In 1968 the Duncan Committee reported that moving the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from its Florentine museum off Downing Street to a new building would save five hundred people and a million pounds a year. Nobody can now remember who the eponymous Duncan was, but over twenty years later the FCO stands where it always did and is not likely ever to move.
It was two-thirty on the day after Anna’s disappearance when Albert walked through the arch opposite Number Ten Downing Street, into the grand square courtyard, and made for the tower at the northwest corner. He had indulged in a taxi from MI5′s Curzon Street headquarters, not wanting to miss the next act. It was time for a private word with David Lescombe.
He showed his pass, climbed the ornate staircase flanked by ancient statues of the Earl of Clarendon and the third Marquess of Salisbury, and walked along the passage until he came to the end, where he did a right wheel into the longest stretch of linoleumed floor the
civil service could boast. Here the gloom was only slightly alleviated by sunshine pouring—dribbling would perhaps be a better word—through the tiny windows in the European corridor, each stationed exactly halfway between the bevel-paneled doors opposite, as if to avoid any risk that someone emerging from an office with all of England’s diplomacy in his head might conceivably be blinded by a ray of light.
At the far end he came to a grand door, surmounted by a florid representation of two angels and bearing a gothic-lettered name panel,
SUPERINTENDING UNDERSECRETARY SIR ANTHONY FORBES-ANDERTON KCMG.
Albert
looked at his watch. He was still a little early. He settled down to wait.
He knew that the job of killing Anna Lescombe was worth all of twenty thousand pounds—to the Americans, if not yet to the British. What he had to do now was find a way of convincing the paymasters that this was the logical solution to their problem. He resented the necessity. To Albert, it was perfectly clear that Anna Lescombe had gone to the bad. She represented all that was rotten about twentieth-century society, everything that Albert and his brother officers most virulently opposed. Yet no one wanted to see it.
Albert rested his elbows on the nearest windowsill. April. It would be a balmy seventy-five degrees on the west coast of Carriacou today. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could smell red snapper grilling over a barbecue, taste rum, feel a warm wind drying droplets of salt water on his skin. Fortunately, Montgomery loved the heat, although he did
not
love going into kennels. Albert, who sympathized, had devoted a lot of spare time to investigating the quarantine regulations in depth. There would be bribes to pay, but on the
island that was nothing new. If he landed this job, it would leave only another thirty thou’ to find. And then …
And then the door behind him opened to reveal David Lescombe standing there with a dazed look on his face. Albert came upright and turned a smiling face in his direction.
“Hello again,” he said.
“Oh, it’s you. I …” David stared. “Sorry. It’s just that …”
“Yes?”
“There’s something about you, something so familiar it’s driving me mad.”
“Ah.”
Albert turned sideways, toward the light. David’s face changed, he even produced a half smile. “Got it.”
“Tell me.”
“Gustav Mahler.”
“Good lord!”
“You’ve got this high forehead and a studious face, you see. And with those spectacles …”
“How extraordinary. Well, there’s one mystery solved, then.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Hoping I’d run across you.” A look of genuine sympathy softened Albert’s intense expression. “You’ve been suspended. Bad luck.”
“Yes.” David stared at him. “How did you know? They’ve only just—”
Albert knew because he had been present when Brewster gave the order. He had also been privy to the loud and long telephone protests put up by the Superintending Under-Secretary, outside whose office they were now standing. Words like “brilliant,” “outstandingly
gifted,” and “the most extraordinary brain of this generation of high fliers” had been used, often more than once. Brewster had been left in no doubt of the official Foreign & Commonwealth Office view: that he was making a particularly stupid mistake.
Albert did not see it in quite that light. He needed a lever. This amiable and, Albert suspected, essentially harmless civil servant was hardly likely to help supply it unless put under intolerable pressure. He regarded David’s suspension as regrettable, but also as ground for hope.
“I think it’s time we had a talk,” he said, deliberately overriding the other man’s question. “Look, it’s a nice day, we could go for a stroll …?”
David looked at his watch. “I’ve got an appointment later. At six.”
I know, Albert thought. And I wouldn’t want you to miss that for the world. But what he said was: “Oh, it won’t take long. Let’s go.”
They walked across Horse Guards into St. James’ Park under a watery sky, half gray and half blue. It was just warm enough to enable them to sit in deck chairs, not far from the bandstand, where they could enjoy an outsider’s view of David’s former domain. Albert spent the walk trying to gauge how he must appear in David’s eyes—apart from apparently being a dead ringer for Mahler, that is. In the end he concluded that the simplest way of finding out was to ask.
“I expect you’re wondering what I’m up to,” he said.
David wrenched his gaze away from the Palazzo’s rock-solid facade. “Frankly, yes.”
“It’s tough for you chaps when security marches in wearing hobnail boots.” Albert spoke with apologetic concern, as if it were all his fault.
“So you’re with security?”
“No, I’m an army officer. Well, yes
and
no’s the answer to your question: military intelligence. My regiment would be first in the firing line if your file surfaced in the East. We’d have to hold the fort—literally.”
“I see. What’s your rank?”
“Oh, just a humble captain,” said Albert, who in truth had been the youngest officer ever to be promoted to lieutenant colonel by the British army, because he was that good.
“But what are you actually … doing?”
Albert interlaced his fingers and extended both hands in front of him, palms outward. “Blowed if I know. Bloody waste of time, if you ask me.” He cast a sideways look at David, who, to his relief, was plainly swallowing it. “You’re worried to hell about your wife, aren’t you?”
“I’m worried, yes.” David stared at the ground. “And I’m angry, too.”
“Why?”
“Is that meant to be a serious question?” David burst out. “She goes off, the file’s missing, my career’s ruined, wouldn’t it make you angry if all that happened to you?”
Albert thought that on the whole it would, especially if strangers like himself insisted on asking questions about it. He found himself coming dangerously close to liking David Lescombe again. “You’re assuming she took the file,” he said quickly.
“I’m assuming nothing. My wife, my file, they’re both missing, that’s all I know. I can’t believe Anna would …”
Spoken like a man who doesn’t
want
to believe,
Albert told himself. “Aaah …” He made a scornful face. “None of it hangs together.”
“But she’s gone, hasn’t she?” David’s voice was bitter. “So’s the bloody file.”
There was a long pause. Albert had to induce David to come up with a lot of answers very quickly, there was room for neither failure nor error, and he was stuck for a way in.
“What do you want to talk to me about?” David asked at last. “Look, I’m sorry to keep on, but who
are
you?”
“I’m muscle.” Albert smiled bleakly. “Not-very-chief cook and bottle washer. Typical, of course. Minor public school, undergraduate cadetship to Oxford, a first in English, posting to Northern Ireland, and now here I am. You’ve no idea how these things work, have you?”
“Not much.”
“MoD has a policy of putting square pegs in round holes and calling it flexible response, also known as shambles. When a file as vital as Krysalis goes missing, when somebody really important goes over the wall, lots of people are affected. So everyone wants a finger in the pie, to check their interests don’t get overlooked. That’s where I figure. Because there isn’t much for me to do at present, they’re using me to run around and do odd jobs.”
David stared at him. “It’s so different from what I would have expected,” he said at last.
“It always is.” Good, Albert told himself. But this won’t bring quick results.
Move!
Try anything, try intimacy … “Look, David … may I call you David, incidentally?”
“If you like.”
“I know what you’re thinking. You watch the telly, you read the posher spy books, and you think, ‘So that’s what it’s like, on the inside, really like….’ But the truth is, the people who work for MI5 are civil servants. Which means they’re fully stretched at the best of times, and when there’s a panic, there’s one chap for every ten jobs. So they bring in part-timers.”
“And your job is to talk to me.” David’s voice became defensive. “They
sent
you.”
“Of course.” Albert took off his spectacles and polished them with a silk handkerchief. They were shallow, shaped like a double sycamore seed flattened across the top, and tinted with just the merest tinge of pink. Cellophane-thin, they gave the impression of being more a protection against light than an aid to vision. In fact, they were a minimal but highly effective form of disguise.
“If I talk to you, will it help them to find my wife? Or only the file?”
“Both, I hope.” Which are you most concerned about I wonder, Albert mentally added, your wife or your career? Let’s find out…. “I’d like us to discuss the personal aspects, I’m afraid. The difficult bits.”
“Personal?”
“Love and death and sex. The Woody Allen things. You a fan of his?”
David shook his head.
“They’re kind of tricky. The problem is that at some point you’re going to have to provide the answers to certain very embarrassing questions about your life with Anna. You can wait for the board of inquiry, if you like. But you just might find it easier to talk about them to me, sitting here, in the fresh air. I’ll pass on the
answers, and then there’s a good chance you won’t have to cover the same ground again.”
David hesitated. “Go on,” he said at last.
“Let’s start with a real tough one.” Albert suddenly wasn’t sure how to go on, finding it an unexpectedly joyless task to manipulate this distressed, pleasant man. “Do you love your wife?”
“Of course.”
“No.” Albert made himself sound infinitely patient and understanding. “No, I’m sorry, you haven’t quite got the flavor of this yet. I’m going to ask you some serious questions and you’re going to answer them in the same way. It’s not Trivial Pursuit.”
“But of course I love my wife!”
“How long have you been married?”
“Eight, nine years.”
Albert waited. He knew that David’s brain would now inevitably serve up the question:
How can you love her if you don’t even know how long you’v
e
been married?
Sure enough—“Nine and a quarter years,” David said sheepishly.
“No children.”
“No. We couldn’t. The doctors never found out why.”
“Yet she had a child by her first husband.”
David laughed in spite of himself. “Yes. Juliet.”
“So perhaps you didn’t really want children?” Seeing David open his mouth Albert sharply interjected,
“Think.”
A pause. “There were six of us kids in my family. It put me off.”
“Did she know you weren’t keen?”
“I was careful never to let her know.”
Neither man spoke for a long time. Albert guessed
what David must be thinking: these questions had begun to give off a sickly aroma, children, impotence, his sex life, Anna’s sex life, the antics they got up to in bed …
Now, looking squarely at David, Albert had an inkling that it wasn’t just Anna’s loving personality and warm smile her husband missed at night. They had a real sex life. They did remarkable things together in bed. Perhaps … yes, perhaps if David had read about those things in a book before meeting Anna he’d have been fascinated, even a little repelled, thinking anyway that they were nothing to do with him.
Anna had changed all that. Suddenly Albert felt sure of it. And the perception changed his view of what David might now be capable of doing to help and protect her.
To his astonishment, Albert felt a twinge of wholly uncharacteristic jealousy.
“What’s the point of this?” David suddenly rasped.
“You see, we need to build up a profile of your wife, then use it to project her probable actions.” Albert spoke softly, using his voice to massage David’s ruffled feathers flat again. “One thing that could affect her is how she sees you. Do you understand?”
David nodded unwillingly.
“I warned you the water would be a bit choppy. Now. Does she love you?”
“I’m sure she does.”
“Does she ever tell you?”
“Yes.” A smile stole across his face. “Oh yes.” Albert waited.
“My wife and I, we … we found each other rather late in the day. I don’t think either of us really expected …”
“No. I see.”
“I met her on a sailing weekend. She was with a party moored in the next berth….”
Albert could sense that David’s mind had drifted back to something that mattered to him even more than his present quandary.
“We got talking. Exchanged addresses. Next weekend we went to a concert together.” David drew a deep breath and expelled it in a shuddery sigh. “Beethoven. After that, we started to go out together regularly.”
When he fell silent, Albert knew better than to speak.
“Opera. Movies. Dinners. And then …” David looked down at his lap,
“Turandot.”
“Ah.” Albert almost felt annoyed with David for complicating things so. “My favorite,” he reluctantly admitted.
“Really?” David treated the other man to a mingled look of shyness and liking. “There’s this wonderful moment when Calaf sings,
‘No, no, Principessa altera’ …”
“‘Ti voglio tutta ardente d’amor,’ ‘I
would have you aflame with love.’”