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He turned to Kazantsev. “Care for a drink?”

The Archery Tavern was dark and smelly, conditions exacerbated respectively by the fog and the nearby presence of riding stables. The windows were tight shut against the cold and the pollutants, but the rich scents of manure and tack wormed their way undeterred through invisible gaps in the brickwork.

There was a smattering of drinkers inside, but they were all either too drunk, too bored, or too shortsighted to give the two interlopers more than a casual glance.

Kazantsev ordered a whiskey, Herbert a pint of bitter. The barman gave Herbert the price; Herbert gave him the money.

“No, please; let me,” Kazantsev said.

“You have,” Herbert replied. “That money comes from your wallet.”

Kazantsev seemed oddly pleased at this.

They found a table in the corner and sat down. Herbert maneuvered Kazantsev against the wall in case
he tried to make a run for it, though that seemed unlikely. The Russian appeared quite content to stay where he was.

“I need hardly explain to you the severity of the situation,” Herbert began, and winced inwardly at how pompous he sounded. “Assaulting a police officer is a grave offense. You probably reported the case of Bentley and Craig, the two who killed a police officer last month, no? So you know how seriously we take that kind of thing.”

“The chloroform, your colleague—I’m sorry. I’d taken it along in case I was disturbed. I heard him come in; I snuck up on him from round the corner and surprised him. By the time I saw his uniform, it was too late; he was already out cold.”

“And then you tied him up, and reapplied the chloroform, again and again.”

Kazantsev spread his hands, conceding the point. “I did. But what else could I have done? The initial mistake is always the worst. Everything else just compounds that.” He paused. “Is he all right? Your colleague.”

Herbert tried to work out whether appealing to Kazantsev’s compassion would work, and decided that on balance it would not. “His head’s hurt, and his pride too. Other than that, he’ll be OK.”

“Good.”

Kazantsev seemed to mean it.

The easy thing to do, perhaps the sensible one too, would have been simply to arrest Kazantsev; but Herbert wanted the bigger picture, and he reasoned that the less formal he kept things, the better. He would remind Kazantsev of the leverage he had over him, and look for dividends that way.

“Assault aside, I’ve got your wallet and your identification, without which you’re in big trouble, especially if I tell those higher up the food chain how I came across it. You’re registered as a newspaper correspondent but not as a diplomat, so you have no official protection from either international law or the Soviet government. I’ve also got a dead man, who—”

“Dead? Who?”

Herbert doubted he could have looked more shocked if he had tried. Whatever he had been expecting Kazantsev to say, it was not this.

If Kazantsev was bluffing, Herbert thought, he should have been in line for an Academy Award; he seemed quite genuine in his surprise.

“Max Stensness, of course,” he replied.

“When? How?”

Herbert was beginning to recover. “I’m sure you know as well as I do.”

“You suspect me?” Kazantsev spread his hands. “I’m a journalist, not an actor.”

“You’re a spy.”

“I’m not an actor.”

“All spies are actors.”

“If I’d known the first thing about this, trust me, you would have been able to tell.”

“You really didn’t know?” Herbert realized too late that this was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Never ask a question to which one would only get one answer; it was a waste of everybody’s time. “All right,” he continued. “Stensness drowned in the Long Water, right by where we just met, sometime last night.”

Kazantsev took a sip of his whiskey; neat, no ice.
Like all good Russians, he regarded diluting spirits as sacrilege. His eyebrows lifted a fraction:
Go on.

“You met Stensness there last night,” Herbert said.

Kazantsev paused for a moment, no doubt wondering how much to tell Herbert, and how much he already knew; then shook his head.

“No,” he said.

“No?”

“No. I didn’t meet him there last night.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s not.”

“Then why did you break into his house this morning?”

“I was
supposed
to meet him by the statue at six thirty. But he never showed up.”

“How long had you known him?”

“About two hours.”

Two hours
, Herbert thought. “Where did you meet him?”

“At the Biochemical Conference.” The only answer he could have given.

“Your name’s not on the list of delegates.”

“I wasn’t a delegate. I’m press.”

“Izvestia
wanted a story about the conference?”

“Izvestia
want stories about everything.”

“How did you meet him?”

“He approached me and suggested an appointment.”

“Professional, or personal?”

“Professional, of course. He told me he had something for me.”

“He didn’t tell you what it was?”

“No.”

“But if you made the rendezvous, he would give it to you?”

“That was the implication, yes.”

“You’d never met this man before, and he gave you a meeting point in the park, in the fog, and you went along without question?”

“Of course. Why not?”

“What if it had been a hoax?”

“What if it had? What would I have lost, apart from an hour of my life?”

“How did you know his name?”

“He had it on his conference badge.”

“And his address?”

“Everyone’s badge had their name and institution. I rang King’s this morning after he had failed to show up, and asked for his home address. Then I went up there.”

“And broke in.”

“The door was unlocked.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove that it wasn’t.”

The lock had not been forced; Herbert remembered that; he’d checked when he’d picked the lock. But of course if Kazantsev was a Soviet agent, he too could pick locks—certainly bog-standard domestic locks—in his sleep. No chance of proving it either way.

“It’s still trespass, locked or not.” Kazantsev shrugged; Herbert continued. “Why did you go up there?”

“I was looking for what Stensness might have wanted to talk to me about.”

“You go to such lengths on all your assignments?”

“Not at all.”

“Then Stensness must have made whatever he was offering sound very tempting.”

“He did.”

“What did he say?” Herbert asked, already knowing and fearing the answer.

“He said it was something which would change the world.”

Herbert spent another hour questioning Kazantsev, and in that time he managed to break him down not an iota.

Of course Kazantsev’s story sounded ludicrous, and of course every instinct of Herbert’s cried out that Kazantsev was a spy; but, knowing what he knew, and more precisely what he did not know, there was no way Herbert could prove that Kazantsev was lying.

Herbert took his questioning round in circles, asking Kazantsev the same thing several times to see whether he slipped up. He came at the problem from different angles, sometimes ruminating for minutes as his thoughts meandered, sometimes jabbing with a quick surprise thrust. Every time Kazantsev answered firmly, concisely, and, most importantly, without contradiction.

Stensness had approached him at the conference and arranged the rendezvous, presumably because Kazantsev’s badge had identified him as an
Izvestia
correspondent.

Kazantsev had gone along to the statue at the agreed time, six thirty.

Stensness had not shown up.

Kazantsev usually waited no more than fifteen minutes at an appointment. If someone had not shown up by then, he left. Because of the fog, he had given Stensness an extra five minutes before leaving.

This morning Kazantsev had rung King’s and obtained the Highgate address—the English were so
trusting, unlike the Soviets, who did not even have phone directories—and that was where Herbert had run into him.

Herbert did not mention the Coronation; better not to let Kazantsev know what he knew, or at least what he suspected. Besides, what would he get apart from a denial?

Herbert felt as though he were in a maze; everyone could see what was happening bar him, blundering around like a blind fool.

Outside the pub, Herbert gave Kazantsev back his wallet—a man needed money, after all, even one born and raised in the workers’ paradise—but kept his accreditation, partly to retain some leverage over him and partly to be bloody-minded. He also kept open the possibility of charging Kazantsev with trespass and assault on a police officer.

The accreditation would be returned and the charges dropped, he said, if Kazantsev could remember anything further which might help Herbert with his inquiries.

“If I could help you, Inspector, believe me, I would,” Kazantsev replied.

“Really?”

“Of course. I am a serious admirer of England and the English. In my short time here, I have come to love your country. London impresses me with its gravity and variety. London is wise; London always comes with a subtext. I love Marks and Spencer, a cheap, democratic shop, not charging the earth like Harrods. Perhaps Mr. Marks was really spelt with an ‘x,’ yes? I love Berry Brothers, the best wine shop in London, where the prices are lower than in Moscow, and so is
the water content in the bottles. I love going to the cinema and seeing the screen gradually disappear in the smoke from all the briar pipes, especially during the last sitting, after which retired colonels from the colonies leap from their seats and bellow ‘God Save the Queen.’ All these things I love. So of course I would help you. Of course.”

Herbert didn’t have enough time to go home
and
make it to Hannah’s on time, so he headed straight for Soho. It should have been a quick hop east on the Central Line, but the fog was causing havoc. Herbert jumped train after spending ten minutes stationary at Oxford Circus with no word as to what was happening, and resolved to walk the rest of the way, but he got his bearings wrong on leaving the station, and before he knew it he was at Piccadilly Circus.

Piccadilly was lined with girls too young and pretty to be tarts, but tarts they were, their mothers lying in wait beneath darkened porches behind. Swarthy men glided from girl to girl with more menace than charm; the foot soldiers of the Messina brothers, Maltesers who ruled the West End prostitution racket with razors.

The fog was making even London’s most colorful areas seem monochrome. Light from the vast neon billboards of Piccadilly Circus groped weakly through the gloom, embers from a blazing riot of brand names: Guinness, Bovril, Vortix Vermouth, Everready, Swallow Raincoats.

Beneath the lights flashing baleful welcomes to the lonely and bored, rent boys negotiated prices with men in curbside cars, engines still running and exhausts thickening the fog yet further. One young man clambered
into a Paramount 10 Roadster; another shook his head and walked away from a Citroen Light 15.

There was a police phone box on the Circus itself; a large blue kiosk topped by an electric light, which in this particular instance was flashing to indicate that the officers on patrol should make contact with their station.

Herbert opened the door and stepped inside. The interior was as spartan as he had expected: a stool, a table with a telephone, a brush, and a duster, and an electric fire which looked far too small and inadequate ever to require the services of the extinguisher beside it.

The telephone was linked directly to the local sub-divisional police station; in this case, the one at Savile Row. Herbert picked up the receiver, waited until the connection was made, identified himself, and asked to be transferred to New Scotland Yard, Murder Squad.

“Murder Squad.” It was Veal’s voice.

“Veal, it’s Smith.”

“Hello! I hear you’re the sunshine boy.” There was no trace of sarcasm in Veal’s voice, as there would have been in some of the others’. Veal was the most sanguine and cheery of all Herbert’s colleagues, the one best at putting people at their ease and, not coincidentally, the one who could always be relied on to winkle information out of a suspect.

“For the moment,” Herbert said.

“Enjoy it while it lasts. What have you got?”

Herbert recounted the salient points of his conversation with Kazantsev.

“Tyce will want to know why you didn’t arrest him,” Veal said, when Herbert had finished.

“It’s lucky Tulloch’s not in charge, then. For attacking
two police officers, he’d want him hung, drawn, and quartered.”

Veal chuckled laconically. “And the rest.”

“I didn’t arrest him because I’ll get more out of him this way.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m never sure. But that’s what I believe, yes.”

“Then that’s what I’ll tell Tyce.”

“Thanks.”

Herbert hung up, stepped out of the police box, spent a few seconds ensuring that he had orientated himself correctly this time, and then set off down Shaftesbury Avenue.

Frith Street loomed at him from the gloom, a left turn into another bank of gray. Number 14 had doorbells but no intercom. Herbert rang three times before he heard from inside the sounds of feet descending the stairs.

“Herbert?” Hannah asked from behind the door.

“Yes.”

She fumbled with locks and latches, and opened the door.

“You found it,” she said, smiling a searchlight-bright display of teeth and presenting her cheek for a kiss. “Come in.”

Hannah lived on the top floor, in a small flat made smaller by the number of people there. Herbert counted at least ten, all young, mostly male, and all conversing in a strange, slightly guttural language that he was unable to place but which he fancied came from Eastern Europe—a conjecture reinforced by their Slavic features, and of course by Hannah’s own accent, too.

There were questioning cries in the guttural language. Hannah replied in the same tongue, presumably
explaining who Herbert was, for when she had finished the others turned and smiled their welcome at him.