Maxim poured it. They sat facing each other, knees almost touching. "Did you ever meet Tyler himself?"
"I heard him at a lecture in London one time. But they would never let me try to meet him." She went quiet again, perhaps imagining – Maxim certainly was – the likeliest result of her meeting Tyler. A car's brakes squeaked in the stableyard, and doors slammed. They listened in secret as new arrivals clumped in next door.
Maxim whispered: "And so you worked on Veverka."
"It is funny. You say Veverka, I say Veverka, and all the time I know it is Tyler, but when I hear Tyler I think Veverka."
"Codenames actually work. Sometimes. So…?"
"I tried to find the bears something, to find them anything." For years Moscow had just dismissed Tyler – publicly – as a normal fascist warmonger. But now they really wanted to nail a handle on him, and Zuzana did her best to find one that would fit. She tried everything, even getting long and contradictory opinions from the best Czech psychiatrists about what made the English 'Doctor X' bed as many young girls as they did themselves. It didn't help. Nothing did. The accounts grew longer but the sum at the bottom stayed a stubborn zero, while Mother Bear got more and more impatient.
"Then one of them, he sent for me and he told me. all the work I had done, I had done nothing. He said nothing. All that work, NOTHING!"
The noises in the next room stopped abruptly. Their secret cocoon shattered, Maxim and Zuzana listened to others listening to what had seemed an empty room.
After a time, somebody beyond the wall moved something cautiously. Life had to go on.
"When was this?" Maxim asked softly.
"It was two days before yesterday. He said they would control the Veverka file themselves now, I would just work for them, a waitress, a messenger, tah."
"Did they say anything about why they could do better?"
"Oh, the bears know everything."
"Fine, but did they know anything special?"
"They said there was a letter. An old letter about Veverka, and why had I not found it."
"Have they got this letter?"
"No. But of course they will get it soon. Of course." She clearly didn't believe in the letter at all.
Maxim took her hands; she squeezed back, but maybe only instinctively. "Did they say what was in this letter?"
"It was about Veverka, something that would spoil him, just what they wanted, and why had I not found it."
Maxim was beginning to lose the thread of his interrogation; she was too close and he should let go of her hands, but…
"They didn't say how they knew there was a letter?" Had he asked that before?
"No."
"Did they say what you should do next?"
"That I should go to Ireland for them. It is more difficult for the bears to go around. To Shannon, because I work for the tourists… Veverka has nothing in Ireland."
What did he ask now?
The outside door in the next room slammed and footsteps faded away on the cobbles. They were alone again. What did he ask next?
He stood up without letting go of her hands, and she stood up in front of him. Her eyes caught a glint from the window, a spark in the gentle darkness around them, and he let go of her hands…
She was wrong. She was too short, her shoulders too wide as he pulled her against him, her breasts too big… She wasn't Jenny. But she was warm and welcoming after the cold lonely months…
Maxim lay drained and drowsy, his bones limps as skeins of wool. Behind the relief, like the big wheel at a distant fairground, turned the slow thoughts: I have been unfaithful to Jenny… Jenny is dead… But I have been unfaithful to her… I told you, she is dead… That makes it worse…
"I am hungry," Zuzana said.
He shook himself awake. You have also been wallowing with a Czech defector, his thoughts reminded him, much closer now. How are you going to phrase that in your report?
She lay mostly naked, tangled in a riot of sheets and blankets on the other bed. And she had a right to be hungry: at the pub they'd picked up only a couple of saloon bar sandwiches suffering from advanced rigour mortis. That had been enough for him, but being shot at can take people different ways.
He started dressing. "Do you want to go up to the village and see if there's a hamburger bar or something?"
"No." She moved her head a fraction on the pillow. "You will get me something. Can I have the gun?"
"Do you know how to use it?"
She took it, flicked out the magazine and pushed the safety off and on. "I know." She obviously did. Maxim wrapped the pistol in a handkerchief and pushed it under his pillow.
"Lock the door and for heaven's sake don't shoot unless somebody kicks it down." Defector Shoots Chambermaid While Sharing Room With Major From Number 10. Not that this motel ran to anything that could be called a 'chambermaid'.
He touched the end of her nose, and walked out.
Zuzanna lay there for a few minutes. Then she got up, stretching languidly and yawning, cat-like, to lock the door. She left the lights off, fumbled for the radio, and turned it on to try and get the half-past-four news summary. She began to dress slowly.
I wonder if they will kill this sad, strong major, she thought. They may hide me, but they cannot hide Number 10.
12
The village had nothing like a hamburger bar, and the only tea-shop was shut. Maxim wandered around, instinctively getting the feel of the place, but also finding a non-vandalised telephone box. He wondered about ringing George, but what did he have to say? Then he came across a 'supermarket', which in this village meant a help-yourself grocer's not much bigger than the motel room, and bought a pocketful of tinned and packaged food. Then he had to buy some paper plates and plastic knives, as well.
He whispered at the bedroom door, and Zuzana put off the light to let him in. She leant against him in a quick, rather practised gesture, and he kissed her hair. When the lights went on, he saw she was rather pale, and her hands were nervously rubbing the pleats in her skirt.
"It's all right," he said. "They can't find you here. They won't even know who to look for."
He had registered as Mr and Mrs Maxim – which was now a shade truer than it had been – because Maxim had no 'trade-name', and would have to use his own credit cards, driving licence and so forth. Zuzana had been professionally offended by that, but it had been the PM's decision. "We brought him in here," he had told George, "because he was Major Maxim and not one of the creepy-crawlies. So Major Maxim he can stay." And that was still that.
But even if he had been spotted as Maxim, the Bloc embassies hadn't got the manpower to ring every hotel in the Home Counties.
He spread out the food, expecting Zuzana to pounce. But she just began decorously spreading a little pвtй on a biscuit.
"Drink?" he suggested. The whisky was running low: she'd taken a snort while he was out. She took another now.
He saw the radio and tuned it to a programme of classical music – not loud, but continuous.
"We're very happy to learn about Veverka, but is there anything you can say about the bears and our security? You do see how important that is."
She nodded with her mouth full, swallowed, took a gulp at her whisky. "It was when your minister sent home so many of the bears, do you remember? It was two years ago. The bears kept bringing in so many joes, your security could not afford to watch them all. It was, what you call it, like saturation bombing. Then for one time your minister did the right thing."
Maxim remembered: a great slaughter of the guilty when over a hundred Russian embassy and trade officials had been declared personne non gratae. Aeroflot had even sent a special plane to collect them. It had made headlines everywhere. Except Moscow, probably.