The Crocus List - Lyall Gavin - Страница 33

George asked: "Did she say anything about her job?"

"Oh no. Dot never would. But I knew she was giving a series of lectures somewhere, and they weren't being reported, and there's only one thing you'd ask Dot to lecture on, so…" The mouth did its best to become a wry smile. "I just guessed you were getting interested in the old Winter Garden stuff…"

"Winter Garden?"

Marriage's smile became slightly superior. "Before your time, of course. And that was the Americans." He called them Amurricanes, in a heavy stage accent that came over as an envious sneer.

"An American Resistance movement?"

Mrs Marriage came up tentatively along the line of boats, making sure she caught her husband's good eye before she moved into their circle of secrecy. She wore a faded anorak over her long cardigan. "I'm just popping into town to pick up a parcel from the station. It could be the parts John was wanting. Can I make you some more tea before I go?"

"No. We're both swimming in tea, we're both sinking in tea." Marriage's tone became abrupt and petulant.

She just smiled. "All right, dear. And shall I see when the garage can take in the car? The clutch really does need-"

"There's nothing wrong with the clutch. It's the way you drive it."

"It's snatching. I really think it's getting dangerous."

"It's the way you drive it."

"I'll see what the garage says. Don't get cold out here. Get Mr Harbinger to help you if- "

"Mr Harbinger's got better things to do than help an old cripple around. I'm not getting cold."

"Very well, dear." She smiled at George and walked briskly away.

"I don't know why I'm so bloody to her," Marriage grumbled, "except that shetolerates me. God knows I got enoughofthat inthe Service." They heard the car start atthe third try and roar jerkily up the track behind the boathouse, leaving a faint cloud of blue smoke drifting around the corner.

"I should have asked you if you wanted more tea," Marriage said, suddenly remorseful. "But perhaps you wouldn't mind something a bit stronger? There's a bottle of vodka in the cupboard over the desk in there. It's all I can offer, but if you felt like pouring us a couple, then topping it up with water… Liz doesn't like me having a snort before sundown."

For once in his life, George would have been ready to forego a drink. But there was a gentle desperation in Marriage's crooked face, and his hand crawled on the rug like a dying spider. "Don't worry about me," he said. "Half my brain cells are dead tissue anyway, so a few more won't make much odds. She can't countthem."

Did one more matter? The man was already living beyond sundown, George told himself. "Actually, I happen to have a flask of Scotch on me, just in case I broke down on the road…" He tried to force the joviality that was usually so easy. Marriage watched as George filled two of his silver cups, refusing water with it.

"It's good to taste the real thing for once; that vodka's mostly water by now." He poured the neat whisky into the corner of his mouth and wriggled with slow, painful relief. George's drink tasted of shame, but he needed it too, by now.

"The American Resistance movement," George prompted delicately. "Was that Winter Garden?"

"In the early Fifties, we all started setting up Resistance networks again, all over Europe, when it looked as if the Soviets were going to come west on the next train. The Air Force was particularly interested: escape routes for aircrew and so on. The Americans took it very seriously; of course, it was the Company by then." If Marriage knew the current jargon for the CIA, he didn't bother with it. "And they'd learnt a fair bit in the war, with their OSS -Office of Strategic Services, same as our SOE. I know they were collecting recordings of all the national songs, so they could set up a Radio Free Norway or Denmark or Italy somewhere, after…"

"And a Radio Free Britain?"

"Oh yes. The trouble was, we could believe in the Continent being overrun again, but we couldn't face up to it happening here. So the Amunicanes wanted to do it, and we let them."

"An American network in Britain."

"Probably quite a good one, too. My Service wanted me to try and penetrate it, just on general grounds, but I told them: the whole point is not to have their name's on our files, all ready for the Soviets to take over. But I spent a few bob buying drinks for a couple of old OSS types who'd turned up in their London station and they took pity on me and let drop the codename: Winter Garden. And flower names for the different groups. At least that's what they told me, it could be sheer bull. But it was before they went in for all the cryptonyms and digraphs and five-letter codes because that's what computers like…"

A lone motor-cruiser rumbled upstream, tidily cluttered, steered by an elderly man with a blacklabradorsitting on the cockpit seat behind him. He waved and Marriage lifted his cup slowly in return.

"One of yours?" George asked politely.

"Private. Did you think this was a poor country? Hah. Just go and count the private boats up and down the river. Most of 'em don't get used more than a few hours in the year. A poor country. "

The boat left a wake that rocked the long drifts of dead leaves on the water and slapped against the quay below them. Marriage finished his drink and put the cup down very obviously.

My God, George thought, cringing, he wants me to kill offmoreofthatfossilised brain. And I'm going to do it, so that he might, just might, tell me something useful. Have I been sending people out to do this? Mind, he excused himself quickly, this is exceptional, quite exceptional. And difficult. Even a trained interrogator would have a problem here…

Thus excused, he poured the drinks. "Did Miss Tuckey have anything to do with that? Help them recruit or…?"

"But then she'd have their lists, wouldn't she? And they wouldn't want that, any more than they wanted the Firmto have them. Once you've got a list, you can drag in the whole network. That's what I'm worried about: if your people are… working along those lines again, and Dot's been helping out, somebody might think she'd gotyour lists. An old lady living alone in the country, you do see…"

George did, and yearned to tell him the Army had thought of it, that Maxim had mentioned how they worked under codenames, then wondered if the Army should tell Moscow that, too-and realised that he was after a list, as well.

Marriage misinterpreted his hesitation and said querulously: "Dot really didn't tell me a thing, nothing. I was just guessing. I don't want you to-"

"Of course not," George soothed him. "I appreciate your concern." And that at least is true, he thought, because if I were a crippled old man living on an early pension filtered through the Secret Vote-and thus controllable-I wouldn't want any whisper of indiscretion getting back to the Service. And probably you're in hock to the Service's banking friends (the Service always had banking friends) for this boatyard, too. They'll never foreclose, because they want you to die in debt. Controllable.

"Getting back to Winter Garden," George said confidently, no longer needing to invoke Miss Tuckey, "you might say it's up my street. What sort of training did they get?"

"Radio, cyphers, handling explosives, the sort of thing we got at Wanborough in the old days."

"Weapons?"

"I doubt most of them would need it; everybody did national service in those days, some would have been in the war."

"They didn't issue any weapons?"

Marriage looked at him oddly, wilting George's confidence. "Our people made it pretty clear there were enough guns still floating loose from the war and getting into the wrong hands. We did make them promise No Guns."

"D'you think they stuck to it?"

"You know, I rather think they did. Probably not forthe right reasons. A Resistance group should use enemy weapons, or stuff that can take enemy ammo-and the Company just didn't have enough Russian gear then, in the early Fifties. Now they could do you a boatload right off the shelf, nothing down and nothing to pay if you shoot 'em in the right direction."