The Crocus List

by Gavin Lyall

  "I led them to your car. I should have been there."

  "I wished you were-but they'd probably have killed you."

  "They could have tried."

  "You aren't armed, Harry. And they could try again."

  "I wasn't going to ring you until I'd got something to say…"

  "I know. Would you care to walk me around the block?" The druggist was heading back purposefully.

  In fact, they just walked around the corner and got into Agnes's rented car.

  "Are you really all right?" Maxim demanded.

  "It just shook me up. By now I'm mostly tired, I was driving most of the night. The closest I could get last night was a flight to Chicago."

  "What will London say?"

  "I'll dream up something for them later. Now, have you contacted Clare Hall yet?"

  "Well, sort of…" Rather shamefacedly, he told about the library.

  "At least we know she's not at home," Agnes said. "The Bravoes may not want to go around asking questions, they'll probably just stake out her house. We'll pick her up when she goes for lunch-and we've got something to say, now, even if it's just Run for the hills, lady."

  "We've got a little more than that. Reading up about Tatham's death…"

  32

  Clare Hallcame out of the library just before twenty to one. Agnes climbed from the car and walked unhurriedly across the road to intercept her.

  "Mrs Hall? I'm sorry to trouble you, but something's come up concerning your father's work. I'm from the British Security Service, I'd be glad if you'd check with our Washington embassy to confirm that."

  Clare Hall stopped and looked around, not at Agnes and not looking for help, but as if reassuring herself that this was Matson, Illinois. Then she smiled politely. "Do the Feds allow you to do this?"

  "Strictly speaking, no. But it would -have taken longer to convince them than to come to you direct. I'm afraid there's a Moscow element interested in the matter as well. That was entirely my fault."

  "I don't understand this one bit. And aren't you overplaying the part, with those sunglasses?"

  Agnes raised them. "That was the Moscow element."

  They sat in the car on the south side of the park that occupied, neatly, one single block on the edge of town where they had run out of tree names and fallen back on Roosevelt and Jefferson streets. A few schoolchildren were throwing a football around the memorial to the dead from the Great Southern Rebellion. Maxim had never known it described that way before, but the list-he had seen it when walking the town earlier-was long enough to justify any name. It was a shock for an outsider, particularly a soldier, to sense how much more the Civil War had meant beyond interesting developments in tactics and weapons.

  "The point is," Agnes was saying, "that Moscow now knows your father set up the Crocus operation."

  "Through your mistake," Clare Hall said calmly.

  "Quite true. But they must have known one thing that I only just learnt-obviously they'd file and cross-reference anything about an ex-Company man-which is that your father's body was never found. You do see where that leads? Is he really dead?-or is he still running Crocus?"

  "I took pictures of him. They made me."

  Agnes considered. "Yes, I did hear that. But I think you should have gone for an emotional reaction, there. Said you actually saw him killed, or lying dead. I could take pictures of my own father lying dead, and he's still zapping the greenfly on his roses whenever the rain lifts. A man like your father, with over thirty years of undercover work-well, he could plant a story in the Italian press, fake a kidnapping, tip off the police where to find you, and walk out of the country on a false passport… to him, it would practically be routine."

  "If you want to believe that, I can't prevent you."

  "The problem is that you can't prevent Dzerzhinsky Square believing it as well. Believing the worst is what they're best at. But we can drop you at home and let you wait and see, if you like."

  There was a long silence. In the back of the car, Maxim took out his pack of cigarettes and looked at them. Although they were an unfamiliar brand, all the routine motions of shaking one loose and putting it in his mouth seemed totally natural. Could he really have become a smoker again after just one cigarette? No, he couldn't, because he still didn't have a light.

  Clare Hall said: "What do you suggest I do?"

  "Get out of town," Agnes said crisply. "Stay at some motel, or with a friend, not a relative. And then contact the FBI, I'll back you up, talk to them myself."

  Agnes was putting herself out on a limb. Whatever else the FBI said, it was going to say Why didn't you come to us first? Because, Maxim realised, I insisted on going to St Louis for the CCOAC list…

  "All right," Clare Hall said. "But I have to stop by my house and pack some things and pick up my car."

  "Yees," Agnes agreed reluctantly. "We may still be ahead of them. They don't give their field men muchscope. On something like this, they'd have to check back up the line, it could be as far as Moscow, before they move… Harry, will you drive?"

  That wasn't to save any masculine pride: she was a better driver than he was, and both knew it. But she wanted to look around, watch for reactions in parked cars that they passed. Unfamiliar with American cars, he got started with a thump from the transmission and a delayed surge of acceleration from the automatic gearbox.

  "You introduced him as Alan," Clare Hall said, "and now you call him Harry."

  "What are names in our trade?"

  "I'd like to know that you're good at your trade. I haven't seen much sign of it yet."

  "Just stay alive and you may prove something yet."

  Maxim took a corner with a sudden tilt, betrayed by the power steering and soft springing. "Sorry… But taking up that point, do you have a gun in the house?"

  "I could have," Clare Hall said cautiously.

  "A hand gun?"

  "Yes."

  "Can I borrow it, at least as long as we're with you?"

  "You mean you aren't even armed?"

  Agnes said: "Your Constitution doesn't say anything about the right of foreigners to bear arms. Is this your street? Circle the block, Harry."

  Apart from the central few blocks where the offices, shops and banks stood shoulder to shoulder, Matson was lavishly-Americanly-widespread. The most modest white frame house had, to Maxim's eye, an absurdly large amount of lawn, dotted with bushes and full-grown trees that towered over them. Perhaps it was because the land was so abundant that nobody had put in fences, hedges or walls, as the British would have done immediately to define their territory.

  What had been the rector's house was a two-storey wooden building with gables that stuck out at each side under steep roofs, and a long porch with wooden columns.

  "I can't see anything," Agnes said. "Back into the driveway."

  In reverse, the car felt like an Army truck, but Maxim got it on to the concrete without scraping the big trees that shaded the house. He took Clare Hall's keys and Agnes moved into the driving seat while he ran, literally ran, through the house. Then he called them in.

  "First, could I have that gun?"

  It was a Walther 9mm, undoubtedly 'liberated' some time in the war, but still in good condition unless it was one made by slave labour, when grains of sand were said to have been added to increase the wear and tear. No, Maxim thought: if Tatham decided to bring this one home, it would be good. He'd know. There was a sealed box of ammunition dated fifteen years ago. He broke it open, loaded the gun, and felt better.

  While Clare Hall packed upstairs, Agnes watched the street through the net curtains of the living-room.

  "What do we do now?" Maxim asked quietly.

  "Tag along with her as far as we can. She's got to get in touch with her father, if he is still alive. I don't know if there'll be a way I can look over her shoulder, but…"

  The room still had a heavy, masculine feel to it, lined with old books and formal photographs. Maxim scanned them, but he didn't really
expect Tatham to have been fool enough to cover his wall with pictures of the Crocus List recruits.

  "D'you think Magill knew Tatham's body was never found?" he asked.

  "Another little thing he didn't tell us. The whole Company must have known-but what should they do? There's no point in trying to track him down if they want to forget he ever worked for them. Can you see anywhere she keeps business papers? Here, you watch for a moment."

  Glancing over his shoulder, Maxim saw her fiddling at the lock on a bureau drawer. Boards still creaked upstairs as Clare Hall moved about. Outside, the street was empty, and looked as if that was usual. Setting up a surveillance in such a place would be ridiculous: it was a lace-curtain neighbourhood, and behind every curtain was an old couple with nothing better to do than watch what everybody else did. In that, if not much else, Matson was international. Of course, if you were police or FBI you'dflash a badge and join the old lady behind her curtains with your binoculars.

  And if you were somebody else you'd flash a gun and end up in thesaméplace: it was a common terrorist tactic to take a family hostage and do their killing from that temporary base. They knew better than to look obvious sitting in parked cars, and probably Moscow knew as much, too. The street still looked empty, and very menacing.

  He heard Clare Hall coming downstairs, was aware of Agnes hurriedly stuffing paper into her bag and sliding the bureau drawer gently shut. He beckoned Clare over.

  "There's a pickup truck, parked round the side of that house nearly opposite. Do you recognise it? Don't touch the curtain."

  Agnes was suddenly at his other shoulder. Clare said: "That's the Gleissner house, they maybe have the decorators in."

  "It's parked facing out," Agnes whispered. "Most people drive straight in: we backed in for a fast getaway. Give them a call, please."

  Clare Hall punched a number on the telephone and listened. "They don't answer."

  "Try once more, just in case it was a wrong number."

  There was still no answer. Agnes said: "I think it would be best if you called the police and said there was something suspicious going on."

  "Send some poor deputy up against Moscow Centre?"

  Agnes and Maxim glanced at each other. They certainly didn't want a dead policeman to explain away. "I could talk to him before he came over," Agnes said thoughtfully, "tell him what's going on.,."

  "You'regoing on," Clare Hall said. "You brought them here-now you get me out of this."

  "In a way, it was your father who brought them here. Harry: what d'you think they're going to do?"

  Maxim shrugged. "I assume they'd rather catch us on some lonely road, but do they think that truck can outrun your car?"

  "Yes," Agnes said. "Those trucks have damn big engines, and with no load in the back… Yes, they'dthink they could catch my Snailsprint Special. They could, too." Instinctively, Agnes had chosen an innocuous low-powered model at Chicago airport. She was regretting it now.

  "We can just wait here for them, then," Maxim said.

  "They could walkin here," Clare Hall said.

  "I wouldn't mind them trying to get close."

  "Harry, could we try and settle something without a shoot-out for once? We'll be here for ever explaining why we're here. And God knows what the embassy…"

  Maxim looked impassive. Clare Hall said: "My car's faster than yours. We can get through to the garage without them seeing, then unlatch the doors and crash out while-"

  "No," Agnes said firmly.

  "My God," Clare Hall said, "we can just walk out the back door and keep this house between us and the Gleissner house until-"

  "No. D'you think Moscow hasn't heard of back doors? It's routine to cover back and front, and they're great ones for routine. "

  Clare Hall glanced fearfully towards the back of the house. Her jitters were showing; no matter who her father was, the Moscow Bravoes were still something that happened on late-night TV, not in Matson, Illinois.

  She rounded on Maxim: "So you're the tough guy, why don'tyou do something?"

  "You say there must be somebody at the back?" Maxim said to Agnes. "They've split their force. If I neutralise him or them, then the back way could be open."

  Agnes had never been in such a situation before: she had been on the outside, among the watchers of a house, moving two steps back on the rare occasions when the police or people like Maxim had been unleashed to go in, and shrugging sadly that things could not have been settled in a more civilised way. Now she was on the inside, and there was no civilised way out that she could see from there.

  What they could see was the watcher himself, around the corner on the cross-street and about a hundred metres on a direct line across the lawn, at the only place where hehad a clear view between the shrubs and full-grown trees. He was bending over the open engine of a parked car.

  "He wasn't there when we circled the block," Agnes said. "But a hundred to one that motor's in perfect nick."

  Maxim was calculating the cover given by the trees and shrubs. "If I can slip out of a side window…"

  "Are you sure?"

  "This is my end of the business."

  "All right-but, Harry: try not to neutralise him too hard."

  Agnes planted Clare Hall in the kitchen to cover the back while she herself scurried to and from the front, checking on the Gleissner house.

  Standing behind Clare for a few moments, Agnes said quietly: "With the effort Moscow's put into this, at short rime and long distance, your father seems to get more and more alive."

  Clare gave a vague snort.

  "Living in England?" Agnes suggested.

  "If that's what you want me to say."

  "If they do catch you," Agnes went on calmly, "it would be nice if I could warn him that they'll be after him as soon as you're through talking to them. Given their methods, you won't last long. "

  "Iknow about their methods."

  "Really?"

  "I worked at Langley in, you'd call it the 'registry', until Dad resigned."

  Yet another little something Mo Magill didn't tell me, Agnes thought, hurrying back for a look from the parlour window. All secret services recruit from families-not for nepotism, but just a pious hope that trustworthiness, whatever that was, was genetic.

  When she got back, Clare Hall said irritably; "Yourfriend's taking his time."

  "I hope so. That way, he's likely to get it right. Why didn't you ring up your old friends at Langley and tell them what's going on here? They'd get something organised pretty quickly."

  "It was a long time ago."

  "Youknow what your father's doing with that Crocus List, and you just don't want to wreck his little games."

  Clare Hall looked at her coldly, downwards, since she was some inches taller. "Get mad at me and I'll paste you one, little girl."

  "You and a freshly broken arm."

  A watcher merely pretending to fiddle with his car's wiring has to turn his head away at times; the pretence demands it. When he turned back, there was a slim man in a new-looking fawn windcheater shambling across the quiet street and glancing from a paper in his hand to the houses around, obviously seeking an address. The watcher bowed his head into the engine again; he didn't want to be asked.

  He wasn't. Maxim said softly: "Do you see where this gun's pointed?"

  The watcher straightened slowly, looking down. The automatic was aimed at his crotch from about eighteen inches.

  Maxim reached and took the humming CB radio, half-hidden by oily rags, from the engine compartment. "Now shut the bonnet-the hood," he remembered the American word. "And into the car, please."

  Later, the watcher would think of all the other moves he might have made-if he had been prepared. He would also remember being taught about those paralysing first seconds after meeting an unexpected and horrible threat. At least he'd be able to say the teaching had been true.

  At the front window, Agnes hadn't seen them get into the car. What she heard was the muffled roar of an engine, close, t
hen the garage doors banged open and a silver compact swerved around her own car and hit the road in a squealing turn. She knew Clare Hall must be in the car, but had no idea of what to do about it.

  The men in the Gleissner house had no doubts. Two of them were in the truck and it had jumped off by the time she looked back at it. Agnes looked around for her handbag, car keys-it was too late.

  The compact had swung round the corner, roaring uppast the watcher's car; the truck didn't bother. It charged across the road, bounced up the sidewalk and across the lawn-no hedges or fences-weaving between the bushes and trees.

  At first, Maxim didn't know where the silver car had come from, but the style of driving didn't belong on those quiet streets. Then he saw the truck bucketing through the bushes he had crawled among so slowly and started cranking down the window, but the truck was long out of range. And then Agnes came sprinting across the lawn.

  She can run, he noticed. Not just hurry with her bottom sloshing from side to side, butmove.

  "Swing around," he ordered. The watcher was in the driving seat, Maxim behind him.

  The watcher took his time, fumbling the key, mistaking the gear. He had recovered from his fright. The car reached the far kerb as Agnes arrived. She-and a tap from the gun-moved the watcher to the passenger seat.

  There was a distant bang.

  Agnes drove off. "Where did they go?"

  "Left at the corner." He tapped the watcher again. "Put your seatbelt on, friend. It could save your life."

  "I don't know what in hell all this is about-" the watcher began. He had, to Maxim's un American ear, a fairly standard American voice.

  "Something to do with what I found in your pocket. Now shut up."

  Agnes swung the corner smoothly and accelerated, not wasting a second or an inch, and in a strange car. Then she braked. Ahead and to the right, a puff of black smoke was rolling up above the houses and trees.

  "Oh God." She drove on slowly.

  The fire was at an intersection, a pyramid of flame and smoke boiling above the interlocked pickup truck and silver car. Already there was a circle of people forming around it, swaying back as the wind toppled the flames towards them. One man was hopefully spraying an extinguisher on the edge of the flame pool; a police siren whooped from the town centre.