"Oh yes, of course."
"So you must have photos of everybody you know in British security?"
She didn't say anything.
"And you've had nearly two years to look through them, haven't you?"
"It was not easy, you must have a reason-"
"In two years you couldn't think of a reason? Who was the man you described just now? – your favourite uncle? You never worked out which man was the contact, did you?"
"I had to havesomething!" she shouted. "I had to bringsomething over! I had brought the Veverka file. I had it in my bag, but…"
Like a voice over his shoulder, Maxim could hear the Ashford instructor saying. "They all do it, they all build themselves up to make themselves more of a catch. If one says he's a KGB major, you can bet he's just a captain. If he tells you he can name six illegals, don't count on getting more than three. Just accept that you're going to be lied to, don't lose your cool, and at least you'll get all that there is to get."
I did brilliantly, Maxim thought bitterly. My first defector and the only cool thing about me is my feet.
He put his arms around her, awkwardly, since he wasn't used to her height and she was as stiff and unhelpful as a lamp-post. "I'm sorry. It's all right. You've given us quite enough to find him anyway. And the file, the baboons won't have got it. The police probably picked it up, so that's all right."
She relaxed and leant against him. "The police, of course. Yes. But what will they do to it?"
"I'll ring in and make sure we get hold of it. Come on." He put an arm round her shoulders and they started back up the field.
After a while, she said carefully: "There is something I can do for you, something else. I cannot say what, but soon."
"Fine." Maxim wasn't really listening. "Do you want to wait in the room?"
"I will wait. Can I have the gun again?"
He gave it to her along with the key, and this time waited until he heard the door lock before going up the yard.
He walked briskly out to the telephone box, since he wasn't going to trust the motel switchboard. But telephone boxes, taxis and parking spaces are never empty when you need them. He waited, almost dancing with the pain in his feet, while two girls made a long giggly call, and then another.
At last they rushed out in a flurry of long coats and laughter, not even noticing him.
Number 10 came on as a matronly voice saying: "You should have told us where you are, Major. We've had more than one-"
"I'm not anywhere," Maxim said. "Just find me George Harbinger."
He told George about the motel, then about Zuzana's work as a cut-out and her little white lies. George took it better than he'd expected, just muttering. "Bloody woman." But he would have had far more experience of defectors' habits, if only indirectly.
Then Maxim told him about Veverka and the file. "That must have been what the wild bunch were after. There doesn't seem any reason why they should think she's even heard of the contact in security."
George grunted dubiously. "Has she said anything about why she's Seen The Light?"
"Just that she's tired of a repressive regime repressing its citizens, or something."
"Bullshit. She tried to identify that contact just so that she'd have something in the bank if she ever decided to come over. Every agent pinches some little secret, just in case. I suppose when you start in that work, you soon realise there may be only one safe place for you: the other side."
"Actually why she came," Maxim said, "is that they just took away her first command. She just grabbed the file, out of spite, and ran. Or that's my guess."
"She doesn't sound all that bright… What's that noise? Have you got the Brigade in there with you?"
Maxim realised he'd been stamping his almost numb feet on the floor of the box. "Sorry. She's no master-spy, but at least we know the Tyler letter's probably still around."
"I'm not at all sure I like that. We'll go into a huddle about it when you get back."
"When's that going to be?"
"Ring me in an hour or so. Oh – there's one other thing, Harry, and I don't think you should mention it to her. Wing-Commander Neale's dead. I asked the fuzz to put a guard on him but I was too late, blast it. Some of your roughnecks seem to have got in and worked on him a little. I believe it was his heart that gave out, so they probably didn't mean to kill him."
"They certainly meant to kill her."
"Yes, well,… Keep in touch."
"Is the news about Neale on the radio?"
"I imagine so…"
Suddenly it wasn't just Maxim's feet that were cold. He ran all the way back to the motel, slowing down just for respectability as he entered the arch into the stableyard. The bedroom was dark, and there was no answer to his gentle knock and whisper. He tried the handle and the door opened. He knew then that she'd gone; a few seconds later, he knew the gun had gone with her.
The receptionist hadn't seen her go. "To tell the truth, I haven't seen her at all, have I? She's a foreign lady, your wife, isn't she?"
"Yes." Maxim was turning away when he realised what that meant. "She made a telephone call from the room, then?"
She could hardly deny it, but wasn't going to admit she'd tried to listen in. She must have been around fifty, with the thin bedraggled look of a bird with a broken wing. "She did make a call to London, yes."
"Just now?"
"Oh no. Nearly an hour ago, I should say."
"Can you give me the number, please?"
She was looking it up when the first shot sounded. It hardly registered on her; to Maxim it was a bomb.
Zuzana was certainly no master spy. She had rung her office as soon as the radio had told her of Neale's death: an almost purely emotional reaction, seeking revenge. But she remembered enough of her training to pretend that she had heard nothing and offered to discuss her own return to the foldprovided nobody went near the Wing-Commander. They had promised that straight off, so she knew that when they came to meet her it would be in bad faith but perhaps without too much suspicion. But she had no time to scout the meeting-place she suggested: the porch of the church glimpsed as she and Maxim drove in. And her worst mistake was not to get there first: she had overestimated the time they would take.
The only real error the two baboons made was not to think that in the darkness she might have a gun in her hand.
The younger and smaller of them grabbed her from behind as she came through the lych-gate; the bigger reached for her from in front. She fired before the pistol was level, and the bullet smacked into his thigh bone. The second shot missed as the gun kicked higher, and the third went through his throat.
The other let go with one hand to reach for his own gun and she swung away, firing and missing as she turned. His shot hit her ribs with a punch that had no immediate pain, and then they were shooting into each other, barely three feet apart, until both fell down. Compared with that noise, the big baboon made almost no sound as he drowned in his own blood.
Maxim was first there, dodging from shadow to shadow across the churchyard until he could see the three bodies. He kicked the guns away; Zuzana and the younger one weren't dead, not yet.
"Did I kill them?" she muttered.
"I think so."
"I had wanted to do it… and be alive, but… Not" He had tried to lift her head out of the blood. But half her right eye socket was shot away. He laid her down very gently.
"They killed… the Wing-Commander…" After that she lapsed into a murmur of Czechoslovakian until she shuddered and died.
A small timid crowd had formed outside the gate. A burly man with a raincoat on over his shirt and carrying a torch, pushed through and shone it around. What had looked like black oil suddenly turned into a pond of blood.
"Great Jesus!" He swayed and put a hand on the gate for support, then turned the torch on Maxim. "I'm a policeman-"
"I'll get an ambulance," Maxim said. "You get onto Special Branch."