Some carried banners, others wore the grey gabardine raincoats and black Homburg hats which were the uniform of the Movement's supporters. They yielded reluctantly, scowling at the number plates and the glittering foreign paintwork. Bradfield neither sounded his horn nor changed gear, but let them wake to him and avoid him as they might. Once he braked for an old man who was either deaf or drunk; once a boy slapped the roof of the car with his bare hand, and Bradfield became very still and pale. Confetti lay on the steps, the pillars were covered with slogans. A cab driver was yelling as if he had been hit. They had parked in the cab rank.
'Left,' Crabbe called as Turner ran a head of him. A high doorway admitted them to the main hall.
'Keep left,' Turner heard Crabbe shout for the second time. Three barriers led to the platform; three ticket collectors sat in their glass cages. Notices warned him in three languages not to ask them favours. A group of priests, whispering, turned to eye him disapprovingly: haste, they said, is not a Christian quality. A blonde girl, her face chestnut brown, swung dangerously past him with a rucksack and well-worn skis, and he saw the trembling of her pullover.
'He was sitting just there,' Crabbe whispered, but by then Turner had flung open the glazed swing door and was standing inside the restaurant, glaring through the cigarette smoke at each table in turn. A loudspeaker barked a message about changing at Cologne. 'Gone,' Crabbe was saying. 'Sod's flown.'
The smoke hung all around, lifting in the glow of the long tube lights, curling in to the darker corners. The smell was of beer and smoked ham and municipal disinfectant; the far counter, white with Dutch tiles, glinted like an ice wall in the fog. In a brown-wood cubicle sat a poor family on the move; the women were old and dressed in black, their suitcases were bound with rope; the men were reading Greek newspapers.
At a separate table a little girl rolled beermats to a drunk, and that was the table Crabbe was pointing at.
'Where the kiddie is, you see. He was having a Pils.'
Ignoring the drunk and the child, Turner picked up the glasses and stared at them uselessly. Three small cigar ends lay in the ashtray. One was still slightly smouldering. The child watched him as he stooped and searched the floor and rose again empty handed; she watched him stride from one table to the next, glaring in to the faces, seizing a shoulder, pushing down a newspaper, touching an arm.
'Is this him?' he yelled. A lonely priest was readingBildzeitung in a corner; beside him, hiding in his shadow, a darkfaced gypsy ate roast chestnuts out of a bag.
'No.'
'This?'
'Sorry, old boy,' said Crabbe, very nervous now. 'No luck. I say, go easy.'
By the stained-glass window two soldiers were playing chess. A bearded man was making the motions of eating, but there was no food before him. Outside on the platform a train was arriving, and the vibration shook the crockery. Crabbe was addressing the waitress. He was hanging over her, whispering, and his hand was on the flesh of her upper arm. She shook her head.
'We'll try the other one,' he said, as Turner joined them. They walked across the room together, and this woman nodded, proud to have remembered, and made a long story, pointing at the child and talking about 'der kleine Herr',the little gentleman, and sometimes just about 'der Kleine', as if 'gentleman' were a tribute to her interrogators rather than to Harting.
'He was here till a few minutes ago,' Crabbe said in some bewilderment. 'Her version, anyway.'
'Did he leave alone?'
'Didn't see.'
'Did he make any impression on her?'
'Steady. She's not a big thinker, old boy. Don't want her to fly away.'
'What made him leave? Did he see someone? Did someone signal to him from the door?'
'You're stretching it, old son. She didn't see him leave. She didn't worry about him, he paid with every order. As if he might leave in a hurry. Catch a train.
He went out to watch the hoo-hah, when the boys arrived, then came back and had another cigar and a drink.'
'What's the matter then? Why are you looking like that?'
'It's bloody odd,' Crabbe muttered, frowning absurdly. 'What's bloody odd?'
'He's been here all night. Alone. Drinking but not drunk. Played with the kid part of the time. Greek kid. That was what he liked best: the kid.' He gave the woman a coin and she thanked him laboriously.
'Just as well we missed him,' Crabbe declared. 'Pugnacious little sod when he gets like this. Go for anyone when he's got his dander up.'
'How do you know?'
Crabbe grimaced in painful reminiscence: 'You should have seen him that night in Cologne,' he muttered, still staring after the waitress. Jesus.'
'In the fight? You were there?'
'I tell you,' Crabbe repeated. He spoke from the heart. 'When that lad's really going, he's best avoided altogether. Look.' He held out his hand. A wooden button lay in the palm and it was identical to the buttons in the scratched tin in Königswinter.
' She picked this up from the table,' he said. 'She thought it might be something he needed. She was hanging on to it in case he came back, you see.'
Bradfield came slowly through the doorway. His face was taut but without expression.
'I gather he's not here.'
No one spoke. 'You still say you saw him?'
'No mistake, old boy. Sorry.'
'Well, I suppose we must believe you. I suggest we go back to the Embassy.' He glanced at Turner. 'Unless you prefer to stay. If you have some further theory to test.' He looked round the buffet. Every face was turned towards them. Behind the bar, a chrome machine was steaming unattended. Not a hand moved. 'You seem to have made your mark here anyway.' As they walked slowly back to the car, Bradfield said, 'You can come in to the Embassy to collect your possessions but you must be out by lunchtime. If you have any papers, leave them with Cork and we'll send them on by bag. There's a flight at seven. Take it. If you can't get a seat, take the train. But go.'
They waited while Bradfield spoke to the policemen and showed them his red card. His German sounded very English in tone but the grammar was faultless. The policeman nodded, saluted and they took their leave. Slowly they returned to the Embassy through the sullen faces of the aimless crowd.
'Extraordinary place for Leo to spend the night,' Crabbe muttered, but Turner was fingering the gunmetal key in the OHMS envelope in his pocket, and still wondering, for all his sense of failure, whose door it had unlocked.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Strain of Being a Pig He sat at the cypher room desk, still in his raincoat, packing together the useless trophies of his investigation: the army holster, the folded print, the engraved paper knife from Margaret Aickman; the blue-bound diary for counsellors and above, the little notebook for diplomatic discounts, and the scratched tin of five wooden buttons cut to size; and now the sixth button and the three stubs of cigar.
'Never mind,' said Cork kindly.
'He'll turn up.'
'Oh sure. Like the investments and the Caribbean dream. Leo's everybody's darling. Everybody's lost son, Leo is. We all love Leo, although he cut our throats.'
'Mind you, he couldn't half tell the tale.' He was sitting on the truckle bed in his shirt-sleeves, pulling on his outdoor shoes. He wore metal springs above the elbows and his shirt was like an advertisement on the Underground. There was no sound from the
corridor. 'That's what got you about him. Quiet, but a sod.'
A machine stammered and Cork frowned at it reprovingly. 'Blarney,' he continued. 'That's what he had. The magic. He could tell you any bloody tale and you believed it.'
He had put them in to a paper waste-bag. The label on the outside said 'SECRET. Only to be disposed of in the presence of two authorised witnesses.'
'I want this sealed and sent to Lumley,' he said, and Cork wrote out a receipt and signed it.
'I remember the first time I met him,' Cork said, in the cheerful voice which Turner associated with funeral breakfasts. 'I was green. I was really green. I'd
only been married six months. If I hadn't twigged him I'd have-'
'You'd have been taking his tips on investment. You'd have been lending him the code books for bedside reading.' He stapled the mouth of the bag, folding it against itself.
'Not the code books. Janet. He'd have been reading her in bed.' Cork smiled happily. 'Bloodyneck! You wouldn't credit it. Come on then. Lunch.'
For the last time Turner savagely clamped together the two arms of the stapler. 'Is de Lisle in?'
'Doubt it. London's sent a brief the size of your arm. All hands on deck. The dips are out in force.' He laughed. 'They ought to have a go with the old black flags. Lobby the deputies. Strenuous representations at all levels. Leave no stone unturned.
And they're going for another loan. I don't know where the Krauts get the stuff from sometimes. Know what Leo said to me once? "I tell you what, Bill, we'll score a big diplomatic victory. We'll go down to the Bundestag and offer them a million quid. Just you and me. I reckon they'd fall down in afaint." He was right, you know.'