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The coffee was ready. She drank it while she ate a second roll. They had been fresh yesterday and were still good. It didn’t matter what she felt like, she must keep her strength up. It was nerves that were making her stomach clench. Hunger would only make it worse. She remembered their parting: he to escape, she believing he was a traitor who had left her behind to take the blame. She had looked like a stupid, starstruck girl in love with an older man who had betrayed not only her, but his country as well. Which was the truth?
She took her coat—it would be cold on the water—along with her large handbag and her camera, checking that she had extra rolls of film. Then she went out of the door and along the street with a firm, brisk step. She knew precisely where she was going.
Aiden was not there. She looked at the heavy, black mass of the bridge spanning the water, the light already seeping under the arches, the shining wet steps.
Did she have the right place? Yes. She had double-checked. There was a cold sunrise wind coming up the canal, but the light was beautiful. Most photographers would have worked with the color and glory of sunrise, catching the faces of the classically beautiful buildings. The architecture of Trieste had a lot to be proud of. In ways, it was perfect, and yet it was the imperfections, the irregular frontages, that made it so achingly lovely. The simple boats on the water gave it reality, coming out of the shadows and down the shining surface, a reality beyond artists’ dreams.
Not all the lines were unbroken. Here and there, wraiths of mist dimmed a palace façade or veiled a knot of moored boats into no more than an impression, as if the artist’s attention had slipped for a moment. A lone boat sculled across the shining patch of water, its oarsman unaware of his own grace.
Elena took picture after picture as the light broadened and the pastel colors became deeper. When the sun rose above the skyline, spilling color across the water, she closed her lens, snapped on its protective cover, and put her camera in the bag. She found herself smiling as she climbed the steps to the bridge and was at street level again.
Aiden was there, waiting for her. He held out his hand to balance her up the last, steep step. He had a coat on, too, and the wind tugged at his thick hair, the sun making it seem fairer than it was. In the harsh, clear light, he looked older than he had in the kinder artificial lamps of the restaurant. He was over forty now and it suited him, gave character and depth to his smooth features. Perhaps he knew pain far better than she understood, engulfed in her own self-absorption, as so many of the young can be. How childish to expect to be anyone’s whole world.
“Sorry,” she said, when she stood beside him. “The light was quite different from the way I expected it to be, much subtler. Everyone does the sunrise.”
“So, you really are a photographer.” He smiled. “I didn’t even know you were interested in it.”
She allowed herself to smile back, as if it were a small thing. “I had to change my direction.” He must know she had been dismissed in disgrace when he had left the Foreign Office as a traitor. That her father had been an ambassador, a senior one, was the reason for her escape from prosecution, and it was not something she was proud of.
“Only partially, it seems,” he replied, without any loss of composure. There was not even a flicker of shame or embarrassment in his eyes. “Did they send you out to rescue me?”
“You exaggerate,” she replied. “All I can do is pass extra money to you, if you need it. And warn you of all they know in London, which is that Max Klausner has disappeared, and that things are apparently growing worse in Vienna. But I imagine you know that.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Do you want a cup of coffee? We might as well be comfortable while you tell me whatever London wants me to know.”
“Yes, it’s cold here.” She realized how cold she really was. Concentrating on the light on the water, she had been largely motionless, unaware of the increasing chill that seemed to have locked her joints and penetrated her flesh. She gave an involuntary shiver.
“I haven’t seen Max for days,” he remarked as they turned onto the pavement and began walking toward the lit doorways of bakeries and cafés. “But sometimes he goes to Vienna. We contact each other only if there’s something to say.”
“London can’t reach him by any of the usual ways,” she said, keeping step with him. The smell of fresh baked bread drifted out to mix with the faint odor of wet stone and the stale water of the canal. “And I can’t find him here.”
“Do you know where to look?” he asked with amusement.
She heard the note of disapproval in his voice and suddenly the years between telescoped in her mind. Only this time she knew he would not laugh at her and then touch her gently to temper the sting of it. How young she had been, hungry for his attention, satisfied by so little that would matter now. She looked away so he would not see the emotion in her face. She answered casually, “Oh, I thought about it, considered what he would have to do. It took me nearly two days.”
“You found him?” he said incredulously.
“I found where he worked,” she replied. “Before he disappeared. Of course I didn’t find him, he’s gone. None of his usual places have seen him for nine or ten days. I don’t know where he lives. The important thing was to find you, causing as little stir as possible.”
“So, you came into an expensive nightclub alone, in an expensive and almost indecent bright red dress, not to draw attention to yourself. Brilliant.”
“It was the dress that got the attention, Aiden,” she corrected. “If I walked down the street as I am now, in old trousers and a peacoat, camera on my shoulder, I’m not that woman. It was the dress they remember, not my face or my hair.”
He was silent for a moment or two, matching his step to hers. When he spoke at last, his tone was quite different. There was urgency in it, and even respect. “Have you any idea where Max went?”
“No, have you?”
“I’m afraid I think he’s dead. His job was here, and I don’t mean his cover job, I mean his real one. He was a good man, clever and loyal.”
For a hundred yards or so they walked in the broadening light without speaking. With a flash of memory, she was going with hi
m, along the quay beside the North Sea, the tide low, and in the early light, the marble-pale sand stretched between the shore and Holy Island, a brief pathway until the tide returned. Its very fragility had made it magic, a dangerous thread across the sea to an island not only holy in name, but in character going back over a thousand years. She could remember standing by the stone wall with grasses all over it. It had been covered with wallflowers, gold and scarlet and blood red, and a sweet, almost overpowering perfume.
“Elena.” Aiden’s voice was sharp, jolting her back to the present. This was business.
“Did you discuss a possible route out of Trieste, in an emergency?” she asked.
“Of course,” he answered briefly. “But we don’t know what has happened to Max. We can’t afford to assume he remained silent about our plans and—”
