The Secret Servant - Lyall Gavin. Страница 51

"For God's sake," Maxim said.

"I'll be all right."

"I have to make sure of that."

"What's happening?" Quinton demanded. "You can't wander off around here, Professor."

"Just getting a little night air," Tyler said soothingly. He headed off deliberately in the opposite direction to the parked car.

The Sыretй captain and Maxim swapped looks, then Maxim hurried after Tyler.

"You don't have to wet-nurse me day and night, you know, Harry."

"I'm hired to be around."

"Fine. I'll show you some of the sights."

Five minutes later, Maxim saw his first 'sight'. It was a basement in a side road, near the station, and if it wasn't a small room it was too small for the quadrophonic barrage of music battering them from the speakers. Most of the room was dim and vague, lit with candles in wax-dribbled bottles on the small tables. A disc jockey sat at a turntable booth at one side of a tiny stage, lit by a single spot. A few couples danced jerkily in front of him.

They sat down at a table near the back wall, and Maxim stared at Tyler through the gloom. Was this what professors dreamt of behind the Tudor brick walls? It might have seemed exotically wicked to somebody who'd just sailed a yacht single-handed around the world, but to anybody else it was a simple trap for tourists, fleas and fire.

A waiter with LA BOOGIE printed on his T-shirt weaved across, lit their candle and spotted their nationality immediately.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he shouted against the music. "What may I bring you?"

"Harry?" Tyler asked.

"A beer."

"No beer. Sorry." The waiter's voice hardened.

"Scotch, then."

"I don't think so," Tyler said. "Not in here." He smiled at the waiter and then let go a fluent, nicely cadenced speech in French. The waiter stiffened and his eyes glinted wider in the candle-light. After a few seconds he was nodding, then suggesting, finally agreeing happily. He wiggled away again.

"They do quite a nice local wine," Tyler said. "And even in places like this, they're proud enough to serve it properly. I hope all this-" he waved his hand "-doesn't shock you?"

"Only the price. I've been seventeen years in the Army. Places like this follow you around like flies."

Tyler winced slightly in the dim light. "Of course, but whenever you've had enough, you can always head on home and I'll follow…"

"Professor, that's one thing-"

"John."

"Professor. I'm supposed to be your security. I can't walk out on you. We shouldn't even be here. If you were recognised-"

"I've kept my glasses on," Tyler said mildly. "I've never been photographed in them."

Maxim just stared. The waiter clanged the bucket with the wine in front of them and laid out three glasses.

A girl pulled a chair into the space between them and sat down, looking quickly from one to the other. "Vous кtes Anglais, n'est-ce pas? Merveilleux…" She wore a dark low-cut sweater, that was the first thing anybody would, or was supposed to, notice about her. She also had a narrow, curved face like a puffin, with big wings of blonde hair dragged back over her ears.

The waiter poured them three glasses of wine and hurried away. The music stopped, and the girl clapped loudly. "Et donc, c'est Pauline."

A tubby girl danced onto the stage, did a perfunctory striptease to a new record, then stood there managing to make her loose breasts rotate in opposite directions. A handful of customers who had never seen this before squealed with admiration.

In a far corner a single shadowy figure sat down, and stopped the waiter lighting his candle for him. "Professor," Maxim said.

"Harry, we're paying for it, we may as well watch it." Tyler lit a small fat cigar he had collected at the buffet. The girl beside him gave Maxim a cool look.

Another record, another stripper, this one thin and worn-looking. Halfway through her act she stopped and said something in German that got a laugh, then translated it quickly. "After her, I must look like a couple of aspirins on an ironing board."

The British and American customers howled. Maxim watched the figure in the corner, then Tyler, as he reached for and gripped the girl's hand.

He sipped his wine cautiously, but it was a pleasant cool Moselle type. The evening was heading for disaster. He could hear George's incredulous voice: 'You let him do what?'

The stripper finished, the disc jockey shouted: "Encore de boogie!" and started another record. One couple started dancing.

Maxim leaned across the table and said: "Professor, you have got to get out of here. I really mean that."

"Harry, I'm not taking orders from you. I'm sorry, but Fm no longer subject to Queen's Regulations and DCTs, and I'm not breaking any contract or the Official Secrets Acts. I'm a private citizen. You don't have to share my bed."

"Would there be room?"

"I certainly hope not."

They glared at each other through the wavering candlelight. Maxim tried for the last – the next-to-last – time. "Professor, just for the sake of the talks, of Number 10, everything – can't you sleep alone tonight?"

Tyler gazed vaguely upwards, breathing smoke. "I don't think so, thank you, Harry."

The girl was watching Tyler but spitting occasional glances at Maxim. She might not understand English, but she understood a threat to her night's income.

"What are you trying to prove?" Maxim demanded.

"I'm not trying to prove anything."

"Then probably it was just something you ate."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Something you ate. A long time ago."

There was a timeless silence, full only of quadrophonic boogie, the babble of the customers, the clattering-of the waiters.

Tyler let go of the girl's hand and started stroking his tie between two long fingers. His glasses were two pale flickering pools of expressionless light.

He is wondering if he can kill me, Maxim thought. And in this town, with its bridges and cliffs, there could be a chance. But perhaps he is also wondering if I am a burning fuse, to be nipped out, or the first crack of light through a door that will never be closed again.

Or maybe he is just realising that even if he lay with every woman in the world he would still wake with only one memory.

Tyler stood up and started dealing thousand-franc notes onto the table in front of the puzzled girl. The waiter came wiggling across…

In the corner, a figure lifted his hand to call his own waiter.

The Avenue de la Gare was wide, bright and empty. An occasional taxi zoomed past, but the rest of the time it was quiet enough for Tyler's footsteps to echo. Maxim wore soft-soled shoes.

"This doesn't seem to be a mugger's city," Tyler said, "and in any case – I do keep forgetting – you are, as our American friends say, 'carrying'. That always has connotations of pregnancy for me. What is it that you carry?"

"A lightweight Charter Arms revolver, five-shot 38." It was in his hand, in his coat pocket. Neither Tyler nor the cloakroom girl had seen that happen.

"May I ask, Major-" the 'Harry' was gone, now, "who else shares your knowledge?"

"George Harbinger, the PM, at least one man from the Cabinet Office and I wouldn't know who else, by now."

Tyler nodded and let put what might have been a sigh of relief. At least he needn't any longer be thinking of pushing Maxim off the bridge ahead.

"Yet they still let me come here?"

"As George said, Moscow rather forced their hands."

It must be a strange feeling when the emperor realises that he actually has no clothes on at all.

Tyler was silent until they reached the long curling bridge at the top of the road. As they paused at the cross-road, Maxim looked back to what might have been a figure stepping into a doorway, and a distant car with only its side lights on, crawling by the kerb.