“When did you plan out the route?” Richard Wilson asked.
“There wasn’t any plan about it, really. We just drove around, deciding on the spur of the moment where to go next.”
“I see. And what took you to Langenlois?”
“It was pure chance. I mean, we were heading back in the general direction of Vienna, and Langenlois happened to be on the road, that’s all. It was just chance.”
So far I’d managed to stay fairly calm, but suddenly my control snapped. My eyes brimmed with tears as I was caught up yet again by a tidal wave of senseless, futile remorse. If only I had not persuaded Max to stop at Zwettl that morning to look at the Abbey Church! If only I’d not talked him out of having a second tankard of beer at the little roadside inn a few miles back! And at the last fateful moment, if only I had not asked him to slow down so that I could see the Trinity Column! Any one of those things, changed minutely, would have prevented us from being at that precise point in the Stadtplatz of Langenlois at the same split second as a crazily driven truck. And Max would not be dead now. Richard Wilson was watching me with grave eyes.
He spoke in a flat voice. “My dear, I’m afraid there was no element of chance about Max’s death.”
His meaning should have been clear enough to me, but I didn’t understand. I stared at him in blank bewilderment.
He came over and put a hand on my shoulder. “That accident was very carefully stage-managed. Max was killed quite deliberately.”
When I fully came round again, it seemed like hours later. I didn’t remember fainting, but for some time I’d been lying in a state of drowsy nonattachment. I could feel the softness of the divan under me, hear a quiet chinking of crockery from the direction of the kitchen.
I opened my eyes. The room looked almost cozy now, with just a shaded reading lamp switched on and the skimpy curtains drawn across the window, the last remnants of daylight showing at the edges. The sounds from the kitchen were homey, warm with a feeling of companionship, until at last I broke surface, and remembered....
“Max!” It was a half-articulate sob of fear and despair, but it brought me release too. I started to cry.
I heard Richard Wilson cross the room toward me. The divan dipped under his weight. His arm slipped under my shoulders, and he gently sat me up, swinging my feet to the floor. For a while we sat there together.
“I had to tell you,” he murmured. “You had to know.”
“I suppose so.” Then I turned my head to face him. “But how . . . ?”
“Not now. Look, I’ve made some tea,” The tray was on the table, and he got up to pour out. “Do you take sugar?”
I stared across the room at him without answering.
“I’ll put some in, anyway. They say it’s good for shock.”
I gave him a feeble little smile of gratitude. My first wariness, that shapeless instinctive suspicion of him had gone. He had known Max well, and that thought brought me a sense of nearness to my dead husband.
Richard carried the cups over, and we sipped our tea without speaking. Not until we’d both finished did he ask, “Feeling better?”
“A bit. Now, will you tell me what you know about Max’s death?”
He nodded somberly and perched himself on the arm of the chair. I stared down at the carpet and counted the rose patterns.
“The truck that hit your car was stolen—it had been taken earlier on, while the driver was in a cafe. None of the witnesses could identify the chap who was driving at the time of the accident, except to say he was a youth of about twenty, and as I expect you know, he jumped out and ran off immediately afterward. It was assumed by the Austrian police that he was either a thief who’d taken the truck for its load of copper tubing, or just a joy-rider.”
I let all this sink in for a moment, and then asked, “Why are you so certain he wasn’t?”
“It’s hard to say. I suppose, basically, it’s a matter of instinct. We understand the sort of people we’re dealing with. They will stop at nothing.”
“But to run Max down in cold blood like that! It ... it’s
unspeakable!”
“In their world, Jessica, it’s just a matter of routine. And don’t forget that you were in the car, too. They risked killing you as well, without the slightest compunction.”
“I wish to God they had!”
I couldn’t sit still, so I jumped to my feet and began to pace around the room. Then I stopped, and suddenly I had no difficulty at all looking directly into Richard’s dark eyes.
“You said just now that you wanted my help. Tell me what I’m to do.” My voice was as hard as steel. I had never felt like this before, filled with a need for retribution.
Watching me with close attention, Richard said slowl, “I’m asking you to go back to Vienna for a while.”
Oh no! I
wanted to forget Vienna, yet I knew that I never would, because forgetting Vienna would be forgetting Max.
“What could I possibly do for you there?”
He frowned, again touching his brows in that characteristic gesture. “It’s difficult to explain, exactly. There are things I can’t tell you, I’m afraid —things I’m not
permitted
to tell you, even though I personally think you have a right to know.” He paused, weighing his words. “Let me put it to you like this. Max’s death, coming as it did, has scared off certain contacts he’d been carefully fostering, and we are anxious to coax them into coming forward again. We believe that if it could be made to look as if you’re taking over where Max left off, it might just do the trick.”
I thought he’d finished speaking, and was wondering how to answer. But then he shot at me suddenly, almost roughly, “I’m not going to pretend there won’t be a certain degree of danger in it for you. Unfortunately, there always is in this work, but we’ll do everything possible to minimize the risks.”
“I don’t care about the danger.”
Amazingly, it was true. The thought of being killed as Max had been killed seemed utterly unimportant. It was the everyday practical considerations that caused me to hesitate. What to do about my flat, and my job? I had gone back to working with British Electronics, which was perhaps not the wisest thing to do, but it had certainly been the simplest.
“Had I better give in my notice at work?”
Richard broke into a smile, standing up suddenly from his perch on the arm of the chair. “So you’ve decided to help us out?”
“I’ve got to, really, haven’t I? I would never be happy if I refused.”
His face was serious again as he answered my previous question. “I think it would be best for you to give your notice, but if things work out as we hope, you won’t need to be away too long. I’m sure British Electronics would take you back again.”
Then there was the embarrassing subject of money. I had next to nothing. When Max died, there had been a month’s salary to come, partly mortgaged in advance; his bank account was in the red. The car, a total write-off, was owned by the firm anyway. Max had talked of insuring his life since he had a wife, but I couldn’t blame him for not getting around to doing it. There had been so little time, and what man expects to be struck down in his prime?
The firm had been good to me, making a generous ex-gratia payment. But with funeral expenses to be met, and my hospital bill, with a few unexpected debts that Max had probably overlooked, and my air fare back to England, there was now precious little left.
“I’m afraid I haven’t very much cash available at the moment,” I said awkwardly.
“That’s no problem.” Again there was that swift smile, come and gone in an instant. “We’ll put you on the payroll temporarily. All expenses, and a bonus at the end.”
“Did Max get paid?” I asked abruptly, before I’d considered whether I wanted to know the answer.
Yet again he smiled at me, though this time it lingered a little longer. It was a soft smile of pity. “My dear Jessica, how else do you imagine you could have lived in that apartment in the Kohlmarkt—and all the trimmings? I realize Max’s normal salary must have been pretty good, but not up to that sort of level!”
A split second’s thought was enough to tell me it was true. I’d been naive to accept our high standard of living unquestioningly.
Richard said quietly, “I think perhaps it’s the right moment to give you this.”
In my distress I had been staring down at the carpet again, minutely examining the crudely patterned roses. But I looked up quickly and saw he was holding out an envelope. Like the one from Steve Elliott that still waited unopened on the table, this was white and squarish, with the name of the firm die-stamped at the corner.
And then I caught sight of the handwriting. . . .
“What’s this?” I whispered.
“Max asked me to see you got it, if ... if ever anything happened to him.”
I stared at the letter, stared at Richard. Both my arms seemed paralyzed, quite unable to reach out and take the envelope from him. He came closer, pushing it into my hand. “It’s from Max, Jessica. Why don’t you open it?”
The stiff paper seemed burning hot where it touched me. Then suddenly I was feverishly anxious to read this final message from my husband. With clumsy fingers I ripped the envelope and dragged out the folded sheet inside.
My darling one, I hope so desperately that you will never have to read this. If you do, it means that I am dead. Richard will explain as much as he can, and as for the rest, the part you can never know, you must believe it was something I had to do. There will be a sum of money due which Richard will tell you about, and he’ll see to the details. Try to forgive me, Jessica darling, for whatever pain I have caused you, and remember always that I loved you very deeply. You are the only woman who ever mattered to me. Max.
To my surprise, I found that my eyes were quite dry. I’d been afraid that this message from Max would smash my feeble defenses. Instead, it gave me added strength. Slowly, with infinite care, I refolded the letter and returned it to the torn envelope. I sat down at the table, holding myself as if I were very fragile, and looked up at Richard.
“He ... he explains things....”
Richard nodded, but he said nothing.
“When was it Max gave you this letter?” I asked him.
“Only a few weeks before he died, when he realized that at any time the heat might really be turned on him.” Richard paused, then went on in a subtly changed tone, a more practical tone, “I expect he mentions money. I’ve been told to let you know that there’s something over seven hundred pounds due to you.”
I shook my head helplessly. Such an amount was far more than I had ever owned, but I wanted no part of it. Not money that had been earned at the cost of Max’s life.
“When would you like me to leave?” I asked wearily.
“As soon as possible. Can you get the firm to release you at once?”
“Do I tell them I’m going back to Vienna?”
He pursed his lips. “Yes, it would be best. They’ll probably get to hear of it anyway, and they’d think it rather odd if you hadn’t mentioned you were going.”
“All right, then. I’ll concoct some reason or other.”
“Good girl!” Then he got down to details. “You’ll have to make your own arrangements, or it might give the game away. Will you book a seat on the afternoon flight on Friday?”
“Yes, I’ll do that Er… how can I get in touch with you, if I need to?”
He shook his head, smiling. “You’ll have to learn our way of doing things, Jessica. For the time being, at any rate, I shall be the one to get in touch with you.”
“Very well.”
My tone must have sounded withdrawn, for Richard said quickly, “Please don’t be offended. It’s better for your own sake that you don’t know too much.”
“I don’t want to know anything. I’m helping you in this because of what they did to Max. That’s all.”
He hesitated a moment before suggesting, almost diffidently, “And for your country?”
I hesitated, too. “Yes—that as well, I suppose.”
The quick smile lit his face again.
Suddenly there seemed nothing more to say. I wanted Richard to go away so that I could be alone with my letter. So far I had merely scanned through it once, because it was too important, too private a thing, to read before an audience. Max was in that letter. I wanted to linger over each word, to touch the stiff paper with my lips and whisper, in case he might somehow hear, that I had loved him just as deeply as he had loved me. That I still loved him.
For the first time since getting home from work, I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty-five! It seemed incredible that in a mere ninety minutes my dreary existence could have exploded with such shattering force. I had learned that my husband had worked for British intelligence, that he had not been killed by accident, but brutally murdered. My grief had changed to such swift anger that I had thrown in my lot with the mysterious other-world of secret agents that to most people remains no more than a fascinating fiction.
Richard was pointing to the table. “I see you’ve had a letter from Vienna.”
“Yes.”
“Who is it from?”
I felt a flicker of irritation. “Does that matter?”
“You mean, it’s none of my business!” Richard smiled sadly. “Things are different now, Jessica— surely you can see that.”
I shrugged. “It’s from a man called Steve Elliott.”
“Steve Elliott? Ah yes, Max’s assistant—hardworking but somewhat unimaginative, I gathered. He often mentioned the stolid Steve.”
I said quickly, “I think you’re being rather unfair. Steve was a very efficient right-hand man for Max, and he was terribly kind to me after the . . . the smash. He attended to everything—the funeral and things, and he visited me constantly, even though the hospital was nearly a hundred kilometers from Vienna. I don’t know what I’d have done without Steve at that dreadful time.”
Richard seemed about to say something more, but he changed his mind, merely remarking lightly, “Let’s not come to blows about it, Jessica.”
“Steve has been promoted to Max’s job now,” I said, still hurt. “Obviously the firm must think highly of him.”
“Does he write to you regularly?”
I shook my head. “He saw me off at Vienna airport when I came home, and that’s the last I heard of him. I’ve wondered, sometimes, if he’d get in touch.”