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Hale yanked back the bench and collapsed onto it, never taking his eyes off of Elena. "I," he said helplessly in French, "have thought about you-I've tried to find you-"
"Bon Dieu," said Cassagnac softly, "it is the English boy, Lot." At least he pronounced the t this time. "Listen to me, boy-she and I are in Berlin with the French forces. We assume-"
"Ahh!" exclaimed Hale. "Good, good." He hoped Cassagnac was telling the truth and that Elena had freed herself from Moscow.
Cassagnac lifted an eyebrow. "We're pleased that you approve. And we assume that you are here with the British. We do not need to have this assumption confirmed, and I'm confident that none of us would be so gauche as to discuss our histories or present tasks with one another. The past is past. You will have one drink with us, and then you will go away we know not where. You have seen that the lady is well; surely that has been your main concern, and now you can be relieved on that score." Cassagnac waved toward the brighter-lit arch from which the aromatic smoke was billowing. "What will you have to drink?" When Hale didn't answer, Cassagnac said to the aproned old waiter who shambled up to the table, "Eine Berliner Weisse mit Schuss, bitte."
Hale realized that he could not ask Elena any of the questions that were clamoring in his head, nor explain anything to her, and so he just smiled at her and took hold of her free hand in both of his. Her hand was cold.
"No, Marcel," she said firmly, pulling her hand free. "Now is now."
Hale closed his hands in loose fists. "You are married to him?"
"Oui," she said, and to Hale the unconsonanted syllable had the finality of an echoing gunshot.
Hale's drink was clanked down on the table then, and he glanced at the glass mug, then looked at it for several seconds. It appeared to contain pink beer. He sighed, and then turned to Cassagnac and made the effort to lift his eyebrows.
"Weak beer with raspberry syrup," Cassagnac explained.
Hale nodded, comprehending that he had been given a child's drink. For a moment he was tempted to speak the old code phrase, "Bless me!"-Things are not what they seem-trust me-just to let Elena know that he was in Berlin on covert SIS business; but a moment later he felt himself blushing, for he recognized this impulse as just a vindication of the spirit in which he'd been given the drink.
On the table in front of Elena stood a smaller glass of some brown liquor, and he humbly reached across and picked it up. "I want to drink to your-happiness," he said, "and not with weak beer. May you-be always contented and often joyful-bueno ano, multos buenos anos-and may you never forget one who has loved you."
He took a sip of what proved to be brandy and set the glass back down softly. Then he picked up his mug and swallowed a mouthful of the pink beer-and it was not bad.
"Thank you," said Elena in a level voice, but Hale saw her blink several times. From the tinny radio speakers on the other side of the room skirled a serpentine violin melody from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.
And Hale remembered the night in Paris when their radio had roared with inorganic chanting, and the garret floor had been scorched by the focus of some terrible attention; afterward Elena had said, Once I would have prayed, and then had quoted a line of verse in English; and now the verse came back to him, and he recalled that it was from Francis Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven."
"Across the margent of the world I fled," he recited now, almost idly, since nothing he said could matter anymore here,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon...
Elena frowned deeply, but nodded, and in a whisper recited the next line-"I said to Dawn: be sudden-to Eve: be soon..."
"Finish your drink, young man," said Cassagnac, briskly tapping ash from his cigarette, "the hour grows late, and-"
A rich, plummy voice interrupted from behind Hale, in English: "Those sh-shoes I left out this afternoon weren't c-c-cleaned," said Kim Philby's well-remembered voice, "and yet I find you here d-drinking, Andrew?"
Hale was jolted by the bench being pulled out, and then Kim Philby had sat down heavily beside him, smelling of tobacco and whiskey and some British after-shave lotion, and crinkling his eyes and showing his teeth in a smile.
Philby's gaze fell on the mug of pink beer. "And what are you d-drinking, Andrew?" He picked it up in one brown hand and sniffed it. "Is this s-some boche digestive aid? Have you got an upset st-stomach, my boy?"
Cassagnac leaned forward and tossed his cigarette butt under Philby's nose into the pink beer. "It was someone else's," he said in a bored tone. The waiter had walked up at Philby's arrival, and now Cassagnac said to him in German, "Where is the brandy our friend ordered?" as he pointed at Hale. Turning to Philby, he added, "And for you, sir?"
"A brandy as well. N-no, two glasses of b-brandy for me." He squinted speculatively at Hale. "You can't have flown here," he said. "It was hard enough for me to get a f-flight into the Gatow airport, with our Soviet allies l-laying claim to all altitudes and all directions and all ow-hours for their own scanty flights. Did you d-drive down the hole? Is this more of J-Jimmie's n-n-nonsense?" Less jovially, he asked, "What is the name and number of your passport here?"
"The name on it?" asked Hale, certain that Theodora would not want Philby to know about the Conway identity. "My own name." He tried to return Philby's gaze as if he were expecting, instead of fearing, some further question.
"We have thought it best," said Cassagnac, "not to discuss our jobs."
Philby frowned at Hale for another moment, then turned to Cassagnac with a smile. "Oh, that's all right, Andrew here is just a j-junior f-fetch-and-c-c-errand-boy, in my firm. A c-custodian, actually." Then Philby glanced back at Hale with mock concern and smacked his forehead. "Oh, I say, I'm sorry-you've probably been h-hinting to your friends about b-big secret g-government work! I should have considered your-your fragile young man's pride."
Hale took a deep breath, then just leaned back and smiled tiredly at Philby. "I'll thank you to leave my fragile young man out of this."
