Chapter 4 Chapter Four

It wasn't actually cold in the hospital, but people felt it.The air smelled of preservatives.Occasionally, in the corridor outside the ward, the rattling of glassware and instruments could be heard as trolleys passed by.Hilary Craven sat in an iron chair beside the hospital bed. In bed, Olive Betterton lay stretched unconscious under a blackout lamp, his head bandaged.A nurse stood on one side of the bed and a doctor on the other.Jessop sat in a chair in the corner of the ward.The doctor turned to him and said in French: "It won't be long. The pulse is very weak now." "She won't regain consciousness, will she?"

The Frenchman shrugged. "I'm not sure about this. When I'm dying, I might recover." "Is there nothing you can do anymore, can't you inject some stimulants?" The doctor shook his head and went out.The nurse also went out with the doctor.A nun came in to replace the nurse, and she went to the head of the bed and stood fingering her rosary.Hilary looked at Jessop.Jessop winked at her, and she went over to him. "Did you hear what the doctor said?" he asked in a low voice. "Understood. What would you like to say to her?" "If she regains consciousness we're going to try to get whatever intel we can get: passwords, markers, messages, or whatever. Do you understand? She'd probably be more willing to tell you than me."

"You want me to deceive a dying man?" Jessop turned his head bird-like to one side, a position he sometimes liked to adopt. "You think it's cheating?" he said thoughtfully. "Yes, that's right." He watched Hilary thoughtfully. "Well, then you can say and do what you like to say and do. As for me, I have no scruples, do you understand?" "Of course, that is your job. You may ask any questions you please, but you will not ask me to do so." "You are a free man." "There's one question we have to decide now. Shall we tell her she's going to die?"

"I don't know. I'll have to think about that." She nodded and walked back to the seat beside the patient's bed.Now her heart was filled with deep sympathy for the dying woman.This woman, is she really going to be reunited with the one she loves?Maybe they're all wrong?Had this woman come to Morocco merely for consolation, to pass the time before the certainty of her husband's life or death came?Hillary wondered. Time is ticking.After about two hours, the clicking of the nun's rosary stopped.She said in a soft, impersonal voice: "Something has changed, ma'am, and I think she is going to die. I must send for the doctor."

She left the ward.Jessop moved to the other side of the bed and stood with his back against the wall, out of view of the dying woman.The patient's eyelids quivered and opened.Her feeble, uncaring blue-green eyes looked directly into Hilary's.The eyes closed and opened again, and seemed a little bewildered. "Where……" The word quivered between her almost dead lips as the doctor entered the room.The doctor took her hand, held her pulse with his fingers, stood by the bed and looked down at her. "Ma'am, you are in the hospital," he said, "the plane crashed."

"airplane?" She repeated the words several times in a trance, in an unusually weak voice. "Ma'am, is there anyone you would like to meet in Casablanca? Is there any information you would like us to convey?" She raised her eyes painfully to the doctor's face.she says: "No." Her eyes turned to Hillary again. "Who are you? Who..." Hillary leaned forward and said in a very clear voice: "I'm also a passenger who flew here from England. If you need me to help you with anything, just let me know." "No...no...unless..."

"what?" "No." The eyes quivered again, and were half-closed again.Hilary looked up, looked across, and saw Jessop's anxious, commanding gaze.She shook her head firmly. Jessop came forward and stood next to the doctor.The eyes of the dying woman opened again.Suddenly she recognized Jessop, and said: "I know you." "Yes, Mrs. Betterton, you know me. Will you tell me what you know about your husband?" "No." Her eyelids closed again.Jessop turned slightly and left the ward.The doctor looked at Hillary across the way and said in a very low voice:

"It's over." The eyes of the dying woman opened again.Those eyes looked around the room in pain, then stared blankly at Hilary.Olive Betterton made a very faint movement of his hand, and Hilary instinctively took Olive's pale, cold hand in both.The doctor shrugged, nodded and left the room.The two women were finally alone together.Olive Betterton said with difficulty: "Tell me... tell me..." Hillary knew what she was asking, so she knew right away what to do.She bent over the dying woman: "Well," she said, her words clear and forceful, "you are dying. That's what you want to know, isn't it? Now, listen to me, I'm going to try to find your husband. If I succeed, you Want me to bring him any news?"

"Tell him... tell him... beware. Boris... Boris... dangerous..." With a sigh, her breath trembled again.Hilary bowed closer to the dying woman. "To help me... help me with this trip, help me get in touch with your husband, is there anything you want to tell me?" "Snow." The word was uttered so indistinctly that Hilary was baffled.Snow?Snow?She repeated the word several times, but could never grasp its meaning.Olive Betterton gave a faint devilish giggle, and at the same time uttered the following faint words from her mouth: Snow, snow, so much snow! You step on a pile and slip.

She repeated it several times: "Go... go... tell him about Boris. I don't believe it, I didn't believe it. But maybe it's true... if so, if so..." She Lifting her eyes and staring at Hilary, there seemed to be a question that seemed to flash in her eyes: "...be careful..." There was a strange rustle in her throat, and her lips spasmed. Olive Betterton is dead. In the next five days, although Hillary did not engage in any physical activity, she racked her brains.She shut herself in a back room in the hospital and got to work.Every night she has to take a quiz on everything she learned that day.All that could so far be ascertained about Olive Betterton's life was set down on paper, and left for her to learn by rote.The house where Olive Betterton lived, the maid she employed every day, her relatives, the names of her pet dog and canary, every detail of her six months of married life with Thomas Betterton .Her wedding, the names of the bridesmaids and the clothes they wore.Patterns in curtains, rugs and calicos.Olive Betterton's interests, hobbies, her daily activities.She likes the food she eats, the wine she drinks.All this she must remember.Hillary had to be amazed at the amount of seemingly meaningless intelligence gathered.She once said to Jessop:

"Are these things useful?" Jessop answered calmly: "Probably not. But you have to make yourself the real Olive Betterton. Hillary, you should think of yourself as a writer. You're writing a book about a woman. The woman is Olive." You describe her childhood and girlhood. You describe her marriage, the house she lives in. In doing so, she becomes more and more real to you. Then you Go through the whole process again. This time, you write it as an autobiography. You write it in the first person. Do you know what I mean?" She nodded slowly, persuaded despite her disgust. "You can only act like Olive Betterton if you become Olive Betterton. If you have the time to learn the character, it is of course much better. But we don't have time to learn it now. .So, we had to cram you. We put you in as a schoolboy, as a student about to take an important exam." He added: "Fortunately, you are very bright and have a good memory ,thanks God." He looked at Hillary calmly. Olive Betterton and Hilary Craven were almost identical in their passports, but in fact the faces of the two men were completely different.Olive Betterton was plain, not beautiful.She appears stubborn and unintelligent.Hilary's face was talented and seductive.Her deep blue-green eyes, set beneath thick brows, were warm and deeply intelligent.Her lips curved upward into a large, generous mouth.Her chin was so unusual that a sculptor would find every aspect of the face interesting. "The face," thought Jessop, "of ardor and daring, and a dogged spirit of fun-seeking, repressed but not extinguished; that is to enjoy life, and to seek adventure." "You can do it," he said to Hilary. "You're a bright student." This challenge to her intellect and memory had excited Hilary.She became interested in the mission, eager to succeed.Once or twice she also had thoughts against the mission.She told Jessop what she thought. "You don't say I'm not Olive Betterton. You say people know her in general, not what she looks like. How can you be so sure of that?" Jessop shrugged and said: "We can't be quite sure about anything. But we have some experience with this kind of thing. It seems that there is very little information exchanged internationally about this kind of thing. In fact, it is very favorable for this kind of thing." ...if what we have in England is a weak link (note that in every organization there will always be a weak link), what is this weak link doing to France, or Italy, or Germany, or wherever? Nothing will be known. Then we may be disconnected and hit a wall. Each agency knows only a small part of the whole and nothing else. The same is true for the other. I can say with absolute certainty Well, all the agency of the opposing party operating here knows is what plane Olive Betterton is going to get here, and what instructions she has to give her. You see, it doesn't seem like she's important ?. If they brought her to her husband, it was because her husband asked them to bring her to him, and it was because they thought they could make him work better if she were reunited with him. She herself only Just one chip in the gamble. You also have to remember that the idea of ​​using a fake Orev Betterton as an impostor must have been a whim of ours too, due to the plane crash and the color of your hair. Our plan of action was to spy on Olive Betterton, to find out where she was going, how she was going, who she was meeting, and so on. are being watched closely." Hillary asked: "Haven't you tried all this before?" "Tried it, tried it in Switzerland. It was done very unobtrusively. However, for our main purpose, that trial failed. We don't know if anyone contacted her there. If they had The contact, which must have been brief. Naturally they expected the constant surveillance of Olive Betterton, and were therefore prepared for such surveillance. This time we should do our job more thoroughly than last time. Some. We have to try to be more cunning than our opponents." "So you're spying on me?" "certainly." "How to monitor?" Jessop shook his head and said: "I can't tell you that. You'd better not know. What you don't know you can't accidentally reveal." "Did you think I would leak?" Jessop was again owl-serious. "I don't know how good you are at acting, how good you are at telling lies. It's not easy, you know. It's not a matter of being cautious. Anything can get in trouble: a sudden breath, Pause in the middle of doing something — like lighting a cigarette to say you know someone or a friend; you can quickly cover that up, but in a split second it can screw up the whole thing.” "I see. That means we must be on the alert all the time." "Exactly. For now you'd better get on with your studies. It's like going to school again, isn't it? Now you know Olive Betterton verbatim. Let's move on to other things." .” Next, learn the codes, the responses in the interview, and all the knowledge that an agent should know: ask, repeat, find ways to confuse her, make her make mistakes; then, set up fake situations and see how she responds to them.Finally, Jessop nodded, declaring that he was satisfied with Hillary. "You can do it," he said, patting Hilary on the shoulder like a grown-up, "you're an astute student. You have to remember that no matter how much you sometimes think you're going about your activities alone, you're probably Not alone. I'm just saying 'probably,' and I don't want to overdo it. Because, the guy on the other side is a smart guy, too." "What will happen if I reach the end of my journey?" Hilary asked. "what do you mean……" "I mean what's going to happen when I finally run into Thomas Betterton face to face?" Jessop nodded gravely. "Yes," he said, "this is a dangerous time. All I can say is that at that time, if all goes well, you may be protected. That is, if things go as we hope. But you It may be recalled that the basis of this operation was that the chances of survival were not great." "Didn't you say that the chance of survival is only one percent?" Hilary said coldly. "I think now I can increase the odds of survival a bit. I didn't know what kind of person you were then." "No, I don't think you would know." She mused. "To you, I suppose, I was only..." Jessop finished what she wanted to say for her: "A woman with conspicuous red hair, a woman who has no courage to go on living." Her face turned red all of a sudden. "It's a harsh judgement." "It's a real judgment, isn't it? I don't like to feel sorry for others. Because it's degrading. We should only feel sorry for others when they feel sorry for themselves. Self-pity is the biggest thing in the world today. One of the stumbling blocks." Hilary mused: "I think you might be right. Would you make you feel sorry for me if I were eliminated (sorry, I don't know what word you usually use) when I'm on this mission?" "Sad for you? I'm not sad. I'm going to curse desperately, because we lost a person who deserves some effort to cultivate." "You finally complimented me." Hilary couldn't help being pleased. She continued in a matter-of-fact tone: "There's another thing that comes to mind. You say it's unlikely anyone knows what Olive Betterton looks like. But what if I'm recognized? I don't know anybody in Casablanca. But There are people coming on the same plane as me. Perhaps among these tourists I'll run across someone I know?" "You don't have to worry about the passengers on that plane. The people who came here with you are businessmen, and they went on to Dhaka; as for the male passenger who got off the plane here, he took The plane is back to Paris. After you leave the hospital, you will go to another hotel, the hotel where Mrs. Betterton has booked a room. You will wear her usual clothes and do her usual hair style, and then Put another plaster or two on your face and your look will be very different. By the way, we have brought in a doctor who is going to work on your face. Only local anesthesia, so that is No pain. But you do have some real scars from plane crashes." "You're a very thorough person," Hillary said. "It has to be like this!" "You never asked me," Hilary said, "whether Olive Betterton told me anything before he died." "I thought you were going to keep your promise." "I'm very sorry." "You're welcome. In fact, I respect you for it. . . I would like to have a chance to keep my promise myself. But it's not on my agenda." "She did say something that I probably should have told you. She said, 'Tell him'—that's Betterton—'tell him to be careful... Boris...dangerous...'" "Boris?" Jessop repeated the name with relish. "Ah, that's our dignified foreign major, Boris Glydel." "You know him? Who is he?" "A Pole. He came to see me in London. He is supposed to be Thomas Betterton's cousin by marriage." "Is considered to be?" "Let us be more exact. If he is who he says he is, he is a cousin of the late Mrs. Betterton. But we have nothing but his words to prove that." "She's scared," Hilary said, frowning. "Can you describe him. I hope I can recognize him." "Okay. Let's describe it, then. He's 6 feet tall, weighs about a hundred and sixty pounds, has blond hair, a prim face, pale eyes, a foreigner's affectation--speaks English quite correctly, but with Has a distinct accent. Military stiff demeanor." He went on: "When he left my office, I had someone follow him, but to no avail, he went straight to the US embassy. This is also normal, because he came to see me from there with a letter of introduction. That A polite but non-obligatory usual letter of introduction. I think he either sat in someone else's car or slipped out of the embassy through the back door disguised as a valet or something. In short, he escaped our tracks. Yes, I should say, Olive Betterton may have had a point in saying that Boris Glydle was dangerous."

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