The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (13 page)

‘I couldn't get hold of either of you,' he said. ‘But I didn't expect to till after six. All well?'

‘Yes. And you? And you?'

‘Tell Paul I need food, clothes and money. I'm on the A428 close to the turning to Nuffield. What about our foreign friend?'

‘At your grandmother's house.'

‘The cellar?'

‘Paul didn't say. Shall I come out with him?'

‘Of course, but don't go near Alderton.'

She passed the message to Paul and set out again on the weary walk to the spot where he had dropped her. Her movements must be puzzling them at the inn, but that could not be helped. Still another lie would have to be invented. The presence of Irata had complicated everything; without him she and Paul would have been able to carry on ordinary social intercourse with no risk at all. She was inclined to sulk till reminding herself sharply that, without Irata, Georges would now be sleeping peacefully as
Amanda
ran under the London bridges on her way to the open sea.

The roads were fairly clear in the still evening, and Paul made the rendezvous in half an hour. When Georges Rivac appeared from the bushes Zia was shocked by his appearance. He looked a fugitive, a dear fugitive, mud-stained, drawn, unshaved and new. This was a man of spirit, though near the end of it, and no longer the slightly shabby, indeterminate agent from Lille.

‘The best I could do for you at short notice,' Paul said. ‘It's all going to hang a bit loose but I've brought safety pins for the trousers and the windcheater doesn't matter. You could be carrying toothbrush and spare socks inside it. I'll take your revolting shirt and trousers and have them cleaned.'

‘I'll have to get a shave somehow.'

‘A razor, Georges, seemed to me even more important than clothes. Bristles are unpardonable except on Sunday morning when they seem to be considered a sign of virility. I'll drain some hot water off the radiator. Driving mirror and all mod cons. Tell us what happened and we'll know what to do.'

‘We'll never know that.'

‘Well, what not to do.'

Georges took up the story from Zia's departure. When he came to the dogs on his trail she exclaimed:

‘But I saw them!'

‘Where?'

‘On the skyline. Not far from a place called East Ilsley.'

‘What on earth were you doing there?'

‘Thinking.'

‘They didn't catch up with you?'

‘No. I got a ride with a farmer behind his tractor. Oh God! And I told him too much—that I was French and married to a British officer. They'll know exactly where he picked me up. How long before they trace him?'

‘They should have done it already and have a description of you,' Paul replied. ‘But there's no reason why they should hit on Mrs. Fanshawe and the White Hart unless someone noticed the number of Irata's bloody motorbike.'

‘What have you done with it?'

‘Under some hay for the moment. We will now invade the nearest hotel, have an excellent dinner and panic afterwards if we feel like it. Georges, you look tired, but my suede jacket is so obviously expensive that you will be welcome anywhere. What would you say, Zia? An overworked doctor getting the surgery out of his lungs?'

He could be. Zia thought, but getting a punt pole out of his memory. She was relieved when after a vast steak and some glasses of Burgundy he began to crow in his high laughter at the thought of Daisy and Irata.

‘In the cellar, of course!' he exclaimed. ‘Did you tell Daisy about it?'

‘I had to. But she was in the secret all along and never said a word to your grandmother.'

‘Didn't your grandmother know the house had a cellar?' Zia asked. ‘What did you use it for?'

‘Nothing much. To small boys existence is what matters, not use.'

‘And Irata is down there?'

‘Yes. Now I have been thinking, like Zia,' Paul said. ‘Georges can't be run in—not known to exist and untraceable. But his life is and always will be at risk from Appinger's organisation. Zia is in deadly danger from Thames Valley Police and none whatever from the KGB who haven't a clue beyond what they read in the paper.'

‘She must never go back to the White Hart.'

‘The police can't work as fast as that, Georges. What we must avoid is the White Hart mentioning her suspicious movements. The landlord must be curious already. Get on the telephone at once! Say you are General Fanshawe and sound military, but not too military! I'd do it myself but they might recognise my voice. Ask them to give her a message when she comes in. That implies that the General knows where she is and what she is doing. Ah yes, and we'll give them a bit of romance to jump at. The message is that she is to report to Defence Security in Oxford at 10 a.m. Then order a taxi to be at the White Hart at nine.'

‘Not from Thame.'

‘Make it Bicester. I know the chap. Very reliable and with all the right ideas. Calls himself the Shire Transport Company when all he has is an old Cortina and a cattle truck. Now, tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow! You haven't given me a chance to see Bridge Holdings. That must be done at once. Georges, you're all right here or anywhere. Zia, you can be traced from the White Hart to Oxford, so you mustn't stay there. You should go straight to London, I think. Put up at the Regency Hotel with another false name and address. It's not far from my West End office.'

Zia said that she was afraid of not remembering a new story and giving herself away. Always she had to account for the foreign accent.

‘I'm going to stay Mrs Fanshawe, Paul. I know her so well, her parents and all. I can even do the army wife stuff. I imagine General Fanshawe as just like my uncle.'

‘Well, if you'd rather. It will only be for a day or two. Georges, you were shivering when you came in and you are finished. You think you aren't, but that's the Burgundy. No travelling tomorrow. No worries. A deck chair in the garden if the weather holds and a second long night to follow.'

‘I can go up to London tomorrow and join Zia.'

‘No, you can't. What will you use for money? When one has an identity it's up for grabs. When one hasn't, one can't get at it. Zia will need everything in my wallet, which leaves it empty. I have to leave home early and be in London all day tomorrow. I must fit in your business between the Exchange Control Commission, a directors' meeting and then a dinner at the national Farmers Union where I hope to meet the Minister before he's sacked. The only solution is to post you a couple of hundred in cash, and you can't leave here till you receive it.'

‘I hope you can afford it.'

‘I have an overdraft and a reputation, Georges, like everyone else who matters. If your possessions are ever returned you can send me a cheque from Siberia. Buy yourself some clothes in Henley, pay your bill and meet me at the Regency about six the day after tomorrow.'

‘What about Irata?'

‘I'll have a long talk with him tonight so that he doesn't feel he is forgotten. Daisy will have been over there anyway.'

Paul Longwill left for home taking Zia with him, and dropped her—since it was now dark—rather nearer to the White Hart. When she returned, again on foot, she could feel curiosity as thick as bar smoke; but no questions were asked and the General's message duly passed to her. At last and thankfully she enjoyed the much needed bath and sleep.

In the morning when the taxi was at the door and the landlord and his wife had said goodbye to her, he whispered mysteriously:

‘If we can be of use to the General, Mrs Fanshawe, don't hesitate to call on us! We know the district as well as anyone.'

That sounded as if he had swallowed the bait; she gave him her sweetest smile and said she had always doubted if she could take him in with her excuse of house-hunting.

‘But don't spread it around,' she added, ‘in case my husband wants to use me again.'

She hoped that would stop him putting two and two together and taking the initiative in passing on his suspicions; but if the police questioned him of their own accord it would not be long before her night's absence was found to coincide with the death of Fyster-Holmes and fingerprints were proved to be identical with those on Mrs Fanshawe's dressing table. She remembered holding on tightly to the rail of the trailer.

Paul had instructed her how to cover her tracks when the taxi dropped her at the Oxford railway station. She was to tell the driver she was travelling to Birmingham. As soon as he had safely driven away she was to walk to the bus station and take the first bus to London. All that went very smoothly and probably would not go so smoothly for detectives on her track.

She felt lonely without Georges and—yes, of course—Paul Longwill. She was on her own again and no longer had that spurious sense of adventure which had supported her at Brussels and Valenciennes. She had a wild and miserable dream that if she burned her passport she could be tried and sentenced in England without any mention of Georges and without her true identity and nationality ever coming out. Morale needed a lift. After booking in at the Regency she visited the downstairs salon and had her hair done.

A day and a half had somehow to be passed, and somehow must be dragged out without continual thought of Budapest, Alderton, the future and the mess in which she had landed the dear and defenceless Georges. The streets of London were dangerous, so full of foreign tourists and among them Hungarians for some of whom she herself had arranged flights and accommodation. So she stayed in her hotel for the afternoon of Thursday, June 2nd and decided to spend the following day between a cinema and a park in the suburbs. The only familiar name was Wimbledon, and it turned out to fit the requirements.

She sat anxiously in the hotel lounge until Georges arrived at teatime and took a room in the hotel—still another Georges dressed more as a farmer up for the day who couldn't be bothered with greater formality than that of the weekly market. He was rested and seemed at ease with himself for the first time since she had met him, noticing and boldly approving the new arrangement of her hair.

Paul Longwill appeared an hour later—also a new Paul, for he had not his usual condescending air.

‘I've had the hell of a time,' he said. ‘Deflated, and how!'

He ordered drinks to be sent up to Zia's room and glass in hand, half sitting on the windowsill where he could look down on his audience, recovered his poise.

‘I got Bamborough to arrange an appointment with your Bridge Holdings for yesterday afternoon. Spring must have spent the rest of the morning making enquiries about me and discounting the answers. He was not at all impressed by his lordship. I threw the Export Credits Department at him. He said they were well-meaning and kept his head on one side like that terrier you called him waiting for a ball. I realised I might as well be persuading St Peter to open the gate by saying I had once had a gin and tonic with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

‘So, straight to the point: that a certain Georges Rivac had been a close friend of mine since childhood. He merely replied that you had called on him twice. I noticed that he said nothing of Zia, waiting for me to bring up that lovely and awkward question myself. Then there was nothing for it but to stumble along into your story. I think now that it was just as well I laid off my image and gave him a chance to judge the very raw me.'

‘How much did you tell him?' Zia asked anxiously.

‘Just that somebody must have advised Karel Kren—now deceased and I told him how—to get in touch with Bridge Holdings and that the somebody was very likely to be his Prague agent. He made no comment, so I asked him what he thought of you both. Zia was an obvious Hungarian adventuress, he said, and Georges would make a good bank clerk in a foreign branch. That gave me an opening and I replied that bank clerks required absolute integrity.

‘He wuffed at that, so I drove it home, saying that cosmopolitan integrity, classless but not characterless, was worth listening to. He admitted that he had thought so the first time he met Georges, but Zia and unexplained accidents on Channel ferries were a bit much. I pretended to know nothing about Channel ferries and asked him what he meant. He told me that he had thought it best to check—privately—Rivac's antecedents and journeys and learned that a rather questionable character had fallen overboard. Statements given by Rivac and Miss Fodor were equally questionable, and did I know where the lady was?

‘“Not if it's a case of annoying a defenceless, little foreigner—that's you, Zia—on no evidence,” I said.

‘He assured me there was no risk of that. The coroner had no interest, nor had Passport Control. Harbour Police only wanted more exact statements for their files.'

‘So he was coming round,' Georges said.

‘Not till I read him my lecture on security: that if you keep everybody out you sometimes prevent the most valuable person coming in. He was good enough to say it was not confined to the City. I then put it to him that he should send somebody out to Prague at once to ask his agent—out-of-doors—if he had had any dealings with Karel Kren and what they were? He refused, and so I offered to pay full expenses as proof of good faith. All over again he wanted to know what the point of it was.

‘“The point is,” I said, “that when Kren's channel of communication was shut down he believed your agent could help him. I don't ask why he should have thought so, but I want to know if he did. Then we may be able to find out where these two innocents ought to have gone with their information.”

‘He laughed quite pleasantly at my calling you two innocents and added that on the question of ultra-security I had impressed him. I snapped back that I was going to impress him some more, and I gave him all that happened in Lille, including the bugging of Georges's office and as much as I thought proper of your kidnapping and escape. He decided to go out to Prague himself by an early plane today and hopes to be back tonight. He has a visa and seems to be able to travel anywhere with government contracts in his pocket.'