“Who cares? There isn’t a Sevastopol,” Quinlan said. He was hungry. “Not much of a Crimea, either. Are we through?” They got up and went out. Silk stayed.
“How is the cello coming along?” Skull asked.
“You’re full of shit. Sevastopol has no cathedral.” Silk sat slumped in his chair. It had been a long day. “Neither does Tartu. Remember that? Tartu was our Blue Steel target the day we got bounced by the Swedes. You said it had a cathedral. That was all balls. It’s got a big university, one of the oldest in Europe. You never mentioned that. Why not? Are you so queer for cathedrals that you’ve got to invent them?”
“It’s a game, Silko. We’ve been playing it since long before you arrived.” Skull was sorting his paperwork. “The chaps identify Russia with cathedrals. You know: onion domes. So I give them cathedrals. Nobody takes it seriously. You’ve been reading books, haven’t you?” Silk nodded. “A great mistake,” Skull said. “We always discouraged it at Cambridge.”
“Tartu is in Estonia.”
“It is.”
“Conquered by Russia.”
“Occupied, technically.”
“And we’re going to wipe out Tartu, and half Estonia with it, in the defence of freedom.”
Skull dumped his files in a briefcase. “Now you’re beginning to sound like Zoë.”
“Haven’t seen her for weeks. I can look at a map without Zoë’s help. One of our targets is Murmansk East. That’s seventy miles from the Norwegian border.”
“And you want to know how the Norwegians feel about getting doused in radiation clouds when you H-bomb Murmansk East. Beats me. Ask the reindeer. Nothing else lives up there except two hairy trolls, manners none and habits vile.”
“It’s all a joke to you.”
“Far from it. I know –”
“No you don’t. You haven’t a clue what our job is like. No penguin has the right to tell us what to do.”
“I flew on ops, in ’43. We bombed Essen. In a Wellington.”
“And when you landed you couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, they tossed you into a blood wagon and you were in Sick Quarters for a week.”
Skull took out a large handkerchief and polished his glasses. “It was a very hazardous raid. The flak…”
“Bugger the flak. You wouldn’t last ten minutes over Russia.” When Skull held his glasses up to the light, Silk said. “You’re scared. You’re bloody terrified. A fiver says you can’t stand the thought of a simulated op, never mind a real one.”
Skull breathed deeply and stood tall. 409 was a very small club. If he backed out now, soon everyone would know. It was only a simulator, a giant toy. “I’ll do it if you will,” he said.
Silk stood. “What you puke, you clean up,” he said.
His years in the RAF warned Silk that he had gone too far: flight lieutenants don’t make bets with wing commanders, not when it involves using expensive simulators. He went looking for Quinlan, told him what had happened, asked for his help. Quinlan was amused. “Forget the money,” he said. “Call it training. Skull’s idea. I’ll clear it with the CO. The rest is up to you. What you break, you pay for.”
Silk tried to book time on the simulator, and failed. Other crews were ahead of him. He added his name to the list.
Next day Silk attended a couple of lectures on Soviet Air Defence, played squash, spent an hour in the Ops Block going over target routes, got bored and drove to The Grange.
“Her ladyship is in the Music Room, sir,” Stevens said. He lifted the cello case from the Citroën. “And Mr Davis is in the mortuary.” Silk stared. “Mr Davis the bookmaker, sir. It seems he just slipped away.”
“Tough luck.”
“Mr Hallett might think otherwise.”
Silk saw a small scratch on the side of the car, and rubbed it with his sleeve. Did no good. “I was having a not-bad day until I met you,” he said. “What’s your game, Stevens? Blackmail? Forget it. You make more money than I do.”
“I merely sought to put your mind at rest.”
“You failed. Stick to polishing the spoons, do me a favour, stay out of my life.”
“Ah, life.” They went inside. “What is life? The poet Longfellow spoke well, did he not? Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not the goal…”
“You’re pulling my pisser again,” Silk said.
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the
soul… It must have taken courage, don’t you think, to rhyme earnest with returnest?!
“Move your ass, Stevens.”
“If pressed, I would rate Auden higher. The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews, he wrote. Is that your experience, sir?”
“You’re a smooth sod, aren’t you?”
“And you are as curly as a corkscrew.”
They stopped and looked at each other, Silk stiff with rage, Stevens calm, one foot on a stair, nicely balanced. “If you weren’t carrying that Cabrilloni,” Silk said, “I’d smash your face in.”
“Further evidence, if such were needed, of your appetite for violence, sir.”
Stalemate. Silk strode ahead. The Music Room doors were open and someone was at the piano, playing tidy, unhurried jazz. Variations on Duke Ellington tunes, perhaps. Or maybe Hymns Ancient and Modern played backwards. Silk didn’t know or care.
Zoë was leaning against the piano. She wore a blue sleeveless dress. He remembered the time when she had got out of that dress faster than he could unbutton his shirt. Long, long ago. Last year, at least. The pianist saw him, stopped playing, stood up. Before the man spoke, Silk knew he was American: the crewcut, the clothes, the loafers with tassles: ads in The New Yorker magazine were full of men like him, over thirty under forty, white, fit and not poor.
“Silko!” she said. “What a nice surprise. Meet Ray Glover, covering Europe for the L.A. Times. This is Silko Silk, devastating Eastern Europe for… I don’t know who for. Not me, anyway.”
They shook hands. “I lived in L.A. once,” Silk said. “With Ginger Rogers. Nice girl.”
“Hell of a dancer.”
“Yes. We didn’t dance.”
“Too bad. A missed opportunity.”
“Well, it wasn’t so straightforward.” He thought of describing the red body rash and knew at once it would be a mistake. He glanced at Zoë. What was this suave West Coast johnny doing here? Christ, that blue dress would fall off in a blink. “Looking well, dear,” he said.
“You’re a musician?” Glover said. “Why don’t we play something?” He waved a hand at the cello case.
Silk looked. Bloody Stevens had dumped it in full view and gone. “I’m hopeless,” he said. “Just a beginner.”
“You can play something, Silko,” Zoë said. “He’s had dozens of lessons,” she told Glover.
“You’d hate it. I just make… you know… noise.”
“Play anything,” Glover said. “Simple nursery rhyme, for instance. Can you play Three Blind Mice?” He sang the tune: dah-dah-dah, dah-dahdy-dah. Zoë joined in. “You do that,” he said, “and I’ll fool around on the piano.”
Silk felt hot. Maybe the rash was coming back. “Honestly, I don’t know any tunes,” he said.
“No tunes?” Zoë said. “What has Tess been teaching you?”
“Technique. We practise technique.” That sounds bad, Silk thought. He played an imaginary bow on an imaginary cello. “Hours of technique.”
“Play a middle C,” Glover suggested. “One note. I’ll do the rest.”
Silk clenched his teeth. He made a feeble gesture at the cello case. “It’s…” He shook his head. “The thing is…”