The Tightrope Men. Desmond Bagley

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       EIGHT

      Giles Denison stirred his coffee and smiled across the table at Diana Hansen. His smile was steady, which was remarkable because a thought had suddenly struck him like a bolt of lightning and left him with a churning stomach. Was the delectable Diana Hansen who faced him Meyrick’s mistress?

      The very thought put him into a dilemma. Should he make a pass or not? Whatever he did – or did not – do, he had a fifty per cent chance of being wrong. The uncertainty of it spoiled his evening which had so far been relaxing and pleasant.

      He had been driven back to the hotel in an Embassy car after dire warnings from George McCready of what would happen to him if he did not obey instructions. ‘You’ll have realized by now that you’ve dropped right into the middle of something awkward,’ said McCready. ‘We’re doing our best to sort it out but, for the next couple of days, you’d do well to stay in the hotel.’ He drove it home by asking pointedly, ‘How’s your side feeling now?’

      ‘Better,’ said Denison. ‘But I could have done with a doctor.’ He had been strapped up by McCready, who had produced a first-aid box and displayed a competence which suggested he was no stranger to knife wounds.

      ‘You’ll get a doctor,’ assured McCready. ‘Tomorrow.’

      ‘I have a dinner date,’ said Denison. ‘With that redhead I told you about. What should I do about that? If she goes on like she did yesterday I’m sure to put my foot in it.’

      ‘I don’t see why you should,’ said McCready judiciously.

      ‘For God’s sake! I don’t even know her name.’

      McCready patted him on the shoulder, and said soothingly, ‘You’ll be all right.’

      Denison was plaintive. ‘It’s all very well you wanting me to go on being Meyrick but surely you can tell me something. Who is Meyrick, for instance?’

      ‘It will all be explained tomorrow,’ said McCready, hoping that he was right. ‘In the meantime, go back to the hotel like a good chap, and don’t leave it until I call for you. Just have a quiet dinner with … with your redhead and then go to bed.’

      Denison had a last try. ‘Are you in Intelligence or something? A spy?’

      But to that McCready made no answer.

      So Denison was delivered to the hotel and he had not been in the room more than ten minutes when the telephone rang. He regarded it warily and let it ring several times before he put out his hand as though about to pick up a snake. ‘Yes?’ he said uncommunicatively.

      ‘Diana here.’

      ‘Who?’ he asked cautiously.

      ‘Diana Hansen, who else? We have a dinner date, remember? How are you?’

      Again he caught the faint hint of America behind the English voice. ‘Better,’ he said, thinking it was convenient of her to announce her name.

      ‘That’s good,’ she said warmly. ‘Are you fit enough for dinner?’

      ‘I think so.’

      ‘Mmm,’ she murmured doubtfully. ‘But I still don’t think you should go out; there’s quite a cold wind. What about dinner in the hotel restaurant?’

      Even more convenient; he had just been about to suggest that himself. In a more confident voice he said, ‘That’ll be fine.’

      ‘Meet you in the bar at half past seven,’ she said.

      ‘All right.’

      She rang off and he put down the telephone slowly. He hoped that McCready was right; that he could manage a sustained conversation with this woman in the guise of Meyrick. He sat in the armchair and winced as pain stabbed in his side. He held his breath until the pain eased and then relaxed and looked at his watch. Half past five. He had two hours before meeting the Hansen woman.

      What a mess! What a stinking mess! Lost behind another man’s face, he had apparently dropped into the middle of an intrigue which involved the British government. That man, Carey, had been damned patronizing about what had happened on top of the Spiralen and had not bothered to hide his disbelief. It had been that, more than anything else, that had driven Denison into disclosing who he was. It had certainly taken the smile off Carey’s face.

      But who was Carey? To begin with, he was obviously McCready’s boss – but that did not get him very far because who was McCready? A tight little group in the British Embassy in Oslo dedicated to what? Trade relations? That did not sound likely.

      Carey had made it clear that he had warned Meyrick not to move far from the hotel. Judging by what had happened on the Spiralen the warning was justified. But who the hell was Meyrick that he was so important? The man with the title of Doctor or perhaps Professor, and who was described on his passport as a civil servant.

      Denison’s head began to ache again. Christ! he thought; I’ll be bloody glad to get back to Hampstead, back to my job and the people I …

      The thought tailed off to a deadly emptiness and he felt his stomach lurch. A despairing wail rose in his mind – God help me! he cried silently as he realized his mind was a blank, that he did not know what his job was, that he could not put a name to a single friend or acquaintance, and that all he knew of himself was that he was Giles Denison and that he came from Hampstead.

      Bile rose in his throat. He struggled to his feet and staggered to the bathroom where he was violently sick. Again there was that insistent beat in his mind: I AM GILES DENISON. But there was nothing more – no link with a past life.

      He left the bathroom and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. You must remember! he commanded himself. You must! But there was nothing – just Giles Denison of Hampstead and a vague mind picture of a house in a half-forgotten memory.

       Think!

      The scar on his shin – he remembered that. He saw himself on the small child-size bicycle going down a hill too fast, and the inevitable tumble at the bottom – then the quick tears and the comfort of his mother. I remember that, he told himself in triumph.

      What else? Beth – he remembered Beth who had been his wife, but she had died. How many years ago was it? Three years. And then there was the whisky, too much whisky. He remembered the whisky.

      Denison lay on the bed and fought to extract memories from a suddenly recalcitrant mind. There was a slick sheen of sweat on his brow and his fists were clenched, the nails digging into his palms.

      Something else he had remembered before. He had come back from Edinburgh on June 17, but what had he been doing there? Working, of course, but what was his work? Try as he might he could not penetrate the blank haze which cloaked his mind.

      On June 18 he had played СКАЧАТЬ