‘Siebkron keeps asking me the same question,’ Bradfield said, in an exhausted moment of frankness. ‘Why did they run? He should know if anyone does: he was at Eich’s bedside; I wasn’t. He heard what she had to say, I suppose; I didn’t. What the hell’s got into him? On and on: “What happened at Hanover mustn’t happen in Bonn.” Of course it mustn’t, but he seems to think it’s my fault it happened in the first place. I’ve never known him like that.’
‘You?’ Hazel Bradfield said with undisguised contempt. ‘Why on earth should he ask you? You weren’t even there.’
‘He asks me all the same,’ said Bradfield, standing up, in a moment so utterly passive and tender that Turner was moved suddenly to speculate on their relationship. ‘He asks me all the same.’ He put his empty glass on the sideboard. ‘Whether you like it or not. He asks me repeatedly: “Why did they run?” Just as Karl-Heinz was asking now. “What made them run? What was it about the library that attracted them?” All I could say was that it was British, and we all know what Karfeld thinks about the British. Come on, Karl-Heinz: we must put you young people to bed.’
‘And the grey buses,’ Saab muttered. ‘You read what they found about the buses for the bodyguard? They were grey, Bradfield, grey!’
‘Is that significant?’
‘It was, Bradfield. About a thousand years ago, it was damn significant, my dear.’
‘I’m afraid I’m missing the point,’ Bradfield observed with a weary smile.
‘As usual,’ his wife said; no one took it as a joke.
They stood in the hall. Of the two Hungarians, only the girl remained.
‘You have been damn good to me, Bradfield,’ Saab said sadly as they took their leave. ‘Maybe I talk too much. Nicht wahr, Marlene: I talk too much. But I don’t trust that fellow Siebkron. I am an old pig, see? But Siebkron is a young pig: Pay attention!’
‘Why shouldn’t I trust him, Karl-Heinz?’
‘Because he don’t never ask a question unless he knows the answer.’ With this enigmatic reply, Karl-Heinz Saab fervently kissed the hand of his hostess and stepped into the dark, steadied by the young arm of his adoring wife.
Turner sat in the back while Saab drove very slowly on the left hand side of the road. His wife was asleep on his shoulder, one little hand still scratching fondly at the black fur which decorated the nape of her husband’s neck.
‘Why did they run at Hanover?’ Saab repeated, weaving happily between the oncoming cars. ‘Why those damn fools run?’
At the Adler, Turner asked for morning coffee at half past four, and the porter noted it with an understanding smile, as if that were the sort of time he expected an Englishman to rise. As he went to bed, his mind detached itself from the distasteful and mystifying interrogations of Herr Ludwig Siebkron in order to dwell on the more agreeable person of Hazel Bradfield. It was just as mysterious, he decided as he fell asleep, that a woman so beautiful, desirable and evidently intelligent could tolerate the measureless tedium of diplomatic life in Bonn. If darling upper-class Anthony Willoughby ever took a shine to her, he thought, what on earth would Bradfield do then? And why – the chorus that sang him to sleep was the same chorus which had kept him awake throughout the long, tense, meaningless evening – why the hell was he invited in the first place?
And who had asked him? ‘I am to invite you to dinner on Tuesday,’ Bradfield had said: don’t blame me for what happens.
And Bradfield, I heard! I heard you submit to pressure; I felt the softness of you for the first time; I took a step in your direction, I saw the knife in your back and I heard you speak with my own voice. Hazel, you bitch; Siebkron, you swine; Harting, you thief: if that’s what you think about life, queer de Lisle simpered in his ear, why don’t you defect yourself. God is dead. You can’t have it both ways, that would be too medieval…
He had set his alarm for four o’clock, and it seemed to be ringing already.