“I don’t know,” said Lawrence. “We were rather hoping you might be able to tell us.”
“Who’s we?”
Another long silence.
“Who’s we?” repeated Adam. “You can’t really expect me to go on believing you work for Barclays DCO.”
“I work at the Foreign Office,” said Lawrence.
“In what capacity?”
“I am not at liberty”
“Stop being so pompous, Lawrence. In what capacity?”
“I’m the number two in a small section that deals in …” Lawrence hesitated.
“Espionage I think is the current jargon we laymen are using,” said Adam, “and if you want my icon that badly you had better get me out of this mess alive because Romanov is willing to kill me for it, as I am sure you know.”
“Where are you?”
“The Richmond Hotel.”
“In a public phone booth?” asked Lawrence, sounding incredulous.
“No, in a private room.”
“But not registered in your name?”
“No, in the name of a friend. A girlfriend.”
“Is she with you now?” asked Lawrence.
“Yes,” said Adam.
“Damn,” said Lawrence. “Right. Don’t leave that room until seven A.M., then phone on this number again. That will give me enough time to get everything in place.”
“Is that the best you can do?” said Adam, but the phone had already gone dead. “It looks as if I’m stuck with you for the night,” he told Robin as he replaced the phone.
“On the contrary, it is I who am stuck with you,” said Robin, and disappeared into the bathroom. Adam paced around the room several times before he tested the sofa. Either he had to rest his head on a cushion, balanced on the thin wooden arm, or he had to let his legs dangle over the far end. By the time Robin had come back out clad in a pair of sky-blue pajamas, he had selected the floor as his resting place.
“Not much of a chair, is it?” said Robin. “But then British Intelligence didn’t warn me to book a double room.” She climbed into the bed and turned out the light. “Very comfortable,” were the last words she uttered.
Adam lay down flat on the bedroom floo
r, using the cushion from the chair as a pillow and a hotel dressing gown as a blanket. He slept intermittently, his mind switching between why the icon could be that important, how Lawrence knew so much about it and, most immediately, how the hell were they going to get him out of the hotel alive?
Romanov waited patiently for the phone to be picked up.
“Yes,” said a voice that he recognized immediately.
“Where is he?” were the only words Romanov uttered. Four words were all he received from Mentor in reply before the phone went dead.
Adam woke with a start an hour before he was due to phone Lawrence back. For nearly forty minutes he lay on the floor with only Robin’s steady breathing to remind him he was not alone. Suddenly he became aware of a strange sound coming from the corridor outside—two or three steps, a pause, then whoosh, two or three steps, a pause, another whoosh. Adam raised himself up silently from the floor and crept to the door. The rhythm of Robin’s breathing never faltered. Whoosh, it now sounded closer. He picked up a heavy wooden coat hanger from the table by the door. He gripped it firmly in his right hand, raised it above his head, and waited. Whoosh—and a newspaper shot under the door and the steps moved on. He didn’t have to bend down to see that it was his photograph that dominated the front page of the international edition of the Herald Tribune.
Adam took the paper into the bathroom, closed the door silently, switched on the light, and read the lead article. It was yesterday’s story with guarded comments from his old commanding officer and embarrassed silence from his mother. He felt helpless.
He crept up to Robin, hoping she wouldn’t wake. He stood over her, but she didn’t stir. He silently picked up the phone and dragged it to the bathroom. He could only just manage to close the door behind him. He dialed the operator and repeated the number.