He offered it, tentatively, and Janet matched his movement, holding out the package, but to receive it he had to give her the envelope, freeing both his hands. He grabbed at it, turning as he did so, scurrying back into the walled city.
Janet was moving fast, too. She ran back across Egypt Avenue, careless of the cars this time, and darted inside the Volkswagen.
“Let me see!” He tugged the material from inside the envelope, spreading it out on his lap, nodding but not looking at Janet as she recounted the conversation. He studied the map and the directions more than the photograph. “It’s right around the other side of the citadel,” he said. “In the Palouriotissa district…” He handed the map across to her and said: “I’ll drive, you map read.”
Janet held everything up close in front of her face, trying to work out where they were going, as Baxeter turned the car, reached the junction, and began skirting the walls along Stasinos Avenue. “It says it’s a two-story house,” she read. “Number 11, in the cul-de-sac off Mareotis.”
“I know Mareotis,” said Baxeter.
“I think this really is something!” said Janet. “I’ve got a feeling about it!”
Traffic clogged ahead of them. Baxeter pumped the horn and said: “Come on! Come on!”
It took almost thirty minutes to complete the loop and come up to King George Square, from which Mareotis fed off. Baxeter slowed now, traveling the entire length until he reached Kapotas, where he said: “Damn!” and jerked the car around, to retrace their route.
“There!” pointed Janet, head close to her map again.
It was a narrow, rutted spur of an alley, without any proper lighting. Baxeter had to stop the car and get out to calculate the consecutive numbering. Back inside the car he edged slowly forward, counting off the houses as he did so.
“… Seven… nine…” His voice trailed off and he stopped the car, not saying anything.
“It’s a mistake: it’s got to be a mistake!” Janet said, gazing at the completely empty lot where number eleven would have had to be. “We’ve miscounted. Let’s do it again.”
Baxeter got out of the car to check the numbering on both sides and then knocked at the entrance to nine. In the light behind the occupant, a fat, sag-busted woman, Janet was able to see a lot of gesturing although she could not hear what was said. There was a slowness about Baxeter’s return to the car.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Really sorry.”
“Tell me!”
“There isn’t a number eleven: there never has been.” He switched on the interior light, looking closely at the photograph. He said: “I don’t even think this is Beirut. The background looks far more like Cyprus than Beirut.”
Janet broke down.
The weeping this time was different from the way she had cried in Beirut. This time there was a mix of emotions, of regret and of disappointment and of frustration. She felt Baxeter’s arm around her and she allowed herself to be pulled into his shoulder and she sobbed against him, letting it happen. There was some relief in weeping.
“Why!” she said, her voice unsteady. “Why does it always have to be like this!”
“Easy,” he said. “We always had our doubts, didn’t we?”
“I wanted so much for it to be right this time!”
“Something could still come up.”
Janet pulled away from him but only slightly. She said: “Your money’s gone.”
“You know that’s protected.”
“I still feel responsible.”
“Don’t be silly.”
22
B axeter insisted upon going alone to the police to report the incident and freeze the money and Janet was grateful. Baxeter dropped her off at the hotel on his way, reminding her of the postponed interview the following day and Janet assured him she would not forget.
Another stupid episode, Janet thought, lying unsleeping in her darkened room. Which she’d suspected before she’d started. But she’d had no choice but to go through with the charade, so it was even more stupid to spend time on recriminations. Oddly, one of her biggest regrets was breaking down and crying like that in front of Baxeter, showing herself up. He’d been very understanding: kind and gentle and understanding. She did not think it was any professional cynicism: she was sure it was genuine. She was glad he’d been with her. There’d been some apprehension, particularly when she stood by the Paphos Gate, but the knowledge of his being so close at hand-of protection being only yards away-had made everything much easier. He really was…
Janet stopped the drift, determinedly, and then demanded the reason from herself. There was nothing wrong, nothing at which to feel ashamed, in reflecting on a man who was kind and considerate and had actually gone to a great deal of inconvenience-the sort of inconvenience he would be undergoing now, at the police station-on her behalf. She was not indulging in any schoolgirl romantic fantasy: that would have been absurd, unthinkable. She was merely looking back over the events of the day that she’d shared with someone. The word shared stayed with her. That’s what she’d done: shared something. Not been alone. After all that had happened, the near-disasters and the humiliations, it had been nice for a few brief hours not to be alone any more. Just as she hadn’t been alone after John Sheridan came into her life. Janet frowned at the comparison. Not the same, she thought: not the same at all. It would be quite wrong for her to combine-to confuse-the two.
The following morning Janet telephoned the British embassy, but without any of the anger she was now sorry at having directed at her father. In contrast, she was chillingly cool. She told Partington at once that she was aware of his role in what had happened to her, talking down his weakly-begun protest by telling him that her father as well as Hart had confirmed it. As she mentioned the American, she remembered the still-unreturned clothes. Deciding now against any more contact with the CIA man, Janet demanded-rather than requested-that the embassy help return them to the woman in Beirut. Partington, flustered, promised that he would, of course, take care of it.
“I couldn’t have known how it would turn out,” said the diplomat. “Not what they intended to happen to you in Beirut.”
“Robbery but not rape, eh?”
“Your father said the money didn’t matter: that without it you wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
“I don’t want to talk about it any more,” said Janet. It was difficult for her to accept but she really did feel bored by it now.
“I really am very sorry.”
“That’s what people seem perpetually to be, very sorry.”
“Apart from returning the clothes, is there anything else I can do?”
“No,” Janet said, careless of the rudeness.
“You will call me again, if I can help, won’t you?”
“No,” Janet said again. “If I thought I needed any sort of help I don’t think I would come to you, Mr. Partington.”
Janet was ready, waiting, for Baxeter’s arrival, and picked up the telephone on the first ring when he called from the downstairs house phone. They met in the lounge overlooking the swimming pool again, although he did not at once turn on the tape recorder. Janet asked about his meeting with Zarpas, and Baxeter said he had not seen him. A subordinate officer had promised to put a stop on the money and circulate all banks, credit exchanges, and hotels. As an additional precaution, Baxeter had told his own bank to duplicate the warning through all its branches. He agreed with her that he supposed there would be a prosecution if whoever had the money attempted to pass it, but he assured Janet the policeman who had taken his statement had not talked of needing one from her.
“What about your magazine?”
“They cleared it before I started, so they knew the risks,” Baxeter said, casually. “There’s no problem.”
“I still wish it had been my money.”
“It’s over, finished,” said Baxeter, even more dismissively.
Janet found the resumed interview difficult, and could not at first understand why. It was because she did not think of him as a stranger any more, she decided finally. At the first encounter, their roles had been clearly defined, interviewer to interviewee, but now it didn’t seem like that any more. Baxeter appeared to find a similar problem, posing his questions over-solicitously, frequently apologizing in advance for what he was going to ask and several times abandoning a query in mid-sentence, saying that it didn’t matter and twice that it was too personal. It was late afternoon before Baxeter turned the recorder off.