“You could have put all that in a letter instead of breaking up my sleep.”
“Think so? No. First rule – try your man to check responses, reflex actions and blood pressure. You got an Alpha plus mark with me. I knew you were awake but even so you got me off balance. I should have thought of the pillow. What’s the answer?”
I stood up and stepped back so that he had a free walk to the door.
“Briefly,” I said, “no. Expanding it a little – not bloody likely. What is it about me that makes people think I’ve got a Judas complex?”
“Money,” he said. “Lovely dollars, honey child.”
The longer I was with him, the less I liked this American. I nodded at the door. “Goodnight, Johnson.”
He did not argue. He said, “Okay. Your loss.” And then at the door, he added, “You keeping my gun?”
I said, “It goes in the collection. When I retire I’m presenting it to the South Kensington Science Museum. Also, not that I’m impressed with the security of this place, I’ll have the key you let yourself in with.”
I held out my left hand and kept him covered with the right. After a flicker of hesitation he fished in his trouser pocket and tossed me a key.
I kept the door open and heard him down the stairs. Then I checked him from the window, crossing the street below. Then I went back to bed. Lovely dollars. Sure, and I would have been paid in dollars, too. But somewhere, when the real book-keeping was done, I was pretty sure that it would have been in roubles. Honey child....
CHAPTER SIX
“VOUS VOUS AMUSEZ, NO?”
I phoned Wilkins at Greenwich the next morning early. It was half-past seven and her father answered the phone, roaring down the instrument as though he had been roused by the officer of the watch saying that number two hold was on fire. He shouted for Wilkins and, while she was taking her hair out of curlers or whatever else it was that she felt she had to do to make herself decent to answer the phone, the old man gave me two runners at Longchamp that day and a brief run down on the weather prospects in London.
Wilkins came on, half-awake and disapproving of early calls. I said that I wanted everything she could find on Avraam Malacod phoned to me as soon as possible, and then, as an off-chance, because it had been worrying me a little ever since I had heard it, I asked for the same on Latour-Mesmin.
“Female?”
“Yes. Vérité,” I said. “The old memory box keeps flashing hazy sorts of headlines. Or am I dreaming?”
“At this hour you should be sleeping.”
I did not argue. I gave her the flat number to call back and then made coffee and two poached eggs. I sat over the coffee trying to put some order into things. Malacod through Stebelson wanted me to keep an eye on Katerina and finally let him know where Mrs Vadarci went to ground. Sutcliffe wanted the same. Then there were the two men who had jumped me in London, and lover-boy who had visited me last night ... all on the same tack. And tied to Mrs Vadarci, flying like a gorgeous kite, so that you couldn’t miss her, was Katerina. Stebelson had said that Mrs Vadarci was going to use Katerina. What for? Maybe I ought to pin Katerina down somewhere long enough to make her talk. It would not be easy, but it was worth trying. If everybody was using everybody else, and hoping to make a good thing out of it, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t come in on the game, no matter what Sutcliffe said about men overfilling their wallets.
I waited until nine-thirty and then phoned Balzac 35. 30, a personal call to Katerina. She came on sounding very sleepy and cross, and sounded crosser when she heard that it was me.
“Ring later,” she said, and I could hear the yawn.
“I want to see you today.”
“Ring later.”
I said, “Seven o’clock tonight. The north end of the Solferino bridge.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll come round to the hotel now?”
“Then I don’t see you.”
“You’ll have to. I’ll say I’m from the Ministry of Health and want to see your certificate to practise as a masseuse. Solferino bridge. Seven o’clock.”
“All right.”
“Good girl.”
“How can I tell the north end?”
“Look at the river. If it flows from your right to your left, you’re at the wrong end. Cross over.”
“Mein Gott – how difficult. I stand in the middle. And I wait only two minutes.” She rang off, and I imagined her curling up in bed again. I lingered over the picture for a while.
Then Casalis came in on his own key and said cheerfully, “Morning, Mother Jambo. Sleep well?”
“All but an hour. I had a visitor. The key of this place is compromised. As though you care.”
“Not particularly. Life is one big compromise.” He poured himself what was left of the coffee into the quarter-filled sugar basin and made a relishing noise as he swallowed half of it at one go. “Delicious. You’ve got a touch with coffee.”
“He called himself Howard Johnson, or some such name. Made me an offer on behalf of the C.I.A. and guaranteed fat payment.”
“Snappy dresser? Looks like a college half-back and has a manner so frank you can tell it’s pure man-made fibre from east of the Urals?”
“That’s him.”
“Dear old Howard. He’s what they call an early developer. Bright boy of the class, top marks in everything, and then when his voice
