The Crocus List - Lyall Gavin (книги онлайн бесплатно без регистрации полностью .txt) 📗

"Dot Tuckey? Sure, she'd been with you, SOE. I didn't know her then, only later."

"They got to her, too. You tell him, Harry."

Maxim told him. Only he left out-as Agnes had instructed-any mention of CCOAC and St Louis.

Magill listened, then said: "Jeez. You are deep into bear country, Major. Did you tell him?" This to Agnes.

"I told him. You can see how worried I got him."

"Yes… so where do you want to go from here?"

"What I really want is for us to reach these people before Moscow does: there's no argument about whothey'll want to pin it on. And after that-nothing. Silence. Blaming it on the Company would be just a fallback-you wouldn't believe me if I said I wasn't thinkingofthat, but you might believe me if I say we'd prefer the good old British way: that nothing happened and there's no blame at all. The psychopath theory can cover the Abbey, and for the rest"-she shrugged-"we can make sure there's no proof. Moscow's got nothing but bodies and they aren't going to dig them up to prove us wrong. But if we're tohandleit this way, it's got to be fast and we need every lead you can give us."

Magill leant back, rocking gently in his chair. "You've grown up, sweetie. You've got style. I'm truly sorry we never got to work together… Now let me tell you where I stand. I've got no official connection with the Company any more, but it's still useful. Even if I wanted to try and screw them, I'd be stupid: it would lose me clients and money both. So I tell you what I'll do: I'll look into a couple things, maybe call somebody-can you get back here after lunch? I'll clear my desk, anything I've got for you I'll tell you privately. Excuse me, Major, but I don't know you or your security clearance. This way, if anybody asks, I may have talked to an agent from British Security. That much I can carry. Okay?"

Going down in the lift, which was uncrowded because it was still early for lunch, Maxim said: "/ think he just wants to put his hand on your knee-in a purely uncle-ly fashion."

"Why, Major Maxim, I didn't know you cared. But I'm a big girl now." Her face was controlled and serious.

"How d'you think we're doing?"

"Let's walk a bit."

They walked uptown on Madison, which quickly loses its advertising-agency and legal-eagle gloss in that direction, with a chill wind in their faces. A mere two hundred miles from Washington had brought them into a different season, although it was obviously the first hint of real autumn in New York: around them, others were hurrying because they were too thinly dressed, or tugging at coats and gloves that were unfamiliar and awkward after half a year at the back of the closet. Maxim felt smug in his thick car-coat for the first time in America.

"Well, at least we established how it all started," he said. "Were you guessing at that Track Two business?"

"More or less. But Charlie's Indians"-she had avoided the British jargon with Magill, Maxim had noticed-"are a big outfit, and big outfits tend to behave in patterns. It was worth trying. Yes, we got that far, but we didn't get any names, not yet. Are you hungry?"

"So-so."

"I don't feel like anywhere too swank. Do you mind missing Delmonico's on your first visit to New York?"

They missed Delmonico's by only a few blocks geographically but far more gastronomically-or so Maxim assumed, since he also assumed that Delmonico's didn't specialise in hamburgers and tuna sandwiches for the decorators working on the shop next door. But he felt securely anonymous jammed in a corner against the steamed-up front window, and perhaps that was what Agnes wanted.

"The trouble is," she muttered through her sandwich, "that we don't really have the leverage I was trying to imply. Mo may just not care what gets said about the Company-it's all the new team now-as long as he isn't caught saying it himself. And if he gets blamed for some dirty work that got started fifteen years ago-and I doubt he was directly responsible; he was too senior, then-how much does it hurt him now? His clients must know he's ex-Company, and like it. It suggests good Washington connections, as he said, and a certain fluidity of ethics, as he didn't say. Clients do like winning."

"He must still want the whole thing stopped."

She raised her eyebrows. "I wish I agreed with you. Look at it this way: Track Two is now doing just what it was set up to do, in just the situation they foresaw: a weak British government getting too close to Moscow. If Mo liked the idea then, why shouldn't he like it now?"

Maxim chewed thoughtfully on something he had deeded to eat rather than take out and look at; he had chosen the hamburger. "Do you think the CIA could still be running it, then?"

"No, the old reasoning still holds. If Charlie had triggered it, there'd have been a big back-up of propaganda and so on. I think the British end somehow managed to start itself up-though I'm damned if I see how."

"What's the problem?"

"Because that's exactly what Charlie wouldn't want them to do: start anything without a clear directive from over here. And there's only one sure way to do that: recruit and train them individually, or in pairs, but never let any one of them see the whole list."

"So somebody must have got hold of the list."

"That could be our strongest point: that things are running out of control. But it depends on how much control the Companywants to have now…"

"Not just a list, though," Maxim went on. "They got hold of a cache of arms and other kit. That sounds like a base, somewhere. They wouldn't issue those things individually, I'd think. I mean, if one of them steps under a bus and you start valuing his estate for probate, Ullo, ullo, ullo, how much is a case of Russian grenades worth?"

Agnes grinned quickly. But Maxim was most likely right. Spreading such immediately incriminating material around was more risky than one truly safe house. "It's something we'd like to know, all right."

"You could ask."

Agnes was about to say scathingly 'Ask how?' but caught herself in time. "So now you go and tramp the streets changing your traveller's cheques into cash and then into traveller's cheques signed Winterbotham. Spread it around the banks-have you got both passports? Clever fellow. Think up a story why you've got cash and want cheques butdon't tell it until they drag it out of you. Sign of guilt. What the hell business is it of theirs? You're innocent, remember."

25

This time there was no waiting at the reception desk; Agnes carefully avoided the girl's eye as she was shown straight through to Magill's office.

The door to the inner room was open and Mo was standing watching a newscast on a TV set in the far corner, sipping from a cut-glass tumbler.

"Hi, sweetie, like a drink?" He mixed her a dry martini from a collection of decanters on a silver tray-nothing so arriviste as a drinks cupboard or private bar-set on a small table. The other furniture was a couple of wing chairs, a single-ended Victorian chaise-longue and a fruitwood dressing-table. The room was decorated in quiet tabby-cat colours, with style-and a purpose. She sipped her drink.

"I did some thinking," Mo said, "and I figured I didn't need to call DC after all. Maybe I should tell you about one man. D'you want to hear?"

"I'm all ears."

"Not all, sweetie, not all. " They sat in the wing chairs. "It goes back to the old OSS days and the crusade we were running against Hitler, along with your SOE and Dot Tuckey and people like that. Like Arnie Tatham. Did you ever meet with him?"

"The name sounds… Didn't he get killed by Italian terrorists?"

"Right. I first met with Arnie, it must've been '44, I didn't get to know him well then, but he came outofthatwith one hell of a name as a field man. He was a natural, you find them sometimes, if you're lucky, and from the damnedest backgrounds. Most anywhere except where you'd go looking. Like Arnie: his old man was rector of an Episcopalian church in small-town Illinois. I think his mother died when he was young and he grew up withmore books than friends, maybe more Shakespeare than Mark Twain. I guess if there hadn't been the war, Arniewould be a professor at some small college writing monographs on how many times Hamlet called Ophelia 'a dumb broad'."