the musician as an errand boy. Gaddis turned around so that his back was facing him.
‘I can’t find your name on the table plan,’ Kath was saying.
‘That’s why I went inside,’ he replied. It was the last lie he would have to tell. ‘Truth is, I’m not feeling all that good. I just pulled out.’ He felt a sudden rush of anxiety, as if he could sense Wilkinson coming towards him. ‘I’ve asked them to take my name off the list. I’m going to head back to my hotel.’
‘You are?’ Kath looked crestfallen.
‘Afraid so. I might pop back later. Make sure you save me a dance.’
Gaddis turned and walked away into the park. In doing so he bumped into a tourist carrying a 35mm camera around his neck. Gaddis’s arm knocked against the telephoto lens and he felt obliged to apologize.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, then, in German: ‘ Entschuldigung.’
Karl Stieleke did not respond.
Chapter 41
Gaddis had chosen the Kleines Cafe from a photograph in a Phaidon guidebook to Vienna which had been left by a guest in the dining area of the Goldene Spinne. The photograph suggested that the cafe was the sort of low- key, inconspicuous place that Gaddis was looking for, and so it proved. Visiting Franziskanerplatz early on Saturday morning, he had discovered a small, pedestrianized square, about half a mile west of the Radisson, with a fountain at its centre, birds hopping in and out of the water and local residents reading newspapers over cups of coffee in the sunshine. The Kleines Cafe occupied the corner of the ground floor of a recently renovated building just a few metres from the fountain. There were two entrances: one leading into the square itself, where half a dozen tables were set out in neat rows; and a side exit, in the lower section of the cafe, which led out on to a cobbled street running downhill into Singerstrasse.
Just inside this back entrance was a single, mirrored booth. It was here that Gaddis established himself at nine o’clock on Saturday evening. He felt that it would be the perfect place to talk to Wilkinson: there were no other seats or tables close by, only some cardboard boxes and empty kegs of beer. In a re-run of his convoluted journey to the Estacio Sants in Barcelona, he had taken a circuitous route to the cafe, trying to shake off any potential surveillance by using three different modes of transportation — foot, taxi, train — in a journey which had lasted almost an hour. He was certain that he was not being followed.
He ordered a beer from the manager and waited. He had a new Yeltsin biography to read, cigarettes to smoke, and felt quietly confident that Wilkinson would appear as soon as he was no longer required at the wedding. But Gaddis had not counted on the sheer volume of customers who began pouring through the back door at around half-past nine. It turned out that the Kleines Cafe was one of the most popular bars in Vienna: by ten, it was impossible to see the exit from Gaddis’s seat at the booth, despite the fact that he was only a few feet from the street. He counted at least thirty people crushed into the tiny lower section around him and assumed that there were at least twice as many in the main body of the cafe. If Wilkinson walked in, there was a real possibility that he would fail to spot Gaddis.
He need not have worried. At twenty-past ten, Gaddis looked up to see Wilkinson peering over the head of a plump Viennese banker who was wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He nodded at him, to establish his identity, and Wilkinson pushed his way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd before settling on the opposite side of the booth in a seat which Gaddis had been jealously guarding since nine o’clock.
‘Let me guess,’ he said, his weight jogging the small circular table as he sat down. ‘You didn’t think I would come.’
‘I’m certainly glad to see you,’ Gaddis replied.
It was hard to read Wilkinson’s mood. His normally impassive face was touched by an odd sense of mischief. Wilkinson had changed out of his morning suit into a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a shirt, and a dark V-neck jumper. He removed the same tattered Barbour that had witnessed the unsolicited visit of Christopher Brooke and set it on the bench beside him.
‘You have quite a nerve, Doctor Gaddis. I was warned about you.’
‘You were?’
‘Certain people are reluctant for us to speak. Certain people are concerned that we might cause trouble. How do you get a whisky around here?’
He wondered if Wilkinson was a little drunk from the festivities. He had been expecting criticism for making the phone call to his home in New Zealand, but the veteran spy seemed to be in a relaxed, forgiving mood. Had he taken any precautions in coming to the cafe? Had he paid any attention to the surveillance threat?
‘I’ll go to the bar,’ Gaddis told him. ‘How do you take it?’
It took ten long minutes to make his way through the crowds, to order two Jamesons on ice and to return to the table. He found Wilkinson flicking through the Yeltsin book.
‘Any good?’
‘Not particularly.’ Gaddis sat down and put the whisky in front of him. ‘Cuttings job.’
There was music playing, lounge jazz, but set at a volume which made conversation relatively straightforward. They would not need to raise their voices above the music and the babble of the crowd. After a brief exchange about the wedding, Wilkinson asked Gaddis for what he called ‘some background’ on his relationship with Katya. His manner was still unexpectedly amiable and co-operative and Gaddis interpreted the question as a broader request to lay out everything he knew concerning ATTILA. To that end, he set about telling the entire story of his involvement with Crane, including Charlotte’s initial research and sudden death, the murders of Calvin Somers and Benedict Meisner, as well as the revelation that Tanya Acocella was an MI6 officer who had masqueraded as an archivist at Kew. Throughout this long process, Wilkinson interjected only rarely, either to clarify a detail or to ask for a phrase to be repeated on account of a sudden noise in the bar. He did not appear to be unduly surprised by anything Gaddis was telling him and remained, for the most part, inscrutable in his reactions. When, for example, Gaddis related what had happened at Meisner’s apartment in Berlin, he merely nodded sagely and muttered ‘I see’ while staring at the ice in his glass. It was increasingly apparent to Gaddis that he was being sized up, rather in the way that a father takes his time to consider the strengths and weaknesses of a prospective son-in-law. Clearly Wilkinson had yet to decide whether or not to divulge the wealth of information he possessed to a writer he did not know or trust. As a consequence, he had about him the slightly overbearing self-confidence of a man who knows that he can walk out on a situation at any moment, at no personal cost.
‘So you subsequently discovered that Neame and Crane were the same man?’
Wilkinson’s question had no obvious tone of condescension, but the implication was clear: Gaddis, a supposedly bright, intelligent academic, had been hoodwinked by an old-age pensioner.
‘What can I tell you?’ he replied, holding his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender. He had decided that the most sensible strategy was to be as candid and as honest as possible. There was no point in trying to finesse a man of Wilkinson’s experience. ‘I was duped by a master liar. My only consolation is that I probably wasn’t the first person to fall for Crane’s silver tongue.’
‘No,’ Wilkinson replied steadily. ‘You certainly weren’t. Nor, I imagine, will you be the last.’ He took a sip of his drink and appeared to catch the eye of a blonde American woman who was standing close to their table. ‘But it makes absolute sense that Eddie would have wanted to get his story out in that way. After all, he’s spent his life being two people.’
It was strangely exhilarating to hear Wilkinson speak of Crane so intimately, but any hope Gaddis held that the conversation would now turn to his recollections of ATTILA were quickly snuffed out.
‘You said in your note that you think Katya was murdered.’ Wilkinson was a physically imposing man and when he stared directly into Gaddis’s eyes, Gaddis had to remind himself not to look away. ‘What is your evidence for this?’
‘A pattern of behaviour,’ he replied uncertainly. It was the first unconvincing thing that he had said all night.
‘I have to say that I disagree with you.’ There was a finality to Wilkinson’s reply which brooked no argument. ‘If the FSB had been on to Katya, they would have followed my files to your house and you’d be dead by now as well.’
