“Yes, Major. A personal interview? No one else? I see. ... The problem is, the Comrade General is in the Far East. ... Not until next Tuesday. Very well then, next Tuesday.”
Major Vanavskaya put down the phone and scowled. Four days. Well, she had already
waited two years—she could wait four more days.
“I think I’ve clinched it,” Bruno told Renate with childlike delight the following Sunday morning. “I’ve just got enough for the freehold purchase and some more left over for decorating and equipping it. It’s a wonderful little bar.”
They were in bed in her own bedroom—it was a favor she sometimes allowed him because he hated the “working” bedroom as much as he hated her job.
“Tell me again,” she cooed. “I love to hear about it.”
He grinned. He had seen it just once but fallen for it completely. It was what he had always wanted and right where he wanted it—by the open sea, where the brisk winds from the north would keep the air crisp and fresh. Cold in winter, of course, but there was central heating, which would need fixing.
“Okay. It’s called the Lantern Bar, and the sign is an old ship’s lantern. It stands on the open quay right on the Bremerhaven dock front. From the upper windows you can see as far as Mellum Island—we could get a sailboat if things go well and sail there in summer.
“There’s an old-fashioned brass-topped bar—we’ll be behind that serving the drinks—and a nice snug apartment upstairs. Not as large as this, but comfy once we’ve fixed it up. I’ve agreed on the price and paid the deposit. Completion is at the end of September. Then I can take you away from all this.”
She could hardly keep herself from laughing out loud. “I can’t wait, my darling. It will be a wonderful life. ... Do you want to try again? Perhaps it will work this time.”
If Renate had been a different person, she would have let the older man down gently, explaining that she had no intention of being taken away from “all this,” least of all to a bleak and windswept quay in Bremerhaven. But it amused her to prolong his delusion so that his eventual misery would be all the greater.
An hour after Bruno and Renate’s conversation in Cologne, a black Jaguar sedan swept off the M3 motorway and sought the quieter lanes of Hampshire, not far from the village of Dummer. It was Timothy Edwards’s personal car, and his Service driver was at the wheel. In the back was Sam McCready, who had been summoned from his habitual Sunday pleasures at his apartment in Abingdon Villas, Kensington, by a telephoned appeal from the Assistant Chief.
“Without the option, I’m afraid, Sam. It’s urgent.”
He had been enjoying a long, deep, hot bath when the call came, with Vivaldi on the stereo and the Sunday newspapers strewn gloriously all over the sitting-room floor. He had had time to throw on a sports shirt, corduroy trousers, and jacket by the time John, who had picked up the Jaguar at the motor pool, was at the door.
The sedan swept into the graveled forecourt of a substantial Georgian country house and came to a halt. John came around the car to open the rear passenger door, but McCready beat him to it. He hated being fussed over.
“I was told to say they will be round the back, sir, on the terrace,” said John.
McCready surveyed the mansion. Timothy Edwards, ten years earlier, had married the daughter of a duke, who had been considerate enough to drop off his perch in early middle age and leave a substantial estate to his two offspring, the new duke and Lady Margaret. She had collected about three million pounds. McCready estimated that about half of that was now invested in a prime piece of Hampshire real estate. He wandered round the side of the house to the colonnaded patio at the back.
There were four easy cane chairs in a group. Three were occupied. Farther on, a white cast-iron table was set for lunch for three, Lady Margaret would doubtless be staying inside, not lunching. Neither would he. The two men in the rattan chairs rose.
“Ah, Sam,” said Edwards. “Glad you could make it.”
That’s a bit rich, thought McCready. No bloody option was what I was given.
Edwards looked at McCready and wondered, not for the first time, why his extremely talented colleague insisted on coming to a Hampshire country house party looking as if he had just been gardening, even if he was not staying long. Edwards himself was in brilliant brogues, razor-creased tan slacks, and a blazer over a silk shirt and neckerchief.
McCready stared back and wondered why Edwards always insisted on keeping his handkerchief up his left sleeve. It was an army habit, started in the cavalry regiments because on dining-in nights cavalry officers wore trousers so tight that a bunched handkerchief in the pocket might give the ladies the impression they had put on a touch too much perfume. But Edwards had never been in the cavalry, nor in any regiment. He had come to the Service directly from Oxford.
“I don’t think you know Chris Appleyard,” said Edwards, as the tall American held out his hand. He had the leathery look of a Texan cowhand. In fact, he was a Bostonian. The leathery look came from the Camels he chain-smoked. His face was not suntanned, just medium rare. That was why they were lunching outside, Sam mused. Edwards would not want the Canalettos covered in nicotine.
“Guess not,” said Appleyard. “Nice to meet you, Sam. Know your reputation.”
McCready knew who he was from the name and from photographs: Deputy Head, European Division, CIA. The woman in the third chair leaned forward and held out a hand.
“Hi, Sam, how’re you doing these days?”
Claudia Stuart, still at forty a great-looking woman. She held his gaze and his hand a mite longer than necessary.
“Fine, thanks, Claudia. Just fine.”
Her eyes said she did not believe him. No woman likes to think a man with whom she once offered to share her bed has ever completely recovered from the experience.
Years earlier, in Berlin, Claudia had had a serious crush on Sam McCready. It had puzzled and frustrated her that she had gotten nowhere. She had not then known about Sam’s wife, May.