The Ways of the World Read online

  On the far side of the dance floor from the jazz band was a bar and a gathering of tables. Sam waved to Max as he approached. Sam was red-faced and grinning and clearly far from sober. His companion was, as Max had surmised, the young woman from the bookshop, looking much more glamorous and indeed much more Russian with her black hair flowing over her shoulders. Her skin was even paler than Max remembered, almost white in the lamplight, so much so that the red bow on her black dress looked like a splash of blood.

  ‘Ah, there you are, sir,’ Sam slurred. ‘Just in time. I’m running out of stories to entertain Nadia with.’

  ‘Nadia Bukayeva,’ the young woman said, extending a hand she appeared to expect Max to kiss. He was happy to oblige. ‘I could not tell you earlier. Igor Bukayev is my uncle.’

  ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance.’ Max sat down, lit a cigarette and engaged Sam in interrogative eye contact.

  ‘Drop of wine, sir? There’s plenty.’

  ‘You’ve certainly had plenty, by the look of you.’

  ‘He is not your batman now, Max,’ said Nadia, reprovingly but genially.

  ‘He never was, actually.’

  ‘He says you were a very daring pilot.’

  ‘Poppycock. I was as cautious as they come. I wouldn’t still be alive otherwise.’

  ‘That is English modesty, yes?’

  ‘That’s what it is, right enough,’ said Sam.

  A waiter hove to and Max ordered a whisky. ‘Are you a regular here, mademoiselle?’ he asked Nadia.

  ‘Nadia, please. We have become very informal, Sam and I.’ She squeezed Sam’s knee, inducing a blush that was visible even through the flush of wine.

  ‘Nadia was asking after you when I got back to the hotel, sir. I didn’t think you’d want me to let her just wander off.’

  ‘So we came here to wait for you,’ said Nadia. ‘And, no, I am not a regular. More … an occasional.’

  ‘Is it always like this?’

  ‘Usually livelier.’

  ‘Really?’ Max glanced around. ‘Livelier than this, eh?’

  ‘They know how to have fun, don’t they, sir?’ said Sam. ‘There are some sights here I never thought to see.’

  ‘And in some cases you’re not exactly sure what it is you’re seeing.’

  ‘Exactly, sir.’

  The whisky arrived. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Sam gulped down a mouthful of wine. ‘It’s been quite a day.’

  ‘I bet it has.’

  ‘’Scuse me, sir – Nadia.’ Sam rose unsteadily to his feet and stifled a belch. ‘I’ve got to point Willy at the wall.’ He stumbled off.

  ‘Who is Willy?’ asked Nadia.

  ‘No one you know,’ Max murmured, watching Sam navigate his meandering way towards a door beyond the bar.

  ‘We need to talk, Max.’ Nadia’s voice was suddenly so close to Max’s ear that he jumped in surprise.

  He turned to find her staring at him intently. She was more serious now – more like the earnest bookshop assistant he had met earlier. ‘This is hardly the place for a quiet chat, Nadia,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Can you hear what I’m saying?’ Her lips were nearly touching his ear lobe. She was speaking at normal volume, but the noise around them reduced her words to a whisper that was nonetheless clearly audible.

  He nodded. ‘Of course I can hear you.’

  ‘Then this is the place. No one else will hear. And anyone who sees us will think I am trying to talk you into bed.’

  ‘But you’re not, are you?’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  Max smiled, unable to decide whether she was flirting with him or rebuking him. Maybe Sam had had the same problem. ‘I want you to tell me why you came to the hotel to see me.’

  ‘Because my uncle disappeared last Saturday, Max. Just a few hours after he heard your father was dead. I do not know where he is. I am very worried about him.’

  ‘You’ve no idea where he might be?’

  ‘No. I do not even know if he is still alive. But when the news came to him of Sir Henry’s death, he was full of fear. I know that much.’

  ‘What did he have to be frightened of?’

  ‘My uncle is a leading member of a secret organization dedicated to the overthrow of the Bolsheviks and the restoration of royalty in Russia.’

  ‘The Trust.’

  ‘You have heard of it?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to be that big a secret.’

  ‘No. Probably it is not. Russians talk. It is one of our vices. Sir Henry had information about the Trust that he offered to sell to my uncle. Did you know this?’

  Max still found it hard to believe his father had been engaged in such activities, but it seemed he was going to have to accustom himself to the idea. ‘What sort of information?’

  ‘There is a traitor inside the Trust. The Cheka know our plans before we know them ourselves. We are being destroyed from within. Sir Henry told my uncle he knew who the traitor was. He was given the name by Pierre Dombreux.’

  ‘But Dombreux was working for the Bolsheviks.’

  ‘Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was playing a double game. It is a dangerous thing to do.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘We must know who the traitor is, Max. Did Sir Henry leave any sort of … record?’

  ‘Nothing that will help you.’

  ‘But will you help us, Max? If you discover the name …’

  ‘I’ll tell you. And you won’t have to pay me for it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She bowed her head and rested it on his shoulder. She murmured something into the muffling cloth of his jacket. For a moment, he thought she was crying.

  ‘Don’t upset yourself.’ He raised her chin gently.

  She looked at him with her large, dark soulful eyes. ‘I am afraid, Max. And you also should be afraid.’

  Max thought of the note the young Arab had secreted in his pocket and smiled. ‘You’re probably right. But I seem to have lost the knack.’

  WHEN HE BELATEDLY rejoined them, Sam made no effort to deny that he felt dead on his feet. ‘It’s been a long day and no mistake.’

  Max insisted on settling the bill and they promptly took their leave of Le Sagittaire.

  ‘You head back to the Mazarin, Sam,’ Max said once they were outside. ‘I’ll escort Nadia home.’

  Ordinarily, Sam would have managed some kind of knowing wink at that. But he really was exhausted. Max suspected much of what he had eaten and drunk in the course of the evening had recently left him by the emergency exit. ‘Righto, sir.’ With that he staggered off.

  It was not far to Bukayev’s bookshop. The streets were generally quiet. Snow was gently falling. In Little Russia, it was quieter still and the snow heavier.

  ‘It is a little like St Petersburg here tonight,’ said Nadia as they approached the shop.

  ‘You grew up in St Petersburg?’

  ‘Yes. And I miss it every day.’

  ‘Do you have any family apart from your uncle?’

  ‘No. My father and my two brothers were killed in the war. My mother died of a broken heart. Uncle Igor is all I have left.’

  ‘I hope you’ll hear from him soon.’

  ‘I hope also. I do not enjoy being alone.’

  They stopped at the door of the shop. There was an appeal – an invitation – in Nadia’s gaze Max could have chosen to pretend he had not noticed. But the warmth and softness of her body were easy to imagine. And he wanted in that instant to do more than imagine them.

  ‘Will you come in?’

  He hesitated, then nodded. And she turned and unlocked the door.

  Max was aware that the man Appleby had instructed to tail him had almost certainly followed him from the Mazarin to Le Sagittaire and on to the bookshop. Staying with Nadia was in part an act of defiance: a statement that he did not care what they knew or thought they knew about him. The rest was a simple surrender to the sensuality of the moment. Nadia needed hi
m and he needed her. And the need was urgent.

  He left as dawn was breaking. Nadia lay in bed, watching him dress. Neither spoke. Words, after their urgent couplings, seemed wholly redundant. He did not even kiss her goodbye. But in the looks that passed between them they exchanged a fitting farewell.

  The snow had stopped overnight and most of it had dissolved into slush. The streets were deserted and Max wondered if his shadow was still with him. He would have had a bone-chilling vigil outside the bookshop if he was. There was no sign of him that Max could detect. But that, he well knew, was hardly decisive.

  Back at the Mazarin, Max took a bath and was still towelling himself down when there was a knock at the door. He opened it to find Sam outside in charge of a breakfast trolley.

  ‘I ordered enough for both of us, sir,’ he said, sounding unwontedly chirpy. ‘There’s nothing like bacon and eggs after a night on the tiles.’

  ‘It’s you who overdid it, Sam, not me.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘But I am confoundedly hungry. And that bacon smells good. Wheel it in.’

  Sam obliged. Max flung on his dressing-gown and they set to.

  ‘I’ve something to tell you, sir,’ Sam swiftly announced, munching on a sausage. ‘I’d have told you last night, but I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.’

  ‘So I noticed.’

  ‘Fact is, I may have found myself a job.’

  ‘You mean here – in Paris?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But how? What sort of job?’

  ‘Well, I thought rather than go gawping at the sights yesterday I’d do something a bit more … constructive.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Like you’ll know, I’m sure, a lot of the meetings to do with the peace conference are held at the French Foreign Office on the Key Dorsey. I went down there and had a chat with some of the chauffeurs. They hang around most of the day, apparently. Got myself into a card game with the British drivers and helped one of them out with a distributor problem he was having. Turns out the chief mechanic they brought over from London’s gone and died of the Spanish flu and they’re desperate to find someone to replace him.’

  ‘So you volunteered?’

  ‘I’m to meet the bloke who hires and fires this morning. The pay’s not bad and room and board at the Majestic’s thrown in.’ Sam grinned. ‘Seems like you might be stuck with me, sir.’

  ‘What about the deposit on those planes?’

  ‘I’ll cable Miller cancelling the order. I reckon I can trust him to pay me back when I get home.’

  ‘You’ve got it all worked out, I see.’

  ‘Cars are child’s play compared with planes, sir. It’ll be money for old rope. I should be able to spare some time to help you out. If you need me to.’

  ‘It’s a kind offer, Sam.’ It had struck Max, in fact, that having a trusted ally lodging at the British delegation hotel might prove invaluable. ‘But everything’s much more complicated than it was this time yesterday.’

  Max told Sam then about Spataro’s murder and Corinne’s arrest. Sam was clearly shocked by the developments. It hardly required a genius to deduce that investigating Sir Henry’s death was a riskier enterprise than Max had originally supposed. And that was before the death threat delivered to him by the young Arab was taken into consideration. He showed Sam the note.

  ‘It gets straight to the point, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But I notice you’re still here, sir.’

  ‘I’ve never been one to walk away from a scrap.’

  ‘Or fly away, as I recall.’

  ‘I don’t really want to drag you into this, Sam.’

  ‘But you reckon Kaiser Bill’s spymaster is behind it all, don’t you, sir?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘Which makes it my patriotic duty to lend a hand. If I can. And I haven’t given up on the flying school yet. You’ll be no use to me dead.’

  ‘Nor much alive, I suspect.’

  Sam frowned. ‘You reckon the boy who slipped you the note was an Arab?’

  ‘Yes. What of it?’

  ‘It’s funny, that’s all. The drivers were talking about a spate of burglaries at the delegation hotels. Petty stuff, apparently. But not so petty if you’re the victim, I suppose. Anyhow, the papers have given the burglar a name: the Singe.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Singe.’

  ‘Do you mean le Singe – the Monkey?’

  ‘Ah. That’ll be it. He gets in through windows so high up no one thinks they need to be closed.’

  ‘Does he now?’ Max remembered standing on the roof of 8 Rue du Verger trying to understand what had led Sir Henry to his death. ‘I wonder how he gets to those windows.’

  ‘Over the roof, maybe,’

  ‘My thoughts exactly. But where are the Arab connections?’

  ‘A few people have caught a glimpse of the burglar – well, someone they think must be the burglar. They say he’s small and dark-skinned – Arab-looking.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘So, d’you want me to ask a few more questions about the Monkey – after I’ve got my feet under the table at the Majestic?’

  Max smiled. ‘It seems to me I’m powerless to prevent you.’

  Sam nodded. ‘That you are, sir. But I thought it only polite to ask.’

  IRETON SEEMED MONUMENTALLY unsurprised by how little Max had learnt from Kuroda. It seemed to Max, indeed, that it was just as he had expected, perhaps even as he had hoped. If stringing Max along to no purpose was Ireton’s objective, it had been well served. If not, it was hard to understand why the American should look so pleased with himself.

  Morahan had the decency to appear at least mildly disappointed as he confirmed Max’s account of their evening’s work. Malory served coffee and smiled appreciatively when Max passed on Kuroda’s good wishes. ‘He really is a charming gentleman,’ she declared, ignoring Ireton’s sarcastic scowl.

  What Max did not pass on, of course, was news of Kuroda’s later contact with him. He reckoned it was only fair to play Ireton at his own game. For the same reason he made no mention of Spataro’s murder and Corinne’s arrest. He did not seriously doubt that Ireton knew of these events. But he was damned if he would give him the satisfaction of being the first to refer to them.

  ‘Are you going to tell me the next person you approached after Kuroda?’ Max asked bluntly as soon as Malory had left them to it.

  ‘I agree Kuroda was never likely to have breathed a word to anyone,’ said Ireton, answering an entirely different question. ‘But we had to rule him out. You can see that, can’t you, Max?’

  ‘I can see it was convenient for you to use me to rule him out for you. Who did you approach next?’

  ‘Like Kuroda told you, he said he’d outbid anyone else who was interested. I took him at his word. But I needed other bidders, of course, to drive up the price he’d be willing to pay.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Where’s the money in this world, Max, since most European countries have bankrupted themselves waging the war to end war? In my homeland, of course. The good old US of A. The American delegation was the obvious place to turn in search of a big fat bid. So, that’s what I did.’

  Max sighed. ‘You may as well give me his name.’

  ‘No need. I’ve arranged to have lunch with him at the Crillon. I’ve told him there’s someone I want him to meet. You. But he doesn’t know who you are and it wouldn’t be fair to put you one up on him. Be at the Crillon at one o’clock and I’ll introduce you to each other. Then we’ll see what you can get out of him. He’s less tight-lipped and a whole lot less cautious than Kuroda.’ Ireton treated Max to one of his misshapen grins. ‘He could be our man. So don’t be late.’

  Ireton soon excused himself on the grounds of a pressing engagement elsewhere, leaving Max to finish the coffee-pot with Morahan, who seemed in no hurry to be on his way. Max was emboldened to ask him a favour.

  ‘About my sha
dow, Schools?’

  ‘You want to lose him?’

  ‘I want to be able to lose him when I choose to.’

  ‘There are a few simple methods. You’re on foot. So is he. That makes any form of transport your friend. Hire a taxi when there are no others about. Hop on a tram just as it’s leaving. Likewise the Métro. There’s a good chance you can give him the slip, at least temporarily. He can pick you up again at your hotel, of course. So, what you really need to do is to put a face to him. The Métro’s probably best for that. Board a train, then jump off just as the doors are closing. Either he shows himself by jumping off as well or he stays on and loses you. I shouldn’t bother trying that this morning, though.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I watched you come in. You’re not being tailed today, Max. Maybe Appleby’s decided it’s not worth the bother.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Morahan shrugged. ‘It’s possible he’s put a smarter operator on your case, I suppose. Maybe more than one man, but that’s a heavy investment. I can’t see Appleby running to it.’

  ‘Why would he call it off?’

  ‘I can’t say. Maybe you should ask him.’

  Morahan walked Max out. Max paused on his way at the door of Malory’s office to wish her a good morning.

  ‘Are you likely to see Mr Kuroda again?’ she asked.

  ‘She has a soft spot for our Japanese friend,’ said Morahan, coming unintentionally to Max’s rescue.

  Malory blushed slightly and pursed her lips in irritation, though whether with herself or Morahan was unclear. ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to him about his country, that’s all. It brings back some happy memories.’

  ‘You’ve been to Japan?’ Max asked, surprised by the possibility.

  Malory sighed, more sorrowfully than nostalgically. ‘I may as well tell you, if only to deny Schools the pleasure of relating it.’