The woman who came in was beautiful. Tall and deep-bosomed, green-eyed, with thick, heavy hair
so blond as to be almost white. A former prima ballerina assoluta of the Bolshoi had taught her to move, a film makeup man had taught her how to make up, a Hungarian couturier had spent weeks showing her how to choose and match clothes, gloves, handbags, shoes. The result was at once beautiful and splendid: a woman of superb proportions and exquisite taste. Chelichev looked pleased.
The woman said: "This is an honor, comrade-general."
The voice was deep, melancholy, beautiful. An actor of the Stanislavsky method had made it so.
Chelichev said: "For me it is a pleasure. A very great pleasure." The woman lowered her head, acknowledging a tribute that could never be commonplace.
"Soong is dead," he continued. "You did remarkably well in Morocco."
"Thank you, comrade-general."
"The information you passed on to Dovzhenko was relayed here. We knew he had gone to Britain of course—it was just good luck that we found him —but the execution, that was remarkably efficient. Except"—he scowled—"that somebody thought it would be amusing to have one of the executives speak to him in Cantonese. We are not here to be amusing. To be amusing is to betray a secret. In this case I think it betrayed who killed Soong to Department K."
"The British intelligence organization?"
"Exactly. Department K is very good. Very original. They never make jokes." He paused. "No. That is not true. The British always make jokes, but it is part of their technique. Their minds work that way. Soong is a good lead for them." He paused again, and the woman knew she was on trial. It was her turn to speak.
"You mean it might lead them to BC?"
"It might. Yes. Their leader, Loomis, is a terrible man. He is also very clever. Everything that happens he turns to his advantage. How would such a man react if he knew that a foreign group was doing all it could to attack the USSR?"
"There have been more incidents?"
"Two cases of sabotage," he said. "One very spectacular. The theft of a certain archives—they were recovered, and the man who stole them killed himself. That was a pity—but to retain the archives was essential. They were about Beria, and very revealing. BC exists all right."
"Of course," the woman said.
"Of course." Chelichev's voice was ironic. "But there are certain people, even in the Presidium, who do not think so. They blame it all on the Americans and the British. If it were true, it would be an act of war. We must stop BC before our masters start demanding reprisals."
He looked at the woman again, noting the fact of her youth and beauty. His look was not one of desire but of pity.
"Another war could destroy us all," he said, "including those of our masters who say it couldn't happen. Just because we take reprisals against those who have done nothing to us. We must find BC and destroy it. Soon."
The woman said: "Dovzhenko had a lead. BC has a bank account in Tangier. I heard about it and brought in Dovzhenko to find out."
"In a bank called Credit Labonne," said Chelichev. "They have a million pounds in Deutschmarks."
"A million pounds sterling?" He nodded. "What a strange way to put it. Why not just say however many million Deutschmarks it is? Unless—"
"It's about eleven million," said Chelichev. "Unless what?"
"Unless Dovzhenko found out from an Englishman—or an Englishman put the money in the bank," answered the woman.
"I want you to go to Tangier again and find out," said Chelichev.
"Why not send Dovzhenko too? He's good," the woman said.
"Very good. Unfortunately Department K took him from us two days ago. That is why I feel so sure they'll know about BC by now."
"They kidnapped Dovzhenko?" Somehow she stopped herself from adding the stupid "But that's impossible."
"He did, not they. A man called Craig, from Department K."
"He must be a remarkable man."
"Very. He could—quite literally—kill you with one finger. We have a file on him. Read it."
"Do you think Loomis will use the BC information to hurt us?"
"No," said Chelichev. "He doesn't want a war any more than I do. I might even get him to help us find out who the BC members are. At a price."
"You think they're based in England?"
"Soong went to England, and we know he was trying to contact the BC."
He looked at his watch and said: "That is all, I think. You will study the situation here for a few more days, then go back to Tangier."
"Yes, comrade-general," she said, and added, because the thought of Dovzhenko being overcome by one man was too incredible, "but may I ask—"
"Quickly," said Chelichev.
"Are you quite sure this man Craig kidnapped Dovzhenko? He didn't defect?"
"Craig took him," said Chelichev. "There can be no doubt. Loomis sent word to me himself."
Craig took a taxi to Soho. He wore the same gray suit, and over it a vicuna coat he had bought in Rome. He wished he had Grierson's elegance. Grierson wore clothes with a casual distinction that took two hundred years of selective inbreeding to achieve. Beside him, Craig knew he looked a peasant. Grierson looked asleep all the time, yet was as fast as a cat. He had a way of smiling that was lazy too, as if the world was a hell of a good place to be in, if only he could wake up. Grierson was in a psychiatric home now, lying in bed, tying knots in a piece of string, untying them, retying them. All day, every day. If anybody asked Grierson to do anything else, he began to cry. Deliberately Craig blotted Grierson from his mind. He walked past the club, and the cooing enticements of the barker. "Show starting any minute, sir. Eleven lovely ladies inside. Nonstop strip, sir. Show you all they've got—and they've got everything, sir, believe me."
Craig hesitated. "How much is it?" he asked.
"Twenty-five bob, sir. Includes entrance to the bar. You can watch the show from there, sir. All mod cons at the Nuderama."
Craig gave the half-embarrassed shrug every man gives when he decides to enter a strip show. The movement was perfectly natural. He was half embarrassed. He paid twenty-five shillings to the woman behind the cash desk. The woman had had a henna rinse and wore a black silk dress and pearls. She also had the figure and muscles of a sumo wrestler. Craig decided not to pick a fight with her, and walked down a corridor with wall-to-wall carpeting. The corridor was two feet wide. From time to time, it seemed, the sumo wrestler sprayed it with My Sin. At least there was an atomizer of it beside her, and the place reeked of the stuff. He felt for the handle of the door leading to the theater—the lighting was what the management called discreet—and fumbled his way into what the eighteenth century would have considered an adequate drawing room. Now it contained a stage, a raked auditorium for fifty people who didn't mind each other's company, and a runway down the middle of the auditorium. Behind the auditorium was a raised bar that looked straight into the theater. Stage, auditorium, and bar alike were cheap and nasty. The walls were distempered a vile yellow; the stage curtains, bought as a job lot before Garrick retired, had once been of red velvet but were now the kind of pink that clashed viciously with the yellow walls; the seats had long since lost their springs, and the bar seemed mostly matchwood. The only thing that surprised Craig was how clean it all was.