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Philby's gaze fixed on the old Frenchman. "I'm Kim," he said, reaching across the table to shake hands. "And you are...?"
"Louis Pasteur," said Cassagnac, smiling.
Philby nodded ponderously and swung his face toward Elena, opening his mouth as if to say something more in the same bantering tone; but then he just exhaled, frowning with what seemed to be surprised and tentative recognition. After two full seconds of staring at her, he closed his mouth, then looked away from her and said to Cassagnac, "And th-this lovely g-girl-is she your w-wife, Mr. Pasteur?"
"Bless me, no!" said Elena suddenly. "Actually I am not married. My name is...Marie Curie."
The waiter walked up then with a tray and set one glass in front of Hale and two in front of Philby-who emptied one of the glasses in a single gulp.
Hale's breathing had suddenly gone shallow and a smile was tugging at his lips, and in his head her words were still echoing: Bless me, no! Actually I am not married.
But Philby was still frowning at Elena, and now he said to her, abruptly, "Nineteen-forty...one! New Year's Eve. I d-do remember you-viv-viva-vividly." He smiled, then went on quickly, "Who were you with, on that night?"
Hale's face tingled in sudden alarm, and he concentrated on taking hold of his brandy glass, and lifting it to his lips, and not glancing at Elena. New Year's Eve of '41 had been their last night together in Paris, the night he had thought of ever since as their wedding night. What intelligence sources did horrible old Philby have access to? Had he somehow been in Paris then?
Hale heard Elena's breezy reply: "On New Year's Eve?-I am sure I was with some handsome young man."
Peripherally Hale could see Philby nod and turn toward him; but the choppy murmur of conversation in the long room was muted then by the sudden roar of rain falling outside the building, and Hale saw dark lines of water begin to streak the boards across the glassless windows.
Philby shifted on the bench to look toward the leaking windows, and Hale heard him mutter, "Constant to the old covenant." Philby glanced back and smiled faintly as he met Hale's startled gaze. " St. Paul 's epistle to the Crustaceans," he said lightly. From his pocket Philby took a corked bottle of some clear fluid, and then he popped it open and poured the liquid into the brandy glass he'd emptied. Hale caught a whiff of something like turpentine and ether. "Flit," Philby said. "A sample of bug killer, fr-from our American c-cousins."
Other diners in the room had turned to look at the rain-streaked boards over the windows, and now an unshaven man in a baggy old business suit came shuffling diffidently up to the table. In German he said, "Rain washes away blood."
Philby frowned at him, and answered in English. "You wish it were so, mein H-Herr Schimpf. I've t-told you before to s-sell your f-f-filthy old secrets to the Om-Om-Americans." He pointed sharply to the street door, and the man shambled away in evident confusion.
Hale knew that schimpf meant disgrace or insult, and he was intrigued to see a dew of sweat on Philby's forehead.
"The city's f-full of ex-Abwehr who've t-turned into freelance intelligence agents," said Philby to the table in general, "and the American Counter-Intelligence Corps and OSS are p-paying them; the British s-simply arrest them. Creatures like that f-fellow will sell you a Soviet code book on Monday, and then c-come back on Wednesday to sell you the news that the relevant coded traffic will be all d-deception now, since on Tuesday he sold word of the original tr-transaction to the Russians; and then on Thursday he'll go b-back to the Russians again." He scowled in the direction the diffident man had taken. "It's a g-g-good way to achieve abrupt, total retirement at the hands of some double-crossed g-government agency. 'There is truth to be found on the unknown shore, and many will find what few would seek.'" With that he snatched up a glass and drained it-and then grimaced and spat, for it had been the glass of insecticide.
"Hah!" he coughed. "That wasn't brandy!" He blinked through watering eyes at Hale. "Better than the l-local g-ggin, at least, hey?"
"I-haven't tried the local gin," said Hale blankly, wondering if Philby had seriously poisoned himself just now. He looked at Elena and Cassagnac, and they were both staring at Philby in moderate alarm. "I guess I won't," Hale added, just to be saying something. But Philby's action had reminded him of something from his Section One archival researches, and he wanted to get away from the man's physical presence for a moment, away from the intrusive insecticide smell, and pin down the memory. Hale sneaked a glance at his wristwatch below the table edge; it was nearly ten o'clock. "How does one get food here?" he asked.
"There is a table by the kitchen wall," spoke up Elena in French, "and they will serve you a plate of potato pancakes or lung hash or Sturdy Max."
"Sturdy Max sounds good," said Hale, who didn't know what it might be. He stood up and walked through the tobacco and cooking smoke toward the indicated far table, where two big moustached men were stirring pots and clanking ladles on plates; and he wondered if he were drunk, for he felt an almost centrifugal resistance to progress away from the table, as if he were walking uphill.
Intrusive. That was it-six months ago Hale had been reading a file of brittle 1916 Secret Service telegrams from the Arab Bureau in Cairo, whose telegraphic address had been INTRUSIVE CAIRO; the group had included Gertrude Bell and the young T. E. Lawrence, and Hale had read about a controversial initiation ritual which had consisted of drinking a half-and-half shot of gin and insecticide, a concoction they had reportedly referred to as "Gin, Repellent."
Hale stumbled up to the serving table and blinked at the pots and platters laid out on it. Sturdy Max appeared to be ham and eggs on black bread, and he was about to ask for some-
- But at that moment the music on the radio was drowned out in a sudden barrage of static, and for a moment Hale thought lightning must have struck somewhere nearby; then the roar of the static began to flail itself into a wild drop-and-double-beat momentum, an articulated cacophony that was tantalizingly almost a coherent rhythm. As in that Paris garret nearly four years ago, the effect of drumming and chanting seemed totally free of any organic or rational source, but it was nevertheless urgent, and quickened with an "emotion" at once so alien and so strong that it could only be comprehended, inadequately, as rage.
Rain washes away blood.
True enough, Hale thought dizzily. This downpour will soon disperse the blood of that man who was shot by the Brandenburg Gate.
The Russian soldiers seemed to herd the fugitive to that spot, before killing him. And there was a crane nearby, useful for lifting a large stone. This is early, two hours ahead of schedule-but so were the flights Elena caught in Paris and Lisbon, three and a half years ago.
It's at the Brandenburg Gate, he thought with sudden total certainty, and it's right now.
When it appears to be starting up, you instantly go into total evasion procedures, am I understood?
Hale glanced back at the table, trying to catch Elena's gaze. But I can't just disappear now, he thought desperately. If I leave right now, when will I ever see her again?
But even if I go back to the table, when will I ever see her again?
...the king's men. They deserve our obedience.
