October Men (27 page)

But—

“And you might ask how the KGB let his family get out too, Peter. I don’t care how efficient Westphal is—they had the time to get her under surveillance first. And Westphal’s men wouldn’t have stirred a finger then—they’d smell an ambush a mile off, they’re experts at it.”

“But, David—Narva said—“

“Phooey to what Narva said. Narva was set up, just as Little Bird was set up.”

“Set up for what, for God’s sake? Why should they be set up?” Richardson tried not to let his impatience show. “You’re not going to tell me there’s no oil in the North Sea, because there’s a ruddy lake of the stuff.”

“But has it ever occurred to you, my lad, why Narva never received that final report on it—the one that really counted?”

“Because the KGB got it first, of course.”

“And then staged a false heart attack and let everyone else go home?” Audley shook his head. “That just doesn’t wash, I tell you.”

“Then what does?”

Audley stared at him over his spectacles for a moment, like an Oxford professor with a hitherto bright pupil suddenly afflicted with culpable intellectual blindness.

“Do you recall the Garbo network during the last war, Peter?” he said.

The professorial look was too much—after so much.

“A little before my time, that was.”

“A pity.” Audley chose to ignore the sarcasm. “Garbo was a Spaniard who worked for us—for the Twenty Committee. Masterman called him the Bradman of the double-cross world. He was a perfect genius at inventing imaginary sources of information—imaginary agents—to deceive the Germans.”

“So what?”

“So Little Bird’s Russian contact, the one who passed on useless information from Western Siberia—he has the smell of Garbo about him.”

“The smell—?” Richardson screwed up his memory, trying to pinpoint the moment of falseness in Little Bird’s tale.

“Garbo—“

“I—I have read about him, actually,” Richardson admitted, already regretting the sarcasm. “But I seem to recall he passed on false information. And this certainly wasn’t false—two hundred million tons of oil a year say it isn’t.”

“I never said it was.”

“Then what are you saying, for Christ’s sake?”

“I’m saying there has to be a man somewhere in the Kremlin who wanted to slip the word about the North Sea—someone high up. Why—well, maybe Neville Macready could answer that for us, but it doesn’t really matter now. What matters is he wasn’t a traitor. He just wanted to make sure that we kept drilling.”

“Why didn’t he tell us then? Why did he tell Narva?”

“Because we would have wanted to know too much, and he didn’t want to give away technological secrets. To convince us he’d have to put himself is our hands and he’d be at our mercy then. But if he could get Narva to switch his investment to the North Sea he reckoned he would tip the balance without betraying his country or risking his neck.

“But his problem was to sell the truth without the proof, and that’s where Little Bird served a double purpose, poor little sod—“

A double purpose—

“—Alive he sold Narva the truth. And dead he proved it.”

The best proof in the world!

Richardson saw the plot in the round at last: Little Bird had been manipulated into conning Narva with a mixture of truth and falsehood, only to be conned himself. And if that was how it was, then Comrade X was a true cold-hearted bastard, who deserved to be sold down the river in his turn.

“The only thing that went wrong was—“

Audley stopped abruptly as a small figure burst through the French windows, skidded to a halt and stared at them in speechless surprise.

“Manfred! I told you not to run on the terrace—you will slip and then—“

The gently chiding voice tailed off as its owner appeared framed in the opening behind the little boy, to stare at them both with the same wide-spaced eyes.

Mother and son, as like as two flowers on the same stem, blue and rich honey and spun gold.

It couldn’t be—and yet it ruddy well had to be, thought Richardson, seeing the evident look of recognition on the woman’s face as the cornflower blue eyes settled on Audley. Of course Richard von Hotzendorff had lost his first family in the war, and it was reasonable to expect him to have married a younger woman the second time round. But he had somehow expected a competent, muscular
Hausfrau
, and Narva’s description of the man had reinforced the expectation. Yet the real somehow was wholly unexpected: somehow the grey Goebbels-figure had captured this gorgeous Rhinemaiden.

“Dr. Audley!”

“Frau von Hotzendorff—I—I—regret—“

Audley had the grace to sound genuinely regretful, at least. And with good reason, since this whole KGB scare was a thing of his own making to twist Narva’s arm … except perhaps if Audley failed the Bastard Ruelle might indeed turn his attentions to the Rhinemaiden.

The door opened behind them.

“Sophie, my dear—“ Narva went forward quickly and embraced the woman “—it is good to see you.”

“Eugenio, I’m sorry I rushed away as we came in, but Manfred will go off to the ramparts—“

“Ah!” Narva swept Manfred into his arms, lifting him up high. The little boy’s arms and legs wound round him affectionately. “So Manfred wishes to go on sentry duty on the ramparts!”

“Uncle, there should be cannon there. Why do you not have cannon to drive away the pirates?”

“Because cannon will not deal with pirates, my love—pirates do not attack castles, they are too cowardly. To deal with pirates you put your cannon in a tall ship and you hunt them and seek them out and blow them out of the water—that is what you do with pirates— you blow them to bits!”

“I know! I know! It is all in that book you gave me, the one with the big coloured pictures.”

“Good—so you liked my book?” Narva set the boy down. “Now there are many other books in your bedroom for you to see. Your brother and sister are there already, and there is a tall glass of fizzy orange for you, but if you don’t hurry the fizz will have all fizzed away. So off you go and I will come and see you tucked up in bed and we will discuss pirates—“

“—And how to blow them out of the water?”

“Exactly!” Narva watched Manfred scuttle away, his eyes warm. Nor did their warmth diminish as he raised them to Manfred’s mother, Richardson noted. What had once been a debt of guilt and honour was something more than that now, evidently.

Sophie von Hotzendorff’s glance shuttled uneasily between Audley and Narva. “There is trouble, Eugenio—for you to want me to bring the children—?”

Narva nodded. “But you will be safe here, Sophie.”

“Safe?” She looked at Audley.

“It concerns your husband, Frau von Hotzendorff,” said Audley. “It is to do with what he was doing when—before he died.”

“But I do not—did not—know in detail what he was doing. He would never tell me, apart from his work for the business. I told you so when we met, Dr. Audley—and it was the truth.”

“Yet you did not tell me everything that was the truth—there were things you didn’t tell me.”

The blue eyes turned in doubt to Narva.

“It’s all right, Sophie my dear,” Narva’s voice was reassuring. “He knows about Westphal.”

“Then there is nothing else to know. I didn’t lie to you, or to the man I saw in London, except in that.”

“Your husband told you what to say if … if he didn’t come out?”

Sophie nodded. “Yes, Dr. Audley. If a man named Westphal—or giving that name—came to me I was to go at once with him, with the children. He said we were to take nothing with us, just to lock the door and go as though we were visiting the neighbours next door.”

That was the Westphal trademark. For every client everything was laid on, everything prepared. And paid for.

“But not to tell us?”

The delicate hair shook the answer.

“He sent that message to you?”

“No. He told me before he left … for the last time.”

“So you knew he was doing something very dangerous?”

“I knew he was risking his life for us.” Sophie swallowed and her neck muscles tightened momentarily. “But I’d known that for some time, Dr. Audley.”

“How did you know—if he didn’t tell you about it?”

“How does a wife know anything?” Sophie swallowed again. “The man—the man in London—he said Richard was a good agent, that he was always very careful. But I know even better that … he was a good man … that he was a good husband and a good father. Although he was older he never seemed like it to us—he used to say we had given him a second lease of life. And it was true…”

The emotions beneath the simple words were on a cruelly tight rein. But what was clear from both (unless she was a marvellously accomplished liar even when there was no need for lies) was that the little carrier of second-class mail, the limping salesman of agricultural machinery, had been a big man to his Rhinemaiden, and that he had impressed her every bit as much as he had impressed Eugenio Narva. And if that didn’t fit the pictures in the file it was the pictures that deceived: like the poet said, it was all in the eye of the beholder— the cornflower-blue eye.

“But then he was different…”

No one seemed to want to ask the next question, in the hope that the answer would come unasked.

“He was worried; he was terribly worried each time he went on a sales trip. And when he came back he was so tired—instead of taking the children out he pretended he was still getting over the flu—he’d just had a nasty bout of it in Moscow—“

“He pretended?” Audley repeated gently.

“He pretended he’d been to the doctor and got some little white pills he took, but he hadn’t been at all—when I went to the doctor about Lotte’s tonsils I asked him, and he said Richard hadn’t been near him in ages. … He was sick—he wouldn’t eat and so he lost weight—but it was worry he was sick with. And I knew it wasn’t the business because Frau Krauss told me how well they were doing, and how pleased they were with Richard—she is the sales director’s secretary—“

Sophie paused, taking a deep breath, as though she felt the reins slipping and needed time to grip them again.

“The lie about the doctor—I thought we had no secrets until then. So I asked him outright: I said if he had something bad on his mind I had a right to share it, just as I shared the good things.”

“You thought it was something to do with his work for us?”

“It was what I was always afraid of, yes. But he said it was not that. And then he told me of his meeting with Eugenio—with Signor Narva … and of the plans he had for us to come to the West.”

“You had talked about escaping before?”

“To the West?” Sophie gave Audley a bitter little smile. “Oh yes, Dr. Audley—we dreamed of it. We dreamed—of one day.”

“But he never told you what he was going to give in exchange for his dream?”

Sophie shook her head. “No … but he said that this time there could be danger. He said it would not be easy, as it was for you. And then he told me what to do when Herr Westphal came for me. That was all.”

“Except you weren’t to tell us about Westphal, eh?”

Richardson, watching her intently, could not decide how much lay still untold and how much had gone over her golden head—she was stunning enough to fog anyone’s judgement. But if that
when
was genuine recall and not a slip of the tongue—
when
Herr Westphal came—it was the final dead giveaway that Hotzendorff himself hadn’t banked on being around for the pick-up.

And even if her memory had played her false, or even if her husband had just been his careful self, preparing for the worst, it still amounted to the same thing. For if he couldn’t yet decide about Sophie, whether she was a good liar as well as a good wife, he had decided at last about Little Bird.

After flying for so long in the safety of the woods, Little Bird had broken cover to soar high and free—where the birds of prey were always waiting for little birds. He had known the risk that they would swoop on him, but Sophie made the risk worth while; for someone like her the chance of a few rich years in the sun would be enough for any man. All the theories and countertheories were resolved in her.

“That is true, Dr. Audley.” Sophie regarded the big man gravely, as though she understood that the implied rebuke was fair. “But let me say this: my Richard never cheated you—he always served you honestly.”

“I didn’t say he didn’t.”

So Audley had succumbed to her too, or at least he was being gentle to her. For her Richard had undoubtedly placed other men in jeopardy by attempting his private coup, the men of his own delivery network in Russia and in East Germany.

“I didn’t want him to go—do you think I wanted him to go back to Moscow?” Sophie’s voice rose. “I begged him not to go back there. But he said it was all too far gone—he had his obligations. All his life he—he had obligations—he never let anyone down. But he said now he was just thinking of us—“

“Sophie, my dear—“ Narva took a step towards her, uncertainly.

Poor old Eugenio Narva, thought Richardson, watching the pain and irresolution in the man’s face, as out of place on it as flowers on a fortress. His sin had caught him out with this ultimate refinement of cruelty: not just his sense of guilt but the powerful ghost of a self-sacrificing husband lay between him and the woman. Ten billion lire and an infinity of Hail Marys weren’t enough to beat that alliance.

“Ha-hmm—professore—“

Somehow little Rat face had entered the room without anyone taking the least bit of notice.

“Professore—“ Boselli began nervously.

But then unobtrusiveness was probably another of his skills. And, come to that, it was hard to imagine those rather timid eyes lining up an automatic—the whole weird deception of the man was remarkable!

“—We—the General has a line cleared to—“ the eyes flicked over the others “—a line cleared.” So the two names had worked their magic. Moscow was on the line.

THE BLEACHED STONES
of the dry watercourse were treacherously unstable, as though the last of the winter torrents hadn’t been strong enough to settle them firmly into their final positions. Already Boselli had nearly broken his ankle on one, saved only by his stout new country boots.