She snapped her lighter. "Can't give it up, either, hey?"
"I've tried." He drew on the first cigarette for eight years, nearly choked, and wheezed: "First today, anyway. Thank you. You don't sound local."
"I'm British, just passing through. You don't sound as if you were a native, either."
"I was born in London, I moved to Canada, oh, twelve years ago. Are you from London?"
"Not by birth, but I worked there. Don't we all?"
The druggist, a bird-like little man in his fifties who longed to repeat his father's reputation as town matchmaker, but had so little chance since the youngsters who hadn't moved out permanently were commuting to biggertowns, was delighted to see two mature strangers getting together over coffee. In his view, friendships made over alcohol-as in the Star Bar around the corner-seldom lasted. He threw his own span into the bridge he saw a-building.
"Now, isn't that a funny thing?-I get two people meeting in a town like this, and wouldn't you know it?-their paths have crossed before. Isn't that a funny thing?"
"London's a big town," Agnes said coolly.
"It sure is, I visited there five years back, with my wife-now, would you know the Bedford Hotel? Wouldn't it be something if you both knew that?"
"I think I used to drink there with a man called George Harbinger," Maxim invented, knowing how George loathed tourist territory. "A fat man. He was something in the Civil Service."
"I don't think I ever heard of him," Agnes said.
The druggist surreptitiously slid Maxim's coffee along the counter, fixing him next to Agnes. "Lady, do you mind my asking if you have an eye problem? With the dark glasses in here, like… I could recommend some medication, or-"
"I got mugged," Agnes said bleakly. She pushed the glasses up, giving Maxim a glimpse of the purple bruise under her left eye.
"That is terrible," the druggist pronounced. "I mean truly terrible. It surely wasn't-"
"Not here."
"Terrible. You should get a doctor… Mister, you should tell her she should get a doctor."
There was a huge anger welling in Maxim that choked off anything he might have said, a yearning to reach that mugger and snap his arms, which he could do so easily, then kick the helpless manhood out of him…
I love her.
He had no idea whether that was a decision or a revelation. It was just a fact, whose origins no longer mattered. He shook his head slowly, to show some reaction, staring past the druggist at the dark handcrafted old shelving, wondering if he should remember every detail of thisplace, and sadly realising he would only remember the huge can of chilli that appeared on the menu board as Home Made.
"Dreadful," he managed to say.
A customer came past to the pharmacy, counter at the back and the druggist said: "Excuse me, folks…"
Agnes touched his hand on the counter, quickly and secretly.
"Calm down, Harry. I'm all right. Really."
"Was it Them?"
"Them. They got the Clare Hall address and that you're here; I was drafting a report… I should never have put anything on record in that place…"
"I led them to you."
"Not you. I think they must have had a bleeper on my car; I never checked, and they'd have taken it away when they caught up-damn it, it's what I'd have done: a simple radio bleeper with a magnet, you can stick it on in two seconds. We probably lost them on the Beltway, and they'd been chasing round the Virginia countryside trying to pick me up… those things only have a range of about three miles."
"I led them to your car. I should have been there."
"I wished you were-but they'd probably have killed you."
"They could have tried."
"You aren't armed, Harry. And they could try again."
"I wasn't going to ring you until I'd got something to say…"
"I know. Would you care to walk me around the block?" The druggist was heading back purposefully.
In fact, they just walked around the corner and got into Agnes's rented car.
"Are you really all right?" Maxim demanded.
"It just shook me up. By now I'm mostly tired, I was driving most of the night. The closest I could get last night was a flight to Chicago."
"What will London say?"
"I'll dream up something for them later. Now, have you contacted Clare Hall yet?"
"Well, sort of…" Rather shamefacedly, he told about the library.
"At least we know she's not at home," Agnes said. "The Bravoes may not want to go around asking questions, they'll probably just stake out her house. We'll pick her up when she goes for lunch-and we've got something to say, now, even if it's just Run for the hills, lady."
"We've got a little more than that. Reading up about Tatham's death…"
32
Clare Hallcame out of the library just before twenty to one. Agnes climbed from the car and walked unhurriedly across the road to intercept her.
"Mrs Hall? I'm sorry to trouble you, but something's come up concerning your father's work. I'm from the British Security Service, I'd be glad if you'd check with our Washington embassy to confirm that."
Clare Hall stopped and looked around, not at Agnes and not looking for help, but as if reassuring herself that this was Matson, Illinois. Then she smiled politely. "Do the Feds allow you to do this?"
"Strictly speaking, no. But it would -have taken longer to convince them than to come to you direct. I'm afraid there's a Moscow element interested in the matter as well. That was entirely my fault."
"I don't understand this one bit. And aren't you overplaying the part, with those sunglasses?"
Agnes raised them. "That was the Moscow element."
They sat in the car on the south side of the park that occupied, neatly, one single block on the edge of town where they had run out of tree names and fallen back on Roosevelt and Jefferson streets. A few schoolchildren were throwing a football around the memorial to the dead from the Great Southern Rebellion. Maxim had never known it described that way before, but the list-he had seen it when walking the town earlier-was long enough to justify any name. It was a shock for an outsider, particularly a soldier, to sense how much more the Civil War had meant beyond interesting developments in tactics and weapons.
"The point is," Agnes was saying, "that Moscow now knows your father set up the Crocus operation."
"Through your mistake," Clare Hall said calmly.
"Quite true. But they must have known one thing that I only just learnt-obviously they'd file and cross-reference anything about an ex-Company man-which is that your father's body was never found. You do see where that leads? Is he really dead?-or is he still running Crocus?"
"I took pictures of him. They made me."
Agnes considered. "Yes, I did hear that. But I think you should have gone for an emotional reaction, there. Said you actually saw him killed, or lying dead. I could take pictures of my own father lying dead, and he's still zapping the greenfly on his roses whenever the rain lifts. A man like your father, with over thirty years of undercover work-well, he could plant a story in the Italian press, fake a kidnapping, tip off the police where to find you, and walk out of the country on a false passport… to him, it would practically be routine."
"If you want to believe that, I can't prevent you."
"The problem is that you can't prevent Dzerzhinsky Square believing it as well. Believing the worst is what they're best at. But we can drop you at home and let you wait and see, if you like."