Albatross (42 page)

The prize was enormous. The power staggered the imagination. He had no precedent behind him to give encouragement. No man of his age had ever been elected. No holder of his unpopular office had ever stepped up to the throne. But there was a first time for all things. Sooner or later change overtook the most entrenched institutions, even in Russia. Borisov ran his own personal empire of repression and subversion with his habitual skill and dedication, but the grander scheme preoccupied him more and more.

He hadn't really concentrated on the situation outside Russia until after the assassination of Henry Franklyn in Venice. And it was high time that he did.

Venice had soon returned to normal. The tourists flocked like the famous pigeons; the shops selling leather and cheap jewellery did a handsome trade; the hotels were full; and the summer season looked like booming. The antique trade was better than the previous year, but the recession still hit the market hard. Work on the lower floor of the shop in the Piazza San Raphael had been completed, the owner installed the two renaissance pieces he had bought in Rome and hung a little primitive gem of the Crucifixion in his house in the Street of the Assassins. He had come home to find his daughter in a foul mood. She was surly enough anyway. Her mother tried to make excuses, but Valdorini had begun to dread his daughter's presence in the home. She was spoilt, he insisted, spoilt and typical of her generation, which had no respect and no aim in life. Her studies were a joke: her exam results were consistently poor, and it seemed to him that she was merely wasting time and money staying on at university.

The perpetual student was becoming an Italian phenomenon. There were greybeards of thirty still lounging around on government grants and their families' allowances, achieving nothing. And, of course, her aggressive left-wing politics drove him mad. According to his daughter, everything was wrong, he declared one evening when they had friends to dinner and the girl was out. The world was being destroyed by industry which was turning the good earth into an ecological desert; the Third World starved while the affluent threw food into their dustbins and the threat of nuclear war hung over humanity, denying the children the right to grow up. She had an answer for everything, Valdorini complained, but it was always the same answer. Everybody else was wrong and only she and her friends were responsible and caring.

His child had become a hostile stranger. He had drunk a lot of wine and he became maudlin, blinking back tears. No son, only this angry girl who looked at her parents as if she hated them; while they were away in Rome she'd had someone staying in the house and never said a word.

There were two other dealers round the table and a member of the City Trade Council. He was a Venetian whose ancestors had elected the Doge in centuries past. He loved his great city and took his responsibilities very seriously. He had been summoned to a meeting with Signor Modena, the head of Security, and members of the city's public bodies, and its most influential citizens. The problems arising from the assassination' of the American and his daughter had been put to them and their help solicited. The killer must be found. If the Red Brigades were mounting a new terrorist offensive, no one in public life would be safe. If, as Modena confided, they faced a new menace, then the prospects were horrifying. He wasn't asking anyone to inform, or to do anything that placed themselves at risk. But just to listen and use their judgement. Venice had harboured the assassin. Somewhere, he or she had left a trace behind.

That meeting had taken place before the body of the dead man was washed up on the public beach at the Lido. The fish had eaten through the anchor rope, releasing the bloated corpse. But the remains of that rope were still knotted round his waist and the postmortem showed that he had died from a broken neck and not from drowning. Identification had done the rest. Modena had a related clue which tied in with the other crime. The boatman had disappeared on the same morning. He was last seen at the public mooring by the Rialto Bridge. But nobody remembered who had hired him. There it rested, until the evening when Valdorini had too much wine and had started talking about his daughter.

3

‘I must say, I'm surprised,' James White remarked. He gave Davina a kindly look. She recognized it meant as little as his smile. ‘I never thought you'd turn to me for help, my dear.'

‘I never thought so either,' she said. ‘But needs must, Chief, when the devil drives.'

‘And are you quite sure who this devil really is?'

They were alone in his study; Mary White had slipped away so they could talk in private. Davina's head came up. He in turn recognized her mannerism.

She was about to challenge him. ‘What do you mean, the real devil?'

‘Well,' he leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs and dwelt on the word, ‘let's go over the facts. You are having an affair with a man. You know his background, you had him thoroughly vetted as soon as you took over at Anne's Yard. He's clean. Or two years ago he
was
clean.… Mother and married sister living in Poland, but no problems there. No affiliations with anything suspicious since he set himself up in England. He did bring one or two refugees out of Eastern Europe, but they were personal friends and he did it by using his money and bribing the necessary officials. In this role he came to Humphrey's notice and Humphrey introduced him to you – when you were both playing spies behind my back,' he added. ‘I must say now that I don't like your friend Walden.'

‘You don't have to tell me that,' Davina interrupted. ‘You proved it once.'

‘If you say so,' he murmured. ‘I don't like the type. It's not a good situation for someone in your position, but you've taken all possible precautions and you can't see that your private life can impinge on your job. But out of the blue, in the middle of a holiday, Walden tells you it's all over. He makes a heroic renunciation for your sake and then allows you to persuade him to go back on it. Am I being accurate, Davina?'

‘You're being a bastard,' she answered quietly. ‘But I expected that. Go on.'

‘He's a very sophisticated man who's made a lot of money out of manipulating people. Playing on their credulity. Wouldn't you agree that defines top-level advertising? He's been your lover for two years or so. He knows you very well by now. He sets the scene and writes the lines. He knows perfectly well that you're not the type to accept his noble gesture without wanting to know how and why. Very few women would, I imagine. Certainly not you. So he gives in and tells you that he's being blackmailed. And what a story! His brother-in-law was arrested as a Solidarity sympathizer. He's in the Ministry of the Interior, didn't you say? He's been interned ever since martial law. He doesn't say whether his brother-in-law is innocent or guilty. I find in my experience that civil servants have little sympathy with workers' movements like Solidarity, but that's beside the point. The point is, his sister is pregnant, living with her mother. That paints a picture of two frightened women, one old and feeble, the other having a child. Helpless and under siege by a ruthless military regime. By now, you're probably running ahead of him, Davina, filling in the gaps. It's the penalty of a quick mind. The blackmail is his brother-in-law's release? But no. It's crueller than that. The brother-in-law isn't interned as his family thinks. He's been taken to Russia because the KGB knows about Walden's relationship with you. They believe they hold a hand of trumps. Walden is to pass on anything you tell him and to pump you for secret information – in exchange for his brother-in-law's life. If he refuses, the poor chap either gets a bullet, or a ticket to the Gulag camps. Now, is that accurate?'

‘It's accurate,' Davina admitted, ‘if I ignore the interpretation. That's what Tony said. They're holding this man as a hostage. The only way out that he could see was to break off with me.'

‘Saying that you'd left him, of course?' Sir James said. ‘For what reason, I wonder? Our friends in Moscow are difficult people to convince. He'd have to have a strong story that could be checked. Davina, my dear girl, don't you know the answer to all this yourself? Didn't you just come down to have it confirmed by an outsider?'

‘You don't believe it,' she stated.

He shook his head gently. ‘I think it's a pack of lies and so do you.'

She got up and stood looking down at him. ‘That's what it looks like,' she agreed. ‘Except for one thing. If Moscow dreamed this up, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. It's so full of damned holes it doesn't make sense. Unless it's true. That's what I don't know. That's what knocks your theory sideways.'

‘Only if his story can be confirmed,' Sir James said. ‘If it can't, then the answer's simple.'

She said, ‘I haven't any cigarettes – I've been trying to give them up. Could I have one of yours?' He handed her the case; she took the fat Turkish cigarette and lit it. Sub Rosa – his trademark.

‘How was it left between you?'

‘I said I'd think of something. I wanted to believe him. And I had the Washington trip. I couldn't think straight till that was over.'

‘What a true professional you are, my dear girl,' he said. ‘Just what I'd expect of you. So he's in Australia, selling high-powered advertising and waiting for a word. He must be chewing his nails, don't you think?'

‘Not if he's genuine,' Davina said quietly.

‘It's rather a big “if”,' the old man added.

‘Tell me something.' She asked the question abruptly. He knew that mannerism too. She was on the defensive when she appeared to attack. ‘Tell me, if you'd
liked
Tony, would you be quite so certain he was rotten?'

‘It wouldn't make the slightest difference,' he declared. ‘I've never let my personal feelings affect my judgement. I've had people working for me that I couldn't stand the sight of. But I trusted them. And in all my years as chief of the Service I never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt once that trust was gone. Nor should you. Now, I hear Mary calling – shall we have dinner and put it out of our minds until the morning?' He opened the door for her; he had beautiful manners.

Davina went ahead into the dining room. The Whites had simple taste in food and wine. The house was comfortable, conventional, with Lionel Edwards hunting prints, shabby sofas where dogs had slept, pieces of very good furniture almost disregarded in odd corners, and a portrait of Sir James White in army uniform, which Davina thought was crude and badly painted. There was nothing to suggest that the couple who had lived there for so many years were quite extraordinary people. They had been friends of the Grahams since Davina was a little child – an odd friendship between her straightforward father and the machiavellian head of the SIS. And over dinner, Mary White asked how the family were.

‘I haven't seen them for a long time,' Davina said.

‘They're not still sulking over that wretched John, are they?' Mary White exclaimed impatiently.

‘Sulking is hardly the word for what they feel,' Davina answered. She felt Sir James watching her. ‘They think I ruined my sister's life. They won't have anything to do with me.'

‘How perfectly ridiculous,' Mary snapped. ‘I've never heard of anything so unfair, have you, James? What did they expect – that you'd let a traitor get away with it because he was your brother-in-law?'

‘People do bend the rules for their families, my dear,' her husband objected, ‘even for brothers-in-law.' He didn't let Davina catch his eye when he said it.

‘Besides, if I know Charlie, she'll find someone else if she hasn't already,' his wife said. ‘If I get the chance, Davina, I shall say something to your mother.'

Davina shook her head. ‘Don't bother. It's my father who's taken against me. You know how he worships my sister. It wouldn't do any good and it might make trouble between you.'

‘It's because he worships her that she's made such a mess of her life and other people's,' Mary White said firmly. ‘She's a lovely girl, but spoilt absolutely rotten. And it's your parents' fault, I'm sorry.' Under the light, her cheeks had flushed pink with indignation.

‘Mary,' Sir James said, ‘you're not to go into battle! I've always said I'd rather face a regiment of Gurkhas than my wife when she thinks something isn't fair.'

They had coffee and Davina went up to bed early. She was still suffering from the five and a half hour time change. She felt tired and desperately low. ‘Put it out of our minds till the morning.' Easy for James White; impossible for her. He hadn't allowed her to deceive herself. Without waiting for the morning, Davina knew the explanation White would give. Confess yourself a spy, allow yourself to be turned and you are practically invulnerable thereafter. You can meet your Russian contact, pass the doctored information and other secret material with it. It was an old ruse.

She got up, pulled back the curtains and opened the window wide. She felt stifled, as if she couldn't breathe properly. And after that conclusion, there was the worst suspicion of all. Walden had never loved her. He had been a plant from the beginning. She'd said it herself in that awful moment in Paris. ‘You made all the running. You were determined to start something.' He had pursued her with singular purpose. And she had let herself be caught. She closed her eyes against the cool night air. She shivered for a moment, as she had done in the centrally heated bedroom at the Ritz.

If his love for her had been an act, then she had no right to stay in her job. Anyone capable of being taken in like that was unfit to sit in James White's chair. But there was one way to prove it. She wondered what James White would say. She shut the window and went back to bed. Exhausted, she fell asleep immediately.