A Question of Betrayal Read online

  He looked much the same. A little heavier, maybe. His skin had more color. It must be from the Italian sun. It suited everyone.

  She could remember everything about him. The obvious things…and the others. The feel of his skin, the thrill of his strength, how easily he moved, his laughter. The way he kissed her slowly, softly…at first.

  She searched for the waiter. She would pay the bill and escape.

  Then her own voice rang in her ears with contempt. Elena, what the hell is the matter with you? You’ve found him. You have to stay here as long as he does, and then follow him. You have to give him vital information to save his life. And even more importantly, to get the information Peter Howard wants, needs. You let Aiden destroy your career once. Are you going to let him turn you into a coward now? You have been given a chance to redeem yourself. You can’t get the past back, but you can influence the future. Don’t let him do that to you!

  The waiter came. She paid him and ordered more coffee, so she had an excuse to sit there until Aiden left.

  It seemed like ages. Her coffee grew cold and she still sipped at it, as if it were delicious. Time seemed to stretch out endlessly. She only glanced at Aiden and his friends now and then. She should not be caught staring, although it would be natural enough to stare; they were anything but discreet. The woman in black, whom Aiden had called Gabrielle, apparently was vivid enough to draw the eyes of men in admiration, and of women in envy. And perhaps curiosity as to how she achieved it. Was it her hair? Her clothes? Her perfect features? Or did it lie in the grace of her movement?

  It seemed like midnight when eventually they rose and made their way to the door, and Elena rose, too. Would they call taxis? There would have to be two, or possibly three. Would she lose the chance to get one also, and to follow the one with Aiden in it? Or on a fine night like this, would they walk?

  She stood on the pavement as if she were waiting for someone. She had had some training in this, but now it seemed far too little. She had already spent two days in Trieste, and time was short. Why was she dithering? She was standing just yards from Aiden. Was she just going to watch him walk away? Was she being cautious or cowardly? She must speak to him now. He had to recognize her, for heaven’s sake. Whatever his feelings, perhaps they were not as deep as hers. They had slept together for months! She had lain in his arms almost all night, woken to kiss one last time before he left in the dawn light. He might not acknowledge it, but he must know. It was impossible to forget such things.

  She walked up to him casually, a cigarette in her hand. She had never smoked, but it was a useful pretense. “Excuse me, can you give me a light? My lighter seems empty.” Did that sound like she was trying to pick him up? She could not let it matter now. Once he had recognized her, he would know that she had some message from MI6. That would be all she needed.

  She was a couple of feet away, close enough to reach out and touch him. He looked at her and met her eyes. There was a look of puzzlement, then a flash of recognition, and an instant later it was gone, masked. But there was a stiffness in him, tiny, almost invisible. Did he know that he had been betrayed?

  No, Peter had believed that he did not yet know. It was part of Elena’s job to tell him. Peter had sent her because she and Aiden had known each other.

  Aiden was looking into her eyes, waiting for her to catch a light to her cigarette, and they were blank. She was a passing stranger, possibly trying to scrape an acquaintance. Pathetic. Could anyone be desperate enough to approach a man who was already with a woman like Gabrielle?

  Elena put the cigarette to her lips and took the light he held up. She drew in. She disliked the taste of tobacco. The minute he was out of sight, she would throw it away. “Thank you,” she said softly. “It’s a nice restaurant. Max Klausner recommended it to me.”

  He hesitated only a second, perhaps two. “Max, the waiter?”

  “Are there two Max Klausners?” she asked.

  “Probably half a dozen,” Aiden said. His voice was light again, courteous, but uninterested.

  Along the street, there was a shout rising in anger. A group of figures seemed to jostle each other, clumsily. One of them stumbled off the pavement into the street.

  It was Gabrielle who broke the moment’s tension. “Signorina, are you waiting for a taxi? I think perhaps you should wait inside the restaurant. It isn’t really safe, alone in the street. Even in good areas like this, there’s a certain unease.”

  “She might be—” one of the other women said with a slight sneer.

  Gabrielle laughed, a rich, happy sound. “Don’t be absurd, Sara. If she were looking for customers, she wouldn’t be dressed like this. She’s waiting for someone who stood her up. She’s trying to act like a lady and still get out of it with some shred of dignity. Don’t pretend that’s never happened to you.”

  Elena seized the opportunity. “Is it so obvious?” she asked with a rueful smile. “I don’t know Trieste very well. How easy will it be to find a taxi?”

  “A woman alone, smoking a cigarette? You’ll look as if you’re waiting for someone.” Gabrielle shook her head. “You’d better come with us. We’ll drop you off somewhere. Anton and I are going…” She stopped short of giving an address. “We can take you to a better district.”

  “Thank you,” Elena accepted. She did not look at Aiden to see if he agreed. Anton? She knew he would not be using his own name: too easy to trace. Especially when he had been here for years. He could pass for German easily, even over a period of time, and the Germans themselves would know who he was, of course. That was his cover: a turncoat, a traitor to the country of his birth. He was supposedly loyal to the new order of Nazism.

  Aiden had no gracious way of refusing to help a young woman in an awkward situation. A scuffle had broken out among the men along the street. They were clearly more than a little drunk, and coming closer. She would have had to go inside if Gabrielle had not offered her help.

  “Anton Salinger,” he introduced himself.

  Aiden Strother? Close enough. “Elena,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. She was committed. “Standish.” In the artificial lighting of the streetlamps, color was distorted. All she could see in his face was a deepening of tone in his cheeks. His composure was perfect.

  “How do you do, Miss Standish?” he said, this time in English. It was an acknowledgment that sounded like nothing, and yet in a way it was everything. He was warning her that they were strangers. The past did not exist.

  Could he really imagine they had met by chance? No, of course not. She had mentioned Max Klausner’s name. She had not quite suggested that in some way she had replaced Max, but he must at least consider it. “I live on Franz Josef Street,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

  He did not reply, but she had done enough.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Lucas drove home, parked the car, and went inside, Toby bumping against his legs. Surprisingly, Josephine was not in the kitchen.

  “Jo,” he called. Where was she? It was not alarm he felt, but discomfort, because it was unusual. He went into the hall and called again. “Jo.”

  The sitting-room door opened and Josephine came out, closing it gently behind her.

  Lucas saw the gravity of her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.

  “Stoney is here to see you,” she began.

  “Stoney?”

  “Stoney,” she repeated very quietly.

  Gladstone Canning was a mathematician Lucas had known at Cambridge. They had worked together quite a lot during the war. Over the years, their friendship had grown. Lucas had spoken of him often to Josephine, because Stoney had been such an essential part of his youth and his war years, although he had never revealed just how important.

  But now Stoney was here. Why? He had never once arrived without having been invited, or asking to see Luc
as in his home.

  “I haven’t seen Stoney for months, maybe a year. Why is he here? Is he all right?” His concern became deeper as he spoke, and long-ago images came back. Stoney was in his mid-seventies, closer to eighty. When they had first met as young men more than half a century ago, Lucas had liked him instinctively. Stoney was quiet, steeped in his work, but loving it intensely. He still worked in the intelligence service, quietly, diligently, his skills unsurpassed by anyone of a younger generation. His commitment to accuracy showed in everything he did, from complicated mathematical calculations to trying to toss pancakes and catch them in the pan, correct side up—or even at all! He enjoyed a good conversation as much as anything in life, except perhaps a good joke. The shaggier and more absurd, the better. But why was he here? Now? “What’s wrong?” Lucas asked.

  “I don’t know,” Josephine admitted. “He seems to have trouble even finding the words for it. And, of course, he is not sure whether to trust me or not.” She smiled ruefully. “I think he is torn between not trusting me, because I am not MI6, and trying not to upset me with ugly facts, because I am a woman.”

  Lucas felt his anxiety increase, tension suddenly ratcheted up. Stoney did not often confide in people, but it was not out of a lack of lucidity in his mind, or words to express it; it was an extreme discretion with secrets, something that was both natural and taught in his position. Also, he would not want to distress Josephine, if what he had to say was an ugly fact. He had never married, and so had no daughters. He had not learned that women were as tough as men any day, beginning with nannies and governesses, going right through to army nurses and women in the Resistance, or tougher still, in espionage, embedded in enemy-held territory.

  “Lucas!”

  “Yes!” He brought his attention back to the present. “I’ll talk to him. Perhaps we can have a cup of tea?”

  She rolled her eyes. “For heaven’s sake, do you think I set him down at teatime to talk about his anxieties without tea? And cake? Do you want some?” She looked at Toby, now sitting at Lucas’s heels and sweeping his tail back and forth across the carpet to signal that he was being obedient and it was dinnertime.

  “After I’ve seen Stoney…it sounds odd.” He smiled. “But Toby’s hungry.”

  “I’m sure he’d like a piece of cake,” Josephine said drily. “But he’s not getting any. Come on, Toby, dinner. Dog dinner.”

  He followed after her, happily. Anything she gave him was always good.

  Lucas opened the sitting-room door and went in. Stoney Canning was leaning back on the sofa, but still managed to look uncomfortable. He was large, over six foot, broad-shouldered, and untidy. Even the best tailor in London could not make a suit that looked as if it fitted him. Not that any tailor could be blamed for the way he looked today. His tie was crooked, his shirt was clean but crumpled, and his jacket appeared to be mismatched with everything.

  “Ah, Lucas.” He made as if to stand up.

  “Good to see you, Stoney.” Lucas held out his hand and gestured for Stoney to stay seated. He himself sat in the chair opposite and leaned back. “How are you?”

  Stoney pushed his hand through his long white hair. “Lucas, I’ve…I’ve got a bit of a problem.” He trailed off into silence, but his eyes searched Lucas’s face, as if he might help him somehow.

  It was a typical Stoney understatement, as when, speaking to a German friend, he had referred, with a rueful smile, to the war as “the recent slight unpleasantness.” It was a typical way of dealing with horror. His strength was mathematics; numbers were like music to him. He could see both form and beauty in the most complex calculations, and could not understand why they were not apparent to everyone, if only they would allow themselves to see them. Lucas recalled countless conversations that had begun like this one.

  “What is it about, Stoney?”

  “That’s it,” Stoney admitted. “I’m not sure. It seems to be figures, but it’s what they represent that matters. It could be anything. Weapons, men, something we already possess, or that we will buy. Anything.”

  Lucas bit back his temptation to interrupt. Stoney was intensely serious.

  “I think it’s money,” Stoney went on. “Very large amounts of it indeed.” He stared at Lucas with wide, troubled eyes. “And what is unforgivable is that they are doing it through MI6!”

  Lucas struggled to keep up. “Who is doing it? The government? What makes you think so? Go back to the beginning, Stoney.”

  “Money in the wrong place,” Stoney said succinctly. “Money that moves around inexplicably, at least not by any ordinary cause that I can see. And I’ve been keeping books since Victoria was queen. It doesn’t fit, Lucas. I know the pattern.”

  Lucas believed him about that, but there could be several explanations. “Theft?” he asked. “Embezzlement?”

  “No,” Stoney said without hesitation. “More like funneling money from one place to another. It’s very cleverly hidden.” His eyes showed reluctant respect for a skill he understood. “Not a few hundred here and there—that could be covered up—I’m talking about millions.”

  Lucas was troubled. It sounded exaggerated, even absurd. And yet there was fear in Stoney’s face, and beneath it a steady, burning anger.

  “What do you think it is?” he asked. “Your best ideas. Doesn’t matter how ridiculous they sound, we’ve got to start with something.”

  Stoney hesitated.

  It occurred to Lucas that he was afraid of being laughed at, of having the ideas that distressed him so clearly dismissed by a man whose opinion mattered to him, perhaps more than Lucas had previously appreciated. “Tell me,” he urged again. “If it’s impossible, we can dismiss it.”

  “I wish we could,” Stoney said earnestly. “I wish more than anything else I could think of. Please tell me I’m a fool, that I’ve lost my grip, and this isn’t happening…”

  At that moment there was a knock on the door. As soon as Lucas answered, Josephine came in with a tray of fresh tea and cake, Toby on her heels.

  Lucas stood up to take the tray from her, and Toby rushed over to Stoney, who leaned forward and put both his hands out to shake his paw, then stroke his head. Toby was delighted. He sat on Stoney’s feet and wagged his tail so hard his whole body swayed with it. He even ignored the cake when the tray was put on the side table, barely out of his reach. He ignored Josephine when she told him to come back with her into the kitchen.

  Lucas looked at Stoney’s face and his large hand resting gently on the dog’s head. “Let him stay,” he said to his wife. Their eyes met and she understood.

  “Don’t give him any cake,” she instructed. “It really isn’t good for him.”

  Stoney looked up at her, his hand still on Toby’s head. “Is there something he could have instead?”

  “Of course,” she answered. “I’ll get him a rusk. It’s really the attention he wants.”

  There was a look of rueful understanding in Stoney’s face.

  Josephine went out of the door, closing it softly behind her.

  Toby moved a little further onto Stoney’s feet and settled himself.

  “I think someone is using MI6 to collect money for Hitler. Specifically, the Nazi-led Fatherland Front. They’re the people who say we must never again fight a war, that we can’t do it again, and half of us agree with them.” He looked at Lucas. “But the other half don’t. Not at the price they’re prepared to pay. Not using MI6, without their knowledge, to finance it secretly, and—”

  “Whose money is it?” Lucas interrupted.

  “Donors,” Stoney replied. “From all over. Some of them even British. People who think Hitler is the answer. Good men—and bad—who think we can appease our way out of another war.” Stoney’s voice cracked for a moment, and his hand tightened in Toby’s thick fur. “But what I can’t bear is that they are using the men of MI6 without t
heir knowing it. At least, I think they are.” He was pleading with Lucas to contradict him, only he could not say the words.

  Lucas’s mind raced. He did not have enough knowledge to confirm such a hideous thing, nor did he have sufficient cause to deny it.

  “It’s MI6, Lucas,” Stoney said so quietly his voice was barely audible. “Our men.” He stopped. The rest did not need to be said. The shared memories were there: the all-night planning sessions, the waiting for word, any news at all, whether they had succeeded, who was lost. Occasionally, they had gone on operations themselves. Lucas could recall the cold, the danger, the casualties, the endless waiting, and the grief for those who had been killed. The job of having to tell their families, the half-truths, the courage, the cost, but not the reason, not the details.

  Josephine came back into the room and found them silent. Toby, in his own way, was also communicating with Stoney, leaning heavily against him. She glanced at Stoney, then at Lucas.

  “Why don’t you stay?” Lucas said to her. “You can use my cup. The cake’s very good.” It had nothing to do with tea or cake, and she understood that. Even Toby understood. He had heard the word “cake” but ignored it.

  Josephine sat down without speaking.

  “Then we must find out,” Lucas continued, as if there had been no interruption. “Is it all in the figures? Or do you have something else?”

  “Someone broke into my home,” Stoney told him.

  “What’s missing?”

  “Nothing I didn’t have copies of,” Stoney said, as if realizing that fact only now. “But they were searching for something, turning out my desk drawers and other places I keep books and papers. Bookcases and so on.”

  “But nothing is missing?” Lucas pressed.

  “No, not that I’ve found…yet. They want to know what I have; they don’t need to copy it.”