On Friday morning before it was light, a uniform opened the door to Troy’s cell and handed him all his possessions, his wallet, his warrant card, his passport, his overcoat, and led him to the front desk.
Gus was waiting.
The flic who arrested him was waiting.
“You are free to go,” he said in English, and handed him a typed page.
Troy said nothing.
Read enough to learn that the bullets that killed Blaine had been 9mm, and the handgun 7.65mm. Well, he knew that all along.
He screwed up the page into a ball and thrust it back.
“A formidable policeman, your Mr. Onions,” the flic said with a hint of a sneer.
“And you’re not,” Troy replied.
Out in the street, Gus said:
“I know it’s early, even earlier in London, but Stan is at the Yard. You’d better call him. I gather he read the riot act to that flic. Your brother’s name got used like a cudgel. Brother of a man tipped to be Prime Minister and blah blah blah. Not the approach Five or the ambassador wanted, but …”
“But I’m out, and your chickenshit tactics would have had me sitting in a cell till doomsday.”
“For the ambassador to step in would mean a diplomatic incident. No one wants a diplomatic incident, Freddie.”
“For Christ’s sake, Gus. It’s been a diplomatic incident from the minute Burgess showed up in Vienna.”
“Then perhaps I mean ‘crisis’ rather than incident.”
“Gus—bollocks! What the hell has happened to you? When we were at school you were team leader, top tearaway, the first over the wall … mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”
Gus stopped, paused, faced Troy.
“If this is your rude way of saying I’ve lost my nerve, then I take all the offence you intend, Freddie. But I haven’t. You’re an outsider. I’m half insider. You haven’t a clue how much the names of Burgess and Maclean still sting the British Establishment, the insiders. The cock-up of a lifetime, the 3-D Technicolor cock-up of the twentieth century. You could have come to me asking for asylum for Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan and caused fewer ripples. You could have told me Martin Bormann and Dr. Mengele were waiting tables in a Viennese coffee bar and scarcely raised an establishment eyebrow. After all, neither of them went to Eton. But Burgess? Guy bloody Burgess? The man who let the whole side down? The man who didn’t play with a straight bat? Personally, I don’t give a toss, as you well know, but I answer to an ambassador who does. If you were to ask me if I think Sir Francis is a pusillanimous prick, a man who makes me wonder why I ever bothered to enter the diplomatic service, a man ideologically and patriotically opposed to the Soviets but, more importantly, scared shitless of the queers, I would privately agree with you. But for your sake I have outmanoeuvred this pusillanimous prick, incurred his future pusillanimous wrath, and God knows what else. And your reproach is unwarranted.”
“OK.”
“I’ll take that as ‘sorry.’”
“Please do.”
They walked through the breaking dawn to the embassy, less than a quarter of a mile away. Drizzle again, one of the things Burgess said he missed about England, and which seemed to be ubiquitous in Vienna.
Gus got through to Scotland Yard on the scrambler.
Handed the telephone to Troy.
“Get out now,” Onions said.
“I know there’s been a murder.”
“Murder is my business.”
“Do as you’re told.”
“It’s not a week since you told me to stay. A man’s dead. There are questions to be asked here.”
“I just moved heaven and fucking earth to get you out of jail. Do as you are fucking well told and leave now!”
Troy held the telephone away from his ear. It did little to diminish the volume of Onion’s rage.
“OUT! NOW! GET ON THE NEXT BLOODY PLANE! YOU’RE NOT INVESTIGATING THIS ONE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”
The phone was slammed down. Troy was left with an electrical buzz.
“Not one for subtlety, is he?” Gus said.
“No. All the same, I’m not getting on the next plane.”
“Freddie, the man just got you out of jail.”
“I only need a few hours. Get me on a flight after lunch. Stan won’t know what time I get back to London.”
“Freddie. You can’t make up for the shortcomings of the Vienna police all on your own.”
“I’ve no intention of trying. Onions is right about that. Not my case. I was merely pointing out the irony of him ordering me to guard a spy, but ignore a murder. But he doesn’t do irony either. There are other questions besides ‘who shot Bill Blaine?’ And there are other ends, ones I’d rather not leave loose.”
“I won’t ask.”
“Then let me ask. Gus, why did you become a diplomat?”
Gus mused, twirled a pencil in his hand, tapped on the desk with the rubber end.
“I suppose I could reply by asking why you became a copper. Unlikely choices both if you think of us at fifteen or so. But it’s a conversation for another time in another country. Now, you’d better get off. Your ends are getting looser by the hour.”