Gifts of War (38 page)

“So,” said Rebecca, after Greg had refilled our glasses, “first I get to know Romford, then I get myself invited back to his room. Then what? What am I looking for? Stacks of cash? Little Alps made of Swiss francs?”

“Yes,” I replied. “But what we need in order to move in is to observe the
method
of payment,
how
he is paid, not just how much.” I let a short silence extend between us. “You may not find out everything on a first visit.”

She nodded slowly. “I had worked that out for myself.”

Another silence. Then I asked, “Have you ever had sex with a man you didn’t love, or like?”

She stared at me. “Do you mind very much if I don’t answer that? This situation is unique, after all—no?”

“Well, it’s unusual, I grant you that,” interjected Greg. “But I wouldn’t like to bet on it never happening somewhere else in this goddamn war.”

The silence around the table this time was profound, and gloomy.

“All I ask,” said Rebecca at length, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “is that you don’t broadcast our little scenario to all and sundry. Can’t we just keep it between us?” She looked intently at each of us men in turn.

Greg nodded.

I did too.

The next morning, early, Rebecca took me shopping. I’d told her I had a wife and son at home—I hadn’t gone into details—and that I needed to bring them both something special. She showed me the main shopping streets, and a back alley or two where there were some specialty shops, mainly selling Swiss chocolate. Just then, chocolate was an unheard-of luxury in Britain. Our tour of the back alleys of Zurich reminded me of that Saturday morning, long ago, in Stratford, when I had first fallen for Sam. But, stunning as Rebecca was, I didn’t fall for her. Walking the streets of Zurich, it became a habit of mine to look out for women wearing Alice bands.

As lunchtime approached, we decided that, since Romford knew me by sight, it was safer if I remained at the consulate, rather than keep hiding behind the pillar I had sat near on that first day. If I formed part of the team that kept Romford under visual surveillance, sooner or later he would spot me—and our plan would be in the soup. It wasn’t worth the risk.

Rebecca made the approach, as I had suggested, and Romford bit like a fish that hadn’t eaten for a month; according to Greg’s account later, he all but raped her right there in the Café Odeon. In view of his evident keenness, Rebecca—in my view quite rightly—played it cool and rebuffed his advances. She even had her own plan as to how to
proceed. She thought it would be less suspicious if she didn’t turn up at the café on the following day, and did so only on the day after that with a friend of hers. This was another woman, a bit older than Rebecca and much slimmer, and darker, but still attractive in her own way. She was called Liesl, and was half Austrian and half Swiss. When Romford came across to their table in the Café Odeon, Rebecca was friendly in a polite sort of way but nothing more.

It was only on the third meeting between Rebecca and Romford, which happened two days later still, that she agreed to join him at his table and let him buy her a drink. The drink turned into lunch, and lunch turned into a dinner invitation two nights later. The fish had been well and truly hooked.

While we were waiting for the all-important dinner, Rebecca showed me more shops of Zurich, including one that I had been keeping an eye open for. There, I bought Will a very simple train set. It had a light at the front that lit up. I bought Sam a handbag and some perfume. Perfume was hard to get in London. And I bought two bags of sugar.

For dinner Romford entertained Rebecca at the main restaurant in the Bar au Lac, rightly calculating that she had never been there before. Added to that, it was just a short journey from the restaurant to his room upstairs. Romford behaved entirely in character throughout and shortly before midnight the couple walked into the lift. Greg watched from across the lobby. He came directly from the hotel to join me where I was waiting, in the Bar Venner in the narrow street that our office overlooked.

We sat in front of two whiskies like beavers at a dam.

“I hope Romford is content with straightforward sex,” said Greg softly.

“Oh, it will be straightforward,” I replied. “And probably over
very quickly, in the first instance, at least. Romford doesn’t have much experience.”

We drank our whiskies.

“If Romford is doing what we think he’s doing, and we manage to prove it to our satisfaction, what then?”

He leaned toward me, so that I could smell the alcohol on his breath. “As I said before, my dear Hal, you, Rebecca, or me is going to have to shoot him. Dead.”

It was half past eleven the next morning before Rebecca showed up at the consulate.

“I had to shower,” she said. “I had to get his smell off me.”

“How bad was it?” I asked as gently as I could.

“Someday,” she said, “someday, if you get me very drunk, I’ll tell you. But not now, not now or for a very long time. It was bad—don’t make me relive it.”

“You have to relive some of it, Becky.” Greg was insistent. “We need to know what happened. Coffee?”

“Don’t call me Becky—don’t
ever
call me Becky. I hate it.” She shook her head, as if to free something caught up in her hair. “I’d love some coffee.”

Greg went off to make it. I didn’t speak for a moment. When I did, it was to say, “War gives us the most terrible experiences, which become the most terrible memories. Is that what worries you—that you will never be able to expunge this memory, that it will spoil you for every other man who will be in your life?”

She looked at me.

“Is that another question you don’t want to answer?”

A slight nod, so I let it go.

Greg came back in with the coffee. “Here we are. I’ve added a little whisky from my own private stash. Medicinal purposes.” He smiled.

Rebecca sipped the coffee, then gulped it. “That’s better,” she murmured.

She leaned against a metal filing cabinet.

“Now, Hal here was right. Romford was fascinated by my background—by my family, I mean. How far back we go, which ancestors did what—generals, politicians, diplomats, bishops, Oxford dons. He couldn’t get enough. I did most of the talking at dinner—we talked in English and in German. I made a few elementary mistakes from time to time, and he was quick to correct me, anxious to show off how good his German is. He asked me about my writing of course, my political views, how I got on with my father. I asked him about himself but he kept brushing that aside until I insisted—which I thought was only natural of me. To be interested in him, I mean. He gave himself away quite early in the meal—”

“What?” cried Greg.

“Not in the sense you mean, silly. I mean he rushed our dinner. He ate quickly, drank quickly, asked his questions in a rush—at times it was more like an interview than a conversation.”

“So?” Greg looked mystified.

Rebecca looked at me. “Tell him, Hal.”

“He wanted dinner to be over, so he could ask you back to his room.”

“Exactly,” whispered Rebecca. “Exactly.”

“And… ? Go on … What happened… ?”

But Rebecca wouldn’t be rushed. She drank more coffee.

“He had champagne in his room. We had a glass. Then he pounced on me. You don’t need to know what happened, or how I handled him. Just that I did handle him. He was obviously not very experienced with women, but that meant I could lead him, teach him, reassure him when he needed to be reassured—as most lovers do.” A sardonic smile crossed her lips. “All you need to know is that I satisfied him… in fact, I bloody well exhausted him.”

She finished her coffee. “That was my plan. After we had finished having sex, at whatever time it was, he fell asleep—though ‘passed out’ would be a better description after what we did and the drink he’d had. That meant it was safe for me to look around his room.”

“Brilliant,” whispered Greg.

“Don’t interrupt. I want to get this over with.” She looked into her coffee cup but it was empty. “He has a suite—a bedroom, a bathroom, a sitting room, and a small hallway with a closet off it. I searched all the rooms, the chest of drawers, the drawers in the table in the sitting room, the closet, the bathroom, the wardrobe in the bedroom, the desk, his bags, under the sofas, behind the curtains, even behind the pictures on the walls.”

“And—?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. No money, no papers, no jewelry. A couple of train tickets, some restaurant receipts, a few cigars. But that’s it.”

“Shit!” hissed Greg.

A long silence elapsed in the room.

“While you were there, did anyone else come in?”

Rebecca looked at me. “Yes, room service. He ordered breakfast for both of us. As soon as he woke up he wanted to do it, so we did it. That made him ravenous, so he ordered breakfast. You press an electric button by the bed, the waiter comes to the room, you say what you want, and they bring it on a trolley. He wanted to do it again after that but I said I had to get on.”