"Walling knew it," she said without looking up from her examination of the Bartholomew map.
"Walling was a trained and experienced genealogist. It's possible that if we went through his library carefully, we'd find it mentioned in some beat-up old edition of some obscure and privately printed little genealogical monograph that Washington never heard of-" I stopped. Vadya had turned away to the overnight case we'd bought. She was pulling out a pair of new black pants and a new black jersey. "Where are you going?" I asked.
"To the telephone. I will get our people on it."
I said, "To hell with that. That's just more time wasted."
"What do you mean?"
I said, "Give us a little credit, Vadya. If an American research unit can't track down an old Scottish name, what makes you think a bunch of your Russian experts can?"
"We have a very good organization," she said stiffly.
"Sure. So do we. So do the British. And if we're going to go the research route, our best bet is to get Colonel Stark on it. After all, it's in his back yard, he's undoubtedly got people who know Scotland intimately, and furthermore he's got access to Walling's place. Since the murder, there's probably a cop at the door, so none of our people-yours or mine-can get in without shooting their way in, which won't give them time for much library work afterward, before more cops arrive."
She hesitated. "I am not authorized to cooperate with the British."
"I didn't think you were. And I'll admit we don't quite see eye to eye with them, either." I grimaced. "If you're going to put those clothes on, for God's sake put them on. The suspense is killing me."
She laughed in a preoccupied way, and climbed into the trousers, squirmed into the jersey, and came over to me pulling it down about her hips. Without Madame Dumaire's artistically padded foundation garment, now part of a careless heap of clothes on the other bed, her figure was considerably less voluptuous than it had been, but she still wasn't really constructed to be at her best in pants. But then, no woman is.
"Turn around," I said, and I picked a price tag off her rear. "Fifteen shillings, sixpence? For a strong healthy girl with good teeth, it's a bargain."
She didn't smile. "I am getting the impression you brought me along for a purpose, Matthew. What is it?"
"What a silly question," l said.
"Stop it. Our love is a beautiful thing, no doubt, but it could have been consummated just as readily in London. Be serious, darling."
"Sure," I said. "Sex apart, I did kind of figure I might have some use for you up here. I hoped our research people could get me the necessary information. That would have been the easy way. Now we've got to do it the hard way."
"Tell me."
"Well, it occurred to me that you're a lousy Red Communist agent, Vadya. And Madame Ling is a lousy Red Communist agent. And that gives you two lovely ladies something in common. I would say the differences between you aren't insurmountable. Are you following me?"
She was silent for several seconds. Then she said, "Yes, I think so. Go on."
"Madame Ling," I said, "is probably sitting in Inverness right now, acting like a rich foreign tourist waiting for her car to be fixed. After being caught off base, so to speak, she won't dare rush back to HQ, wherever it is-call it Brossach-without first making foolproof arrangements to make sure she won't be followed. Well, there can't be too many hotels in a little town like Inverness good enough for Madame Ling; she looked like a fastidious sort of person. You shouldn't have a great deal of trouble reaching her by phone."
Vadya said carefully, "I killed one of her men in London. At least I suppose he was one of hers, although he wasn't Chinese."
"I never heard of Peking getting particularly upset over the loss of a little low-class manpower. You did it to protect yourself, and to gain my confidence, of course."
"I helped put her car in the ditch."
"But you didn't shoot to kill. Not when you saw who was in the car. It was unfortunate, but you're not obliged to let yourself be wrecked, even by a fellow-believer in the doctrines of the great god Marx."
She said quietly, "You are not being very polite, darling. I do not sneer at George Washington in your presence."
It was no time to laugh, and maybe old George was as good a patron saint as any. I could certainly use all the help I could get, and he'd been a pretty competent guy in his time.
"My apologies," I said. "Strike it off the record."
"What do you want me to tell Madame Ling?"
"Tell her?" I said. "Hell, that you're ready to sell me out, what else?"
There was a little silence. Then she said, "Go on."
"Why else would you have gone to the trouble of gaining the confidence of, and pretending to cooperate with, a nasty bourgeois type like me? You've been keeping an eye on me to make sure I did no harm to the great common cause-also, admittedly, you've been trying to find out for your superiors in Moscow just what their good friends to the east.are up to. But now you figure it's time for all good proletarians to join forces and, as a first step, to wrap me up and put me in the deep freeze before I have a chance to get really troublesome. Of course, you expect a little information in return for your help, maybe even a guided tour, so you can make your report to the home office look good."
She hesitated and said dubiously, "Matthew, I-"
I said, "It's a cinch. You get the drop on me convincingly, and turn me over to them. If you work it right, they'll take us both inside, me as a prisoner, you as a trusted-well, more or less-ally. When the time comes, you help me get free and we go after McRow together, just the way we worked it in Mexico. Remember?"
"Yes," she said. "Yes, I remember." She picked up the map and started to fold it thoughtfully; then she looked back at me, having made up her mind. "You will have to trust me, darling," she said.
It was as good a tip-off as a flashing red light and a warning rocket. Whenever they start talking about trust, they're going to double-cross you. Well, I'd thought she'd see the possibilities, all of them.
chapter SIXTEEN
In the morning, when we came outside for breakfast, the sun was shining. A few spectacular white clouds still hung over the mountains that edged the high valley or bowl in which the hotel was located, but elsewhere the sky was as blue as you could wish.
The sunshine turned the treeless moorland scenery from bleak to beautiful. It was really a hell of a fine, wild-looking country, and I wished I could go hunting in it, or even fishing, although I haven't got quite enough sadism in me to really enjoy fishing. I can rationalize killing a living creature quickly, with one well-placed shot-after all, we connive at death every time we order steak-but letting it fight its heart out against a nylon leader, and then boasting about its game, despairing struggles over a beer afterwards, is a little too specialized a form of amusement for my simple soul.
Vadya said, "Someone has been in the car, Matthew." We had, of course, arranged the usual system of telltales to let us know if our transportation had been tampered with. I stopped admiring the view and checked the trunk and hood. Neither had been opened. The wheels had not been moved or lifted. Since it was a very low-slung little car, this made it reasonably safe to assume that nothing fancy had been hung on us underneath. But the left-hand door had definitely been opened.