its passing and had the wealth to do so gracefully.
There were enough to keep it perpetually full; the Connaught rarely had an available room.
Scofield knew this, and years ago had decided that occasions might arise when the Connaught's particular ex.
clusivity could be useful. He had reached and cultivated a director of the financial group that owned the hotel and made his appeal. As all theaters have "house seats," and most restaurants keep constantly "reserved" tables for those exalted patrons who have to be accommodated, so do hotels retain empty rooms for ae purposes. Bray was convincing; his work was on the side of the angels, the Tory side. A room would be at his disposal whenever he needed it.
"Room six-twenty-six," were the director's first words when Scofield placed his second, confirming call. "Just go right up on the lift as usual. You can sign the. registration in your room-as usual." - Bray thanked him and turned his thoughts to another problem, an irritating one. He could not return to the rooming house several blocks away, and all his clothes except those on his back were there. In a duffle bag on the unmade bed. There was nothing else of consequence; his money as well as several dozen useful letterheads, identification cards, passports, and bank books, were all in his attach6 case. But outside of the rumpled trousers, the cheap Mackinaw jacket, and the Irish hat, he didn't have a damn thing to wear. And clothes were not merely coverings for the body, they were intrinsic to the work and had to match the work; they were tools, consistently more effective than weapons and the spoken word. He left the bank of telephones and walked back into the aisles of Harrods. The selections would take an hour; that was fine. It would take his mind off Paris. And the inopportune love of his life.
It was shortly past midnight when Scofield left his room at the Connaught, dressed in a dark raincoat and a narrow-brimmed black hat. He took the service elevator to the basement of the hotel and emerged on the street through the employees' entrance. He found a taxi and told the driver to take him to Waterloo Bridge. He settled back in the seat and smoked a cigarette, trying to control his swelling sense of concern. He wondered if Taleniekov understood the change that had taken place, a change so un- reasonable, so illogical that he was not sure bow he would react were he the Russian. The core of his excellence, his longevity in his work, had always been his ability to think as the enemy thought; he was incapable of doing so now.
I'm not your enemyl Taleniekov had shouted that unreasonable, illogical statement over the telephone in Washington. Perhapsillogically-he was right. The Russian was no friend, but he was not the enemy. That enemy was the Matarese And crazily, so unreasonably, through the Matarese he had found Antonia Gravet. The love.
What had happened?
He forced the question out of his mind. He would learn soon enough, and what he learned would no doubt bring back the relief he had felt at Harrods, din-dnished by too much time on his hands and too little to do.
The telephone call to Roger Symonds, made precisely at 4:30, had been routine. Roger was out of the office so he bad given information to the security room operator. The unexplained number that was to be relayed was six-four-three. minus twenty-two... Room 6 1, Connaught.
The taxi swung out of Trafalgar Square, up the Strand, past Savoy Court, toward the entrance of Waterloo Bridge. Bray leaned forward; there was no point walking any farther than he had to. He would cut through side streets down to the Thames and the Victoria Embankment.
"This'll be fine," he said to the driver, holding out payment, annoyed to see that his hand shook.
He went down the cobbled lane by the Savoy Hotel, and reached the bottom of the hill. Across the wide, welllighted boulevard was the concrete walk and the high brick wall that fronted the river Thames. Moored permanently as a pub was a huge refurbished barge named Caledonia, closed by the 11:00 o'clock curfew imposed on all England's drinking halls, the few lights beyond the thick windows signifying the labors of clean-up crews removing the stains and odors of the day. A quarter of a mile south on the tree-lined Embankment were the sturdy, wide-beamed, full-decked river boats that plowed the Thames most of the year round,