I looked at him in disgust. I didn’t want to kill him any more, just be rid of him for ever.
‘For God’s sake take him away,’ I said wearily and began to move towards the interior of the villa.
But I was prevented by the fat man who thrust the ancient shotgun into my belly.
I turned angrily to my Trinity scholar.
‘Come on!’ I said. ‘I’ve kept my share of the deal. Now I’d like to get after my daughter, OK?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve arranged for your daughter to return here,’ he replied. ‘Meanwhile I should avoid disturbing Signore Vasari’s equilibrium if I were you. He’s had a hard day and is not in the best of moods, I fear.’
Vasari. I glanced at the stout and sweating Italian. The name meant something, but my mind wasn’t working too well.
Then gradually two mental images began to merge together. Only they didn’t make any kind of sense.
Pa said, ‘I recognize that look of dawning enlightenment, Lem. Bravo! Let me complete the process. I’m not certain who you imagine this gentleman to be but may I make a formal, and accurate, introduction. Lem, I’d like you to meet Major Vassily Krylov of the KGB.’
Krylov! I looked at him stupidly. And now the mental images overlay each other perfectly.
To me those high-boned, hollow-cheeked, sadeyed and pallid features had suggested a scholarly Cambridge academic.
To Teresa they had suggested a romantic Slav violinist.
But now I saw that my friend from British Intelligence who had twice come riding to my rescue on his scooter was neither scholar nor musician but a KGB officer who had mutilated my sister’s hands in his efforts to get her to talk. And in the end he hadn’t needed to. Warned on the telephone of my return to the apartment, he had merely retreated and waited till I took off down the autostrada, then followed me.
Something else connected in my mind.
‘Kate too?’ I cried. ‘That’s how you were so handy!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘She walked into me in the hallway. Unfortunately she recognized me. It did not suit me to have her talk to you after that, but she would not be persuaded. So …’
My reaction was instinctive too, but my tired and unresponsive muscles were past reacting with the lethal speed which must have sent Krylov’s knife driving up under Kate’s ribcage.
I pushed Vasari’s gun barrel aside and lunged desperately at Krylov, who had all the time in the world to decide where to hit me. I think that basically he had the political extremist’s orderly mind and perhaps it was his sense of symmetry as much as anything that made him choose my left ear so that I would have a matching pair.
The Beretta’s barrel was cracked against it with expert force and for the second time that day I did my falling star act into the cosmic night.
18
… look for the laugh …
This time when I awoke, I’d gone far back beyond adult debauchery in Caracas clubs. I was nine and Ariel’s boom had come swinging across as the wind shifted and caught me unawares, cracking me across the temple and lifting me into the sea. There had been a sensation of drowning, then Pa’s arms around me in the water and the knowledge that I was safe. I had remembered little more till I awoke in my narrow bed in my narrow room with its whitewashed walls and the purple evening sky pressed like a bishop’s vest against my window. Then as now I had a splitting headache, and now as then Pa was sitting at the end of the bed reading a book and making occasional notes in the margin.
‘There you are then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I thought you would like to be in here. Krylov would have preferred the cellar, but Giorgio and Piero had just about shattered the door in their efforts to get out, so that wasn’t much use, was it?’
For a second the names were meaningless, then I jumped thirty years and I was back in the present.
I sat up, tried to resist the temptation to touch either ear, failed, and winced.
‘Yes, you’ve got a matching pair there,’ said Pa, showing that, like Krylov, he too had an orderly mind. ‘Though I don’t think the shading’s quite right. There’s a trifle too much royal blue in the left one, I would say.’
I said, ‘Father, can we cut this crap?’
I was lying on the bed, not in it, and now I swung my legs over the side. I was still clad in nothing more than my Y-fronts but there were some clothes draped over the brass bed-head. I reached for them but my father made a familiar admonitory gesture with his index finger.
‘I would recommend a shower first,’ he said. I looked down. He was right. All that wrestling, first in the cellar, then on the terrace, had left me considerably besmirched with dust adhering to sweat.
I went to the door and paused, uncertain whether I might not find myself confronting a shotgun muzzle when I opened it. I glanced at father, but he had returned to his book. The old way, I thought bitterly. Little Lem must be left to his own decisions until he himself decided he’d made the wrong ones. I’d been right about the shotgun. Vasari was sitting on a wooden stool a few yards down the corridor. He levelled the gun at my chest and I indicated the open door of the bathroom straight opposite. Gloomily he nodded. I got the impression that he hadn’t banked on letting himself in for all this when he did his Russian friends a couple of favours. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t ready, willing and able to shoot me.
As I luxuriated under the shower, I tried to come to grips with the situation. Why had Krylov been following me and rescued me from the police? Why had my father been pointing a gun at Krylov? What the hell was he doing in the villa anyway! And who were Giorgio Heathcliff and all his mates?
I gave up. The clearer my mind became under the healing jets, the clearer it grew that I wasn’t going to reach any solutions via rational discourse.
I towelled myself dry and, just as I would have done thirty years ago, I went to admit defeat and ask my father to explain.
He put his book down as I entered the room, as if he had been anticipating this moment.
I began to pull on the clothes. They didn’t quite fit, but I wasn’t posing for any fashion plate.
‘You’re even bigger than I remembered, Lem,’ said Pa.
I laced up the sneakers provided. Fortunately they were the right size.
I said, ‘Pa, before I was rudely interrupted out on the terrace, I was about to chop your head off: What gives with all this sang-froid? I mean, what makes you think that as soon as I finish tying these laces I won’t carry on where I left off?’
He said, ‘Lem, whenever there was something you didn’t want to do, you used to be more expert than anyone I’ve met at finding little procrastinating jobs. Like tying up your shoes. For the moment at least, the murdering mood has departed from you.’
He was right, of course. He frequently was.
I replied, ‘Don’t bet on it lasting.’
He said, ‘While it does last, can I ask what brought it on in the first place?’
There were things I wanted him to explain to me, but I knew from old experience that this kind of exchange would be done to his blueprint or not at all.
Besides, there were things I wanted to say to him. I didn’t know whether I’d work myself up into a killing mood again, but this chance of confrontation was one I’d long dreamt of.
I told him that I’d come back to England to see Angelica—I didn’t tell him why, merely leaving it as a sudden upsurge of parental love. I told him about the Brigadier and what had happened in Rome.
‘So you really came down to Amalfi in search of Angelica, not in pursuit of me?’ he said.
‘You’ve got it,’ I said. ‘Face it, Pa. You don’t mean enough to me to make a tuppenny bus-ride worth while.’
He fingered his neck thoughtfully. ‘I got a different impression earlier.’
‘What did you expect? A big hug?’ I asked incredulously.
He shook his head. ‘No. Of course not. But I had hoped that my letters might have sown a seed of doubt …’
‘Letter!
I read one! The others I tore up. For God’s sake, don’t you think I’d had enough of your eternal rightness? Your self-justification?’
My anger blazed up again, not a killing anger this time, but one which was not going to be denied. I had one enormous advantage over those bastards with the guns out there. In the end, they cared about their lives. I had no life to care about.
I went on, standing now and towering over my father who suddenly looked a frail old man easily to be brushed aside, ‘Listen, Pa, my first concern is to get out of here and make sure Angelica’s safe. As for stopping you pouring out your poison about Mama, there are plenty of people waiting out there ready and eager to put an end to you, so I may not even have to save a bit of energy for that task. But rest assured, I’ve got the stomach for it!’
This macabre double-entendre tickled my fancy and I laughed, perhaps a trifle crazily, for my father seemed to experience a moment’s unease, though typically he tried to express it as concern for my well-being.
‘Are you all right, Lem?’ he said.
‘Never better,’ I said almost gaily. ‘Never better. Now if you’ll excuse me …’
He seized my arm and said fiercely, ‘Then if you’re feeling so well, for God’s sake use your head! How do you imagine you’re going to get out of here for a start?’
‘You’re not going to stop me, are you?’ I asked curiously. ‘You?’
He held on to my arm and said with passionate intensity, ‘Lem, I did not kill your mother! Believe me!’
‘Why the hell should I believe that?’ I shouted. ‘What else would you say? There’s too much evidence, Pa! Too much by half!’
‘I would say, from what I’ve heard, that there’s just about the same amount of evidence that you killed Kate,’ he said judiciously. ‘Why should Angelica believe that you’re innocent?’
I froze and stared down at him. It was queer, but this was the first time this obvious parallel had occurred. Father and son, both fleeing guiltily from houses where their wives lay brutally done to death.
I said, ‘She’ll believe. I’ll explain.’
He said, ‘I hope she gives you the chance, Lem. That’s all you’ll need, isn’t it?’
He was at it again. Not pleading. Oh no, the great Billy Bessacarr would never plead! But forcing me to confront my own decisions in the light of my own experience.
I was older and wiser now; or cleverer, at least.
I turned his own device on him and said, ‘She’ll have to give me that chance or kill me. There’s no other way I’ll be stopped. And, believing what she does, I wouldn’t blame her if in her grief and rage she killed me. But I’ll take that risk. We have to choose our own risks, isn’t that right, Pa?’
There it was, threat and warning, leaving the choice with him. He smiled faintly as if in appreciation of my table-turning skill, but his first words reduced me to my old pupillary status.
‘To state the obvious, in case you are still bent on not seeing it, I am not in control here. Not since your dramatic intervention, that is, though you mustn’t feel too badly about that. Your misinterpretation of the situation is one which many reasonably intelligent minds would have arrived at. The story which this Brigadier has told you is well constructed, with enough of the truth in it to provide a pretty solid foundation. Your own unreasoning prejudices have supplied the rest.’
‘Oh come on!’ I burst out. ‘What are you trying to say—that you haven’t been an honoured guest in Moscow these twenty years? That the Brigadier and all his people are double agents?’
‘I wish you would listen, Lem,’ he reproved me. ‘Use your brain! You imagined Major Krylov was one of the Brigadier’s men. Why?’
‘Because I saw him working with someone I knew for certain was,’ I replied, resenting but not resisting this catechism.
‘Now what does that suggest?’ said Pa.
‘Either that someone’s fooling someone else. Or that they’ve got an interest in common.’
‘Yes. Yes. Come along. Come along,’ he said impatiently. ‘And what would that interest seem to be?’
It was amazing. Even after all this time I still felt ashamed that my slowness was disappointing him. But the conclusion he was driving me to seemed too ludicrous to be worth saying. Yet there was no other.
‘They’re both interested in stopping you from getting back to the UK,’ I said. ‘But I thought it was the Russians’ idea, a great Soviet propaganda exercise …’
‘So your precious Brigadier told you, no doubt. Lem, when will you learn that in all your life there’s only been one person who never told you anything but the truth. And that has been me. Listen now, and believe. The last thing the Russians want is for me to go back to Britain.’
‘You mean you’re too valuable to them!’ I jeered.
‘On the contrary, I have little positive value,’ he said. ‘I have not been too well of late and it’s a long time since I’ve been up to much in the way of original research. I had a moderate pension, a comparatively young wife. It must have looked to my Russian hosts as if I could be allowed to drift into senility without much expenditure of money or concern on their part. But Kim died, you see.’
An uncharacteristically bitter smile touched his lips.
‘Strange how the death of a wife has always signalled a radical change of direction in my life.’
The reference to Mama stung my fury to life once more but before I could even speak he raised his hand and said wearily, ‘You must listen, Lem. For your own peace of mind. First, let me tell you about Angelica, my Angelica, I mean. We met, we fell in love, we married, we drifted apart, we fell out of love. But we never fell out of friendship, that’s for certain. We led our own lives to a great extent, but still met, partly for your sake, but most for the mutual solace, advice, and simple pleasure we derived from each other’s company.
‘I had my own concerns, the Trust, my scientific work, my political work too. There was a growing campaign against me. It was a neurotic time, of course. “Lord Moscow”, the Yellow Press cartoonists called me. And I was under active investigation. Not that there was anything to find, but it was a source of irritation.
Angelica, now, Angelica was a creature of high society. Not that she hadn’t worked as hard as anyone during and immediately after the war. But later she began to take some of the rewards. She moved in the highest circles. She was, you must understand, in her morality, like an eighteenth-century grande dame. Whatever you did should be judged in terms of style, taste and, above all, discretion. She was the true aristocrat.’
‘You mean, it was all right as long as you didn’t do it in the street and frighten the horses?’ I jibed.
‘If you prefer to be coarse, Lem,’ he reproved. ‘I’m merely trying to explain. If this interferes with some nursery notion you still retain of your mother as some warm, kind, cuddly, walking doll created entirely for your service and your comfort, then I’m sorry for you. If on the other hand you merely feel that it contradicts your knowledge of her as a beautiful, intelligent, humane and lovable woman, then be assured it doesn’t. I had hoped you would have known her well enough to know that.
‘To proceed: she had begun to find, however, that taste and discretion were not as easy to maintain in the twentieth century as in the eighteenth. To move in the highest circles could also mean to have contact with the lowest. The Profumo business proved that.’
‘You’re not trying to tell me she was mixed up with that gang of pimps and prostitutes,’ I said dangerously.
‘Oh, Lem, if I offered you a list of those who were mixed up with them, the snob in you could hardly resist envy at the chance of being in such company. No, the public side of that affair was but the beast’s rump. The cover-up which took place made poor Nixon’s efforts after Watergate seem a very shoddy, amateurish affair. But your mother had begun to be sickened by it all long before the scandal. And the rather too timely death of Stephen Ward as he waited for the verdict at his trial completed her disillusion.�
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‘Too timely? What the hell does that mean?’ I demanded.
‘Dr Ward, you will recall, was being tried for living off immoral earnings. He it was who effected introductions between some of his lady friends and members of the Establishment. And also between them and Captain Ivanov, the Soviet naval attaché. The social Establishment hates sexual scandal, the political hates security scandal. Poor Ward was one of those creatures high society depends on, with one foot in the beau monde and one in the demi. Pathetic and dispensable. And he was dispensed with.’
‘But not literally. He committed suicide,’ I protested.
‘He attempted suicide,’ corrected Pa. ‘But he was recovering sufficiently rapidly to be expected back in court in a few days when he died. But this is beside the point. All I’m trying to do is to explain Angelica’s position. She was in a very unhappy state of mind that summer and autumn, even you may have noticed that.’
‘I put it down to you,’ I retorted.
‘Consistent in that at least,’ he applauded. ‘No, nothing I was doing worried your mother. She knew all about Kim, so even if she had discovered us in bed, it would have caused her no more than a slight embarrassment. But she didn’t, Lem. She didn’t. In fact I never saw Angelica at all that night.’
‘But you must have done!’ I protested. ‘You were in the house. I saw you!’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. But this is what happened afterwards. Kim and I were having a quiet drink when the phone rang downstairs. Kim went down to answer while I had a shower. She came back rather worried to tell me it was Percy Nostrand wanting to have an urgent word with me. I asked Kim if she’d start packing my things. We were flying to Paris later that evening to attend a Peace Rally the following day. When I got on the phone, Percy told me that he’d heard on the Home Office grapevine that a security team was being sent round to talk to me that same evening, ‘talk’ being a euphemism for interrogate. They’d probably have a search warrant, possibly even an arrest warrant in case it was needed. It was absurd, of course, I had nothing to hide. But I knew they were quite capable of sitting on me till I missed my plane and I didn’t care to have my plans disarranged. So I grabbed my ticket and passport and headed off, leaving Kim to put the rest of my things together and bring them to the airport.
Traitor's Blood Page 16
