The two men watched the film for a moment without saying anything, both apparently engrossed in the drama as if they’d been together in the room all afternoon. Then Harper looked up at the ceiling questioningly, cupping a hand over one ear. Popovich got up, nodding his head. He spoke to Harper very quietly, a whisper almost completely drowned in the noise from the TV. ‘Yes. There’s a Russian agricultural delegation buying wheat on the 30th floor. But I’ll tell you about it. Come into the bathroom.’
‘I’ve got to shave anyway,’ Harper said. Popovich went ahead of him into the cubicle, ran the bath taps gently and after that the wash-basin. Harper got his kit out, took off his shirt, doused his face, and started to work up a good lather.
Andrei Popovich was a small, dapper man, in the bottom part of a tightly fitting navy blue synthetic fibre suit; a firm, broad-boned, high-cheeked, Slavonic face; fiftyish, but looking younger with dark sparse hair standing up a little and then running straight back — thin strands with a lot of empty space underneath so that you could quite clearly see most of his scalp: compact, sure of himself, yet without any air of command or superiority — he was like an accountant at the back of a board meeting who knows the company figures better than any of the directors and will quite soon be taking over from them. The eyes were faint blue and very steady — the nose, chin and everything else about him neatly and inconspicuously formed. He looked entirely the busy, anonymous Russian bureaucrat which he was — one of half a dozen attachés at the New York Consulate.
In his communication with Harper, though, he displayed one individual trait — the sense of a mother conducting a good-humoured game with a fretful child, a playful femininity, which Harper, who had dealt with him before, disliked considerably. He might have been flirting with him, Harper thought, but he could never be sure, for Popovich was never blunt about it. It was a gossamer-thin quality in the Russian — this knowing sensuousness — a hint like very faint perfume in the air: a twinkle in the blue eyes, a sudden gentle but unexpected movement, a minute roll of the lips, a quick softness in his perfect English pronunciation. And it kept Harper uneasy with him whenever they had met. The man swelled with a quality of secret, ultimate knowledge — easily borne, temptingly hinted at to favourites, potentially dangerous. And Harper could never decide if there were any sexual overtones in these marks of a hidden character, or if, as was quite logical, they were simply the fruit of his position as the most senior KGB officer in America.
‘Good,’ Popovich said firmly, watching Harper intently as he started to shave. ‘Good, good.’
Harper looked at him curiously in the mirror. ‘Good what?’ he asked above the soft rush of bath water. Popovich was standing very close to him now, hardly two feet away from his face, so that his voice could be heard. But was that the only reason for his proximity, Harper wondered?
‘Everything is good. But we must not rush it.’
‘Where is he then?’ Harper finished lathering his beard. But Popovich delayed. He kept looking at Harper, smiling.
‘Flitlianov? Or your man Marlow?’ he said at length. ‘They are both upstate in New York at this moment. Our men are there. They are both together.’
‘Together?’
Again Popovich paused, twinkling. ‘No, not together. In the same place.’
Harper frowned, and turned with his razor to consider a suitable route through his stubbled pock-marks. ‘And what about the letter drop in Grand Central?’ he asked. ‘Anything there. The woman? Have you any lead on her?’
‘We have her too. She is there as well. All three of them,’ Popovich said neatly.
‘Christ!’ Harper turned half-way through a scrape. ‘The three of them. I needn’t have bothered to come then. Are you sure it’s the right woman?’
‘Yes. As soon as Flitlianov followed them up to the country last Friday. Why else would he go? And he’s been tailing her before.’
‘What woman? Who?’
‘Mrs Jackson.’
‘Mrs who?’ Harper stopped everything.
‘The wife of your SIS liaison officer here — Guy Jackson.’
‘No.’ Harper showed an awful dismay through the white streaks of lather.
‘Yes, yes, Harper. We’ve checked her out. She lived in Beirut when Flitlianov was there in the mid-fifties. And of course George Graham was there before that. It all fits. That mail, the names we want, must be somewhere up in their house in the country. Mrs Jackson is the end of the letter drop all right.’
Harper felt real disappointment. His own plans for getting Marlow to New York had been quite incidental to the main action, he realised now. He was redundant: of course Guy Jackson had been useless — the contact with Marlow which they had wanted him to pin-point had been his wife.
‘It’s all over then,’ Harper said, thinking of Holborn again, and failure, and McCoy. ‘You just wait till she hands the stuff over to Flitlianov. And take him. It’s all over really.’
‘Just beginning, I think, Harper. No despair,’ he said, smiling softly. ‘Starting — just starting.’ He repeated the word, as though encouraging a child to resume a game he’s lost interest in. Then he opened the top of Harper’s after-shave lotion and smelt it. ‘Good. Very nice,’ he said solicitously.
‘How? It’s all wrapped up. Apart from Jackson,’ Harper said petulantly. ‘Jackson’s a whole new script. I’d never have thought he was working for the KGB — or her.’
‘He’s not,’ Popovich said, putting a dab of the undistinguished pine cologne on his finger tips. ‘That’s where it begins: Guy Jackson is working for the Americans, the CIA.’
Harper had just finished shaving and now he turned and looked at Popovich angrily. ‘May I?’ He took his lotion back and put it on the shelf without using it. ‘Thanks — well, that’ll be your affair, won’t it. I can start packing again.’
‘Don’t be difficult, Harper.’ Popovich was suddenly very calm, staring at him. Then he relaxed, his serious message received and understood. ‘You’ll be needed. I want you to know all about it. We’ll need you back in England. I’ll tell you: there are two points here, both connected, and you’ll be able to help, you’ll be very necessary indeed, when the time comes. One — we’ve no idea whereabouts these papers she has are hidden. And no idea when or how she’ll hand them over. It’s all sheer chance there. Open to any bad luck. Very difficult. And secondly, Guy Jackson; he’s been given a very interesting assignment by the CIA. He’s being posted back to England in a month, to Cheltenham —’
‘I knew that,’ Harper put in casually, trying to rescue something for himself from the whole business. ‘That he was going —’
‘You don’t know. Listen and I’ll tell you.’ Popovich moved away.
Harper put away his shaving gear and they went back into the bedroom where Random Harvest was coming to an end. Popovich turned the channel selector on the large TV set and at once a picture of the front lobby of the hotel appeared. Another twist displayed the entrance on 53rd Street. A third movement gave only a dark screen but now there were voices over it in Russian, a spirited conversation full of agricultural facts and figures. A fourth time — and then they heard the drawl of American voices, then a long pause. Then: ‘OK, this is the wheat deal again. Get Adam back will you? He’s in the lobby. He wants to have it all first hand.’