'Portugal? I thought they were on your side.'
'We had people everywhere. Allies have been known to change sides.'
'To our knowledge there have been no more deaths.'
'That you know of.'
'That we know of. What was the problem with your records that prompted you to suggest this meeting?'
Nowak told Sorge of the computer virus, of the electronic enemy within which was steadily wiping out their records. When he had finished, he leant back and watched the Russian who was playing noughts and crosses with his shoe toe in the snow. When he had beaten himself, and connected the line that joined the three crosses, he finally told Nowak of the fire in KGB Headquarters.
'Deeper and deeper,' commented Nowak when Sorge had finished.
'Someone has their tentacles in both our organisations.'
'Yeah. Who? Unless one of us is being set up. By our own people.'
'Or both of us.' Sorge shrugged, opened his briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers. He handed them to Nowak. The American took the bundle, opened his briefcase and repeated the exercise.
There was nothing else to say, they had known each other too long and both were aware when the other was telling the truth.
Ch. 31
Just after nine a.m., Billie watched Adam through the glass entrance doors of the hotel fitness centre. He was working out on the multi-gym, that modern torture chamber of pulleys, bars and stacked weights. He wore a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt, a towel wrapped round his neck to keep the heat in. He was on his back, tilted head down, on a padded board with his feet tucked under a bar above him. His hands were clasped behind his head and he pulled himself upright into a sitting position before lowering himself down again. It was a painful exercise, one she did herself on her short morning sojourn in the gym at home. She usually managed twenty before her stomach muscles demanded that she rest before attempting any more. She knew Gary did one hundred every morning and another hundred at night. He had told her how difficult the last twenty were, how painful the exercise.
She watched Adam effortlessly on the board, counted him to a hundred and nine pull-ups before he swung his legs off and sat cross-legged on the floor. He saw her as he wiped his face with the towel, grinned and beckoned her in.
'Don't you ever sleep?' she asked, when she had let herself in.
'Not a lot. Waste of time.'
'Didn't know you were a fitness freak? Quite Californian.'
'Very funny,' he said, standing up. 'Goes with the job. Usually, when I'm in the field, it's easy to stay fit. But here, with all this soft living, this is the only way. You going to have a go?'
'No. I just wanted to check you knew what was happening.'
'The boat ride.'
'Yes. It leaves at twelve.'
There was to be a meeting between the American and Soviet scientists later that afternoon, but Trimmler had insisted he wanted a trip on a Mississippi riverboat before that. The boat, the Creole Queen, left from the wharf next to the hotel and Tucker wanted Billie and Adam to accompany the Trimmlers. 'At a discreet distance,' he had instructed.
'I'll be in the lobby at eleven thirty. Do we need tickets?'
'I'll get those.'
'Come on. Go get changed and then jump on one of these machines. It'll do you good.'
'Okay,' she replied. 'See you in ten minutes.'
She left the exercise room. It would be fun exercising with someone else, Gary always took it so seriously. She was beginning to enjoy the Englishman's company. Maybe he wasn't as hard nosed and arrogant as he had first appeared. Then she remembered the bag by the side of the exercise room, remembered the weapons.
That was the difference between him and Gary. Gary worked at his exercises for self-achievement, for his own gratification. To Adam it was the difference between life and death.
And she, old collector and disseminator of information, was part of a real life and death struggle. The realisation suddenly hit her, she felt the excitement rush through her.
She really was in the field.
And of all things, it had been the Fitness Centre that had brought about that realisation. With Gary, exercise was something to do. With Adam it was for real.
She was a secret agent and she wanted to tell the world.
Twenty minutes later, as Adam watched her on the jogging machine, with her small breasts bouncing up and down under her tight T-shirt, he hoped she wouldn't be faced with what he knew could well happen. Violence was his estate. If it came, sudden and harsh as is its nature, he knew she couldn't cope.
What he didn't say, his real reason for coming down to the exercise room, was that he had sensed that instinct, that flash of the unexplainable, that warned him of danger. He needed his fitness, his agility, his strength.
He knew things were suddenly going to change.
He didn't try and define his feelings.
His instinct had held good in the past.
The road was about to become rocky.
Ch. 32
The Creole Queen is a paddle bashing, white painted, single smoke stacked, river boat.
It recalls days of Rhet Butler gamblers strolling the decks with a thin cigar clamped between their teeth, of smart suited men and elegantly frocked women on their way to the American dream, of little boys fishing on the banks of the Mississippi hearing the toot toot of the river boat as it rounded the bend, of cotton and steam, of the old captain up on his bridge sailing into the wilderness, of the Deep South, of Mark Twain, of all that made America great.
That's as it was. Today, the Creole Queen, and its sister ships that ply on the reminiscence trail, are a sham. Only half the size of the original river queens, they are designed purely for the tourist market.
Adam watched the Trimmlers walk down River Walk and up the gangplank onto the boat. He and Billie kept their distance.
Trimmler seemed nervous, anxiously looking round for something, yet not wanting to appear to be doing so. At one stage, as they were climbing the steps down to the restaurant gallery, he whispered conspiratorially into Trudi's ear, then seemed to point across where the other passengers were. Trudi glanced in the direction he indicated.
Adam looked to where he had pointed. There were a group of people there, a mixture of ages and sexes. They were nothing extraordinary, just tourists like the others on the boat.
Across the river a tug, pushing a line of five heavily laden barges, blew its horn, warning a small motorised pleasure craft going in the opposite direction to keep clear.
The sound, loud and nearby, attracted the attention of the tourists on the Creole Queen and they turned as one man to look at the tug train bearing down on the smaller boat. The pleasure craft, with six revelers on board, swung hard left and skirted the barges on their port side.
'Did you see that? That was close,' said Billie.
'Wasn't it?' he replied. But he had ignored the incident, kept his attention on Trimmler. The scientist had also chosen to disregard the near accident and had signalled, with a small wave of his hand, to one of the group on the opposite side of the deck. A distinguished, older man with a heavily lined face framed in a grey shock of wavy hair with his back to the railings, had nodded back, acknowledged Trimmler. The two men had held their gaze and Adam immediately sensed their closeness. Then the grey haired man smiled gently and turned away to watch the scene on the river. Trimmler suddenly took Trudi's arm and led her down the stairs to the restaurant. The man with the wavy grey hair moved along the railings to get a better view of the pleasure craft as it passed the tug train. He walked with a limp and he held a walking stick. He moved away from his group towards the rear of the Creole Queen.