After watching Girard eat through a mountain of local and provincial cheeses, he finished his own meal and walked to the bar that stood in the lobby. Girard would have to walk past him to get to the doors, so he ordered a cognac and watched a foursome of old Americans playing bridge in the quiet lounge, the hotel’s big black dog occasionally shoving his head under one of their arms trying to get some attention.
Kirov sipped his drink and waited. Finally the Frenchman appeared, looking as satisfied with his meal as only the Gaelic can be.
“Pardon,” Kirov said jovially, “would you care for a night-cap? My last night in civilisation and a shame to drink fine cognac on my own...”
Girard was tall and good looking, in his mid thirties. His tan was real and he moved like a man who was fit, but his eyes had a flatness that left Kirov uneasy. He had seen it before, in those who could kill without feeling and sometimes even enjoyed it. If Quayle doesn’t do the job on you, you cunt, he thought, I will.
“Thank you but no,” he answered.
“Are you sure? It’s cold outside! Let me warm your way!”
Kirov lifted his glass to try to persuade him, every inch the happy drunk, but Girard would not be convinced. “No, thank you,” he replied stiffly – and, taking his coat off the rack, he moved out onto the street.
Good enough, Kirov thought. He’ll remember me now. Then, scooping up a handful of peanuts from a small china bowl on the bar, he settled on his haunches and called over for the hotel dog, who snuffled them up with clear rolling sweeps of his big pink tongue.
“Dosvidania,” he said, stroking the dog’s head.
Then he too walked out onto the street and the cold crisp night. It had been snowing for forty hours now, and one of his team was watching the chalet complex. As soon as they looked like moving into the mountains, they would know. There was a ski equipped aircraft chartered in Girard’s name in two days’ time. The pilot had talked in a bar in Sollonges. He didn’t like new snow on glaciers but, for this fee, he would fly anywhere.
Everything was ready. Quayle’s instructions had been followed to the letter.
*
Quayle had taken a look at the code on the screen, written the questions down verbatim on a pad, and then shut it down without touching a key. He worked better on paper and now sat for the seventh hour, considering the questions. They had passed though Singapore and were airborne again, Sergi and Holly still asleep in their seats as they had been throughout the stop – and, lighting another cigarette, he let his mind wander back twenty-five years to his days Cambridge University and the first icon he had watched Teddy Morton transform from a mildewed filthy write-off to a thing of beauty again.
“The first letters of the full name of the background colour and the last letter of the frame colour of the first Orthodox piece you ever handled in my rooms.”
He remembered it like yesterday. The fine brushes dipped in turpentine and the bright smear of blue across the heavy cardboard shoe box top. What blue? Cobalt blue? Sky blue? Royal blue? It was mid-range and strong. Cobalt blue.
He wrote down CB.
The frame was easy. It was heavy and of carved timber and painted in thick gilt gold leaf. Writing a D after the CB, he moved onto the next question.
“The final move of the game of chess you won” was next. It didn’t give a time or date or who the opponent was. It didn’t need to. He had only ever beaten Teddy once. It was with a move that Boris Spatsky had used to advantage with Bobby Fischer the American. They had been sitting in the book-lined study in Morton’s house in Cambridge, a fire in the hearth and a bottle of Russian Vodka on the small occasional table between them. Quayle was pleased to be back. He had just finished a long job in East Berlin and it was nice to unwind. Queen to King four. QTK4. He wrote that in after the D.
“The departure time of the train that you took to Lincoln for the first time. Drop the points.”
Now that would have been on file at registry. The train he should have taken anyway. He had gone up the day before and spent the night with a girlfriend who lived nearby. Only Teddy knew that. She had sneaked out of work to meet him at the Station. Mid-afternoon. He had nearly missed it because of the idiots briefing them at the FO. He remembered it because it was the girlfriend’s address. She lived at number 212. The 2:12.
He wrote in 212 and moved on.
“The poet whose words have brought you this far. The year of his death less the number of bicycles you owned over the years at college. Key the number in backwards.”
Newbolt died in 1938. Less two bikes made 1936. He wrote down 6391 after the 212. That was it.
CBDQTK42126391.
Flipping up the top of the computer, he inserted the disk again and took a breath. Fuck it, he thought. Mine is not to question why. Mine is but to do or die.
He punched in the code slowly, careful, with his thick fingers, not to make an error.
The screen flashed a fast series of figures and finally asked him if he wished to change the code. Breathing a sigh of relief, he hit the ‘N’ option and, as he scrolled down the files, he lit another cigarette. For the next two hours, he read and made notes on the pad, his jaws clenching and his eyes glittering. Bastards.
*
Chamonix was veiled in new snow
