He said, “What the news?”
“They’ve gone, yesterday morning. Moved on. Any idea where?”
He shook his head and passed me a card. “You’ll find me there. My studio. I’m a painter.” The name was Michael Oglu and the address 21 Ulica something-or-the-other. “How’s Manston?” he added.
“Fine,” I said. “What can I call on you for?”
“Anything, dear boy. Come and buy a picture. Tourist scenes. Poker-work frames.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Two other things. One, when you move I’ll know where you’ve gone. Two, watch out for a nice old gent, whitehaired, who carries a malacca stick with a silver knob on top shaped like a half-closed water-lily.”
“You’re kidding.” I laughed.
“Gospel. No amount of training can stop it. Personality will out. In its quiet way it’s a flamboyant profession. London says he’s just been assigned to this beat and he’s strictly a killer. Vide the stick. He’s not over intelligent, though. But he’s a sticker when ordered.” He giggled and squeezed lemon over the last oyster on the plate before I could get to it.
I met Vérité an hour later in the Gradska Kafana on the harbour and bought her coffee and a slice of cake.
“They left yesterday morning,” she said, “on a coastal steamer for the island of Mljet.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s about four or five hours up the coast. There are two or three lakes in the centre of the island and there’s an island on one of them where a thirteenth-century monastery has been turned into an hotel. They booked in there. I’ve done the same for us. We leave tomorrow morning, very early. Is that right?”
“Dead right.”
We went back and had lunch. Afterwards she disappeared into her room and I didn’t see her again until dinner. I got my evening smile for something or other and then we danced. In the main room we got blocked for a moment or two. I found myself treading water gently looking over Vérité’s shoulder at a table which held a plain, dumpy woman and an oldish man with raven black, close-cropped hair and a stiff Prussian set to his thin shoulders. Resting up against the table at his side was a malacca stick with a silver knob shaped like a half-closed water-lily.
The comfortable old biddy with him laughed at something he had just said, reached across the table affectionately and patted him on the cheek. Maybe she liked him better with his hair dyed.
When we went up to our rooms I went into Vérité’s with her.
I stopped the beginning of her cold frown by saying, “What do you do about your reports to Herr Malacod?”
The frown went.
“I mail them the moment I’ve written them.”
“Copies?”
“I don’t keep any.”
I went across the room and opened the french windows. She had a separate little balcony. Mine was three feet away. There was nothing on the far side of hers except the corner of the hotel. Nobody could come round that, not even Sir Edmund Hillary.
I came back to her and said, “Keep your door locked and a chair up against it. Not wedged, but like this—” I demonstrated “—so that it’ll go over with a crash if anyone tries to come in. If it does – scream with everything you’ve got. It’s better than any gun and I’ll be right in.”
“It’s very nice of you to be so concerned for me, and I shall do as you say. But—” she walked to the table and picked up her handbag “—I can also look after myself.” She pulled out a small automatic. “Herr Malacod insisted on it.”
“Good for Herr Malacod,” I said. I began to walk to the door, intending to say goodnight from it.
She said, “In view of what you’ve just said, isn’t there something you ought to tell me which I should report to Herr Malacod?”
She was serving her master. I had to find ways of serving both mine.
“No,” I said. “It’s just a hunch. When you’ve been on the same bus route a long time, you get to spot the man who’s travelling without a ticket.”
I got one of her genuine smiles, and said goodnight. I stood outside until I’d heard the key go and the sound of the chair against the door.
I went down to the bar and had a nightcap, and then I went to the reception desk and asked a few silly questions about our trip to Mljet the next day. The girl behind the desk was bored and ready for a gossip. By the time I went upstairs again, I knew that water-lily knob and his partner were listed as Herr and Frau Walter Spiegel from Berlin. I had a strong feeling that neither of them would have any trouble going from West to East through the Wall.
I lay in bed trying out a few wild ideas, but I got nowhere with them.... Katerina and Mrs Vadarci, and trailing behind them in an untidy wake, Malacod, the wealthy Jew philanthropist, Sutcliffe, the éminence grise of Whitehall, and then the hard-working beagle pack from Moscow represented by Howard Johnson and Herr Walter Spiegel. I was ready to bet that somewhere, more remote perhaps, there might be a representative of the Federal German Office for the Protection of the Constitution.... Bonn wouldn’t let itself be left out, not if Katerina, Stebelson and Malacod were genuine West German nationals, which I felt they were. There were all the makings of a spicy pie. What I wanted to know was whether it was already in the oven, or just sitting on the marble slab waiting for the crust to be put on. Whatever state it was in, I was hoping for the chance to put in my thumb and pull out a plum.
I read a chapter of Stigmata and fell into a light sleep, which nothing disturbed until the porter
