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

33

"I didn't identify all of them," Annette told George before he had even had time to order a drink; inevitably, they had met in one of his clubs. "Four are dead anyway, and there's five others I'm not certain about. One of them could be either of two people with the same name, but I've got twenty-two who are alive now unless they've died in the last year or so. How's that?"

"Brilliant. What are you drinking?"

"Anything." Then, remembering that such a careless attitude to alcohol offended George: '.'Gin and tonic, lemon, no ice. Can I go on?"

"May I see?" George read the St Louis list through carefully, feeling guilty that it took such a neat and thorough piece of paperwork to remind him of how competent a woman he had married. And he could guess at the amount of work it represented: it had been no simple skimming of Who's Who, since few businessmen enter those pearly gates without the visa of a knighthood, or at very least, a CBE or CMC. Only four had achieved such distinctions.

Somewhere on that list is Person Y, he thought, glaring at it as if he could make the name shuffle its feet with guilt. But at least there was a pattern: a Church connection (where it showed), a tendency to independence and running their own businesses, although not all were businessmen: one was a university lecturer, another a solicitor. But no Person Y.

Blast.

"What did you say?" Annette was suddenly anxious.

"Nothing, you've done a marvellous job… perhaps I can narrow it a bit further." Taking the ages, he thinnedthe list down to twelve men who were now around the fifty-year mark.

Their drinks arrived and George gobbled more or less silently for a while. Then he said carefully: "I have an American banker from the Midwest sending a signed photograph to an Englishwoman who was involved in the French Resistance. A picture of himself and some Briton, just the two. It's the Brit I want, and he's somewhere on that list. Where's the connection?"

"The American had an affair with the Englishwoman in the war."

"Typically feminine; you've all got pornographic minds. No, he spent the war in the Pacific."

"Then they had an affair after the war. If he's a banker he could afford a European holiday, I should think."

"That still doesn't tell us who the Brit is-and before you start, he's too old to be their love-child. Cleanse your thoughts and start again."

"What else do you know about your American?"

"Nothing much… he wrote a couple of books."

"What sort of books?"

"One was a polemic on banking practice, by the title, and the other was about the Red Menace. "

"What does your Englishwoman do-since the war?"

With a shiver at talking of Miss Tuckey in the present tense, George said: "Oh… gives lectures, writes books-"

"Writes books."

' "Everybody writes books, these days… " George let his voice trail away. Keyserlinghad been anti-Communist: Dorothy Tuckey's work on Resistance techniques-seen as a future need-were anti-Communist. So perhaps the photograph was one writer paying homage to another whom he admired? "It still doesn't tell us who the Brit was."

"Another banker? Or another author-no, there isn't one on the list… Or a publisher? There's one of them. Could that be the missing link?"

"Most publishers look like missing links… But no jumping to conclusions. First we have to know who published Miss… Library."

One advantage of London clubs is that at least the older ones maintain good libraries that stay open after the public ones are closed. Miss Tuckey's works had been rather specialised, however, so it was only in the third of George's haunts that they found a couple of her books. The earlier had been published by the Parados Press and printed by Arthur Fluke amp; Son, Worcester.

"By God," George whispered-the particular library had that leather-bound and unread atmosphere-"I do think we've found him."

According to Annette's notes, Julian Fluke from the CCOAC list had spent a couple of years with a London publisher before joining the family printing firm in Worcester, where he had soon started a small imprint of his own. The books had been marketed through a bigger publisher: that, George knew already, was not rare and even today needed relatively little capital-particularly when you owned a printing works already.

"Isn't Parados some sort of fort?" Annette murmured.

"It's a bit of a fort, the wall you build to stop yourself getting shot in the back. Ha!" Such a name was no coincidence. Parados had specialised in Resistance memoirs and some crusading religious works. But it had published no books since 1970. Shortly afterwards, Julian Fluke had left the family firm and gone to. work for HMSO Press, the government printing works in Edinburgh. The latest Whitaker's Almanack showed that he was now Deputy Controller, Classified Printing.

George shook his head in slow admiration. After the CCOAC conference there had been two years spent winding down Parados Press-which could have made Fluke too overtly an activist figure-then the retreat to Edinburgh and the gradual penetration of the government institution he would understand best. Now, just about every secret government paper that needed printing would pass under his nose. A true position of trust-and in one way, Fluke's loyalty ran deeper than anybody had guessed.

34

They left Gulev's car at a shopping mall on the outskirts of St Louis and got a cab out to the airport. They were back at the Washington embassy around dinner time, but the messages had got there sooner. Those were stacked in order of time and mounting hysteria on Agnes's desk. She flicked wearily through them, then reached for the phone. "They certainly traced my car… Hello?"

Maxim could hear the operator's anguished squawk.

"Never mind that," Agnes said firmly. "I'm not at home to anybody except London, but you can tell Colonel Lomax and Mr Giles that I'm back." She put the phone down. "Giles does the same job for the Other Mob, Six. You probably haven't met him."

She took the cover off a portable typewriter and began to type in expert bursts; Maxim remembered her undercover two years as a secretary. He lit a cigarette and slumped in a corner chair. Without looking up, she said: "You're getting the habit again fast. "

Maxim looked at the cigarette in his hand. "Funny. I thought I'd be fireproof after eight years."

"You'll fail your next Combat Fitness Test and then what?"

"Not quite the most pressing of my problems."

"No… light me one, would you?"

He put it in her mouth. "Report?"

"I seem already to have reported to Moscow," she said sourly. "It's about time London got a few words as well."

They could identify Lomax's urgent Rifle Brigade stride in the corridor well before he slammed through the door. "Good God, Agnes, what did you-and you!" He suddenly saw Maxim. "I told you specificallynot to-have you been in Illinois as well? I should have guessed. You canhave no idea of what we-By God, you'll stir up a rerun of the War of 1812 any moment now."

"Jerry," Agnes said wearily, "turn down the heat and come off the boil. I'll have something for you in a minute."

Lomax gave her a vicious glare and subsided in another corner. Just as Agnes finished, Giles came in, tall and aristocratic in evening dress, having been called away from some function. He had almost no hair and a permanently amused expression.

"My dear Agnes, youhave been enjoying yourself -except for your poor eye. What happened there? You've even got Charlie's Indians speaking to me again, although I won't pass on what they're saying. It seems they'd arranged in Matson to be tipped off if Arnold Tatham's daughter did anything newsworthy, and I suppose getting burnt to death counts as news even in these days. And would this gentleman be Major Maxim? Yes, I've heard of you. Delighted. Edwin Giles." They shook hands.