Albatross (36 page)

1

Venice. The Queen of the Adriatic. The four golden horses and the pigeons in St Mark's Square. The gondolas gliding like painted swans down the lightly ruffled waters of the lagoon. The Lido, with suntanned bathers splashing in the waves. All the tourist claptrap came into his mind as the plane landed at Marco Polo airport. It was an internal flight from Milan; most of the passengers were foreigners ending their Italian tour with a visit to the most beautiful city in Europe. Some would say in the world. He had never been there before. He was born in the Dolomites and his hair was fair and his eyes blue. He didn't look like an Italian. He had been given money and false papers. He had booked himself into a modest pensione some ten minutes' walk from the Grand Canal. He queued up with his fellow passengers for the water bus that would take them out into the lagoon and land them by the Rialto Bridge. It was a warm May afternoon, and the first thing he noticed was the smell. A musty smell with refuse as its base, hinting at rottenness beneath the surface of the blue-green water. For him, it symbolized the modern world. The excited people craning forward, pointing out the sights as they came into view filled him with contempt. He saw no beauty in the splendid buildings, no romance in the extraordinary phenomenon of a city built on water. He would welcome the day when it crumbled and fell into the encroaching sea.

He heaved his suitcase up and disembarked. He had a map of the city; he walked through the dawdling crowds, a hurrying figure intent on finding refuge. The pensione was down a dark cobbled side street, where the overhanging houses closed out the light and the twentieth century. He went to his room and unpacked. His equipment was concealed in the handle of the suitcase. His instructions were to leave the pensione but not the city after it was done. He was to go to a house on the Street of the Assassins. Nobody would think of looking for him there.

‘I feel like a schoolgirl,' Davina said. ‘If I had a satchel I'd swing it and start skipping.'

‘You look like one,' Tony Walden said. ‘A very desirable fourteen-year-old. Now, aren't you glad we came here?'

She took his arm and squeezed it. ‘You know I am. It's more beautiful than you said, and you did a pretty good PR job! Isn't it funny, all those Canalettos and Guardis coming to life in front of our eyes? I promise you, darling, you choose where we go for a holiday from now on. I'll never argue again.'

He guided her through a group of students clustered in front of the Basilica of St Mark and steered her to the right. The canal gleamed in the sunlight ahead of them.

‘The day you don't argue, I'll know there's something very wrong,' he said. ‘Let's catch the water bus back to the hotel.'

She turned to him, disappointed. ‘Why? I could wander round here for hours.'

‘Because I'm expecting a call,' he said.

‘I thought we were supposed to be on holiday,' Davina protested. ‘The trouble with you is you never stop thinking about business.'

They boarded the big water bus and took seats in the stern. ‘Can you honestly tell me,' he countered, ‘that you haven't given a thought to your office or what's happening since we got here?'

Davina looked at him and smiled. She did look ridiculously young, he thought, with her hair red in the sunshine, tied back like a teenager's with a twist of blue elastic and a silly bobble on the end.

‘You win,' she said. ‘I did speak to Humphrey yesterday when you were having your hair cut. And he was delighted to tell me that everything was running perfectly without me. What's your call?'

‘A client in Milan,' Walden said. ‘Mobili Internazionali. Very big in the European market. They make marvellous modern furniture. I believe we could do a major promotion in the States.' He put his arm round her. ‘If I get the account I'm going to buy you a keepsake.'

He knew immediately that he had made what people called a Freudian slip. He might have known she'd pick it up. If only she wasn't so incredibly alert; but then she wouldn't have got the job.

‘Why a keepsake? You're not going away somewhere you haven't told me about?'

‘I meant a present.' He said it quickly and was saved because the bus bumped gently into its mooring and they had to get up.

‘I don't want presents,' Davina said as they walked towards their hotel. ‘I have enough trouble with you trying to pay my own way as it is.'

They went up in the lift to the first floor. His insistence on using the lift rather than walk up the short flight of stairs slightly irritated Davina. She thought it was lazy of him and she said so. He still used the lift.

‘That's only because you're afraid someone would say you were being bribed,' he said, unlocking the door of their suite. ‘The head of the SIS is banking Gucci bags in Switzerland! Come here.' While he was kissing her he began to undo the jaunty pony tail. Davina knew that he liked her hair hanging loose when they made love.

She said, ‘What about your call from Milan?'

‘I conned you,' he murmured. ‘It's not due for two hours.'

Humphrey Grant left the office in Anne's Yard twenty minutes early. It was a quiet time of year, a gentle May, as his deputy Johnson described it, meaning that apart from the continuing crisis of East–West coexistence, there was little fluctuation in the intelligence graph. He was having his bi-weekly lunch with his former chief, Sir James White, at the Garrick Club, and over their long association, Grant had learned to be early rather than late. Since Sir James's retirement, Humphrey Grant had grown closer to him than ever before. Close enough to confess one day that he was living with a young man. He would never forget James White's reaction. The bushy white brows raised a little and the blue eyes showed the merest flicker of surprise. He hadn't known whether to expect shock or lacerating scorn. The response caught him off guard.

‘How very brave of you to say so,' White had said. ‘I admire you for this, Humphrey, although I disapprove. Are you proposing to resign from the Service?'

‘If you think I should, Chief,' Humphrey had said.

‘I'm not the chief any more,' Sir James had reminded him. ‘My opinion doesn't count. You have to contend with Davina, my dear chap. But I can give you my advice on how to deal with her if you like. And still keep your job.'

Humphrey had taken that advice. He had gone to see her and told her that he was a homosexual and had a lover. Sir James had been right about her too. It took her twenty-four hours to make up her mind. It was a decision taken after consultation with the Prime Minister, she told him, and he winced, expecting the worst. His private life was only relevant if it exposed him to blackmail. He had forestalled any possibility of that by telling her the truth. He had agreed to a security vetting on his lover. His confidence in the boy was justified. He was exactly what he appeared: a simple young man of working-class background without any affiliations, political or homosexual, to anything or anybody, before he came to live with Humphrey. In no way could he be regarded as a risk.

It was strange that he couldn't feel grateful to her. Strange that he actually hated her for letting him remain, when he knew that she despised him for adopting a mode of life which had put his career at risk. She had been promoted to the post which should have been his; now he owed his position in the Service to her and he would never be able to forgive her.

He enjoyed his lunches with Sir James. Ironically, although he had recommended Davina's appointment, Sir James displayed a veiled malice towards her that Humphrey identified very quickly. He resented being out to grass, as he called it, and his natural bent for mischief and intrigue focused on the woman he had elevated to his former job. He lunched with Humphrey to hear the gossip and to slip in odd suggestions that might cause his protégée discomfort. It kept him amused and it allowed Humphrey to be thoroughly spiteful and disloyal.

On that pleasant May midday, after a glass of sherry in the splendid room on the first floor, Humphrey leaned his long body towards Sir James White and said, ‘I must say, it's quite a relief to have her out of the way. She wants everything done
yesterday
. It's not the way to get the best out of people.'

‘And does Tim Johnson feel the same?' Sir James inquired. He watched Humphrey with a kindly twinkle. He had recommended Johnson to Davina. A very clever, ambitious young man, endowed with formidable talent. That too had a quirky motive. A young lion like Johnson would keep Davina Graham on her toes. And goad poor Humphrey if he was tempted to sulk or turn complacent. Just because he had retired, Sir James reflected, he wasn't obliged to be bored. Humphrey made a grimace; his ugly face contorted, as if a skull had become a gargoyle. He could have sat high up on a church as a waterspout, his chief thought at that moment. What on earth motivated the lover …?

‘Johnson,' Humphrey said, ‘would like it the day before yesterday. They don't like each other, of course. Two of a kind.'

‘Well,' Sir James said, ‘you're in the driving seat, my dear Humphrey, while she's on holiday. Enjoy it. Make Johnson run a few circles. It'll be good for him.'

‘There's nothing happening at the moment,' Grant said. ‘Very quiet. He said so himself. I think he'd love an international incident – he'd be quite capable of engineering trouble if he thought he could promote himself. The Eastern desk hasn't reported anything except routine for the last month. April was dead and it looks as if May will be the same.'

‘Perhaps our friend Borisov is on holiday too?' Sir James suggested. ‘I know Franklyn is touring Europe.'

‘He's the only American I've ever had time for,' Humphrey said primly.

‘Because he takes a hard line?' Sir James raised an eyebrow. ‘They all do, in the Administration. They wouldn't last long if they didn't.'

‘Franklyn knows the Russians,' Grant countered. ‘He's quite different from the crewcut goon you had to deal with. He was three years in Moscow and he has a very sensitive political nose. Even Davina admits that. How do you know he's in Europe?'

‘Oh,' Sir James said lightly, ‘I have a few contacts, I keep in touch. Shall we go down to lunch?'

They were drinking coffee when he said, quite casually, ‘You know, Humphrey, there's something that's been bothering me for some time. I think I ought to mention it. Alfred, would you bring me the cigars?' He knew how much Grant hated people smoking. As he lit it and puffed, Grant didn't seem to notice. Maybe the boyfriend liked the odd fag. He chuckled to himself at the bad joke. ‘It's Davina's good friend, Tony Walden,' he went on. ‘Has anyone run a security check on him, do you know?'

Humphrey nodded. ‘It was the first thing she did,' he said gloomily, ‘after she got the job.'

‘I might have known,' James White remarked. ‘Davina's not exactly sentimental. Or rather she's more responsible than sentimental. Which is a great compliment to her, of course. However –' he played with the cigar, examining the tip for a moment ‘– she's been at the top for eighteen months. What was a clean sheet when she started might read differently by now; a lot of doubtfuls slipped through the vetting system at that time. Think about it, Humphrey. I'd run a second check on Walden if I were you. Davina needn't know unless you find anything.'

Humphrey looked at him. The cigar smoke made him want to cough. ‘Do you have any particular reason for suggesting this?'

‘Only instinct,' Sir James said softly. ‘I met him once – I didn't like him.'

No, Humphrey Grant thought, you wouldn't. A Polish Jew who made a fortune out of an advertising agency; a flamboyant self-made man without an old school tie in his wardrobe. Not your type at all. But Davina Graham's type, it seemed. On holiday together in Venice. They'd been together for over two years. But James White wouldn't suggest a check on the man just because he didn't like him. In twenty-five years his instinct for something wrong had only failed once. And that particular failure was drinking himself to death in Moscow.

‘I'll take a look at Walden,' he said. ‘I'll let you know what happens.'

They got out their diaries and fixed a date in two weeks' time.

He had been given the code name ‘Italy'. They were all known by the country of their birth. He had been well briefed on how to melt into the background. The great mistake was to arouse curiosity. In a city that delighted in gossip and lived the best part of its life in cafés, the recluse would cause comment. He must talk to his fellow guests and to the padrone in the pensione. He must tell them about his interest in architecture, paint the false picture of home and family that had been created for him, and he would be absorbed and forgotten. He was not gregarious by nature. Talking to strangers was an ordeal. But the time was short enough, and he spent the mornings walking the route, and going up and down by bus and gondola past the hotel on the Grand Canal. Finally he went into the hotel itself. The famous Gritti Palace, once owned by a Venetian nobleman.

He felt conspicuous going into the bar that overlooked the canal, but his clothes were expensive and there were a number of young men like him drinking Camparis or scotch. He didn't expect to see the target. Familiarize yourself with the background, get to know how people move in and out, when the hired gondolas pull in for the evening runs, for the morning expeditions to the Cipriani out in the lagoon. Stand on the landing stage, sink yourself in the atmosphere so that nothing can take you by surprise. You won't need any of the things you'll observe and memorize if the plan goes well. But you may if it doesn't.…

When the target came through the door and into the bar, he glanced up briefly, then finished his scotch and left the hotel. If the planned method failed, then the bar at the Gritti could provide an alternative. He had seen the man accompanying the target. A bodyguard, naturally. He would keep the alternative as a very probable reserve.