Paris Spring

by James Naughtie

  With effort, he pulled himself up to stand. Propping himself against the wall with one hand, he reached for his stick before he walked to the window. ‘You are claiming – do correct me if I’m wrong, won’t you? – that there is some kind of leak. You don’t know whence it sprang, which government or even which bloody capital, except that Moscow may know something that it shouldn’t – may know! – about alliance plans. Which ones we don’t know. What may have leaked, you have no idea. When the information was passed, if it was, you don’t know. In other words, you know bugger all.

  ‘But you claim that it’s evidence of a network of agents, of which the French are aware and are keeping to themselves. I expect they’ll be delighted to hear that you’ve been spreading the story across London.

  ‘And as for our own dear service – I’m thinking of Duncan Gilfeather in Berlin, poor Jonny Hinckley at NATO – what the hell have you done? Left them in the bloody lurch. Didn’t speak to them, and gave not so much as a by-your-leave before you tossed them on a dung heap. From which, incidentally, they will have great difficulty crawling out.’

  Bolder said, ‘I’m very sorry, Freddy. Really.’

  Both men were exhausted. Bolder’s hair had collapsed and the thatch lay matted across his forehead. His crisp white shirt was sweat-stained and in an unthinking nervous spasm he had undone his shoe laces. Craven was erect at the window. Without his stick he would have been on the floor.

  Swinging round slowly, he said, ‘Sandy, this hurts.’

  Bolder said, ‘I understand.’

  ‘I want to salvage what we can, for the good of this station,’ Craven said as he sat down at the desk. ‘I’ve drafted a telegram which indicates exactly how I think this suggestion or rumour, or whatever we call it, should be treated. With exceptional caution. Exceptional. I have said that my own conversations indicate that at a moment of tension it’s natural to have claims from the other side that the balance has shifted – intelligence-wise, I mean – and we have to remember that it’s in their interest to set some hares running. One of which may have crossed your path.’

  ‘Are you putting me in the public stocks?’ Bolder’s head was down, and he was whispering.

  ‘Oddly enough, no. Though God knows why. Your name isn’t mentioned.’

  ‘Thank you, Freddy. You’re a good man.’

  ‘I may regret it,’ Craven said. ‘But I want this place intact. Especially with what’s coming our way. It’s not the Russians we’re going to be talking about here.

  ‘The Nanterre faculty is being shut down today. The police are all over the Sorbonne. A right-wing bunch set fire to a lecture theatre early this morning, and you can expect the riot squads on the street. They’ll be rough because that’s their way. The army’s round the corner. And half the lecturers are going on to the streets with their students. They’re serious. Flemyng says there’s a dam that could burst. Sandy, for God’s sake, don’t you care?’

  ‘Of course.’ Bolder sounded sad. ‘But maybe I have Russia on the brain. You know, my life.’

  Craven said that he wouldn’t expect Bolder, even in these circumstances, to tell him the names of everyone he had met or listened to in recent days. Secret servants’ rights were sacrosanct, almost always. But he added, ‘I deserve a little more, don’t you think?’

  Bolder nodded. ‘What I would say is this, Freddy. There was no moment at dead of night. Not a knock on the door. It was talk, that’s all. I speak to the French, all sorts of people around this town. Even the Americans.’ If it was meant as a joke, it failed.

  ‘Talk!’ Craven was shouting now. ‘And you pranced off to London as if you had the bloody Holy Grail in your suitcase. Grow up, Sandy. This isn’t what you were taught to do.’

  ‘I have no words,’ Bolder said, miserably.

  The old man looked him in the eye. ‘If I’d built my reputation on talk of that kind, I wouldn’t be here.’

  They were both exhausted, Bolder folded up in his humiliation and Craven drained of all his fuel.

  ‘And by the way,’ he added, delivering a last uppercut, ‘I knew you were slinking off to London. I saw you at Nord.’

  ‘Why were you there?’ There was a last sliver of defiance in Bolder’s voice, but no more.

  ‘That, my dear Sandy, I’m not going to tell you. Now get on your way. I’m going to finish the telegram. And, no, you’re not going to see it.’

  Thus dismissed, the weary Bolder left the room without another word.

  Craven lifted his phone and, after a moment, asked for a cipher clerk.

  *

  Quincy’s envelope was back in Maria’s bag, the paper with the list tucked away while Flemyng welcomed his old friend at the door.

  Sam Malachy had kept all the rough edges that Flemyng had lost. He was short and beefy and his dark brown hair never looked the same from one day to the next. His features were rounded, except for a pointed nose that gave the impression of turning upwards at the end. Flemyng always told him he had the look of an eighteenth-century squire who’d led a raddled life, and he did carry the air of a good-time boy, which he was. The broad Yorkshire voice had never softened in his time away from home, and it misled some colleagues, who were deceived into thinking that as a consequence he was no linguist. But Sam was one of the best in the business. At the language school he was polishing his Czech again.

  They came into the room together, Flemyng’s arm across Sam’s shoulder.

  ‘This is Maria. Rest assured we can talk as friends.’

  Sam took her hand. ‘That’s saying something.’

  Flemyng got a kettle on the boil, and asked Sam for news of Vienna.

  ‘You know how it goes. Sleepy old town, set in its ways. Fur coats on the Staatsoper steps, picnics in the woods. Sachertorte for tea. Then – bang! – it’s all excitement.’

  He was watching Maria, as if wondering whether to continue, and when she caught his eye she nodded quite deliberately.

  Sam smiled. ‘We get news from Belgrade or up the river from Budapest. Bit of trouble in Warsaw maybe. Everyone gets worked up and we scamper around. Talk to each other and let the rumours breed. Then we all go quiet again. Except this time, Will, it’s different.’

  ‘Prague, you mean?’

  ‘I do,’ said Sam.

  ‘Can they keep the lid on?’ Maria asked.

  ‘I doubt it. We can feel the heat in Vienna.’

  Flemyng was pouring tea. ‘We’re going to have lunch, but let’s talk first. Sam, I need to let you know that Maria is in on all this. Don’t hold back. We’re working together.’

  ‘In whose interest?’ Sam said, and laughed.

  ‘You needn’t worry about that,’ Flemyng said. Sam picked up his serious expression and sat back, ready to listen.

  ‘It’s the old story, Sam. We’ve got a puzzle, it’s in two parts and maybe more, and the pieces don’t fit. The only thing that we can be sure of is that we’ve found ourselves walking into a minefield wearing hobnailed boots. I’m going to start with a name that you’ll know. Grace Quincy.’

  ‘Murdered in this very city,’ Sam said. He got up and began to pace the room. ‘And known to you?’

  Maria said she had been. As at the cemetery, she gave no hint that their acquaintance had lasted no more than a few days. To make Flemyng’s point, she said, ‘Together, Sam, Will and I have discovered something important. That’s why we can talk openly to you. When Grace died, she was working on a story about the other side. Vienna’s the gossip capital, and she passed through recently. Hear anything?’

  Sam said he’d like to ask another question first. Looking at Flemyng, he said, ‘How’s Freddy?’

  Flemyng was alerted by the sharp tone of someone who thought he was getting to the point. Catching his eye, he detected in Sam a seriousness that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  ‘Have you talked?’ Flemyng asked.

  Sam had turned away and moved to the window. He said nothing, as if he had missed Flemyng’s question
.

  Aware that the atmosphere had changed, Flemyng continued without asking again. ‘Put it like this, Sam – Sandy Bolder’s not Freddy’s favourite boy at the moment.’

  Repeating himself, he said that Sam shouldn’t worry about Maria. ‘Please. She knows this story from me and no one else.’

  ‘OK,’ Sam said. ‘Sandy rang me. When you pulled me over from London, I couldn’t think why. But I heard a whisper afterwards that Sandy was causing trouble back at base and I wondered. Did he tell you that he spoke to me?’

  ‘He did, and Freddy knows, too.’

  ‘It was odd,’ said Sam. ‘One of his conspiratorial calls. Said there was talk in Paris of leaks. Russians smirking all over the place. Knew more than we thought they did. Had I heard anything in my outpost, where all the wires seem to cross. No was my answer. I did tell him he had Moscow on the brain. They’re panicking so much about Prague, believe me, that everything else is for the birds.’

  Then, he said, Bolder had sent a telegram. Eyes only for Sam. He was convinced that the key to his puzzle lay in the east. But there was nothing Sam could offer in return.

  ‘Put it like this, Sam.’ Flemyng stretched back as if to give a summing up. ‘Maria and I are caught up in the Quincy business, which makes it awkward for us both. We knew her, and everyone’s trying to find out why she died. There’s a coincidence here that’s impossible to ignore. Bolder thinks there a game afoot in this city. Quincy’s on to something. And suddenly she’s dead.’

  Sam said that he had the same attitude to coincidences as Flemyng. ‘They’re never what they seem.’

  But he could be emphatic. He hadn’t seen Quincy in Vienna recently, and no talk about her had come his way. ‘They all pass through, back and forth from Prague and beyond. She’s a regular on our patch. A sparkle of Hollywood in the gloom, people say. But this time, nothing.’

  Maria said they must be thinking about lunch. ‘I’ve got a suggestion. We head into the quarter first, and spend a little time. There’s a place in rue de Seine where I’ll find some people I know and you can go on from there.’

  ‘Students by any chance?’ said Sam, all smiles.

  ‘Sure. Kids with armour on.’

  Flemyng was clearing away and getting his jacket.

  Sam said, ‘And what do they say will happen next?’

  ‘The revolution starts tomorrow,’ said Maria.

  TWENTY-TWO

  While Flemyng and Sam were preparing for a night in the streets, Abel Grauber was inhaling the remembered smells of London, soothing the last of his transatlantic weariness. He did little on his stopover except to contact the brothers, Mungo by phone and Will by telegram. He stayed clear of the embassy. Whatever the coming days held, he was determined that his presence itself shouldn’t become another secret. There would be enough of them.

  Mungo was subdued when they spoke, but Abel felt the pulse of relief in his voice. ‘I’m looking forward to having you here, whenever that might be. Your room is waiting. Come when you can.’

  He left his telegram to Paris until the end of the day, to make sure that it wouldn’t be delivered until the morning, and said that he expected to be able to call Flemyng from the city the following evening.

  Steering away from embassy tracks, he dined at Bianchi’s in Soho, where the clock outside the first-floor window was still stuck at half past one, as it had been for years. Elena, doyenne of eating places for a mile around, remembered him and pampered him at a table in the corner, like one of her actors whose bills never needed to be paid until they were back in work. Later, he decided to walk to his dingy hotel near Victoria, with creaky beds and no night porter, to be ready for the first boat train of the day, paying in cash and confident that in all London Elena was probably the only person who knew he was passing through. She never told tales.

  On the crossing, smooth with a spring breeze light enough to leave hardly any white traces on the water, he sat on deck and looked back to the cliffs until they disappeared, only turning towards France at the last. Where was home? Mungo’s voice had cheered him and he felt the lure of the north, where there was solace. London? Friends and memories, but for Abel the embrace of the city had lost its warmth. In the months ahead, however long he was required to stay, he wouldn’t be resuming a love affair, but trying to rekindle its flame.

  He bought bread and cheese in Calais, and took a sheaf of morning papers to the train. Then he found time to sleep. He stirred only once on the journey, so when he took time for a coffee at Gare du Nord he felt rested.

  Leaving the metro at Odéon, he dropped his bag at a hotel a few minutes’ walk away, and in a café on the next corner rang Maria’s office from the phone under a wooden hood on the wall. It was late afternoon, and in their brief exchange – anonymous and almost monosyllabic on both sides – she told him that she could be at their old place within the hour, not naming it. He rang off, knowing that he had time for a walk through some of his old streets before turning up at 36, rue de Nevers.

  They hugged, and Maria poured the coffee she had ready for him on the gas ring.

  ‘Sleep here if you like,’ she said. ‘You know it well enough.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m at a pension three streets away. But, have you…?’

  Producing a key from her bag as he spoke, she dropped it on the table. ‘I have a surprise for you,’ she said.

  ‘Me, too,’ Abel said. ‘Isn’t that how we like it?’

  ‘Whether you’re going to like this or not, I can’t say.’ She laid one folded sheet of paper in front of him. ‘Here’s where we are. Read it.’

  She gave no description, no explanation.

  Abel flattened the sheet, and looked at the list taken from the hiding place in the cemetery, the copy typed out by Maria in her office. She sensed his excitement.

  As he looked at the names, his face took on such intensity that Maria almost believed that for the half-minute or so that he scanned the paper he didn’t blink. Concentration had kicked in, and he didn’t speak. He breathed in slowly. Then, looking up, ‘You know any of these names?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Nor me.’ He shook his head. ‘Who knows?’

  Maria said she had checked at the embassy without leaving any fingerprints – ‘our lovely Butterfield’ – and had established that the names were in none of the obvious files. ‘None on the usual lists, and no trace among people we’ve come across in the last few months. The old regulars, trade delegations and so on. Not one of them turns up in any cables. Zilch. But we’ve only started.’

  ‘Berlin?’ Abel said. ‘Has Hershkoff seen them?’

  ‘Not yet. I need to work out how to get it to him. We may need a courier of our own.’

  Abel said, ‘Begin at the beginning. Is this something Quincy left behind?’

  ‘That’s why I love you,’ Maria said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Abel was dark-haired and sun-browned, slim and easy with himself. His rounded face had a touch of Mungo’s cherubic style, but he was narrower, taller, and his eyes were darker. Jet black. When he was serious, everything about him seemed to draw in so that he became thinner, and his face longer, but for now he had thrown his shoes aside, and showed through his excitement the readiness of an athlete on the blocks. His jeans were blue and a dark green shirt open to his chest. He wore a gold ring and his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. Watching him, Maria said quietly, although he heard her, ‘Every inch an American.’

  ‘On with the story, Miss Cooney.’

  Maria said, ‘This list was in a dead letter box in the Père Lachaise cemetery close to where Grace Quincy was found on her stone. She died on the Wednesday, as you know, and these names – in an envelope – were left there in a hiding place. Was she meant to collect it? I don’t know. But we believe the envelope was handled by her.’

  ‘Why? I’m assuming you didn’t find this by chance,’ Abel said, showing no surprise at anything she had said.

  ‘No.’
/>
  ‘So who told you where?’ There was almost no pause between his questions. ‘Quincy herself?’

  Maria shook her head. ‘OK. Here’s the first complication. I wasn’t alone when it was found.’

  He said nothing, but stretched out an open hand. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘Your brother was with me.’

  They were sitting close, neither missing any change of expression in the other. Abel’s face didn’t alter, but his eyes turned away from hers, to a window and a brick wall in shadow outside. He stared. In Flemyng, Maria had seen something of the intensity that the brothers preserved for their dealings with each other. She said nothing.

  The men lived far apart, but Flemyng had told her that at each connection the power came flooding back, unbidden. A complication, but they lived with it. She had once wondered aloud with him whether he would describe it as love, because she knew from them both that with their energy came nervousness and even suspicion. Sometimes, a reluctance to trust.

  ‘Of course it’s love,’ Flemyng had said to her. ‘Not the word we use, mind you. We’re one, whether we like it or not. Some day we’ll find time to talk about it.’

  Now she had placed him at her side in the Quincy story, and Abel would have to find out why. She saw that his face was drawn, which brought the shadows back.

  ‘Did Will know her?’ he asked.

  ‘I introduced them four days before she died.’ Maria told the story of Hoffman’s party, Quincy’s arrival and her introduction and Flemyng’s fascination. His excitement. With the care that each expected of the other, she added, ‘If he did know her and concealed it, he did it bloody well. I’m sure it was a genuine first meeting. She said so, too. I know it wasn’t the last.’

  ‘When was that?’ Abel asked.

  ‘The day before she died.’