The Secret Servant

"Did they say anything about why they could do better?"
"Oh, the bears know everything."
"Fine, but did they know anything special?"
"They said there was a letter. An old letter about Veverka, and why had I not found it."
"Have they got this letter?"
"No. But of course they will get it soon. Of course." She clearly didn't believe in the letter at all.
Maxim took her hands; she squeezed back, but maybe only instinctively. "Did they say what was in this letter?"
"It was about Veverka, something that would spoil him, just what they wanted, and why had I not found it."
Maxim was beginning to lose the thread of his interrogation; she was too close and he should let go of her hands, but…
"They didn't say how they knew there was a letter?" Had he asked that before?
"No."
"Did they say what you should do next?"
"That I should go to Ireland for them. It is more difficult for the bears to go around. To Shannon, because I work for the tourists… Veverka has nothing in Ireland."
What did he ask now?
The outside door in the next room slammed and footsteps faded away on the cobbles. They were alone again. What did he ask next?
He stood up without letting go of her hands, and she stood up in front of him. Her eyes caught a glint from the window, a spark in the gentle darkness around them, and he let go of her hands…
She was wrong. She was too short, her shoulders too wide as he pulled her against him, her breasts too big… She wasn't Jenny. But she was warm and welcoming after the cold lonely months…
Maxim lay drained and drowsy, his bones limps as skeins of wool. Behind the relief, like the big wheel at a distant fairground, turned the slow thoughts: I have been unfaithful to Jenny… Jenny is dead… But I have been unfaithful to her… I told you, she is dead… That makes it worse…
"I am hungry," Zuzana said.
He shook himself awake. You have also been wallowing with a Czech defector, his thoughts reminded him, much closer now. How are you going to phrase that in your report?
She lay mostly naked, tangled in a riot of sheets and blankets on the other bed. And she had a right to be hungry: at the pub they'd picked up only a couple of saloon bar sandwiches suffering from advanced rigour mortis. That had been enough for him, but being shot at can take people different ways.
He started dressing. "Do you want to go up to the village and see if there's a hamburger bar or something?"
"No." She moved her head a fraction on the pillow. "You will get me something. Can I have the gun?"
"Do you know how to use it?"
She took it, flicked out the magazine and pushed the safety off and on. "I know." She obviously did. Maxim wrapped the pistol in a handkerchief and pushed it under his pillow.
"Lock the door and for heaven's sake don't shoot unless somebody kicks it down." Defector Shoots Chambermaid While Sharing Room With Major From Number 10. Not that this motel ran to anything that could be called a 'chambermaid'.
He touched the end of her nose, and walked out.
Zuzanna lay there for a few minutes. Then she got up, stretching languidly and yawning, cat-like, to lock the door. She left the lights off, fumbled for the radio, and turned it on to try and get the half-past-four news summary. She began to dress slowly.
I wonder if they will kill this sad, strong major, she thought. They may hide me, but they cannot hide Number 10.
 
12
The village had nothing like a hamburger bar, and the only tea-shop was shut. Maxim wandered around, instinctively getting the feel of the place, but also finding a non-vandalised telephone box. He wondered about ringing George, but what did he have to say? Then he came across a 'supermarket', which in this village meant a help-yourself grocer's not much bigger than the motel room, and bought a pocketful of tinned and packaged food. Then he had to buy some paper plates and plastic knives, as well.
He whispered at the bedroom door, and Zuzana put off the light to let him in. She leant against him in a quick, rather practised gesture, and he kissed her hair. When the lights went on, he saw she was rather pale, and her hands were nervously rubbing the pleats in her skirt.
"It's all right," he said. "They can't find you here. They won't even know who to look for."
He had registered as Mr and Mrs Maxim – which was now a shade truer than it had been – because Maxim had no 'trade-name', and would have to use his own credit cards, driving licence and so forth. Zuzana had been professionally offended by that, but it had been the PM's decision. "We brought him in here," he had told George, "because he was Major Maxim and not one of the creepy-crawlies. So Major Maxim he can stay." And that was still that.
But even if he had been spotted as Maxim, the Bloc embassies hadn't got the manpower to ring every hotel in the Home Counties.
He spread out the food, expecting Zuzana to pounce. But she just began decorously spreading a little pвtй on a biscuit.
"Drink?" he suggested. The whisky was running low: she'd taken a snort while he was out. She took another now.
He saw the radio and tuned it to a programme of classical music – not loud, but continuous.
"We're very happy to learn about Veverka, but is there anything you can say about the bears and our security? You do see how important that is."
She nodded with her mouth full, swallowed, took a gulp at her whisky. "It was when your minister sent home so many of the bears, do you remember? It was two years ago. The bears kept bringing in so many joes, your security could not afford to watch them all. It was, what you call it, like saturation bombing. Then for one time your minister did the right thing."
Maxim remembered: a great slaughter of the guilty when over a hundred Russian embassy and trade officials had been declared personne non gratae. Aeroflot had even sent a special plane to collect them. It had made headlines everywhere. Except Moscow, probably.
"So then, the bears went crazy. Suddenly they had nobody to make the drops, they thought all their sources would forget them, they would have nothing left. So they had to use us, of course. And some of the Poles and Hungarians, but…" the but and a little shrug relegated the Polish and Hungarian services to the fourth division. "Of course, they did not tell us who we were posting messages for. But it was the usual ways, the dead drops, always Moscow Centre chose them. I did not believe it before, but it is true. They could say in Moscow for me to post a message in the springs of the bed near the window of number 6 bedroom in this motel. They do not trust their own people here even to decide things like that."
Maxim had heard the same thing and hadn't really believed it, either.
"So, I tell you, it was a crazy time." They were back sitting facing each other, not touching. "We were running all over to the places Moscow said was a good drop. It was mad." And in the panic, there had been an unguarded discussion about which of two missions was more important, and Zuzana had heard enough to know she was acting as a cut-out for a source within British security itself.
"It was a moving drop, you understand. In a train, it came into Victoria just about ten o'clock each morning. I must go down to Gatwick first, then get on it there and post the message up under the towels basket in the lavatory at the back of the third first-class carriage. Then I stayed and went again just before the end to pick it up if it had not been collected, so the cleaners would not find it."
Maxim's experience was that British Rail cleaners might just be getting around to finding messages posted in the Boer War, but he smiled and nodded encouragingly.
"It was a good drop," she conceded. "It was simple, we used it often Of course, there must have been a crash contact for the emergencies, but I would not be in that."