Split Code (21 page)

‘It happens once in a hundred years to a girl, and you can’t say no,’ said Beverley Eisenkopp, raising her voice a little above the noise of Grover kicking the door in. ‘I love my husband, Nurse Joanna, but Simon Booker-Readman is my prince. We were made for one another.’

They had certainly fitted very well into the Jacuzzi bath. I said, ‘You aren’t thinking of a divorce?’

She put the lid on the lavatory seat and sat on it. ‘Have I done any God-damned thing but think?’ she said peevishly. ‘Of course all I ask is a golden future with Simon - but what would be the cost? Two fine homes destroyed, my husband’s peace of mind gone, the mental health of three little children damaged for ever. I wouldn’t do that to my children, Joanna.’

I took it as a good sign that I had become Joanna, and said, ‘It’s none of my business anyway, Mrs Eisenkopp. You can be quite sure that no one among your family or friends will hear about it through me.’

She lifted her lashes and there were beautiful tears in them. ‘Do you mean that?’ she said. ‘Do you really mean it? But you hardly know me. Is it for the sake of those lovely children?’

To the sound of Grover’s feet and Grover’s voice, hoarse with rage, was added the rattle of the doorknob, violently turned from outside. I said ‘Well, they’ve got Bunty, of course. But certainly, it means a great deal to both of the children to have you there as much as possible. Grover is doing all this because he wants you to love him, you know.’

Her eyes were bright, pellucid hazel, with the whites clear as boiled eggs. She said, ‘Then if Comer were to ask you a question that threatened our marriage, could I count on you, Joanna, to be a real friend?’

I wondered how many files her romance with Simon Booker-Readman already occupied in British Intelligence and tried to look well-disposed but unbending. ‘We are trained, Mrs Eisenkopp, never to interfere in the personal affairs of the family. If awkward questions are asked, the rule is to answer that we know nothing about it.’

Beverley Eisenkopp got up and snatched at a tissue, dislodging a shower of Bunty’s personal James Bond plastic frogmen into the empty bath. ‘But that’s not enough,’ she said pettishly.

‘I’m sorry. I did try to leave. Don’t you think, if Mr Eisenkopp finds out from anyone, it will be from Mrs Booker-Readman?’

Her face relaxed. If the discussion had been less fraught, I think she might even have laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Oh, no. There’s no danger of that.’

The doorhandle fell inwards on to the carpet. She said, her voice melodious still, ‘Grover! What are you doing? You bad boy, leave Momma’s handle alone!’

He did, too. We could hear his shouts receding into the playroom and a series of crashes, such as bricks being thrown at a television set.

I undid a pin from my bib and set to work on the door while Mrs Eisenkopp wheedled through it. Bathos. I tell you, my private life and my career both sure as death were designed by a plumber.

We arrived at Ĉilipi, a little south of Dubrovnik, just before lunchtime.

You could see, looking out of the plane, how the Magistrala, the Adriatic Highway, ran down the west coast of Yugoslavia, on the green strip between mountains and sea. And on the sea, opposite Italy’s heel, stood this ancient walled town of Dubrovnik.

From the plane, it looked pretty well preserved, considering. The Balkans have changed hands so often that they’re a kedgeree of names and religions and languages. Yugoslavia has Austro-Hungarians in the north and there are Negroes in the south, descended from slaves of the Barbary corsairs. Occupied in the last world war by the Germans, the place liberated itself in a fearsome upheaval, complicated by the fact that there were two opposing Resistance movements. The Partisans, under Marshal Tito, ended by ruling the country, but the men of some regions, such as the Croats, have never really accepted the outcome.

So in his briefing Johnson had told me. The country was Communist, but its mixture of public and private enterprise was unlike that of Russia. It was still poor, and vulnerable to recession and trade barriers, but helped by the new tourist industry. For the tourist industry they needed Adriatic Highways, and Beverley Eisenkopp and places like Dubrovnik.

Its harbour town lay to the north. We saw, as we circled to land, the white banded flanks of the
Glycera,
lying there at the quay under the confetti-like swags of her bunting.

There were cars waiting for us all at the airport, with Warr Beckenstaff escorts in pink silk rosettes and makeup. The Eisenkopps went off first, on Comer’s insistence, to install their little prince and princess with Bunty at Herceg-Novi.

Our car came next, to take us with the baby to Johnson’s yacht
Dolly.
With us, not to be outdone in conscientious parenthood, came the Booker-Readmans and Johnson himself, to see the child safely aboard before going on to the
Glycera.

It was all going according to plan. I believe I heard, as we drove away, the boom of some announcement behind, being made over the airport’s tannoy. But I paid no attention.

I remember that drive up the coast towards the harbour because Benedict was asleep, and I was able to relax, too, for perhaps the last time. For one thing, the car was a hired one and driven not by a member of the Warr Beckenstaff Corporation but by the little man called Lenny Milligan who looked after the
Dolly,
and had brought her round from Malta. And beyond his smart navy uniform and suntanned neck I had my first, and what might be my only close look at Yugoslavia.

It was more dramatic than I had expected: the high lilac mountains clothed with green almost to the top, and full, they said, of both Venetian fortresses and houses weekendica. The coast showed the same contradictions: the pink and white stucco buildings and the stone ones, with door rings and carved lintels and flanking pilasters.

The highway was international. There were green and yellow pumps of Jugopetrol, and snackbars, and autocamps and a notice
Top Strip Tease
by the roadside. We shared the route with Peugeots and Skodas and Opels, Fiats and Volkswagens, Zastavas and Trunus with thick hairy upholstery. There were also a herd of white goats, and donkeys with panniers of green stuff, and a man leading a horse with a wooden saddle. A Tam lorry full of Valencian oranges passed by a grove of citrus trees.

One third of these people were farmers. There were orange and lemon trees everywhere, and vines, just putting out their new leaves, and the pale trunks of fig trees, with the fruit small and firm as green light bulbs. There were flowers everywhere too, in beds and parks and balconies: phlox and tulips and begonias and low thick spidery succulents; geraniums and irises and bushes of small full pink roses. Wistaria and mimosa, and palms with great sprays of bright orange dates. We passed a window full of pot plants and I saw Donovan’s lips moving, silently.

Of course the summer was hot. Today it was merely mild, and the sky was overcast, although we passed men in the fields working stripped to the waist: tall brown-skinned men with an easy walk, as had the girls. Dressed, they wore in the country the Mediterranean uniform you see on older people everywhere: the long or short black cotton skirts, the headscarf, the black beret worn with faded blue denims. The old men with bad teeth and thick unwashed grey hair, each with his brimmed hat tipped over one narrowed eye, rakishly. They played cards in the side-streets we passed, on small tables littered with glasses and coffee cups. It reminded me of those other men playing cards in the Carl Schurz Park in America.

It reminded me of everything. How did twenty strangers expect to blend into a countryside such as this? How did you walk the hills in your good British clothes, avoid the dogs and the cats, produce the smart walkie-talkies from under your jacket; explain the use of your binoculars?

On the other hand, Mike Widdess had done it. So could other people, if driven hard enough. If driven, of course, by my father.

Then I saw Donovan watching me, and thought about nothing for the rest of the journey.

Johnson Johnson’s yacht, the
Dolly,
lay with six others at the Orsan, the yacht club on the opposite side of the basin from where the
Glycera
was berthed, and I heard Simon draw in his breath when he saw her. I thought I knew what to expect, but it wasn’t the elegant sheer of fifty-six feet of white topside; the tailored teak of the deck with its brass sparkling; the pale soaring poles of her masts. Graceful, orderly and implicitly workmanlike. I should have checked my suppositions against the experience I already had, of Johnson painting. Denny Donovan, his arms full of baby luggage, said, ‘Wow!!!’ Rosamund followed Johnson into the cockpit and looking around said, ‘Why the
Dolly?
She’s a beautiful boat.’

Her tone was critical, but he smiled at her.

‘Crummy name, I agree. It’s really the
Doiley,’
he said. ‘Once belonged to a fancy paper goods manufacturer.’ A door leading aft had swung open under his fingers, disclosing a double stateroom, brightly and impeccably furnished. ‘Suppose you come in here while Lenny and Donovan take the luggage through for Joanna and the baby, and Donovan gets his stuff settled. I’ve given Joanna the forward stateroom with Lenny on one side of her in the fo’c’sle cot and Donovan on the other, next to the galley. I’ll show you in a minute. There’s a place for lashing Ben’s basket and no one can possibly get at them there.’

‘Your bedroom?’ said Simon, looking curiously around. I dumped Ben’s cot on one of the beds and sat beside him. Rosamund sank on the other side. The boy was sleeping, his new lashes stuck out like bristles.

‘It’s the master bedroom,’ Johnson said. ‘Bathroom off. Fittings as you see. Place for wet canvases here. I can get to the cockpit in one second if need be, and there’s a plastic cockpit cover I use when I’m painting. All the dials you see through the door are the usual things - radar, echo sounder and whatnot. And radio telephone, so you can speak from the
Glycera.
You’ll have a drink I hope with me here, and then as soon as you feel happy about the baby, we can push off round the quay to your mother. You said Mrs Warr Beckenstaff wanted to see Joanna?’

That was an understatement. The command had come, by transatlantic telephone, the night before we left New York. She wanted to see me, and her grandson. I had said she could see me with pleasure, but not her grandson at the end of a long day of air travel. There had been a three-cornered argument which by remote control I had won. Benedict’s health came first, it was agreed. Eventually.

Now Rosamund said, ‘We’ve been asked to take Joanna aboard for half an hour. May we leave the baby here with you until she comes back?’ The saloon was clear. Johnson moved from the cockpit down into it and waited while we all filed after, taking Ben with us. From a bar just behind him there came a pleasant chinking sound as Lenny laid out the drinks. ‘You can leave him with Lenny and Donovan,’ Johnson said. ‘He’ll be quite safe. They’re moving
Dolly
out from the jetty as soon as we’ve gone, and then no one can get aboard without warning. We carry a pram and a launch; we’ll send the launch to fetch Joanna whenever she’s ready.’

Behind us, Lenny coughed and Johnson turned. His face behind the glasses was as bland as if he really didn’t know exactly what Lenny was about to remark. Johnson said, ‘A problem?’

Lenny’s accent was Cockney, and his ears stuck out. He had exchanged his blue jacket for a white steward’s coat, spotlessly laundered. He said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. The Avenger’s out of action. Temporarily. They’re fixing her in the repair shop.’

Neither of my employers displayed any interest. Donovan, coming through the door forward said, ‘You can’t leave shore then, can you, sir?’

The
sir
was a new phenomenon, due perhaps to the owner of such an evident piece of floating capital. Johnson said, ‘We’ve got the dinghy. For that matter, Lenny can bring the yacht over to take Joanna off. After that, we meant to move round to Dubrovnik harbour anyway.’

‘Why?’ said Rosamund. She had a glass in her hand, and looked as though she needed it, what with jet lag and Ingmar in the offing.

‘The view is better,’ Johnson said peacefully. ‘Also, it’s less accessible. Dubrovnik’s a walled city closed to traffic, unless you happen to want to get married. The only escape is through the gates or up the funicular: all easy to close if there’s trouble. Come and see where the baby will sleep. Joanna, you’d better tell Lenny what to do if he wakens.’

They had to wait for me in the end, because you can’t just walk off a boat with a baby there. But I took care of the essentials quickly, and in the right order, leaving a feed in the fridge and the bathing and changing and feeding essentials still in their polythene wraps where they were handy and yet couldn’t spill if
Dolly
sailed. They say that you can count a baby’s luggage as roughly the same as two adults’, and it’s all too true.

Benedict’s carrycot stood on the forward stateroom carpet, with each handle lashed to the bulkhead. He was still sleeping when I came back after washing quickly. I took off my apron and combed my hair and buttoned my coat and went out, leaving him. As I had guessed from the laughter, they were on their second refills and hadn’t missed me. I followed everyone on to the jetty and Johnson took the wheel of the car. Looking back, I could see that Donovan was already standing by to cast off the shore line and that a thin cloud of smoke was rising aft from
Dolly’s
exhaust.

Children don’t waken on boats. I’ve seen a five-year-old sleep like the dead with an anchor chain roaring a foot away. Between the noise of the car and the harbour I couldn’t even hear the sound of
Dolly’s
engine, never mind the screams of Benedict, if any. It was Donovan who must have spotted my corrugated face at the back window and straightened to give me a thumbs-up. It didn’t mean that Ben wasn’t roaring; only that he wanted to cheer me. And he did. I was going to meet Mrs Warr Beckenstaff on the
Glycera,
but I was a lot less worried about it than Rosamund.