‘And when will that be?’
‘It’s probably happening now, at their meeting in eastern Slovakia. No doubt the fraternal comrades are toasting peace and happiness at this very moment.’
‘Have you met the man?’
‘Dubček? Once, at a reception. The ambassador was in London and Eric Whittaker was ill, so the lot fell on me.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Courteous, amusing, intelligent. As far as one can tell from hello goodbye.’
The man hummed a bit, his bluff, aggressive humour dampened for a moment. ‘Speak the language, do you?’ he asked unexpectedly.
‘Czech? Well enough. My Russian is better.’
‘At least they’ve posted you to the right place.’
‘Pure chance, I can assure you. I might just as easily have got Ouagadougou.’
Wry laughter. Did the man even know where Ouagadougou was?
It wasn’t exactly clear what brought the evening to an end. Probably the arrival of cars to take people back to their hotel. There was much handshaking and a bit of two-cheek kissing, which rather surprised the parliamentarians. And then the terrace and the house below was empty of all but the hosts and Sam was making his belated farewells. Madeleine managed to get him alone for a moment, which was what he had been dreading. She took hold of his shoulders and kissed him full on the mouth. ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘will you go to bed with me?’
‘Did Steffie suggest you ask me that?’
‘More or less.’
‘Well tell her the answer’s no.’
She laughed. ‘Is that because you’re being faithful to her, or because you’ve got someone else lined up?’
‘Mrs Whittaker, you’re drunk.’
She was doing that thing, fiddling with his tie as though to make him look respectable. ‘And you are boring.’
‘Boring is what I should be, under the circumstances. Can you imagine what Eric would say if the First Secretary in Chancery was shafting his wife?’
‘Eric doesn’t mind. When he took me on I warned him that sometimes I’d have a little fling and he wasn’t to mind about it. It was my first husband who minded, and look what happened to him.’
He took her hand and lowered it to her side. ‘Was he pushed or did he jump?’
She thumped him gently in the chest. ‘I began to push,’ she said. ‘He thought it easier to jump.’
It was a short walk to Sam’s flat through the maze of alleys. As he reached the little square in front of his building a figure detached itself from the shadows and accosted him.
‘Did I give you a fright?’ the SIS man asked.
‘Not at all, Harold. Nothing gives me a fright in the Malá Strana. Safest place in the whole city.’
‘Ghosts, I thought. No amount of security can guard against them.’
‘Are you a ghost, Harold?’
‘Spook, maybe. But I’ve always thought of myself as a kind of golem. Occult powers, if you know what I mean. No, I won’t come up. Safer to have a quick chat out here.’
‘I’m sure my flat is clean.’
The man laughed. ‘Is that what Mr Plod the policeman tells you?’ He reached inside his jacket as though going for a gun, but all he brought out was a plain envelope. ‘I thought you’d like the photo. Nice little souvenir. Don’t bother looking at it now. I just wanted to say that she has form. Your young lady, I mean.’
‘Form? What kind of form?’
‘Interesting, really. A few years ago – sixty, sixty-one – she was having an affair with a member of the Party. Respectable chap, married, three children, house in Vinohrady, you know the kind of thing. Destined for the Presidium, by all accounts. So we got to know about his little peccadillo with this particular girl – don’t ask me how – and we had him lined up for a bit of gentle blackmail.’
‘Charming.’
‘We are, Sam, we are.’
‘And what happened?’
‘Total bloody failure. As soon as he was approached by us, he dropped her like a hot potato, confessed everything to the wife and told the StB. Our own chap had a difficult time extricating himself from the deal. He was working under diplomatic cover, thank God, but they declared him persona non grata and we had to get him out in a hurry.’
Nothing could be more normal, Sam told himself. Young girl falls for older, successful, married man, then gets thrown over when the affair threatens to go public. Yet nothing could be more abnormal than having Harold and his spooks sniffing around your private parts. ‘But she wasn’t actually working for us, was she? It wasn’t – what do you lot call it? – a honey trap?’
Harold glanced sideways at Sam. He was hoping, oh, surely he was hoping, that he looked like Orson Welles in that scene in The Third Man. Not as he was in the later scenes – not running through the sewers, and certainly not clawing at the grating of the manhole cover. But the one where Harry Lime appears for the first time, standing in the shadows of the doorway. ‘I’d say she was a not-so-innocent bystander caught in the crossfire.’
‘Not so innocent?’
‘Apparently your girl was only fifteen when she started with this fellow. Quite a little titbit.’
Sam felt something snap inside him. Nothing dramatic, just a small palpable rupture. Trust, or something. ‘Fifteen?’
‘That’s what it seems. Been with him for three or four years when we caught up with it. There’s a theory going around the files that we were trespassing on another operation. That she was set up by the East Germans. Who knows if that’s true or not?’
‘So she might have been an East German agent? At fifteen?’
‘Not saying so, old chap. Just a rumour.’
There was a pause while Sam digested this possibility. ‘Sure you won’t come up?’ he asked. ‘A nightcap?’
‘Quite sure, old chap. Must be getting along. Work all hours these days. I do hope I haven’t put the kibosh on the start of a lovely friendship.’
‘Nothing of the kind, Harold. And thank you for the information.’
In his sitting room Sam opened the envelope Harold had given him and tipped the photographic print out along with two strips of negatives. He examined the print. It was the kind of thing you took on holiday – a group of strangers gathered behind half-empty beer glasses, frozen by the flash and backed by shadows. Faces were white and staring, grimacing with laughter. One of the group had put his hand round the back of his neighbour’s head to give him an antenna of two fingers. In the centre was the violinist – Jitka, that was her name – and her husband. On the left of the group was Lenka. The others laughed, she smiled.
What, Sam wondered, was she smiling at?
III
10
It’s raining. Scudding clouds like damp rags hung out in the wind. A boy and a girl, laden beneath rucksacks, climbing out of a Land Rover and taking up position on the roadside. The Land Rover drives off in a plume of spray and laughter.
‘Daddy doesn’t believe we’ll get anywhere,’ Eleanor mutters angrily, and it’s only defiance that stops her fulfilling her parent’s belief. Her anorak hood is letting in water around the neck, it’s too damp to roll a ciggie and she’s having second thoughts about this venture.