He could yell, he could scream, but it wouldn't be her hand that reached out to save him. Lying alone in the darkness, in the quiet of Bevin Close, she wondered what, who, could drown him.
'You all right, Polly?'
'Fine, I'm OK, just fine.' She did not look up. She was bent over her desk and light cascaded down in a cone from the lamp and fell on the cheap little notepad with the wire coil binding it.
'The photographs have gone, and your prelim report. Well received. So it bloody well ought to have been. Can't the rest wait till the morning? If not, can I get you a sandwich, some coffee?'
The girls in the office, long gone home, had told her often enough that she allowed Justin Braithwaite, station chief (Prague), to load work on her as if she were a pack-mule. Because she did not confide, entertain them with the soap-opera of her life, they knew so little. After being dumped by email from Buenos Aires, work kept Polly Wilkins sane… She realized her rudeness.
'Sorry. I'm grateful you called by Nothing, thanks. I want to go on hitting it.'
'Just checking. Freddie's at the other end of the line, sleeping in. You can handle it?'
'I can handle it.' A yawn creased her face and she giggled. 'I'll pack in when it's done.'
'Goodnight, Polly.'
He was gone, closing her door softly behind him.
She glanced at her watch, and grimaced. Hadn't realized it was deep in the small hours, that the embassy had emptied and the city slept. She heard him move away through the outer office and there was the bang of the grille gate closing on the rooms used by what Consular, Trade and Political called the 'dirty raincoat crowd'. At first, responding to the email, she had joined everything. Within a week she had signed up to art-appreciation courses, walking weekends and clay-court tennis lessons. Within two weeks, nursing a bruised brain, blisters and elbow ache, she had gone into Justin Braithwaite's office, spilled out the story of her broken relationship, had brushed away his offered sympathy and pleaded for work. Work was salvation.
What she respected most about her station chief, he had not offered a homily on the effect of tiredness on the quality of performance; nor would he take personal credit for what she had achieved inside the smashed, ineptly searched cafe. How many in
London, among those who had savaged the desk, would not have claimed a medal and citation for what she had found? Precious bloody few. It was an old work technique. After dumping the passports with the blown-up photographs on Justin Braithwaite's desk, and after writing up her report for encoding and dispatch and leaving it with him, she had gone on a search of every cupboard, drawer and storage box in their offices and in the secure section of the basement they used. She had been among old cobwebs, spiders' territory, and had finally retrieved the graphite powder.
The notebook, of course, should have gone in a pouch to London. A courier should have been sent pell-mell from Heathrow to collect it, bag it, chain it to his wrist, and fly it back for the boffins to handle.
Not Polly Wilkins's way.
Freddie Gaunt would back her and Justin
Braithwaite had not overruled her.
If she had not been hurt the way she had, belted, bounced off the walls like she was a rag doll, she would not have had that streak: bloody-minded awkwardness, her signature. She yawned again and felt the ache in her shoulders. A maxim of the Service was
'Find, fix, strike, exploit'. She thought, if she could stay awake, she would have the means to exploit.
The technique, using graphite powder – fine and black – was what they taught at the Fort down on the south coast. Recruits on the induction course, computer literate, grinned and patronized the instructor when he lectured on the use of graphite powder and told stories of how it had been used by old men, long retired, from the Service or the Soviet enemy or the east Germans. She had a double page of the Prague Post spread across her desk. On it was the first blank page of the notebook, where top sheets had been torn out. Difficult for her, in exhaustion, to keep her hands steady, but she lifted the sachet of powder and tilted its neck, then let the grains cascade down. God, what a bloody mess.
She lifted the open notebook, hands shaking, shook it and let the powder run on the page, up, down and across. Then she spilled the mess on to the newspaper.
She saw the writing, could make out the faint outline of the digits.
She copied what she read in a wavering hand.
A man had died that another might be given time to flee. A man was tortured and stayed silent that another's flight might be hidden. She saw them both: charred skull, bruised and bloodied features. She had respect for them… She would undo them, make the death and pain wasted. That was her work, done better because of respect.
Polly studied the numbers, then her mind glazed and the sheet of newspaper careered up at her, and the powder was in her nose, eyes and mouth. She slept at the desk and the graphite – a weapon of the long-past war – smeared her cheeks.
A hand shook his shoulder.
Gaunt woke, startled. His arm was thrown out from the blanket and scalding tea slopped on to his chest.
His eyes opened.
Over him, trying to steady the mug, was Gloria.
'Apologies if I frightened you, Mr Gaunt.'
'God… what time is it?'
'Two minutes after six o'clock, Mr Gaunt.'
She was always so precise, what made her so valued.
He reached up, took the tea from her and gulped.
Now that he was awake, she switched on the light.
Its brightness bathed him. He had slept only in his singlet and pants. She gazed at him with rather frank interest. He couldn't see why. He was skeletally thin, his facial features were drawn tight over his bones and his legs and arms were like fencing posts, but his shoulders were strong. Perhaps her interest in his white body, on which the sun was never permitted to shine, came from the absence of a man in her life. He would not have cared to list in priority the three features of her existence. Gloria, as he knew it, had her job, her self-appointed role of caring for Frederick Gaunt, and a spaniel, with the name C hung on a disc from its collar. Gaunt might come first or last, and did not ask. The tea cleansed his mind.
He shivered. New regulations demanded money be saved – of course it should be: without money saved there would not be the resources to pay for bloody pamphlets on glossy paper, The goddam Secret Intelligence Service in 2010 – the central heating came on at seven, no longer at five. He held his spindly arms across his chest, not for modesty but for warmth.
'What's in?'
'Wilco's signal and her passports. Nothing after that.' Then the stern schoolma'am reminder:
'Everybody has to sleep, Mr Gaunt – not just you.'
He drank the last of the tea, then waved the mug towards his desk. 'I think I'd like those pictures up so as we get under the blighter's skin.'
Off the bed. He padded to the door, retrieved his suit trousers from the hanger and slipped into them.
From his desk cupboard he took clean socks, an ironed and folded shirt, a towel and his washbag.
Gloria, the blessed woman, always made sure he had a change of clothes. He collapsed the bed, the blanket inside it, and took it to the little annexe off the office.
Then he was off, his waistcoat, jacket and tie on his arm, shoes in his hand, to wash, shave and ready himself for the day with a cooked breakfast in the canteen far below.
He saw the river traffic from the window and behind the capital city's waterway were the great buildings of prestige and government – any of them could be a target if the co-ordinator came this way.
From the door Gaunt glanced back. She had already Sellotaped the blown-up picture – A3 size – from the Argentina passport to the wall and was tearing off strips to fasten up the photograph lifted from the Canada passport. Strictly forbidden to cover office walls with posters and images – interfered with the master plan of the contract interior designer. The faces, one bearded and one clean-shaven with heavy-framed spectacles, stared back at him, seeming to threaten him. Again, Gaunt shivered, but not with cold.