Chapter 19
Terms
"She's perfectly well," said Gideon Strake. "I'd like to begin with that. She's had her supper. She has a room with a window and a lamp and a woman to sit with her. She asked very courteously for a cup of tea. She told my people it was her birthday."
David stood in the hall with his free hand flat against the wallpaper. Near his thumb, a child had once pencilled a tiny face on a faded green leaf.
"Let me speak to her."
"I'm afraid it isn't a matter of what you'd like. I'm going to tell you what will happen, Daniel, and at the end you'll have a choice. I think it's the first you've been given in twenty-five years. I stood in your kitchen. I was twenty-six. It was my first job. I never meant for it to come to this."
"What do you want?"
"I want you to come to dinner."
He said it so simply David thought he'd misheard.
"A house on a lake called Villa Ambrose, belonging to a very old friend who wants to meet you. On the twenty-sixth of April, a Saturday, six people will sit down at his table as they have every spring for twenty-five years. When the clock strikes twelve, he'd be happy if you walked in the front door and joined them. Alone. In the hat, if you've another. He's particular about the hat."
"And my sister?"
"Will be in a pleasant house by the water in the care of a kind woman. You may hear her voice every Sunday. At five past midnight on the twenty-sixth, once you've crossed the threshold, she'll be driven to the nearest hospital."
"And if I don't?"
"If you don't come, or come with an escort, or any uniform is seen within a mile of that house, a number of arrangements will be made. I'd rather not describe them. You have a good imagination." His voice wasn't colder, only steady. "You walk in, drink a glass of Conrad's wine, answer a few questions about a certain correspondent, and by nine in the morning you're free to go with your sister. I give you my word. I'm sorry to say it's worth something. Tell Mr. Kamara I'm very sorry about Marcus. A decent man, under great pressure. We found something in his sailing log. Good night, Daniel. Happy birthday to her."
The line clicked. David put the receiver down with great exactness so as not to make a sound.
"It's the most transparent trap I've ever heard," said Idris, pacing between the sofa and the tin. "A house with six of the richest people in Europe, an armed security force, midnight, and a hostage fifteen minutes away. They'll never let you leave. And she'll be killed anyway."
"I know." David sat by the window, fingers laced, almost peaceful in the yellow light. "He said a certain correspondent. They want the Archivist. They think if they have me in a room, they can ask."
"And do you know?"
"No."
"Then you'll be—"
"Yes."
Idris stopped in front of him. "I believe in evidence and warrants signed by a judge. I've never wanted so much to do something that is none of those. I have a worse idea. The leak. Marcus. It's the greatest weakness of my life, but it's a line, in both directions. I want to tell Strake a story. On the best possible authority, I want him to believe Interpol will raid that house, not on Saturday, but on the Friday. With a judge's order, a team from Bern. I want him to move every man he has to the gates on the twenty-fifth in a panic, to guard a door nobody will knock on. And when Saturday comes, I want him tired."
"And on Saturday?"
"On Saturday I want a real one."
"It's a very thin plan," said David.
"The thinnest I've made. It has no middle."
"That's what I like about it." For the first time in an hour, something moved in David's face, a wry flicker like the first colour in a sky. "May I tell you the other half? A man like Strake doesn't hold a woman because he's cruel. It's the only way he knows to make me walk through a door. And he's right. I'd walk through any door he asked. He'll expect me to be afraid. And for the first time in his life he'll be wrong. I'll be perfectly happy. It's the one place I've always wanted to be. At the table, with all of them, where there's no one left to hide from."
"They'll search you. They'll take everything."
"I'll have what I always have," said David Morgan. "A pair of hands. And the audience."
They waited in a rented Edwardian house in Penarth with the lights out, in a half circle round a gas fire, with their coats on, like people waiting for a verdict.
Camille was first to stand. She crossed the room and put both arms round him and held on hard. After a moment, he lifted his arms and held her.
"I saw the car," she said into his shoulder. "I stood by a lamp-post with a flask and watched a policeman hold the door. I thought, how kind. She turned and looked straight at me. She smiled. She was happy."
"It's not your fault."
"Then whose?"
"The man who wrote the form." He held her away by the shoulders. "I'm going to ask you for something. Say yes before I tell you what it is."
"Yes."
"It's the largest thing we've ever done."
He told them in three or four plain paragraphs, standing on the rug in his wet coat. Ravi had both hands over his mouth. Nell sat with her eyes closed, listening, as she had for thirty-one years, to the sound under the words. When he stopped, the fire popped.
"It's quite mad," said Anselm. "It has one door, and you are standing in it. At the end of it you will be in a house with a man who wishes you dead." He rose, hands hanging. "I have driven for thirty-one years. I have never driven a person to a place from which he was not going to come back. I do not intend to begin. You will tell me where you would like to be collected, and when."
"I can't ask that."
"You have not asked. I am telling you."
"I'll go," said Nell.
"I'll go," said Camille.
"I think I'm about to be sick," said Ravi from the corner. "And I think I'll come."
David looked at them for a long moment in the gas light. "I'd like to thank you. I don't think I can."
"That's all right," said Nell. "You've seven weeks to practise."