Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [79]
His mind went back to the day, a week ago now, when he and Mary Ann had gone their separate ways from Kennedy Airport. They had stood there, both of them finding it difficult to speak. Stafford Nye had broken the silence first.
‘Do you think we’ll ever meet again? I wonder…’
‘Is there any reason why we shouldn’t?’
‘Every reason, I should think.’
She looked at him, then quickly away again.
‘These partings have to happen. It’s–part of the job.’
‘The job! It’s always the job with you, isn’t it?’
‘It has to be.’
‘You’re a professional. I’m only an amateur. You’re a–’ he broke off. ‘What are you? Who are you? I don’t really know, do I?’ ‘No.’
He looked at her then. He saw sadness, he thought, in her face. Something that was almost pain. ‘So I have to–wonder…You think I ought to trust you, I suppose?’
‘No, not that. That is one of the things that I have learnt, that life has taught me. There is nobody that one can trust. Remember that–always.’
‘So that is your world? A world of distrust, of fear, of danger.’
‘I wish to stay alive. I am alive.’
‘I know.’
‘And I want you to stay alive.’
‘I trusted you–in Frankfurt…’
‘You took a risk.’
‘It was a risk well worth taking. You know that as well as I do.’
‘You mean because–?’
‘Because we have been together. And now–That is my flight being called. Is this companionship of ours which started in an airport, to end here in another airport? You are going where? To do what?’
‘To do what I have to do. To Baltimore, to Washington, to Texas. To do what I have been told to do.’
‘And I? I have been told nothing. I am to go back to London–and do what there?’
‘Wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
‘For the advances that almost certainly will be made to you.’
‘And what am I to do then?’
She smiled at him, with the sudden gay smile that he knew so well.
‘Then you play it by ear. You’ll know how to do it, none better. You’ll like the people who approach you. They’ll be well chosen. It’s important, very important, that we should know who they are.’
‘I must go. Goodbye, Mary Ann.’
‘Auf Wiedersehen.’
In the London flat, the telephone rang. At a singularly apposite moment, Stafford Nye thought, bringing him back from his past memories just at that moment of their farewell. ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ he murmured, as he rose to his feet, crossed to take the receiver off, ‘let it be so.’
A voice spoke whose wheezy accents were quite unmistakable.
‘Stafford Nye?’
He gave the requisite answer: ‘No smoke without fire.’
‘My doctor says I should give up smoking. Poor fellow,’ said Colonel Pikeaway, ‘he might as well give up hope of that. Any news?’
‘Oh yes. Thirty pieces of silver. Promised, that is to say.’
‘Damned swine!’
‘Yes, yes, keep calm.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I played them a tune. Siegfried’s Horn motif. I was following an elderly aunt’s advice. It went down very well.’
‘Sounds crazy to me!’
‘Do you know a song called Juanita? I must learn that too, in case I need it.’
‘Do you know who Juanita is?’
‘I think so.’
‘H’m, I wonder–heard of in Baltimore last.’
‘What about your Greek girl, Daphne Theodofanous? Where is she now, I wonder?’
‘Sitting in an airport somewhere in Europe waiting for you, probably,’ said Colonel Pikeaway.
‘Most of the European airports seem to be closed down because they’ve been blown up or more or less damaged. High explosive, hi-jackers, high jinks.
‘The boys and girls come out to play
The moon doth shine as bright as day–
Leave your supper and leave your sleep
And shoot your playfellow in the street.’
‘The Children’s Crusade à la mode.’
‘Not that I really know much about it. I only know the one that Richard Coeur de Lion went to. But in a way this whole business is rather like the Children’s Crusade. Starting with idealism, starting with ideas of the Christian world delivering the holy city from pagans, and ending with death, death and again, death. Nearly all the children died. Or were sold into slavery. This will end the same way unless we can find some means of getting them out of it…’
Chapter 20
The Admiral