He had written what he wanted to write and she had apparently said what she wanted to say, because she was standing up and peering into a stack of pamphlets on a bookshelf, looking for some background reading she could give him as a prelude to getting him out of her office in time for her ten o'clock conference. While she hunted she talked distractedly about the German Federal Drug Agency and declared it to be a paper tiger. And the World Health Organization gets its money from America, she added with disdain — which means it favors big corporations, reveres profit and doesn't like radical decisions.
"Go to any WHO assembly — what do you see?" she asked rhetorically, handing him a bunch of pamphlets. "Lobbyists. PR people from the big pharmas. Dozens of them. From one big pharma, maybe three or four. "Come to lunch. Come to our weekend get-together. Have you read this wonderful paper by Professor So-and So?"' And the Third World is not sophisticated. They have no money, they are not experienced. With diplomatic language and maneuvering, the lobbyists can get behind them easy."
She had stopped speaking and was frowning at him. Justin was holding up his open notebook for her to read. He was holding it close to his face so that she could see his expression while she read his message; and his expression, he hoped, was quelling and reassuring at the same time. In support of it he had extended the forefinger of his free left hand by way of warning.
I AM TESSA QUAYLE'S HUSBAND AND I DO NOT TRUST THESE WALLS. CAN YOU MEET ME THIS EVENING AT FIVE-THIRTY IN FRONT OF THE OLD FORT?
She read the message, she looked past his raised finger at his eyes and kept looking at them while he filled the silence with the first thing that came into his head.
"So are you saying that what we need is some kind of independent world body that has the power to override these companies?" he demanded, with unintentional aggression. "Cut down their influence?"
"Yes," she replied, perfectly calmly. "I think that would be an excellent idea."
He walked past the woman in the rollneck and gave her the kind of cheery wave he thought appropriate to a journalist. "All done," he assured her. "Just off. Thank you for your cooperation" — so there's no need to telephone the police and tell them you have an impostor on the premises.
He tiptoed through the classroom and tried once more to woo a smile from the harassed teacher. "For the last time," he promised her. But the only people who smiled were the kids.
In the street the two old men in raincoats and black hats were still waiting for the funeral. At the curbside two stern young women sat in an Audi saloon, studying a map.
He returned to his hotel and on a whim inquired at the desk whether he had mail. No mail. Reaching his room, he tore the offending page from his notebook, then the page beneath it because the imprint had come through. He burned them in the hand basin and put on the extractor to get rid of the smoke. He lay on his bed wondering what spies did to kill time. He dozed and was woken by his phone. He lifted the receiver and remembered to say, "Atkinson." It was the housekeeper, "checking," she said. Excuse her, please. Checking what, for God's sake? But spies don't ask those questions aloud. They don't make themselves conspicuous. Spies lie on white beds in gray towns and wait.
* * *
Bielefeld's old fort stood on a high green mound overlooking cloud-laden hills. Car parks, picnic benches and municipal gardens were laid out among the ivy-covered ramparts. In warmer months it was a favored spot for the townspeople to perambulate down tree-lined avenues, admire the regiments of flowers and eat beery lunches in the Huntsman's Restaurant. But in the gray months the place had the air of a deserted playground in the clouds, which was how it looked to Justin this evening as he paid off his taxi and, early by twenty minutes, made what he hoped was a casual reconnaissance of his chosen rendezvous. The empty car parks, sculpted into the battlements, were pitted with rainwater. From sodden lawns, rusted signs warned him to control his dog. On a bench beneath the battlements, two veterans in scarves and overcoats sat bolt upright, observing him. Were they the same two old men who had worn black homburg hats this morning while they waited for the funeral? Why do they stare at me like this? Am I Jewish? Am I a Pole? How long before your Germany becomes just another boring European country?
One road only led to the fort and he strolled along it, keeping at the crown in order to avoid the trenches of fallen leaves. When she arrives I'll wait till she parks before I speak to her, he decided. Cars too have ears. But Birgit's car had no ears because it was a bicycle. At first sight she resembled some kind of ghostly horsewoman, urging her reluctant steed over the brow of the hill while her plastic cape filled behind her. Her fluorescent harness resembled a Crusader's cross. Slowly the apparition became flesh, and she was neither a winged seraph nor a breathless messenger from the battle, but a young mother in a cape riding a bicycle. And from the cape protruded not one head but two, the second belonging to her jolly blond son, strapped into a child's pillion seat behind her — and measuring, to Justin's inexpert eye, about eighteen months on the Richter scale.
And the sight of them both was so entirely pleasant to him, and so incongruous, and appealing, that for the first time since Tessa's death he broke out in real, rich, unrestrained laughter.
"But at such short notice, how should I get a baby-sitter?" Birgit demanded, offended by his mirth.
"You shouldn't, you shouldn't! It doesn't matter, it's wonderful. What's his name?"
"Carl. What's yours?"
Carl sends his love… The elephant mobile you sent Carl drives him completely crazy… I hope very much your baby will be as beautiful as Carl.
He showed her his Quayle passport. She examined it, name, age, photograph, shooting frank looks at him between.
"You told her she was waghalsig," he said, and watched her frown become a smile as she hauled off her cape and wound it up and gave him the bike to hold so that she could unbuckle Carl from his seat. And having released Carl and set him on the road, she unstrapped a saddlebag and turned her back to Justin so that he could load up the backpack she was wearing: Carl's bottle, a packet of Knackebrot, spare nappies and two ham and cheese baguettes wrapped in greaseproof paper.
"You have eaten today, Justin?"
"Not much."
"S. We can eat. Then we shall not be so nervous. Carlchen, du machst das bitte nicht. We can walk. Carl will walk forever."
Nervous? Who's nervous? Affecting to undertake a study of the menacing rain clouds, Justin swung himself slowly round on his heel, head in air. They were still there, two old sentries sitting to attention.
* * *
"I don't know how much stuff actually went missing," Justin complained, when he had told her the story of Tessa's laptop. "I had the impression there was a lot more correspondence between the two of you that she hadn't printed out."
"You did not read about Emrich?"
"That she had emigrated to Canada. But she was still working for KVH."
"You do not know what her position is now — her problem?"