“Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I’m new to the district, but I’ve been told you have houses for rent.”
“Oh, yes. You’ll want to speak to Mr. Knights. He handles the rentals. What name shall I say?”
He smiled again. “Ross,” he said, “James Ross.”
She depressed a switch and spoke into the intercom. “There’s a Mr. Ross in the office, Mr. Knights. About a house. Can you see him?”
Two minutes later, James Ross was seated in the office of Mr. Knights. “I’ve just moved up from Dorset to take over East Anglia for my company,” he began easily. “Ideally I’d like my wife and kids to come up and join me as soon as possible.”
“Perhaps you’re looking to buy a house, then?”
“Not just yet. For one thing, one wants to look around for the right house. Then, the details tend to take a bit of time. Second, I may only be here for a limited period. Depends on the head office. You know.”
“Of course, of course.” Mr. Knights understood completely. “A short lease on a house would help you to get settled while waiting to see if you would be staying longer?”
“Exactly,” said Ross. “In a nutshell.”
“Furnished or unfurnished?”
“Furnished, if you have such a thing.”
“Quite right,” said Mr. Knights, reaching for a selection of folders. “Unfurnished houses are almost impossible to come by. You can’t always get the people out at the end of the lease. Now, we’ve got four that might suit you on the books at the moment.”
He offered Mr. Ross the brochures. Two were evidently too large to be plausible for a commercial representative and needed a lot of upkeep. The other two were possibles. Mr. Knights had an hour and drove his client to see both. One was perfect, a small, neat brick house on a small, neat brick road in a small, neat brick housing development off the Belstead Road.
“It belongs to a Mr. Johnson,” said Mr. Knights as they came downstairs, “an engineer working on contract in Saudi Arabia for a year. But there’s only a six-month lease left to run.”
“That should do very well,” said Mr. Ross.
The address was 12 Cherryhayes Close. All the surrounding streets had names ending in “hayes,” so that the whole complex was known simply as “The Hayes.” Brackenhayes, Gorsehayes, Almondhayes, and Heatherhayes were all around. Number 12 Cherryhayes was separated from the sidewalk by a six-foot strip of grass and there was no fence. A garage was attached to one side—Petrofsky knew he would need a garage. The back garden was small and fenced, reached through a door from the tiny kitchen. The downstairs contained the glass-paneled front door, which led into a narrow hall. Straight in line with the front door was the staircase to the upper landing. Under the stairs was a broom closet.
For the rest there was the single sitting room at the front and the kitchen down the hall between the stairs and the sitting-room door. Upstairs were two bedrooms, one front and one back, and the bathroom. The house was inconspicuous and blended with all the other identical brick boxes down the street, themselves occupied mostly by young couples, he in commerce or industry, she coping with the house and one or two toddlers. The place a man waiting for his wife
and children to join him from Dorset at the end of the school term would choose and not be noticed very much.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
“If we can just go back to the office and sort out the details ...” said Mr. Knights.
The details were easy. A two-sheet formal lease to be signed and witnessed, a deposit, and a month’s rent in advance. Mr. Ross produced a reference from his employers in Geneva and asked Mr. Knights to call his bank in Dorchester on Monday morning to clear the check that he wrote out there and then. Mr. Knights felt he could have the paperwork sorted to everyone’s satisfaction by Monday evening if the check and the references were in order. Mr. Ross smiled. They would be, he knew.
Alan Fox was also in his office that Saturday morning, at the special request of his friend Sir Nigel Irvine, who had called to say he needed a meeting. The English knight was ushered up the stairs at the American Embassy shortly after ten o’clock.
Alan Fox was the local head of station for the CIA and he went back a long way. He had known Nigel Irvine for twenty years.
“I’m afraid we seem to have come across a small problem,” said Sir Nigel when he was seated. “One of our civil servants in the Defense Ministry turns out to have been a bad egg.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nigel, not another leak,” expostulated Fox.
Irvine looked apologetic. “I’m afraid that’s what it has to be,” he admitted. “Something rather like your Harper affair.”
Fox winced. The blow had struck home. Back in 1983 the Americans had been badly hurt on discovering that an engineer working in California’s Silicon Valley had blown to the Poles (and thence to the Russians) a vast tract of secret information about the Minuteman missile systems.
Sir Nigel felt that, along with the earlier Boyce spying case, the Harper affair had evened the score somewhat. The British had long tolerated rib-tickling references from the Americans about Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, not to mention Blake, Vassall, Blunt, and Prime, and even after all these years, the stigma remained. It had almost made the British feel a bit better when the Americans had had two bad ones over Boyce and Harper. At least other people had traitors as well.
“Ouch,” said Fox. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you, Nigel. You can’t see a belt without wanting to hit below it.”