A Woman Involved (44 page)

They sat by the fire in the bedroom, with a bottle of wine. Her whole demeanour was different now. She said:

‘All right, so you tricked me for my own good. I can accept that, with reservations. Though locking me up in a whore-house dungeon was adding insult to injury. But I can accept even that, just, because it was all you could do in the peculiar circumstances …’ She looked at him steadily. ‘But I beg you, for
our
sake, not to lie to me now, Jack. And you
are
lying to me. It hasn’t taken you a week to get here from Zurich. You’ve been to Rome. And you
did
go into the Union Bank of Switzerland, and get the box. Makepeace told me.’

He said incredulously, ‘Makepeace told you? …’

‘He started by giving me your version. But I’ve been in his company for three solid days driving down here. That gave me time to ask a lot of questions, a lot of time for him to contradict himself. I know he bought you a tape-recorder and took it into the bank. I know you were attacked by a Russian in the vaults.’ She waited.

Morgan stood up. Oh to have this all over with. He paced away across the room.

‘Yes, I’ve lied to you. Yes, I’ve been to Rome.’

She sighed grimly. ‘What did you need a tape-recorder for?’

‘There is a tape made by Klaus Barbie, purporting to be a
summary of what’s on the microfilm. I’ve got the tape here. And I bought a recorder, you can listen to it.’

He expected her to be astonished that Klaus Barbie had anything to do with this. She only said, ‘And where’s the microfilm?’

He had decided to tell her that there was no microfilm, to disentangle her from this mess. But he hesitated from lying any more. ‘Why aren’t you surprised about Klaus Barbie being involved?’

She said: ‘Max told me everything. And please don’t tell me that no microfilm exists. Because I saw it.’

He was astonished. ‘When?’

‘On my birthday, last year. When Max had his drunken outburst.’

‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘what
has
Klaus Barbie got to do with this? And God’s Banker? And how did the microfilm get from Barbie to Max?’ He jabbed a finger at her. ‘You didn’t tell me you knew all this. You misled me.’

‘Yes.’ She held out her hand: ‘Give the microfilm to me, please.’

He walked back to the bed and sat down.

‘What is this, Anna? You’re cross-examining me cold-bloodedly.’

‘I feel far from cold-blooded, believe me. I feel hot-blooded.’ She looked at him, then shook her head. ‘Oh darling Jack … you are either a most honest babe in the woods of espionage, or you are still working for the British. You tricked me, in Switzerland. Was it only to save my skin? Or was it also to stop me destroying the microfilm so you could find out what it was about, so that
you
could decide what to do about it? And maybe give it to the British to sort out?’

He was angry that she was right. ‘If I were still working for the British, why am I here?’

‘Because you are still deciding what to do about it perhaps?’

‘Not because I love you perhaps?’

‘Yes, that too.’

‘Well, I wish you’d look more convinced about that!’ He breathed bitterly. ‘The microfilm is still in the vaults of the Union Bank of Switzerland. Because it was too dangerous to bring it out, with Russians waiting outside. I’d already been
attacked inside. It is in a new box, a numbered account, so nobody can forge my signature.’

She nodded slowly. Unsurprised. ‘And you’re not going to tell me the number? Because what I don’t know can’t be extracted from me?’

‘Correct. I’ll get it out when we need it.’

She breathed.

‘All right. That’s what I would have done, too.’

He said, ‘I thought you would have destroyed it?’

She got up. She began to pace across the bedroom. ‘And? Have you got any plan figured out yet?’

‘Not yet.’

She did not believe him. She sat down on the bed.

‘Was there anything else in the box?’

He said, ‘An envelope containing a banker’s letter, and an airline waybill.’ He pulled out the envelope and extracted the banker’s letter.

She read it carefully, expressionlessly. Then put it aside.

He harided her the waybill. She studied it. She made no comment.

‘Do those mean anything to you?’ he said.

‘Anything else?’ she said.

‘Do the names Sanchez, and Hank mean anything to you?’

‘No. Was there anything else?’

He pulled out the film negatives. ‘I think some of these are pornographic.’

She took them. She held them up to the firelight.

She studied them grimly, her face set.

‘Do they mean anything to you?’ Morgan said.

‘Are there any more?’ She looked in the envelope.

‘No. Can you identify anybody?’

‘No. But yes, they look pornographic,’ she said flatly. She looked at the film again. Then put them back in the envelope carefully.

‘Now, please tell me what happened in Rome?’

First he played the Klaus Barbie tape. She listened grimly, her head in her hands. She made no comment. Then he told her about Rome.

He did not tell her about going to the golf club, nor how
he tried to see the Secretary of State disguised as Reverend Anderson from Zambia. He wanted her to believe that he had no plan yet. He told her about Whacker Ball and Renata, what information she had dug up about the death of Pope John Paul I, but he did not tell her about the police waiting at Pensione Umberto, lest that alarm her. He consulted his notes and told her everything that Miguel Milano had told him: about God’s Banker and his crooked deals with the Vatican Bank, the ghost companies they set up together, about Bellatrix and the arms it supplied to the military régimes of South America; he told her about the masonic lodge called P2 of which God’s Banker was the paymaster, how God’s Banker was robbing his own banks, the deep financial crisis he got into, about the Vatican Bank’s ‘comfort letter’ in respect of Bellatrix and their subsequent denial that they were responsible for Bellatrix’s debts: he told her Milano’s theory that God’s Banker fled to London to try to get his hands on certain documents from somebody in P2 with which to blackmail the Vatican into paying so that P2 could get arms.

Anna sat on the bed, listening expressionlessly. She said:

‘So this Miguel Milano thinks that the Vatican had God’s Banker murdered, to stop him blackmailing them?’

‘Yes. But he’s wrong. Obviously the Russians murdered him. To stop him getting the microfilm and exposing their secret weapon in the Vatican.’

‘Did Miguel have any theories about what weapons were needed, and for whom?’

‘No.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you know? You haven’t told me everything that Max told you.’

She started to get up, but he put a hand on hers. He said: ‘If Miguel’s theory is correct, Max must have been a member of P2, because God’s Banker was going to get the evidence from a P2 member. Was he?’

She got up and paced away. ‘Yes.’

‘But P2 is fascist! Fiercely anti-communist. And Max was hand in glove with the communist government of Grenada.’

She sighed bitterly.

‘That’s where he was so damn clever. He was hand in glove with everybody. He was pals with Somoza of Nicaragua and pals with the Sandinista guerrillas. Pals with both Castro and
Washington DC. That was his value to P2 – his assignment was to infiltrate the communists in the region.’

Morgan sat back on the bed.

‘I see. And? How did he get the microfilm from Klaus Barbie?’

She said: ‘Barbie wanted to join P2. Max did business in Bolivia, and they knew each other. Barbie approached Max and wanted to join P2, for protection, because the French were after him, and he offered the microfilm to prove how valuable he could be.’ She snorted softly. ‘And Max hung onto it. And tried to use it for his purposes.’

‘And that purpose was? Was it in fact for arms?’

She got up and paced away. He said: ‘Why’re you reluctant to tell me, Anna?’

She said tensely: ‘What am I going to do about this, Jack?’

He said: ‘I thought you wanted to destroy the microfilm as a scurrilous lie?’

She cried impatiently: ‘I didn’t
want
to believe it. Even though I suspected it was true. And now –’ she jabbed her finger at the tape-recorder – ‘I
know
it’s true. It all fits …’ She sighed angrily: ‘I was never going to destroy it if it was true, Jack.’

‘What would you have done?’

She put her hands to her face. ‘Oh darling Jack … you don’t know how grateful I am for all you’ve done to help me …’ She dropped her hands. ‘I didn’t know what I was going to do. Get hold of the microfilm and verify it somehow. Then … Somehow I was going to see the Pope about it. Maybe I was going to hire somebody to help me.’ She appealed: ‘But what am I going to do
now?
’

And oh God he hated to trick her again, but he had to.

‘We’re not going to do anything for the time being. The heat’s on us, Anna. We’re going to lie low in these mountains until after Christmas.’

For a moment intense relief flickered across her face. Then she appealed: ‘For God’s sake, there are communists in the top ranks of the Holy Roman Church! What are we going to do after Christmas?’ Her eyes were suddenly glistening. ‘And please don’t suggest that we hand the problem over to the British! …’

He snorted. ‘You still have a lingering suspicion that I’m working for the British?’ He smiled mirthlessly: ‘
The Spy Who Loved Me
?’

She stood, nerves tight. ‘And don’t imagine that I can ever go and live in Britain after this.’

He said emphatically, ‘We
will.
We’ll face them down once this is over.’

She looked at him, then cried:

‘Oh –
I’m
the spy, don’t you see? …’ She thumped her breast: ‘
I’m a trained Russian spy! … And I can never run to England … 
’

He was astonished. She glared at him, then cried:

‘
Because it wasn’t the Russians who murdered God’s Banker – or the Vatican! It was the bloody British! And they’ll do the same to me!
’

He stared at her, absolutely astonished.

She cried: ‘You’re blind, Jack – and your friend Miguel Milano! The answer’s staring you in the face and you don’t see it! Think! You ask what weapons God’s Banker and the P2 wanted the money for! For which country!
Think!
What was going on when God’s Banker was hanged from Blackfriars Bridge on the 18th of June 1982?’ She jabbed a finger at him: ‘You were
there
, Jack!
The Falklands War!
Between Britain and Argentina!’

‘Jesus Christ …’ Morgan said.

‘
Think.
Mr Gelli, the Grand Master of P2, was an Argentinian subject! And he was supplying arms to fascist countries with money provided by God’s Banker. And now Argentina is at war with Great Britain, and losing, and she desperately needs more arms. But God’s Banker is bankrupt …’ She jabbed her finger at Morgan again: ‘
That’s
what P2 wanted out of the deal. Money for arms, so Argentina could win the Falklands War! So P2 was going to give God’s Banker the microfilm with which to blackmail the Vatican into paying up on that “comfort letter”. And God’s Banker rushed to London to get it from Max.’ She glared, then cried: ‘It was
exocet missiles
that Max was going to buy with the money …’ She pointed at the envelope. ‘That airline waybill is for sixteen crates of exocet missiles, not bulldozer parts!’

‘Jesus Christ …’ Morgan whispered. She cried:

‘And the British murdered God’s Banker to stop the Argentinians getting any! And the very next day Galtieri, the military president of Argentina, fell!
And the war was lost …
’

She looked at him, her chest heaving.

‘The
British
murdered God’s Banker and made it look like suicide!
And that’s what they’ll do to me …
’

The night was unreal. Makepeace knocked on the door and asked them if they wanted any supper, but they didn’t. He said the coast was clear, and went to bed. Morgan and Anna lay close together in the glow of the fire and the unrealness of the snowy night. She was calm again now, drained.

‘I never actually joined the Party at university. But I was a communist all right. I still am a socialist, but an older, wiser, moderate one now. But in those days I was young and starry-eyed.’ She snorted wearily. ‘I believed in the spontaneous creative vigour that would emerge from the masses if they were unshackled from the yoke of international capitalism. I wanted to see the means of production nationalized, instead of the profits of sweated labour going to Wall Street. I considered the workers of the Third World were getting a raw deal and I wanted to see oppressive, undemocratic governments got rid of. As I still do.
Including
oppressive communist governments.’

He waited. She went on: ‘And of course I was reading Marx and Lenin and Mao Tse-tung for my political science degree – along with Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. I was awfully knowledgeable, if not particularly wise.’ She sighed. ‘Then … I never told you this, but at the end of my second year I visited Russia.’

He was surprised. ‘No.’

She smiled wearily. ‘Nor did my parents know. They thought I was spending the summer holidays touring Europe. And when I met you two years later I didn’t think it would be smart to tell one of Her Majesty’s nuclear submarine commanders,
whom I fell in love with at first sight.’ She sighed bitterly. ‘Anyway, that’s where they recruited me.’

He could hardly believe this. She went on:

‘A girlfriend called Cynthia and I went. It was supposed to be one of those cultural student tours, arranged by Intourist. And that’s how it started – art galleries, ballet, theatre, universities. The Russian students assigned to Cynthia and me as guides made a great fuss of us. We met Russian students who invited us to parties. No real politics at first. Then we went on to the heavier stuff. Touring factories. Collective farms. They were excellent, the ones we saw. Rosy-cheeked Russian girls singing as they worked, stalwart Russian lads in love with their tractors. Tables groaning with food, jolly sing-a-longs in the evening, vodka flowing like water.’ She smiled bleakly. ‘We really had a splendid time. And everything so cheap. And the Russian boys who were squiring us around were most charming.’ She breathed: ‘I got very fond of one.’ She paused, wearily. ‘His name was Ivan, of course. He had just graduated. He was going to join the diplomatic corps.’ She sighed wearily. ‘We had an affair … It got pretty intense. He wanted me to stay in Russia, and marry him, et cetera.’