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

32

Clare Hallcame out of the library just before twenty to one. Agnes climbed from the car and walked unhurriedly across the road to intercept her.

"Mrs Hall? I'm sorry to trouble you, but something's come up concerning your father's work. I'm from the British Security Service, I'd be glad if you'd check with our Washington embassy to confirm that."

Clare Hall stopped and looked around, not at Agnes and not looking for help, but as if reassuring herself that this was Matson, Illinois. Then she smiled politely. "Do the Feds allow you to do this?"

"Strictly speaking, no. But it would -have taken longer to convince them than to come to you direct. I'm afraid there's a Moscow element interested in the matter as well. That was entirely my fault."

"I don't understand this one bit. And aren't you overplaying the part, with those sunglasses?"

Agnes raised them. "That was the Moscow element."

They sat in the car on the south side of the park that occupied, neatly, one single block on the edge of town where they had run out of tree names and fallen back on Roosevelt and Jefferson streets. A few schoolchildren were throwing a football around the memorial to the dead from the Great Southern Rebellion. Maxim had never known it described that way before, but the list-he had seen it when walking the town earlier-was long enough to justify any name. It was a shock for an outsider, particularly a soldier, to sense how much more the Civil War had meant beyond interesting developments in tactics and weapons.

"The point is," Agnes was saying, "that Moscow now knows your father set up the Crocus operation."

"Through your mistake," Clare Hall said calmly.

"Quite true. But they must have known one thing that I only just learnt-obviously they'd file and cross-reference anything about an ex-Company man-which is that your father's body was never found. You do see where that leads? Is he really dead?-or is he still running Crocus?"

"I took pictures of him. They made me."

Agnes considered. "Yes, I did hear that. But I think you should have gone for an emotional reaction, there. Said you actually saw him killed, or lying dead. I could take pictures of my own father lying dead, and he's still zapping the greenfly on his roses whenever the rain lifts. A man like your father, with over thirty years of undercover work-well, he could plant a story in the Italian press, fake a kidnapping, tip off the police where to find you, and walk out of the country on a false passport… to him, it would practically be routine."

"If you want to believe that, I can't prevent you."

"The problem is that you can't prevent Dzerzhinsky Square believing it as well. Believing the worst is what they're best at. But we can drop you at home and let you wait and see, if you like."

There was a long silence. In the back of the car, Maxim took out his pack of cigarettes and looked at them. Although they were an unfamiliar brand, all the routine motions of shaking one loose and putting it in his mouth seemed totally natural. Could he really have become a smoker again after just one cigarette? No, he couldn't, because he still didn't have a light.

Clare Hall said: "What do you suggest I do?"

"Get out of town," Agnes said crisply. "Stay at some motel, or with a friend, not a relative. And then contact the FBI, I'll back you up, talk to them myself."

Agnes was putting herself out on a limb. Whatever else the FBI said, it was going to say Why didn't you come to us first? Because, Maxim realised, I insisted on going to St Louis for the CCOAC list…

"All right," Clare Hall said. "But I have to stop by my house and pack some things and pick up my car."

"Yees," Agnes agreed reluctantly. "We may still be ahead of them. They don't give their field men muchscope. On something like this, they'd have to check back up the line, it could be as far as Moscow, before they move… Harry, will you drive?"

That wasn't to save any masculine pride: she was a better driver than he was, and both knew it. But she wanted to look around, watch for reactions in parked cars that they passed. Unfamiliar with American cars, he got started with a thump from the transmission and a delayed surge of acceleration from the automatic gearbox.

"You introduced him as Alan," Clare Hall said, "and now you call him Harry."

"What are names in our trade?"

"I'd like to know that you're good at your trade. I haven't seen much sign of it yet."

"Just stay alive and you may prove something yet."

Maxim took a corner with a sudden tilt, betrayed by the power steering and soft springing. "Sorry… But taking up that point, do you have a gun in the house?"

"I could have," Clare Hall said cautiously.

"A hand gun?"

"Yes."

"Can I borrow it, at least as long as we're with you?"

"You mean you aren't even armed?"

Agnes said: "Your Constitution doesn't say anything about the right of foreigners to bear arms. Is this your street? Circle the block, Harry."

Apart from the central few blocks where the offices, shops and banks stood shoulder to shoulder, Matson was lavishly-Americanly-widespread. The most modest white frame house had, to Maxim's eye, an absurdly large amount of lawn, dotted with bushes and full-grown trees that towered over them. Perhaps it was because the land was so abundant that nobody had put in fences, hedges or walls, as the British would have done immediately to define their territory.

What had been the rector's house was a two-storey wooden building with gables that stuck out at each side under steep roofs, and a long porch with wooden columns.

"I can't see anything," Agnes said. "Back into the driveway."

In reverse, the car felt like an Army truck, but Maxim got it on to the concrete without scraping the big trees that shaded the house. He took Clare Hall's keys and Agnes moved into the driving seat while he ran, literally ran, through the house. Then he called them in.

"First, could I have that gun?"

It was a Walther 9mm, undoubtedly 'liberated' some time in the war, but still in good condition unless it was one made by slave labour, when grains of sand were said to have been added to increase the wear and tear. No, Maxim thought: if Tatham decided to bring this one home, it would be good. He'd know. There was a sealed box of ammunition dated fifteen years ago. He broke it open, loaded the gun, and felt better.

While Clare Hall packed upstairs, Agnes watched the street through the net curtains of the living-room.

"What do we do now?" Maxim asked quietly.

"Tag along with her as far as we can. She's got to get in touch with her father, if he is still alive. I don't know if there'll be a way I can look over her shoulder, but…"

The room still had a heavy, masculine feel to it, lined with old books and formal photographs. Maxim scanned them, but he didn't really expect Tatham to have been fool enough to cover his wall with pictures of the Crocus List recruits.

"D'you think Magill knew Tatham's body was never found?" he asked.

"Another little thing he didn't tell us. The whole Company must have known-but what should they do? There's no point in trying to track him down if they want to forget he ever worked for them. Can you see anywhere she keeps business papers? Here, you watch for a moment."

Glancing over his shoulder, Maxim saw her fiddling at the lock on a bureau drawer. Boards still creaked upstairs as Clare Hall moved about. Outside, the street was empty, and looked as if that was usual. Setting up a surveillance in such a place would be ridiculous: it was a lace-curtain neighbourhood, and behind every curtain was an old couple with nothing better to do than watch what everybody else did. In that, if not much else, Matson was international. Of course, if you were police or FBI you'dflash a badge and join the old lady behind her curtains with your binoculars.