October Men (25 page)

“Then what made you half-believe Hotzendorff?”

“There was a difference between what my experts told me and the information he supplied.”

“Namely?”

“
Certainty
, professore—that was the difference! My men said nothing had been found
yet—
they would not say it wasn’t going to be found. But these Russian reports weren’t simply hypothetical, they were policy decisions founded on something that was evidently a fact, with no ifs and buts.”

“It didn’t occur to you that they might be taking you for a ride, signore?” cut in Richardson. “Because there isn’t one damn bit of evidence that anyone else knew better than your chaps, you know.”

“But why should they take me for a ride, Signor—Richardson?” said Narva. “My success or failure is not important to them—they had no reason, they could have no reason! And I was not taken for a ride, either. That is the fact of it, is it not? We have not reached the figures that Little Bird gave me, I know. But they are going up all the time now—already they are talking of 150 million tons a year. That is 40 per cent of European needs in 1976. And that is not being taken for a ride, signore—or if it is I would like to be taken on more such rides, I can tell you!”

Narva’s vehemence, compared with his usual cool, was interesting. Hitherto only the threat to the Hotzendorff family had aroused him, with its implication of strong family feelings. To this Richardson now added the likelihood that he disliked even the suggestion that he could be deceived. Or could it be that in this one instance he had taken an uncharacteristic risk, and was sensitive about it?

That was worth pushing further—

“But what made you rely on this fellow?”

“But I have told you! He—“

“Not Little Bird, signore. This contact of his—the Russian chappie he wouldn’t tell you about. Didn’t he want anything? Did he spill the beans simply out of love for the West?”

Narva stared at him, slowly subsiding. Then he shrugged. “There was no money in it, anyway, that I know. When I asked that same question at the beginning Hotzendorff said that no money was required. He said the deed was its own reward.”

A political protester, thought Richardson. Or a disaffected technocrat. Or an admirer of some dead poet or persecuted novelist, or even a Russian Jew. If there was anything in this version of the impossible it could be any one of those.

Audley murmured something unintelligible to himself. “We’re still straying from the point. You wanted facts and he didn’t give them to you—“

“How do you know that?” interrupted Narva.

“Because you’ve been saying it all along.” There was a sudden nuance of weariness in Audley’s voice. “’Nothing spectacular’—and the known facts were against him all the way. But you threw your money into the North Sea all the same.” Audley broke off for one moment. “And for that he had to give you proof—just one bit of total proof.”

The two men stared at each other over the word like dogs over a buried bone. One dog knew the bone was there, because that was where he had buried it; the other dog also knew it was there because other dogs’ bones were what he lived on.

“Yes, Professore Audley—he gave me proof.”

“What proof?”

“The best proof in the world: his death.”

Not one bone, but two hundred and six of them. Tibias and fibias, big juicy thigh bones full of marrow and little crunchy finger bones. All the bones that went to make a man. So brittle that a chance blow might crack them, yet strong enough to lie in the earth for a million years.

Narva sighed. “You are once more a good guesser, professore— I pushed him. … It happened that I needed a new field for investment. One inside Europe, politically stable—that was very attractive. And this was the time to start if what he was saying was the truth, before the bigger companies totally committed themselves … before the stampede…”

Now he was explaining himself, almost justifying himself, in a way that was equally uncharacteristic. It was almost as though he regretted making good: Richardson began uncertainly to revise his earlier conclusion.

“How did he die?” Audley’s harsh question interrupted the process of revision.

“How?” Narva shook his head. “Officially—he had a heart attack. I have been able to find out no more than that.”

“But unofficially?”

“Unofficially? There is no unofficially. I do not have the resources to investigate a man’s death in Moscow. All I have is his last message, and there was no heart attack in that.”

“What was there in it, then?”

“I will tell you first how it came about, professore. In the first place I pressed him for proof that this was not a mere precautionary plan. And then I said it was not even enough to know that the Russians were convinced there was oil there, I had to know how they knew this. And above all I had to have the locations of the fields—whether these were in the British sector, or the Norwegian or the Dutch. I told him that without this certainty his information was without value. And I told him there was very little time left.

“He replied that it would be dangerous to try to go too fast. I would have to be patient, but that he would do his best. In the meantime he asked me to get him a camera—something like the Exakta, which was the East German camera made for espionage work. He said that as a courier he had no such equipment, and couldn’t get any without drawing attention to himself—“

Narva fell silent suddenly. Then he squared his shoulders. “I had a suitable camera sent to him. But—I told him that he had better use it quickly.”

“You had begun to believe him?”

Narva looked at Audley for a moment without replying. “I would like to think so, professore. But I think also I had become greedy. The new Xenophon rig was almost ready for sea, and I had the opportunity of buying a large block of their shares at a competitive price. If what Little Bird said was true I could make a killing. For me the time was exactly right.”

“But not for Little Bird?”

“The Little Bird sent me one more message,” said Narva. “It was very short, the shortest he ever sent. He said his contact had conclusive proofs—submarine survey methods, scientific data and locations in British and Norwegian areas. But there was a risk that someone was on their track, so they were both coming out at once. They would meet my representative in Helsinki in one week’s time. But in the meantime I must get his family out of East Germany as fast as possible. His wife would be ready with the children.”

There was no longer any hint of feeling, of emotion, in the Italian’s voice, and by God there didn’t need to be, thought Richardson—because everyone in the room knew too well how to dress that last message in the widow’s weeds of reality.

It was a dead man communicating, a man who already knew he was as good as dead when he transmitted it but was still reaching against hope for life. Even now, long after the thing was over and done, Little Bird’s despair was like a view of some distant star exploding—an event at once ancient history and immediate tragedy.

“I had already approached Westphal and we had a contingency contract. He took thirty-six hours to get Frau Hotzendorff and the children out of East Germany into Czechoslovakia, and another thirty-six to get them into Austria. And I had the Xenophon stock within a fortnight. Six weeks later Phillips found their condensate field in the Norwegian sector, next to the British block 23/37.”

“But you never saw the Exakta film?”

“Since then Phillips has proved the Ekofisk field, and West Ekofisk and Eldfisk—“ Narva ignored Audley’s question “—Xenophon has Freya and Valkyrie, British Petroleum has Forties, Shell-Esso has proved Auk, Amoco has Montrose. And there will be more, Professore Audley, you can be sure of that… And I made my killing. Or killings, if I am to include those who enriched me.”

Again, a rare bird—even rarer than he had seemed before: a tycoon with a sense of sin. And of one sin in particular, and that the occupational sin of tycoons—greed! Clearly, whatever turned Eugenic Narva on, it wasn’t the piling up of mere treasure on earth: he was driven by much more complex motives.

“So you have no idea about the identity of his contact?”

Richardson looked sidelong at Audley. Now, there was a man with no sense of sin at all … and a man now totally cured of that fourth sin of his which had set all the hungry cats among the pigeons again. The problem evidently absorbed him so much that it would never occur to him to be sorry for Narva’s good Catholic conscience, only to gamble on its existence. The only real sin David Audley might recognise now was failure.

“No. I have told you so already.”

“And the woman—the widow Hotzendorff?” Audley went on remorselessly.

Narva looked at Audley coldly for a moment, then shook his head. “She knows nothing.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Narva was saved from replying by the click of the door behind him. Without turning away from them he inclined his head to listen to the white-coated doorman’s urgent whisper.

Only in that concentrated silence the whisper was just that bit too loud for secrecy.

This was the second of the day’s conversations which had been unexpectedly disturbed by General Raffaele Montuori, thought Richardson.

Only this time he was doing it in person.

WHAT IMPRESSED RICHARDSON
most about General Raffaele Montuori was neither his rank and beautiful uniform nor the fact that his arrival scared little Rat face out of his cardboard shoes, but the simple white and blue of the British Military Cross embedded in his rainbow display of decorations. All the others might mean something or nothing, but the MC didn’t come up with the rations.

That was what the book had said about Montuori, of course: he was an old timer close to retirement, but still a hard man, a throwback to days of the Roman legions whom even Sir Frederick had treated with a deference which wasn’t purely diplomatic. But it was still a good thing to be reminded of it by that ribbon.

Not that Narva conceded him any special treatment.

“General—this is an unexpected honour,” he said formally. “But you are welcome in my house.”

“Signor Narva—“ Montuori bowed “—it grieves me that you have been disturbed in this way, at this hour.”

“I understand the necessity for it, General.”

“Nevertheless we are grateful for your co-operation.”

Richardson had the feeling that the two men were communicating very different messages to each other than their apparent platitudes suggested.

“It is freely given.”

“That is understood.” The General paused. “Though I would expect no less in the circumstances.”

So that was the way of it: Narva had served notice that he had talked because he chose to talk, and Montuori had indicated that he would have had to talk whether he liked it or not. But being practical men in temporary agreement neither was prepared to make an issue of the matter.

“Signor Narva has been extremely helpful.” Boselli’s head bobbed. “He has been helpfulness itself.”

Momentarily the General’s eyes left Narva’s face. But they settled not on Boselli, but on Audley.

“In that case it would be unreasonable to take more of your valuable time, signore,” said the General. “But if I might be permitted to speak privately with these gentlemen we may then be able to leave you in peace—“

Any similarity between Superintendent Cox’s retreat from Sir Frederick’s room and Narva’s retirement was purely accidental, Richardson decided as he watched the General pour himself a generous glass of Caprese. Anyway, what mattered now was the man who remained, not the one who had gone.

The General turned towards them.

“More wine, Dr. Audley?” he said in almost unaccented English.

“Thank you.” Audley held out his glass.

“Captain Richardson?”

“Thanks, General. But I don’t use the rank now.”

“Indeed? Why not?”

“I don’t wear the uniform.”

“Your mother must be disappointed.”

Richardson held his glass steady. “What makes you think so?”

“She always intended you to follow in your father’s footsteps. Assault Engineers—is that not so?”

“You know my mother, sir?”

“My dear boy—there was a time after the war when I might have become your stepfather.” Montuori smiled. “You will be so good as to remember me to her, perhaps?”

“Of course.” Richardson nodded. “It’s a small world.”

“Yes, I have always found it so. And never more so than now… Would you not agree, Dr. Audley?”

“I think the probabilities usually even out the improbabilities in the end, actually.”

“A somewhat unromantic view. But you may be right—I gather you usually are—stop hovering, Pietro!”

Boselli blinked nervously. “Sir—I—I was wondering about Villari—“

“And I am wondering about Ruelle. Did Signor Narva’s helpfulness extend in that direction?”

Boselli shook his head. “No, sir. But we did not expect him to know anything—in that direction.”

Richardson looked at the little Italian with renewed interest. He had kept as quiet as a church mouse during Audley’s duel with Narva, almost as though he wanted no part of it. And his present nervousness was obvious. But they knew better now—that the quietness was a deceptive front and the nerves were those of the hunter at the smell of his quarry, Ruelle.

“That is true,” admitted the General, eyeing Audley speculatively. “One of your probabilities, Dr. Audley.”

“And Signor Villari?” Boselli’s voice sounded stretched and thin.

The General turned slowly towards him. “Armando didn’t make it, I’m afraid.”

Boselli drew a long breath.

“I—am sorry, General.”

“Yes, so am I.” The General straightened up. “The bullet was touching the heart. It was just too close, that’s all—too close.”

“I am sorry.”

“Yes. But it was not your fault, Pietro.” The General nodded. “Tell me, Dr. Audley—how is your wife?”

Richardson looked at the General in surprise which was instantly transformed to dismay as it dawned on him that this was no social inquiry—the unexpected question was delivered with a cold precision which altogether precluded that. So it could only mean that the Italians’ patience was exhausted and that they were prepared to turn the screws as ruthlessly on Audley as he had done on Narva only a few minutes before.