“It’s magnificent,” she said in awe. Romanov
held up the gold medallion. “A bauble compared with the treasures I left
behind,” he assured her.
“Comrade
lover
,”
Anna said in a childlike voice, pulling him towards the bed, “you realise how
much I adore, admire and respect you?”
“Um,” said Romanov.
“And you also know,” she continued, “that I
have never asked you for any favour in the past.”
“But I have a feeling you are about to now,”
said Romanov as she lifted back the sheet.
“Only that if the gold chain is nothing more
than a mere bauble, perhaps you might allow me to wear it occasionally?”
“Occasionally?” said Romanov, staring into
Anna’s eyes. “Why occasionally? Why not permanently, my darling?” and without
another word he removed the gold chain from around his neck and placed it over
the young girl’s head. Anna sighed as she fingered the thick gold rings that
made up the chain that Romanov didn’t let go of.
“You’re hurting me, Alex,” she said with a
little laugh. “Please let go.” But Romanov only pulled the chain a little
tighter. Tears began to run down her cheeks as the metal began to bite into her
skin.
“I can’t breathe properly,” gasped the
researcher. “Please stop teasing.” But Romanov only continued to tighten the
chain around her throat until Anna’s face began to turn red as it filled with
blood.
“You wouldn’t tell anyone about my windfall,
would you, my little one?”
“No, never, Alex.
No one.
You can
rely on me,” she choked out desperately.
“Can I feel absolutely certain?” he asked
with an edge of menace now in his voice.
“Yes, yes of course, but please stop now,”
she piped, her delicate hands clutching desperately at her master’s blond hair,
but Romanov only continued to squeeze and squeeze the heavy gold chain around
her neck like a rack and pinion, tighter and tighter. Romanov was not aware of
the girl’s hands clinging desperately to his hair, as he twisted the chain a
final time. “I’m sure you understand that I must feel absolutely certain that
you wouldn’t share our secret with anyone,” he explained to her. But she did
not hear his plea because the vertebrae in her neck had already snapped.
On his morning run along the Embankment,
Adam mulled over the tasks that still needed to be carried out next.
If he took the morning flight out of
Heathrow on Wednesday, he could be back in London by the same evening, or
Thursday at the latest. But there were still several things that had to be
organised before he could leave for Geneva.
He came to a halt on the pavement outside
his block and checked his pulse, before climbing the stairs to the flat.
“Three letters for you,” said Lawrence.
“None for me.
Mind you,” he added as his flatmate joined him
in the kitchen, “two of them are in buff envelopes.” Adam picked up the letters
and left them on the end of his bed en route to the shower. He survived five
minutes of ice-cold water before towelling down. Once he was dressed he opened
the letters. He began with the white one, which turned out to be a note from
Heidi thanking him for dinner, and hoping she would be seeing him again some
time. He smiled and tore open the first of the buff envelopes, which was yet
another missive from the Foreign Office Co-ordination Staff.
Captain Scott- the rank already seemed out
of place – was requested to attend a medical at 122 Harley Street at three o’clock
on the following Monday, to be conducted by Dr John Vance.
Finally he opened the other brown envelope
and pulled out a letter from Lloyds, Cox and King’s branch in Pall Mall,
informing Dear Sir/Madam that they had been in receipt of a cheque for five
hundred pounds from Holbrooke, Holbrooke and Gascoigne, and that his current
account at the close of business the previous day was in credit to the sum of £272.18s.4d.
When Adam checked through the account it showed that at one point he had, for
the first time in his life, run up an overdraft – a situation that he knew
would have been frowned upon had he still been in the army, for as little as
twenty years before it was in some regiments a court-martial offence for an
officer to be overdrawn.
What would his brother officers have said if
he told them he was about to remove two hundred pounds from the account with no
real guarantee of a return?
Once Adam had finished dressing, he rejoined
Lawrence in the kitchen.
“How was the Shah of Iran?” he asked.
“Oh, very reasonable really,” said Lawrence,
turning a page of the
Daily Telegraph,
“considering
the circumstances. Promised he would do what he could about his current
financial embarrassment, but he was a bit pushed until the West allowed him to
raise the price of oil.”
“Where did you eventually take him to lunch?”
asked Adam enjoying the game.
“I offered him a shepherd’s pie at the Green
Man, but the bloody fellow became quite snotty. It seems he and the Empress had
to pop along to Harrods to be measured up for a new throne. Would have gone
along with him, of course, but my boss wanted his wastepaper basket emptied, so
I missed out on the Harrods deal as well.”
“So what are you up to today?”
“I shouldn’t let you in on this,” said
Lawrence, peering at the photograph of Ted Dexter, the defeated English cricket
captain, “but the Governor of the Bank of England wants my views on whether we
should devalue the pound from $2.80 to $2.40.”
“And what are your views?”
“I’ve already explained to the fellow that
the only 240 I know is the bus that runs between Golders Green and Edgware, and
if I don’t get a move on I’ll miss my beloved 14,” said Lawrence, checking his
watch. Adam laughed as he watched his friend slam his briefcase shut and
disappear out of the door.
Lawrence had changed considerably over the
years since he had left Wellington. Perhaps it was that Adam could only
remember him as school captain and then leaving with the top classics
scholarship to Balliol. He had seemed so serious in those days and certainly
destined for greater things. No one would have thought it possible that he
would end up as an investment analyst at Barclays DCO. At Oxford contemporaries
half joked about him being a cabinet minister. Was it possible that one always
expected too much of those idols who were only a couple of years older than
oneself? On leaving school their friendship had grown. And when Adam was posted
to Malaya, Lawrence never accepted the army report that posted his friend as
missing presumed dead. And when Adam announced that he was leaving the army,
Lawrence asked for no explanation and couldn’t have been kinder about his
unemployment problem. Adam hoped that he would be given the chance to repay
such friendship.
Adam fried himself an egg and a couple of
rashers of bacon. There wasn’t much more he could do before nine thirty,
although he did find time to scribble a note to his sister, enclosing a cheque
for fifty pounds.
At nine thirty he made a phone call. Mr
Holbrooke – Adam wondered if he actually had a Christian name – couldn’t hide
his surprise at receiving a call from young Mr Scott. Now that my father is
dead, I must be old Mr Scott, Adam wanted to tell him. And Holbrooke sounded
even more surprised by his request. “No doubt connected in some way with that
envelope,” he muttered, but agreed to put a copy of his father’s will in the
post that afternoon.
Adam’s other requirements could not be
carried out over the phone, so he locked up the flat and jumped on a bus
heading up the King’s Road. He left the double-decker at Hyde Park Corner and
made his way to Lloyds Bank in Pall Mall, where he joined a queue at the
Foreign Exchange counter.
“May I help you?” asked a polite assistant
when he finally reached the front.
“Yes,” said Adam. “I would like fifty pounds
in Swiss francs, fifty pounds in cash and a hundred pounds in traveller’s
cheques.”
“What is your name?” she enquired.
“Adam Scott.”
The girl entered some calculations on a
large desktop machine before cranking the handle round several times. She
looked at the result,
then
disappeared for a few
moments to return with a copy of the bank statement Adam had received in the
morning post.
“The total cost, including our charges, will
be £202.1s.8d. That would leave your account in credit with £70.16s.4d.,” she
informed him.
“Yes,” said Adam, but didn’t add that in
truth it would only be £20.16s.4d.
the
moment his
sister presented her cheque. He beg
,an
to hope that
the Foreign Office paid by the week, otherwise it would have to be another
frugal month. Unless of course...
Adam signed the tops of the ten traveller’s
cheques in the cashier’s presence and she then handed over five hundred and
ninety-four Swiss francs and fifty pounds in cash. It was the largest sum of
money Adam had ever taken out at one time.
Another bus journey took him to the British
European Airways terminal in Cromwell Road where he asked the girl to book him
on a return flight to Geneva.
“First class or economy?” she asked.
“Economy,” said Adam, amused by the thought
that anyone might think he would want to go first class.
“That will be thirty-one pounds please, sir.”
Adam paid in cash and placed the ticket in his inside pocket, before returning
to the flat for a light lunch. During the afternoon he called Heidi who agreed
to join him for dinner at the Chelsea Kitchen at eight o’clock. There was one
more thing Adam needed to be certain about before he joined Heidi for dinner.
Romanov was woken by the ringing of the
phone.
“Yes,” he said.
“Good morning, Comrade Romanov, it’s
Melinski, the Second Secretary at the Embassy.”
“Good morning, Comrade, what can I do for
you?”
“It’s about Comrade Petrova,” Romanov smiled
at the thought of her now lying in the bath. “Have you come across the girl
since you reported her missing?”
“No,” replied Romanov. “And she didn’t sleep
in her bed last night.”
“I see,” said the Second Secretary. “Then
your suspicions that she might have defected are beginning to look a serious
possibility.”
“I fear so,” said Romanov, “and I shall have
to make a full report of the situation to my superiors the moment I get back to
Moscow.”
“Yes, of course, Comrade Major.”
“I shall also point out that you have done
everything possible to assist me with this problem, Comrade Second Secretary.”
“Thank you, Comrade Major.”
“And brief me the moment you come up with
any information that might lead us to where she is.”
“Of course, Comrade Major.”
Romanov replaced the phone and walked
across to the bathroom in the adjoining room. He stared down at the body
hunched up in the bath. Anna’s eyes were bulging in their sockets, her face
contorted and the skin already grey. After throwing a towel over the dead
researcher’s head and locking the door, he went into his own bathroom for an
unusually long shower.
He returned and sat on his side of the bed,
only a towel around his waist, and picked up the phone. He ordered breakfast
which arrived fifteen minutes later, by which time he had dressed. Once he had
finished orange juice and croissants he returned to the phone trying to recall
the name of the hotel’s manager. It came back to him just as the receptionist
said,
“Guten Morgen, mein Hen.”
“Jacques, please,” was all Romanov said. A
moment later he heard the manager’s voice, “Good morning, Herr Romanov.”
“I have a delicate problem that I was hoping
you might be able to help me with.”
“I shall certainly try, sir,” came back the
reply.
“I am in possession of a rather valuable
object that I wish to deposit with my bank and I wouldn’t want. . .”
“I understand your dilemma entirely,” said
the manager. “And how can I be of assistance?”
“I require a large container in which to
place the object.”
“Would a laundry basket be large enough?”
“Ideal, but does it have a secure lid?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Jacques. “We often have
to drop them off down lift shafts.”
“Perfect,” said Romanov.
“Then it will be with you in a matter of
moments,” said Jacques. “I shall send a porter to assist you. May I also
suggest that it is taken down in the freight elevator at the rear of the hotel,
thus ensuring that no one will see you leaving?”
“Very considerate,” said Romanov.
“Will a car be calling to collect you?”
“No,” said Romanov. “I...”
“Then I shall arrange for a taxi to be
waiting. When will you require it?”
“In no more than half an
hour.”
“You will find it parked outside the freight
entrance in twenty minutes’ time.”
“You have been most helpful,” said Romanov,
before adding, “
the
Chairman of the State Bank did not
exaggerate his praise of you.”