by Craig Thomas
The telephone rang, startling him out of his recriminations. He looked at the extension on the wall, then snatched at the receiver.
"Professor Massinger?"
Peter Shelley's voice—?
"Yes. Who is that?"
"Shelley, Professor."
Massinger's head turned so that he could guiltily watch the door. The shadows in the dressing-room enlarged, moving across the carpet like the progress of a conspiracy. He slumped onto the divanette.
"What — what do you want?"
He listened for the second click of an eavesdropper. His hand shook.
"I–I'd like to help," Shelley blurted. "I — think I can get you the file, just for a couple of hours, you can photocopy it and I can get it back…" The plan spilled out. Shelley had gone over and over it, it was obvious, overcoming his reluctance and ambition and fear. "It's a transcript, of course, not a copy of the original photographs in Washington… it's all I can do, I won't be able to do anything more."
Massinger listened. No one else seemed to be listening on another extension.
"I.."
"Professor — you said you wanted it. Do you want it?"
Click? Telephone being picked up? Margaret—? Massinger was enraged, and his anger spilled onto Shelley. Shelley was part of the conspiracy to separate him from Margaret—
"I don't require it now," he said as unemotionally as he could. "I'm sorry, but it's nothing to do with me. Thank you for calling."
Shelley put down his receiver at once. Massinger listened. Above the purring tone, he heard a slight click as one of the extensions in the flat was replaced. He slapped his own receiver onto its cradle as if it burned his hand. Then he waited until Margaret should open the door, a smile of sympathy and congratulation on her lips. Misery occupied his chest and stomach like water that threatened to drown him.
* * *
Margaret glowed. There was no doubt of it. Happy, confident, secure once more. She received the sympathies of her guests concerning the news of her father's betrayal and murder almost with equanimity. Order had returned to her universe. Massinger watched her moving amid the guests at her apres-opera gathering with a love that seemed renewed. Refreshed. And as a perpetual stranger to this kind of social intimacy.
Eugene Onegin, with a Russian soprano and conducted by the soprano's more famous husband, had failed to lift him from his mood. Only Margaret's silent glances of approval and satisfaction throughout the evening in their box had stilled the nagging self-criticisms. Yet now, after whisky and good Burgundy and very little to eat, he could begin to accept and live with the choice he had made. His priorities were reasserted. He had slightly adjusted the focusing ring of his moral and emotional lens, and Margaret's image was precise and clear in the eyepiece.
He was standing near the window, and the scent of the roses was clearer than the cigar and cigarette smoke. Already, two or three people had spoken warmly to him of directorships; another had murmured an enquiry concerning an imminent Royal Commission and his willingness to serve; yet another had dangled the prospect of a lucrative Quango appointment. All of it had pleased Margaret immensely; all of it appealed to some hidden instinct in himself to increase his Anglicisation — to become, now that he was no longer a respected university teacher and merely an emeritus professor of King's College, London, a useful, even powerful member of the closed community in which he moved and lived. He felt a need to strengthen his roots in England, to give himself a more appropriate weight as Margaret's husband. Now, it was beginning to happen. Anything was possible now. Were he younger, and a British citizen, he might have sought, and found, a safe parliamentary seat. He was being courted. Everyone knew, and everyone was pleased with him. He smiled bitterly into his glass.
The scent of the roses was momentarily nauseous and the room too hot. Then Sir William Guest, senior Privy Councillor, formerly Head of the Diplomatic Service and presently security and intelligence co-ordinator in the Cabinet Office and Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was standing beside him.
Caviar speckled the corner of his mouth until the tip of a pink tongue removed it. Moselle glowed palely in his tall glass. He was beaming at Massinger with evident satisfaction. Of all people, of course, Sir William would know he had withdrawn from the contest — given Aubrey up. Sir William's eyes moved to Margaret, who waved over heads to him and Massinger. Margaret, waving to her godfather and her husband.
"You are blessed, my boy," Sir William murmured.
"I know it."
"Your continued — your uninterrupted happiness." Sir William raised his glass and drank off a toast. "My goddaughter's looking so well, so — happy these days." He sighed like a large dog before a blazing hearth.
"Yes, William."
"Lucky man — lucky to have been able to draw that much from a woman." Sir William chuckled. His jowls moved slightly out of sequence with the sound. Then he appraised Massinger. "Can't imagine how you've done it. It must be something you Americans have." He laughed. The noise seemed bellicose. "A great shame this business of her father ever reached the public domain," he continued. "Very upsetting for Margaret."
"I think she's coping," Massinger replied, studying his glass.
"Naturally, as her godfather, I worry about her. Her father was my closest friend, and he would have been a great man. A future head of the Diplomatic Service — he might even have kept me out of the job!" He laughed again, briefly. "A bloody disgrace—"
"If it's true."
"Oh, of course, if it's true." Sir William's heavy eyebrows almost touched above his nose as he frowned at Massinger. The expression was a warning-off. "Even so, very upsetting. As for the thought that one of our people… Still, this is not the occasion. Leave it to time, eh?"
"And Babbington?"
Sir William's eyebrows closed upon each other again. His eyes were hard as he shook his head slightly. "We'll leave that. It's out of our hands, mm?" He watched Massinger over his glass. A gold-rimmed Venetian glass, a little florid for his own taste. Apparently, Castleford had bought a set in Venice before the war. There were four left. Sir William might almost have chosen it deliberately to further his arguments and threats.
The piano sounded in the next room. A soprano began a Schubert song, slow and delicate and moving. An der Mond, Goethe's song to the moon.
"We must lunch soon," Sir William announced. "My bank requires one or two new directors — fresh blood, and all that. I want men I can trust." He smiled and patted Massinger's arm. What remained of the Aloxe-Corton in Massinger's glass stirred but refused to catch the light. An der Mond continued. One of the Covent Garden chorus singing, perhaps—? A small, sweet voice. The song became almost unearthly.
The noise in the room slowly stilled, as if every guest had been caught in the fine mesh of the melody — or because they wished to overhear the catalogue of Sir William's bribes.
"And that Royal Commission," Sir William continued, "just the sort of thing you should be seen to be doing at the moment." He drained his glass and added: "Schubert — overrated, I'm afraid. Far too flighty for me." The bellicose laugh moved away with him, into the crowded room.
Massinger finished his wine, and listened. The room applauded as the song ended, and there were calls for others — Mozart arias which the singer would be wise not to attempt, Schubert again, Wolf, Victorian fireside ballards. Massinger propelled himself through his wife's guests in search of the Aloxe-Corton. A young man hired for the evening by Stephens, the butler, refilled his glass. He turned towards the sound of the soprano, now singing a modern pop song. The way we were. She followed Streisand's floating and swooping more than adequately.
The KGB Rezident at the Soviet embassy was standing in front of him, smiling and raising a glass of cognac in salute.
"Pavel!" Massinger exclaimed in surprise, almost with pleasure. Pavel, ostensibly the Russian Cultural Attache, was usually drunk at social gatherings, and often amusing. Massinger had found him attached, even bound, to
Margaret's musical and cultural set almost from the time he had met her. Everyone seemed to know his real position. Massinger believed that Pavel used Margaret's parties and occasions not for intelligence-gathering but for relaxation, under the pretence to his masters, no doubt, that important people, people with secrets and with influence, frequented Margaret's salon.
"Paul, my good friend!" Pavel exclaimed thickly. It was evident that he was drunk again. Yet he was neither aggressive nor morose in his cups. Only louder; the Russian beneath the Party man.
The girl in the next room caressed past and present without touching them.
"You're enjoying yourself, Pavel?" Massinger enquired archly, nodding at the brandy balloon.
"Of course, of course! Your parties are always splendid — splendid! So good for spying!" He burst into laughter again. His English was good, cosmopolitan and assured like his slim figure and expensive clothes. He was urbane, amusing, passionate. His appearance was deceptive, and Massinger suspected the ambitious Party functionary beneath the silk shirt and the skin. Pavel drank more cognac, then passed his glass to the young man. It was generously refilled. More applause, then immediately another Schubert song, one of overblown romantic longing.
I have that, Massinger told himself. I have achieved what that song aches for. The sensation was warming, like drink. Pavel silently toasted Massinger once more then ostentatiously sniffed the cognac and sighed with pleasure. And I daren't risk losing it, Massinger added to himself.
"Did you enjoy the opera?" he asked.
"Enjoy — what is enjoy? It is — so pale, so Western, my friend. I lived it, lived it!"
"Good for you."
"And this song is like the opera, mm? So unreal. A romantic dream." Massinger had forgotten that Pavel spoke German as well as French and English. "Operas of power interest me more. Like Wagner. Though I trust you not to report me to the Central Committee for my pro-Nazi sentiments!" He roared with laughter, creating little whirlpools of re-assumed conversation as guests were distracted from the singing in the next room.
"Power — yes," Massinger murmured. Then he saw Margaret at the door, having detached herself from the party around the piano. Her finger made circulating motions in the air, and he nodded, smiling. He was neglecting his duties as host. Escort, he thought, might have been a more accurate description. Nevertheless—
"And falls from power," Pavel added as Massinger was on the point of excusing himself. "Like that of your poor friend Aubrey."
He watched Pavel's eyes. Slightly glazed, the pupils enlarged. His trim figure was unsteady, beginning to rock with the current of the alcohol.
"Yes."
"Tears, idle tears," Pavel quoted.
"Quite." Massinger's back felt cold, his mind as icy as the pendants of the chandelier above them. "Maybe we ought to shed tears, even for an enemy?"
Pavel shook his head and spread his arms. Cognac slopped onto his wrist, staining the cuff of his white silk shirt. His face was red. Then he laughed.
"Not one," he said, vehemently. "Not one for him. These people here aren't crying. Why should I — why should we?" He laughed again. "They've abandoned him, haven't they?"
"I'm afraid they have, Pavel." Then Massinger said, quickly and lightly, "But you should mourn him as one of yours — surely?"
Pavel's eyes cleared, hardened into black points. Then he laughed once more, with genuine amusement. "I heard all about his arrest, you know," he said. "From my — colleague in Vienna. My opposite number there tells a most amusing story — quite anecdotal." His features sharpened around his gleaming eyes. Massinger sensed triumph exuded like an odour. His arm waved his glass around the room. Massinger tensed himself for revelation. Pavel was on the point of indiscretion, already certain of Aubrey's fate. "Aubrey has been gathered in like a good harvest," he said. "My colleague saw his face, at the moment of his arrest. Quite, quite crestfallen! It must have been so dreadfully embarrassing for poor Aubrey," he added venomously.
"Yes," Massinger said after a long silence. Why am I doing this? he asked himself. I have abandoned him, too.
Pavel raised his glass once more, and murmured something inaudible. He knows all about it, Massinger recited to himself. He knows. His — the Vienna Rezident was there …? He wanted to shake the truth from the Russian. Instead, he raised his own glass and left Pavel, who seemed complacent at his own indiscretion, unworried. His indifference had to spring from complete and utter confidence. And it was as if he had needed to tell, to boast of it to a man who had been Aubrey's friend… and, as Pavel must know, had abandoned him in company with everyone else. Massinger felt nausea rise into his throat.
If only I could make him talk, make him tell, Massinger thought. If only I could — he knows it's all faked, that it's a set-up — he knows what's going on… The Vienna Rezident saw it all.
He realised that he had left the party, glass in hand, and had walked through the dressing-room into their bedroom. He studied his glass, his reflection in the dressing-table mirrors, and his swirling thoughts, and decided he would not return to the drawing-room immediately. He sighed, and looked at his watch. A masochistic urge prompted him to turn on the portable television on the table opposite the bed. He sat down, hearing the slither of silk beneath his buttocks. Soft lights glowed upon silver brushes, crystal jewellery trays, pale hangings, deep carpet. A late news magazine programme bloomed on the screen.
He could not believe what he saw. Aubrey, in front of a monkey cage. A tall, bulky man standing next to him. Summer, blue sky. A distant, hidden camera.
"… film sold to RTF, the French broadcasting service, which purports to show the head of British Intelligence and his Soviet controller during one of their meetings. The French television service have refused to name the supplier of the film…" Massinger was stunned. He saw his blank face and open mouth in a mirror. An idiot's expressionless features. "… Foreign Office has tonight refused to comment on the veracity or otherwise of the film. We have been unable to confirm the identities of the two men…"
It was Aubrey. Body, head, build, profile, full-face — Aubrey. And the other was Kapustin, no doubt… Teardrop himself. He moved quickly to the television set and switched it off, almost wrenching at the controls. An image of Pavel's satisfied, confident features floated in front of his eyes, then melted and reformed into the features of Sir William, then Babbington and then the others, followed by Aubrey's shrunken, defeated old face. Finally, the professional mask of the driver of the blue Cortina.
They had him now. Aubrey. Tape, film, public exposure, trial by television and newspapers. They had wrecked him. Anger rose like a wave of nausea in Massinger.
He moved into the dressing-room, piled with coats and umbrellas and raincoats and furs and capes. He picked up the telephone swiftly and dialled Peter Shelley's number. The tone summoned, again and again. Massinger perspired impatiently, guiltily. Sir William's face appeared again in front of his eyes, but then he saw Margaret — a multiple image of her face that afternoon, before she left him and Babbington alone, and her face that evening, glowing.
He felt sick with betrayal.
"Come on, come on—!" he urged, as if afraid that the new and unexpected determination would desert him, seep away down the telephone line. "Come on." His head kept swivelling towards the door.
Why, why? he asked himself. Why am I calling?
"Yes?" Shelley answered. He sounded the worse for drink.
"Have you seen the late news programme?" Massinger demanded.
"Yes." Shelley's voice was young and bitter, almost sulky. "What do you want?"
Massinger knew he was poised above a chasm. All he had was an anger caused by some faked film and the smug, insulting, deliberate indiscretions of a KGB Rezident — and threats and bribes. They did not seem to justify this — this commitment. His shame had been revitalised, but, even as he had dialled Shelley's number, bribery and love had reappeared to restrain him. Then he leapt over the chasm.
His old debt
to Aubrey gave him some of the energy he needed to make that leap. But anger, pure hot rage, finally drove him. They had threatened him, threatened his future with Margaret, his happiness with her… Babbington and Guest. Threat and bribe. Stick and carrot… and he had been prepared to go along, to begin to forget… and it was a lie! Pavel knew that—! Buried professional instincts, wider loyalties than the personal one to Aubrey, began to surface. He thought of Margaret, hesitated, swallowed, clenched his free hand. Then he said, "I want that file tomorrow."
"Why the sudden change of heart?" Shelley asked haughtily.
"Never mind. Tomorrow, at eleven. Meet me outside— outside the Imperial War Museum — yes?"
"I–I'll have to have the file back by one."
"You will. Just be there, Peter. It's very important."
"Have you heard from Hyde?"
"No — you?"
"No."
"I'll talk to the woman again tomorrow. Now, good night."
The door opened as he put down the receiver. His hand jumped away from it as from an electric current. He automatically adjusted his tie in the cheval-glass before turning. Margaret stood there, with Pavel.
"Pavel wanted to say good night," she announced. The noise of the party swelled through the open door behind them. Her hand was on the Russian's arm like the touch of a fellow-conspirator. Yet it was he who was the real conspirator, the real traitor.
"Good night, Pavel."
"Good night, my friend — good night, and thank you."
Pavel turned away as he approached, poised to be escorted to the door. Then Massinger said, before he could weigh or recall the words: "Not one teardrop, Pavel?"
The KGB Rezident's shoulders stiffened. Then he turned a bland and smiling face to him.
"Perhaps just one," he said. There was an amusement in his eyes. Then he laughed. "No, I really must be going." He held out his hand. "Take care, my friend." The warning was precise. "Take good care of yourself. Good night, Margaret."