George Bartram - Under the Freeze

“Oh, naturally. All right, I’ll get a car. Doesn’t have to be fancy, does it? You ain’t visiting the Queen Mum.”

“No. Something nondescript.”

“Oh, just my line. Swell. All right, gimme two hours, I’ll pick up your pal and meet you at the Rose. Midnight. No, make it half after. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Tarp had backtracked mentally through the days in England and had tried to find if there had been any way by which MI-5 could know the number of the car he was driving or the name under which he had rented it. In the end it seemed too risky to go on using it. If Matthiessen’s people caught up with him now, they would take him. Rattled by the disaster in the passage, they would be looking for a scapegoat. A former Agency man with a fake passport and a Moscow tie-in would make a lovely diversion for them.

He dropped the rental car at the all-night space of a rental agency and carried the loaded briefcase back to his hotel. He spent three-quarters of an hour going through Mrs. Bentham’s work, then separated a dozen or so pages that he needed and put the rest back into the plastic briefcase. Paying his bill, to the astonishment of the owner, who was ready for bed, he dropped the briefcase into the dumpster behind a restaurant and then went to the underground and found his slow way to Hire Attire, which was deserted and dark. He left the bloody and torn clothes with the clean ones in a bag with a note: “Please hold until called for. Some cleaning may be in order. Black.”

It was cold. The rain had turned to intermittent sleet. He wore a turtleneck and a heavy sweater and the tweed jacket with its wet sleeve, and still he was cold. His leg hurt. He was tired. He thought of Johnnie Carrington and found a telephone. Grimes Hospital did not want to put him through to anybody, but after much pleading on his part a resident came on.

“I’d like to inquire about Mr. Carrington.”

“Uh, which Carrington is that?”

“John Carrington.”

“Who is this?”

“How is Mr. Carrington?”

“I’ll have to have your name, sir. It’s regulations.”

Tarp thought he was being stalled. Matthiessen , he thought, and he hung up. Matthiessen’s not going to save his public ass at my expense . Matthiessen would deplore Carrington’s injury, but he could be grateful that it gave him a possible way of locating Carrington’s renegade American friend.

Renegade . That had been Repin’s word. Not so very long ago. Last night, in fact. In the noodle restaurant. It seemed an age.

He walked for five blocks in case MI-5 were quicker at tracing telephone calls than they were supposed to be, and he let two taxis go by before he waved one over and fell into it. It had taken twenty-two minutes to let three cabs go by, and he was wet and shivering.

“Dreadful night,” the driver said cheerfully.

“A bit.”

“Where to, then?”

“Camberwell New Road.”

The driver turned and looked him over, then slowly pushed over his flag. “Not a very bright spot, this time of night,” he said dubiously.

“I’m not going to rob you.” Tarp dropped two bills on the front seat. “I’m too cold.”

The pink word Rose burned its mysterious way against the rawness of the night. Tarp paid the driver and then paid him more to sit there. Many minutes later a pair of headlights slowed as they came past going the other way, then did a U-turn and came up behind.

“Keep your motor running,” Tarp said.

“I got no intention of turning it off. What’s up?”

“Just checking to make sure it’s my friend.”

Tarp waited until he recognized the slim figure of Jenny Barnwell. Then he paid the driver for the fourth time that night and climbed out.

“You’re late,” he said accusingly.

“Of course I’m late!” Barnwell said. Tarp looked into the car. Repin was sitting back there, smiling happily. He looked warm and pleased with himself.

“What’s he so happy about?”

“He taught Sara how to make brioche. She give him a couple dozen and a big kiss.”

“Who’s Sara?”

“Never you mind.”

The car was a big old Humber with an engine that could have powered a truck. Tarp walked around it, still shivering a little but needing to inspect it. It was solid, well cared for. “You did well,” he said.

“God, don’t give me a word of praise! Don’t say I did something up to snuff! Christ, I’ll croak from the shock if you approve!”

“Get in.”

“Bloody well right. You’re driving me back to the club. Well, you don’t expect me to walk, do you?”

They sat in the front seat together. Rose cast its pink glow over their hands. Repin leaned forward, munching a brioche. There was a warm smell of milky coffee.

“Sara?” Tarp said.

“Yes, Sara,” Repin said. “Is very nice little lady.”

Barnwell sneered. “Some Belgian!”

Tarp handed him two pages from the sheets that Mrs. Bentham had given him. He pointed with a slightly quivering finger. “I want you to track down these people. There are nineteen of them.”

“Holy Christ. They aren’t dangerous, are they?”

“I doubt it. They’ll be pretty old, most of them. A lot of them will be dead.”

Barnwell peered at the paper. The light from the car’s ceiling was absurdly dim. “‘Navigation officers and ratings, H.M.S. Loyal .’ Wot’s this now?”

“Just find them. I want to talk to some of them.”

“That’s all I do, find them?”

“That’s all.”

“You’re paying?”

“That’s right.”

Jenny bobbed his head. “Well, that’s not so bad, then.”

He dropped Barnwell outside his club and turned the big car around. It was a pleasure to drive, with lots of reserve power and an affinity for the road on turns.

“Can you spare some of Sara’s coffee?” Tarp said.

Repin maneuvered himself into the front seat and reached back for a sack and plastic cups and a huge Thermos bottle. “Is my pleasure.”

“Who’s Sara?”

“Very nice, very large English female. Ask no questions.”

“All right.” Tarp took a cup of the sweet, milky coffee.

“Where do we go now?” Repin said. He held up a brioche. It was half a day old, but it was delicious, just faintly salty from the butter.

“France. There’s a truck ferry from Folkstone at four.”

“You look bad. Trouble?”

“Much trouble.” He pointed the car toward the bridges and began to tell Repin about the day.

The telephoned instructions from Paris took them through a village that was nothing more than two lines of gray houses along the road, one a store and one a cafe, past a gasoline station sitting by itself two hundred yards beyond the last building, past a seventeenth-century farmhouse with windowless walls up tight against the road. They were fifteen miles inland from the Pas-de-Calais coast. In the overcast, the land looked like rock covered with gray moss, bumpy and grudging and as if nothing could ever put down roots into it.

The roads got smaller and rougher. The last two hundred yards was a rough, stony track up a hill between tough little oak trees that somehow clung to the surface as if they had been glued there. At the end of the track was a tumbledown stone farmhouse, and behind it were three even more dilapidated barns arranged in a U. They and the house were all collapsing into what had been the barnyard. There was a silent old man already in the cold house, and a younger woman with frightened eyes. Tarp thought she might be his daughter, a stick of a woman with the shrinking posture of a dog that has been kicked. She looked at the big old Humber and at Repin and at Tarp with hostile eyes.