It was dark before Gus returned. Troy had been fed, allowed to wash, but his trousers reeked of dried vomit and he’d sell his soul for a toothbrush and half an inch of Gibbs SR.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be another night, Freddie.”
“Like hell it is. Gus, get me out of here.”
“They won’t release you on my recognisance. They’re waiting for the ballistics report. I can send for a lawyer, if you like, but London would take a dim view of that. They ask that you don’t make a statement. Any statement. You haven’t, have you?”
“Of course not.”
“All London asks that you don’t make waves. They want this dropped, not debated. The ballistics thing ought to kill it stone dead. Then you’re out.”
“Who do the police think Blaine was?”
Gus looked sheepish, embarrassed by the answer rather than the question. Two words spoken softly.
“Cultural attaché.”
“Cultural attaché? That old lie.”
“If Blaine hadn’t had a diplomatic passport on him we’d have passed him off as a tourist.”
“An armed tourist? An armed cultural attaché? A ballet-and-opera man with a shoulder holster and a Browning automatic? I said they were incompetent, not stupid.”
“I know. It’s completely implausible, but it’s what’s been agreed. No one’s going to own up to this one. It suits Five and it suits Sir Francis.”
“Who?”
“Sir Francis Camiss-Low. The ambassador. The bloke you so curtly refused to meet when you were here last.”
“Ah, I forgot his name. Mea culpa. My diplomatic blunder. But … I ask—what am I supposed to have been doing out with a gun-toting cultural attaché at ten o’clock of a Wednesday night in the middle of a rain-sodden Vienna? Shooting divas? Popping off at ballerinas? Assassinating the fucking hurdy-gurdy man?”
“No one’s asking that. No one but you.”
“And that doesn’t strike you as odd?”
“I suppose it does.”
“You suppose? Gus, go back to the embassy, bypass the fucking ambassador, and call Onions. If his narks at MI5 haven’t told him what’s going on, you tell him.”