House of the Hanged (29 page)

The last thing either of them expected was breakfast.

Its arrival was announced by a loud thumping on the door, which was then unlocked and pushed open. Tom slipped from the bed and wandered warily over.

There was a tray outside in the corridor: buttered baguette, a jug of coffee, two cups, and a candle burning in a brass holder. Both Russians were also there, guns drawn.

‘Did you get some sleep?' asked the small one, with a knowing leer.

Tom ignored him and picked up the tray.

‘Big mistake. We didn't know she was your girl friend.'

‘She isn't my girlfriend.'

‘Big mistake.'

Lucy laid a blanket on the floor like a picnic rug and placed the candle in the middle of it.

‘It's good to see your face again,' said Tom.

He was wary about the coffee, but it tasted innocent enough, and besides, the Russian's comments outside in the corridor suggested that a more sinister end was planned for them than a straightforward poisoning.

They heard a telephone ring twice while they were eating, and they also heard a car driving off. They studiously ignored these sounds of activity, just as they went out of their way to avoid all mention of what Lucy had rightly described as their ‘hateful situation'.

They spoke of other things, of her mother and the deep unhappiness she seemed doomed to always carry with her like a curse, and of her father, whose bones would always lie in French soil. Tom also told her his mother's story, a tale of displacement which he suspected lay at the root of his own peripatetic existence. They listed the five people they disliked most in the world, as well as the five they most admired; the five places they wished they'd visited, and the five they wished they hadn't.

They found more things to list, things which allowed them to laugh and to speak of other places and other times. It was escapism, but of a limited kind. They both knew there was something final, something definitive, in the nature of their lists that acknowledged the coming cataclysm.

They would not be allowed to remain there forever – Lucy stretched out on the blanket, her head in his lap – talking by the guttering light of a candle.

When it finally happened, when the key turned in the lock and the door swung open, it was Tom they wanted, and Tom alone.

Lucy clung to him.

‘It's not over yet,' he whispered in her ear. ‘And if it comes to it, fight like a hellcat.'

He kissed her hard on the lips then left.

Only one of the Russians, the taller of the two, was waiting for him outside in the corridor.

‘Where's your boyfriend?'

‘Shut up.'

‘Did you have an argument? Has he left you?'

Tom saw the fury flaming in the big man's face, which was just what he wanted to see. If he could only goad him into making a mistake . . .

There were no mistakes, though, as Tom was shepherded back through the farmhouse and out into the courtyard.

The heat struck his face like the blast from an open furnace, and his eyes struggled to adjust to the blinding sunshine. It was another glorious day, a span of unclouded blue overhead.

Rounding the wing of the farmhouse, Tom plucked a sun-cracked fig from the tree trained against the end wall. This brought a futile reprimand from the big Russian, which Tom ignored. A short distance from the farmhouse a handful of cypresses stood sentinel over a low grassy rise. There was a person seated at a table in the shade cast by the cluster of tall, tapering trees.

It was a woman, and although her back was turned, a simple gesture unmasked her: the way she took her coffee cup between the thumb and middle finger of her left hand before raising it to her lips.

It was enough to stop Tom dead in his tracks.

‘Keep moving,' ordered the big Russian.

But he couldn't move. He daren't move closer, in case he was right.

A sharp shove in the back propelled him forward, and the woman turned to face him.

He had often wondered what she would look like now, but the mental pictures he had painted of her had done her a disservice. The intervening years seemed barely to have touched her features. Her hair, though shorter, was still as black and lustrous as a lump of anthracite, and the large dark eyes that met his incredulous gaze were unlined.

‘Take your time,' said Irina, gesturing to the chair opposite her.

He wanted to make sense of it, but his mind was emptied of all activity. He stared like a halfwit while she poured him a coffee, adding a dash of milk and half a spoon of sugar – the way he had always taken it.

She slid the saucer over to him, along with her cigarettes and a lighter. She then said something to the big Russian which Tom didn't catch. The man backed off, out of earshot.

‘You look well,' said Irina. ‘It must be the Mediterranean lifestyle. Or maybe it's the young company you keep.'

Her English had always been good. Now it was impeccable, with barely a trace of an accent.

‘How old is she, Tom?'

‘Don't tell me you're jealous.'

Irina smiled. ‘I am a little. She's beautiful.'

So that had been her behind the torch. ‘Yes, she is. She's also intelligent, kind, and above all . . . true.'

The emphasis wasn't lost on her. ‘Oh please, don't be so dramatic.'

‘Dramatic!?' He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Under the circumstances, you might have to allow me a bit of latitude.'

He could see it now, not all of it, but enough of it to know that everything he had always taken for granted could now be discarded as untrustworthy, everything that had passed between them, reaching right back to their first meeting at the embassy party in Petrograd, when Irina had spilled her drink in front of him, splashing his shoes with wine. Mortified, apologizing for her clumsiness, that was the moment she had hooked her fish – a small fish, the most junior member of the special diplomatic mission dispatched from London to negotiate with the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

He had never once thought to doubt her. Why should he have, when others who knew her far better hadn't? Her credentials were beyond reproach. She had even worked as a volunteer nurse alongside Ambassador Buchanan's daughter at the British Colony Hospital on Vassili Island. That's how thorough the Bolsheviks had been in their preparations.

‘You're upset,' said Irina. ‘Of course you are. I understand.'

‘How can you possibly understand? I was shedding tears for you just a few hours ago.' She looked shocked by his words. ‘I've been living a half-life because of you.'

‘But at least you're alive,' she countered. ‘Others weren't so lucky . . . like Dimitri.'

‘Remind me . . .?' said Tom, knowing full well.

‘Dimitri Zakharov, the man you killed.'

‘To avenge your death. Now there's an unfortunate irony.'

‘More than you think,' said Irina. ‘Dimitri was my lover.'

Tom reached for a cigarette. It wasn't the added betrayal that shocked him – nothing could top the grand deceit he was still groping to come to terms with – it was the lengths to which she had been willing to go.

‘And how did he feel about you offering up your body for the cause?'

A part of him wanted her to say that Zakharov had never known, that she had never told him, that she had done it for herself.

‘He understood.'

‘Christ . . .'

‘We were fighting for a new world, a better world. Nothing else was important. Your navy was in the Gulf of Finland. If you had joined the Whites you would have destroyed us. The Revolution would have been for nothing. We all did what we had to do to stop that.'

Baint had once said that the only feature a man could make for himself was his mouth. If this was true, then Irina's betrayed a hardness of the soul he had never associated with her.

‘And was it worth it – your better world? How many of your own people have you massacred since then? How many have starved to death? How many have you locked up and forced to work like slaves?'

Irina hesitated. ‘It has been a long and hard road.'

‘You don't seem to have suffered too badly from the look of you.' His gaze settled on her chain-link bracelet. ‘Solid gold . . .?'

Irina glanced at her wrist before looking up. ‘From a man who lives alone in a palace by the sea large enough for five families . . .?'

She took her cigarettes back and lit one, pleased with her riposte, and not without justification.

‘Why me?' he asked. ‘Why trick me back to Petrograd? I was nobody.'

‘Don't be offended, but we weren't after you. We were after ST-25. We were after Paul Dukes.'

The plan, she explained, had been hatched by Dzherzinsky, the head of the Cheka, who was obsessed with tracking down Britain's last agent in the capital. They knew he was there, just not where. If Tom could be persuaded to return from Finland then he would be obliged to use the underground network already in place; he would lead them to Dukes.

‘I didn't think it would work,' said Irina. ‘I didn't think you would come for me. When you did . . .' She trailed off.

‘What?'

‘I still can't believe you came for me.'

He hardened his heart against her words. ‘A tribute to your professionalism. You were very convincing. And the pregnancy was a nice touch. Was that Dzherzinsky's idea too?'

‘Yes.'

But there had been a moment's hesitation, a brief tremor in her eyes, which now seemed determined to avoid his.

‘Irina . . . look at me.'

When she finally did, he saw both the lie and the truth written in her face.

‘I promised myself I wouldn't tell you.'

‘A child . . .?'

She nodded. ‘A boy. Such a beautiful boy.'

When he saw the tears starting to her eyes he felt a chill qualm run through him.

‘He died?'

‘Died? No.'

A boy. A living boy.

‘Is he mine?'

‘I don't know. Maybe Dimitri's.'

‘Surely you can tell. He must be – what? – sixteen by now.'

‘In ten days.'

‘Surely you can tell.'

‘How,' she demanded, almost aggressively, ‘when I haven't seen him since he was a baby? I don't even know where he is.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean, think what it was like for me. I was on my own. Dimitri was dead. You were gone. I didn't know who his father was, and yes . . . I wasn't ready to be a mother. Dimitri's family wouldn't take him in case he was yours. No one wanted him.' She paused. ‘He went to an orphanage in Moscow.'

‘Which orphanage?'

She shook her head and looked at him with sadness. ‘I shouldn't have told you. Why do you think I'm here, to have coffee with you and talk about the old days?'

‘No, I know why you're here. You're here to finish a job.'

‘It's not a job I asked for, and I couldn't say no.'

‘I'm touched,' he replied sarcastically.

‘You should be. Why do you think I sent the Italian? To give you a chance, Tom. You should have disappeared as soon as you'd killed him. I assume you
did
kill him.'

Tom nodded.

‘I'm sorry, but failure isn't an option. If you knew the man who gave the order, you would understand that.'

‘General Ivan Zakharov – Dimitri's brother.'

That surprised her, that really surprised her, and Tom glimpsed an opportunity. Under other circumstances he might not have risked it, but now wasn't the time for professional discretion.

‘We know more than that, Irina. We also know about your spy in the Secret Intelligence Service.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

He believed her, not because she had no reason to lie to him, but because she looked worried.

‘Zakharov didn't tell you, did he? That's how he knows I killed Dimitri – your man on the inside accessed my file. That's also why it had to look like I'd died a natural death. You say failure isn't an option, but you've already failed, Irina. You shouldn't have given me a chance, you shouldn't have sent the Italian. It was because of Pozzi we knew we'd been infiltrated.' He let her absorb his words before continuing. ‘What's General Zakharov going to think about that when you return home?'

‘You're trying to save your life.'

‘I'm trying to save both our lives.'

‘You're forgetting Lucy.'

That chilled him: the confirmation that Lucy also had a death sentence on her head.

‘Irina, listen, Stalin's on the rampage, everyone knows it. No one's safe. You think Zakharov's going to cover for you? He's going to throw you to the wolves to save himself.'

‘I'll take my chances with him.'

‘Then you're a fool, because you don't need to.' He leaned closer. ‘Come over to us. We can protect you.'

When she looked to her left he thought at first she was checking to see that the big Russian wasn't listening in, but her eye had been drawn by a motor car approaching along the track to the farmhouse, throwing up a plume of white dust in its wake.

Turning back to him, she asked, ‘And did you make the same offer to Pyotr?'

‘Pyotr?'

How in heaven did she know?

She smiled wistfully. ‘You're a good man, Tom, too good for all this; you always were.'

He watched the car pull up by the farmhouse, the same car that he and Lucy had been transported in. The short Russian appeared from behind the steering wheel and moments later Pyotr unfolded himself from the passenger seat. He was instantly recognisable from the white bandage around his head. Both men made their way over.

Irina rose to receive them, her authority evident in the little bow Pyotr gave as he greeted her in Russian. ‘It's an honour to meet you, comrade.'

Tom was struck limp and lifeless by the spectacle. Leonard's scepticism about Pyotr had been entirely justified. He had needed Tom to get him away from the car wreck, and now that he was on his feet again it was business as usual.