The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (23 page)

Looking aimlessly out of the window which separated them from any future and its folk, she recognised the colonel's familiar green car and let him in. He looked tired. The smile on the face of the tiger was gentle but far from reassuring.

‘First to arrive, I see,' he said. ‘I must admit that for a simple soldier a conference with Gerald and Herbert Spring is rather frightening.'

‘How is Gerald?' Georges asked.

‘Alive. That's all I know—and that the police have Irata's bike.'

‘Poor Irata! He was so fond of it. Where is he?' Zia asked.

‘Out of reach of the police, my dear. You can be sure of that. By the way, Georges, I called on your admirable friend Paul Longwill in the City. He's going to buy your grandmother's house.'

‘He isn't as rich as he makes out, you know.'

‘I do know. Gerald will help. It's one of the bills I have for him. Damn it, he gets a vote of his own from Parliament! I don't. Have to rattle my begging bowl.'

‘Is Paul in the clear?'

‘He thinks so. He says the police are not even polite to him any more, and that's a good sign. Ah, here they are!'

He let in Gerald and Herbert Spring.

‘Good evening, Spring! Good evening, Corporal! You may sit down.'

‘I can't sit down, damn you!' Gerald replied.

‘Office chair worn out?'

‘You're lucky I'm still in it! If you want to know, I was tooling along quite happily looking for a quiet spot to leave the bike when I was picked out by headlights. Blue lamp on top of the car. Hell! So I whacked her up to eighty. They couldn't catch me because I could corner faster, but they stuck to my tail. All right in the lanes, but then there was a long straight. I knew I'd had it. I'm not James Bond.'

Zia, kept from knowledge of Irata's fate, was annoyed at the levity of these supposedly responsible English. It was her life and Georges's that mattered not theirs.

‘And then I saw a train. One of those tinpot railways which Beeching kept open for goods traffic. Level crossing with gate still open. It slammed down just behind me and by the time quarter of a mile of train had passed I was in the next county or somewhere near it. A nice, quiet, gravelled farm track showed up on the left a bit late. I was so blasted panicky that I turned into it and came off.'

‘How did you get home with no seat to your trousers?'

‘Walked for an hour and took a taxi. Now have you got anywhere with all this nonsense about Kren and Lukash, Colonel?'

‘Yes. The brochures were invaluable—so secret, Gerald, that I daren't think of them myself. And have you identified Fyster-Holmes's friends?'

‘Some of them. The rest in a week or two. The pity is that we have no way of recognising Appinger as he calls himself. If the man ever entered this country again, every movement of his could be watched and every contact investigated.'

‘You'll be able to recognise him. He's only got one eye.'

‘Then the other is a very good glass one,' Georges said.

‘I'm sure it will be. But for the moment he will leave with a bandage over it. And meanwhile check all private nursing homes, Gerald! I think the frontal lobe of his brain may not be all it was.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?'

‘Well, you see, he knew the importance of those brochures—not what was in them but the sort of thing that might be. Given a hot clue, I hoped he would decide that his incompetent partners had given up too soon and that he ought to find the pink Honesty in person. And he did.'

Georges mentioned impatiently that it didn't exist. He, like Zia, felt forgotten in the enthusiasm of these competing professionals.

‘But you told me the white did, so I found it. And watered red ink is obtainable through MI(S). You remember the ice-cream inspector, Gerald?'

‘Suspected party member since 1962. Contacts under investigation. Suspected . . .'

‘In fact a fat file on the way. Well it so happened that a barrow of fruit and flowers pulled up in Alderton near the ice-cream cart. It was a hundred to one that the inspector would be on board, very anxious to get a line on what the police were up to. “What's this here?” he asks, seeing some pretty pots of pink Honesty among bunches of the purple. “'Arf a quid a pot, Guv'nor,” the hawker answers. “Where did you find it?” Mr Vanilla-and-Strawberry wants to know. “Up yours,” says my old barrow boy. “Only spot in the Home Counties, but it ain't faraway.”

‘“Would a fiver be any use to you?” Ice-Cream suggests. So my Covent Garden expert tells him exactly where it is, nearly Zia's description but about twenty yards off and not that easy to see when you get there. And then the inspector nips straight to the village telephone, making the first move a lot faster than I expected. Appinger had to come out from London, but I still had plenty of preparation to do.'

‘I hope to heaven you have given nothing away, Colonel,' Gerald said. ‘This is surely not the business of your MI(S)?'

‘Personal, Gerald, entirely personal. Among other things, let's say I wanted to pay him out for making me lie on my belly in Alderton Wood wondering whether I'd be tried by court martial or the assizes. Well, moving to Act 2, there was I up a tree and Appinger comes out with old Nut Sundae. Of course I cannot be sure that it was Appinger, but he was tearing a strip off his assistant in shocking bad English which was all splutter and the comrade was taking it all as if he was the office boy.

‘Operation Appinger so far successful. But one can never be sure what's on the other side of the hill. My guess was that when he found the pink Honesty which his chaps had missed he would lift it with a spade or garden fork, putting his foot on it like everyone else. Height and probable length of leg correctly estimated by Rivac here. Angle of shaft to ground calculable. It should have hit him hard in the crutch, but he bent down and used a trowel. So it got him in the eye like King Harold.'

‘So it's MI(S) which is the real Dirty Tricks Department,' Spring exclaimed.

The terrier snapped into the conversation for the first time, somehow emphasising for Georges the likeness of the other two to a wolfhound and a jealous, old sheepdog.

‘Will you please explain at length, Colonel Mannering,' Gerald demanded. ‘The use of explosives could have been disastrous.'

‘Nasty bangs. I quite agree. It was just a spring loaded plate. General principle of mousetrap. A light touch and a little metal stake jumps up. End of it just clear of the ground of course, but imperceptible. A slight improvement on the sharpened bamboo booby trap.'

‘But you could have killed him!'

‘With pleasure. But I knew you wanted him kept alive.'

‘And what happened then?'

‘Ice-cream man very sportingly carried him away on his back.'

‘I suppose you see that you have entirely wrecked my plan of keeping our knowledge secret.'

‘Not at all, Gerald. They'll stick it on to Rivac, assuming that he must have been an interested observer in Vietnam. I was myself. Poor Georges! What a bloodthirsty, cunning brute! Rippmann, Fyster-Holmes, now this.'

‘They'll get him, you know, if the police don't,' Spring said. ‘And he'll be lucky if he can take Kren's way out.'

‘That's just why I wanted you here. Wave your wand and make him vanish!'

Georges impetuously interrupted, saying that it was simple. Both Lille and England were out for ever and he was homeless.

‘But Zia is not,' he added. ‘You must get her back to Budapest, and she's burned her passport.'

‘How sensible of her! Then the next time she wants to compete in something international she has only to go to the right commissar in tears and swear she lost it. I can arrange to have her handbag stolen, if necessary, but that's a bit crude and I am sure she can think of something better. She is an important ambassadress of sport as they call it and she should not be stopped from bringing fame to Hungary just because she has been a stupid, careless little girl. Would it work, Miss Fodor?'

‘Yes, I think so. But how can I ever go home?'

‘You travel on a British passport. An Indian princess, perhaps. Some dark make-up and a pretty sari. That should deceive Gerald's excellent chaps at the airport, watching for Mrs Fanshawe. What colour sari would you like?'

‘Pink for Honesty.'

‘Back to your usual form I see, Miss Fodor! We shall book you to Vienna. After that leave the rest to Bridge Holdings and for once do what you are told.'

‘But I must account for my time to the Hungarian Travel Bureau. I'm supposed to be in Switzerland.'

‘Well, you were. You fell ill and went to a very private nursing home in Zurich. Doctor's certificate can be supplied. But I'm afraid it will have to be an abortion.'

‘How disgusting!'

‘Only in case of official enquiries. Medical details would not be on the certificate. Just think of poor Georges! He has to have an abortion backwards and be reborn. Who would want to go through all that again to reach a future without a past? Would you mind being born in Mexico, Mr Rivac, somewhere out in the wilds—I know just the right little town—where registration is always dubious and hard to check?'

‘No. Some day, perhaps, I can come back to Europe.'

He was in such a mood of despondency at all this talk of rebirth and nameless future that he could neither suggest nor argue. The colonel revived him by asking sharply:

‘And what about his Lille agency?'

‘I thought of buying it, but the paperwork is too complicated. We'll just let it die. With Rivac on the run, that will appear very natural to police and authorities.'

‘But he can't live on hand-outs!'

‘Bridge Holdings, my dear Colonel, is a commercial firm with wide interests and government favour. I shall look after my old Mexican friend. I knew his mother and he has all the requisite qualities to represent our company in Spain.'

‘By God, he has! Do you ever go show jumping in Spain, Zia?'

‘In the autumn. But will I have to defect? I don't want to do that.'

‘I think if you were simply to get yourself a foreign husband and keep your nose clean afterwards,' Spring said, ‘they would let it go at that. Communists or not, your charming people are very reasonable.'

‘Most unwise!' Gerald exclaimed. ‘She can't just pick a husband out of the hat.'

‘That's up to her, Gerald. But Don José Rivero Muñoz y Carvacal, the assistant manager of Bridge Holdings (Iberia) S.A., maybe available.'

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1978 by Geoffrey Household

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

978-1-5040-0662-0

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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