The Company of Saints (8 page)

‘It's accurate,' Davina admitted, ‘if I ignore the interpretation. That's what Tony said. They're holding this man as a hostage. The only way out that he could see was to break off with me.'

‘Saying that you'd left him, of course?' Sir James said. ‘For what reason, I wonder? Our friends in Moscow are difficult people to convince. He'd have to have a strong story that could be checked. Davina, my dear girl, don't you know the answer to all this yourself? Didn't you just come down to have it confirmed by an outsider?'

‘You don't believe it,' she stated.

He shook his head gently. ‘I think it's a pack of lies and so do you.'

She got up and stood looking down at him. ‘That's what it looks like,' she agreed. ‘Except for one thing. If Moscow dreamed this up, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. It's so full of damned holes it doesn't make sense. Unless it's true. That's what I don't know. That's what knocks your theory sideways.'

‘Only if his story can be confirmed,' Sir James said. ‘If it can't, then the answer's simple.'

She said, ‘I haven't any cigarettes – I've been trying to give them up. Could I have one of yours?' He handed her the case; she took the fat Turkish cigarette and lit it. Sub Rosa – his trademark.

‘How was it left between you?'

‘I said I'd think of something. I wanted to believe him. And I had the Washington trip. I couldn't think straight till that was over.'

‘What a true professional you are, my dear girl,' he said. ‘Just what I'd expect of you. So he's in Australia, selling high-powered advertising and waiting for a word. He must be chewing his nails, don't you think?'

‘Not if he's genuine,' Davina said quietly.

‘It's rather a big “if”,' the old man added.

‘Tell me something.' She asked the question abruptly. He knew that mannerism too. She was on the defensive when she appeared to attack. ‘Tell me, if you'd
liked
Tony, would you be quite so certain he was rotten?'

‘It wouldn't make the slightest difference,' he declared. ‘I've never let my personal feelings affect my judgement. I've had people working for me that I couldn't stand the sight of. But I trusted them. And in all my years as chief of the Service I never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt once that trust was gone. Nor should you. Now, I hear Mary calling – shall we have dinner and put it out of our minds until the morning?' He opened the door for her; he had beautiful manners.

Davina went ahead into the dining room. The Whites had simple taste in food and wine. The house was comfortable, conventional, with Lionel Edwards hunting prints, shabby sofas where dogs had slept, pieces of very good furniture almost disregarded in odd corners, and a portrait of Sir James White in army uniform, which Davina thought was crude and badly painted. There was nothing to suggest that the couple who had lived there for so many years were quite extraordinary people. They had been friends of the Grahams since Davina was a little child – an odd friendship between her straightforward father and the machiavellian head of the SIS. And over dinner, Mary White asked how the family were.

‘I haven't seen them for a long time,' Davina said.

‘They're not still sulking over that wretched John, are they?' Mary White exclaimed impatiently.

‘Sulking is hardly the word for what they feel,' Davina answered. She felt Sir James watching her. ‘They think I ruined my sister's life. They won't have anything to do with me.'

‘How perfectly ridiculous,' Mary snapped. ‘I've never heard of anything so unfair, have you, James? What did they expect – that you'd let a traitor get away with it because he was your brother-in-law?'

‘People do bend the rules for their families, my dear,' her husband objected, ‘even for brothers-in-law.' He didn't let Davina catch his eye when he said it.

‘Besides, if I know Charlie, she'll find someone else if she hasn't already,' his wife said. ‘If I get the chance, Davina, I shall say something to your mother.'

Davina shook her head. ‘Don't bother. It's my father who's taken against me. You know how he worships my sister. It wouldn't do any good and it might make trouble between you.'

‘It's because he worships her that she's made such a mess of her life and other people's,' Mary White said firmly. ‘She's a lovely girl, but spoilt absolutely rotten. And it's your parents' fault, I'm sorry.' Under the light, her cheeks had flushed pink with indignation.

‘Mary,' Sir James said, ‘you're not to go into battle! I've always said I'd rather face a regiment of Gurkhas than my wife when she thinks something isn't fair.'

They had coffee and Davina went up to bed early. She was still suffering from the five and a half hour time change. She felt tired and desperately low. ‘Put it out of our minds till the morning.' Easy for James White; impossible for her. He hadn't allowed her to deceive herself. Without waiting for the morning, Davina knew the explanation White would give. Confess yourself a spy, allow yourself to be turned and you are practically invulnerable thereafter. You can meet your Russian contact, pass the doctored information and other secret material with it. It was an old ruse.

She got up, pulled back the curtains and opened the window wide. She felt stifled, as if she couldn't breathe properly. And after that conclusion, there was the worst suspicion of all. Walden had never loved her. He had been a plant from the beginning. She'd said it herself in that awful moment in Paris. ‘You made all the running. You were determined to start something.' He had pursued her with singular purpose. And she had let herself be caught. She closed her eyes against the cool night air. She shivered for a moment, as she had done in the centrally heated bedroom at the Ritz.

If his love for her had been an act, then she had no right to stay in her job. Anyone capable of being taken in like that was unfit to sit in James White's chair. But there was one way to prove it. She wondered what James White would say. She shut the window and went back to bed. Exhausted, she fell asleep immediately.

‘Davina looked well, I thought,' James White remarked to his wife. ‘A bit tired after her trip to Washington.'

Mary poured out the remains of the coffee. ‘Damn, I'll have to make some more – don't talk nonsense, dear, she looked utterly miserable. Now, you can tell me why she came to see you. She's never liked you, so it must be something very urgent.'

‘Not very,' he smiled at her, ‘because I'd already foreseen it and the thing is in hand. She doesn't know, of course.'

Mary looked at him. ‘You're retired,' she said. ‘But nobody would think so. Anyway, you can tell me about it.' While he was head of the SIS she hadn't asked a single question concerning his work. As soon as he became a private person, his wife's curiosity was insatiable. She asked him about everything, even the most insignificant detail. What was in his mail, who was that on the telephone, why was he so long in the village …? It must have been a great strain keeping silent all those years, he reflected, and he loved her for it.

‘You remember that advertising chap, Tony Walden?'

‘The one with the yacht and the stupid blonde wife?'

‘That's right. He and Davina have been having an affair for quite some time.'

‘Good Lord!' she exclaimed. ‘I am surprised. I can't think of him as her type.'

‘There's no accounting for women's taste in men,' he answered. ‘That's what makes them such bad security risks. It appears that the wealthy jet-setting Mr Walden is being blackmailed by the KGB. I don't have to fill in the details for you, dear, but it's put Davina in a very difficult position.'

‘You can give me the details in a minute,' his wife said firmly. ‘Just let me make some more coffee.'

When he had finished, she frowned, thinking hard. ‘What a blow for the poor girl,' she said at last. ‘She's had so little happiness. What will she do about it?'

‘I hope she'll take my advice,' he answered, ‘if she's tough enough, and I believe she is.'

Mary White got up. ‘By tough, James dear, you mean heartless. And there you're wrong. The heartless one is the sister. It's quite late, look at the time. Let the dogs out and lock up, will you?'

‘You say that every evening,' he remarked gently, ‘knowing I always do both.'

The call from Paris was reported to him direct. He listened, nodded, smiled and said, ‘Good. Better than we hoped. Make certain ‘France' is psychologically ready and that all the details have been finalized. This is one of our most important targets; impress that on her.'

The assurances came through. He remembered the file on the girl Hélène Blond. Repressed, feelings of profound inferiority and aggression, brutally ill-treated as a child, a personality geared towards megalomania. She had been found like a jewel among the dross that came to them. And, like a jewel, she would soon shine among the Company of Saints. He put the telephone down. If anything went wrong, there was a fail-safe: the nothingness that all were sworn to embrace rather than betray their organization.

Those who killed had to be prepared to kill themselves. It was a logical conclusion to the disturbances they all had in common. A hatred of life and of themselves transposed into a hatred for others. Death was the solution to all problems. They were taught to accept that, even to enjoy the acceptance. He felt refreshed and optimistic. His plans were going well, and in spite of other setbacks, other anxieties, his Saints were giving praise.

It was 1 a.m. in Sydney. The dinner given in honour of Walden by his Australian associates had finished early by local standards. He was booked into the Caravelle, a vast, glittering glass-fronted hotel with breathtaking views over the harbour. The diners had all been male, and in different circumstances Walden would have enjoyed every moment of it. Australian hospitality was as rich and individual as the national sense of humour. The dinner was uproarious: his two partners were in excellent spirits, and the fifteen guests, all very substantial clients, talked business and sport and would happily have extended the party to a nightclub.

Walden laughed and talked, giving every appearance of enjoying himself. He was careful not to match his companions drink for drink. He needed a clear head that night. Watching him, no one would have guessed that every nerve was taut and a headache of symphonic proportions battered his brain. When the dinner broke up, he excused himself. ‘I have an important call to make.' His smile was conspiratorial.

‘The lovely lady, eh?' The manufacturer of Australia's best-selling lager nudged him and grinned. ‘Pity she isn't with you this trip.'

‘Next time. She made me promise,' Tony Walden said. They had met his wife two years ago. So blonde and beautiful, so stupid that she passed for being delightfully feminine. She had made many conquests among the robust Antipodean males. He had a call to make and a caller to see. But neither had anything to do with Hilary Walden. At this time, nearly eleven on a Sunday morning in England, his wife would be waking up in the country mansion he had bought her, with her boyfriend sharing the breakfast tray. Walden didn't think of her for more than a few seconds.

He had a suite on the eighth floor, overlooking the harbour and the Opera House that had once caused such a furore. That night, looking out over the harbour fiery with lights and flanked by glittering high-rise buildings, Tony Walden tried to find an answer to his life. He had achieved every goal, but success hadn't been easy. He knew what failure meant, and disappointment. Grinding anxiety was just as familiar as the exhilaration of success. Two marriages, two sons, money, a tremendous business bursting with expansion. And Davina Graham.

There was a knock on his door. It was so soft and the thudding of that dreadful headache was so loud. He opened the door. The man outside didn't say anything; he just walked past Walden through the hallway and to the sitting room. He stared at the view for a moment and then turned round. He was smaller than Walden, thin, with a beaky face and bright blue eyes.

‘That's bloody spectacular, isn't it?' The man spoke with a broad Australian accent.

‘Yes,' Walden said.

‘How did your party go?'

‘Well. They enjoyed themselves.'

The man looked round him. ‘You keep any booze up here?'

Walden said, ‘Help yourself. I won't be a minute.' He went to the bathroom and took two painkillers. His face looked sallow and lined in the mirror.

His visitor made himself at home. He had a glass of whisky in his hand and was perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘Any news for me?'

‘No,' Walden said. ‘I'm putting a call in later tonight. But you can report back that I don't think it's going to work. I never did think so, and I want to make sure you understand. The whole scheme is a bloody waste of time.'

‘But that's your problem. It's up to you to make it work. Nobody gives a shit for opinions, old sport. It's action we want. You better get cracking.' The man finished his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He grinned at Walden, showing uneven teeth, with a gold crown glinting in the cavern of his mouth. ‘You look a bit worn – we work and play hard over here. Find the pace a bit hot, eh?'

Walden ignored the remark. He had hated the snide little bastard the first time they made contact. A dockside rat come up in the world. God knew what he'd had to do to get there.… ‘I've booked a call,' he said. ‘I want you out of here before it comes through.'

‘Okay. Keep your pants on. You know my room number?'

‘I know it. I'll be in touch before I go to Melbourne.'

‘Okay,' the man said, and grinned again. He let himself out.

Walden looked at his watch. He sat down beside the telephone and waited. Nothing eased the headache. At 1.20 his phone rang. He picked it up. The operator said, ‘I'm trying your call to London, Mr Walden.' Amazing how clear it sounded, he could have been calling from across the road. Amazing how good the lines were. Phoning Italy was like dialling Mars by comparison. ‘I'm sorry,' the operator's voice cut in. ‘There's no reply.'