by Jeremy Duns
I caught myself and laughed inwardly. It was a line of thought I might have pursued a few months earlier – not any more. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see if the girl was still visible, and it was then that I spotted the tail. It was four cars behind us, a small white Fiat with Rome plates. The driver was wearing a pair of oversized dark glasses, but it was definitely him: Toadski. I looked across at Severn, but he didn’t appear to have noticed, and I wasn’t about to set him right.
What the hell did the man want now? And how had he got here? I’d checked every seat on the plane. Presumably, he had watched Barnes and me walk off to our gate at Heathrow – careless of me not to notice – seen where we were headed and taken the next flight out. He’d had a stroke of luck that my flight had been delayed, but then again I had flown BEA so perhaps it wasn’t so much luck as fate. But what did he want? It was a long way to come to tell me to keep a low profile again. He hadn’t looked like an assassin, but perhaps I’d misjudged him and the message had been a diversion. I should have drowned him in a bucket of bleach when I’d had the chance.
As Severn drove through the embassy gates, I looked in the mirror and saw the Fiat pulling up to park about halfway down the street. Severn slipped into a space at the top of the driveway under a palm tree, and I opened my door and stepped out.
VI
We walked up to the entrance and I looked out at the grounds.
‘Staff still in the sheds?’ I asked, as he rang the bell.
He gave a curt nod. The original embassy in Via XX Settembre had been bombed by Zionists in ’46 as part of their terror campaign against the British. Twenty-three years later, work had finally begun on rebuilding it on the original site, but most of the staff were still based here at Villa Wolkonsky, the ‘temporary’ embassy that had been set up after the attack. Although the ambassador’s quarters were rather grand, when I’d been here most of the staff had worked out of prefabricated shacks and outhouses in the grounds of the building – and apparently still did.
‘Sarah’s found you a room,’ Severn said. ‘Not terribly opulent, but I hope it will do.’
‘Sarah?’
‘The Station’s radio officer. We married last year.’
I remembered. I’d even been asked to sign off on it by Personnel, which I had done, naturally. ‘Keeping things in the family’ was approved of: it tended to make life easier. From past knowledge of Severn’s girlfriends, I imagined she would be very pretty and very pliant.
A butler in tails came to the door and led us inside. There was no lighting: there had been a power cut. ‘You see?’ Severn muttered to me under his breath. ‘Africa.’ The butler gave us each a torch, and we walked past the copy of Annigoni’s portrait of the Queen to the reception desk, where a young man asked for our passports. Severn handed over his, and I remembered that Barnes had mine. Severn vouched for me, and the guard produced a form for him to sign to that effect. As well as having worked out of temporary quarters for over two decades, the embassy had a giant chip on its shoulder about security that dated back to the Twenties, when one of the local employees had passed hundreds of documents to the Soviets because he’d been trusted with keys to all the safes. As a result, the security precautions were often insufferable. They had annoyed me intensely in ’64, but right now I was delighted they were still in place: I couldn’t have picked a safer place to stay.
We climbed the staircase to the top floor, where Severn led me to a room roughly the size of the broom cupboard I should have strangled Toadski in.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘here we are.’
An iron bedstead had been made up with linen, and someone had sprayed cologne about, presumably to banish whatever unpleasant smell had previously occupied it. A rust-stained mirror and a washstand faced the bed, beside which sat my hold-all.
‘Where will Barnes sleep?’ I asked.
‘His room’s further down this corridor. Shall we go down now, or would you like a shave and a shower first?’
I walked over to the window and peered out. The street was largely protected from view, but I could just make out one corner of it. A tiny bubble of whitish grey stood out against the darkness: the Fiat.
I turned back to Severn. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
*
Downstairs again, members of the household were scurrying around lighting candles. From what I could make out, the place hadn’t changed much: the same candelabra and carpeting, the same paintings of dead dignitaries and the same smell of varnish.
We walked through to the dining room, where twenty or so people were seated, their faces quivering in the candlelight and their voices merging into a low babble. Lennox, the ambassador, was at the head of the table, talking to an elderly woman I vaguely recalled was married to the French cultural attaché. On seeing us, he touched her lightly on the arm and stood, placing his napkin on the table. The room hushed, and he slowly began clapping his hands. A few moments later, the others followed suit, scraping back their chairs and facing me.
‘Bravo!’ Lennox called out. ‘Bravo!’
It took me a moment, and then I realized that they were giving me a standing ovation for chasing down Farraday’s sniper. I wished I were the man they thought they were applauding – but I wasn’t. A wave of shame swept over me and I gestured for them to stop, but it only encouraged them to applaud with greater gusto. I quickly stepped over to Lennox and he shook me by the hand and, slowly, the circus died down.
‘Welcome, Paul,’ he said. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again, although I wish it wasn’t under such tragic circumstances.’
The last time we’d met had been at a particularly unpleasant meeting in London three years earlier, at which he had complained that my Section was interfering in his affairs – but no mind. ‘We wanted to have something a little grander,’ he was saying, ‘but what with the dreadful news about John, not to mention all the demonstrations taking place in town today, it wouldn’t really have sent the right message.’
I told him I quite understood and thanked him profusely both for the honour and for putting me up, and then let Severn lead me around the table. I shook hands with Cornell-Smith and Miller, two of the old hands at the Station. Then we came to Barnes, who looked up at me with evident relief that I hadn’t been kidnapped on the way from the airport. It seemed that everyone was ahead of me: his taxi driver must have been luckier than us with the lights, or known a short cut. He was seated next to a good-looking man with brilliantined grey hair, to whom Severn now introduced me: Marco Zimotti. I shook his hand.
‘A pleasure.’
‘The pleasure is mine,’ he said. He was wearing a crisp black suit accompanied by a white shirt that heightened a very dark tan, the whole outfit worn with a sort of studied nonchalance: he looked more like a film star than a director of military intelligence.
‘I’ve been hearing about you from Reginald here,’ he said with a disarming smile. His English was faultless, with just the faintest tinge of a Neapolitan accent. ‘He tells me you went to the same school as Charles. Who, may I ask, was whose “fag”?’
I glared at Barnes. Severn was blushing to the roots of his hair – I wondered whether it was because he knew the American expression or because it wasn’t the sort of thing one talked about in polite company.
‘Charles was mine, in fact,’ I said. ‘Although we didn’t call them that. He was my “jun man” – “jun” meaning junior. He had to make me tea and toast in the morning and that sort of thing.’
Zimotti raised an eyebrow meaningfully. ‘And now? I imagine you could say he is still your “jun man”… no?’
Severn laughed rather too loudly and Zimotti joined in, and somehow we moved past it and everyone pretended it hadn’t been said. Severn took me by the arm and indicated a woman seated to Zimotti’s right.
‘And this is my wife, Sarah.’ She stood, and he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.
Well, she was more than pretty. The few women I’d encou
ntered in the Service who had escaped the typing pool had either been buck-toothed bluestockings or had done their best to appear so in order to be taken seriously. Not this one, though. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, tall and slim, with a sheet of honey-blonde hair that looked like it had been lifted from an advertisement for Sunsilk. She wore a white evening gown that had holes cut into it, discreetly revealing segments of golden-brown skin. It looked very expensive: the Gucci, Pucci, Cucci brigade. She had a high-boned face, with deep blue eyes heavily accented by kohl and a wide jawline leading into a perfectly shaped chin. Her lips were a little thinner than the fashionable Bardot pout, but otherwise she had the instantly recognizable look of the international jet set: one of the beautiful people for whom life was an endless round of cocktails and fun, fun, fun.
She offered me a hand sparkling with diamonds. ‘You must be Paul,’ she said. Her voice was low and cool, the accent Home Counties. ‘Charlie’s been telling me all about you.’
‘You’ve got a head-start on me, then,’ I said. ‘He only mentioned you ten minutes ago.’
She tilted her head to one side and smiled. It was the sort of smile that managed to say a lot of things at once, and I imagined she used it often, and found it very useful. I took a seat between her and Zimotti, and Severn pecked her on the cheek again and squeezed past to make his way to the far end of the table.
A white-jacketed steward brought round some wine and bowls of cold asparagus soup, and I turned to talk to Zimotti. He threw out a few questions about my previous experience of Rome, and I answered some of them and parried a few more.
‘I was sorry to hear about John Farraday,’ he said after we’d exhausted the preliminaries. ‘It is truly a tragedy, and I am deeply ashamed that one of my countrymen appears to have been responsible for it.’ His jaw clenched, marking the bones in his cheek. ‘But you have my assurance that we will discover who was behind this – and these Communist filth will be made to pay for what they have done.’
I thanked him for his support. ‘Charles told me you may have more information about Arte come Terrore. Do you have anything that specifically links them to this?’
We paused as the waiting staff came round with the main course: over-cooked venison, by the look of it. Zimotti sawed into his meat, his eyebrows knitting at the toughness.
‘We haven’t heard from our colleagues in Milan yet,’ he said, ‘but there is no question in my mind that these people were behind it. We have been watching this group for some time. They spend a lot of time here, as well as in Sardinia.’
‘Sardinia?’
‘Yes, they have some kind of a base there, we think. We are working on discovering more about it.’
That was something, at least. I asked him who he thought was sponsoring the group.
‘Moscow,’ he replied without hesitating, ‘although only the leaders of the group would be aware of that, of course.’ He nibbled off another chunk of meat.
‘Of course. But what makes you so sure it’s not Peking?’
‘All our evidence points to Moscow,’ he said. I was about to ask him what that evidence consisted of when one of the stewards walked over and told him he was required on the telephone. He excused himself with a smile and left the room.
So much for his briefing me. Dessert was served: a rice pudding, of all things. I had a spoonful, then pushed it to one side. I called back the steward and asked him for a grappa. He brought it to me a couple of minutes later, in a rather large glass. I leaned across and told Barnes I was going to grab some fresh air, and then headed onto one of the balconies overlooking the garden.
*
There was a faint breeze, and I could smell the mimosa and magnolia trees. I looked down, trying to catch another glimpse of the street, but I wasn’t high enough. Perhaps he’d gone home. Perhaps it hadn’t even been him.
No. It had been him, all right.
I took a sip of the drink, welcoming the fiery sensation it caused in my chest, and gazed out at the lights of the Eternal City: the Alban hills were just visible in the distance. Somewhere not too far away teachers were striking, students were staging sit-ins and factory workers were planting explosives. Rome itself, so Severn claimed, was on the verge of burning. And here we were, watching and waiting…
My thoughts were interrupted as I became aware of someone behind me. I turned to see Sarah Severn standing in the doorway.
‘Mind if I join you?’ she asked.
‘It’s a free country.’
She stepped onto the balcony and flashed her Mona Lisa smile again. ‘Is it?’
She took a pack of cigarettes from her purse: Nazionali, one of the more popular local brands, rather rough on the throat as I remembered. You could buy British tobacco everywhere here, so I took it she wasn’t overly attached to home-grown products, as expatriates sometimes were. She shook a cigarette into her fingers in one graceful movement, and I leaned over with my lighter. She looked up, and as our eyes met I felt the familiar flicker of interest. I stopped the thought dead. No more women.
‘Zimotti’s back,’ she said, and exhaled a stream of smoke in the direction of the Colosseum.
So that was why she had come out here – to shepherd me along. I didn’t say anything and she glanced downward, showing off her long, dark lashes. ‘Sorry,’ she said with a hint of sarcasm. ‘I just thought you might want to know.’
I placed my glass on a balustrade and lit one of my own cigarettes. ‘Thanks.’
She looked up again. ‘The head of the Service has just been murdered. Don’t you want to find who was responsible?’
‘I know he was murdered,’ I said. ‘He was standing a couple of inches in front of me when it happened. Perhaps you could let me decide how to do my job.’
She turned away and I immediately regretted my tone: my promotion was turning me into a pompous arse.
‘Do you treat everyone this way?’ she said. She paused for a moment. ‘Perhaps the bullet hit the wrong man.’
She was looking at me calmly, brazenly, as though daring me to slap her, and I realized I was being a fool and smiled.
‘Perhaps it did,’ I said, reaching for my drink again.
The tension eased away. We finished our cigarettes in companionable silence and headed back indoors. But instead of returning to the dining room, she grabbed me by the arm and led me through a door and into a long corridor.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘For a walk!’ she laughed gaily, and I followed her, a hazy configuration of white silk and brown skin moving down the unlit hallway. I wondered if she might be drunk.
‘I heard you were very brave,’ she called out, ‘chasing the sniper across London.’
‘Not really,’ I replied, dragging my eyes away from her figure. ‘It was just instinct. I didn’t find out much.’
We were heading into the heart of the embassy now. Candles had been placed in sconces along the walls, and I could make out the gatepost for the entrance to the Station at the far end of the corridor.
‘Still,’ she said, ‘not many people would have risked their own skins like that.’ She had slowed down and turned back to face me. ‘And you found out something, or you wouldn’t be here.’
What was she getting at? I didn’t get the chance to ask her because there was a loud humming sound in my ears, and lights were flickering on.
‘Finally!’ she said. ‘Now we’ll be able to see where we’re going.’ She took my arm in hers and gestured ahead of us. ‘Do you fancy a tour of the Station? It’s changed a bit since your day, I think.’
‘It’s rather late,’ I said, ‘and I’m sure I’ll see it tomorrow. What did you mean—’
I looked up to see Charles Severn standing a few yards ahead of us, a drink in his hand.
‘Hello, lovebirds,’ he said, stepping forward and placing a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. ‘Can I join, or is it a private party?’
*
I found Barnes hovering anxiously outside m
y room. Severn had said he’d become worried and gone looking for me. It was still early – not yet nine o’clock – but I was shattered, so I had asked Severn to make my excuses to Lennox and he had headed back down to the dining room for coffee, his arm around Sarah’s waist. He had seemed to believe her story that we had simply been stretching our legs, but I didn’t. She had wanted to take me into the Station: why? She wasn’t that forward, surely.
I told Barnes I was going to call it a night, and he nodded and headed for his room down the corridor. I walked into my broom cupboard and threw my jacket onto the bed. On an impulse I looked out of the window and down at the street, searching for the grey bubble. It was still there. Christ. Was he planning to stay there all bloody night?
I made a decision – sleep could come later. I drained the rest of the grappa from the glass and caught Barnes up in the corridor, making a show of patting my pockets. ‘Damn it, I seem to have lost my cigarettes. They must have dropped out in the car on the way over. I’ll just go and get them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I walked downstairs and headed outside to confront Toadski. This time, I’d make sure I got some proper answers.
VII
The street was quiet and deserted, and I ran down it looking for the Fiat. Yes, there it was. As I approached it, I smashed my glass against a wall, then yanked open the front door and pressed the jagged edge to Toadski’s throat.
‘Move over!’
He glared at me with a mixture of fear and fury and jerked his head desperately towards the back of the car. I looked: there was someone sitting there, hidden in the shadows.
I glanced down the street, then up at the windows of the embassy. No one. I pulled the glass away from Toadski’s throat, opened the rear door and climbed in. There was a strong smell of cheap Russian tobacco, and something sweet I couldn’t place.