“Sir—”
“Good night, Bluebird.”
The connection was broken.
The car was waiting and the motor was running. Puffs of white smoke from the rear of the Jaguar danced in the light evening wind. The lights were trained on the entrance of the modest two-story office building set in the middle of a pastureland off the main road to Cheltenham town center.
There were six entrances to the underground complex used by Auntie and by the Auntie listening post where the man called Bluebird worked. Under new security procedures, the workforce rotated in sections each month using different entrances and exits. It was vastly confusing to all involved and no one would have been surprised that Wickham had helped devise the system and that Wickham routinely flaunted it. In fact, he had left by exactly the same entryway each night for two years.
“Damned Rogers,” he said as he emerged from the darkened entry and was temporarily blinded by the lights of the Jaguar. Rogers was his driver and usually reliable but he had been late this evening because of motor trouble on the M4. And to cap it off, he had turned on the brights of the headlamps and it was more light than Wickham needed. He blinked and shielded his eyes as he walked across the crisp snow to the car.
He opened the rear door and slid inside.
The automobile was comfortably warm.
“Have to hurry along tonight. Maggie is expecting guests at eight—”
Rogers nodded and put the heavy car into gear.
Wickham sighed, picked up his unread Telegraph on the seat next to him and flicked on the rear reading lamp. The Jaguar also had a small bar tucked discreetly into the back of the front seat where Rogers drove.
The car purred onto the B highway and turned north. Maggie had finally found something suitable after an unsatisfactory six months in lodgings in Cheltenham itself. The house was not convenient but it was exactly what Maggie expected for people of their station. Maggie had greater expectations than Wickham — but that was to be expected. Wickham’s brother was in line to become earl and he was a vigorous, healthy man of fifty and it seemed quite unlikely — given the longevity of the various family members — that Wickham would ever receive the coronet. But life was not uncomfortable for him and if he would tell the truth, he found the tedious life inside the listening-post section of Auntie to be rather fulfilling in a mild way. He was an important man, by anyone’s lights, and not one of these posturing upper-class twists who couldn’t make a career on his own. Given the privileges of life he inherited with the privileges he had earned, Wickham was a contented man.
“Careful,” Wickham said absently as the car slipped around a curve. He always said that; the car always slipped in winter on the same curve. And Rogers always replied that it looked like more ice tonight.
Funny.
Wickham rattled the thin pages of the Telegraph.
Funny.
“Rogers,” he said.
There was no reply. He blinked in the thin light in the back of the large car and noticed that Rogers’ hair was growing a bit long. All the chauffeurs fancied a bizarre sense of personal hygiene. Their cars were cleaner than they were. That is what he had once told Maggie after they had to sack Tulliver.
“Rogers?”
“Yes, sir?”
The chauffeur glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
Well, Wickham thought. You see. It was Rogers. What had crossed your mind, old boy?
Wickham smiled. “Thought you’d say we’d get a bit more ice tonight.”
“Yes, sir, I expect we will.”
“Suppose.” The subject did not interest him. He glanced at the murder story on page three. Trust the Telegraph, good and gray, to have a nice murder story each day on page three. Wickham found the occasional peek into life in the London underworld fascinating, even if he never told Maggie about it. Too brutal, she would have said. Too vulgar.
And then the car stopped.
Still. On the middle of the deserted roadway.
“Rogers?”
“Sir.” The chauffeur turned.
“Why have we stopped?”
“Something’s wrong with the motor, sir.”
“Damn. Thought you had it fixed this afternoon.”
“So did I, sir.”
“Seems to be running.”
“No, sir. Something wrong. Let me take a look.”
Wickham turned back to his paper in annoyance. Woman on the Portobello Road had been raped, trussed up, and then slashed to death. Particularly brutal.
“Sir.”
Again, Wickham put down his paper. He glanced at Rogers standing outside the car with the left front door open.
“What is it?”
“Sorry, sir. You weren’t the worst. I was fond of you. But you have to understand, sir.”
“Understand?”
“Sir, I wish it would never have come to this.”
“Understand what?”
“You and the Mrs. were really quite nice,” Rogers said in an uncomfortable voice.
Wickham blinked. “What are you talking about? Close the door.”
“Can’t, sir.”
“Can’t?”
“Would you come this way, sir?”
Wickham flushed. He really was becoming quite angry. “See here—”
“Sir.”
And then he saw the gray pistol in Rogers’ hand.
Slowly, as in a dream, he opened the rear door and climbed out of the Jaguar still rumbling in the middle of the deserted roadway. And then he saw the lights flash a hundred yards away.
“Over there, sir.”
He allowed himself to be pushed along. It had not snowed for six days but it had been freezing cold and the snow crunched under his feet. He thought absurdly that he would ruin his shoes walking across this frozen field of snow. Why was he doing it? He felt the pistol at his back.
“Nothing will happen, sir,” Rogers said unhappily.
“What is the meaning of this?” But the question did not carry conviction. He asked it like a man who knew the answer.
The other car, hidden in darkness, was black. Rogers opened the rear door.
Two foreigners were inside. Their clothes did not suit their builds. One wore a gray hat that was not fashionable. Wickham noticed these things. He was pushed into the back and sat down heavily on the vinyl seat, which felt cold through the layers of his clothing. He hated a cold automobile. He always insisted that the car be properly warmed before he would enter it, even if he was in a hurry.
“Good-bye, sir.”
Rogers was already crossing the field back to the Jaguar. What would he say? What would he tell Maggie? What could he expect?
“See here. What is this? Do you know who I am?”
The man at the wheel turned. His features were flat. His eyes were small black coals that had never burned. His tie was knotted too tightly at his thick throat.
“Certainly, Mr. Wickham.” The accent was harsh, Slavic. “We know who you are very well.”
And the other man smiled.
3
The two men sat at the curving end of the little bar off the lobby inside the Victoria Hotel. Beyond the windows, the storm that had blown in from the North Sea that morning was now ebbing with the afternoon light. Along Damrak, the street that separated the hotel from the canal, the snow had pushed into little mountains of slush. The red streetcars were silenced by the snowfall and moved dreamlike along the bright, straight tracks. There were no boats in the canal and the streets were empty.
“What is the business?”
“In a little, Antonio.” The second man was round and pleasant like a Rubens cavalier. In fact, he was not Dutch but a Bulgarian in charge of the obscure Bulgarian travel service in Amsterdam, where hardly anyone ever wanted to go to Bulgaria on holiday. It did not matter. He had other jobs.