Return to Vienna

by Nancy Buckingham

  “You said just now that you wanted my help. Tell me what I’m to do.” My voice was as hard as steel. I had never felt like this before, filled with a need for retribution.

  Watching me with close attention, Richard said slowl, “I’m asking you to go back to Vienna for a while.”

  Oh no! I wanted to forget Vienna, yet I knew that I never would, because forgetting Vienna would be forgetting Max.

  “What could I possibly do for you there?”

  He frowned, again touching his brows in that characteristic gesture. “It’s difficult to explain, exactly. There are things I can’t tell you, I’m afraid —things I’m not permitted to tell you, even though I personally think you have a right to know.” He paused, weighing his words. “Let me put it to you like this. Max’s death, coming as it did, has scared off certain contacts he’d been carefully fostering, and we are anxious to coax them into coming forward again. We believe that if it could be made to look as if you’re taking over where Max left off, it might just do the trick.”

  I thought he’d finished speaking, and was wondering how to answer. But then he shot at me suddenly, almost roughly, “I’m not going to pretend there won’t be a certain degree of danger in it for you. Unfortunately, there always is in this work, but we’ll do everything possible to minimize the risks.”

  “I don’t care about the danger.”

  Amazingly, it was true. The thought of being killed as Max had been killed seemed utterly unimportant. It was the everyday practical considerations that caused me to hesitate. What to do about my flat, and my job? I had gone back to working with British Electronics, which was perhaps not the wisest thing to do, but it had certainly been the simplest.

  “Had I better give in my notice at work?”

  Richard broke into a smile, standing up suddenly from his perch on the arm of the chair. “So you’ve decided to help us out?”

  “I’ve got to, really, haven’t I? I would never be happy if I refused.”

  His face was serious again as he answered my previous question. “I think it would be best for you to give your notice, but if things work out as we hope, you won’t need to be away too long. I’m sure British Electronics would take you back again.”

  Then there was the embarrassing subject of money. I had next to nothing. When Max died, there had been a month’s salary to come, partly mortgaged in advance; his bank account was in the red. The car, a total write-off, was owned by the firm anyway. Max had talked of insuring his life since he had a wife, but I couldn’t blame him for not getting around to doing it. There had been so little time, and what man expects to be struck down in his prime?

  The firm had been good to me, making a generous ex-gratia payment. But with funeral expenses to be met, and my hospital bill, with a few unexpected debts that Max had probably overlooked, and my air fare back to England, there was now precious little left.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t very much cash available at the moment,” I said awkwardly.

  “That’s no problem.” Again there was that swift smile, come and gone in an instant. “We’ll put you on the payroll temporarily. All expenses, and a bonus at the end.”

  “Did Max get paid?” I asked abruptly, before I’d considered whether I wanted to know the answer.

  Yet again he smiled at me, though this time it lingered a little longer. It was a soft smile of pity. “My dear Jessica, how else do you imagine you could have lived in that apartment in the Kohlmarkt—and all the trimmings? I realize Max’s normal salary must have been pretty good, but not up to that sort of level!”

  A split second’s thought was enough to tell me it was true. I’d been naive to accept our high standard of living unquestioningly.

  Richard said quietly, “I think perhaps it’s the right moment to give you this.”

  In my distress I had been staring down at the carpet again, minutely examining the crudely patterned roses. But I looked up quickly and saw he was holding out an envelope. Like the one from Steve Elliott that still waited unopened on the table, this was white and squarish, with the name of the firm die-stamped at the corner.

  And then I caught sight of the handwriting. . . .

  “What’s this?” I whispered.

  “Max asked me to see you got it, if ... if ever anything happened to him.”

  I stared at the letter, stared at Richard. Both my arms seemed paralyzed, quite unable to reach out and take the envelope from him. He came closer, pushing it into my hand. “It’s from Max, Jessica. Why don’t you open it?”

  The stiff paper seemed burning hot where it touched me. Then suddenly I was feverishly anxious to read this final message from my husband. With clumsy fingers I ripped the envelope and dragged out the folded sheet inside.

  My darling one, I hope so desperately that you will never have to read this. If you do, it means that I am dead. Richard will explain as much as he can, and as for the rest, the part you can never know, you must believe it was something I had to do. There will be a sum of money due which Richard will tell you about, and he’ll see to the details. Try to forgive me, Jessica darling, for whatever pain I have caused you, and remember always that I loved you very deeply. You are the only woman who ever mattered to me. Max.

  To my surprise, I found that my eyes were quite dry. I’d been afraid that this message from Max would smash my feeble defenses. Instead, it gave me added strength. Slowly, with infinite care, I refolded the letter and returned it to the torn envelope. I sat down at the table, holding myself as if I were very fragile, and looked up at Richard.

  “He ... he explains things....”

  Richard nodded, but he said nothing.

  “When was it Max gave you this letter?” I asked him.

  “Only a few weeks before he died, when he realized that at any time the heat might really be turned on him.” Richard paused, then went on in a subtly changed tone, a more practical tone, “I expect he mentions money. I’ve been told to let you know that there’s something over seven hundred pounds due to you.”

  I shook my head helplessly. Such an amount was far more than I had ever owned, but I wanted no part of it. Not money that had been earned at the cost of Max’s life.

  “When would you like me to leave?” I asked wearily.

  “As soon as possible. Can you get the firm to release you at once?”

  “Do I tell them I’m going back to Vienna?”

  He pursed his lips. “Yes, it would be best. They’ll probably get to hear of it anyway, and they’d think it rather odd if you hadn’t mentioned you were going.”

  “All right, then. I’ll concoct some reason or other.”

  “Good girl!” Then he got down to details. “You’ll have to make your own arrangements, or it might give the game away. Will you book a seat on the afternoon flight on Friday?”

  “Yes, I’ll do that Er… how can I get in touch with you, if I need to?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “You’ll have to learn our way of doing things, Jessica. For the time being, at any rate, I shall be the one to get in touch with you.”

  “Very well.”

  My tone must have sounded withdrawn, for Richard said quickly, “Please don’t be offended. It’s better for your own sake that you don’t know too much.”

  “I don’t want to know anything. I’m helping you in this because of what they did to Max. That’s all.”

  He hesitated a moment before suggesting, almost diffidently, “And for your country?”

  I hesitated, too. “Yes—that as well, I suppose.”

  The quick smile lit his face again.

  Suddenly there seemed nothing more to say. I wanted Richard to go away so that I could be alone with my letter. So far I had merely scanned through it once, because it was too important, too private a thing, to read before an audience. Max was in that letter. I wanted to linger over each word, to touch the stiff paper with my lips and whisper, in case he might somehow hear, that I had loved him just as deeply as he had loved me. That I still
loved him.

  For the first time since getting home from work, I glanced at the clock. Seven-thirty-five! It seemed incredible that in a mere ninety minutes my dreary existence could have exploded with such shattering force. I had learned that my husband had worked for British intelligence, that he had not been killed by accident, but brutally murdered. My grief had changed to such swift anger that I had thrown in my lot with the mysterious other-world of secret agents that to most people remains no more than a fascinating fiction.

  Richard was pointing to the table. “I see you’ve had a letter from Vienna.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is it from?”

  I felt a flicker of irritation. “Does that matter?”

  “You mean, it’s none of my business!” Richard smiled sadly. “Things are different now, Jessica— surely you can see that.”

  I shrugged. “It’s from a man called Steve Elliott.”

  “Steve Elliott? Ah yes, Max’s assistant—hardworking but somewhat unimaginative, I gathered. He often mentioned the stolid Steve.”

  I said quickly, “I think you’re being rather unfair. Steve was a very efficient right-hand man for Max, and he was terribly kind to me after the . . . the smash. He attended to everything—the funeral and things, and he visited me constantly, even though the hospital was nearly a hundred kilometers from Vienna. I don’t know what I’d have done without Steve at that dreadful time.”

  Richard seemed about to say something more, but he changed his mind, merely remarking lightly, “Let’s not come to blows about it, Jessica.”

  “Steve has been promoted to Max’s job now,” I said, still hurt. “Obviously the firm must think highly of him.”

  “Does he write to you regularly?”

  I shook my head. “He saw me off at Vienna airport when I came home, and that’s the last I heard of him. I’ve wondered, sometimes, if he’d get in touch.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, no special reason. I thought perhaps he might want to know how I was getting on.”

  “You didn’t think of writing yourself to tell him?”

  I fingered the letter from Max, which was still in my hand. “I suppose I didn’t like to. It’s so easy for a woman to give a wrong impression.”

  “I see.” Richard looked at me thoughtfully. “Aren’t you going to see what he says?”

  I didn’t want to have to read the letter while Richard was still with me. Picking up my handbag from where I’d left it on the table, I first put Max’s letter away inside. Then I went over to the divan and dropped the bag there. Slowly, reluctantly, I went back to the table for Steve’s letter. This time I fetched the paper knife from the bureau and slit the envelope neatly.

  I didn’t know quite what I expected, but the letter was a disappointment. Very matter-of-factly Steve asked how things were going with me, mentioning that he’d heard through the firm’s grapevine that I’d returned to British Electronics. He gave me one or two random items of news about mutual acquaintances in Vienna, said that work kept him very busy these days. Maybe, he finished up, when he next visited the head office we could have dinner together.

  There was nothing in it that I could object to Richard seeing. Bleakly I held the letter out for him to read. He took it without comment and quickly skimmed it. Then, after a short and expressionless glance at me, he read it again more slowly. When he looked up, it was as if he was trying to read my thoughts.

  “I suppose you’ll have to meet him when you go to Vienna?”

  “Well, naturally!”

  “Then you must be especially on your guard to give nothing away to him.”

  I felt suddenly hot. “You’re not saying that you suspect Steve of ... of anything?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. But in this queer game of ours, you have to learn to trust nobody. Absolutely nobody.”

  For some strange reason I had an urge to hurt Richard, to stab a wound. “In that case,” I said coldly, “why should I trust you?”

  He was putting on his raincoat, which he must have taken off when I’d fainted. He stopped abruptly, his arms half into the sleeves. His dark eyes cut into me.

  “Don’t you trust me, then, Jessica?”

  I said uncomfortably, “I’ve no alternative, have I?”

  “Oh yes you have! You can just send me packing, and apart from the seven hundred quid that’s due to you, you’ll never hear from us again.” He shrugged himself into his raincoat and began buttoning it. “I promise that there’ll be no pressure put on you. We were just hoping you might help us finish off what poor old Max couldn’t finish for himself,”

  Immediately I felt ashamed of my silly spite, and wanted to put things right. Richard had known Max more intimately than anyone but myself—and even more than I in some respects. He was a contact I couldn’t bear to lose.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I didn’t really mean anything.”

  “Forget it!” Richard came up and laid his hands on my shoulders. He smiled down at me gently. “You’ve taken quite a beating lately, so it’s no wonder you’re a bit pent up. But there’s a job to be done now—you’ll feel better when things start moving.”

  I wondered about that. But in a way Richard was right. I’d given my grief its head for long enough, and now it was time to face the world again.

  Chapter 3

  For most of the way the Caravelle was flying in a gray world of cloud. Outside the windows there was nothing to see but swirling vapor. The plane was half-empty, and with nobody in the seat beside me, I was forced into the company of my own seething thoughts.

  The firm had thought it very odd when I’d announced that I was leaving in order to return to Vienna. I’d been sent for by Mr. Flackman, the elderly personnel director, who studied me thoughtfully across his wide desk. Perhaps he was wondering if the car smash that had killed Max had left me somewhat unstable.

  “Is this really a wise move, Mrs. Varley?”

  I was on weak ground, and it made me nervous. “I’m just not settling down in London,” I -said. “I ... I thought that I’d be able to, but somehow it hasn’t worked out.”

  “You’ve not given it very long, have you?” His thin fingers fiddled with the cap of his pen. “What does your family think about this sudden plan of yours to go back to Vienna?”

  “Oh, they understand how I feel.”

  That wasn’t true! My parents had been dismayed, poor dears, when I’d phoned home the night before to tell them. They didn’t know what to make of it, though both of them had been careful to avoid any hint that I was acting foolishly. My raw irritability during the three weeks I’d been at home convalescing was still fresh in their minds.

  My father, one of the finest dentists in the West Country, would never have been so careless as to jab the nerve of a patient’s tooth the way he had stabbed again and again through my eggshell shield. Too much kindness, too much love! And the more they showered their love and sympathy upon me, the more it hurt. I’d just had to get away, and that was why I returned to London and British Electronics, going to ground like a wounded animal.

  As I sat there high above central Europe in the enclosed comfort of the big aircraft, I could picture my parents easily. By my watch it was just past four-thirty, and at this very moment Dad would be taking a short break, coming through from the surgery next door to join Mum for a cup of tea. And in all probability she would still be fretting about me.

  “But why should Jess suddenly decide to go off like that, Paul? I just don’t understand it.” Mum’s thin, anxious face would be pleading for reassurance that Dad couldn’t give. But he’d be doing his level best.

  I’d make it up to them, I resolved, when this whole business was over and done with. If, I amended, I was still alive to do it.

  For the first time, fear of the danger involved took hold of me, and I shivered. I wasn’t a very brave person—not like Max. In those last few weeks with him, especially during our holiday, he had seemed so gay and confident, despite
the grim threat hanging over him. On the one or two occasions when I caught him looking a bit strained, he had immediately laughed it off, or kissed me with such swift passion that all other thoughts were swept away. It had been a magnificently courageous performance!

  Again I felt a tiny thrust of pain at the reminder that our relationship had not been all I’d imagined. I had no doubts about Max’s love for me, but to some extent he had been acting a part throughout our brief time together—from necessity, of course, for he was committed to secrecy before we had even met. But even so, it hurt. Utterly in love with my husband, I had believed that just as our bodies came together in naked and all-giving joy, so Max and I were enjoying a true intimacy of mind.

  Sighing, I turned away from the grayness outside the plane window and glanced around at my fellow passengers. What, I wondered, lay behind the masks they offered the world? The two middle-aged women sitting together at the front and chattering nonstop; the bland business executive opposite, who seemed to be reading endless reports; the young couple, who must surely be newlyweds, judging by their absorption with one another. And what about that fast-working type farther along, who caught my glance and was grinning into the opening he thought he could see? I looked away quickly. To these people, I would seem perfectly innocent, too. A young woman with an air of sadness about her, traveling alone. If they caught the glint of my slim gold wedding ring, they might conclude I was temporarily parted from my husband.

  The sun cut through the cloud above us, and we were instantly in a shimmering world of palest silver-gilt. I looked out of the window again, and as I watched, the cloud layers below us parted, too. The effect was dramatic, theatrical. The spotlights first, then the lifting of the curtains to reveal the opening set. Vienna airport! Great buildings of steel and glass, and beautiful, because my memory told me so. I had made this landing once before, when I’d arrived with Max at the end of our honeymoon in Spain.

  It was unbearable to think back to that day.

  My plan now was to take the airport bus into the city rather than a taxi, because it was important not to give the impression to any interested onlooker that I was spending money too freely. Richard had explained to me a host of things an intelligence agent must be wary of. At all times, he’d warned me, I must behave with great caution, as if I were being observed.