The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [121]
‘Hungary?’ Here, if he needed it, was final validation of the seriousness of his predicament.
‘I have a car nearby,’ she added, noting his surprise. Eva’s voice was clipped but heavily accented. Gaddis noticed her gaze shifting to various corners of the park. It was clear that she was concerned about surveillance and wanted to leave as quickly as possible. ‘Won’t you come with me please? The message that Tanya sent to you was not secure. It was not as complex as we would have preferred. Many of us have seen The Third Man, Doctor Gaddis.’
‘Of course.’
So he followed Eva, a half-step behind, feeling like a child in the company of a stranger whose decency he has no reason to doubt. They walked back beneath the low bridge and headed for the forecourt of the Shell garage. The migrants were still sitting under their tree, but did not look up this time as Gaddis passed them. Entering a small area for parked cars, he heard the double sonics of an infra-red lock and looked up to see the rear lights on a grey Volkswagen saloon blinking briefly. Eva opened the passenger door, walked around to the driver’s side and switched on the engine. The car smelled of Deep Heat and Gaddis turned to see a muddied football boot, a pair of shorts and some shin pads lying on the back seat. He assumed that they belonged to Eva’s son, but their appearance was as incongruous to him as it was surprising. Was she a soccer mum with a parallel life? Were people like Eva the footsoldiers of the secret world, ordinary men and women with families and jobs who just happened to moonlight as spies? He was fastening his seatbelt when she began to ask him a series of questions about his life in London. Do you have children? What work do you do? Is London very expensive? It was plainly a pre-arranged tactic designed to put him at ease. No mention was made of the Wilkinson killing, nor of the reasons for Gaddis’s flight from Vienna. Eva kept things very light, very ordered. They were already fifteen minutes outside the city before he was able to turn the conversation around and to get some answers.
‘So, you never told me. Do you work for the British Embassy?’
She smiled, in the way that one might smile at an impertinent stranger. She had been driving, he noticed, at precisely five kilometres beneath the Austrian speed limit. The last thing she needed was a traffic cop pulling them over.
‘Oh no. I am a schoolteacher.’ She turned and saw that Gaddis looked confused. ‘But I help your friends when the telephone call comes through. It is a good arrangement.’
It was one of the strangest remarks he had ever heard. How did such an ‘arrangement’ come about in the first place?
‘So you know what happened to me last night?’ he asked. ‘You know about the shooting?’
This time Eva did not smile. ‘The details of your situation are not my direct concern, Doctor Gaddis. My only job is to make sure that I deliver you safely to your destination. If, on the way, I can help to allay any concerns you might have, or to answer any questions, I am also happy to do this.’
Gaddis looked out of the window. The pale, flat countryside was sliding past like a dream. He craved a cigarette but remembered that he had finished his packet in the park.
‘So where are we going?’ he asked. The ashtray in the car was clean and there was no sign of any cigarettes. ‘What’s the plan?’
Eva took a satisfied intake of breath. The conversation was developing along lines that she had predicted.
‘It’s very simple.’ She overtook a lorry travelling slowly in the lane ahead of them. ‘I am taking you into Hungary where we will stop at Hegyeshalom station. There you will board the train to Budapest. I will return to Austria.’
‘You’re not coming with me?’
He felt embarrassed to have asked the question, to have sounded alarmed. It was as if he had revealed some evidence of cowardice.
‘I am afraid not.’
‘You don’t normally take people all the way?’
Eva raised a matronly eyebrow. ‘Every case is different.’ The response had a tone of censure. ‘Because of a prior arrangement, I need to be