Kurtz's voice meanwhile had thickened, and so, for a moment at least, had his shoulders. He had placed both fists on the table either side of the dossier.
"It is also our information by a different source, Commander," Kurtz announced, with greater force, "that on its northward journey from Greece through Yugoslavia, the same Mercedes was driven by a young woman with a British passport. Her lover did not accompany her, but flew ahead to Salzburg with Austrian Airlines. The same airline was privileged to reserve prestige accommodation for him in Salzburg, at the hotel ?sterreichischer Hof, where our enquiries show that the couple called themselves Monsieur and Madame Laserre, though the lady in question spoke no French, only English. This lady is remembered for her striking looks, her red hair, the absence of a wedding ring, for her guitar, which caused a certain merriment, also for the fact that though she left the hotel early in the morning with her husband, she returned later in the day to make use of its facilities. The head porter recalls summoning a taxi for Madame Laserre to take her to Salzburg Airport and he remembers the time of day he ordered it--2 P.M., just before he went off duty. He offered to confirm her flight reservation and establish that her plane's departure was not delayed, but Madame Laserre would not permit him to do this, presumably because she was not travelling under that name. Three flights out of Salzburg fit the timing, one of them Austrian to London.
The lady at the Austrian Airlines sales desk distinctly recalls a red-headed English girl who had an unused charter ticket Thessalonika to London, and wished to have it rewritten, which was not possible. In the event, she was obliged to buy a full-fare one-way ticket, which she paid for in U.S. dollars, mostly twenty bills."
"Don't be so damn coy," Picton growled. "What's her name?" And he stubbed out his cigarette very violently, holding it down long after it had ceased to struggle.
In answer to his question, Litvak was already passing round photocopies of a passenger list. He looked pale and might have been in pain. When he had gone all the way round the table, he helped himself to a little water from the carafe, though he had barely breathed a word all morning.
"To our initial consternation, Commander, there was no Joan," Kurtz confessed as they all settled to the passenger list. "The best we could come up with was a Charmian. Her surname you have before you. The Austrian Airlines lady confirms our identification--number thirty-eight on the list. The lady even remembers her guitar. By a happy chance, she is herself a devotee of the great ManilasdePlata; the guitar therefore left a deep impression on her memory."
"Another bloody friend," said Picton coarsely, and Litvak coughed.
Kurtz's last exhibit also came from Litvak's briefcase. Kurtz held out both hands for it, Litvak placed it into them: a wad of photographs still tacky from the printing pan. He dealt them out summarily. They showed Mesterbein and Helga in an airport departure lounge, Mesterbein staring despondently into the middle air. Helga,behind him, was buying a half-litre bottle of duty-free whisky. Mesterbein was carrying a bunch of orchids wrapped in tissue paper.
"Charles deGaulle Airport, Paris, thirty-six hours ago," Kurtz said cryptically."Berger and Mesterbein, about to fly Paris-Exeter via Gatwick. Mesterbein ordered a self-drive Hertz car to be available to him on arrival at Exeter Airport. They returned to Paris yesterday, minus the orchids, by the same route. Berger was travelling under the name of Maria Brinkhausen, Swiss, a new alias we may add to her many others. Her passport, one of a bunch prepared by the East Germans for Palestinian use."
Malcolm had not waited for the order. He was already through the door.
"Pity you haven't got a shot of them arriving in Exeter too," said Picton with innuendo, while they waited.
"Commander, as you well know, we could not do that," said Kurtz piously.
"Do I?" said Picton. "Oh."
"Our masters have a reciprocal trading deal, sir. No fishing in one another's waters without prior consent in writing."
"Oh that," said Picton.
The Welsh policeman once more applied his diplomatic unction. "Exeter her home town, is it, sir?" he asked Kurtz. "Devon girl? You wouldn't think a country girl would take to terror, not in the normal way of things, I suppose?"
But Kurtz's information seemed to have stopped dead at the English coast. They heard footsteps mounting the big staircase, and the squeak of Malcolm's suède boots. The Welshman, never daunted, tried again.
"I never think of red-heads as Devon, somehow, I will say," he lamented. "Nor Charmian, truthfully, to be honest. Bess, Rose, I suppose--I can see a Rose. But no Charmian, not Devon. Up country, I'd say Charmian was. London, more likely."
Malcolm came in warily, one soft tread following cautiously upon the other. He was carrying a heap of files: the fruit of Charlie's forays into the militant left. Those at the bottom were tattered with age and use. Press cuttings and cyclo styled pamphlets poked from the edges.
"Well I must say, sir," said Malcolm, with a grunt of relief as he set his burden on the table, "if she's not our girl, she jolly well ought to be!"
"Lunch," Picton snapped, and, having muttered a quite furious stream of orders to his two subordinates, marched his guests to a vast dining-room smelling of cabbage and furniture polish.
A pineapple chandelier hung over the thirty-foot table, two candles burned, two stewards in shining white coats attended their every need. Picton ate woodenly; Litvak, deathly pale, picked at his food like an invalid. But Kurtz was oblivious to everybody's tantrums. He chatted, though nothing in the way of business, naturally: he doubted whether the Commander would recognise Jerusalem, if ever he had the fortune to go back there; he really appreciated his first meal in an English officers' mess. Even then, Picton did not stay the meal through. Twice, Captain Malcolm summoned him to the door for a murmured conversation; once he was required on the telephone by his superior. And when the pudding came, he suddenly stood up as if he had been stung, handed his damask napkin to the servant, and strode off, ostensibly to make some phone calls of his own, but perhaps also to consult the locked cupboard in his office where he kept a private store.
The park, apart from the ever-present sentries, was as empty as a school playing field on the first day of holidays, and Picton strolled in it with the faddish restlessness of a landowner, grumpily eyeing the fences, stabbing with his walking stick at anything he didn't like the look of. Nine inches below him, Kurtz bobbed cheerfully at his side. From a distance, they might have resembled a prisoner and his captor, though it would not have been quite certain which was which. Behind them trailed Shimon Litvak holding both briefcases, and, behind Litvak, Mrs. O'Flaherty, Picton's fabled Alsatian bitch.
"Mr. Levene likes to listen, does he?" Picton burst out, quite loud enough for Litvak to hear. "Good listener, good memory? I like that."
"Mike is close, Commander," Kurtz replied with a dutiful smile. "Mike comes everywhere."
"Sulky chap, he strikes me as. My Chief said a one-to-one, if it's all the same to you."
Kurtz turned and said something to Litvak in Hebrew. Litvak dropped back until he was out of earshot. And it was a strange thing, which neither Kurtz nor Picton could quite have explained, even if they had admitted to it, that an indefinable sense of comradeship settled over them as soon as they were left alone.
The afternoon was grey and blustery. Picton had lent Kurtz a duffle coat, which gave him a sea-dog look. Picton himself wore a British Warm, and his face had darkened instantly with the fresh air.
"Decent of you to come all this way really, just to tell us about her," said Picton, like a challenge. "My Chief's going to drop old Misha a line, the devil."