“I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t have to trust him,” Skorzeny said. “Just let him do his job. I have faith in his ability. He’s a soldier. Like me.”
Lainé inclined his head to show he hadn’t missed Skorzeny’s veiled insult. “What was I, a washerwoman?”
Skorzeny chose not to answer the question. Instead, he said, “I would appreciate it if you stayed in your room this evening. I have important guests coming to dinner.”
Lainé’s tongue licked tobacco flakes from his lips. He spat them out, pfft. “What guests?”
Skorzeny looked at the damp flakes that landed on the leather of his desktop. “Political guests. Esteban will bring you a tray and a bottle from the cellar.”
Lainé’s eyes brightened. “You have a cellar?”
“Frau Tiernan is cooking lamb, so I suggest the ’55 Penfolds Grange Shiraz. It’s Australian, but excellent.”
Lainé’s lip curled at the wine’s origin, then he shrugged and nodded. “All right. But I tell you, I don’t like the Irishman. How do you know he won’t betray us?”
Skorzeny shook his head. “He is a soldier. A good one. He will follow orders. Besides, I have placed someone close to him. Someone to keep watch for us.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The landlady showed Ryan to the parlour with its stiff-cushioned chairs and dark wallpaper. Two young women had peeked down at him from the landing above when he entered the boarding house. They had ducked back beyond the banister, giggling, when he looked up at them.
Mrs. Highland left Ryan alone to fidget on the settee. She returned a few minutes later, said Celia would be down presently.
“What are your plans for the evening?” she asked, hovering by the door as if standing sentry, her hair pulled back hard into a bun, her smile polite and tight-lipped.
“The pictures,” Ryan said.
“Oh? What’s playing?”
“The James Bond film. Dr. No. It’s based on a book by Ian Fleming.”
Her smile turned to a scowl. “I hear those books are really quite vulgar.”
Sweat gathered at the small of Ryan’s back. “I haven’t read any of them.”
“Hmm. As I’m sure you can see, I run a respectable house. I regard my girls not just as lodgers, but as wards in my care. I know some of their parents personally. I won’t insist, but I would be grateful if you brought Miss Hume back before eleven o’clock.”
Ryan smiled and nodded.
The door opened, and Celia entered. Her red hair gathered loose above her shoulders, the short-sleeved green dress simple and snug, an emerald broach the only embellishment. Mrs. Highland stood back, frowning at the sight of Celia’s freckled skin. Celia ignored her.
“Albert,” she said.
Ryan stood. “Celia.”
They stood in silence save for the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece until Celia said, “Thank you, Mrs. Highland.”
The landlady looked at them each in turn, cleared her throat. “Well, I’ll leave you two to make your plans. Good evening, Mr. Ryan.”
He bowed his head. “Good evening.”
Mrs. Highland left them, closed the door behind her. Ryan heard her scold the girls on the stairs.
Celia’s green-eyed gaze caused Ryan’s mouth to dry and his lips to seal shut.
When he thought he could bear the silence no longer, she said, “Mrs. Highland does like to fuss over her girls.”
Ryan’s laugh burst from him like a greyhound from a trap. He blushed, and Celia smiled.
“Shall we go?” she asked.
They sat in the flickering dark, still and silent. Other couples leaned close, touched, the silhouettes of their heads sometimes joining together. Everyone in the room oohed in soft unison as Ursula Andress emerged tanned and shining from the sea.
The girl next to Celia looked up for a moment before turning her lips back to the boy whose hand had slipped inside her blouse. Ryan watched the shapes of the boy’s fingers move beneath the fabric. When he raised his eyes, he saw Celia looking back at him, a sly smile, her eyes glistening in the dimness.
They walked south along D’Olier Street towards the northerly buildings of Trinity College, Celia’s arm hooked in Ryan’s. A rain shower had slicked the pavement while they’d been in the cinema, street lights reflected in the sheen. The windows of the Irish Times building glowed across the way.
“He’s ever so handsome,” she said.
“Sean Connery?”
“Yes. I met him once, at a party in London. Well, I didn’t meet him exactly, he was in the room. It was last year, just before Dr. No came out in England. You could tell to look at him he’d be a star. He had a grace about him, like an animal, a tiger or a leopard, something dangerous and beautiful.”
She spoke the words as if they were the most savoury ingredients of an exotic recipe.
“I don’t suppose it’s really like that, is it? Being a secret agent.”
Ryan smiled. “I’m not a secret agent.”
“Well, you’re G2. It’s the nearest thing we have to a secret agent in our little country.”
“Maybe so, but it’s nothing like that film.”
“No?” She forced an exaggerated frown of disappointment. “No lithe beauties coming ashore and throwing themselves at you?”
They reached the end of the street, the elaborate facade of D’Olier Chambers rising above them. Celia indicated the pub tucked away on Fleet Street, opposite.
“Buy me a drink,” she said.
Inside, thick curtains of tobacco smoke hung in the air. Ryan went to the bar while Celia found a snug at the rear. The barman stared in confusion when he asked for lime in the gin and tonic, so lemon had to do.
Suited men, red faced with shirt collars unbuttoned, guffawed and shouted. Journalists, Ryan guessed, writers for the Irish Times, downing whiskeys and pints of stout, exchanging stories. They had watched Celia as she entered on Ryan’s arm, their eyes following the flow of her through the room. Ryan had felt no offence at their covetous stares. Instead he had felt pride, his vanity glowing like a filament in his chest.
Many would have thought it scandalous for a young woman to enter a pub like this, but that didn’t seem to bother Celia. But the lack of lime in her drink did.
“Rum and Coca Cola would be fine next time,” she said, her smile polite but scolding.
Ryan wondered if he should apologise. Instead, he sipped his half of Guinness. Celia’s gaze settled somewhere beneath his chin.
“Isn’t that the same tie you wore in Malahide?” she asked.
His fingers went to the silk before he could stop them. “Is it? I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention to fashion.”
“Really? It’s a very nice suit. What is it?”
She reached across the table, lifted his lapel and read the label on the inside pocket.
“Canali. Italian. You dress well for a man who doesn’t follow fashion. Better than most of the men in Dublin, anyway. Have you ever been to Paris?”
“I’ve passed through,” he said.
She told him about her time there, stationed in the Irish embassy, a Third Secretary. How she walked around Montmartre, and how once, entirely out of the blue, a man came right up to her and asked her to model for him.
“And did you agree to it?” Ryan asked.
“Almost,” she said. She leaned close, shielded her mouth with her hand, and whispered, “Until he said it was to be a nude.”
She said her father was a High Court judge, now retired, a fussy old man, stiff with snobbery, but she loved him all the more for it. He told her about his father and his little grocery store where he had toiled for year upon year, just like his father before him, with little to show for it.