The embassy had provided Blaine with a guest room. By the time he had dropped his suitcase, gone into a closed-door chat with Gus—Troy cooling his heels in the lobby, only too delighted not to be included—it was seven thirty.
Blaine emerged from Gus’s office, with just his briefcase, looking a trifle flustered.
“It’s going to be a stinker of a night,” Gus said. “Rain and more rain. There’ll be a cab at the door in five minutes. If the evening proves to be a long one, I’ll see you both in the morning.”
“What?” said Troy. “You bloody well won’t. I’m off as soon as the dog sees the rabbit.”
“Freddie, please. See that Bill gets to the Imperial in one piece, and be so kind as to escort him back. He doesn’t know Vienna, do you Bill?”
“‘Fraid I don’t. Not my beat, as it were.”
“That’s OK. Every cab driver in Vienna knows Vienna.”
Gus took him by the arm, steered him into a huddle.
“Freddie. Just do this. Need I remind you? Egg, duckling, Mother Duck.”
“Make that Mother Goose and we’ve got a fucking panto! Which is pretty much what this feels like.”
“Just do it!”
It was a short hop to the Imperial.
Troy said, “Surely you’ve met Burgess?”
“Oh yes. Bumped into him a few times during my years with Five. He always seemed to be turning up. Proverbial bad penny. But even before that, we overlapped at Cambridge. Can’t say I knew him, but his set were very high profile, always being seen, always wanting to be seen.”
“Then you probably overlapped with my brother too.”
“Yes. But I didn’t know him either. We never really overlapped in what we did. He was very much Cambridge Union and debating.”
“And you weren’t?”
“No, I rowed.”
I might have guessed, thought Troy.
“A blue in 1930. We beat Oxford by two lengths. Nineteen minutes nine seconds. Pretty good time. Second fastest since the end of the war, but in ‘34 we took more than a minute off that. Of course, I’d come down by then …”
Troy tuned out.