The TV reporter’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Are you in trouble?’
Startled, she looked round at him, eyes wide. ‘What?’
‘Why don’t you tell me about it? I get the feeling you could do with a friend.’
Yes, but it wouldn’t be this man. After all, he was a reporter; he would use anything she told him. Why else had he come rushing over to her just now? Because he had smelt a story. Maybe she shouldn’t even have this drink with him, but he knew Don Gowrie and his family – he might be able to tell her things she badly wanted to know, about Mrs Gowrie, the daughter . . . what had someone said she was called? Catherine . . . yes, Catherine. She must remember that name. There was so much she did not know. But she would have to be very careful that while she was trying to get information out of this journalist she didn’t tell him anything which could be dangerous.
She had felt him staring at her while those security men were talking to her; she could see how clever he was. He had known there was something behind her question to Don Gowrie, behind the way Gowrie reacted. Her heart thumped painfully, remembering again the way Gowrie had swung round and stared at her.
She could still see his face. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, hoping for, what reaction she had thought she would get, but she had certainly stopped him in his tracks. He had looked quite ill for a second; she could almost be sorry for him, he had gone so pale, his eyes all black and shiny, the pupils dilating with shock.
He had got away with it all this time, he must have thought he was invulnerable, as safe as houses, and then she turned up, just as he was taking his most audacious gamble, the one all gamblers dreamt about, the jackpot, the big one. If he became president of the United States he would become at once the most important man in the world. The very prospect must make your head spin. It made her breathless to contemplate what it would mean for him, and Don Gowrie must want it very badly, any man would, and she could snatch it away from him.
While she was in that room and he was up there on that platform talking she had watched him and thought: who would believe the truth about him, if she told anyone? She found it hard to believe herself.
But one thing was certain and they both knew it. If anyone found out what he had done it would blow his career sky-high, let alone ruin his private life. That powerful father-in-law would never forgive him. All that money, all that power, would be taken away from him. He would lose everything. Could she do that to him?
How much did Mrs Gowrie know, or guess? And Catherine Gowrie, how would she feel? The shock of the truth would destroy the landscape of Catherine’s whole life. How would she feel, when she heard? How would all his friends, his colleagues react? Not Don Gowrie, they would think, remembering that profile, as noble and assured as the head of a Roman emperor on a thin, beaten silver coin. He wouldn’t lie, cheat, conspire to deceive people who trusted him.
Sophie’s mouth quivered angrily. Oh, but he would, he would, and it was time everyone knew the truth about him.
The waiter brought their drinks, making a big thing of placing them on the coasters, the supple bend of his body closer to her than was strictly necessary so that she picked up on his musky scent. ‘Enjoy,’ he said huskily, looking at her through his long dark lashes.
The TV reporter gave him a cold stare and the waiter sneered before sauntering away again, very slowly.
‘What’s it like, getting that all the time?’ Steve Colbourne asked her. ‘I’ve often wondered how women cope with men always coming on to them.’
Sophie was startled by the question. Drily she asked, ‘You never come on to women, I suppose?’
He grinned. ‘Oh, yes, but I hope I’m never crude or pushy.’
‘Have you got a girlfriend? Have you ever asked her that question?’
His face changed, his voice grew terse. ‘I’m not dating anyone just now, no. You still haven’t answered my question.’
Had he just broken up with his woman? she wondered. Or was she just imagining that look of pain?
‘Oh, you get used to handling men’s come-ons,’ she said aloud.
‘Without slapping their faces?’
She laughed. ‘That sometimes just encourages them. They think of a slap as a come-on.’
He gave her a sidelong glance, smiling with teasing amusement. ‘I’m glad to see you have a sense of humour – you didn’t seem human enough for that.’
‘Thanks!’ she said, bristling. ‘You may get a slap yourself, any minute, if you keep up remarks like that.’
He grinned at her. ‘Sorry. Tell me, what sort of outfit do you work for? This agency – is it a big one, is it independent, or government-run?’
Well, at least she could talk freely about her work; there couldn’t be any risk in that. ‘It’s independent, founded in 1990, on a shoestring, with no capital but his brains and determination, by a Czech journalist, Vladimir Sturn.’ Her voice warmed and she smiled, thinking of Vlad, a fast-talking old reporter, half-pickled in vodka after years of hanging around bars listening to gossip and whispered secrets.
He looked more like a walrus than a man, a huge, wrinkled face, mournful round eyes, a great rubbery nose above a bushy moustache, usually sprinkled with ash from the cigars he smoked all the time.
His heavy clumsy body rolled from side to side as he walked, as if he was not used to life on dry land, his hands were great paws covered in dark hair, his laughter was a rough salty bark. He was the first and only real friend Sophie had ever had; she loved him dearly and so did most people who worked for or with him.
‘For the first few months he ran it singlehandedly – he couldn’t afford to pay anyone else. He sat in his flat, which was his office, too, scouring foreign newspapers, listening to foreign radio stations, picking up stories he could translate into English and sell to Czech newspapers, radio, TV. He’d spent most of his career working for the state press agency; he always says he doesn’t know how he stayed sane, writing lies, knowing the truth but never being able to print it or talk about it on the air. During the time Dubcek was First Secretary and everyone began to feel free to talk openly things got much better, but then . . .’ She stopped, shrugging, because even now it felt odd to say the truth out loud, to say what you really thought or felt.
‘Then the Russians invaded, in 1968,’ Steve prompted, watching her.
‘The year I was born,’ she said, smiling.
‘Really?’ He sounded incredulous. ‘Not good timing.’
‘That’s exactly what Vlad said when he first saw my date of birth. My God, he said, what a year to pick to be born!’ Vlad had given a roar of laughter then, adding, ‘I have to be worried about your timing, darling.’ Then he had sobered and told her how he had felt the night the Russians invaded; the first disbelief, because none of them had believed the Russians would do it, then the panic and chaos, and then the clampdown which muzzled the press throughout the country. Everything was shut down, press, radio stations and TV, so that Vlad and his colleagues had sat there all night, helpless and gagged, while Russian tanks rolled inexorably towards Prague.
‘I’m always grateful I never had to live under Communism,’ Steve said, frowning into his drink. ‘How do people cope with all that tension?’
‘Fear becomes a way of life,’ she said soberly. They were only now slowly beginning to trust in freedom, to believe they were safe in saying what they really thought.
‘I guess,’ Steve nodded, watching her face and fascinated by the expressions passing over it. The more he looked at her the less he could believe she had ever been Gowrie’s mistress. ‘So when did you join this agency?’
‘I worked for Vlad part-time, doing translation, while I was at college. I did a modern languages degree and Vlad was always short of people who could read French and Italian – a lot of people in our country speak German and Russian, we’ve been forced to learn both, in the past, for obvious reasons. When your country is occupied by foreigners you soon realise you have to learn their
language; they won’t learn yours.’
Steve watched her face; not cool now, no, pulsing with feeling, her blue eyes dark with it, so that he knew what she must look like when she made love, the real woman under the ice. Ah, but how thick was the ice? How long would it take to break through the frozen surface – obviously tapping her anger about her country’s history would not be the way!
‘By the time I got involved with it the agency was very successful. Even Vlad was surprised by the way it took off. He couldn’t go on running it alone; he needed to find staff to help him, but he couldn’t pay much so he looked for students. My tutor was an old friend of his, and told me about the job. I was lucky to get it, lots of others were after it, but Vlad had known my father so he hired me. I had to comb foreign newspapers for stories he could use – it was good practice for me, helped me improve my fluency. He didn’t pay much, but even so that money made my life a lot easier. Student grants are barely big enough to survive on back home. We all had to get part-time jobs. When I got my degree, I became a teacher, but I discovered I wasn’t a natural teacher, I didn’t enjoy the job, and the pay was poor, but then most jobs pay very low wages back home. I had to save up for weeks just to buy myself shoes.’
‘I had no idea it was that bad in the Czech Republic,’ Steve said, frowning.
‘These days, some people do quite well, those in business, but on a teacher’s pay it’s tough surviving, especially if you have kids.’
‘Have you got kids?’ he asked, and she knew he was teasing her and laughed.
‘No, of course not. Have you?’
‘No wife, no kids,’ he shrugged. ‘As my mother never stops reminding me.’
‘She wants you to get married?’
‘She’s fixated on becoming a grandmother. Why do women get obsessed with these stages of life? First they desperately want to get married, then they want children, and as soon as the children grow up they want grandchildren – why can’t women just let life surprise them?’
‘We have a sense of the right order of things, I suppose,’ she said, taking the question seriously. ‘A sense of the natural rhythms of life.’
‘But not you? You don’t want marriage and children yet?’
‘First I want to enjoy my job,’ she said frankly. ‘That’s why I left teaching. I didn’t like doing it, and I wanted a better life, it’s so tiring being poor, really poor, never having any money left over from the bare essentials. Have you been to my country? Eaten our food? Grey slabs of meat, potato dumplings, almost no green vegetables or fresh fruit except at prices very few people can afford. And you have to ration your shampoo, can’t afford to go to a hairdresser, have to keep wearing your clothes for years – it wears you down, you feel you’re endlessly struggling, you get very depressed.’
‘The Czechs I’ve met always seem very cheerful, though.’
‘We’re free now – of course we’re cheerful and we have hope, at last. We can look forward to a better life soon. But few of us earn enough. That’s why, when Vlad offered me a full-time job with the agency, working abroad, I jumped at it. He had begun to realise it was no longer enough just to take stories from other sources, he was selling the agency material all over East Europe by then and he needed his own staff out in the field finding stuff with an East European angle.’
‘He sounds like a live wire. I once worked for a guy like that, the year I went into television. He was a documentary producer, Bernie Stein, he was never afraid to take chances, whatever the risk. Men like that don’t come too often.’
She nodded, liking the warmth and affection in his eyes. ‘Vlad is one in a million,’ she agreed, and they smiled at each other, united in their feelings for these giants from their past.
‘Is this the first foreign country you’ve worked in?’
‘No, I was based in London first, for a year, but I travelled if ever a story came up elsewhere in Europe. I had my own car for the first time, too.’ Her eyes were a wide, bright blue with pleasure. ‘Only a second-hand Mini, it’s true, but it was mine! You have no idea what that felt like, to own my own car.’
‘Oh, don’t I? I worked my butt off to earn enough to buy my first old banger. I was still at school and had half a dozen different part-time jobs that last year, just to save up to buy a car. I worked in a store, sweeping floors and burning trash; I cleaned houses, I washed up for a local French bistro . . .’
‘Your parents couldn’t afford to help?’
‘They aren’t rich, although we were never poor, either. But they were going to have to help me out while I was at college. I decided not to ask them for a car.’
Sophie read the stubborn lines of his mouth, the pride in the set of his head and felt a sense of kinship. Americans always seemed to her so rich and spoilt, used to getting what they wanted when they wanted it. This man was different. She could understand this man.
‘You must have felt great when you finally had the money!’
His smile flashed out. ‘Ten feet high. I bought an old blue Thunderbird; the chassis was beaten to hell but a friend re-tuned the engine for me and it lasted me two years. I loved that car more than any car I’ve had since.’
‘That was how I felt seeing all the places in Europe whose names I’d heard all my life but never thought I’d ever see. After years of dreaming about Paris I finally got to sit at a table in a terrace café and drink wine while I watched the world go by, and I’ve floated down the Grand Canal in Venice in a gondola, although I could only afford that once, they charged me an arm and a leg. But it was worth it, to feel, just for one hour, that I was really there, looking up at those marvellous palaces and churches.’
Her breathless excitement had brought a smile into his grey eyes. ‘You’re making me envious! I haven’t been to Europe for a long time. Although I’m going now, of course, to cover Gowrie’s trip.’
She came down with a bump, her whole body jerking into attention as she remembered Gowrie. ‘You’re going with him?’
He was aware of her sharp interest. ‘A lot of us are. If Gowrie becomes the next president, anything he thinks and says is vitally important to our country.’
Her voice was tense. ‘Do you think he will become president?’
‘Could be, I’m afraid.’
She watched him curiously. ‘You don’t think he’ll be a good president?’
‘We haven’t had a good president for so long some of us have ceased to expect we ever will.’
‘You’re cynical about politicians,’ she murmured. ‘Me too.’
‘Yeah, well, I can see how you would be,’ he smiled. ‘I guess Gowrie’s no worse than any of the others. He’s certainly in front of the pack at the moment. A couple of years ago if he had made a trip to Europe nobody would have taken a blind bit of notice! He’d have gone alone. But he’s in a new league now.’
‘I didn’t realise any of the press would be going with him,’ she thought aloud. She must go. She had to talk to him and if she went to Europe she might get a chance. It would be an expensive trip, though, and she had to watch every cent she spent. As Vlad kept saying, the agency had to operate on a shoestring. He watched her expenses like a hawk. How could she persuade him to let her go?
What would it cost? A cut-price plane ticket from a bucket shop, a cheap hotel. She could save a lot by walking instead of taking public transport, buying cheap food to eat in her room instead of eating out. Oh, she could cut expenses to the bone. She was an expert at living on almost nothing.
‘I’m a mind-reader,’ Steve said and she started.
‘What?’
‘You mean to go on this trip, too, right?’
‘If I can talk Vlad into paying for it,’ she confessed. ‘Which will be like talking Dracula into giving me a blood transfusion from his own veins.’
Steve roared with laughter.
In the penthouse suite of the hotel Don Gowrie was talking on the phone. ‘Her passport details all check out, then? Born Prague, 1968. Parents, Johanna and
Pavel Narodni. Father dead, mother remarried, now has two younger sons. Mother still alive, then?’ He bit down on his lower lip. ‘I see. No, don’t bother with the Czech end. Leave it now; close the file.’ There was a murmur on the other end of the line. ‘No, I said close the file!’ Don Gowrie put down the phone with a faint crash, the hand that held it slippery with sweat, picked up a decanter from the antique black-lacquered Chinese-style table and poured himself a glass of whisky, then walked over to the window of the suite to stare down, down, down at the pale grey ants flickering along the street below. From up here on the sixtieth floor you couldn’t make out their sex, or what they wore, let alone their faces. It was hard to be sure they were human beings. Their life or death meant nothing at this height. If one of them suddenly fell down dead you wouldn’t even notice. Would any of the others hurrying past them stop to look, or would they just step over the body and rush on?
Behind him someone asked quietly, ‘Do you think she knows something that could be a problem?’
He shrugged without turning round or answering.
‘How serious a problem?’
‘I don’t even dare ask her. That serious.’ He swallowed the whisky and went back to pour himself another.
‘You haven’t forgotten you’re speaking tonight at that dinner.’
The soft reminder made him stop pouring. He picked up the glass, swirled the whisky, holding it up in front of the Tiffany lamp on the side-table. The art nouveau glass with its metal-outlined red roses and Celtic-styled green leaves gave the whisky a deep, alluring glow, but he barely saw it. His mind was too busy, considering solutions, rejecting all of them. There was only one way out and he knew it. She had to be silenced.
Behind him, his companion was thinking along very much the same lines. ‘We’ll have to make sure she doesn’t cause any trouble, then, won’t we?’
Don turned to stare, face furrowed, pale, set.
‘Be careful.’
Sophie felt the American watching her and glanced quickly at him, a frisson of warning down her spine. She must not let this man get too close, he could become a problem. She looked at her watch, ready to make her excuses and go.
Walking in Darkness Page 4