The Crocus List

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."

There was a long silence. In the back of the car, Maxim took out his pack of cigarettes and looked at them. Although they were an unfamiliar brand, all the routine motions of shaking one loose and putting it in his mouth seemed totally natural. Could he really have become a smoker again after just one cigarette? No, he couldn't, because he still didn't have a light.

Clare Hall said: "What do you suggest I do?"

"Get out of town," Agnes said crisply. "Stay at some motel, or with a friend, not a relative. And then contact the FBI, I'll back you up, talk to them myself."

Agnes was putting herself out on a limb. Whatever else the FBI said, it was going to say Why didn't you come to us first? Because, Maxim realised, I insisted on going to St Louis for the CCOAC list…

"All right," Clare Hall said. "But I have to stop by my house and pack some things and pick up my car."

"Yees," Agnes agreed reluctantly. "We may still be ahead of them. They don't give their field men muchscope. On something like this, they'd have to check back up the line, it could be as far as Moscow, before they move… Harry, will you drive?"

That wasn't to save any masculine pride: she was a better driver than he was, and both knew it. But she wanted to look around, watch for reactions in parked cars that they passed. Unfamiliar with American cars, he got started with a thump from the transmission and a delayed surge of acceleration from the automatic gearbox.

"You introduced him as Alan," Clare Hall said, "and now you call him Harry."

"What are names in our trade?"

"I'd like to know that you're good at your trade. I haven't seen much sign of it yet."

"Just stay alive and you may prove something yet."

Maxim took a corner with a sudden tilt, betrayed by the power steering and soft springing. "Sorry… But taking up that point, do you have a gun in the house?"

"I could have," Clare Hall said cautiously.

"A hand gun?"

"Yes."

"Can I borrow it, at least as long as we're with you?"

"You mean you aren't even armed?"

Agnes said: "Your Constitution doesn't say anything about the right of foreigners to bear arms. Is this your street? Circle the block, Harry."

Apart from the central few blocks where the offices, shops and banks stood shoulder to shoulder, Matson was lavishly-Americanly-widespread. The most modest white frame house had, to Maxim's eye, an absurdly large amount of lawn, dotted with bushes and full-grown trees that towered over them. Perhaps it was because the land was so abundant that nobody had put in fences, hedges or walls, as the British would have done immediately to define their territory.

What had been the rector's house was a two-storey wooden building with gables that stuck out at each side under steep roofs, and a long porch with wooden columns.

"I can't see anything," Agnes said. "Back into the driveway."

In reverse, the car felt like an Army truck, but Maxim got it on to the concrete without scraping the big trees that shaded the house. He took Clare Hall's keys and Agnes moved into the driving seat while he ran, literally ran, through the house. Then he called them in.

"First, could I have that gun?"

It was a Walther 9mm, undoubtedly 'liberated' some time in the war, but still in good condition unless it was one made by slave labour, when grains of sand were said to have been added to increase the wear and tear. No, Maxim thought: if Tatham decided to bring this one home, it would be good. He'd know. There was a sealed box of ammunition dated fifteen years ago. He broke it open, loaded the gun, and felt better.

While Clare Hall packed upstairs, Agnes watched the street through the net curtains of the living-room.

"What do we do now?" Maxim asked quietly.

"Tag along with her as far as we can. She's got to get in touch with her father, if he is still alive. I don't know if there'll be a way I can look over her shoulder, but…"

The room still had a heavy, masculine feel to it, lined with old books and formal photographs. Maxim scanned them, but he didn't really expect Tatham to have been fool enough to cover his wall with pictures of the Crocus List recruits.

"D'you think Magill knew Tatham's body was never found?" he asked.

"Another little thing he didn't tell us. The whole Company must have known-but what should they do? There's no point in trying to track him down if they want to forget he ever worked for them. Can you see anywhere she keeps business papers? Here, you watch for a moment."

Glancing over his shoulder, Maxim saw her fiddling at the lock on a bureau drawer. Boards still creaked upstairs as Clare Hall moved about. Outside, the street was empty, and looked as if that was usual. Setting up a surveillance in such a place would be ridiculous: it was a lace-curtain neighbourhood, and behind every curtain was an old couple with nothing better to do than watch what everybody else did. In that, if not much else, Matson was international. Of course, if you were police or FBI you'dflash a badge and join the old lady behind her curtains with your binoculars.

And if you were somebody else you'd flash a gun and end up in thesaméplace: it was a common terrorist tactic to take a family hostage and do their killing from that temporary base. They knew better than to look obvious sitting in parked cars, and probably Moscow knew as much, too. The street still looked empty, and very menacing.

He heard Clare Hall coming downstairs, was aware of Agnes hurriedly stuffing paper into her bag and sliding the bureau drawer gently shut. He beckoned Clare over.

"There's a pickup truck, parked round the side of that house nearly opposite. Do you recognise it? Don't touch the curtain."

Agnes was suddenly at his other shoulder. Clare said: "That's the Gleissner house, they maybe have the decorators in."

"It's parked facing out," Agnes whispered. "Most people drive straight in: we backed in for a fast getaway. Give them a call, please."

Clare Hall punched a number on the telephone and listened. "They don't answer."

"Try once more, just in case it was a wrong number."

There was still no answer. Agnes said: "I think it would be best if you called the police and said there was something suspicious going on."

"Send some poor deputy up against Moscow Centre?"

Agnes and Maxim glanced at each other. They certainly didn't want a dead policeman to explain away. "I could talk to him before he came over," Agnes said thoughtfully, "tell him what's going on.,."

"You'regoing on," Clare Hall said. "You brought them here-now you get me out of this."

"In a way, it was your father who brought them here. Harry: what d'you think they're going to do?"

Maxim shrugged. "I assume they'd rather catch us on some lonely road, but do they think that truck can outrun your car?"

"Yes," Agnes said. "Those trucks have damn big engines, and with no load in the back… Yes, they'dthink they could catch my Snailsprint Special. They could, too." Instinctively, Agnes had chosen an innocuous low-powered model at Chicago airport. She was regretting it now.

"We can just wait here for them, then," Maxim said.

"They could walkin here," Clare Hall said.

"I wouldn't mind them trying to get close."

"Harry, could we try and settle something without a shoot-out for once? We'll be here for ever explaining why we're here. And God knows what the embassy…"

Maxim looked impassive. Clare Hall said: "My car's faster than yours. We can get through to the garage without them seeing, then unlatch the doors and crash out while-"

"No," Agnes said firmly.

"My God," Clare Hall said, "we can just walk out the back door and keep this house between us and the Gleissner house until-"

"No. D'you think Moscow hasn't heard of back doors? It's routine to cover back and front, and they're great ones for routine. "

Clare Hall glanced fearfully towards the back of the house. Her jitters were showing; no matter who her father was, the Moscow Bravoes were still something that happened on late-night TV, not in Matson, Illinois.

She rounded on Maxim: "So you're the tough guy, why don'tyou do something?"

"You say there must be somebody at the back?" Maxim said to Agnes. "They've split their force. If I neutralise him or them, then the back way could be open."

Agnes had never been in such a situation before: she had been on the outside, among the watchers of a house, moving two steps back on the rare occasions when the police or people like Maxim had been unleashed to go in, and shrugging sadly that things could not have been settled in a more civilised way. Now she was on the inside, and there was no civilised way out that she could see from there.

What they could see was the watcher himself, around the corner on the cross-street and about a hundred metres on a direct line across the lawn, at the only place where hehad a clear view between the shrubs and full-grown trees. He was bending over the open engine of a parked car.

"He wasn't there when we circled the block," Agnes said. "But a hundred to one that motor's in perfect nick."

Maxim was calculating the cover given by the trees and shrubs. "If I can slip out of a side window…"

"Are you sure?"

"This is my end of the business."

"All right-but, Harry: try not to neutralise him too hard."

Agnes planted Clare Hall in the kitchen to cover the back while she herself scurried to and from the front, checking on the Gleissner house.

Standing behind Clare for a few moments, Agnes said quietly: "With the effort Moscow's put into this, at short rime and long distance, your father seems to get more and more alive."

Clare gave a vague snort.

"Living in England?" Agnes suggested.

"If that's what you want me to say."

"If they do catch you," Agnes went on calmly, "it would be nice if I could warn him that they'll be after him as soon as you're through talking to them. Given their methods, you won't last long. "

"Iknow about their methods."

"Really?"

"I worked at Langley in, you'd call it the 'registry', until Dad resigned."

Yet another little something Mo Magill didn't tell me, Agnes thought, hurrying back for a look from the parlour window. All secret services recruit from families-not for nepotism, but just a pious hope that trustworthiness, whatever that was, was genetic.

When she got back, Clare Hall said irritably; "Yourfriend's taking his time."

"I hope so. That way, he's likely to get it right. Why didn't you ring up your old friends at Langley and tell them what's going on here? They'd get something organised pretty quickly."

"It was a long time ago."

"Youknow what your father's doing with that Crocus List, and you just don't want to wreck his little games."

Clare Hall looked at her coldly, downwards, since she was some inches taller. "Get mad at me and I'll paste you one, little girl."

"You and a freshly broken arm."

A watcher merely pretending to fiddle with his car's wiring has to turn his head away at times; the pretence demands it. When he turned back, there was a slim man in a new-looking fawn windcheater shambling across the quiet street and glancing from a paper in his hand to the houses around, obviously seeking an address. The watcher bowed his head into the engine again; he didn't want to be asked.

He wasn't. Maxim said softly: "Do you see where this gun's pointed?"

The watcher straightened slowly, looking down. The automatic was aimed at his crotch from about eighteen inches.

Maxim reached and took the humming CB radio, half-hidden by oily rags, from the engine compartment. "Now shut the bonnet-the hood," he remembered the American word. "And into the car, please."

Later, the watcher would think of all the other moves he might have made-if he had been prepared. He would also remember being taught about those paralysing first seconds after meeting an unexpected and horrible threat. At least he'd be able to say the teaching had been true.

At the front window, Agnes hadn't seen them get into the car. What she heard was the muffled roar of an engine, close, then the garage doors banged open and a silver compact swerved around her own car and hit the road in a squealing turn. She knew Clare Hall must be in the car, but had no idea of what to do about it.

The men in the Gleissner house had no doubts. Two of them were in the truck and it had jumped off by the time she looked back at it. Agnes looked around for her handbag, car keys-it was too late.

The compact had swung round the corner, roaring uppast the watcher's car; the truck didn't bother. It charged across the road, bounced up the sidewalk and across the lawn-no hedges or fences-weaving between the bushes and trees.

At first, Maxim didn't know where the silver car had come from, but the style of driving didn't belong on those quiet streets. Then he saw the truck bucketing through the bushes he had crawled among so slowly and started cranking down the window, but the truck was long out of range. And then Agnes came sprinting across the lawn.

She can run, he noticed. Not just hurry with her bottom sloshing from side to side, butmove.

"Swing around," he ordered. The watcher was in the driving seat, Maxim behind him.

The watcher took his time, fumbling the key, mistaking the gear. He had recovered from his fright. The car reached the far kerb as Agnes arrived. She-and a tap from the gun-moved the watcher to the passenger seat.

There was a distant bang.

Agnes drove off. "Where did they go?"

"Left at the corner." He tapped the watcher again. "Put your seatbelt on, friend. It could save your life."

"I don't know what in hell all this is about-" the watcher began. He had, to Maxim's un American ear, a fairly standard American voice.

"Something to do with what I found in your pocket. Now shut up."

Agnes swung the corner smoothly and accelerated, not wasting a second or an inch, and in a strange car. Then she braked. Ahead and to the right, a puff of black smoke was rolling up above the houses and trees.

"Oh God." She drove on slowly.

The fire was at an intersection, a pyramid of flame and smoke boiling above the interlocked pickup truck and silver car. Already there was a circle of people forming around it, swaying back as the wind toppled the flames towards them. One man was hopefully spraying an extinguisher on the edge of the flame pool; a police siren whooped from the town centre.

Agnes stopped a block away, watching, then turned to Maxim. He shook his head. "It's over already. Either they got out fast or they didn't get out at all." He had seen burnt-out vehicles, and their occupants, before.

Agnes moved off slowly, keeping north towards the edge of the town. Maxim asked: "What about your car?"

"I'd like it, but it could be a mistake to go back now. Better keep moving."

"Won't they trace you from a hired car?"

"Yes, in time. But they've got a lot to think about already."

After a few minutes and one zigzag they were out on a straight if not wide road between the cornfields strewn with rotting stalks. Agnes speeded up, then abruptly slowed to a stop. She sat there, her head bowed and her shoulders shivering; when she lifted her hands off the wheel, they shook "God, Harry, I'm sorry…"

"Take your time."

"Just… you're speaking to somebody, and a minute later she could be…"

"I know. And you don't get used to it. Not unless you're the wrong sort of person to start with."

"Your lady friend," the watcher said, "does not have a strong stomach."

The pistol rammed him forward in his seat. "And you don't have a strong neck. I won't kill you in here, but we can take a walk in a cornfield. "

After a moment, Agnes slid the car into Drive. "Thank you, Harry. Andyou: you helped, too." She wound up to a fast but safe speed. "What are we going to do with the excess baggage here?"

"D'you want to stop and ask him a few questions?"

"You are kidnapping me," the watcher started, remembering his innocence again.

"I doubt he knows anything we don't already. He's just a pawn."

"The name's Gulev, and he lives in Chicago." Maxim had the contents of Gulev's pockets-which had included a revolver-spread on the back seat.

"Bulgar?" Agnes asked the watcher.

"I am an American citizen. You are committing-"

"I dare say." She drove silently for a few more minutes, then stopped. "All right, Gulev; this is as far as you go."

Maxim saw a sudden dampness on the watcher's forehead.

"Give him back everything," Agnes said, "except the gun and one thing-his driving licence, say. Now listen, Gulev: that licence is proof that we had you and could have killed you-when I show it to your bosses in Washington or London, and I know them better than you do. So you just tell them we didn't bury you in some cornfield in return for them not trying to kill Major Maxim in the future? Have you got that? Good. Have a nice rest of the day."

Maxim got out first and watched Gulev on his first hundred yards back towards Maison, just in case. When he got back in, he asked: "D'you think it'll work?"

"No, frankly."

Maxim smiled. "From the first day I joined the Army, I assumed the Russians wanted to kill me. "

"I had to try," Agnes said between clenched teeth.

After a time, Maxim said. "Yes. Thank you."

The Illinois farm country isn't truly flat, as film directors show it (Maxim blamed his disappointment on them) by choosing the few stretches where you could roll a bowling ball fromhorizonto horizon without losing sight of it. Slow rises and dips unnoticeable to a car's engine pull the skyline closer, and clumps of trees around the still-frequent farmhouses pull it closer still. But it certainly didn't need a map; he put that away.

"Did you find anything useful in her papers? I noticed you pinched a photo of Tatham. "

"I got her last batch of telephone bills."

He was unimpressed. "Nothing more?"

Agnes gave him a superior glance. "You don't know American phone bills: they actually tell you something, like what numbers you dialled long-distance. To Britain, for instance."

"Ah. Did she?"

"I think so, but I haven't had time to look carefully. They may not tell us much, she could have been smartenough to let her father call her. You didn't know she was CIA as well, for a time? Just a filing job, I think, but she may have learnt something… Not enough to charge out and try to beat the Bravoes at that game… damn it, I didnot know she was going to do that."

"Of course you didn't. But d'you think she was escaping from us or Them?"

After a time, Agnes said: "You're a reassuring person, Harry, but any way you look at it, we got her killed."

"Nothing to do with her father, the CIA, the Crocus List, Moscow? -just us?"

"I know we only reacted-but here we are driving a car hijacked from some Bravo across the Midwest, breaking God-knows-what laws and with two or three people burnt to death back there… Is it enough to say we didn't start it all?"

He knew Agnes was going to fear sleep for the next few nights, would be trying to bypass her dreams with drink and pills, and he longed to see her through those nights. But he also knew today's events would tear them apart. If he could say anything, it had to be now.

"Reacting is our job; we aren't supposed to start anything. But if they fire the first shot-"

"That's the Army way, Harry."

"No, the Army way would be to fire back the next thousand and anything else we could lay our hands on. By that standard, I think we've behaved quite politely. But not reacting at all won't make the secret war go away. I think we were stuck with it the moment the world got The Bomb. It didn't stop nations wanting to get their own way, it just made them scared of using their armies. So they shifted to surrogate armies: guerrillas, terrorists, agents they could disown-all well away from The Button. So-here we are."

Agnes slowed the car and looked across at him curiously. "You've been doing some thinking."

"No, mostly just listening to Miss Tuckey." Then he nodded. "Yes, some I thought of for myself. Trying to think about what I'm doing, and why."

"And it may be crooked, but it's the only game in town."

"Oh no. Somewhere across the Elbe there's a Major Ivan Maximovitch who's put as much of his life into his army as I have into mine. And some days-you can't help it-we'd like to know how it would work out. Nothing to do with politics or human rights, just to know which one of us is the best. We'd need a supporting cast of a few hundred thousand, but they're mostly in place already… We'd make quite a chapter in history, between us. Andthat's the other game. But"-he lifted the pistol from his lap-"I think I'm safer with just this."

"Put that bloody thing away, we'll be in Springfield in a couple of minutes." If he had done anything towards consoling her, her tone didn't show it.