‘Go tell that to Moscow.’
‘As far as they’re concerned you’re doing your job and doing it well. They’ve no axe to grind in your direction.’
‘But when this finally blows up they’re going to have to close down this whole system and I’ll be called back to Moscow.’
‘It might not all blow up,’ I said, not sounding terribly convincing. ‘And if it does, why should they want you back in Moscow. They’re going to need a new system; it’s bound to involve electronics — unless they plan to go back to the dark ages — and who better to set it up than you?’
‘Well, we’ll see.’ He didn’t sound happy. ‘They don’t like failure.’
‘There’s no failure on your part. This has all sprung from one of their own side defecting. There’s no evidence to suppose it’s a conspiracy.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said solemnly. He called the barman for his cheque. I asked for mine at the same time. We both pulled our wallets out; a large wadge of papers came out of his pocket with his; it went back into my pocket.
‘If I get recalled, you know,’ he said, ‘to Moscow, can I, er, come to England?’
‘Sure. I’ll fix that for you. No problem.’
He seemed relieved. I didn’t feel inclined to tell him that if this lot went wrong on me I wasn’t going to be capable of fixing anything; not even a nail to a piece of wood.
Karavenoff left the bar; I stayed on and had another drink; the bourbon tasted pleasant, the music wasn’t bad, and I didn’t have any other plans for the evening.
I read through the transcript when I got back to the Hotel Kilgour. Karavenoff hadn’t been exaggerating about it being a busy day. I wasn’t surprised that it had been busy; Moscow had been informed by the message that Karavenoff had sent off on my instructions that the facts about the entire airline communication system were about to be blown.
Livid communications had been hurled around the wires and a torrent of abuse was flung in the direction of the Pink Envelope, who was given the job of tracking down and halting the squealer before any damage could be done. It was clear from the messages that Unwin was not a Russian agent, which enabled me to tick one name off my list. What Karavenoff had said about my having earned a colour became apparent to me in a short exchange between G in Washington and the Pink Envelope.
G’s message was, ‘The Blue Bow is dead.’
The reply was, ‘Are you sure?’
I didn’t require a university degree to figure out who they were talking about.
24
The newspaper headline was loud and clear: Embassy suicide mystery. It didn’t mean much to me. A couple of blocks further down the street another headline sold a copy of the Washington Post to me: British Diplomat in Death Plunge.
I read the entire article motionless by the news stand. Sir Maurice Unwin had jumped to his death from his fifteenth-floor office window. He was happily married, with three children, had no financial worries and was a popular figure in Washington. The Post hadn’t yet discovered that he happened to be the US head of MI6; but they would. In time.
The article stated that no one could give any immediate reason for his suicide. I wasn’t surprised. Suicide didn’t come into it.
It was Saturday morning and I was walking down Houston towards my new office. I let myself in and again made a careful search of the whole building. It was eerily dead, unwanted, unwelcoming. Nobody had been there since yesterday and it was unlikely that anyone would come uninvited.
When I reached my own office suite I pressed the button for the elevator. I listened to it whine and bump its way up and then come to a halt at my floor with a definite clunk. Its metal door slid open unsteadily and in short jerking movements. I pressed the stop-watch start button on my watch, and stepped in, pushing the button for the ground floor. I rode the thing up and down a couple of dozen times, carefully recording the timing for each stage. The variations were to within a second on each run, which was fine.
Next I set to work on the brains of the machine, if brains was the right description for the frayed and battered box of wiring that carried the instructions from the various buttons inside the elevator to the various electric circuits and motors and switches that made it go to the fifth floor when button 5 was depressed and to the first floor when button 1 was depressed, and the such like.
Because of having to run up and down to the basement power switch to test every stage of my tricky operation, it took me much longer than I had expected, and it was not until late into the afternoon that I finished.
I went and sent an overnight cable to Fifeshire. I sent it to his home address in the country, reckoning he’d be back there by now. The cable would reach him about 8.00 or 9.00 in the morning, English time — it would put him on alert and he would know the significance immediately the deed was done. I worded the cable simply: ‘Check the elevator operator’s private bank account. You’ll know what I mean. If I have been right, place advertisement in Times personal column, Tuesday or Wednesday, saying: All forgiven, Charlie. If I have been wrong, place ad saying: Goodbye.’ I signed it ‘Sam Spade’.
Saturday night passed slowly. I was worried about the following day, very worried. If I was wrong not even all the power Fifeshire might be able to muster was going to be able to get me out of it, but I had made no real contingency plan: I was gambling everything on being right. Whilst bits of evidence had gathered with each day, I knew that the horrific gamble I was about to make was still mainly on my hunch and the odds were not too attractive.
I went over and over everything late into the night, pacing the hotel room until the facts blurred into an unfathomable mess inside my mind and I slept a fitful sleep. Rain lashed through the night and a howling wind shook the windows, and I had repeatedly to get out of bed and ram wedges of paper down the sides of the frames in an attempt to stop the rattling. I awoke finally at 7.00 feeling in need of a good night’s sleep.
I checked the room thoroughly to ensure there was nothing through which I could be traced. At least there were no fingerprints to worry about: I had worn either my fabric gloves or my surgical gloves all the time I had been in the room. I left the various wash things, and everything except what I needed today, in the room, although it was unlikely that I would be coming back.
It was bitterly cold outside; the rain had gone but the wind remained, gusting in great sweeps down the corridors formed by the skyscraper buildings. I had breakfast in a cafe then walked to the office. I unlocked the front door and left it unlocked. I switched on the power for the elevator then again made a thorough search of the building. Each time I walked through the rooms of that building they looked worse.
I sat down in my own suite; it was eleven o’clock. I took from my pocket the calculator I had been given by Trout and Trumbulclass="underline" it was an innocuous-looking thing and had emblazoned in gold lettering on the outside the model-name: Vatiplier. I also took from my pocket a large pink envelope, a black marker pen and a strip of blue ribbon. On the outside of the envelope I wrote with the pen the word Goodbye.
I was craving for a cigarette and realised I had forgotten to buy a new packet. I went over to the window and looked out. Bits of paper and other garbage swirled down the street. There was nothing else in sight, not a person nor a car; it was desolate.
Twelve o’clock finally came. I lifted the receiver and dialled the number of the call box: I hoped to hell it hadn’t been vandalised during the night. The number was answered before it even had a chance to ring.
‘Good morning, Digger,’ said a heavily disguised voice. There was no mistaking whose voice it was: Scatliffe’s. I gave him the directions, repeated them once, then hung up.