He lifted his head and Mawby was beaming at him, Pierce shook his hand, Carter with evident pleasure and welcome on his face waited his turn and Smithson slapped him on the hack. George, with an eye on Mawby, stayed still and distant.
Working from an office temporarily provided for him at headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Street, Valeri Sharygin wrote in longhand what he hoped would be his final report on the disappearance of Willi Guttmann. No, not the disappear- ance, the drowning… The KGB major frowned privately, his head turned away from the typist by the window. The absence of the interpreter's body irritated him, but he could wait no longer. Leave beckoned before the departure of the delegation to the United Nations in New York for the summer session of the Conference.
Perhaps before he flew to the United States he would telephone Foirot in Geneva.
He had been thorough in the writing of the report. Thorough enough to have visited personally the mes- senger from the Foreign Ministry who had taken the Guttmann possessions to his father's flat. Thorough enough to have registered the bitter swell of bereavement that had greeted the messenger.
What could he achieve by further delay? He anticipated that while he took his fortnight at Sochi the corpse would drift to Lake Geneva's surface.
It was peculiar that it had not already done so.
Chapter Five
Lizzie Forsyth ran up the two flights of stairs to the flat of the British Consul. She rang the doorbell, and heard the muffled whisper of a door opening deep inside and the murmur of annoyed voices. Who came on Sunday evening to do busi- ness with the Consul? He'd be placating his wife, saying he wouldn't be long, wondering what matter could not wait till the morning. Lizzie reordered her hair, raised herself hand- some on her heels and waited.
'Yes?'
Lizzie smiling. 'You remember me, Lizzie Forsyth?' Lizzie radiant, a grin and white teeth. 'I wanted to see you.'
He had started back, as if exposed to danger. The Consul; remembered Lizzie Forsyth. Not every day that he played host to a Soviet defector, that he entertained a man from Intelligence in his drawing room. He would not forget Lizzie Forsyth and her shivering boy and the quiet competence of the man who had taken him away. Unhappily he gestured her inside and led the way to his office, calling to a closed door on the way that he would not be long.
'What can I do for you, Miss Forsyth?'
She spoke with the fervour of a gale at an open window.
'I've just had the most marvellous thing happen. Just like that and without warning… my period's come. I'd given up hope, resigned myself to it, having the baby, and now it's come. God knows why I was as late as that. Well, it's come now… so the problem's over.'
'You're not…'
'I'm not pregnant, isn't it marvellous? I want to tell Willi I didn't know how to write to him. Where to send a letter.'
'You're not pregnant?'
'It's wonderful, I think it's the happiest thing that's ever happened to me.' 'And now you want to tell Willi?'
'He'll want to know. I'm a bit ashamed really… I sort of railroaded him.'
She was quieter now, calmer, the flood tide running steadily. 'I don't know whether he ever specially wanted to marry me. Willi ought to know, oughtn't he? It'll make everything different…'
The Consul winced, pain clear on his face, and he held up his hand for her to stop.
'Pray, how does this make everything different?' He looked into her clear, azure eyes and watched the light run against them and heard her certainty and sureness.
'We don't have to get married, well not in a hurry anyway.'
He put his hands to his chin, rubbed at the skin. 'There was no more compelling reason for Willi Guttmann's defec- tion than that you had told him you were pregnant and that he must stand by you?'
'About right, yes.'
'And now that you are no longer pregnant, what do you think should happen?'
'Well, he's free, isn't he?'
'Free to do what?'
'He can go home, if he wants to,' she blurted. 'He's under no obligation to me.'
'He's defected. For your sake he has made himself a traitor.' The Consul paused, sighed. 'There is no second chance, there is no change of mind.
He came across and that's that. He is somebody that we are interested in, that his own side cares about… Willi Guttmann no longer has a home.
'It was as much his fault as mine.'
'Do you still want to marry Willi Guttmann, make the rest of your life with him?'
'I don't know.' The certainty was gone, the radiance had dripped away.
Just a secretary, one of a hundred, and the prettiness trodden out of her.
'The relevant authorities will inform Guttmann of what you've told me.'
'It's not just me that's to blame…'
'Get out, Miss Forsyth. Get out of this office and never come near it again.'
She didn't understand, he knew that, and his anger was wasted on her.
She hadn't the smallest comprehension of the squalid mess she had left behind her. He tried to recall the face of the boy under his wet and sleeked-down hair, and could remember only the way that he had stood beside the girl and held her hand and looked with love at her and trembled from the cold of the lake.
He walked to the door and opened it and then went across the hallway and unlocked the front door. She hurried past him and when she was gone he heard only the sharp clatter of her heels on the steps.
They stayed up late in the sitting room.
The terms of reference for the evening had been set by Mawby. No shop talk, no gossip about the Service. This was a night off for all concerned, the last they would have, Mawby had said, this was the team familiarising with its selection, learning the mannerisms and habits and pecu- liarities. There was a bottle of whisky on the table and crystal glasses and the level of the drink slipped as the tongues loosened and the laughter echoed from the walls. Mawby played host, his back to the fire, orchestrating the enter- tainment, involving the players, and did it skilfully.
Henry Carter talked of a strike-bound family hotel on the Costa del Sol with guests cooking and washing and making their beds, and a suspicion of cholera up the coast. Adrian Pierce recounted his Cambridge days and the homosexual don who took tutorials in a satin dressing gown and the chase around the table and the flight back to his room. Harry Smithson, a leer at his face and a grin at his mouth, told of the 19-year-old second lieutenant that was himself and the posting to occupation forces in Germany and the favours that could be gained for a pair of soft stockings and a bar of milk chocolate.
Happy, friendly, nonsense talk, and Mawby allowed Johnny to remain on the fringe, to enjoy but not to contri- bute. Sizing them up, weighing them, and he could bide his time over the development of the relationships. No fool, Charles Augustus Mawby. Nobody's fool.
Johnny basked in quiet pleasure because this was how it had been sometimes in the mess, and he was the moth drawn to an old flame.
Johnny had laughed and chuckled at the private faces of the men in the room. Carter for whom nothing worked and the tale was of chaos and failure. Pierce, whose sarcasm was vital and cutting. Smithson the cynic, believing in nothing, trust- ing nobody.
Content to be in charge, giving them their heads and for a purpose, Mawby dispensed the whisky.
And it was good to be part of something again. The noise of the room highlighted the narrowness of the escape bolt that Johnny had chosen for himself in Cherry Road. Run away, hadn't he? Sprinted for cover after the awfulness of the trial. Shunned contact with the great outside and leaned on his frail mother for support. Not
