John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 3

"Did he have a favourite place anywhere? Some hideaway he talked of going to?"

"He said once Ireland. He'd buy a croft overlooking the sea and write."

"North or south?"

"I don't know. South, I suppose. As long as it was sea. Then suddenly the Bahamas. That was more recent."

"Who does he have there?"

"n.o.body. Not as far as I know."

"Did he ever talk of going over to the other side? Little dacha on the Black Sea?"

"Don't be a fool."

"So Ireland, then the Bahamas. When did he say the Bahamas?"

"He didn't. He just marked the property advertis.e.m.e.nts in The Times and left them for me to see."

"As a sign?"

"As a reproach, as a come-on, as a signal that he wanted to be somewhere else. Magnus has a lot of ways of talking."

"Has he ever talked about doing away with himself? They'll ask you, Mary. I might as well do it first."

"No. No, he hasn't."

"You don't sound sure."

"I'm not. I'll have to think."

"Has he ever been physically frightened for himself?"

"I can't answer it all at once, Jack! He's a complicated man--I've got to think!" She steadied herself. "In principle, no. No to all of it. It's all a total shock."

"But you still rang very fast from the airport. As soon as he wasn't on that plane, you were on the phone: 'Jack, Jack, where's Magnus?' You were right, he'd vanished."

"I saw his suitcase going round the b.l.o.o.d.y ap.r.o.n, didn't I? He'd checked himself in! Why wasn't he on the plane?"

"How about his drinking?"

"Less than before."

"Less than Lesbos?"

"Miles less."

"What about his headaches?"

"Gone."

"Other women?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't know. How could I? If he says he's out for the night, he's out for the night. It could be a woman, it could be a Joe. It could be Bee Lederer. She's always after him. Ask her."

"I thought wives could always tell the difference," said Brotherhood.

Not with Magnus they can't, she thought, beginning to settle to his pace.

"Does he still bring papers back at night to work on?" Brotherhood asked, peering into the snow-clad garden.

"Now and then."

"Any here now?"

"Not that I know of."

"American papers? Liaison stuff?"

"I don't read them, Jack, do I? So I don't know."

"Where does he keep them?"

"He brings them at night, takes them back in the morning. Just like everyone else."

"And keeps them where, Mary?"

"By the bed. In the desk. Wherever he's been working on them."

"And Lederer hasn't rung?"

"I told you. No."

Brotherhood stood back. Two men, m.u.f.fled against the night, tumbled into the room. She recognised Lumsden, the Amba.s.sador's private secretary. She had recently had a row with his wife, Caroline, about starting a bottle-bank in the Emba.s.sy forecourt as an example to the Viennese. Mary thought it essential. Caroline Lumsden thought it irrelevant and explained why in an angry outburst to an inner caucus of the Diplomatic Wives a.s.sociation: Mary was not a real Wife, said Caroline. She was an Unmentionable, and the only reason she was accepted as a Wife at all was to protect her husband's half-baked cover.

They must have soldiered up the bridlepath from the school, she thought. Waded through half a metre of snow in order to be discreet about Magnus.

"Hail, Mary," Lumsden said brightly in his best scoutmaster's voice. He was a Catholic but that was how he always greeted her, so he did it tonight. To be normal.

"Did he bring any papers back on the night of the party?" Brotherhood asked, closing the curtains once more.

"No." She put on the light.

"Know what's in this black briefcase of his that he's carrying?"

"He didn't take it from here so he must have collected it at the Emba.s.sy. All he took from here was the suitcase that's at Schwechat."

"Was," said Brotherhood.

The second man was tall and sickly-looking. He carried a bulging bag-in each gloved hand. Enter the abortionist. It was practically a full plane, she thought stupidly; Head Office must have a permanent defection team on twenty-four-hour standby.

"Meet Harry," Brotherhood said. "He's going to put some clever boxes on your telephones. Use them normally. Don't think of us. Any objection?"

"How can I?"

"You can't, you're right. I'm being polite, so why don't you do the same? You've got two cars. Where are they?"

"The Rover's outside, the Metro's in the airport carpark waiting for him to pick it up."

"Why did you go to the airport if he had a car there?"

"I just thought he might like me to be there so I took a taxi and went."

"Why not take the Rover?"

"I wanted to ride back with him, not drive in convoy."

"Where's the Metro key?"

"In his pocket presumably."

"Got a spare?"

She searched her handbag till she found it. He dropped it in his pocket.

"I'll get it lost," he said. "If anybody asks, it's gone for repair. I don't want it kicking round the airport."

She heard a heavy thud from upstairs.

She watched Harry pull off his gumboots and place them neatly on the mat beside the French windows.

"His father died Wednesday. What's he been up to in London apart from burying him?" Brotherhood continued.

"I a.s.sumed he'd be dropping in at Head Office."

"He never did. He didn't ring, he didn't visit."

"Then probably he was busy."

"Did he have any plans for London--anything he told you of?"

"He said he'd go and see Tom at school."

"Well, he did that. He went. Anything else? Friends-- dates--women?"

She was suddenly very tired of him. "He was burying his father and tidying up, Jack. The whole visit was one long date. If you'd had a father and he died, you'd know how it was."

"Did he phone you from London?"

"No."

"Steady, Mary. Think now. That's five days already."

"No. He didn't. Of course he didn't."

"Would he usually?"

"If he can use the Office phone, yes."

"And if he can't?"

She thought for him. She really tried. She had been thinking for so long. "Yes," she conceded. "He'd phone. He likes to know we're all right, all the time. He's a worrier. I suppose that's why I went off with such a bang when he didn't show up. I think I was worried already."

Lumsden was stalking round the room in his stockinged feet, pretending to admire Mary's water-colours of Greece.

"You're so, so talented," he marvelled, his face pressed against a view of Plomari. "Did you go to art school or simply do it?"

She ignored him. So did Brotherhood. It was a tacit bond between them. The only decent diplomat is a deaf Trappist, Jack liked to say. Mary was beginning to agree.

"Where's the servant?" said Brotherhood.

"You told me to get rid of her. On the phone. When I rang."

"She smell a rat?"

"I don't think so."

"It mustn't get out, Mary. We've got to sit on it as long as we possibly can. You know that, don't you?"

"I guessed."

"There's his Joes to think of, there's everything to think of. Far more than you can know. London's stiff with theories and begging for time. You quite sure Lederer hasn't phoned?"

"Jesus," she said.

His eye fell on Harry, who was unpacking his clever boxes. They were grey-green and possessed no apparent controls. "You can tell the servant they're transformers," he said.

"Umformer," Lumsden piped helpfully from the wings. "Transformer is Umformer. 'Die kleinen b.i.+.c.hsen sind Umformer.'"

Once again they ignored him. Jack's German was almost as good as Magnus's, and about three hundred times better than Lumsden's.

"When's she due back?" Brotherhood asked.

"Who?"

"Your servant, for G.o.d's sake."

"Tomorrow lunchtime."