Albatross (41 page)

Humphrey hesitated. Out to grass, my foot. He had heard odd vulgarities like that from Ronnie. He decided to play the innocent. No comebacks from Davina if the Chief was caught meddling. He must stop thinking of him as the Chief even though White liked him saying it. ‘Why think about it,' Humphrey countered. ‘You've been friends of the family for years. Why shouldn't you see Charlie, or any of them?'

Sir James smiled his bland smile, famous for its lack of meaning. ‘Exactly. Such a beautiful girl, and so charming. I can't think she'll be alone for long, now that she's come back into circulation. It's a pity there's this feud between Davina and the family. Perhaps I can do something to help mend the fences?'

Humphrey looked at him bleakly. Fence-mending was not Sir James's speciality. He had never healed a rift between other people in his life. He wouldn't have found it amusing. If he wanted to be mischievous, that wasn't Humphrey's business. Personally he thought Davina Graham's sister was a spoilt little tart. Women like her made him shudder. He turned the conversation back to serious things. ‘Davina is convinced there'll be another murder,' he said suddenly. ‘That's one of the reasons she's going to Washington.'

‘Does she think it'll be another American? Good God, if she starts running that one, the CIA will go berserk.'

‘I don't know, nor does she. She just insists that Franklyn wasn't a lone target.'

‘Well,' Sir James said cheerfully, ‘only the next few months will prove it one way or the other. Now, I must get the bill.'

‘No,' Humphrey said, ‘I insist, Chief. This is my lunch.'

The smile enveloped him again. ‘Very well, don't let's argue, Humphrey. And you must,' he said gently, ‘break that habit of calling me Chief.'

‘I'll try,' Humphrey Grant promised. ‘But it isn't easy.'

The house in the Rue Constantine had been recently redecorated. The Minister was famous for her taste and elegance. Being a distinguished lawyer and a feminist, Isabelle Duvalier had earned her place in the new government, which declared itself committed to women's rights. The fact that the new Minister for the Interior was married to a rich man twenty years her senior and bought her clothes from St Laurent didn't detract from her brilliance and her flair for publicity. Her enemies nicknamed her Evita; passionate concern for the underprivileged and jewels by Boucheron. It was a gibe that bounced off the lady like a toy arrow. She was impervious to criticizm; her style carried her above the jealous sniping of the press. She gave lavish parties but she worked a twelve-hour day. And she was a conscientious, enlightened mother of two teenage daughters. They attended the Lycée, and the eldest at eighteen was having an affair with a student from the Sorbonne. Being progressive, her parents approved after she assured them she was on the pill. The girls had their own quarters on the top floor of the house; there they played records, cooked themselves the junk food that was in fashion and entertained their friends.

That evening found the women of the family together; the Minister was at home, free of social commitments. Her daughters and their friends joined her for dinner. Her husband was in Munich. In spite of his age he led a very active business life. The murder of the American statesman had been the major topic during dinner.

‘I met him when he came to Paris two years ago,' Isabelle Duvalier remembered. ‘He was most amusing. His wife was a chic Californian. You know the type, darlings – Nancy Reagan, but not so pretty. I couldn't believe that she died just a year later.'

‘It was so terrible to kill his daughter,' her eldest girl, Louise, remarked. ‘Don't you think so, Hélène?'

There were eight of them round the table; cigarette smoke hung in a cloud below the lights. The talk was quick and uninhibited. The Minister loved the conversation of the young. She waited for Hélène's answer. Hélène was Louise's closest friend and, in Isabelle's eyes, almost an adopted daughter.

‘Such bad luck she was with him,' Hélène agreed. ‘But they'll never catch the people who did it.'

‘What do they hope to gain? That's what seems so crazy about the whole thing.' The young student who was Louise Duvalier's lover was a committed pacifist. A nice boy, the Minister felt, and sure to come to his senses when he grew up a little.

‘Violence achieves nothing but violence,' he went on, aware of his lover's admiring looks. ‘Whoever these terrorists are, they've activated a new chain of violence against themselves. They've killed innocent people along with Franklyn; his daughter, the bodyguards, the boatman – for what?'

‘If we knew the motive,' his hostess said, ‘we might have some idea who they are.'

‘They're the same lot under some other name,' Hélène volunteered. ‘I agree with you, Raoul, violence doesn't help. But wasn't Franklyn violent too, in his way? Didn't he support nuclear arms?'

‘There's no comparison.' Diane, the younger daughter, entered the argument. Like her mother, she was articulate and competitive. ‘The Americans want nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Having them stops war –'

There was a general outcry of disagreement. Hélène didn't join in; she was a little out of her depth when the talk became too involved with politics and dialectics. She regarded her own views as clear-cut, even basic. She didn't want her clever friends to see her limitations, so she knew when to drop out of a debate, like now. She watched the adroit way in which Isabelle Duvalier steered them from one point to the next by asking a pointed question. She noticed the genuine interest and enjoyment she displayed in the company of the group of students. And she had always been especially kind to Hélène. She didn't look at all like a woman with a strong maternal instinct.

Hélène had come to Paris to get away from home. At the Lycée she had met Isabelle Duvalier's daughter and they had become friends. That friendship soon extended to the whole family. Hélène spent every summer holiday with them in Normandy. There were definite advantages to being a politician with a rich husband. The delightful chateau built on a lake was one of them. Hélène liked going there. She heard her name and started; her thoughts had drifted far away.

‘Let's go into the salon,' the Minister suggested. ‘Come along, Hélène, let's lead the way before they all start coming to blows. Tell me, how is your aunt?'

Hélène's aunt was the widow of a doctor; she lived in modest style on the Left Bank, and disapproved of all the things most dear to Isabelle Duvalier. She was a devout Catholic, a fierce admirer of ex-President Giscard d'Estaing and she loathed the feminist movement. However, she had been invited to tea with the Minister and been charmed by her.

‘She's very well,' Hélène answered. ‘A bit cross with me at the moment.'

‘Oh? Has she any reason?' Isabelle Duvalier slipped her hand through the crook of the girl's arm.

‘She says I spend too much time fooling about,' Hélène admitted, ‘and not enough time working.'

‘Which is true, isn't it?' There was no reproach, only a smile.

Hélène nodded. ‘Yes, madame. Quite true.'

‘Then don't stay upstairs too late tonight,' the Minister advised. ‘Otherwise your aunt won't like you coming here so often. Go home and do some work. And ask if she can spare you for the weekend after next. We're going down to Blois to stay with my brother-in-law. Louise is in love and is sulking. As you can imagine, I dare not bring Raoul; my brother-in-law doesn't sympathize with peace and ecology, I'm afraid. Diane is staying in Paris and Louise will be bored to death unless you keep her company. Would that suit you?'

‘Oh, madame, I'd love it. How kind of you to think of me.'

‘I'm very fond of you,' the older woman said. ‘I'd like you to come for me, too. So don't be late tonight.'

‘No,' Hélène promised. ‘I certainly won't.' She kept her word. A weekend at the home of Albert Ferdinand Duvalier. Old and rich and hated by so many people. She didn't mind making an excuse and leaving the records and the marijuana on the upper floor.

She took the metro to the Station Malakoff and went into the public telephone. She dialled a number and tapped her foot impatiently. When it answered she said quickly, ‘This is France. I've got important news.'

Tony Walden was away when Davina got back from Washington. He had a trip booked to Australia; it would keep them apart for three weeks. She arrived on a Saturday morning, feeling mentally and physically exhausted. Consultations had gone on nonstop for the full four days of her visit. She and Johnson had been flown by helicopter from the capital to Langley. Eric Brunson, the CIA's director, was a pleasant man under normal conditions, but the pressures building up made him peremptory and suspicious.

Davina showed Tim Johnson that she could be patient and tactful, qualities he hadn't thought were in her. And he saw Brunson warm to her as to a friend. A very clever Boss Lady, Tim decided. She's mentally holding the man's hand, sympathizing with his predicament. And by the end of the visit, Davina and Brunson were committed to a joint investigation. The SIS would contribute anything that came its way through its intelligence sources and send the information direct to the States. And the CIA would share its findings with London. Between them they should circumvent the deliberate blocking tactics of the Italian government and its security service. They were more concerned with proving that the assassin had come to Italy from outside than with finding him. As Brunson said on their last evening together, ‘They don't want to find the bastard because they think he
is
Italian!'

Davina didn't disagree.

Johnson was met by his wife at the airport. Davina spoke to her briefly; she felt a sickening pang of loneliness when she saw them drive off together. She was going back to her empty flat.

It was a lovely June day; the suburban gardens were bright with flowers on the way into London. She longed to get into the country, to breathe some clean air and walk with a dog running alongside her. Marchwood. Marchwood with its famous garden a riot of colour, her mother's loving care rewarded by the splendours of that perfect English flower, the rose. She missed the house terribly; she missed the summer evenings with a drink on the warm terrace, and the scents drifting on the faintest breeze. She missed her mother, even her father's awkward welcome. For a while she had been friends with Charlie. Now that was finished. There was no welcome for her at home. They had exiled her as completely as her brother-in-law was exiled. She in her lonely London flat, he in his KGB apartment in Moscow.

She unlocked the door, left her suitcase unopened on the bed. There was a stale atmosphere in the place, although it had only been empty for a few days. Davina opened the windows; there was little traffic and the quietness grated on her nerves. When the city fell silent it was unnerving, as if everyone in the world had gone away for the weekend and only she were left behind.

She chided herself irritably. There were people she could ring up. If Tony Walden wasn't available she stayed at home, content to read or watch television, feeling relaxed after the week's work. But not this time. Not after Paris. Now that she was alone, Davina felt despair. She couldn't counter it with argument, because instinct and logic told her that their relationship could not survive. And there was no one in the world she could confide in. She remembered Sir James White's remark when she moved into his office.

‘It's a lonely spot to be in, my dear. Especially for a woman. But I think you'll come to terms with it.'

Until that night in Paris, Davina believed that she had faced the problem. Now she knew the real test was just beginning. She didn't ring Australia. She made coffee, unpacked her clothes, had a hot bath and dialled the number of James White's house in Kent.

His wife Mary answered. Yes, of course he was in – would she hold on? Davina said briefly, ‘Chief, can I drive down and see you?'

His voice was full of pleasure. Very warm. ‘My dear, of course! And stay the night – we haven't a thing to do the whole weekend. We'll expect you in time for tea.' He rang off and slowly Davina put the receiver back.

Of all the men in the world, he was the last she ever expected to go to for help. But of all the men in the world now, he was the only one she could trust.

Four thousand miles away someone else just as lonely prepared for his weekend. He had a dacha outside Moscow, nestled in the pine forests above the Moscova river. It was a luxurious house, secluded from the other dachas that gave the members of the Politburo a retreat from the city. It was smaller than the magnificent residence of the President himself. But not much smaller. The shadows moving discreetly round the grounds belonged to the KGB militia; they guarded Igor Borisov, Director of State Security, head of the largest network of intelligence in the world, with a quarter of a million men under arms at his command. The second most powerful man in Russia. Some said the first, because the President was old and ailing, kept alive by the doctors at the Ushenkaya Clinic.

Borisov had sent his wife on a Crimean cruise. She didn't want to go. There had been the usual scene when he suggested it. In the end he had simply told her she was going. He needed the dacha to himself and she couldn't stay in Moscow.

He retreated from his offices in Dzerzhinsky Square to the peace of the woods and the empty house. He had wanted to get a divorce for a long time. It wasn't easy because the President was a family man, married to the same woman for forty years. He wouldn't like his protégé to cast off his wife, like an old shoe that pinched. But how she pinched, Borisov complained; how she bored him and nagged him and froze him into impotence whenever they shared a bed. But he would have to wait. It couldn't be too long. The old man's heart was labouring; the slightest chill turned to a lung infection. While he walked along the river bank, or sat in the sunshine on his porch, Borisov made plans. They had occupied his mind from the time the snows of winter melted, when the life of his friend and mentor, President Zerkhov, entered its final term. The old man knew that he wouldn't see another winter, but he faced the future with typical stony courage and set himself the task of finding someone suitable to care for Russia. He had the mentality of a tsar and the jealousy of a hereditary ruler for his heirs. No old men, he declared to his wife while she sat by his bedside. No bald heads living in the past. Russia needed a man of vision, a man who was young enough to lead her into the next century. Igor Borisov was his choice. That choice could be Borisov's guarantee of supreme power or cause his humiliation and ultimate fall. He had more enemies than friends. And he would need friends. Friends inside the all-powerful Politburo and the support of the Army. The Army and the KGB were natural rivals. No former Director of State Security had been liked by the generals. The troops with the red shield badge had provided the firing squads too often for the regular armed services to trust them. Borisov was determined to change that attitude. He agreed with Zerkhov: Russia needed a diplomat to guide her into the future, not a hard-liner living on the dictums of the past. Borisov had disposed of the worst specimen not long ago. A very convenient stroke had carried him away, with the assistance of a certain drug.