Donna whispered.
“Ten minutes at the most. Judy’ll pull a curtain to when he’s got his kit off. Now, are you sure you know how to work it?”
“It’s just a camera like any other, Donna.”
“Georgie-we only got one chance.”
“Yes. I know how to work it.”
When the curtain moved, George tiptoed up the stairs, imagining Boris doing the same thing all those months ago as he prepared to spring the honey trap.
At the bedroom door he could hear the baritone rumble of HG’s drunken sweet nothings.
“S’wonderful. S’bloody amazing. Tits. Marvelous things. If I had tits… bloody hell… I’d play with them all day.”
Then kick, flash, bang, wallop… and HG was sprawled where he had been, and George was uttering Boris’s lines in the best Russian accent he could muster.
“You have ten minutes, Colonel Horsfield. You fail to meet me in the Penguin Café in Kingly Street, this goes to your wife.”
He was impressed by his own timing. The Polariod shot out of the bottom of the camera just as he said “wife.”
HG was staring at him glassy-eyed. Judy grabbed her clothes and ran past him hell-for-leather. Still, HG stared. Perhaps he was too drunk to understand what was happening.
“You have ten minutes, Colonel. Penguin Café, Kingly Street. Das vidanye.”
He’d no idea why he’d thrown in the “das vidanye”-perhaps a desperate urge to sound more Russian.
HG said, “I’ll be there… you commie fucking bastard. I’ll be there.”
Much to George’s alarm, he got up from the bed, seemingly less drunk, bollock-naked, stiff cock swaying in its frenchie, and came toward him.
George fled. It was what Donna had told him to do.
Down in the street, George arrived just in time to see Judy pulling on her stilettos and heading off toward Beak Street. Donna took the Polaroid from him, waved it in the air, and looked for the image.
“Gottim,” she said.
George looked at his watch. Didn’t dare to raise his voice much above a whisper.
“I must hurry. I have to meet Boris.”
“No. No, you don’t. You leave Boris to me.”
This wasn’t part of the plan. This had never been mentioned.
“What?”
“Go back to the party.”
“I don’t
“Find your mates. They must be in a club somewhere near. You know the pattern: booze, booze, strippers. Find ‘em. Ditch the wig. Ditch the camera. Go back and make yourself seen.”
She kissed him.
“And don’t go down Berwick Street.”
Donna stood awhile on the next corner, watched as HG emerged and saw him rumble off in the direction of Kingly Street. Then she went the other way, toward Berwick Street, and stood behind one of the market stalls that were scattered along the right-hand side.
She could see Boris. He was reading a newspaper, letting his coffee go cold and occasionally glancing at his watch. He was almost taking George’s arrival for granted, but not quite.
She was reassured when he finally gave up and stood a moment on the pavement outside the caff, looking up at the stars and muttering something Russian. Really, he wasn’t any taller than George, just a bit bigger in the chest and shoulders. What with the wig and flashbulb going off, all HG was likely to say was “some big bugger, sort of darkish, in a dark suit, didn’t really get a good look I’m afraid.”
That was old Boris, a big, dark bugger in a dark suit.
Her only worry was that if Boris flagged a cab and there wasn’t one close behind, she’d lose him. But it was a warm summer evening: Boris had decided to walk. He set off westward, in the direction of the Soviet embassy. Perhaps he needed to think. Was he going to shop George for one no-show or was he going to roll with it, string it and George out in the hope of keeping the stream of information flowing?
Boris crossed Regent Street into Mayfair and headed south toward Piccadilly He seemed to be in no hurry and paid no attention to cabs or buses. Indeed, he seemed to pay no attention to anything, as though he was deep in thought.
She matched her pace to his, trying to stay in shadow, but Boris never looked back. In Shepherd Market he turned into one of those tiny alleys that dot the northern side of Piccadilly, and she quickened her step to get to the corner.
The light vanished. A hand grabbed her by the jacket and pulled her into the alley. The other hand pulled off her wig, and Boris’s voice said, “Don’t take me for a fockin’ fool. Horsfield doesn’t show and then you appear in a silly wig, trailing after me like a third-rate gumshoe. What the fock are you playing at?”
It was better than she’d dared hope for. She’d been foxed all along to work out how to get him alone, this close, in a dark alley. And now he’d done it for her.
She pressed her gun to his heart and shot him dead.
Then she leaned down, tucked the Polaroid into his inside pocket, put her wig back on, walked down to Piccadilly and caught a number 38 bus home.
The first George heard was from Daft Elsie, pushing her trolley round just after eleven the next morning.
“Can’t get on the fourth floor. Buggers won’t let me. Some sort of argy-bargy going on. I askyer. Spooks and spies. Gotta be a load of old bollocks, ain’t it?”
“Two sugars, please,” said George.
“And I got these ‘ere jam don’uts special for that Colonel ‘Orsepiddle. ‘Ere, love, you have one.”
“So,” he tried to sound casual, “it all revolves around the good colonel, does it?”
“Let’s put it this way, love. ‘E’s doin’ a lot of shoutin’. An’ it’s not as if he whispers at the best of times.”
So-HG wasn’t so much blowing the whistle as shouting the odds.
After lunch Ted dropped in, dropped the latest, not-yet-late-final-but-almost edition of the London Evening Standard onto his desk.
George pulled it toward him.
Soviet Embassy Attaché Shot Dead in Mayfair.
George said nothing.
Ted said, “Could be an interesting few weeks. Russkies play hell. Possibly bump off one of ours. A few expulsions, followed by retaliatory expulsions.… God I’d hate to be in Moscow right now.”
“What makes you think we did it? I mean, do we shoot foreign agents in the street?”
“Not as a rule. But boldness was our friend. I gather from a mate at Scotland Yard that they’re clueless. No one saw or heard a damn thing. Anyway… change the subject… what was up with you last night? Throwing up in the bogs for an hour. Not like you, old son.”
“Change it back-does this have anything to do with the hoo-ha going on on the fourth floor?”
“Well, let me put it this way. Be a striking bloody coincidence if it didn’t.”
It became received wisdom in the office that the Russians had tried to set up HG and that he would have none of it. Less received, but much bandied, was the theory that rather than keep the meeting with the man attempting blackmail, HG had simply rung MI5, who had bumped off the unfortunate Russki on his way across Mayfair. That one Boris Alexandrovich Bulganov was found dead within a few yards of MI5 HQ in Curzon
Street added to veracity, as did a rumor that he’d had a photograph of HG in bed with a prozzie in his pocket. Some wag pinned a notice to the canteen message board offering ten pounds for a copy but found no takers.
Ted was profound upon the matter, “Always knew he’d end up in trouble if he let his dick do the thinking for him.”
It became, almost at once, a diplomatic incident. Nothing on the scale of Profumo or the U2 spy plane, but the Russians accused the British of assassinating Boris, whom they described as a “cultural attaché.” The British accused the Russians of attempting to blackmail HG Horsfield, whose name never graced the newspapers-merely “unnamed high-ranking British officer”-and George could only conclude that neither one had put the dates together and worked out that they had been blackmailing an HG Horsfield for some time, but not the HG Horsfield. If they’d swapped information, George would have been sunk. But, of course, they’d never do that.