But Elizabeth was remembering other things—the penny-pinching on the laundry, and the unpaid secretarial work.
And what had nearly happened to her—
She sat up straighter in bed. "Why did he tell that story about the Vengeful?"
"Maybe he didn't." Paul shook his head. "Maybe he just talked about the Vengeful research to Lippy, and Lippy spun the yarn on his own initiative."
"Why should he do that?"
"Well . . . Del Andrew thinks Ray Tuck's eyes—and ears—
were bigger than his stomach. He could have heard something, or seen something—Lippy was getting sicker, so Ray Tuck was doing more of the leg-work around his place, and he could have heard something one day . . . And as Lippy didn't trust him he wouldn't have wanted him to believe that the Captain was sitting right on top of a lot of loot here in England... there in England—he made up this yarn about treasure to put him off the scent."
Elizabeth almost smiled through her heart-ache: it was strange to hear Del Andrew speaking out of Paul's mouth, word for word.
"Don't go, Paul!" She had tried to throw her bonnet over the windmill, only to have it blown back into her face. But now she was desperately awake—and even more desperately dummy3
lonely. "Sit down, please— please!"
He sat down unwillingly. "What can I do for you?"
What indeed! The rich woman had to think—and that was another lesson, to be learnt as she went along.
"You said . . . Danny Kahn doesn't matter—?"
"Oh. . . Del Andrew will get Danny Kahn—don't you worry about him!"
"So what does matter?" Desperation honed up her wits to a razor edge. "What—what on earth was there on board the Vengeful, that Colonel Suchet wanted so badly?"
For a moment he didn't reply—he was staring fixedly at the low frills on Madame Hortense's nightie. Then he shook his head and concentrated on her.
"Ah . . . well, that may not prove such an overwhelming mystery, Bertrand thinks—he was the first one I phoned after dinner." He smiled at her a little ruefully. "Contacts again, Elizabeth: it seems that Bertrand put his friend's colleague on his mettle—the one who knows all about Napoleon's times. Experts like demonstrating their expertise, I know the feeling all too well, it's quite irresistible . . . Apart from which, Bertrand shrewdly suspects, the mysterious Colonel Suchet sounds interesting in his own right— and I know that feeling, too."
But if he knew it he wasn't demonstrating it now, as he had done at Coucy le Château, Elizabeth observed: if anything, he looked tired and rather worried, and somehow younger dummy3
because of that, not older.
"The long and short of which is that we have a name and an address in Paris—and an appointment for 11 o'clock: Professor Louis Belperron, of the Sorbonne, editor of the Annales historiques de l'Empire, and author of books too numerous to mention—not to add innumerable contributions to the Revue des études napoleoniénnes, and so on and so forth.''
"Paul, that's wonderful—" Only his lugubrious expression cautioned her. "—isn't it?"
"Yes. It's wonderful." Whatever it was, said his face, it wasn't wonderful.
"Then . . . what's the matter?"
"The matter, Elizabeth ... is that I spoke to David Audley last of all, after Bertrand and Del Andrew . . . that's the matter."
Elizabeth frowned. "But why . . . ? Doesn't he want us to see ... Professor Belperron?" A spark of anger kindled suddenly on Paul's behalf. "Isn't he pleased with you—with us?"
"Pleased? No, he's not pleased—he's bloody delighted!! He's so damn pleased he's busy galvanising his Professor Wilder on the Vengeful back in England . . . and probably half the research section as well, for all I know." He drew a deep breath. "He's so pleased that I've got to send Aske to Charles de Gaulle Airport tomorrow afternoon to collect him, so he can tell us in person how pleased he is ... among other dummy3
things."
"He's coming to France?"
"And then we're all going on a jaunt to Lautenbourg—'Tell Aske to book rooms in a Michelin-recommended hotel—
somewhere where the food's good' . . . sweet Jesus Christ!
Where the food's good!"
In any other circumstances the prospect of actually visiting the scene of the great escape would have overjoyed her, but Paul's misery was infectious. "That's bad, is it?"
"Yes, it's bad." He fell silent for a moment. "You don't know David Audley as I do."
He made the prospect of Audley daunting. And yet at the same time the memory of that big man, with his strange handsome-ugly face and rough-gentle manner, excited her intensely: wherever Audley was, that would be the centre of things and the answers would be there.
"I know he likes you, Paul." She tried to reassure him and to make amends for her treachery. "In fact, I think he's fond of you, even."
For an instant he stared at her incredulously, and then his expression blanked out; and she knew, but too late, that she'd said exactly the wrong thing.
"If I may say so, Elizabeth . . . that's a damn silly remark—"
"I mean—I meant, he respects you—"
"I don't care if he worships the ground I tread on." He bulldozed over her. "What I mean is what I said last night, dummy3
only more so: I think the Russians are making a fool of him.
The difference is that now I'm not just guessing. Because now the evidence points that way."
"What evidence?"
"What evidence . . ." He got up, and walked round the end of the bed towards the open window. And then stopped suddenly. "Put the light out, Elizabeth."
She fumbled for the switch. "What is it, Paul?"
"Nothing. Just a precaution." He waited, and she guessed that he was accustoming his eyes to the darkness. "In the field you take precautions, that's all. And this is the field, Elizabeth—'some foreign field' . . . but that's not what I intend it to be, for either of us . . . so, as of now, we take the proper precautions—okay? I should have done it before . . .
I'm getting careless, like Novikov ... or maybe not like Novikov ..."
"Yes, Paul." Excitement was only a thin skin on top of fear, she realised: "the field" was no more than an abbreviation of
"the battlefield", where men died.
"What evidence." He was a silhouette against a skyline faintly lightened by the illumination of the old city. "It was always on the cards that they'd stage a diversion of some kind. What I don't know is whether you were planned to be that diversion, or whether they're bright enough—and quick enough—to take advantage of you when you turned up out of the blue . . . I just don't know . . ."
dummy3
He was speaking as much to himself as to her, and she didn't dare disturb his line of thought. Because this was something she'd never seen before—never heard, never even remotely imagined: this was a man struggling with a problem which involved not only his comfort, or his business—his job, his livelihood, his income . . . even the security of his country, which he was paid to safeguard—but his life—
And her life too?
"If there was a Russian Audley running the operation I'd guess this is pure opportunism—that they didn't know about you, but you fitted the bill so perfectly that they dropped everything else in preference for you—in preference for the old Vengeful."
It was strange, but she wasn't cold any more. The thought of Father, and what he had done, had chilled her; but now she was aware of the warm darkness all around her, and of the slightest prickle of sweat at her throat.
The silhouette changed, and she was aware that he had turned back inwards, to face her. "Guessing isn't evidence—if that's what you are about to say—I'm aware of that. But I'm not guessing when I say they have Audley-watchers over there, on the other side. I could even give you a name—the name of one of them whom we know about, if it would mean anything to you. And he's a scholar, like Audley ... an archaeologist, not an historian, but a Russian Audley, all the same." He nodded at her. "He'd know very well how obsessed David is with the past. And if he knows Audley's in charge on dummy3