“We’ve got briefings all day tomorrow out at Langley. Brick Kelly wants to understand exactly how Red Banner and the CIA will function together. Then we’ll head back to Bermuda tomorrow night and meet with C first thing next morning. You’re flying Hawke Air, Harry.”
Brock nodded. “What’s on C’s agenda?”
“A series of fairly intensive organizational meetings are going on right now. A skeleton staff there is already getting Red Banner up and running. C is remaining in Bermuda until we return. We’ll get our first assignment from him.”
“Moscow?”
“That would be my bet,” Hawke said. “Slip ourselves into Moscow and try to find this Third Man.”
“C have any idea who this third bird might be?”
“Only, as I said, that he’s probably the power behind the throne. The one who’s pulling all the strings inside the Kremlin. The man behind the Iron Curtain, one might say.”
“Like that fat little bastard in The Wizard of Oz.”
“Precisely. Our job is to put a serious damper on this Third Man’s plans for global conquest.”
“Tall order.”
“Right, Harry, it’s up to us. C, like everyone else in our service, is concerned that the West is desperately weak at this moment in history. America is tied down in a no-win war and has an unstable southern border, and Britain is preoccupied with a restive Muslim population, among other things. It’s his view that if the allies are not especially vigilant at this moment in time, we may soon see the Iron Curtain descending over Europe yet again.”
“And so Red Banner?”
“And so Red Banner, Harry. Let’s get out of here. I’m cold as hell.”
Hawke marched up the steps leading to his hero’s home, feeling his blood quickening. He welcomed the familiar feeling of focus and suppressed excitement that preceded every important mission. After months of recuperation and hard training he knew he was as fit as he’d ever been.
He had no excuses.
He was ready to go.
It was good to know that the fight was well and truly joined.
24
Everyone was drunk. Or, at least, it certainly seemed that way to Diana Mars. She scanned the colorful crowd scattered over the lawn, looking for Ambrose. Had he left her? Or had she left him? She wasn’t at all sure, but his absence was irritating all the same. Perhaps another drink was called for. After all, she’d had only one or two Pimm’s cups. Or was it three? No matter. Everyone seemed to be having a jolly good time. The party, a spur-of-the-moment garden affair at the Darlings’ quaint place on Harbour Road, was winding down.
It was nearly six o’clock on a drowsy Sunday afternoon, and the Darlings clearly wanted everyone to go home.
“No more Pimm’s?” she asked the barman, cocking one well-arched eyebrow. “You cannot be serious.” Diana rarely drank to excess, such was her horror of losing her soigné air, losing a touch of bloom or a ray of admiration. But this party was a trial.
They’d run out of hooch, for one thing. And the hors d’oeuvres platters were long gone. She settled for a tall club soda and wandered off to find her true love.
Lady Mars made her way through the twitter of golf chatter (it was always golf at these charming affairs, wasn’t it? or bridge, grandchildren, or needlepoint?), hearing the lovely tinkle of ice in good crystal as she passed, moving across the sloping green lawn up toward the gabled and russet-painted house, moving through small islands of people, all dressed in various shades of pastel linen, the men in monogrammed velvet slippers with no socks, the chattering classes up to their usual boozy bonhomie.
There was a fresh whiff of scandal on the island, just in time for Christmas. The very married American chairman of one of the big offshore insurance companies was running off with the very young wife of the pastor at St. Mark’s. Apparently, this torrid affair had been going on for years, right under Tippi Mordren’s nose! In the vestryman’s wardrobe!
Quel horreur!
Island gossip is so different from big-city gossip, she thought, pausing at the pantry door. Even the juiciest bon-bons (frequently with a nut or even a fruit at the center!) have a predictably evanescent arc. The tittle-tattle flares up suddenly and self-extinguishes, far more rapidly than elsewhere, poor things, for on a small island like Bermuda, the sly whispers simply have nowhere left to go. Even the hottest rumor burns itself out with a hiss at the shoreline.
She found herself in the empty pantry, pouring warm white wine from a large economy-sized jug into her water glass. These hot afternoons made one thirsty. And she was feeling most disagreeable, to be brutally honest. Put out with Ambrose for some reason she couldn’t put her finger on. Poor dear. Every time he opened his mouth, she snapped at him. She loathed the hurt look in his innocent-baby eyes, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Where is that damn ring? she thought, stamping her foot in a rare display of anger, realizing she’d just put her quite ringless finger right on the problem at last. She knew he had the ring. She’d heard it rattling around in his can of shaving cream when she was straightening up his bathroom one morning. So, why on earth hadn’t he given it to her?
Wandering with her wineglass through the house, a warren of rooms, she finally found Ambrose in a small, low-ceilinged sitting room, a kind of den, she supposed, nautical regalia all round. Ambrose was seated in one corner, deep in conversation with Sir David Trulove, predictably, as the two of them had been conspiring all afternoon. Talking about some top-secret project, the details of which Ambrose would not even share with her. This wrinkle, fairly new in their relationship, was troublesome. But she had decided not to let it bother her. He could have his secrets. She could have hers. Tra-la-la.
It wasn’t as if he and she were formally engaged, after all. They’d been in Bermuda for weeks, and not once had the subject even come up. The question remained unpopped after almost a month. Why, she’d no sooner-
“Diana!” Ambrose said, leaping to his feet as she entered the otherwise empty room. “There you are, darling! We were just speaking of you.” Steadying himself with his cane, he crossed the room to kiss her cheek.
“I very much doubt that,” she said, smiling at him. “Here in this…den of spies, I rather doubt I’m topic A. Oh, hullo, David. I didn’t realize you were here.”
“Diana,” C said, getting to his feet. “Sorry to keep the old boy from you all this time. Terribly rude, I’m afraid.”
“Not at all,” Diana said. “I’ve been having a splendid time wandering about by myself. I adore garden parties. Doesn’t everyone?”
Ambrose could see she was peeved and said, “You were bored. I’m terribly sorry, darling.”
“I could murder a gin and tonic right now. Lot of heavy furniture out on the lawn, darling,” she said, sipping her wine, “not that you’d have noticed, mind.”
“What’s that you said, dear?” C asked. Collapsing back into his deep chair, he pulled a pencil-thin cheroot from his gun-metal cigar case and lit it with a match. He let the smoke dribble out between his lips and inhaled the thick stream up his nostrils. “Something about heavy furniture?”
“Diana’s code name for boring people,” Congreve said.
C smiled. “You know Harold Nicolson’s comment about boring people? ‘Only one person in a thousand is a bore, and he is interesting because he’s one in a thousand.’”
“Marvelous!” Diana giggled. “But, idiocy all the same.”
“Listen, Diana,” Ambrose said, looking around the room in a conspiratorial fashion. “Sir David and I are planning a little clandestine excursion this evening. We thought you might like to join us.”
“Where to?” she said. At the moment, her idea of an excursion was climbing up into bed, popping a baby-blue Ambien, and getting a good night’s sleep.