The Avenue of the Dead (10 page)

She wanted information about the Flemings' early life; she wanted to know everything possible about Edward. When Hickling responded that this was difficult and would take time, she lost her temper. He kept his, explaining that without help from the CIA such an investigation would take an outsider months. Davina flared at him. ‘Hire a private detective! For Christ's sake, that's standard procedure in this country when you want to know anything about anyone! Some firms won't hire an executive here without a confidential report, and how the hell do they get those?'

‘Asking for an investigation into the Assistant Undersecretary of State isn't quite the same thing as finding out about the sex habits of a marketing director,' Hickling pointed out. ‘There isn't a reputable agency in the States that wouldn't be on to Langley five minutes after you'd made the enquiry.'

‘Then what am I supposed to do?' she demanded.

‘Find out from Mrs Fleming.' Lomax spoke for the first time. ‘Isn't that the object of the operation?'

She swung round on him. ‘Mind your own business please. This has nothing to do with you.'

‘It so happens it has,' he said quietly. ‘Peter, haven't you told Miss Graham that I've been promoted? No, I suppose she's in such a mood, you thought you'd better wait.'

Davina turned back to Peter Hickling. ‘What is this?' she demanded. ‘What's he talking about?'

Hickling was a very astute judge of people. He hadn't lost his temper with Davina Graham because he knew that her irritability was due to considerable strain.

‘You explain it,' he said to Lomax. ‘Why don't you take Davina out to dinner – isn't it time you stopped snapping at each other if you're going to work together? I'm going home. Betty's got a couple coming in for bridge. I know Davina doesn't play. Goodnight.' He left the office. For a moment they stared at each other; Lomax took out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to her.

‘It's not a bad idea,' he said. ‘If you don't play bridge.'

‘No, thanks.' She didn't take the cigarette. ‘I'll go to bed early.'

‘Please yourself.' Lomax shrugged. ‘I'm surprised you haven't had the notification.'

‘The notification of what? Your promotion? I know what you are, Mr Lomax, and I made my feelings on the subject very clear to London. I expect there's something in the diplomatic bag for me, I just haven't had time to go through everything. Whatever this is all about, it won't make any difference to me. I don't intend to work with you. I came here to do this job on my own, and I'm going to do exactly that.'

He surprised her then. He didn't respond to the challenge as she expected. He didn't say something rude or walk out. He went on sitting in his chair, smoking the cigarette she now wished she'd accepted, looking at her.

‘If I said you looked tired,' he remarked suddenly, ‘I suppose you'd take it as an insult.'

‘I think I'd say what I said before – it's none of your business.' She didn't mean to sit down, but it was a reflex. Since she came to America no one had said she looked well or ill or tired or anything personal, except for that gabbling woman who followed every remark with something about herself. She opened her bag and shut it again. She had no cigarettes left. He got up and gave her one.

‘You're the most awkward bloody female I've ever met,' he said. ‘You are a bloody woman,' Sasanov used to say when they quarrelled in the early days. As Lomax lit her cigarette, she turned her head away because her eyes filled with tears. He saw them, but he said nothing and strolled over to Hickling's desk. ‘I know that canny sod keeps a bottle somewhere,' he said.

‘It'll be gin.' Davina was fumbling with a handkerchief. ‘He only drinks martinis.'

‘I have a decent bottle of Scotch at home,' Lomax said. ‘I think you'd better come round and help me drink it.'

She was to remember that moment long afterwards when her life changed its direction. It was not predestined; she had a choice. Or it seemed that she had. To accept or refuse. To take one turning at the crossroads to the future or to take another. But this would be hindsight, and time always mocked truth. ‘All right,' she said.

It was a pleasant three-roomed flat in the embassy-owned apartment block on Massachusetts Avenue. An impersonal place, as all such government-issue places are; standard decor, furnishings, the stage left bare for the occupant to install the scenery of his life. Photographs, books, oddments from a past outside the neat little Washington pad. There was nothing. Lomax had put nothing of himself on a wall or a table. Nothing but whisky, bottles of soda, and packets of English cigarettes. They didn't talk much to start with. He gave her a drink, and they sat quietly.

‘Why did you rip into poor Peter Hickling?' he asked her. ‘It's not like you.'

‘Isn't it? I thought I had a reputation for being sharp,' she said.

‘That wasn't sharp. That was more like someone who's at the end of their rope and had to let fly at someone.'

‘I'll apologize tomorrow,' she said. ‘I think I've let Liz Fleming get on my nerves.'

‘Neil said she was a handful,' Colin remarked. ‘Dealing with drunks isn't easy, and a drunken woman is the bottom of the well, as my father would say.'

She hadn't intended to discuss it with him. She didn't know what made her start.

‘She drives me mad at times,' Davina said slowly. ‘When we were girls, I hated her. She didn't hate me, she just despised me. Now the boot should be on the other foot. But it isn't quite. I'm sorry for her, you know that? There's something pathetic and awful about a woman who's let herself down. And she's frightened. She's frightened out of her wits. I can feel it. And because she's frightened she's put her hooks into me and she won't let go for a minute. Do you know how many times she phones me a day?' He shook his head. ‘Half a dozen. And I see her
every
day. I tried to avoid her for a couple of days, just to give myself time to breathe, or think, and she was round at the apartment, bursting into tears, saying she must have upset me, and didn't I know she couldn't go on unless I was there …' Davina paused. He was very quiet, listening to her. ‘I hate scenes,' she said. ‘I hate people doing an emotional striptease. It's never genuine or they wouldn't drag outsiders in.'

‘You sound like a Scot,' he said. ‘I think I'd be tempted to give Mrs Fleming a clip round the ear.'

She laughed suddenly. ‘Do you know, I damned nearly did? That day when she burst in on me, you could have struck a match on her breath, and she was trying to put her arms round me telling me I was the only friend she had in the world? I had to really hold myself in not to slap her. But there's something else. I think that's what's really getting at me. The first time we went out to lunch she hinted about being scared and in danger … pretty broad hints that it was coming from the husband, too. And since then – nothing! Not a word about anything. Just girl talk, and self-pity about being lonely and needing me and if only she could talk to someone – the minute I say, talk to me, she clams up completely. It's just as if she's got what she wants and that's all there is to it. A “friend” in inverted commas, someone to hang on to like a leech and suck dry.'

‘You've got to force her out into the open,' Lomax said. ‘Call her bluff; it's the only way!'

‘That could frighten her off completely,' Davina argued. ‘All right, suppose I do call her bluff and she runs a mile?'

‘You'll be no worse off than you are now. The days are going by and you're getting nothing out of her; she's hanging on to you, taking one step forward and two steps back. You haven't got the time to waste while she makes up her mind to tell you the truth. One thing I have learned.' He stared hard at her. ‘When you're at risk don't hang about. Never mind the deskbound strategists in London – they're not going to be there when the flak hits the fan. Face Liz Fleming and get tough with her.' He was leaning forward; he had a way of narrowing his eyes when he was emphasizing a point.

‘I'll talk to her if you like,' he offered. ‘She won't play games with me.'

‘I'm sure she wouldn't,' Davina said. ‘But if that was the way the chief wanted to handle it, they'd have sent you out here instead of me.'

‘Pity they didn't,' he remarked. ‘I know that type; men or women, they're much the same. They're bloody leeches, weak as water, looking for someone strong to cling on to, someone to carry them. That's why they run to drink when things go wrong. And even when they don't. Take my advice,' he said, ‘tell her you're leaving. Stop Browning taking calls in case she turns back to him. Isolate her, make her feel she's going to be out on her own. Frighten the hell out of her, Davina. Then I think you'll find she'll crack.'

‘You have a way,' Davina said, ‘of making it sound very ugly. I'm not used to seeing my work through your eyes. I don't like it.'

‘You didn't like what the KGB did to your husband,' he said.

‘No,' she answered after a pause. ‘I take your point. Just don't make it again, will you, please?'

‘I hope I won't have to,' he said. ‘I'm not trying to hurt you, but you've got to face facts. This isn't a game played by gentlemen in bowler hats; spying is ugly, like you said. There aren't any rules except to get them before they get you. I've fought the Russians before. They've got some set-up here with these Flemings. It's going to be ugly and it's going to be rough. They didn't exactly treat you with kid gloves.'

‘That doesn't mean I have to be like them,' she said. ‘I don't want to treat Liz as an enemy.'

‘In this game,' Lomax said, ‘everyone's an enemy till they've proved they're a friend. There's a Chinese restaurant down the block – Peking cooking. It's very good; the food's better than the Unicorn. I'll give you dinner. I can tell you about my promotion.'

‘Why can't you tell me now?' she said. She didn't want to go to dinner with him. She wasn't even hungry.

‘Because there's something else I learned,' he said. ‘Discretion is the better part of valour. You'll take the news better when I've fed you and filled you up with sake.'

She sat up straight and looked at him. ‘What news?'

He shook his head, and for the first time there was friendliness in his quirky smile. ‘After we've eaten,' he said.

They walked the block down to the restaurant. He had a long stride which she found difficult to keep up with. She was surprised when he took her arm as they crossed the street. The food was excellent, as he said. And she needed all the sake he provided when she heard of Humphrey Grant's proposal. Lomax was to give her maximum protection. To do this he would have to move into her flat. She faced him across the table.

‘No,' she said. ‘Certainly not.'

Lomax shrugged. ‘Contact London then,' he said easily. ‘It wasn't my idea.'

‘We were right,' the brigadier said cheerfully. ‘It's always gratifying to be right, don't you agree, Humphrey?'

Grant looked glum. ‘I'd have rather been wrong in this case,' he said. ‘What kind of a mess are we going to find?'

‘My dear chap,' James White reproved him gently, ‘don't be such a pessimist. The point is we know there is a mess, and we're going to find out what it is and deal with it. I thought sending Davina out there would activate our little traitor Browning, if there was a KGB connection with the Flemings. And lo and behold, he contacts his controller and alerts Moscow that she's arrived!'

John Kidson was in the office; he and James White were going to lunch before a meeting with the Foreign Secretary over a delicate operation taking place in Poland. ‘Chief, now we know it's a Moscow Centre operation, is there any need for Davina to stay out there?'

White wagged a finger at him. The smile was still there but the eyes had turned cold. ‘Now, now,' he said. ‘You mustn't start thinking like a brother-in-law. You know the rules. We don't have any family connections in the Service.'

‘I'm thinking of whether she's in a fit state to cope with a dangerous security mission,' Kidson said sharply. ‘Anything involving a top man like Fleming is going to get pretty rough. She won't stand up to a second interrogation.'

‘We've taken precautions,' the chief said. Haven't we, Humphrey?'

‘You've sent Lomax out with her, I know,' Kidson persisted. ‘It won't take Borisov's boys long to realize what his job is, and they'll simply take him out if they decide to go after Davina.'

It was Grant who answered. ‘A lot of people have tried to “take him out” as you put it,' he said. ‘Some of them were Moscow Centre trained, too. They didn't succeed and they didn't survive. Davina will be perfectly safe with him.'

‘In the meantime,' James White said, ‘she's doing very well. She's become the odious Mrs Fleming's indispensable companion and she's made a niche for herself in Washington where she's become part of the scene – she's in a perfect position to uncover Moscow's little wasps' nest for us. And as Humphrey said, she has Lomax to protect her.' He lit his Turkish cigarette; he never offered them to anyone else.

‘The person at risk,' he said after a moment, ‘is Mrs Fleming. If what she says is true, and her husband is a Russian agent, whether willingly or not, then they will want to silence her. The surprising thing is why they haven't already done so. That does intrigue me, doesn't it you?' He looked from one to the other. ‘And what also intrigues me is why she has stayed on with this husband who she thinks is going to kill her. She could have taken a plane to England instead of running to the embassy … It's very puzzling and very original. As I said to you, Humphrey, at the beginning, we may be seeing Borisov's signature for the first time. It certainly isn't going to be the same trademark as the last. Much more subtle, I suspect, than Kaledin. A man who favours slow poison rather than a bullet in the neck. It will take all Davina's skill to unravel this one. But I have perfect confidence in her. You should have too, John, instead of trying to get her brought home.' He looked at his watch. ‘Come along, we'll be late for lunch. We need to fortify ourselves against our Foreign Secretary's moral indignation. I couldn't possibly eat after I'd seen him; trying to discuss anything sensible with him always gives me indigestion.'