Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Spy

Chapter Nine

That strange winter afternoon, Mann's soft voice in that darkened room, my lack of sleep, the infatuation for Red that was fast becoming love, the contrived nostalgia of the Christmas festivities, or perhaps those last three whisky-sours, accounted for the way I remember it as a hazy dream. A dream that became a nightmare.

The hotel management loaned us two old-fashioned tuxedos. My outfit included a shirt with pique front, as stiff as a board, and Mann's even had a wing-collar. The band played Glenn Miller arrangements with suitable verve and sweetness, and the brass stood up and swayed through the choruses.

The Manns were dancing to the tune of 'Sun Valley Serenade' when Red and I took the Bekuvs into town for the midnight mass. The Catholic church in Waterbridge was crowded, and an elaborate nativity scene occupied the entrance. The nave was lit by a thousand flickering candles. They made the interior warm and yellow, but the upper parts of the church were dark.

The Bekuvs sat close together, and we chose a seat behind them so that I could watch them without intruding upon their privacy. Long after the singing of the choir ended, my mind remained full of the candlelight and the resonant chords of the great organ. And, mixing with it, came the brassy riffs of the Glenn Miller arrangements and the soft whispered words of love from Red.

Outside, the first hours of Christmas Day were celebrated in an icy wind and scattered showers of sleet. At the exit people paused to wrap their scarfs tighter and button their thick overcoats. It was this that created a solid crush of worshippers at the door. We shuffled forward a step at a time.

It was exactly the right place for it.

I heard the strangled cry from Mrs Bekuv, and the scream of some other unidentified woman. Hands flailed, and hats were knocked askew. A man began to shout. The Bekuvs were no more than five yards away from me but they might have been five miles away for all the help I could give them.

I swore, and ripped at the crowd, tearing a way between the worshippers like a man demented.

By the time I got to the Bekuvs, the crowd had parted enough to let Mrs Bekuv sit on the stone steps. She was conscious but she said nothing. She looked heavy and lifeless, the way soldiers do when their battle is done. Andrei Bekuv was bending over her. Both of them had blood on the front of their clothes. Andrei was pulling at his wife's sleeve so that blood ran down her arm to form a puddle on the step.

'They've killed Katinka,' said Andrei Bekuv.

I reached for her pulse and bloodied my hands.

'Get an ambulance, Red. Ask the church to phone.'

'They've killed my Katinka,' said Bekuv, 'and it's all my doing.'

I bound my handkerchief tightly round her arm but the blood still came. It marked the cuff of my borrowed tuxedo, and dribbled on to my new leather overcoat.

There were no shadows. Everything in the room was white, and the fluorescent tubes lit it with a cold, pitiless glare. My blood-encrusted handkerchief lay coiled and discarded on the trolley, like the scaly skin of some terrible red serpent, and alongside it — carefully aligned — was the gold wristwatch and bracelet that Bekuv had bought for his wife in New York.

My coffee was cold. I tore open a sachet of powdered cream, stirred the mixture and gulped it down. It was a hell of a lousy way to spend Christmas morning.

There was a rap at the door and Mann entered without waiting for a response. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair imperfectly parted.

'You talked with the surgeon?' He unbuttoned his trenchcoat to reveal a partly buttoned shirt, and a cardigan pulled down over his evening trousers.

'No arterial cuts. Her hands will be scarred for life — she grabbed at the switchblade — maybe scars on the abdomen too, but the thick coat saved her anything worse than superficial wounds. If the blade had entered her the way it was intended, she would have been dead before she hit the ground.'

Mann sniffed, walked over to the trolley and moved the wrist-watch and bangle with the tip of his finger, as if making a chess move. 'Description of the assailant?'

'At least a dozen,' I said. 'All of them different.'

'And our pal Andrei?'

'She stepped between them. It was meant for Andrei, but he wasn't scratched. He's taking it badly.'

' "My darling Katinka, what have I done to you? "'

'That's the kind of thing,' I agreed.

'No one could have known that the Bekuvs started talking,' said Mann, as much to convince himself as to convince me.

'There must be a few people in Washington suffering sleepless nights.'

There will be a few people in the Kremlin suffering worse than sleepless nights if we break this one wide open,' said Mann. They don't set up Henry Dean situations unless it's really big.'

'We should have1 expected some attempt to kill them.'

'I did expect it. But not this soon. Who the hell could have known we'd brought them to this godforsaken hole.'

'Gerry Hart?'

Mann scratched his face. His was unshaved, and he touched his beard self-consciously. 'Yes, that little bastard is certainly kept well informed. Who might be leaking to him? Any ideas?'

I shook my head.

'Well, this is the way it's going to be from now onwards,' said Mann. 'We'd better get prepared for more of the same. We'd better move the Bekuvs out of here.'

I looked at my watch. 'Merry Christmas,' I said.

The better the day, the better the deed. Isn't that what they say?'

'It might look damned funny to the local press boys.'

'A mugging?' said Mann. 'Nothing to leave the tree for.'

'Knifing at midnight mass,' I said. 'In Waterbridge that's a headline. They will go for it. You won't shake that one, Major.'

'And if I put a security guy at her bedside, it will look even more like a story.' Mann grabbed at his face and rubbed hard as if trying to wake up. 'And yet without a security guard they might try again.'

I tried to reassure him. 'It was an amateur kind of job,' I said. 'I never heard of the K.G.B. using a shiv artist who hit the wrong target, and even then let them grab the knife away.'

'It damn nearly worked, and you know it,' said Mann. 'And there was nothing amateur about the way they found out where the Bekuvs would be last night.'

'They might have followed us all the way from New York City, and then staked out the hotel, waiting for an opportunity,' I suggested.

'You know nothing followed us,' said Mann. 'Even in the back seat with Red, you've got to know nothing followed us.'

I didn't answer. He was right, nothing had followed us down the highway, and we'd had a helicopter to help check-out that fact.

'You get back to your girl-friend,' said Mann. 'Give me a call here in the morning. I'll have doped it out by then.'

Red was half asleep as I got into bed. She reached out for me in dreamy wantonness. Perhaps it was part of an attempt to forget the events of the previous evening that made us so abandoned. It seemed hours later before either of us spoke a word.

'Is it going to be all right?' Red asked me in a whisper.

'She's not badly hurt. Andrei isn't even scratched.'

'I didn't mean that,' she said. 'I'm glad she's not badly hurt, but I didn't mean that.'

'What then?'

'This is all part of what you're doing, isn't it?'

'Yes,' I said.

"And it's going wrong?'

'It looks like it,' I admitted. 'Mrs Bekuv will have to be kept under surveillance and that will be more difficult now she needs medical attention.'

'In London,' said Red suddenly. 'What sort of a house do you live in?'

'I don't have a whole house,' I said. 'I rent the top floor to a friend — a reporter — and his wife. It's a small Victorian terrace house, trying to look Georgian. The central heating is beginning to crack the place apart — first thing I must do when I get back is to get some humidifiers.'

'Where is it?'

'That part of Fulham where people write Chelsea on their notepaper.'

'You said there was a garden.'

'It's more like a window-box that made it. But from the front you can see a square with trees and flower-beds — in summer it's pretty.'

'And what kind of view from the back windows?'

'I never look out of the back windows.'

'That bad?'

'A used-car dealer's yard.'

She pulled a face. 'I'll bet it's the most beautiful car dealer's yard in the world,' she said.

I kissed her. 'You can decide that when we get there,' I said.

'Do I get to change the drapes and the kitchen lay-out?'

'I'm serious, Red.'

'Yes, I know,' she said. She kissed me again. 'Don't let's be too serious though — give it time.'

'I love you, Red,' I said.

'I love you too — you know that. Do you want a cigarette?'

I shook my head. She reached across me to the bedside table and found her cigarettes and lighter. I couldn't resist the chance to hug her close to me, and she tossed the cigarettes aside and said, 'Well, if I can choose.' The cigarette-lighter slid down behind the mattress, and clattered to the floor. Red giggled. 'Will you always want me?' she said.

'Always,' I said.

'Not that, you fool,' she said.

She kissed me with opened mouth. Eventually I said, 'What then?'

'Would Major Mann let me stay with you?' she asked. 'I could make the coffee, and sweep the floor, and look after Mrs Bekuv.'

I said, 'I'll ask him tomorrow, if he's in a good mood.'

She kissed me again, more seriously this time. 'If he's in a good mood,' I repeated.

'Thanks,' she mumbled.

I reached for her. 'You chatter too much,' I said.