The Relic (12 page)

‘You're safe, so long as nobody else finds out. And you won't have headaches any more because you saved the other child and the baby. That was a good thing to do, Adolph. Boris did the killing. But other people wouldn't care about that. They'd think you were as bad.'

He was crying. ‘I was punished. I am sterile. I was punished.'

‘That's enough for today,' Irina got up. ‘You'll have a sleep now. We'll talk again tomorrow. You'll feel better. Much better. Get up.'

She wouldn't help him; he was weak and unsteady, but she wouldn't take his arm or guide him to the bed. She let him stumble and fall to his knees. For a moment he looked at her with lucidity.

‘You hate me,' he said.

Irina pressed the bell for the nurse. ‘I'm helping you,' she said. ‘You hate yourself.'

Müller arrived at Geneva Airport just after eleven in the morning. He wandered down the Rue du Rhône, admiring the window displays. It was a rich city, comfortable and self-confident. He stopped to inspect the latest Piaget watches and was tempted to buy one for Susan. She loved jewellery. She had done a lot towards making that sale to the Americans. She deserved a present.

They had two boys, both at college in America. He didn't want his sons to grow up in Germany. They were not going to be involved in what he did. Their lives lay with the capitalist world he had hated so bitterly in his own youth.

He didn't hate it now. He accepted it, enjoyed what it had to offer and lived his secret life because he loved it. He loved the game for its own sake. If it had ever been necessary he could just as happily have switched sides.

He decided to be generous and went in to the shop. He bought a gold Piaget with a diamond-set face, had it gift-wrapped and went out to find a cab and go to meet Irina.

He was on the pavement, waiting, when he saw Volkov on the opposite side of the road. The same familiar figure, untidily dressed, with too-long hair and a hang-dog look about him. Then he saw the girl. She was beside him and she had taken his arm as they waited on the pavement across the road. Müller stared hard. She was young, in her late twenties, very blonde and pretty.

‘I'll be damned,' he said to himself ‘I wonder what Irina would think of that!' He turned away, not wanting Dimitri Volkov to see him. He was in luck because a cab drew up alongside him and a man got out. He jumped in and set off for his rendezvous with Volkov's wife.

Müller grimaced at the thought of her. He had grown out of fanaticism. He despised the single-mindedness of people like Irina Volkova. They were blinkered by their own convictions. Often they did their cause more harm than good. Even more important to Müller, they harmed others more flexible than themselves. He didn't like her. She was a type he found threatening.

But he had despised her husband from the beginning. A fiery orator, and self-styled leader of the persecuted and oppressed, consumed with a reckless urge to sacrifice himself for his ideals. Müller hadn't admired him for it, even when he was a thorn in the Soviet government's side. He thought Volkov was a fool. There was no place in Müller's scale of values for a loser. He had long since abandoned heroics. They were all losers; the Jewish refusniks, the intellectual dissidents, the scattered Christians asking to be eaten by the KGB lions. All the men and women of conscience who had confronted the invincible system. The jails, the labour camps and the asylums were full of them. They were building railways and digging roads in the frozen wastes of Siberia. They had changed nothing. Change had come in spite of them, that was the irony. Change was a mass movement; it owed nothing to the puny efforts of the individual. Gorbachev and the new era in Russia was the result of the great pendulum swing of economics.

Inequity and deprivation had brought Marxism to birth. The same forces were calling for freedom and democracy. What people wanted was food in the shops and a slice of the materialist cake they saw being gobbled in the West.

Few things surprised Müller; he had lived through the trauma of Germany's defeat and the painful reconstruction of a shattered and divided people. He had come out of it successful, respected and secretly wealthy. But the sight of Dimitri Volkov with a woman gave him pause. It was no chance acquaintance. They were isolated from the crowd, their arms linked, the woman gazing up in to his face. Volkov had been written off for the last five years. He was drowning himself in booze and self-pity. He posed no threat to anyone. He was the last man in the world with the guts to deceive his wife. But even in that brief glimpse, Müller was certain that he
was
deceiving her.

She should be told, of course. He should mention it, alert her in their mutual interest. But he disliked her enough to postpone it. What harm would come if she were being fooled for a change? He had never forgiven her for reporting his indiscretion in front of her husband. Even though the husband had made no use of it. She had rounded on him without mercy. If his controller had taken her seriously, he might have been in real trouble. No, he decided. Let Volkov cheat on her. A little adultery now and then was harmless. As harmless as the man himself. And Müller could play that particular ace if and when Irina Volkov needed a slap in the face.

‘Tell me about yourself, Lucy. I want to know about you.'

She smiled at him. They were together, sitting in the sunshine on the balcony of her apartment. They had made love that morning and it was better than the day before.

‘I've told you all there is,' she said. ‘The only interesting thing about me is finding you.'

He had a strand of her hair in his fingers; he played with it, twisting it round until it curled.

‘You have lovely hair,' he said. ‘Tell me about your father then. How did he get to England? And your mother?'

He was happy; he had lost the familiar feeling of dread and despair. The elation, the excitement and the wonderful afterglow of making love to her had left him in a mood of carefree tenderness. The sun was shining and they were warm on the pretty little balcony with its boxes of flowers. He was in the mood for confidences. He wanted to extend their intimacy, to hear about her childhood, her family. He wanted to imagine her growing up.

‘My father was in a camp at the end of the war,' Lucy said. ‘He'd been taken back to Germany for slave labour. His parents were shot. The camp was run by the British and one of the officers had taken an interest in him.' The same officer who had let him say goodbye to his friend Boris, but she didn't tell him that.

‘He got my father to England after the war, gave him a job and helped him to get settled. My father became naturalized, but he was always a Ukrainian. My mother was Irish; she died when I was seven, but I remember her very well. She was so pretty. My father brought me up. Major Hope left him the business when he died; he'd lost his only son through drugs, I think, and he more or less adopted my father. They were very close.'

He held her hand. ‘I'll take care of you now,' he said gently. ‘Your father taught you to speak Russian?'

‘He taught me everything,' she said. ‘He'd had so little education, but he loved books and believed learning was the key to living. And to being free. That's why you meant so much to him. He'd lost his freedom, his parents … He was beaten and half-starved … But he never gave in. Like you, Dimitri.

‘He wrote letters to politicians, to Church leaders. He got up petitions and raised money when you were arrested. And he gave me a picture of you to put in my room. Every Sunday we went to Mass and prayed you'd be released. I wish he'd lived long enough to meet you.'

‘I didn't deserve anyone's prayers.' Volkov said slowly. ‘I don't deserve you. What are we going to do, Lucy? This can't go on forever.'

‘No,' she said. ‘It can't. But we have a little time left. We've got today and we're going to be happy together. The sun's gone in, and you look cold. Come inside and I'll warm you.'

In the evening they went walking, hand in hand, as if it were the first love for each of them.

‘How long must I wait,' he said suddenly, ‘till you tell me why we are here together?'

‘Not very long, I think,' Lucy answered. ‘I never thought I'd love you, you know that? I imagined meeting you, talking to you, but nothing like this. I'd built up a picture of you, like the one my father cut out and gave me, but it's nothing like you, Dimitri. You can't fall in love with heroes. You trust me, don't you?'

‘I trust you,' he answered.

‘My life is in your hands, Lucy. And your life in mine. It frightens me.'

She stopped and they faced each other. ‘Your wife won't find out about us,' she said. ‘But if she does, it won't matter because we will be out of her reach. I'm going to say goodbye, Dimitri, my love. It's getting late and you should go home. I don't worry about that any more. I know you won't drink. I know she can't hurt you. I won't come to the flower shop tomorrow. I'll wait at the apartment.'

He bent and kissed her. She gasped as he opened her lips. He held her tightly.

‘I'll come to you tomorrow,' he said.

Irina was early. They met in the cocktail bar of the Richemond. There was an old Intelligence adage which held that if you want to hide something, put it on public view. If two subversives want to meet and pass unnoticed, then do it in the smartest, most exclusive hotel in Geneva. She waited irritably, smoking, checking her watch.

He came into the bar without any sign of being flustered. He walked up to the table, smiled, pulled out a chair and sat down.

‘Irina,' Müller said. ‘What can I get for you?'

‘You're late,' she said icily. ‘I have afternoon appointments.'

‘So have I,' he retorted. ‘I'm going to waste my time visiting two dealers, both of whom will try to sell me items I don't want—and one of which I know is a nineteenth-century fake. But I had to have an excuse to see you, so I'm not complaining. I shall have a Kïr. The same for you?'

‘I hate liqueur in wine,' she said. ‘A glass of Moselle will do. Now, can we be serious?'

‘You're always serious,' Müller remarked. ‘How is our friend Adolph? Have you discovered why he has his headaches?'

She was a very cool, self-composed woman, who seldom showed her feelings. Except on that one occasion when she lost her temper and shouted at him like a fishwife in front of her husband. He would never forget that. Now he saw anger in her eyes and a faint flush of colour in her cheeks.

‘Rape and murder,' she said. ‘It's taken a long time for the guilt to surface.'

Müller raised his brows and pursed his lips in a tiny whistle. ‘Adolph? My God! Tell me about it.'

‘He and a Ukrainian Nazi attacked and killed a woman during the Russian campaign. He stole the Fabergé desk set from her. That's why he lied about it. That's not the important point. The Ukrainian stole a cross. Does St Vladimir's Cross mean anything to you?'

He set his glass down on the table. ‘It does indeed. What are you saying?'

‘In a minute,' she leaned towards him. ‘What do you know about it?'

‘It was an early thirteenth-century gold cross which vanished from Kiev during the Revolution. Most likely the Bolsheviks destroyed it. With all due respect, my dear Irina, they were a lot of barbarians in those early days.' Then he frowned. ‘You're not suggesting there's a connection with it and this cross Adolph told you about. That would be impossible!'

She said quietly. ‘It was a humble farmhouse. They were country people. But they had a Tsarist treasure hidden there—that desk set. He told me about the cross. He ranted and raved because he found out years afterwards what it was the other swine had taken. He's a world expert on Russian art, isn't he?'

Müller said, ‘He likes to think he is. I've told him so anyway. So?'

‘He swore it was the genuine cross. He tried to find it after the war. He thinks the Ukrainian probably was killed and someone stole it from him and got it to Europe.' She paused. He didn't interrupt her. ‘He used his resources to try and trace it and he came up with a French jeweller who'd been offered it about twenty-five years ago. He wouldn't pay good money because it was set with spinels instead of rubies, so the man took it back.'

Müller said slowly, ‘It would be spinels. There weren't any rubies of large size in that period. And that was all? He got no further?'

‘No,' Irinia said. ‘He knew its significance. He said he didn't want the Russians getting on to him, so he had to be very discreet. But he came to a dead end with that jeweller.'

‘What exactly is its significance?' Müller asked. ‘I assume you mean political?'

‘Political disaster, if the wrong people got hold of it,' she retorted. ‘Brückner knew how dangerous it was. He said it this afternoon.'

‘And you want me to make enquiries?'

‘I want you to tell our friends at home. This is too big a responsibility for us to take on our own. It must go to the top. At once.'

‘You don't think you're being alarmist,' he suggested. ‘It's very unlikely that it survived the Civil War in 1919, and even less likely that it was looted during the war and brought out of Russia in one piece. Personally, I don't believe the story.' He shrugged. ‘No doubt there was some cross or ornament they found when they robbed that poor creature, and Adolph had made a fantasy out of it. He's half-mad anyway, from what you tell me. I'll pass it on, but I must add my own disclaimer. I don't want to look a fool.'

Irina got up. ‘I have to see my evening patients,' she said. ‘As for looking a fool, I wouldn't play this down if I were you. I have an instinct that he's right.'

Müller summoned the waiter for the bill. He got up, bent briefly over her hand. It was a charming display of good manners by a suave middle-aged man to an attractive woman.