2

The weather was so mild that the Grahams were having breakfast on the terrace. Marchwood faced south, so that the front of the old house was bathed in sunlight.

The front terrace was Captain Graham’s innovation; he liked to read the morning papers there and, when it was warm enough, to enjoy breakfast overlooking the splendid garden at the front. He was reading The Times, exclaiming as he did so. Davina’s mother usually made pleasant noises during this ritual and thought about her flowers. But not that morning. The dreadful murder of the American politician had upset them both. Captain Graham was reading excerpts aloud to her, and instead of thinking about spraying the roses, Betty Graham was paying full attention.

‘And that poor daughter,’ she said. ‘Only nineteen – it’s unthinkable what people will do these days!’

‘They’re the scum of the earth,’ her husband retorted. He put the paper down. ‘Where’s Charlie?’ He loved having his favourite child living at home and his grandson was a marvellous bonus. He was always asking where she was, or wandering off to find the boy. His wife thought it was touching and sweet. It had never entered her head to be jealous of his love for their beautiful daughter. She pitied Davina because she had minded being second-best so much.

‘I think she’s coming now,’ she said. ‘I can hear Fergie.’ They had engaged a local girl to help look after the little boy. Fergus Graham felt it took rather too much out of Charlie. He often said to his wife that she had never quite recovered from the awful shock of two years ago.

‘Darling,’ Mrs Graham said, ‘the coffee’s still hot. I’ll make you some more toast.’

Charlie Kidson thanked her with a kiss. Her father beamed. Really she was a lovely girl, and still so young-looking. Nobody would have given her a day more than, say, twenty-eight. Not thirty-seven, not three years from forty. That abundant red hair, the too thin figure, the girlish laugh. Not heard so often now, not since she found out about her husband. It grieved him to think that she was sad. And she wouldn’t apply for a divorce. He couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t like Charlie to sit still and let life pass her by.

‘Pat’s going to take the Monster for a walk,’ Charlie said. She referred to her son by his nickname; it rather shocked some people who didn’t realize that she adored him. She picked up the paper and glanced at the headlines. They had watched the late news together the night before. She had gone up to bed rather abruptly, her parents thought.

‘That ghastly thing,’ she said. She drank some coffee. Then she looked at her father. ‘I expect Davina will be revelling in it. I couldn’t stop thinking about her last night. I didn’t get to sleep for hours.’

‘You shouldn’t let it get on your nerves,’ her father said. ‘Forget about her, Charlie. I’ve said this over and over to you. She doesn’t come here any more. She’s stopped writing. Put it out of your mind.’

‘I do,’ Charlie insisted. ‘But something like this brings it all back. I thought of her last night, sitting in her bloody office, queen of the heap at last, while the poor little Monster grows up without his father and John sits in Moscow, drinking himself to death. Do you know, Daddy, I’ve thought about going out to join him?’ She saw the alarm on her father’s face and then shook her head quickly. ‘No, not seriously, just when I felt so fed up and angry about what happened … when I thought about Fergie. Of course I wouldn’t go. I’d loathe it and I’d loathe John too for ruining everything. I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.’ She got up and put her arms round him.

‘It would kill us if you went,’ he said. ‘Remember what he did. You couldn’t live with that.’

‘I know I couldn’t.’ Charlie went back to her chair. ‘Maybe I should get a job, Daddy. Pat can cope with Monster during the week. All I do is drip around here and he doesn’t need much now. Mother won’t let me near the kitchen.’

‘As you can’t boil an egg, darling,’ Mrs Graham came back with the toast, ‘it’s not surprising. What’s she grumbling about, Fergus?’

‘She’s not,’ he said rather testily. ‘She’s had a bad night and she’s upset.’ He got up and shuffled back into the house. He was far less active than a year ago; age had suddenly encroached upon him. He had never moved like a man of seventy before disaster struck Charlie. Mrs Graham looked after him for a moment.

‘You mustn’t worry him,’ she said quietly. ‘He hasn’t been well lately. Are you upset, Charlie? What’s the matter?’

‘I was talking about Davina,’ her daughter said slowly. ‘She’s in her element with this Venice nightmare, isn’t she, Mum? I can just imagine her, can’t you?’

‘No,’ Mrs Graham said, ‘I can’t. And that’s a terrible thing to say. I know you’re bitter and you’ve every reason, but I won’t let you talk about her like that.’

‘If it wasn’t for Daddy,’ Charlie remarked, ‘you’d still see her, wouldn’t you?’

Betty Graham rarely asserted herself, but when she did her family listened. ‘Yes, I would. Davina’s my daughter just as much as you are. I think it’s time you pulled yourself together, Charlie, and stopped feeling sorry for yourself. Perhaps you should do some voluntary work. Helping other people is the best way of taking one’s mind off one’s self. I’m going into the village to do some shopping. Do you want to come?’

‘No thanks, Mummy.’ Charlie had flushed. For a moment her eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t used to being chided and she reacted like a child, resentful and uncertain. For Christ’s sake, can’t you grow up even now? And back the answer came to her. No, you can’t, and you never will so long as you nestle under Daddy’s wing. Just as you did with your husband, with every man you’ve ever known. Poor, helpless, beautiful little me, I must be taken care of. It’s time you stood up on your own two feet. She got up and gathered the crockery onto the tray. ‘I’ll put these in the dishwasher,’ she said.

‘Thank you, darling.’ Mrs Graham had said what she felt and it wouldn’t be repeated. She wasn’t a woman who created an atmosphere.

Charlie went into the kitchen, loaded the dishes, poured the powder and switched on the machine. She went upstairs to her room, not because there was anything to do. Pat cleaned the nursery. Charlie was meticulously tidy about her own surroundings. She went up to be alone and to cry if she felt like it. Her reflection was a comfort; looking at herself diverted her attention from less pleasant things. Still beautiful – not a line, not a blemish on the perfect skin. Damn it, if she cried, it made her eyelids swell. She’d cried enough. Davina wasn’t crying. As she had said to her father, her sister was on top of the heap, successful, carrying on an affair with a very rich man, living her life exactly as she wished. The tables had certainly turned for both of them. She had achieved it all at the price of Charlie’s happiness. It was easy enough for her mother to reproach her for being bitter. She had the same cool quality of detachment as Davina. Her father understood because he and Charlie felt the same. Voluntary work, her mother had suggested.

Charlie addressed herself in the glass. ‘You’re not just miserable,’ she said aloud. ‘You’re bored to death as well. It’s time you did something about it.’

Later that day, when her parents were lulled by an afternoon sitting in the sun and she had set out to be particularly thoughtful and sweet to them, she announced that she was going up to London to buy some new clothes and look up her old friends.

‘Why don’t we go down to Sicily for a few days? It’ll be perfect, not too hot.’

Davina shook her head. ‘I can’t, darling. I wish I could. I can’t leave Humphrey in London and Tim coping out here while I swan around finishing my holiday. I’ve got to go back.’ She slipped her arm round him. ‘I may have to fly to Washington – I was thinking about it last night.’

‘To see Brunson?’

‘To see somebody. I’m sure this isn’t an isolated assassination. We’ve got to get together with Langley and try to work out who could be next and why?’

Walden had insisted that they leave Venice. He looked as strained and preoccupied as she did. ‘Davina,’ he said, ‘spend one day with me in Paris. One day and a night won’t make any difference.’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course it won’t. You’ve put off things for me often enough. We’ll go to Paris – can we fly direct?’

It was part of the balance in their relationship that Walden always made the travel arrangements, chose the hotels when they went away and took over the organizing of their lives. She said to him, ‘Why Paris, Tony? Any special reason?’

‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ he said. ‘You’ve started smoking again. I wish you wouldn’t.’

She didn’t answer. Ever since the tragedy the day before, Walden had lost his exuberance. He seemed weighed down and uneasy, quite unlike himself. She stubbed out the cigarette. Something was wrong, something more than the revulsion of a sensitive man to violent death. Knowing him so well, she couldn’t account for the sudden change of mood. Paris, for twenty-four hours. Why?

‘We can fly via Milan,’ he said. His smile was tense.

While she lay awake, he hadn’t slept either. ‘And I suppose you’re going to book into the Ritz again?’ Davina tried to make it sound lighthearted. ‘No good me suggesting some nice little pension on the Avenue de l’Opéra?’

‘You always suggest it,’ he answered. ‘Just because you stayed there once and there weren’t any lumps in the mattress. And I always say no. If we can’t get a decent room at the Ritz, we’ll try the Crillon. Or the Georges V. Go and pack while I get on the telephone.’

Tim Johnson took a launch out to Marco Polo airport. The explosives expert wasn’t staying at the Gritti; Johnson booked in with him at a more modest hotel and they went over the routine report Modena had given Davina.

‘We’re seeing the Boss Lady after lunch,’ Johnson remarked. ‘See if you can dream up a theory or two by then. Our gallant Italian allies are going to tell us fuck-all. So I picked up these odds and ends for you.’ He put a plastic bag on the table.

The expert, a genial’ man inappropriately named Moody, opened it, sniffed at what was inside and then probed gently. ‘Wood, metal and, er, something else. I know what it feels like.… Where the hell did you get this, sir?’

‘Out of the canal, near enough to where it happened. About a hundred yards away from the actual explosion. I just fished up what I could in the dark. Felt a bit messy. It may be just ordinary garbage and flotsam.’

Moody put his nose to the bag again. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve got something for the lab and the forensic boys as well.’

‘Good,’ Johnson said briskly. ‘We’ll go and see Miss Graham at three. She’s flying back today.’

They arrived at Orly airport at eight o’clock. There was a car to meet them and, as they drove off the Périphérique, she slipped her hand into his and said, ‘The Ritz or the Crillon?’

‘The Ritz,’ Walden said. ‘Luckily someone had cancelled. We have our usual suite. I also ordered dinner there. You look tired, my darling.’

‘I am,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m curious too. I asked you why Paris, remember?’

‘I know you did.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘Isn’t it the most beautiful city in the world? And look – how marvellously typically French. Look at that Tricolore! What a sense of theatre!’

The Arc de Triomphe was bathed in floodlights, and between its arches, fanning out in the breeze, there blazed a vast flag.

‘Now, we would never do that,’ he said. ‘Only the French have the self-confidence to be so magnificently vulgar.’

They had a small suite on the first floor overlooking the Place Vendôme. There was a huge bowl of red roses in the bedroom.

‘Tony,’ Davina said, ‘don’t tell me they remembered?’

‘No, I did.’

There was a card with the flowers: ‘With all my love always, Tony’. She held it in her hand, and suddenly the luxurious bedroom felt cold.

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘I was going to wait till we got back to England,’ he began slowly, hesitating. The bedroom wasn’t cold; she shivered and knew that the chill was in her own tense body as she listened. ‘I’ve been so happy with you, Davina. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved in my life, do you know that? Darling, don’t look at me like that. Sit down, sit down. Come here beside me.’

His distress was making it worse. He took her hand and held it tightly between both of his, while she sat close to him, frozen and sick with anticipation. He stumbled over his words and suddenly Davina couldn’t bear it.

‘You’re leaving me,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake, why?’

‘I can’t tell you why,’ he said. ‘We just can’t go on being together any more.’

‘I love you,’ she protested. ‘You love me, I know that. Is it your wife? Tony, for Christ’s sake, you’ve got to tell me the reason! It’s just not good enough to say we can’t go on and you can’t tell me – I won’t accept that!’

‘No,’ he answered. ‘It’s nothing to do with Hilary. That would be simple.’ He didn’t look at her, he kept his head down, gripping her hand in his. ‘I’ve known for months now that we had to break up. I couldn’t face it and I lied to myself. But not now, not after Venice.’

She said, ‘But why? What happened in Venice couldn’t happen to me! I told you, I’m safe. You’re talking nonsense.’

‘Not nonsense,’ Walden said quietly. ‘I’m just finding saying goodbye to you difficult, that’s all. Will you listen to me and not interrupt? Please, Davina?’

‘I’ll listen,’ she said. ‘What else can I do?’

He went on slowly, dragging the words out until she could have screamed. ‘You know I love you. You’re the most important person in the world to me. And that is why I wanted to spend our last night together in Paris. I wanted to make it beautiful for you. I wanted to tell you in the place where we’ve been so happy and had such wonderful times.’

She pulled her hand away and got up. She walked into the sitting room. Such wonderful times. That suite held memories: stolen weekends when they left their responsibilities behind; the joy of exploring Paris together; the sweetness of their nights. She broke down and wept. Not since losing Ivan had she cried aloud as she did then. She heard him say close to her, ‘Even the roses – they were waiting for you the first time we came. It was a mistake, my love. I shouldn’t have told you here.’

She turned round to him. ‘Then why did you?’ she demanded. ‘Why choose this of all places to tear us both to pieces? You and your bloody roses – you like a bit of theatre yourself, don’t you? How could you do this, Tony? How could you hurt me like this?’

He tried to take her in his arms, but she fought fiercely, pushing him away. She saw the anguish on his face and suddenly her anger disappeared. She felt sick and cold and unbearably empty.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You say it’s over. I can’t argue – I won’t beg either, thanks very much. But I want to know why. You owe me that, Tony. I want to know the reason.’

‘I can’t answer that,’ Walden said.

‘Because you don’t love me and you don’t have the guts to say so?’

‘You know that’s not the reason.’ His voice rose. ‘You know I love you! Christ, I need a drink – where do they keep it in this goddamned place?’

Her voice stayed level. ‘In the cupboard over there. You ought to know, it’s always in the same place. If it’s not because of your wife, and you still love me, what else could it be?’

She watched his back, listened to the awkward clatter as he fumbled with glasses and swore in Polish. ‘I didn’t want to get mixed up with you,’ she went on. ‘I had a good man who wanted to marry me – you were the one who made the running. You were determined to start something up between us. Now you’ve had enough, I suppose that’s the answer. What am I supposed to do, Tony? Shake hands and say it was fun while it lasted?’

He swung round on her then. She saw that he was angry now. He changed colour, turning very white when he was angry. He came close to her and said, ‘I’ll tell you what you do. Give up your job with the SIS. Resign, and there will be no problem. I’ll get a divorce and we’ll get married!’

Suddenly Davina was calm. ‘What has my job got to do with it? Are you saying that if I resign we can stay together? Tony? Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes,’ Walden said flatly. ‘And now, my love, you can answer your own question. And think about it seriously. I meant what I said. I’ll marry you and we can be together for the rest of our lives.’

She sat down and after a moment said, ‘Get me a drink, will you?’

He brought her a glass, hesitated, and when she held out her hand, he sat beside her. ‘I didn’t think you’d be so bitter,’ he remarked. ‘Maybe I didn’t realize how much you loved me?’

‘When you’re hurt,’ she said quietly, ‘you lash out. Anyway I do. I’m not going to leave my job, but you’re going to tell me why it matters. And by the way, you might try trusting me a little bit. Pass me a cigarette, will you? You can’t nag me about smoking now.’

‘I’ve never hit a woman,’ Walden said, ‘but, Davina, if you needle me.… Just shut up and drink your drink, will you!’

She lit her cigarette, sipped the brandy. The lights were twinkling in the Place Vendôme outside their windows. ‘At least I’ve stopped shaking,’ she said. ‘That’s something. It’s blackmail, isn’t it?’

There was silence for what seemed a long time to Davina. Then he looked at her and said simply, ‘Yes.’

The man called Italy stayed on in Venice till the end of the week. He became very bored, watching television and reading the art books and magazines. The girl hadn’t given up trying; even on the last night she approached him. She wanted to sleep with what he’d done, not him. He told her so. She banged her door and he left the house early the next morning without seeing her again. There were checks at the airport. He bought a train ticket to Pisa and the carabiniere passed him through the barrier. From Pisa he boarded a train. It was a long, tiring jouney, but the train was full of people like himself, sleeping all night in the uncomfortable second-class carriages, some dozing on their luggage in the corridors. Nobody noticed him. Finally he took the bus to his village at the foot of the mountains. He ate a meal with his parents and gave them the souvenirs he had brought back from his holiday. Then he went to bed and slept through till the next day. He would never see or hear from his comrades again. That was the rule, and it guaranteed their safety. And his own. He was back at work in his father’s chemist shop. He had made his contribution.

The device used, Humphrey told James White at their next lunch, must have been some kind of mine, either laid in the path of the cruiser or attached in some way. Considering the vigilance of Franklyn’s bodyguards, it was difficult to see how it had been done. White nodded. Details bored him now; he liked to hear the broad issues, the personal gossip. He had never been a technical man. Humphrey sensed that he was impatient. ‘Everyone seems to think it’s a terrorist group,’ he said. ‘Except Davina.’

James White looked up and said mildly, ‘And who does she say did it?’

‘Borisov’s people.’ Humphrey sounded impatient. ‘She’s got that man on the brain, you know, Chief. She sees his hand behind everything. I said to her yesterday, “He isn’t God, you know. He can’t be blamed for every crackpot killing in Europe.”’ He didn’t repeat her reply because it stung. ‘If the person who killed Franklyn was a crackpot, what the hell is a professional?’ And he knew she was right. It was a supremely professional job, its operator equipped with the kind of technology that ruled out the splinter groups of political fanatics. His choice of word had been a slip of the tongue: Crackpot. She had swept his theories aside because of it. Tim Johnson supported Humphrey’s view that money and expertise were at the disposal of the assassin, but he didn’t believe they came from Moscow.

Davina was flying to Washington on Tuesday, Humphrey told Sir James. ‘Needless to say, they’re having a fit over there. The President himself has told Langley to go ahead and find the killer, and let the Italians argue about it afterwards. I suggested Johnson should go with her instead of me.’

‘Don’t let him take over too much,’ White remarked. ‘You could find yourself eased out, my dear Humphrey. He’s a thrusting young man.’

‘I have plenty to occupy me,’ Grant replied. ‘There’s nothing to be gained in Washington for anybody but Davina. She’s the Boss Lady, to use Johnson’s awful phrase. He’ll be a glorified aide, that’s all. And by the way, Chief,’ he leaned across the table slightly, ‘I’ve started some inquiries about our friend Walden. One of our chaps in West Berlin has some good Polish contacts. He’ll report back in a week or two.’

‘What are they going to look for?’ James White asked.

‘Old associates,’ Grant answered. ‘Family, friends, anyone in official circles who knew him before he came here. Anyone who’s been in recent contact with him. We know he has a mother and sister living in Cracow. Our German friend says that if there is a lead his people will find it.’

‘That’s good, Humphrey,’ Sir James said. ‘I don’t think you’re wasting your time. I think something will come out of this. By the way, Charlie Kidson has decided to set herself up in London. It seems she’s out of mourning. Perhaps one shouldn’t call it that since Kidson is still alive.’

‘He’s in a clinic,’ Grant said, ‘drying out. I can’t think why they bother.’

‘It wouldn’t look good if he died,’ White remarked. ‘It wouldn’t encourage others to claim their reward in Moscow. God knows how they kept Burgess going for so long. A thought occurred to me, Humphrey. See what you think of it. Now that I’m out to grass, I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes. I thought I’d ask Charlie to lunch. See what she’s up to – would you agree?’

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.

The prize was enormous. The power staggered the imagination. He had no precedent behind him to give encouragement. No man of his age had ever been elected. No holder of his unpopular office had ever stepped up to the throne. But there was a first time for all things. Sooner or later change overtook the most entrenched institutions, even in Russia. Borisov ran his own personal empire of repression and subversion with his habitual skill and dedication, but the grander scheme preoccupied him more and more.

He hadn’t really concentrated on the situation outside Russia until after the assassination of Henry Franklyn in Venice. And it was high time that he did.

Venice had soon returned to normal. The tourists flocked like the famous pigeons; the shops selling leather and cheap jewellery did a handsome trade; the hotels were full; and the summer season looked like booming. The antique trade was better than the previous year, but the recession still hit the market hard. Work on the lower floor of the shop in the Piazza San Raphael had been completed, the owner installed the two renaissance pieces he had bought in Rome and hung a little primitive gem of the Crucifixion in his house in the Street of the Assassins. He had come home to find his daughter in a foul mood. She was surly enough anyway. Her mother tried to make excuses, but Valdorini had begun to dread his daughter’s presence in the home. She was spoilt, he insisted, spoilt and typical of her generation, which had no respect and no aim in life. Her studies were a joke: her exam results were consistently poor, and it seemed to him that she was merely wasting time and money staying on at university.

The perpetual student was becoming an Italian phenomenon. There were greybeards of thirty still lounging around on government grants and their families’ allowances, achieving nothing. And, of course, her aggressive left-wing politics drove him mad. According to his daughter, everything was wrong, he declared one evening when they had friends to dinner and the girl was out. The world was being destroyed by industry which was turning the good earth into an ecological desert; the Third World starved while the affluent threw food into their dustbins and the threat of nuclear war hung over humanity, denying the children the right to grow up. She had an answer for everything, Valdorini complained, but it was always the same answer. Everybody else was wrong and only she and her friends were responsible and caring.

His child had become a hostile stranger. He had drunk a lot of wine and he became maudlin, blinking back tears. No son, only this angry girl who looked at her parents as if she hated them; while they were away in Rome she’d had someone staying in the house and never said a word.

There were two other dealers round the table and a member of the City Trade Council. He was a Venetian whose ancestors had elected the Doge in centuries past. He loved his great city and took his responsibilities very seriously. He had been summoned to a meeting with Signor Modena, the head of Security, and members of the city’s public bodies, and its most influential citizens. The problems arising from the assassination’ of the American and his daughter had been put to them and their help solicited. The killer must be found. If the Red Brigades were mounting a new terrorist offensive, no one in public life would be safe. If, as Modena confided, they faced a new menace, then the prospects were horrifying. He wasn’t asking anyone to inform, or to do anything that placed themselves at risk. But just to listen and use their judgement. Venice had harboured the assassin. Somewhere, he or she had left a trace behind.

That meeting had taken place before the body of the dead man was washed up on the public beach at the Lido. The fish had eaten through the anchor rope, releasing the bloated corpse. But the remains of that rope were still knotted round his waist and the postmortem showed that he had died from a broken neck and not from drowning. Identification had done the rest. Modena had a related clue which tied in with the other crime. The boatman had disappeared on the same morning. He was last seen at the public mooring by the Rialto Bridge. But nobody remembered who had hired him. There it rested, until the evening when Valdorini had too much wine and had started talking about his daughter.