"No." She moved her head a fraction on the pillow. "You will get me something. Can I have the gun?"
"Do you know how to use it?"
She took it, flicked out the magazine and pushed the safety off and on. "I know." She obviously did. Maxim wrapped the pistol in a handkerchief and pushed it under his pillow.
"Lock the door and for heaven's sake don't shoot unless somebody kicks it down."Defector Shoots Chambermaid While Sharing Room With Major From Number 10. Not that this motel ran to anything that could be called a 'chambermaid'.
He touched the end of her nose, and walked out.
Zuzanna lay there for a few minutes. Then she got up, stretching languidly and yawning, cat-like, to lock the door. She left the lights off, fumbled for the radio, and turned it on to try and get the half-past-four news summary. She began to dress slowly.
I wonder if they will kill this sad, strong major, she thought. They may hide me, but they cannot hide Number 10.
12
The village had nothing like a hamburger bar, and the only tea-shop was shut. Maxim wandered around, instinctively getting the feel of the place, but also finding a non-vandalised telephone box. He wondered about ringing George, but what did he have ro say? Then he came across a 'supermarket', which in this village meant a help-yourself grocer's not much bigger than the motel room, and bought a pocketful of tinned and packaged food. Then he had to buy some paper plates and plastic knives, as well.
He whispered at the bedroom door, and Zuzana put off the light to let him in. She leant against him in a quick, rather practised gesture, and he kissed her hair. When the lights went on, he saw she was rather pale, and her hands were nervously rubbing the pleats in her skirt.
"It's all right," he said. "They can't find you here. They won't even know who to look for."
He had registered as Mr and Mrs Maxim – which was now a shade truer than it had been – because Maxim had no 'trade-name', and would have to use his own credit cards, driving licence and so forth. Zuzana had been professionally offended by that, but it had been the PM's decision. "We brought him in here," he had told George, "because he was Major Maxim andnot one of the creepy-crawlies. So Major Maxim he can stay." And that was still that.
But even if he had been spotted as Maxim, the Bloc embassies hadn't got the manpower to ring every hotel in the Home Counties.
He spread out the food, expecting Zuzana to pounce. But she just began decorously spreading a little pâtéon a biscuit.
"Drink?" he suggested. The whisky was running low: she'd taken a snort while he was out. She took another now.
He saw the radio and tuned it to a programme of classical music – not loud, but continuous.
"We're very happy to learn about Veverka, but is there anything you can say about the bears and our security? You do see how important that is."
She nodded with her mouth full, swallowed, took a gulp at her whisky. "It was when your minister sent home so many of the bears, do you remember? It was two years ago. The bears kept bringing in so many joes, your security could not afford to watch them all. It was, what you call it, like saturation bombing. Then for one time your minister did the right thing."
Maxim remembered: a great slaughter of the guilty when over a hundred Russian embassy and trade officials had been declaredpersonne non gratae. Aeroflot had even sent a special plane to collect them. It had made headlines everywhere. Except Moscow, probably.
"So then, the bears went crazy. Suddenly they had nobody to make the drops, they thought all their sources would forget them, they would have nothing left. So they had to use us, of course. And some of the Poles and Hungarians, but…" thebut and a little shrug relegated the Polish and Hungarian services to the fourth division. "Of course, they did not tell us who we were posting messages for. But it was the usual ways, the dead drops, always Moscow Centre chose them. I did not believe it before, but it is true. They could say in Moscow for me to post a message in the springs of the bed near the window of number 6 bedroom in this motel. They do not trust their own people here even to decide things like that."
Maxim had heard the same thing and hadn't really believed it, either.
"So, I tell you, it was a crazy time." They were back sitting facing each other, not touching. "We were running all over to the places Moscow said was a good drop. It was mad." And in the panic, there had been an unguarded discussion about which of two missions was more important, and Zuzana had heard enough to know she was acting as a cut-out for a source within British security itself.
"It was a moving drop, you understand. In a train, it came into Victoria just about ten o'clock each morning. I must go down to Gatwick first, then get on it there and post the message up under the towels basket in the lavatory at the back of the third first-class carriage. Then I stayed and went again just before the end to pick it up if it had not been collected, so the cleaners would not find it."
Maxim's experience was that British Rail cleaners might just be getting around to finding messages posted in the Boer War, but he smiled and nodded encouragingly.
"It wasa good drop," she conceded. "It was simple, we used it often Of course, there must have been a crash contact for the emergencies, but I would not be in that."
The radio concert ended with a burst of applause; it turned out to have been Schubert. Zuzana stood up, glanced at her watch, then prowled the room restlessly, but still with an animal grace. In an odd way, she reminded Maxim of the cat who sat on his papers.
"So I thought," she said, "why do I not find out who is this source?"
"And did you?"
Somebody next door flushed a cistern and in the silence after the music, it seemed to startle her. "I want to walk a bit. We can go down the back way."
It was quite dark by now, the sky sharp with stars. The stable-yard rambled downhill into a small vegetable garden and then a field where they must once have grazed the horses. In a few seconds, Maxim's thin town shoes were soaked in freezing dew. Zuzana had on strong, well-polished ankle boots. They walked hand in hand.
Once they were clear of the buildings, she said: "It was not easy to find out, you understand. I could not wait in the corridor – those carriages were never so crowded – to go into the lavatory after each one to see if the message was gone. And the real man would have known me before I knew him. So I had to take some time. I would go in early to see if the message had gone, like that I knew he came on before East Croydon…" Gradually she had eliminated the other regulars, bringing it down to one man.
And that man must bethe man; a spymaster can use cut-outs, messengers who are no great loss when pinched, but a traitor can trust nobody. He has to collect his own post.
"Did you find out his name?" Maxim asked incautiously. But she wasn't to be hurried. They had reached the bottom of the field, where an overgrown stream glinted slow and sullen in the starlight. Zuzana shivered, folded her arms as if to cradle her breasts, and rocked gently against the quiet cold, sniffing at the sky.
"It will snow," she said suddenly. "Here you almost never have snow. It will be beautiful, like at home… He was I think fifty years old, or some more, about 185 centimetres in height, he is bald in the middle with grey hair…" the description rambled on, but it was by a trained observer and it added up to a complete man.
But what man?
"You didn't get his name?"
"Did you want me toask him?"
"Once you'd spotted him, you could have followed him from Victoria, to see where he worked."
"He was in the trade. He was in both our trades, he would have noticed me. And… they took me off that drop. I think they had some new joes in by then, and he was too important…" Her voice was flat and mumbly.
Maxim asked: "Have your people got a photograph of me yet?"