Sir William's position, his treachery would be pre-eminent; invaluable to Moscow. Kapustin would be little more than an office-boy by comparison.
'I'll have it in hand, William, before your return from Washington. Eldon can take charge of the cleaning- up.'
'Let's just have it over with!' Sir William remarked with sudden and unexpected testiness. 'Unpleasant, time-consuming business… let's get on with it, and then on with more important matters.' His voice reproved gently and with immense authority. Babbington, like a tiresome junior boy, was wasting the house-master's valuable time. As if to fulfil the image that occurred to Babbington, Sir William added: 'Let's not spend too much time with the Colts, shall we, and neglect the First Eleven? What's past is past.'
'Quite.' Babbington was satisfied with the self-control he had displayed during their meeting. He looked at his watch. 'I have a lunch appointment, William,' he explained deferentially.
'Of course, my dear fellow — as a matter of fact, so have I.' Sir William stood up, and offered his large, smooth-knuckled hand. Babbington took it, smiled.
'Spring-cleaning will be early this year,' he promised. 'And comprehensive.'
'I don't doubt it, my dear fellow — but, find Margaret and her silly husband for me, would you? I'd like to have a long, godfatherly talk to that young lady.'
'Of course.'
Babbington envisaged the tightrope, the knife-edge. Timing would be important; daring crucial. Sir William would have to content himself with eventually learning that his god-daughter and her husband had walked into the very danger he had always feared they might meet. Unfortunate, the meddling of amateurs…
As for Aubrey — if they once laid hands on him, he could be shipped to Moscow and his treachery displayed there for the world to see… before he was quietly killed. Aubrey might yet have made his greatest mistake. He had been safer in London than he was in any other part of the world.
Yes. Who dares wins, he thought ironically. Who dares wins.
Paul Massinger was afraid. Not professionally, but in a deeper, more insidious personal sense which he could neither quell nor ignore. Zimmermann's warning to employ his old training and instincts had amounted to no more than a half-hearted attempt to avoid surveillance at Schwechat airport when they reached Vienna. His awareness was clogged and weary with the images of his sleepless night; the turning, tossing body of Margaret lying in the other bed, pretending sleep. He had been unable to discern any surveillance. He had made Margaret walk with an American couple to the doors of the lounge while he held back, watching the passenger lounge, the stairs, the doors. It was futile; a branch of mathematics which he had forgotten and which would not return. He was no longer an agent.
He had given up the attempt and rejoined Margaret outside the glass doors in a bitter afternoon wind that seemed to mock them, and they had immediately taken a taxi.
Margaret talked quietly and obsessively in the back of the taxi. Occasionally, Massinger glanced through the rear window but saw no tailing car. The turning of his head was a duty rather than a skill. His wife voice's endlessly refuted the accusation that her father might have been a Nazi. There was Cliveden, of course, even an acquaintance with Mosley. But it was nothing, nothing…
He had not been allowed to take a commission because of his importance in the wartime civil service… no one had worked harder, no one was more outspoken of the need to defeat Hitler and the Nazis… people had trusted him… Churchill… Sir William would laugh at the suggestion… it had to be the woman… the answer was with the woman.
Nonsense. Ridiculous. Foul…
Foul, foul, foul…
Massinger's head beat with the voice, with its almost mad intensity. Nothing had changed. His wife was still obsessed with her father's death and the manner of it. There was nothing else. Nothing else, nothing else, his mind began to chorus with her assertions and refutations. Nothing else. The remainder of their lives together was at stake, he admitted.
Sobs like the separate, recurring pains of violent toothache. All night. Yet, whenever he addressed her or sat up in his bed, she had not replied but had instantly pretended sleep, holding her breath in the darkness of the bedroom as if listening for the noise of intruders. Until he, too, adopted a regular rhythm of breathing that imitated sleep. After a while, the sobbing would begin again, punctuated by sighs, and occasional stifled groans. The distance between the twin beds was a gulf. He had never felt so separated and apart from her and the sensation horrified him.
He recoiled from what they might find in Vienna, even as she pursued it fervently.
His call to Clara Elsenreith as he looked out at the Rhine masked by slanting, driven rain was one of the most reluctant he had ever made. The woman had agreed, almost suspiciously, to see them, but only because he was a friend of Aubrey whose name she recognised. She did not promise help or revelation.
The Stephansdom, in the centre of Vienna.
He could not recall, except with difficulty, that this was the city of less than a week ago, the city of the drugged KGB Rezident, of Hyde's danger.
It was hard to remember Hyde. He was a distant, drowning figure in the waves of his wife's anguish, his white hand raised for help. He was, in all probability, dead.
The taxi stopped and the driver turned and indicated the imposing seventeenth-century fasade of the first and second floors of the building that housed the elegant shoe-shop. Beyond the broad window of the shop was a cobbled courtyard which would contain the entrance to the apartments. Massinger paid the fare, tipping with unconsidered generosity.
Margaret got out into the wind, which distressed the hair she had perfunctorily tidied in the taxi. She was heavily made-up, and the effect was to make her look older rather than to disguise the tired, drawn appearance of her features. The wind chilled and sculpted her features into an expression of hopelessness. He took her arm, and, as the taxi pulled away out of the Stephansplatz, led her beneath the archway into the courtyard. A small fountain was toyed with by the gusting wind. Green plants appeared drab and hardly alive.
Massinger rang the bell. Immediately the security loudspeaker enquired his name. Then the lock was released, and they entered a wide hallway, elegantly carpeted, small tables dotting it as if items left over, superfluous. Wealth announced itself quietly and firmly in the hall and on the staircase. Massinger clutched Margaret's elbow more tightly, brushing down his ruffled hair with his other hand. Paintings, furniture, tables, sofas.
The door opened as they reached the head of the stairs. The woman, white-haired and perhaps sixty, was four or five inches taller than Aubrey. Perhaps Castleford's height — almost as tall as himself, Massinger realised. Yes, she and Castleford would have made what would have been described as 'a handsome couple'. But Clara Elsenreith had preferred Aubrey, hadn't she…? She was dressed in a shirt and trousers perhaps too young in style but worn with definite confidence, even panache. Her eyes were intelligent, quick to observe. She smiled, introducing herself.
'I am Clara Elsenreith. You are the Massingers. Please come in.' Her cool voice might have been that of a receptionist. A young maid took their coats and disappeared with them. The walls of the reception hall were crowded with paintings, some of which Massinger recognised. There were many he felt he could give a current, and heady, valuation. Even almost forty years later, the sense of wealth clashed with the image he had had of Clara Elsenreith, bereft and penniless and an expert exploiter of men. She waved them through double doors into a long, high-ceilinged drawing-room. Gold leaf, gilding, and a wealth of paintings and ornaments. A high marble fireplace and tall windows through which the bulk and the towers of the cathedral could be seen. The room was warm.
She indicated deep, comfortable chairs while she perched cross-legged, hugging her knee like a much younger woman, on a high-backed, delicate chair covered with some heavily embroidered material in blue and gold. Her shirt was chocolate-brown silk and her beige trousers were elegantly tailored. On her small, narrow feet were flat gold slippers. She seemed to watch them with amusement. There was no reluctance in her.
'I've ordered coffee,' she announced after a few moments.
'Thank you,' Margaret replied. Massinger sensed that the woman regarded them from a lofty superiority, as if they were two distant country cousins who had arrived in the city for a first visit.
'It was good of you to see us at such short notice,' he offered.
