2006 - Restless

by William Boyd

  “You can take those away, Boris,” Romer said. “Whisky and peanuts—no, no, no.” He chuckled. “Will they ever learn?”

  When Boris left the mood changed suddenly. I couldn’t analyse precisely how, but Romer’s false charm and suavity seemed to have quit the room with Boris and the peanuts. The smile was still there but the pretence was absent: the gaze was direct, curious, faintly hostile.

  “I want to ask you a question, if you don’t mind, Miss Gilmartin, before we begin our fascinating interview.”

  “Fire away.”

  “You mentioned something to my secretary about AAS Ltd.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you come across that name?”

  “From an archive source.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m sorry you should think that,” I said, suddenly on my guard. His eyes were on me, very cold, fixed. I held his gaze and continued. “You can have no idea what’s become available to scholars and historians in the last few years since the whole Ultra secret came out. Enigma, Bletchley Park—the lid has been well and truly lifted: everybody wants to tell their story now. And a lot of the material is—what shall I say?—informal, personal.”

  He thought about this.

  “A printed source, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “No, not personally.” I was playing for time now, suddenly a little more worried. Even though my mother had warned me that there would be particular curiosity about AAS Ltd. “I was given the information by an Oxford don who is writing a history of the British Secret Service,” I said quickly.

  “Is he really?” Romer sighed and his sigh said: what a complete and utter waste of time. “What’s this don’s name?”

  “Timothy Thoms.”

  Romer slipped a small, leather-encased notepad from his jacket pocket and then a fountain pen and wrote the name down. I had to admire the bluff, the bravado.

  “Dr T.C.L. Thoms. T, h, o, m, s. He’s at All Souls,” I added.

  “Good…” He wrote all this down and looked up. “What exactly is this article about, that you’re writing?”

  “It’s about the British Security Coordination. And what they were doing in America before Pearl Harbor.” This was what my mother had told me to say: a large catch-all subject.

  “Why on earth would anyone be interested in all that? Why are you so intrigued by BSC?”

  “I thought I was meant to be interviewing you, Lord Mansfield.”

  “I just want to clarify a few things before we begin.”

  The waiter knocked on the door and came in.

  “Telephone, Lord Mansfield,” he said. “Line one.”

  Romer raised himself to his feet and walked a little stiffly to the telephone on the small writing-desk in the corner. He picked up the receiver.

  “Yes?”

  He listened to whatever was being said and I picked up my whisky, took a large sip, and took my chance to study him a little more closely. He stood in profile to me, the receiver in his left hand and I could see the glint of the signet ring on his little finger against the black bakelite. With the heel of his right hand he smoothed the wing of hair above his ear.

  “No, I’m not concerned,” he said. “Not remotely.” He hung up and stood for a moment looking at the telephone, thinking. The two wings of his hair met at the back of his head in a small turbulence of curls. It didn’t look well groomed but of course it was. His shoes were brilliantly polished as if by an army batman. He turned back to me, his eyes widening for a moment, as if suddenly remembering I was in the room.

  “So, Miss Gilmartin, you were telling me about your interest in BSC,” he said, sitting down again.

  “My uncle was involved in BSC…”

  “Really, what was his name?”

  My mother had told me to watch him very closely at this juncture.

  “Morris Devereux,” I said.

  Romer reflected, repeated the name a couple of times. “Don’t think I know him. No.”

  “So you do admit you were part of BSC.”

  “I admit nothing, Miss Gilmartin,” he said, smiling at me. He was smiling at me a lot, was Romer, but none of his smiles were genuine or friendly. “Do you know,” he said, “I’m sorry to be a bore, but I’ve decided not to grant this interview.” He stood up again, moved to the door and opened it.

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because I don’t believe a word you’ve told me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “What can I say? I’ve been completely honest with you.”

  “Then let’s say I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Your privilege.” I took my time: I had another sip of whisky and then put my clipboard and my pen away in my briefcase, stood up and walked through the door ahead of him. My mother had warned me that it would probably end like this. He would have had to see me, of course, after the AAS Ltd revelation, and he would try to determine what my agenda was and the moment he sensed it was unthreatening—simple journalistic curiosity, in other words—he would have nothing more to do with me.

  “I can find my own way out,” I said.

  “Alas, you’re not allowed to.”

  We moved past the dining-room, now with a few male diners, past the bar—fuller than when I arrived, with a low susurrus of conversation within—past the reading-room, where there was one old man sleeping, and then down the grand curving staircase to the simple black door with its elaborate fanlight.

  The porter opened the door for us. Romer didn’t offer his hand.

  “I hope I haven’t wasted too much of your time,” he said, signalling beyond me to a sleek, heavy car—a Bentley, I thought—that started up and pulled over to the Brydges’ side of the road.

  “I’ll still be writing my article,” I said.

  “Of course you will, Miss Gilmartin, but be very careful you don’t write anything libellous. I have an excellent lawyer—he happens to be a member here.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s a fact.”

  I looked at him squarely in the eye, hoping that my gaze was saying: I don’t like you and I don’t like your disgusting club and I’m not remotely frightened of you.

  “Goodbye,” I said, and I turned and walked away, past the Bentley, from which a uniformed chauffeur had appeared and was opening the passenger’s door.

  As I walked away from Brydges’ I felt an odd mixture of emotions uncoiling inside me: I felt pleased—pleased that I’d met this man who had played such a key role in my mother’s life and that I hadn’t been cowed by him. And I also felt a little angry with myself—suspecting and worried that I hadn’t handled the encounter well enough, hadn’t extracted enough from it, had allowed Romer to dictate its course and tenor. I had been reacting too much to him, rather than the other way round—for some reason I had wanted to rattle him more. But my mother had been very insistent: don’t go too far, don’t reveal anything that you know—only mention AAS Ltd, Devereux and BSC—that’ll be enough to set him thinking, enough to spoil his beauty sleep, she’d said with some glee. I hoped I’d done enough for her.

  I was home in Oxford by nine o’clock and picked up Jochen from Veronica’s.

  “Why did you go to London?” he said, as we climbed the back stairs towards the kitchen door.

  “I went to see an old friend of Granny’s.”

  “Granny says she hasn’t got any friends.”

  “This is someone she knew a long time ago,” I said, moving to the phone in the hall. “Go and put your pyjamas on.” I dialled my mother’s number. There was no reply so I hung up and dialled again, using her stupid code and she still didn’t pick up. I put the phone down.

  “Shall we go on a little adventure?” I said, trying to keep my voice light-hearted. “Let’s drive out to Granny’s and give her a surprise.”

  “She won’t be pleased,” Jochen said. “She hates surprises.”

  When we reached Middle Ash
ton I saw at once that the cottage was dark and there was no sign of her car. I went to the third flower pot on the left of the front door, suddenly very worried for some reason, found the key and let myself in.

  “What’s happening, Mummy?” Jochen said. “Is this some kind of a game?”

  “Sort of…”

  Everything in the cottage seemed in order: the kitchen was tidy, the dishes were washed, clothes hung drying on the clothes-horse in the boiler room. I climbed the stairs to her bedroom, Jochen following, and looked around. The bed was made and on her desk was a brown envelope with ‘Ruth’ written on it. I was about to pick it up when Jochen said, “Look, there’s a car coming.”

  It was my mother in her old white Allegro. I felt both stupid and relieved. I ran downstairs, opened the front door and called to her as she stepped out of the car.

  “Sal! It’s us. We came out to see you.”

  “What a lovely surprise,” she said, her voice heavy with irony, bending down to kiss Jochen. “I didn’t remember leaving the lights on. Somebody’s up very late.”

  “You told me to call you the minute, the second, I got back,” I said, more accusingly and more annoyed than I intended. “When you didn’t reply what was I meant to think?”

  “I must have forgotten I’d asked you,” she said, breezily, moving past me into the house. “Anyone like a cup of tea?”

  “I saw Romer,” I said, following her. “I spoke to him. I thought you’d be interested. But it didn’t go well. In fact, I would say he was thoroughly unpleasant.”

  “I’m sure you were more than a match for him,” she said. “I thought you both looked a bit frosty when you said goodbye.”

  I stopped. “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I was outside: I saw you both leave the club,” she said, her face utterly open, guileless, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. “Then I followed him home and now I know where he lives: 29 Walton Crescent, Knightsbridge. Great big white stucco place. It’ll be much easier getting to him the next time.”

  THE STORY OF EVA DELECTORSKAYA

  New York, 1941

  EVA CALLED TRANSOCEANIC FROM a pay phone on the street outside her safe house in Brooklyn. Five days had gone by since the events in Las Cruces, during which she had made her way slowly back to New York, taking advantage of all the means of transport available—plane, train, bus and automobile. The first day in New York she had staked out her own safe house. When she was sure no one was watching she moved in and laid low. Finally, when she assumed they’d be growing increasingly worried by her silence, she telephoned.

  “Eve!” Morris Devereux almost shouted, forgetting procedure. “Thank God. Where are you?”

  “Somewhere on the eastern seaboard,” she said. “Morris: I’m not coming in.”

  “You have to come in,” he said. “We have to see you. Circumstances have changed.”

  “You don’t know what happened down there,” she said with some venom. “I’m lucky to be alive. I want to speak to Romer. Is he back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him I’ll call on Sylvia’s number at BSC. Tomorrow afternoon at four.”

  She hung up.

  She went down the street to a grocery store and bought some tinned soup, a loaf of bread, three apples and two packs of Lucky Strike before going back to her room on the third floor of the brownstone building on Pineapple Street. Nobody bothered her, none of her anonymous neighbours seemed to register that Miss Margery Allerdice was in residence. If she opened the bathroom window, and leant out as far as she could, the top of one of the towers of Brooklyn Bridge was just visible—on a clear day. She had a pull-down bed, two armchairs, a radio, a galley kitchen with two electric rings, a soapstone sink with one cold tap and a lavatory screened by a plastic curtain with tropical fish all swimming in the same direction. When she arrived back she made some soup—mushroom—ate it with some bread and butter and then smoked three cigarettes while wondering what to do. Perhaps, she thought, the best thing would be to fly now…She had her identification, she could be Margery Allerdice and be gone before anyone really noticed. But where to? Mexico? From there she could catch a ship to Spain or Portugal. Or Canada, perhaps? Or was Canada too close? And BSC had a substantial organisation there also. She ran through the pros and cons, thinking she could manage better in Canada, that it would be easier to be inconspicuous; in Mexico she’d stand out—a young English woman—though from there she could go to Brazil, or even better, Argentina. There was a sizeable English community in Argentina; she could find a job, translating, invent a past for herself, become invisible, bury herself underground. That was what she wanted to do—to disappear. But as she thought on she realised that all this planning and speculation, however worth while, wasn’t going to be put into effect until she’d seen and spoken to Romer: she had to tell him what happened—perhaps he could sort out and solve the crowding mysteries. After that she could make up her mind, but not before.

  As the evening drew in she listened to some music on the radio and in her mind went back over the events in Las Cruces. ‘The Events in Las Cruces’—the euphemism was rather comforting: as if her hotel room had been double-booked or her car had broken down on Highway 80. She felt no guilt, no compunction about what she had done to de Baca. If she hadn’t killed him she knew he would have killed her in the next minute or two. Her plan had been only to stab him in the eye and run. She only had a sharpened pencil, after all—one of his eyes was the only possible target if he was to be immobilised. But thinking back over those few seconds in the car, remembering de Baca’s reactions, his total, shocking incapacity followed by his immediate death, she realised that the force of her blow must have driven the pencil point through the eyeball and the eye-hole in his skull, deep into his brain puncturing, in the process, the carotid artery—or perhaps hit the brain-stem, causing instant cardiac arrest. There could be no other explanation for his almost instant death. Even if she had missed the artery and the pencil had penetrated his brain de Baca might not have died. But she would have been able to make her escape, though. However, her luck—her luck—her aim and the sharpness of the pencil point had killed him as swiftly and as surely as if he had taken prussic acid or had been strapped to an electric chair. She went to bed early and dreamt that Raul was trying to sell her a small speedy red coupe.

  She called Sylvia’s number at BSC exactly at 4.01 a.m. She was standing at a pay phone outside the entrance of the Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue with a good view of the main doors. Sylvia’s phone rang three times and then was picked up.

  “Hello, Eva,” Romer said, his voice level, unsurprised. “We want you to come in.”

  “Listen carefully,” she said. “Leave the building now and walk south down Fifth. I’ll give you two minutes, otherwise there won’t be any meeting.”

  She hung up and waited. After about three and a half minutes, Romer emerged—fast enough, she thought: he would have had no time to set up any team. He turned right down Fifth Avenue. She shadowed him from across the street and behind, watching his back, watching his manner, letting him walk some six blocks before she was sure there was no one on his tail. She was wearing a headscarf and spectacles, flat shoes and a camel coat she’d bought in a thrift shop that morning. She crossed the street at an intersection and began to follow him closely herself for another block or two. He was wearing a trench coat, an old one with a few repaired tears, and a navy-blue scarf. He was bareheaded. He seemed very at ease, strolling southwards, not looking around, waiting for contact to be made. They had reached 39th Street before she walked up beside him and said, “Follow me.”

  She turned east and on Park Avenue turned north again, heading towards 42nd Street and Grand Central Station, going in by the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance and walking up the ramp to the main concourse. Thousands of commuters criss-crossed the vast space, swarming, jostling, hurrying: it was rush hour—probably as secure a place to meet as any in the city, Eva reasoned: hard to jump her, eas
y to cause confusion and escape. She didn’t look behind her but made for the central information booth. When she reached it only then did she turn, taking off her spectacles.

  He was right behind her, face expressionless.

  “Relax,” he said. “I’m alone. I’m not that stupid.” He paused, moving closer to her, lowering his voice. “How are you, Eva?”

  To her intense irritation the genuine concern in his voice made her suddenly want to cry. She had only to think of Luis de Baca to go hard and resilient again. She took off her headscarf, shook her hair loose.

  “I was sold,” she said. “Somebody sold me.”

  “Not any one of us. I don’t know what went wrong but Transoceanic is tight.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “Of course you think that. I would think that. But I would know, Eva. I’d figure it out. We’re tight.”

  “What about BSC?”

  “BSC would give you a medal if they could,” he said. “You did a brilliant job.”

  This threw her and she looked around at the hundreds of people hurrying by and then, as if for inspiration, up at the immense vaulted ceiling with its constellations winking out of the blue. She felt weak: the pressure of the last days overcoming her now, all of a sudden. She wanted nothing more than for Romer to put his arms around her.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” he said. “We can’t talk properly here. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

  They went down a ramp to the lower concourse and found a place at the counter of a milk bar. She ordered a cherry milkshake with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream, suddenly craving sweetness. She checked the room as the order was prepared.

  “There’s no need to look around,” Romer said. “I’m on my own. You’ve got to come in, Eva—not now, not today, or tomorrow. Take your time. You deserve it.” He reached over and took her hand. “What you managed to do was astonishing,” he said. “Tell me what happened. Start from when you left New York.” He let her hand go.

  So she told him: she talked him through every hour of the entire trip from New York to Las Cruces and Romer listened, still, without saying a word, only asking her when she had finished to repeat the period of time from her saying farewell to Raul to the encounter with de Baca.