The Parrot Cage, page 29
There was a khaki-clad figure standing in the shade at the far end of the quay and Ming set off towards him, wondering why he did not move forward and suppressing her own desire to run at full tilt and fling herself into his arms. Half-way down the quay, she saw that it was not her chief, only her training officer from Etchingham. Walking more and more slowly, she made her way up to him and waited.
‘Marie,’ he said, using her work name, as he had done from the first moment he was put in charge of her, ‘Major Suvarov has been held up in London. He wants you to go straight up there to the flat where you met before; and to give me the packet.’
Ming dumped the suitcase on the ground and fished beneath her clothes for the stained, paper-wrapped bundle. Before she could even hand it over, he had seized it from her hands.
‘Oh, well done, Marie,’ he said breathlessly.
‘You didn’t really think I’d come back without it, did you?’ she asked. He looked up and at last smiled at her.
‘It was a damned hazardous mission, Marie. You’ve done well.’
‘I’m afraid that the man …’ she was beginning, when he hushed her with a gesture.
‘No, don’t tell me anything. Suvarov will debrief you in London. Here’s a warrant for the train. There’s one leaving in fifteen minutes. I’ll drive you to the station if you’ll come now.’
‘You’re not coming, then?’ said Ming, making a question of the statement.
‘No, I’ve another of you to come in yet; but we’ll meet again, don’t worry. Here we are. Hop in.’
He drove her to the station, saw her on to the London train and then shook her hand, repeated his congratulations and left her. Ming sank back against the rough moquette of the seat and tried to understand that she was back in England, her mission accomplished; that the message had been handed over, that she was safe and the episode was over. But despite what her reason tried to make her instinct believe, she knew that while Annette and the unnamed man were still in France risking death and worse it could not be over for her either.
She closed her eyes, deliberately trying to banish all thought of Annette from her mind and feeling like a puppet whose strings have been cut, so that instead of an obediently jerking prancing figure there was only a bundle of painted wooden limbs lying in a useless heap. Almost as though her mental picture had transmitted some message of collapse to her brain, she fell at last into a sleep so deep that even the clatter of the train’s arrival at one station after another could not waken her.
The other occupants of the carriage, two respectably dressed middle-aged women, a uniformed soldier and two men in civilian clothes, paid no attention to the exhausted girl until the train stopped at Basingstoke. There the soldier stood up, heaved his kitbag from the luggage rack and made to step past Ming to get out of the compartment. But the train, which had already stopped, jolted once more and he lost his balance, put out a hand against the wall to steady himself and stepped on her feet. Even then she did not wake. One of the women; who was wearing a brown felt hat that looked as though she had converted it from one of her husband’s sporting trilbies, half stood and then turned to the other woman.
‘Don’t you think we ought to do something about the young lady? It can’t be natural to sleep like that even when a hulking six-footer has stepped on your toes. Shouldn’t we try to wake her?’
Before the other lady could answer, one of the civilian men leaned forward to say quietly:
‘Please don’t concern yourself, madam. We’re keeping an eye on her. She’s been on duty a long time and is not very well. She’s coming up to London to see a specialist. Her CO asked us to see that she got there in one piece.’ He smiled reassuringly as he spoke and since his accent put him somewhere in the higher establishment, the concerned woman in the brown hat blushed with embarrassment at having tried to interfere.
‘I do beg your pardon,’ she said softly. ‘I hadn’t realised that you were looking after her. She seemed so alone when she arrived.’
‘Not at all,’ he answered as quietly. ‘How could you know? But please don’t be concerned. We shall take good care of her. She’s very valuable to us, eh Jimmy?’
The other man nodded and smiled in the same polite way, and the woman was silenced. But she was not quite satisfied and when the train drew into Waterloo, she dropped her open handbag on the floor so that she would have an excuse to fossick around and wait to see what happened to the poor pale girl.
The two men stood up, looked arrogantly down at the stout woman scrabbling on the floor for her lipstick, powder compact, handkerchief and all the other impedimenta that had issued from her bag and exchanged resigned glances. The taller of the two leaned down to shake Ming’s shoulder.
‘Wake up, my dear,’ he said kindly. ‘We’re here at Waterloo and we’ve a car waiting.’
Ming opened her dark-blue eyes wide and tried to focus on the man who had spoken to her. She was still half asleep, but part of the sense of what he had said reached her.
‘Did Peter send you?’ she said, leaning back against the seat and looking up at him. He smiled again.
‘That’s right. He’s anxious about you. Come on up, if you can stand, and we’ll get you back to him straight away.’
Ming let him help her up and pull her case off the rack. As she reached the door, one of his hands under her shaky elbow, the other woman finished collecting her possessions and stood up, breathless.
‘My dear …’ she began. Ming turned, her dazed violet-blue eyes looking puzzled. ‘Forgive me for troubling you, but are you all right? Can I help at all?’
Ming smiled and a little colour came reassuringly into her pale cheeks.
‘Thank you,’ she said in a tired voice. ‘But these gentlemen will see me … home. I’m all right really.’
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ said the woman, embarrassed to have accosted a perfect stranger and tried to interfere in what was obviously an official performance and yet unable to rid her mind of the feeling that something was badly wrong.
‘Goodbye, and thank you,’ said Ming more firmly and let the two men escort her out of the railway carriage.
London
1943
Chapter Twenty-Two
That evening, Flixe was sitting in her flat, trying to get hold of Peter Suvarov. He had not answered the private telephone on his desk at the office all day and she had not dared to risk involving Gerry in what she had to tell him. Flixe had left a discreet message at his club and had dialled the number of his rooms in Pall Mall at half-hourly intervals. She knew that there was no way she could keep Jean-Pierre’s declaration secret. Peter had to know about it. But she could not find him.
At half-past seven she was in such a state of confusion, irritation and emotion that she poured herself a strong brandy and soda and sat sipping it by the telephone. When it rang she was so surprised that for a moment or two she did not pick up the receiver. At last she controlled herself.
‘Western 0808,’ she said.
‘Flixe,’ came the voice she had wanted all day.
‘Peter, thank God, I must talk to you. I’ve—’
‘Not now,’ he said icily. ‘This is urgent. Have you seen Ming this afternoon?’
So cold was his voice that she did not even stop to wonder why he was asking and answered simply:
‘No. I haven’t seen her for months.’
‘Damn. Where might she go, Flixe? Try to think: friends? Anyone she might want to see if she were in London?’
Flixe thought for a moment, half-stupefied by his obvious impatience.
‘I think … there’s only Gerry or Anna Kingsley that I know of.’
‘Tried them. Oh, God.’
‘Peter,’ she said sharply, her brain beginning to work again. ‘What is the matter? Why are you looking for Ming?’
‘I can’t explain now, Flixe. She was due at Charles Street four hours ago and she’s disappeared.’ Then Flixe understood. Somehow Peter had recruited poor, fragile little Ming to work for him. Bitterly angry, she spoke crisply into the telephone.
‘There must have been an accident. Ming is too conscientious to go off seeing friends if she had an appointment with her employer. Have you tried the hospitals?’
‘Of course. And the police. I must ring off in case they’re trying to get through.’
‘Peter,’ said Flixe urgently, but there was no one at the other end of the telephone. She put her receiver back on its cradle. She was so angry that she could hardly breathe. Gerry might perhaps be thought of as fair game, just as she herself was, but Ming was too delicate, too frightened and far too badly hurt to be exposed to the Suvarov-fascination technique. How could he have done such a thing? How dared he?
Flixe got up off her chair and paced around her drawing-room, feeling as though her rage were a physical entity that had somehow to be expelled from her. Her teeth were clamped together and she breathed through her nose in vast, deliberate breaths. But it did not help either; it merely left her with an aching head. She gave vent to a howl of frustration, anger and resentment and swore violently, quite forgetting the thinness of the walls of her flat or the possible audience in the other flats.
She expelled the rage in the end, of course; rage was not an emotion she had been bred to feel and all her family’s and school’s training had been directed at ways to ignore anger or to pretend that it was something else. Exhausted by the effort, feeling as though the top of her head might suddenly detach itself and fly off, she lay down on her bed and buried her face in the pillow.
After five minutes or so she turned over and lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her mind felt as vacant and her joints as heavy as they did after Jean-Pierre had made love to her. As the functioning part of her brain understood that, the rest was galvanised by a dreadful thought. The chain of ideas arrived in her mind fully linked: Peter had told her just before he had sent her on the course that he had almost completed his investigation into Jean-Pierre’s activities; Jean-Pierre had just told her that he would have to leave London soon; Ming had disappeared on her way to a meeting with Peter.
Flixe’s face hardened and her lower lip disappeared between her teeth as she tried to work out whether there was any reason to suppose a connection between the three facts. One second’s thought told her that there must be; another’s that such a proposition was ludicrous. There was simply no way of knowing without evidence. Instead of fruitless speculation, she forced her mind to consider where Jean-Pierre might have taken Ming if he had indeed abducted her or – since the picture of that elegant, urbane, entertaining, affectionate man doing any such thing was impossible – ordered her to be abducted. A memory of a conversation they had had over dinner one evening came back to her, and she heard again his ironic voice describing the destruction of his company’s warehouse in the City. To make conversation she had asked politely whether it was entirely useless and he had said something. Flixe tried to picture the scene again so that she could summon up his precise words. She thought they had been: ‘Quite useless for their original purposes, but a few of the offices are still usable and I’ve lent them to some associates of mine.’
Flixe got off her bed and went towards the telephone. Suvarov would have to know of her suspicions. Whatever she might think or feel about Jean-Pierre, Ming’s safety was of paramount importance. ‘Thank God,’ she said aloud, ‘I have the number of the Charles Street flat.’ She dialled it, but it rang and rang without being answered. Eventually she put down the receiver. But she could not simply leave her suspicions there, and instead dialled the number of his office.
When the duty officer answered, Flixe asked whether Gerry were still in the building.
‘I believe so, madam,’ came the polite answer. ‘If you’ll hold on a moment, I’ll put you through.’ Flixe was chewing one of the fingers of her left hand in impatience, but soon enough she heard her sister’s voice, tense but still polite:
‘Mrs Kyrle speaking. Can I help you?’
‘Gerry, thank God you’re still there. Has Suvarov come back?’
‘No. Why? Oh Flixe, have you got some news of Ming?’ Gerry’s voice had become so eager that Flixe hated to have to disappoint her.
‘No. But a faint possibility has occurred to me. I must talk to him,’ she said, the desperation in her voice. ‘Do you know where he is, Gerry?’
‘At the flat, I thought. Charles Street. You know it.’
‘Yes, I do. But he’s not there. Is there anywhere else?’
‘No. I tried his rooms in Pall Mall myself a minute ago. And he’d never go to the club while something like this is on. Oh, Christ, Flixe, what are we going to do?’
It was so unlike Gerry to swear that Flixe was spurred into some kind of decision.
‘We’ll have to do something ourselves. No … we’ll need help.’ For an agonising minute she could not think who she could possibly ask; and then she remembered how superb her old suitor had turned out to be at Naseby House. ‘I’ll get Johnny,’ she said. ‘Stay there, Gerry. If Suvarov rings, tell him what’s happened and get a number where we can ring him. If not, don’t worry. I’Il ring you back in a minute or two.’
She replaced the receiver just as the three minutes were up, and then dialled the number Johnny Blenkarne had given her. His telephone rang for so long that she thought he must be out, but just as she was about to give up he picked it up. She could hear how breathless he was, but she was in too much of a hurry to comment.
‘Johnny? Flixe here; something awful may have happened and I need help. Will you …?’
‘Just tell me what you want me to do,’ he said through his panting.
‘Have you any transport?’ she asked, so grateful that he asked no questions that she did not bother with either explanations or thanks.
‘Actually yes, a jeep. And some petrol: about half a tankful. Where are we going?’
‘The City. Could you pick me up at the flat?’
‘Of course, Flixe. Be with you in ten minutes. Hold on, my dear.’
‘Johnny, you’re a brick,’ she said, feeling tears coming into her eyes. She rang Gerry back and told her to be waiting at Hyde Park Corner in twenty minutes’time. Then she ran into her bedroom and changed into trousers and jersey and exchanged her high-heeled black shoes for a pair of rubber-soled sneakers. A quick look in her pre-war telephone directory gave the address of the only City warehouse belonging to West-Grandison et fils, Importers; it must have been the one about which he had talked. Flixe memorised the address and stuffed a London street map into the capacious pocket of her khaki trousers.
She was downstairs and waiting when Johnny pulled up and she slid into the seat beside him before he had even switched off the engine. As he drove towards Hyde Park Corner, she told him the few facts and her many suspicions, without explaining who Jean-Pierre was, what he meant to her or the conspiracy of which he was suspected. Johnny listened in silence until she had finished.
‘Whew! No wonder they sent you on that course, Flixe,’ he said at last. ‘Are you sure? It all sounds most unlikely.’
‘No, I’m not sure at all, Johnny. But don’t you see, even if there were one chance in a million that it might be true, since I can’t get hold of the boss I have to investigate? And I think it’s more likely than that.’
‘Yes, of course. And I’m with you all the way even if it is a wild goose chase. Don’t fret.’
‘Johnny …’ she was beginning until she caught sight of Gerry standing on the pavement at her left. ‘Here’s Gerry. Pull up, will you?’
He did as she asked, screeching to a halt, and felt Flixe press closer to him on the front seat to make a room for her sister. He greeted her tersely and then drove off through the darkening streets towards the Tower of London, while Flixe explained what they were going to try to do.
Johnny drove so fast that Gerry was afraid the tyres would not hold and they would skid out of control. But they did not and at last he slowed slightly as he turned north from St Katharine’s Dock into a maze of small roads, cratered bomb sites, and weird brick towers that were all that was left of the offices and factories that had once stood there. Astonishingly, in the middle of the devastation were a few buildings, miraculously preserved. Five minutes later they passed the remains of a bombed pub.
‘Pull up here, would you, Johnny,’ said Flixe, with her finger on the map. He obeyed her as before, and parked neatly by the broken kerb outside the pub. Flixe pushed Gerry out of the jeep and followed her on to the pavement. The old inn sign with its picture of some gentle country scene still hung absurdly outside the burned-out shell of the building, creaking in the wind like the rigging of the Marie-Celeste. Gerry shivered involuntarily. Johnny locked the jeep, while Flixe walked round and opened the bonnet. Then she lifted it up and bent forward into the engine for an instant. When she straightened up, Gerry, who was standing behind her, muttered:
‘What’re you doing?’
‘Immobilising the engine, just in case any crooks pass this way and think it might be handy. Come on, Johnny.’
‘Coming. But, look, Flixe. We ought to decide what we’re going to do if we do find anything at this place. There’s no point charging in with no preparation. Remember Sergeant Plummer’s advice?’
Flixe laughed a little at his reference to their course, but recognised the common sense of his intervention.
‘OK. Now, from what I can remember of the description of the warehouse, the old main entrance is in one street and the one they actually use now in quite another. So what about this, Johnny? I’ll ring the bell at the door they still use and demand Jean-Pierre and be all hysterical and weepy when they say he’s not there and generally create, while you approach from the bombed bit and try to get in while I’ve got at least one of them distracted.’
‘OK.’
‘And I?’ asked Gerry in some asperity.
‘It’s tricky, Gerry. You haven’t had any training in breaking and entering … Yes,’ she went on, catching sight of her sister’s face in the moonlight. ‘I have. That’s where Johnny and I met up again. Never mind. It’s a pity that it’s not you who could be realistically searching for Jean-Pierre.’
