So she had made him tea, and attempted conversation, until he slumped into a kind of vacancy, which Moira found mildly disturbing at first, then forgot about. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have work to do; a task which manifested itself, as her tasks tended to, in stacks of paper of varying heights, and which was soon accompanied by her usual repertoire of “tchah”s and “duh”s; of
At which the old man snapped out of the realm he’d wandered into and said, “Cuckoo?”
“Les Arbres was weird,” Bad Sam said. “Like a commune, but more regimented. And without many women, though there were kids.”
Ho had returned with a bag of ice, which he’d solemnly delivered to Catherine, then left. Chapman was applying it to his knee as he spoke. The room was damp, and the radiator supplied little heat; merely banged and wheezed at intervals, as if clearing its throat. Lamb was slumped in his chair, fiddling with an unlit cigarette, and Catherine had retired to a dark corner, like a child hoping its parents won’t notice she’s still there, attending to adult conversation which had turned unsuitable.
“I was there to watch David’s back, but it was a cushy gig. France was hardly hostile territory, the odd waiter aside. And you didn’t have to worry about anyone flying the coop. Defection wasn’t a big problem that year.”
“This was when?” Lamb’s voice was uncharacteristically muted.
“First time? Summer after the Wall came down.”
“Tell me about Les Arbres.”
Bad Sam described the house, the grounds, the location. He’d counted eight male adults. “I recognised one of them. Yevgeny, he was calling himself. First names only at Les Arbres. He was former KGB. He’d done a turn at the embassy in London, and back then we used to keep spotter’s cards on the visiting talent. Molly Doran made them up. Remember?”
Lamb grunted.
“She’d tape their pictures onto playing cards, making a big thing of whether they were hearts or clubs or diamonds. Lover boys or rogues, she’d say. She was pretty good at telling who was which.”
“What jolly japes we all had,” Lamb said. “Back when the world was teetering on the brink of nuclear catastrophe.”
“Oh, lighten up,” Bad Sam told him. “We’re all still here. Anyway, Yevgeny, he was a heart, I remember. Actual name, or embassy name, Ivor Fedchenko. But when I told Cartwright who he was, he brushed it off. Not important, he said.”
“And you let it go?”
“I hadn’t been in the job long, but I knew my pay grade. I was a junior Dog, Jackson. He was David Cartwright.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Debriefing an ex-agent. Code name Henry. That’s what the docket said, anyway.”
“And you stayed there?”
“Nope. Hotel in the nearby town. Angevin.”
“And you weren’t present at these debriefings.”
“Like I said, junior Dog. Jackson, I was his driver, his minder, his bottle washer. I wasn’t privy to classified discussions.”
“Debriefing a decommissioned spook doesn’t sound like he was juggling the nuclear codes. You lay eyes on this Henry at all?”
“How would I know? Nobody was wearing their codename on a badge.”
“Who was in charge?” Catherine asked softly.
He said, “There was an American, we weren’t introduced. But he seemed to be Boss Cat. I think his name was Frank.”
“You think,” Lamb repeated.
“His name was Frank. What’s this about, Jackson? It was years ago, it happened in peacetime, and nobody made a run at the old man. If you hadn’t mentioned France, I wouldn’t have remembered it.”
Lamb said, “Cartwright was far too senior to be making housecalls. I find that odd. How many visits did you make?”
“A couple. With me, anyway. The second was later that year.”
“And nothing unusual happened either time?”
Bad Sam said, “You’re sure this has something to do with what happened today?”
“I’m not even sure where Ho got that ice from. Right now, we’re all in the dark.” The snap of a lighter disproved his point, and for a moment Lamb’s face was visible. Catherine coughed. The lighter died, but Lamb’s cigarette tip glowed red. “There are bodies hitting the floor, though. That’s usually a sign something’s amiss.”
“The last night of our second trip, he was . . . distracted. Upset. Drank more than usual. And he was never too abstemious.”
“Warning to us all,” muttered Lamb, and was rewarded by a sigh in the darkness.
“There’d been a rumpus during the day. A woman turned up unexpectedly, Frank’s girlfriend, and they had a fight. She could scream and shout for England, I gather, which she was, by the way. English. I guess the old man must have taken some of the collateral, because he seemed cowed. But it was over by the time I got there. She’d just driven away.”
“Where’d you been?” Catherine asked.
Bad Sam looked sheepish. “Round back of the house, with a couple of the Russian guys. We were playing pétanque.”
“Sweet God in heaven,” said Lamb.
