'He told you something else.
About a woman. I heard him sayFrau and Auto. Something about a woman and a car.'
'Sorry, old boy,' de Lisle said coolly, 'it's the Rhineland accent. Sometimes it simply defeats me.'
Turner stared back at the Königswinter bank, shielding his eyes with his gloved hand because even in that miserable spring the light came sharply off the water. At last he saw what he was looking for: to each side, like mailed hands pointing to the Seven Hills of Siegfried, turreted brown villas built witn the wealth of the Ruhr; between them a splash ofwhite against the trees of the esplanade. It was Harting's house receding in the mist.
'I'm chasing a ghost,' he muttered. 'A bloody shadow.'
'Your own,' de Lisle retorted, his voice rich with disgust. 'Oh,sure, sure.'
'I shall drive you back to the Embassy,' de Lisle continued. 'From then on, you find your own transport.'
'Why the hell did you bring me if you're so squeamish?' And suddenly he laughed. 'Of course,' he said. 'What a bloody fool I am! I'm going to sleep! You were frightened I might find the Green File and you thought you'd wait in the wings. Unsuitable for temporaries. Christ!'
Cork had just heard the eight o'clock news. The German delegation had withdrawn from Brussels during the night. Officially the Federal Government wished to 'reconsider certain technical problems which had arisen in the course of discussions'. Unofficially, as Cork put it, they had run away from school. Blankly he watched the coloured paper stutter out of the rollers and fall in to the wire basket. It was about ten minutes before the summons came. There was a knock on the door and Miss Peate's stupid head appeared at the little trap. Mr Bradfield would see him at once. Her me an eyes were alive with pleasure. Once and for all, she meant. As he followed her in to the corridor, he caught sight of Cork's brochure on plots of land in the Bahamas and he thought: that's going to be useful by the time he's done with me.
CHAPTER TWELVE 'And There was Leo. In the Second Class'
'I have already spoken to Lumley. You go home tonight. Travel Section will attend to your tickets.' Bradfield's desk was piled high with telegrams. 'And I have apologised in your name to Siebkron.'
'Apologised?'
Bradfield dropped the latch on the door. 'Shall I spell it out for you? Like Harting, you are evidently something of a political primitive. You are here on a temporary diplomatic footing; if you were not, you would undoubtedly be in prison.' He was pale with anger. 'Godalone knows what de Lisle thought he was up to. I shall speak to him separately. You have deliberately disobeyed my instruction; well, you people have your own code, I suppose, and I am as suspect as the next man.'
'You flatter yourself.'
'In this case, however, you were placed specifically under my authority, by Lumley, by the Ambassador and by the necessities of the situation here, and specifically ordered to make no move which could have repercussions outside the Embassy. Be quiet and listen to me! Instead of showing the minimal consideration that was asked of you, however, you go round to Harting's house at five in the morning, frighten the wits out of his servant, wake the neighbours, bellow for de Lisle, and finally attract a full-scale police raid which, in a matter of hours, will no doubt be the talking point of the community. Not content with that, you are party to a stupid lie to the police about conducting an inventory; I imagine that will bring a smile even to Siebkron's lips, after the description you offered him of your work last night.'
'Any more?'
'A great deal, thank you. Whatever Siebkron suspected that Harting had done, you have by now delivered the proof. You saw his attitude for yourself. Heaven knows what he does not think we are up to.'
'Then tell him,' Turner suggested. 'Why not? Ease his mind. Christ, he knows more than we do. Why do we make a secret of something they all know? They're in full cry. The worst we can do is spoil their kill.'
'I will not have it said! Anything is better, any doubts, any suspicions on their part, than our admission at this moment in time that for twenty years a member of our diplomatic staff has been in Soviet employment. Is there nothing you will understand of this? I will not have it said! Let them think and do what they like, without our cooperation they can only surmise.'
It was a statement of personal faith. He sat as still and as upright as a sentry guarding a national shrine.
'Is that the lot?'
'You people are supposed to work in secret. One calls upon you expecting a standard of discretion. I could tell you a little about your behaviour here, had you not made it abundantly clear that manners me an nothing to you whatever. It will take a long time to sweep up the mess you have left behind you in this Embassy. You seem to think that nothing reaches me. I have already warded off Gaunt and Meadowes; no doubt there are others I shall have to soothe.'
'I'd better go this afternoon,' Turner suggested. He had not taken his eyes from Bradfield's face. 'I've ballsed it up, haven't I? Sorry about that. Sorry you're not satisfied with the service. I'll write and apologise; that's what Lumley likes me to do. A bread and butter letter. So I'll do that. I'll write.' He sighed, 'I seem to be a bit of a Jonah. Best thing to do really, chuck me out. Be a bit of a wrench for you, that will. You don't like getting rid of people, do you? Rather give them a contract.'
'What are you suggesting?'
'That you've a damn good reason for insisting on discretion! I said to Lumley - Christ, that was a joke - I asked him, see: does he want the files or the man? What the hell are you up to? Wait! One minute you give him a job, the next you don't want to know him. If they brought his body in now you couldn't care bloody less: you'd pat the pockets for papers and wish him luck!'
He noticed, quite inconsequentially, Bradfield's shoes. They were hand-made and polished that dark mahogany which is only captured by servants, or by those who have been brought up with them.
'What the devil do you me an?'
'I don't know who's putting the finger on you: I don't care. Siebkron, I would guess, from the way you crawl to him. Why did you bring us together last night if you were so bloody worried about offending him? What was the point to that, for one? Or did he order you to? Don't answer yet, it's my turn. You're Harting's guardian angel, do you realise that? It sticks out a mile, and I'll write it six foot high when I get back to London. You renewed his contract, right? Just that, for a start. Although you despised him. But you didn't just give him work; you made work for him. You knew bloody well the Foreign Office didn't give a damn about the Destruction programme. Or for the Personalities Index either, I shouldn't wonder. But you pretended; you built it up for him. Don't tell me it was compassion for a man who didn't belong.'
'Whatever there was of that has worn pretty thin by now,' Bradfield remarked, with a hint of that dismay, or selfcontempt, which Turner now occasionally discerned in him.
'Then what about the Thursday meeting?'
A look of sheer pain crossed Bradfield's face.
'My God, you are insufferable,' he said, more as a mental note, a privately recorded judgment, than an insult directly intended.
'The Thursday conference that never was! It was you who took Harting off that conference; you who gave the job to de Lisle. But Harting still went out Thursday afternoons all right. Did you stop him? Did you hell. I expect you even know where he went, don't you.' He held up the gunmetal key he had taken from Harting's suit. 'Because there's a special place, you see. A hideaway. Or may be I'm telling you something you know already. Who did he meet out there? Do you know that too? I used to think it was Praschko, until I remembered you fed me that idea, you yourself. So I'm going bloody carefully with Praschko.'
Turner was leaning across the desk, shouting at Bradfield's bowed head. 'As to Siebkron, he's rolling up a whole bloody network, like as not. Dozens of agents, for all we know; Harting was just one link in a chain. You can't begin to control what Siebkron knows and doesn't know. We're dealing with reality, you know, not diplomacy.' He pointed to the window and the blurred hills across the river. 'Theysell horses over there! They screw around, talk to friends, make journeys; they've been beyond the edge of the forest, they know what the world looks like!'