The Legend
Also in Arrow by Evelyn Anthony
Albatross
The Assassin
The Avenue of the Dead
The Company of Saints
The Defector
The Grave of Truth
The Malaspiga Exit
The Occupying Power
The Poellenberg Inheritance
The Rendezvous
The Return
Voices on the Wind
To Anthony and Mary with love
CHAPTER ONE
Peter Arundsen had a hangover. He had spent his forty-second birthday at one of the best restaurants in London, dressed up in a dinner jacket, dancing to a smooth twenty-five-piece orchestra with his wife, and on the following afternoon he still had a hangover. It was four-thirty, and he’d left the office early because they were going away for the weekend. He stopped outside the front door and very slowly put the key in the lock and turned it. He was slow because he was reluctant. He didn’t really want to go in and face his wife, any more than he wanted to get on the train at Victoria and arrive at Buntingford House. His head ached because champagne disagreed with him; but it was his birthday and so he had to have it, whether he wanted to or not. It had been a jolly party, just six of them, and his wife had enjoyed every moment of it. He tried to say, Bless her Heart, and couldn’t. It wasn’t his kind of evening, that expensive, conventional evening out, but it was very typical of the life he’d been leading for the past eight years. Ever since he had left the Firm.
He closed the door carefully after him, so that it made a click, instead of the usual slam. But it wasn’t any use; his wife heard him and called out. ‘Pete? Is that you?’
‘Yes,’ he called back.
‘I’m in the bedroom. Trying to shut your suitcase.’
‘I’m coming.’ He threw the rolled-up copy of the Evening Standard on the hall chair. The big black headlines were hidden, covered by the sports page and details of some soccer star who’d been suspended. For kicking or gouging of some unsportsman-like behaviour. English sport was like English politics as far as Arundsen was concerned. Scraping rock bottom. He had rolled up the paper instead of throwing it away, because his wife probably knew anyway; she often listened to the lunchtime news on the radio, and, of course, the radio was full of it, like the newspapers. ‘Dunne in Moscow’, ‘Trade Expert Defects to Russia’. And there was a large blurred photograph of James Dunne, taken before the war. Even Arundsen, who was his best friend, wouldn’t have recognised him. He went on up the narrow passage and into their bedroom. It was quite a big room, for a London flat, and his wife Joan had enjoyed herself making it as feminine as possible. It was all pink and white, with frilly lampshades like someone’s old knickers, and two neat twin beds, properly spaced apart by a combination bedside cupboard and bookshelf in white wood with gilt metal fittings.
Three years after their marriage, when they moved into the flat after his promotion, Joan had got rid of their double bed, and Arundsen had been too disinterested to care. She was bending over his suitcase as he came in, and for a moment he had an impulse to slap her bottom; it was a neat little bottom and one of the things he had fallen for when they first met. But she wouldn’t think it was funny, or sexy, if he did; the last time she had been very irritated, so he changed his mind, and said, ‘Hello, darling,’ instead.
‘I can’t get this damned thing shut,’ she said. ‘Honestly, why do you have to take so much with you? It’s only two nights!’
‘I used to travel with a paper bag till you married me,’ he said. ‘It’s your fault.’
‘There’s a difference between going round the works with a toothbrush and one clean shirt, and taking three pairs of shoes and half the laundry basket for a weekend. Here, you sit on it. How’s your head, darling? Had a busy day?’
He got down on his knees and began leaning his weight on the suitcase. His head pounded with the effort. She hadn’t mentioned Jimmy Dunne. That was worse because he’d have to explain it all to her; he had hoped that she’d found out the details for herself. Then there were only the condemnations and ‘I told you he wasn’t any good’ to wait for; he was prepared for these.
‘I heard about Jimmy on the news,’ his wife said. ‘I nearly rang you, but then I thought you’d hear anyway. I was sure there was something wrong when he disappeared on holiday like that. It’s just what those other two did, don’t you remember?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But Jimmy’s no Burgess or MacLean.’
‘Then what’s he doing in Moscow?’
He closed the case and snapped down the locks. ‘I don’t know, darling. We’d better get a move on or we’ll miss the train.’
‘There’s plenty of time, it doesn’t take more than ten minutes from here.’
When his salary went up to five thousand they had taken the flat in a modern block on the Embankment; it was so central, just as Joan said, so near the theatres and everything. In fact they went to the theatre about twice a year. The cottage in Herts had been sold, and now he spent the weekends in London, reading the Sunday papers or going round to have supper with some of the new friends Joan had made. The distinction was deliberate; they weren’t people with whom he had anything in common. They were all respectable, middle class, and the men were as boring as the women. He often wondered what the hell his wife did all day, now that their small son David had gone away to private school.
‘Have we got any more Alka Seltzer?’
‘I bought some this morning; you finished the lot. I thought you might need some to take away. Is your head very bad, darling?’
She came and put an arm round him, and kissed him on the cheek. She was affectionate and thoughtful, and a pretty woman. It wasn’t her fault that he was bored with his whole life and with her. He gave her a squeeze round the waist.
‘You’re a good girl, Joan. I’ll go and take a couple. I’m not looking forward to the weekend, I must admit.’
‘Then why don’t we just cancel?’ She said it very eagerly. He knew how much she hated these trips down to Buntingford and the reunions with Thomson and the others. She had always been uncomfortable and ill-at-ease; the mention of the Firm and its activities embarrassed her. She was always worried that their friends would find out what he had done after the war.
‘We can’t,’ he said. ‘The Chief’s expecting us.’
‘You all talk about that man as if he was God,’ his wife said. ‘You don’t work for him any more; he’s not in the beastly business himself now. Why do you keep up with him at all?’
Arundsen shrugged. ‘Why do people go back to their old school? Happiest days of your life, and all that sort of tripe.’
She stood back from him and her mouth turned down. It made her look hard and much older suddenly.
‘You’re not comparing murder and all those awful things with being at a public school! You know what I think of the whole thing.’
‘I should do, you’ve told me often enough,’ he said. ‘And it wasn’t murder—don’t be so damned silly.’
‘Oh no? What about that Scot, MacCreadie—you told me he was an assassin, during the war.’
‘I was exaggerating,’ Arundsen said irritably. ‘I was probably drunk. We did a job, darling, and whether you like it or not, it had to be done. It still has to be done. I gave it up because you wanted me to, but I’m not going to be bloody well ashamed of it. I know you don’t like the Chief, but it’s only three or four times a year at the most, and I like to go there. He was one of the best men in the whole outfit.’
‘He’s horrible,’ Joan said. ‘Such a condescending snob, having us all down to that house. I hate going there. It’s the same every time; you all get together and swop stories about what you did or so-and-so did, and wasn’t it bloody marvellous, while I sit there, bored stiff! And you’ve got a wonderful audience in his niece. She just laps it all up. I suppose she’ll be there this weekend again?’
Arundsen felt himself stiffen.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I expect so. For God’s sake, darling, what’s wrong with her?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong with her,’ Joan said. She stood in the middle of the room, her face flushed and her mouth opening and shutting, spitting out the words. He thought how unattractive she was when she was angry.
‘She’s divorced her own husband and she has the nerve to make a pass at mine, right in front of me. That’s what I don’t like about her!’
‘You’re talking about three months ago,’ he said. ‘You must be crazy, going on like this. We’ve only seen the woman twice. Look here, Joan, for God’s sake stop having a row with me. I’m going to wash or we’ll miss the train.’
‘I’m not going,’ his wife said. ‘I’ve just had enough of it. You can go on your own.’
Arundsen went to the bathroom without looking at her.
‘All right; if that’s how you want it.’
He shut the door and locked it. The Alka Seltzer were on the shelf; he dropped three into a glass and filled it with water. He watched the tablets leap and fizz, spending themselves in millions of bubbles until they floated on the top, fluffy and shapeless. He drank the water down, grimacing, and wiped his mouth on a towel. He had met Joan when he was still with the Firm, after Jimmy Dunne’s recommendation had got him promoted and posted back to England. He had taken her out a few times and then slept with her. She had felt very worried about the whole thing, and in the end he married her. And that was when the pressure began. She wanted a child, a settled home. People in the Civil Service were always travelling; why, he’d been three years in Hong Kong and a year in Yugoslavia before that. He didn’t even know how long his London posting was supposed to last. And then he’d told her what he really did, and what friends like Bill Thomson, who’d been his best man, and George Geeson really were. She had been horrified.
The Secret Intelligence Service. Arundsen was in a weak position because he hadn’t told her first, and she had played on this, putting him at a disadvantage. And when she was pregnant he resigned. What she didn’t know was that he had been on a two-week assignment which took him into East Berlin and brought him out across the Wall with a Pole called Rodzinski whom British Intelligence wanted to question very badly. He had cut it very close indeed on that trip; the sight of Joan with her knitting bag of baby clothes made him feel like a criminal. He had left the Firm, and the Chief had been very understanding about it. He owed it to him to go down to Buntingford when they were asked. He was a great man in his own way, and if Joan was too small-minded to see it and accept him that was just too bad. She wasn’t coming. He came out after washing his hands and the bedroom was empty. His case stood in the middle of the floor, waiting for him. He picked it up and thought he had better put out a peace feeler, at the same time hoping that she wouldn’t respond by changing her mind and coming after all.
‘Come on, Joan. Get your things and come down. Don’t let’s fight.’
She was sitting in the lounge, as she called their drawing-room, reading the evening paper he had left in the hall. Her face was hostile, but there was no sign of tears. If she’d been crying he would have made a genuine effort.
‘I’ve arranged to go over to the Nortons’ for supper,’ she said. ‘I told you I don’t want to go. You’ll have a nice time holding Mrs. Wetherby’s hand and telling her what a hero you were.’
He went out of the flat without answering, and stopped himself slamming the front door because of what it would do to his headache. Twenty minutes later he was in the train on his way to Sussex.
‘I love coming down here,’ Bill Thomson said. ‘I’ve been all over the world and there’s nothing anywhere to beat a house like this.’ He half turned to speak to the woman on the terrace beside him. The sun was slowly setting, spreading wide streaks of colour across the sky; reds and pinks and oranges ran into each other, outlined by the purpling edges of clouds that were creeping up from the horizon. The terrace was a long one, built of grey stone. It ran the length of the west side of the house, and it had been added to the original Tudor structure in the late eighteenth century. It gave a splendid view over the landscaped garden on the west side of the central court. A mile-long drive led up to Buntingford itself, and an unbroken view of green fields and woods surrounded the beautiful red brick building, rising in its traditional E-shaped symmetry, its copper-domed tower shining like a green jewel in the light of the setting sun. It was a famous example of early sixteenth-century architecture, built by the treasurer to Henry VIII on lands sequestered from the monastery of Bunting. The great Elizabeth had spent part of her girlhood there, and the rooms she used were still preserved with some of the original furniture and tapestries.
It was a house whose beauty always took Bill Thomson’s breath away; simple, stately, rich in colour; surpassing the most glittering of palaces abroad. Mary Wetherby leaned forward, her elbows grated by the grey stone balustrade. The sun was on her too, turning her dark brown hair a red colour, like old copper. She wore it long and straight; her face was beautiful with a pale skin and hazel eyes that changed to blue or green in different lights. She was thirty and divorced four years. ‘Phillip loves this house,’ she said. ‘He’d do anything to keep it going.’
‘Must take a lot of money, by his standards,’ Thomas said. ‘Still, I suppose the great unwashed help with their half-crowns. I’d like to come down sometimes and do a bit of guiding. I’ll ask him if he’d like that.’
‘I’ve helped him several times,’ she said. ‘One woman thought I was his daughter.’ She smiled. ‘He was absolutely furious. He hates opening the house to the public, you know; he really resents people walking through the place. But as you say, it brings in the money.’
‘It’s glorious,’ Bill Thomson said. ‘I was brought up in the country; Peggy and I had this little place near Dorset after the war. We got the garden really going; people used to stop their cars to look at it. Then she died and there didn’t seem much point.’
‘You live in London permanently now, don’t you?’
Mary had spent a year in Washington where her husband was Naval Attaché and two years roaming America after she left him. She had never met Peggy Thomson.
‘Yes, I’ve got a little place in Swiss Cottage. I do a bit of work at the office and it’s near enough without being in the centre of Town. I don’t do too badly really, but I just don’t like city life.’
‘It’s my haven, this house.’ Mary Wetherby didn’t look at him as she spoke; her face was turned towards the setting sun, descending bloodily behind the skyline. ‘I’ve no family of my own—my mother married again and she lives in South Africa—I haven’t seen her for years. Phillip has been kinder to me than anyone. When I come down here I feel completely different. Safe, as if nothing could ever come through from the outside world.’
‘Surely it’s not that bad a place,’ Bill Thomson said. He was tall and thin, nearing sixty; most of his life had been spent abroad, the latter part of it since leaving Portugal where his father worked as a wine-shipper had been spent in the Firm. They all called it the Firm. Only outsiders talked about MI6. Or gave it its initials, S.I.S. The Secret Intelligence Service. The people on the inside talked about the Firm or the Office. His wife had been in the cypher department of the newly created S.O.E. branch of Military Intelligence when he met her; they had married during the war and they had been very close. There were no children; by accident, not design. And they hadn’t needed any, because they were enough for each other. Now he too had retired, like all Phillip Wetherby’s weekend guests. He ran a small export business and lived in Swiss Cottage, as he said. He spoke fluent Portuguese, Spanish and French, and during the war he had joined MI9 and run an escape route across the Pyrenees for refugees, escaped Allied servicemen and agents. He had lived what he described as an interesting life, and he was conditioned to accepting circumstances as they came along without any special resentment if they were unpleasant. His wife had understood his work and waited patiently, supporting him when he needed it, never complaining. She had faced her own death from cancer with the same stoic calm. He looked down at the woman beside him, and wondered what the hell she found so difficult about life at her age that she wanted to hide from it at Buntingford.
‘It can’t be too bad,’ he repeated. He softened it with a laugh as if they were both joking. Her shoulders moved in a little shrug.
‘Bad enough as far as I’m concerned. I’d like to stay on here and never go back to London.’
‘Why don’t you?’ Thomson asked. ‘If you really want to opt out at your age.’
‘Because Phillip wouldn’t like it,’ she answered. ‘He likes to live alone, I know that. Look, there’s the car coming now.’
Thomson looked at his watch. ‘So it is. The Chief suggested I went down and met the Arundsens; this business with Jimmy Dunne will have shaken the hell out of him. They were very close friends.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that,’ she said. ‘Bill, can I come with you?’
‘Of course.’
The car was a grey Bentley Continental, driven by a young man in chauffeur’s uniform. The car and the chauffeur were one of Phillip Wetherby’s conceits. He had never driven himself since the end of the war, and he insisted on what he described as a decent car. Thomson and Mary Wetherby got in; as if by consent he sat in the front and she behind. The conversation had left a strain between them. He had never liked her, without knowing why, and he had let her see it. He was sorry and annoyed with himself. Then he began to think about Arundsen and Jimmy Dunne, and he forgot about the woman in the back.
He had known Arundsen for years. Thomson was twenty years older and much more experienced; he had the war and a lot of nasty episodes behind him when Peter Arundsen joined his department in ’47. And the regulars were not very welcoming to young men from University who thought they knew it all, especially since they were coming in after the show was over. That was the general attitude and Thomson shared it. He showed Arundsen the ropes and waited for him to fall on his face, which he did within three months of joining. But he knew it and he was big enough to ask for help. Thomson liked him after that; he asked him out once or twice to the pub opposite the Whitehall Theatre and liked him even more. He was not superstitious but he believed in luck. Arundsen was lucky; he felt this very strongly. He was also extraordinarily inventive. You could give him a really awkward problem, like a complete breakdown of communications with a network inside Rumania, for instance, and no means of knowing whether their agents had been blown or were keeping low, and some bastard in the Foreign Office sending memos saying they must have an answer. Arundsen would think of some crazy means of getting it; often involving his own entry into the danger zone and out again. He had luck and courage and ingenuity, which was another way of seeing the simplest solution first. When he was promoted over Bill Thomson the older man stood him a dinner. He admired him and he liked him. He liked his little wife too. She was a good sort, and she loved him. She was right to persuade him to get out, though she would never know how right. Getting Rodzinski out of Berlin was almost his last job. They’d missed him by a hair.
The station at Buntingford was full of cars, waiting in orderly rows for the commuters to come pouring out of the train. Thomson wasn’t a man who had a chauffeur but he had authority with people. ‘Pull in here. I’ll get out and meet them.’
The chauffeur pulled the Bentley into the kerbside.
‘You wait here, Mary. We’ll be back in a second.’
He saw her open her bag and take out a mirror to look at herself, and this irritated him all over again. There was something about her he didn’t like, and for once he couldn’t put a finger on it. Men in general liked her; the last time Arundsen had been falling over himself every time they were near each other. Perhaps that was why he didn’t like her. Nice, average Joan Arundsen wouldn’t have a chance against a woman like that.
‘Where’s Joan?’ He came up to Arundsen on the platform.
‘In London. She couldn’t come down. How are you, Bill—didn’t expect to see you here; I thought you always came down early.’
‘I do,’ Thomson said. ‘The Chief sent the car for you, so I took a ride down to meet you. Nothing wrong with Joan, is there?’
‘No,’ Arundsen said. ‘We just had a bloody row at the last minute. She said she wasn’t coming, so I said okay. Who’s that in the car?’
‘Mary. She took a ride to meet you too.’
Arundsen gave his case to the chauffeur who was standing by, looking sulky. He wondered for a moment why so many professional chauffeurs under forty were queers, and then why Phillip Wetherby employed him. He had a horror of homosexuals. He opened the back door and got inside.
The first thing he noticed was her scent. With his eyes closed he’d have known she was near him because of the scent she wore. It was strong and elusive; he had never known anyone else who wore it. He looked into her face and his heart gave an irregular jump. She smiled at him and held out her hand. He could feel the blood coming up round his neck, under his collar.
‘Hello, Peter. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. Nice to see you, Mary.’
She moved a little, making room for him. He supposed it was the hangover, but he seemed abnormally aware of her. His head had begun to ache again with the dull pain which only a drink would settle.
‘How’s the Chief?’ he asked Thomson.
‘In good form, I think. Pretty fed up over Dunne; I’d better warn you, Peter, he won’t hear any excuses.’
Arundsen looked out of the car window. ‘There just aren’t any. The bastard’s gone bad, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘Is it very serious—did he know a lot of things?’
He turned back to Mary Wetherby. He liked the way her eyes changed colour according to the clothes she wore.
‘He’s probably the greatest living authority on China in the world, politically speaking. He spent most of his life there; his father had the Slatefield agency, and Jimmy took on the job after he left University. He got a first in Oriental languages, and God knows what he could have been if he’d stayed in England. He had a terrific brain. Instead, he went out to Hankow and joined his old man’s firm.’
‘We’d recruited him while he was still at Cambridge in ’35,’ Bill Thomson said. ‘We picked up a lot of people at about that time. Being a Western commercial representative is about the best cover for work in the Far East you can get. They’re welcomed everywhere. Jimmy was a natural for the job.’
‘He had a complete affinity with the Chinese,’ Arundsen said. ‘I went out to Hong Kong in ’56, beginning of ’57—anyhow, I was told off to work with Jimmy. That’s how I got to know him. He was wonderful to work for; he knew exactly what the score was, and he went straight to the source. And he could; he knew them all and they all accepted him. Mao, Chou en-Lai, they were all friends of his. He had thrown in his lot with the Reds early on; he said Chiang Kai-Shek was a gangster and he wouldn’t win; and he was right, of course. He went on the Long March with Mao after the Nationalist victory. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about the present political set-up out there.’
‘No wonder Moscow’s delighted to get him,’ Bill said. ‘He’s just what they need at the moment.’
‘But why does this matter to us?’ Mary asked. She was looking at Arundsen as she spoke; the movement of the car as it cornered the narrow lanes had brought them close. His knee was pressed against hers and he hadn’t moved away; instead he slid his arm across the back of the seat so that she was leaning against it. He looked at her mouth and wondered what it would feel like to kiss her.
‘Why are the papers making such a fuss?’ she said.
‘Because about ten years ago he gave up his association with Slatefields—they’re an American firm and they won’t trade directly with Red China now, and he joined our trade section in Hong Kong. So he’s an official on the staff; that makes a stink to start with! And look at the question of security! This is the third English defector within the last eighteen months, and a couple of Admiralty clerks get hauled up for selling secrets on the new sub: the Americans must be doing their nuts over it. I mean, who the hell can be trusted? Why did he do it—who got at him? The ramifications go all over the place. Do you want a cigarette?’
‘Yes please.’
She bent forward over his lighter flame, and the scent was in her hair. It haunted him; one day he must find out what it was called. It lingered wherever she had been; he remembered noticing it in the library at Buntingford when he and Joan had last come down, and knowing that Mary had been in the room. ‘We’re here,’ she said. The car rounded a wide Sweep in the long drive and the house came into view, its copper-domed tower silhouetted against the sky. The sun was down and it would soon be dark. There was a gleaming black Austin Princess drawn up at the entrance, and Bill Thomson laughed.
‘The Geesons have come, I see. Good old George; he likes the soft life. You know he’s done so damned well in that company that you can’t pick up the Financial Times without seeing something about him in it.’
‘I know,’ Arundsen said. He liked George and his wife, but he envied him a little. He had adjusted to the peacetime scene so brilliantly. He was rich and successful, and when Joan wanted to be bitchy she liked to mention the Geesons and point this out.
‘He’ll be chairman of that group, you’ll see,’ Bill Thomson said. The car stopped, and before the chauffeur could get round to them Arundsen had opened the door and jumped out. He was not a man who pawed people; normally he disliked the habit of kissing and embracing comparative strangers which was the accepted convention. But he wanted an excuse to touch Mary Wetherby, and he held out his hand to help her get out of the car. It must be the hangover; he blamed his raw awareness on his aching head and complaining liver. Whatever the reason, she was causing a major reaction just by being near him. For a moment their fingers locked. He knew that she held on a little too tightly and a little too long, and Bill Thomson was looking at them. The clock in the Tudor tower above struck seven and a flight of white pigeons burst out from the roof-tops, streaking in panic across the sky. They walked across the courtyard in silence, with Bill Thomson between them, and went into the house.
It was understood that guests at Buntingford dressed for dinner. George and Françoise Geeson were already in the library when Arundsen came down. There was no sign of their host. He never appeared before a quarter to eight. The Geesons were a middle-aged couple; he had worked with S.O.E. during the war and left it with a D.S.O. for work in France. He was a slightly built man with greying hair and alert brown eyes who had made a great success in industry, applying the techniques of dash and imaginativeness which had distinguished him in the field of operations. His wife was French, and they had met during one of his tours in the South, when she had acted as his courier. They had four children, they were happy and they suited each other as well in peace as they had in the hectic years when both lived one step ahead of the Gestapo. He was successful and rich, and occasionally did what he described as an odd job here and there for the Firm when he was travelling.
At a quarter to eight Phillip Wetherby came into the library and everyone stood up. He looked round the room and smiled at them all; he was a tall thin man, his hair completely white, a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles on the bridge of his over-bred nose.
‘Hallo there, how nice to see you all. Arundsen—my dear chap, so sorry Joan isn’t well—George and Françoise.’ He spoke a few words to her in exquisite French, and she laughed, pleased at the gesture. He was a man who knew the value of small touches in relation to people, he remembered details and made use of them at the right moment. It gave the impression that whoever he spoke to was special to him, a little more favoured than the rest. Mary Wetherby came in a moment later, wearing a long green dress of a material that clung over her beautifully proportioned body, her dark brown hair caught up in coils on top of her head. Arundsen felt her looking at him; he made an effort and didn’t move or meet her eyes. He saw her go up to Françoise Geeson and say a few words; she had the same knack of putting people at their ease as Phillip Wetherby. It was something they shared through the same background and traditions. You only had to look at her to see the refined breeding in her face and the slim bones of her body. He hated the word ‘lady’ with its vulgar connotations of pre-war snobbery, but there wasn’t another that fitted her. Everything about her was soft and feminine, and yet elusive. He studied the two inches of whisky in his glass, while Bill Thomson went on talking to him, and wondered whether he would have let his imagination rove over the woman in the way it was doing if his wife had been in the room.
‘Well, Arundsen?’ Phillip Wetherby was beside him. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine, thanks. You’re looking very fit.’
‘I am. Retirement suits me; I spend a lot of time gardening and, of course, there’s the odd game of golf. Bad news about Dunne.’
‘Yes,’ Arundsen said. ‘Bloody bad business.’
‘I’d like to talk to you after dinner,’ Wetherby said. ‘You knew him so well, you might be able to help give a line on what happened.’
Arundsen looked at him and gave a thin smile.
‘I thought you said you’d retired.’
‘So I have. But I get the odd call now and again. The Major-General’s a very good man and we’re old friends. We’ll talk after dinner.’
He turned away from Arundsen then, and said, ‘Anybody know what’s happened to the Countess? We’ll have to sit down without her soon.’
‘No, no idea,’ Thomson answered, and Arundsen said nothing. He had stopped seeing the Countess when he got married; she had only been at Buntingford twice since then and he was surprised that the Chief invited her at all. He disliked homosexuals and equally he despised whores. And whatever she had been in the war the Countess Katharina Graetzen was now a whore and a drunk.
‘She’s coming,’ Françoise Geeson said. ‘I spoke to her yesterday and she said she’d come down tonight. I’m sure she’ll manage it, Mr. Wetherby.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Phillip said. ‘But it’s eight-fifteen and I think we should start our dinner. It’s rather good tonight and we mustn’t let it spoil. Mary, my dear, will you lead the way?’
CHAPTER TWO
The Countess had caught the six-forty from Victoria with so little time to spare that she ran on to the platform without a ticket. It was a full train; she had been lucky to get a seat. The last time she had stood for most of the journey. It was a year since she had been asked down to Buntingford, and when Phillip Wetherby’s letter came, she went out and spent her last ten pounds on a second-hand evening dress. And she promised herself not to get drunk, or to annoy him like last time; then he might ask her at regular intervals. She was late because the man she had arranged to meet had kept her waiting, and she was so short of money that she didn’t dare break the appointment. She leant back in the carriage and sighed. She felt tired and depressed, as if the episode had soiled her. For a long time she had been drifting into the casual commercial encounters like the one which had made her miss the train, and they meant nothing to her. She was broke in spite of everything and there wasn’t any other way to live. She had tried taking jobs, but they didn’t last. Life was like one of those children’s puzzles, full of little balls of steel. As soon as you juggled one ball into its socket all the others tumbled out and the whole thing had to begin again. Her age was a secret; no one had ever known it for sure, not even the people in S.O.E. for whom she had worked before joining Wetherby. She was born in Silesia, and her title was quite genuine. Her hair was light brown, the front streaked with blonde where it had begun to turn grey, and in the high cheek-bones and fine jaw-line there was the ruins of a beauty which had made her famous in European society after the war. But the face was sallow, the skin stretched and drawn with tiredness and vicious alcoholic bouts. When she lit a cigarette her hands shook. One by one the little balls had dropped out of their sockets and now they swirled and skittered across the puzzle’s surface in a hopeless confusion. Her life was a shambles for the simple reason that it had gone on too long. Youth and excitement were the Countess’s true milieu. When one began to fade the other deserted with it; the twenty-six-year-old girl who parachuted into German-occupied Poland in 1944 and took part in the Ghetto rising came into the peacetime world with decorations and a dazzling reputation. Wetherby employed her, and as Foreign Office interpreter she travelled through Europe, collecting lovers and information, living on the crest of the Cold War wave. And then things slackened. She was forty, and she had slipped into the habit of getting a little drunk at parties, of sleeping with men when it wasn’t necessary to the job because they told her she was beautiful. Her old employers were kind and tactful but they dropped her. She was no longer reliable. That, in her own opinion, was when she should have died. She was out of a job, and the travel agencies, interpreter stints and dress shops followed one another in quick succession. She didn’t last in them because she couldn’t adjust to the life. There was a sense of waste and failure which drove her to the bottle in a suicidal rush, but even this didn’t succeed. She went on living and slipping lower and lower down the scale until only a very few of her old friends kept in touch, and they were not the smart ones, but the wartime or postwar comrades from the Firm. Men like Arundsen whom she had known once a little better than she should have, and the Chief himself, because he never quite forgot his people, no matter how low they sank.
She sighed again and opened her eyes, staring out of the train window at the darkening countryside as it flashed by, seeing none of it. She should have died, before it came to the gentleman who’d come to her bed-sitting-room in Bayswater that afternoon. He was about sixty, and there was dirt under his fingernails and his breath smelt of stale beer. She had picked him up at Lyons over a cup of coffee, and at the end he had grumbled and sworn at her because she asked three pounds.
He paid, but she knew she wouldn’t see him again. As a mistress she had been superb; glamorous, exciting, sensual. Now she made love with sad disinterest, and only when there was no other means of meeting her expenses. She lived in a miserable bed-sitting-room and escaped from it all by getting drunk as often as she could afford. Death would have been so welcome; a different type of woman would have taken the obvious escape route via the gas fire or the aspirin bottle, but Katharina was incapable of the ultimate act of cowardice. Courage was an integral part of her nature; she had been born brave, with a love of hazard for its own sake and a contempt for physical risk. She would never kill herself.
She wondered who would be at Buntingford, and automatically she thought of Arundsen. There had been a brief interlude between them ten years ago, a meeting and a parting in which there had been comradeship and a great deal of passion. It passed by mutual consent into a relationship of affection and respect. Sentimental without possessiveness, the Countess liked to keep in touch with her friends. Unfortunately their wives resented her and squeezed her out by means of the usual feminine dirty tricks. The dreary woman Arundsen had married was no exception. She had conveyed her opinion of the Countess without saying anything obviously rude or disapproving, and Arundsen dropped out of her narrowing circle.
It wasn’t his fault. The Countess didn’t blame him. It was a long time since they had met; her infrequent visits to Buntingford hadn’t coincided with his. He must have changed; he was a good-looking man with the fair hair and blue eyes of his Norse ancestors. A strong man, capable of passion and daring. Now he was caged, of course, like so many of his kind, tamed and disciplined to a steady job and a respectable life.
Perhaps he was happy—the Countess hoped so. She liked others to be successful, to find themselves in the alien peacetime world where she herself was lost.
‘Buntingford! Buntingford!’
She opened her eyes quickly as the train drew into the station and pulled her shabby overnight case off the rack. Her second-hand dress was in it, a wild, stupid extravagance for just this one weekend, and a bottle of brandy, buried under the clothes at the bottom, just to help her get through the two days.
In the library after dinner Phillip Wetherby offered Arundsen a cigar. He had sent the others into the drawing-room with instructions to amuse themselves, and settled down with a brandy to the talk he had mentioned before dinner.
‘You know, this whole business of Dunne defecting has shaken the departments very badly,’ he said. ‘He was always looked on as a hundred per cent reliable. He’d been in the most confidential posts in the Far East and then in London here. There’s never been a whisper about him, except the “queer” allegation, but that was investigated and there was absolutely nothing in it.’
‘Well, it came after Burgess and MacLean, everybody was seeing buggers under the bed at that time,’ Arundsen said. ‘I don’t know, I just don’t understand what could have happened. I knew Jimmy like I know myself. We’d no secrets from each other. I said today, I’d have staked my life on him being straight.’
‘However,’ Wetherby said, ‘the fact remains that he’s gone over to the opposition. I heard yesterday that he went through Germany; that Austrian holiday was just a blind. He took off after a week and vanished. Next we heard a rumour that he’d been seen the other side of the Wall and now Moscow’s crowing from the roof-tops.’
He took a sip of his brandy; it was an old fine champagne cognac and he savoured it carefully; he was a man who did everything in moderation and disliked excess in others.
‘I needn’t tell you there’s an awful flap on in Washington. How much did he know? why did we send him with our trade delegation when he wasn’t reliable?—on and on and on.’
‘I can imagine,’ Arundsen said. ‘But why? What got him?’
‘That’s what we’d like to know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Arundsen. You were his best friend. Probably the only friend he had in the Firm—I mean someone who was near to him, not just a drinking companion.’
‘There were plenty of those,’ Arundsen said.
‘Of course, no man who drinks like that is really stable,’ Wetherby said. ‘I always disapproved of that aspect of him, but then what’s the good of hindsight. Enough people will be saying “I told you so” as it is. How long is it since you left us, Arundsen?’
The question came without warning; there was no change of tone. It was quite casual.
‘I resigned in ’60,’ Arundsen answered. ‘Why?’
‘Quite a lot of us resigned,’ Wetherby went on. ‘But if there’s a job to be done now and again—we help out.’
‘Like yourself?’
‘Yes, and Geeson, and one or two others. Would you do a job for us, Arundsen? Just one job, wouldn’t take you long.’
‘What sort of job?’
‘Go to Germany and see if you can pick up anything about Dunne. See who he met out there—find out who picked him up over the other side.’
‘I should say our old friend Ivliev picked him up in East B. That is if he’s still in charge of their set-up.’ Arundsen lit a cigarette. His hands were quite steady and his mind was calm. He had already thought out what was coming next and he had his answers ready.
‘Oh, he’s still there; very efficient man.’
‘Long memory, too. He bloody nearly got me the last time I went over there.’
‘That doesn’t worry you, surely?’ There was a little surprise in the voice, a slight lift to the eyebrows conveying to Arundsen that he was talking in a rather distasteful way.
Arundsen smiled. ‘As a matter of fact, it does. I’m married, I’ve a wife and a boy to consider. I wouldn’t go back over that Wall for all the tea in China; or all the experts on it, either. I resigned, Chief, because I’d had it, and only a bloody fool goes on. And I resigned for good. I’m not prepared to start again.’
‘You could be a great help,’ Wetherby said. ‘This is something you could do better than anyone we’ve got.’
‘Look, Chief …’ Arundsen got up. He was growing angry, and he didn’t want to let it show. But he wasn’t going to be made to feel a coward.
‘You’re talking as if Jimmy Dunne were my responsibility. He’s not. He’s the responsibility of the people who employed him. They’re the ones to sort this out. If they haven’t got a man clued up enough to go to Austria and Berlin and make a few enquiries, then they’re as bloody inefficient as I thought they were. I’m not going back there. I’m not working for the Firm again, and that’s absolutely final. I’m out, and from the way they run the Eastern Section since you left I’m bloody glad of it.’
‘Very well.’ Wetherby got up too; Arundsen had tensed in spite of himself. The older man was relaxed, almost indifferent.
‘You’re quite entitled to refuse. I shall probably go myself.’
‘Good luck then,’ Arundsen said. ‘No hard feelings, I hope?’
‘Of course not.’ Wetherby moved away from him, opening the door. ‘You were always pig-headed, my dear fellow. But one of my very best operators, all the same. Let’s join the others. Mary won’t be pleased if I keep you shut up too long. You’re rather a favourite of hers.’
Sunday began with clouds; they lowered over the splendid trees with a full-bellied threat of rain, and then before lunch they started moving, driven like ships across the sky by a hostile wind. The sun came out, dappling the gardens with warmth, striking a green glow off the copper tower, and by midday the weather-vane was almost motionless. The wind had dropped and it was going to be a perfect English June day.
The night before had not been a success for Arundsen. The Countess had come up to him when he went into the drawing-room after his talk with Phillip Wetherby, and for a moment he had thought times were better because she had a dark red dress on, and in the shaded lights she looked quite young and beautiful.
But the illusion didn’t last. He had bent and kissed her on the cheek, privately thanking God Joan wasn’t there, or she’d have given him hell about it afterwards, and at once he got the brandy smell.
Her voice was rather deep, with the Polish accent clinging to certain vowel sounds; it seemed incredible that they had once been lovers. Incredible and unimportant. She was an old friend in need, and her greatest need was self-respect. He lit her cigarettes and told her lies about how little she had changed, and the sad eyes thanked him. After an hour the Geesons had rescued him; he needed rescuing because the Countess had accepted two brandies and soda from Wetherby, and she was getting to a slightly maudlin stage, clinging on to his arm and going back over old times. He had slipped away, his place taken by George Geeson. Geeson had a reputation as a ruthless industrial operator, but where his wartime comrades were concerned he had a sentimental streak a yard wide. He settled down to spend the rest of the evening with the Countess because she was tipsy and miserable and needed support. Arundsen hadn’t meant to do it but he found himself next to Mary Wetherby. He was irritable and depressed; Wetherby had put him in the wrong. He had been right to refuse to go back, but his reasons were based on self-protection and this made him ashamed. A couple of years ago he might have gone. Had Wetherby been in charge of the section he would have gone without question. But not now. The Berlin/Eastern Europe section was run by a retired naval commander whom Arundsen had always disliked when they were both working there together, and the top man of all was what he described as stupid shit soldier. He was not sticking his neck out for any of them. But he wished it wasn’t Wetherby who’d asked him.
He was depressed by the Countess; she looked haggard and broke, in spite of the long dress which was three years out of date. She was dying visibly and with great pain; he couldn’t accept it without resentment against Fate, and a little against the peacetime world which had no place for people like her. They’d all been bloody glad of the Katharina Graetzens in the war. Now there just wasn’t a niche she could be fitted into; no room at the bloody Do Drop Inn. He had turned to Mary with a kind of defiance, letting himself look at the shape of her breasts under the green dress, and making love to her mentally while they talked. It was a way of defying his wife, who had accused him of it anyway, and of ignoring Wetherby’s gentle acceptance that he was a coward who wouldn’t go back. Well, he wouldn’t go back, and being married didn’t stop a man from wanting another woman. It was partly her fault anyway; why did she wear a dress that clung at every vital point if she didn’t want to be undressed—she had looked at him with an odd expression, as if he were being rude to her, and he had broken off suddenly and realised that in a way he had been. They were talking about the Countess, and Mary had said how sorry she was for her. ‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ Arundsen had said. ‘She’ll make out.’ It was rude and immediately he felt ashamed, because he had taken his bad temper out on her. She coloured and got up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’ Then she went away and he was furious with himself and with her, because the rest of the evening was ruined.
He had slept badly and woken bad-tempered and tired. She wasn’t at breakfast, and he was so irritated he escaped into the garden. Also he didn’t want to read the newspapers because they were full of Jimmy Dunne.
There were half a dozen different types of garden at Buntingford; a water garden, where rare lilies and irises bloomed, and a huge weeping willow trailed its branches in the pool, two acres of formal lawns and bed, with sudden unexpected vistas come upon through avenues of trees, with a fountain or a group of figures at the end. There was a lake behind the house, and a pavilion, built at a much later date by the same Wetherby ancestor, who had fallen in love with the classical lines of Greece and the romantic splendour of Renaissance Italy. The pavilion gleamed white through the thick dark trees, reflected in the shimmer of the lake, and swans sailed past it. But it was never used. Phillip Wetherby’s mother used to have picnic parties there, but after her death it was closed up. Arundsen was walking towards the lake when he saw Mary Wetherby pass at the end of a pergola covered in roses. She was walking slowly in the direction of the lake when he caught up with her.
‘Hello,’ he said. She stopped and turned; even in the open air the scent was still a part of her.
‘Hello, Peter. It’s such a lovely morning—I thought I’d go for a walk.’
‘Good idea. Can I come with you?’
‘Of course.’ He thought she had the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.
He wasn’t just attracted to her; that was common enough when a woman looked like she did. She disturbed him. He slid his hand into the crook of her arm. He was a man who did everything physical with firmness. She couldn’t have freed herself.
‘I was rude to you last night,’ he said suddenly. He had always disliked apologising; he was surprised by the way the words came spilling out. ‘I’m sorry, Mary. I was just feeling bloody-minded. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’
‘You didn’t,’ she said quickly. ‘I made a very stupid remark. Who am I to be sorry for somebody like the Countess? You were quite right.’