Krysalis: Krysalis (12 page)
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I had permission. Once the safe was installed.”
“We’ll come back to the safe in a minute; can we for now just establish why you had it at home?”
“All members of the Krysalis committee keep a current version of the file with them at all times.”
“Why?”
“Discussions frequently take place out of working hours in members’ private homes.”
Until this point Fox had been allowing the conversation to proceed at a brisk trot. Now he dropped the reins and sat back. There was a long silence. David fidgeted; his legs seemed to be too long for his liking.
Albert turned back to the window and resumed his study of the square. The thrill inside him was growing all the time. This was ugly. Very ugly. The stupid people who pretended to run England had been more than usually careless, probably in the names of Freedom, or Trust, or some such nonsense. This interrogation was just the beginning, the tip of a horrendous
iceberg. And Fox, he admitted to himself, was running it with the style of a true master.
“I have to tell you frankly,” said Fox, “that we in MI5 were not aware of the cavalier attitude which the London end of Krysalis has displayed. We hope to God that Washington will never find out.”
“Washington’s exactly the same as London.” David heaved an impatient sigh. “We ring up our American opposite numbers at home. You can do that now, you know; it’s called International Direct Dialing.”
Albert’s positive feelings toward David were starting to wear thin. A little contrition wouldn’t come amiss, he thought. A slight sense of shame, perhaps?
Upstairs, the banging, which had ceased since the accident with the glass, resumed with double intensity. When the doorbell rang Albert murmured, “Shall I …?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.” Fox looked at his watch. “It’ll be Leadbetter.”
A few moments later Albert escorted a man of about his own age, say thirty-five, into the drawing room. Fox again took charge. “What have you got?”
“Well, we’ve oiled the wheels and put them in motion.” Leadbetter, a thoughtful man, obviously liked to set his own pace. He opened a notebook and tugged a couple of times at his undernourished mustache, as if a little pain might stimulate him. “Usual alert at all ports and so on. So far, we can’t find anyone who remembers seeing her after teatime Friday.”
Fox turned his head a fraction. “Did you see your wife on Friday before leaving for Midhurst?”
“No. She was off at the crack. I left later than usual, because I wanted to go to Albemarle Street, to pick up
a compass. I’d ordered it specially. They don’t open till nine-thirty.”
“Ah yes, you sail…. Where was Krysalis when you left?”
“In the safe.”
“Yet your wife doesn’t have access to it?”
“Of course not. It was installed by your department.”
“Has she ever been present while you’ve opened the safe?”
“Possibly. I can’t remember.”
“But she might have seen you open it?”
“Yes.”
“And remembered the combination?”
“Oh,
really!”
David stood up and began to pace around the room, while Albert looked on with what he hoped came across as a sympathetic smile. Fox was never less than good. At times like this he could be inspired.
“Mr. Lescombe, all I’m doing is pointing out that your wife could have had access to the safe without your knowledge.”
“She could.”
Albert had a sudden empathy for what was making David angry: being compelled to face what he could not endure. He turned away from the window and began to study his unwilling host with real care.
“Did your wife know you were in the habit of bringing home confidential papers?”
“I didn’t tell her, if that’s what you mean.”
“But did she know?”
“She might have guessed, I suppose.”
As David stalked up and down the room, he kept meeting Albert’s eyes, again giving the impression of
believing that the two men had met somewhere before.
Fox cleared his throat. “Mr. Lescombe, tell us about your wife, please. What’s she like?”
David willfully chose to misunderstand. “Like that,” he said, pointing. “It’s recent.”
His finger indicated a framed photo standing on an ebony Steinway grand. Albert examined it while Fox made a production-number apology for not having expressed himself with sufficient clarity and what he had really meant to ask …
So that was Anna Lescombe. She looked younger than thirty-nine, Albert thought, and the blond hair pulled back tightly into a bun would equally well have suited a girl half her age. Lovely, outdoor coloring, the kind of face you saw bobbing behind a horse’s head midweek, when most of the men were at the office and the hounds were working double time because it was a treat for them…. Rounded features. A firm chin that stopped just the right distance short of aggression. Cheeky smile. Twinkling eyes that spoke before the mouth opened, giving it all away. Eyes like those could never keep a secret. And this inquiry, Albert realized sadly, is almost certainly a waste of time. He sighed. No twenty thousand. So close and yet so far.
God, though, she’d look fabulous in pink. She grew on you. It wasn’t until you’d been studying her face for a few moments that it suddenly dawned how beautiful she was. Those luminous eyes …
There was, he realized, a potential problem. For professional reasons, he preferred to hate his quarry. Hating the person in the photo would not be easy.
Albert had one favorite fantasy and it was only mildly sexual: a woman on a horse, galloping, with her hair pulled back like Anna Lescombe’s. And here she
was. Living with … Albert glanced at David … the kind of prat Whitehall seemed to favor these days, who nevertheless was nobody’s fool and wasn’t sure how much he trusted his wife.
Yet who was
fond
of her. Odd expression. Did it represent Lescombe’s attempt to distance himself from her and so save his career? Was he, in effect, acknowledging that his wife might be guilty of something?
That tingle of hope, stilled a moment ago by Albert’s study of Anna’s face, resurrected itself with greater fervor.
“She’s the usual sort of professional woman, I suppose.” David was speaking again. “She had to work twice as hard as the next man, who because he was just that, a man, would always get on, you know what I mean? Conventional, middle-class upbringing.”
Ah, interesting, Albert thought, because you’re not middle-class upbrought, are you, my man? In the army we can spot that a mile off. Your accent’s marginally wrong and your habits of thought are impure. You smell like a liberal, Lescombe, and that’s a dangerous odor….
“Won a scholarship to Somerville, went on to superb corporate law chambers, top-flight. Goddamnit, she makes six times what I do, why on earth would she want to spy …?”
He stopped with a strange look on his face, the kind the hero wears when he’s been slugged from behind by his best friend.
Albert’s excitement erupted in a sudden burst of restlessness. He saw why Fox had asked for him, now. The road to Anna lay through David. Albert was going to have to make friends with him. Fox needed a nice-guy executioner.
Nice guys were rare. Expensively so.
“As an adult, however, her life was not entirely conventional.” Fox was choosing to ignore the word “spy,” but his voice hardened. “There was an unfortunate first marriage, I believe? A child?”
“Oh, so you know about Eddy, do you?”
Before Fox could respond, someone rapped on the door and entered. “Sorry, chief, can you come?”
David glared at this tousle-haired ruffian, part of the crew that was busily taking apart his house.
Fox rose. “What is it?”
“Empty bottle of sleeping pills under the bed, with a clean set of prints matching those on the safe.”
“Mr. Lescombe, do you know anything about these sleeping tablets?”
“No.” David’s voice trembled slightly. “Nothing,” he added, as if to cover up the momentary weakness.
“You’ll come in straightaway,” Fox said. “You can tell a neighbor that the house may be empty for a while, if you like, but keep it general.”
David was so astonished he scarcely noticed when Leadbetter’s hand descended on his forearm. Albert, seeing the look of fear on his face, now knew for sure that his earlier misgivings had definitely not been justified.
There was something in this for him after all.
9
The hell-for-leather journey from London to Greece took up all of Monday, but Anna retained little impression of it. Most of that time Gerhard kept her sedated. She did not really begin to recover until she found herself in a taxi, absorbing impressions of many trees, a dusty road fringed with convolvulus that glowed pinky-white in the dying sun, olive groves, a gearbox whose synchromesh had gone, glimpses of royal blue sea, smell of Papastratos cigarettes overflowing from the broken ashtray … then they were jolting down a rough stone track toward a white, single-story villa.
Gerhard got out and spoke Greek to an old man, who stood in the doorway nervously twisting his faded straw hat and putting it on his head for a few seconds before jerking it off to give it another few turns. His soft, sad eyes were contradicted by a thin mustache, which, together with his beaky nose, gave his face the severe look of an old soldier. There was also a boy in his late teens, who helped Anna out of the car. She wobbled
a little, steadied. When she took a deep breath, the air was rich with the smell of some pungent herb, rosemary perhaps, that sluiced through her mind, cleansing it.
Gerhard introduced the old man as Yorgos, the caretaker; the youngster turned out to be Iannis, his son. Yorgos produced a scratched and dented tin from which he took a cigarette, hesitantly offering it to Anna. She shook her head, but the sight of that tin lured her away to another time.
Her father had always kept his smokes in a tin. She could see his pudgy fingers struggling with the airtight lid and her nose wrinkled at the vision of those nasty stains, the color of ginger biscuits, which had polluted her nostrils whenever he kissed her. How strange that the acrid smell of spent nicotine could become the odor of love to a child.
While Gerhard talked with the two Greeks she drifted through the spacious house. The main room gave onto a terrace. There Anna sank down into a wicker chair and rested her head in her hands.
Gerhard finished typing a document. He rattled it out of the machine and hesitated while he mentally ran over the plan again. He couldn’t afford to take any chances, not when he was embarking on the outright sale of Krysalis.
If he went ahead with this, it meant the end of life as he knew it. No more East Germany. No more Ilsa and her family. Well, it had been a long time since he’d cared a damn about either of the Germanys, but Ilsa … he squashed the guilt with a shrug, then looked at his watch, calculating. He stuffed the paper into an
envelope, along with some banknotes, and beckoned Iannis, Yorgos’ son.
“Let’s go through it one more time,” Gerhard said. “You leave for Athens, now. Tomorrow, first thing, you’ll send this fax.”
The boy took the envelope and nodded.
“Afterward, you’ll keep checking to see if there’s any reply. There’s plenty of money for you in the envelope. Remember, keep moving; never stay in the same place two nights running.”
Patiently he went through the instructions yet again, dinning each detail into the boy’s head, until he felt sure Iannis understood exactly what was required of him.
Looking up at the boy, Gerhard realized that now it was just a matter of time. By the weekend, it wouldn’t matter a damn what Anna thought or believed.
But he must have those four days!
It was going to be a nerve-racking time. What if Barzel somehow managed to find them? He would know by now that Anna had disappeared, along with his prized agent…. No, don’t think about that. Besides, there’s only one answer: if Barzel finds you, he will kill you. So there’s absolutely no need to think about that at all.
Gerhard reached up to clap Iannis on the arm. “Good boy. See you Sunday, then …”
He waited for father and son to leave before going to find out what had happened to Anna. He was relieved to see her sitting quietly on the terrace. Her eyes were closed. Since she had not heard him approach, he left her undisturbed, allowing himself the luxury of reacquaintance with the villa. He always experienced a sensation of homecoming when he returned to the island,
but this evening it seemed particularly strong. He knew why: Anna always enhanced everything she touched.
As he looked down at her something clicked into place within him; he knew he wanted her to stay with him forever, if not here then wherever their destinies might entice and entwine them. With that realization faced, he found himself breathing more easily.
The house itself nestled half hidden in a grove of dark conifers. On a patio below the terrace where he was standing, the land sloped away steeply as an overgrown garden, littered with spiky, strawlike grass and several huge ribbed pots, still full of last season’s dead flowers. The property ended with a wall and a metal-rod gate. Beyond that, a path wound down to the bay some fifty feet below, where there was a small beach, for all practical purposes a private one.