Philip McCutchan
Moscow Coach
One
“Can’t have that,” Shaw said cheerfully, indicating the American girl’s empty brandy glass. His gray-blue eyes, eyes that even after so many years ashore still held more than a touch of the sea, smiled at her across the low table in the bar of West Berlin’s Hotel von Hindenburg, where the Moscow party was waiting to go through the check-point in the Wall next day. “Let me get you a refill?”
Virginia MacKinlay shook her head. “One’s plenty for me, I guess — and this place isn’t as cheap as the brochure made out it was.” Shaw liked her smile, and he liked her hair — and the way the light was glinting on it now… it was thick and dark, and styled in the Italian fashion, which happened to do things to Shaw. She added, “I’d sooner just sit and talk, if you won’t be bored to tears, that is?”
“I assure you I won’t be that!” He grinned, and ran a hand through his crisp, wavy brown hair — an unconscious gesture, but one which definitely appealed to women. He liked the look of her all right… but there was something just a shade phoney, perhaps, in the way this attractive young woman had buttoned herself on to him so quickly after the tour courier had introduced him as a new addition to the party. But then, if she’d been after information, she’d probably have encouraged him to go on the brandy. For his part, training was keeping a tight grip on his tongue; they sat and talked innocuously about one thing and another until a bell-hop came along and said there was a phone call for Miss MacKinlay.
Shaw’s gaze followed her appreciatively as she left the bar. She was really beautifully built — quite a model! His mouth curved downward in a bitter grimace. Women could be dangerous in his job — and not only because of the security risk involved. Thinking of women, his mind went back to Debonnair Delacroix. He’d done his best to forget her after leaving her in La Paz after the South American job had ended, and thanks to an inflexible will he’d succeeded reasonably well; but the jolt had hardened him and given him a touch — unusual for him — of cynicism…
He caught sight of his own reflection in a big wall-mirror, and grinned suddenly. He looked cynical today, all right! He thought again about the job he’d come to do. Maybe that cynicism was why he’d reacted with such uncharacteristic indifference when Treece had said, back in London, “Your orders, my dear fellow, are to kill Conroy… We shall approve any method you like to use.”
Any method you like… Shaw had always disliked the killing, no matter how long he’d been in the game: he disliked it still — but he was losing his squeamishness. Men had to live, so the Conroys of this world had to die. That was all there was to it.
Conroy had to be killed, but it was a case of “first find your Conroy…” Simple? Shaw sighed, and wondered who of all the mixed bunch that made up the Moscow party would turn out to be the Conroy of whom the thin man had spoken.
Not simple! Nothing in this life ever was.
This job had started a couple of evenings earlier.
Esmonde Shaw had been in the Strangers’ Gallery of the House of Commons, listening to an emotional motion of censure on the Government because of its handling of a security leak. The Opposition had played a good hand skillfully, and the atmosphere had been tense and bitter. Shaw, who had attended unofficially but nevertheless for professional reasons, hadn’t waited for the vote to be taken — it was a foregone conclusion anyway; the Government Whips could always be relied upon to ensure the defeat of censure motions. Shaw had walked out into Parliament Square and along Whitehall, sniffing the late evening cool, feeling profoundly disturbed at the way the security services must appear to the public to be constantly falling down on their jobs. It wasn’t so, of course; but one could never hope to persuade the arm-chair experts that no security set-up in this world could cope with what was going on these days. The petty traitors, the small men who wanted to live beyond their means, the bigger ones who were in debt and saw a lucrative way out, the queers, the drunks, the dope addicts, the fellow-travelers… they existed in such profusion now, and at so many levels, that if one demanded one hundred per cent security one needed an undercover-man in every office in the land where matters of State were handled.
It was while he was in this mood that the blonde girl had made contact.
Shaw had felt someone brush alongside him; and he’d looked round and seen a girl of no more than twenty-three or — four, well dressed, and wearing dark glasses even though daylight had gone. She was just an ordinary, nice-looking girl, and he’d been vastly surprised when he felt her hand lightly touch his arm and heard her say conversationally, “You’ve just come from the House, Commander Shaw, haven’t you? I know, because I followed you.” He looked down at her, considerably shaken.
“I don’t know you,” he said. “How in hell d’you know my name?”
“Never mind that,” she answered coolly and crisply, almost running as she tried to keep pace with his long strides. “Anyway, I only hope you enjoyed all you heard.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, slightly amused by her manner. Then he added, “I take it you were there too?”
She nodded. “There’s something you might care to follow up — if you don’t want to have a whole lot more dirty linen washed in public.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said determinedly. She gave a quick glance round. “Do you know a place called the Fig Leaf? I don’t suppose you do, but—” He laughed; he couldn’t help it. “I imagine this is some kind of joke? Dirty washing — the Fig Leaf. I’ve an idea I do see some sort of connection, but I fail to—”
“There is,” she said swiftly, looking up into his face, studying the crinkled lines of merriment round the eyes. “But not what you think. The Fig Leafs a cafe, a dive really, in the Tottenham Court Road. On the left going up from the Underground. About a couple of hundred yards. I suggest you go along there now.” She paused, still watching his face. “Interested?”
“I don’t know yet. Tell me more.”
She said, “There’ll be a man there reading the Evening Standard. He’ll know you. He’ll be wearing a dark suit and he has a mole on his left cheek, just under the eye. He’s very thin, and tall. You’ll sit down near him and blow your nose twice. That’ll tell him you’ve seen me.”
“Will it indeed?” Shaw raised an eyebrow indulgently. “And then?”
“The rest is up to him. He’ll tell you something.”
“About what?”
“That,” the girl said tartly, “isn’t my business. I don’t know and I never ask questions of that sort. Look after yourself, won’t you?”
She was gone.
She simply slid away behind him and he caught a glimpse of a blonde head moving through the following crowd, and then going down a side street that led to the Embankment. There was something about her which, to Shaw’s trained mind, said newspaper-woman. She could have been in the Press Gallery — he hadn’t seen her in the Strangers, anyway. It would be pointless to try to tail her. If he wanted to pursue this thing, there was a man in a dark suit waiting in the Fig Leaf.
He shrugged. If he wanted to…
Shaw, knowing quite well that he had no choice in any case, decided he did want to. He’d had similar tip-offs and encounters before — many, many times before. Nine out of ten were just so much time wasted. But there was always the tenth; and his bosses on the Defence Intelligence Staff expected him to keep his nose to the ground so as to earn his salary in between active assignments.