Here Be Monsters

'Yes?' For the first time Sir Peter's voice was without colour, as carefully neutral as Switzerland. 'No, I didn't know.' Sir Peter's face weakened very slightly. 'No, it wouldn't have done. And I take it that his work… he taught the Classics - Latin and Greek - ?'

Audley nodded. 'Very successfully. I'm reliably informed that Waltham took more of the top scholarships to Oxbridge - and Bristol and Durham - than Winchester, proportionately.

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And as for university entrance… they say that just being in his Classical Sixth was like being given the key to the door.' Another nod, with a cynical smile. 'He used to make the rounds, keeping up his contacts - with his old pupils, as well as the professors and the dons… And with a girl in tow, somewhere, very often. But always discreetly, of course.'

The smile vanished.

Sir Peter frowned. 'Where did he get them? Waltham's a bit out of the way, surely?'

Elizabeth heard herself sniff. 'Waltham has girls in its sixth form now - ' She caught Audley's eye ' - bright girls.'

Audley grinned wickedly. 'But Haddock himself was dead against that, Elizabeth. In fact, my reliable informant says he damn nearly resigned prematurely when he was out-voted.'

'Oh yes?' She fought her prejudices.

'He let himself be out-voted?' Sir Peter was less unhappy now. 'But he was always rather against democracy - ever since the Athenians voted for the death of Socrates.'

'They stopped his mouth with gold, was what he's alleged to have said afterwards.' Audley was happier too. 'They gave him a grant to entertain his sixth formers in his house in the South of France. And they increased his salary.'

Sir Peter cocked his head. 'I didn't think the Classics had so much clout these days?'

'They don't, my dear chap,' agreed Audley. 'But your old friend had a lot of influence - not just on account of his university results… or even because he was an ex-president of the Imperial Classical Association… which has a few rather well-placed fellows and members in the higher reaches of power, even now.' He shook his head suddenly. 'Come on, Peter - I can tell Miss Loftus about Haddock any time. It's that twenty-six-year-old bad conscience of yours she's interested in. Or would you prefer my version of events?'

'Isn't that in your record - your version of them, David?' Sir Peter switched to Elizabeth without waiting for an answer. 'Very well, Miss Loftus. I suppose I should be glad of the opportunity of speaking for myself, even though I'm not particularly proud of what I did.'

He paused. 'Is that what you wanted to hear, David?'

But Audley didn't seem to have heard him: he seemed to be concentrating on the books he had last seen in 1958, to the exclusion of everything else now.

'What did you do, Sir Peter?' Since the Master of Xenophon Oil was waiting for comfort which Audley was clearly not about to give him, she had no choice but to push him dummy2

forwards.

'I destroyed his career.' He accepted Audley's refusal, coming back to her, to meet her eyes without blinking.

'Squadron Leader Thomas's career?'

'Squadron Leader?' In spite of all their talk about aeroplanes - planes British and German, crashed or shot down or 'ditched' - the rank was meaningless to him. 'Yes, if you like, Miss Loftus - Squadron Leader Thomas - Caradog Thomas - Haddock Thomas - ' He shrugged '

- whoever you like, it's the same man. And it's the same thing: I shot him down, Miss Loftus.

And he didn't bale out, or walk away… or swim ashore… not after I'd got him in my sights.' He almost looked at Audley again, but held himself steady in the end, on her. 'Or maybe he did -I don't know now, Miss Loftus.'

'What did you do?'

'What did I do?' He drew a breath. 'We were both career civil servants. Or… I was in the process of resigning, actually. Because… it was after Suez. Because it was different, after Suez - ' another breath, taken in slowly ' - or, that was my excuse anyway, at the time, to myself. But you could interpret it quite differently: you could say that I was a second-class honours man, with second-class prospects… But with the prospects in oil, after Suez -

that's in '56, that was - and with what I knew… I suppose you could say that I knew where the first-class prospects might be. What I was doing in the Civil Service suddenly seemed… unprofitable to me, in more sense than one, at any rate.'

'And Mr Thomas?' It didn't seem right to refer to the man by his nickname when she'd never met him. 'How did you - ?'

'Destroy his career?' He half-looked at Audley again, as though for confirmation. But the big man was still pretending to browse among the books. 'I did - didn't I, David?'

'If you think you did… tell her.' Audley didn't look up. 'After all this time it's a bit late to agonize. If that's what you're doing.'

'Yes.' Sir Peter gave Audley a Xenophon look. 'All right, Miss Loftus. He wants me to remember, so I will.' He stared at her, sorting his memories into separate columns, adding and subtracting to prepare his balance sheet. 'I wasn't in the process of resigning -I had already resigned. And I wasn't buying claret. By then I was clerking for this Greek, who had cornered a piece of the tanker tonnage, and was cashing in on it. And I was learning Arabic at evening classes… When he came out of the woodwork.' He nodded towards Audley.

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'1958?'

'Uh-huh.' Audley turned the page of his book.

'1958 - I was beginning to think I'd made a mistake, somewhere down the line: that I should have read Arabic at Cambridge, or stayed in the Foreign Office.' A trace of lingering bitterness still showed in his voice. 'And then he turned up, with what seemed like a fool question. Except he had a Special Branch man in tow - or a secret policeman of some heavier variety. So it didn't seem like a silly question at the time.' He gave Audley another look. 'You scared me, David.'

'I wasn't after you.' Audley turned another page. 'Not particularly.'

'It didn't seem like that.' Sir Peter came back to her. 'He wanted to know where I'd been on holiday, the summer before.'

'And you didn't appear too scared, actually,' murmured Audley.

'But I was.'

'It didn't stop you telling me - to go bowl my hoop elsewhere,' said Audley mildly. 'The first time, anyway.' He raised his eyes to Elizabeth. 'He wasn't helpful the first time.'

'But he came back a second time - in working hours, with the same policeman in attendance - right there in the middle of the Greek's office!' The recollection of the second time, even in this customized room on the pinnacle of the power and glory of Xenophon Oil, made Sir Peter wince. 'The Greek damn near sacked me on the spot… Which, with what he was doing - the way he was sailing his tankers close to the wind - you could hardly blame him… To have one of Sir Frederick Clinton's bright young men interrogating one of his clerks - ' For a fraction of a second the Master of Xenophon became the Greek's clerk again in his memory ' - which was what saved me, I suppose.'

'Huh!' Audley closed the book. 'Stavros didn't quite know how much you knew, eh?'

Sir Peter nodded. 'He told me he'd see me right if I kept my mouth shut about his business.'

'And you could continue to date his daughter?' Audley cocked a knowing eye.

'That too,' agreed Sir Peter evenly. 'But if it didn't concern his business I'd better tell you what you wanted to know, or go and register at the nearest Labour Exchange.'

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'And not continue to date his daughter?' Audley matched agreements. 'I was rather depending on that to open you up.'

It was exactly as David Audley's wife always said - had said from their very first meeting: When David plays, if you want to play with him, you had better learn to play dirty. Because that's the way he plays!

Sir Peter looked as though he was beginning to remember how much he had once disliked Audley: the two men studied each other in silence, each estimating and re-estimating what they observed, each aware that the other had put on weight and muscle since 1958, but neither quite sure now who had the edge on the other if it came to trouble-making.

'Your new boss is that military fellow - Butler, is it?' Sir Peter changed the subject casually.

'Looks a bit stupid, but isn't, by all accounts?'

'That's right.' Audley accepted the change mildly. 'Right both times. Do you know him?'

'Not really. I knew old Sir Frederick much better.' Sir Peter smiled. 'And your economics fellow better still -Neville Macready… Do you see much of him?'

'As little as possible.' Audley returned the smile.

Elizabeth had been half-way to thinking the tortoise and the armadillo, but those two smiles amended the image. It was more like the elderly shark and the middle-aged tiger - and each was showing its teeth.

'A slightly surprising appointment, wasn't it?' The tiger tested the depth of the water with a provocative paw. 'Butler, I mean - ?'

'Very surprising, more like.' Audley nodded, but then looked away towards the unfinished line of books as though the subject was beginning to bore him. 'It should have been Oliver St John Latimer, if some bastard hadn't queered his pitch. He was the obvious choice.'

'Is that a fact?' Fascination got the better of Sir Peter. 'Was that Macready?'

'No-oo…' Audley pounced on a tattered paperback. ' Europe and the Czechs! That's a very early Penguin!' He handled the antique paperback reverently. 'Macready hates Latimer, but it certainly wasn't Mac.'

'No?' Sir Peter echoed the rejection of his first candidate doubtfully.

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'No.' Audley replaced the fragile heirloom. 'That was one of your '58 library. I remember now. And as you never throw books out there should be a copy of If Hitler Comes somewhere along here - ' Audley moved further along' - ah!'

Elizabeth began to understand the nature of the exchange. If Sir Peter Barrie knew so much about the byzantine internal politics of the department then he was not just name-dropping to warn Audley of his influence in high places. For, if he knew that much, he must also know that Audley himself had been the other front runner - indeed, the odds-on favourite, if Paul's assessment had been correct. So that 'slightly surprising appointment'

guess had been cruelly barbed.

Audley looked up. 'Come on, Peter!'

Sir Peter frowned. 'It can't have been that RAF fellow - the one who married the Ryle woman, after Ryle divorced her - ?'

'Hugh? Good God, no!' Audley grunted contemptuously. 'But I didn't mean that, my dear chap… it was me, of course, if you must know - I was the bastard - I can't abide the egregious Oliver, so I put in the boot much the same way as you did with old Haddock. Or maybe not in exactly the same way. But I did queer his pitch sufficiently. And Jack Butler is my daughter's godfather, you know - ' He gave the tiger a huge shark-grin ' - or perhaps you didn't know? But it doesn't matter anyway, because that isn't what I mean.' The shark-grin vanished. 'What I meant was for you to stop pissing around, Peter, and start telling our Miss Loftus about your eternal triangle - you and old Haddock and the fair Philadelphia, eh?'

Elizabeth just caught the dying glow of the flash of hate, beyond that old unforgotten dislike, which momentarily illuminated Sir Peter's face, as she turned towards him. Or was it pain - it was gone so quickly that she couldn't be sure.

'The fair Delphi - " Delphi" , was it?' Audley's voice came from outside her range of vision, casually seeking confirmation on the surface, but evil with certainty underneath. 'They both worshipped at the same shrine, Elizabeth. So they both asked for an answer from the Delphic oracle: "Who loves me?" - Philadelphia Marsh, only and beloved daughter of Abe Marsh, ci-devant Abraham Marx, no relative of either Karl or Groucho or Spencer.'

Whatever it had been, it was pain now.

'But they each received an equivocal answer.' Audley only continued when it was evident that Sir Peter had nothing to say. 'Only… Haddock was a classicist, so he knew that when the oracle at Delphi said "No", that didn't necessarily mean the same thing. But poor old Peter Barrie wasn't a classicist, so he thought "Yes" meant "Yes".'

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' No!' Interrogation would never have wrung that pain from the man, not with the whole of Xenophon's green-and-gold tower beneath him, thought Elizabeth. And Audley hadn't tried to interrogate him.

'That was the way it was.' Audley knew when he was on a winner. 'They were both after the same girl. And Haddock won.' He paused, but not long enough to allow any objection.

'So his good friend shopped him.'

'That was not the way it was - and you know it.' Sir Peter registered his objection too late.

'You've already said as much yourself.'

'Oh - sure! The first tirne I twisted your arm you wouldn't talk. But when the Greek twisted your arm… then you gave me Haddock. So you'd sorted out your priorities by then - right?'

Sir Peter Barrie looked at her for a long moment, which she realized was the moment Audley had been working towards from the beginning.

'Miss Loftus… in a perverse way he's right - the truth, the whole truth… and everything but the truth… that's how he's right.'

She felt for him, recalling the same division of truth which Father's mourners had delivered and withheld at his funeral, as they had briefly held her hand, with the rain dripping from their caps, or their hats, or their umbrellas - those who knew him, some of them old shipmates, and those who only knew him from his medals and the naval annals and afterwards: all of them had possessed a piece of that truth, and pehaps she herself only knew a part of it, after all.

The truth was that the truth always had one more dimension than even the most complete profile imagined. 'Yes, Sir Peter?'

'I don't really know what you want. But if you want me to shop him now, I'm afraid I can't help you. Because I think I loved them both, Miss Loftus.'

Past tense - loved! But Haddock Thomas was still alive, so what did loved mean?

'Delphi was younger than I was - ten years younger.' He dismissed Audley with a half-glance. 'And Haddock was almost exactly eleven years older than I was… I know that, because he used to say that he was conceived after the Battle of Loos and born during the Battle of Somme - and that's 1916. So I was midway between them. And… it wasn't just

"Yes" and "No". I thought he was too old for her, as a matter of fact, Miss Loftus.'

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Elizabeth struggled with the mathematics of what he was trying to tell her, which somehow added up to the dreadful arithmetic of the whole blood-stained twentieth century: Haddock Thomas had been a pilot in Father's war - but Sir Peter had been just too young for that… and Delphi - Philadelphia Marsh - ?

'He introduced me to her. It was at a party in the American Embassy - Dr Marsh was one of their economic advisers, commuting between Bonn and London and Washington…

Haddock had worked with him, off and on, ever since he'd joined the service, after he'd come down from Oxford the second time, after the war.'

'Where - when did you meet… Haddock?'

'At Oxford, in '48. He was a post-graduate - a Farnsworth scholar. If you want to address him correctly he's Doctor Caradog Thomas. I was a mere undergraduate.'

'But you were friends.'

'Not then. I seconded a motion he proposed in a debate. "This house does not believe all cats are grey at night". After that we were friendly acquaintances. I didn't meet him again until… '53 - no, '54. He was Foreign Office, I was an economic dogsbody. It was in Paris.'

'And that was when you became friends? But he was older than you.'

'Oh yes. Eleven years and a war older, Miss Loftus. But he always maintained the war didn't count - those were his lost years, he said, so they were struck off. And that made the difference only five years.' He thought for a moment, then shrugged. 'I didn't think of him as being older, anyway. Not then.'

He stopped, and Elizabeth knew she would have to jog him again to make him go on. 'He introduced you - ?'

'Yes. To Delphi Marsh. He knew a lot of people - a lot of girls. I didn't.' He was slowing again. 'It was a long time ago.'

'Yes, Sir Peter. She was his girl?'

'No. She was no one's girl when he introduced her.' He took his memory by the throat suddenly. 'Then she was my girl - very much my girl, Miss Loftus. We had an understanding. We went on holiday to Italy together. Then she went on holiday again, but without me. And then she was Mrs Caradog Thomas.' He drew a single breath. 'And then she was pregnant, and then she was dead, Miss Loftus,' he expelled the words with the same breath, as though to clear them finally from his chest, once and for all.

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'Dead?' The sudden ending to an otherwise familiar story took Elizabeth by surprise. 'She died - ?'

'In childbirth?'

He shook his head. 'She was knocked down by a car.'

'A lorry, actually,' murmured Audley.

'A lorry, then.' He continued to look at her as he half-turned his head towards Audley. 'If you want to know all the details I'm sure he has them on file somewhere. But it was no one's fault. At least… at least that was what Haddock wrote in his letter.'

Elizabeth frowned from Sir Peter to Audley. It was as though they had assembled a jigsaw for her, carefully sorting the straight edges and the surrounding pieces, but leaving the centre blank. 'But how did - ? You said… he was "shopped" - how was he shopped?'

'Quite simply, Elizabeth dear. As simply as "B" comes before "T", to start with. Meaning that I came to "Barrie" on my little list before I came to "Thomas". Because they'd both been on holiday in foreign parts, but one tends to work alphabetically.'

'But - ' Elizabeth came within a tyro's breath of adding why, only just catching herself in time: for whatever original reason, Audley had only been doing then what she was doing now, all those years ago ' - but Sir Peter had left the service - the Board of Trade, or the Treasury, or whatever - by then, surely?' It was lame, but it was better than nothing.

'Very true,' agreed Sir Peter. 'But then, even if I had still been employed in Whitehall, it was still a great nonsense.'

Elizabeth looked at him. 'Why was it a great nonsense?'

'For three reasons, Miss Loftus. You yourself have supplied the first: I had quit the Queen's service - I had, as it were, privatized myself. And although the Greek had some fairly hot little secrets of his own, they were hardly the sort which should have interested British Intelligence. Besides which, I was never really privy to any of his secrets, I only suspected things here and there. But the second reason is more to the point, though actually not dissimilar. Because, when I was in the service, what I was doing was hardly top secret. It was sensitive, of course - some of it. But none of it was really in the least important. What I had in my head was of far more use to the Greek's oil deals than to any foreign power, actually. So if they were after a traitor, I was a very poor candidate.'

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Audley shook his head. 'I told you, Peter - I wasn't particularly after you.'

'So you said. Although it didn't seem like that at the time. And you were certainly after that Italian holiday of mine - ' He came back to Elizabeth ' - which is my third point. Because there was no mystery about that, you see.' The corner of his mouth dropped slightly. 'It's rather ironic - I'd guess that's the only time I've been properly vetted, with expense no object - would that be correct, David?'

Audley puffed his cheeks. 'It was the only time I vetted you. That would be correct.'

'Uh-huh? Well, the other times wouldn't have amounted to much, compared with your time, I would guess.'

'Why was it ironic, Sir Peter?'

'Ironic and expensive.' He smiled at her with his mouth, but not with his eyes. 'It was a rather special holiday. I was with the girl I expected to marry. And she was beautiful - I suppose I was rather proud of myself: I'd never expected to capture such a beauty, and…

partly because I loved her, and - but perhaps partly to impress her, and make sure of her…

I drew most of my savings out of the bank -I hoped to make more from the Greek, one way or another - and I splashed it around. Miss Loftus.' He added. 'We flew to Rome, and stayed at a good hotel - she was used to good hotels. And I hired a car, and we progressed by slow stages - and more good hotels - to Florence. And then to Venice… I knew what to show her, because I'd slummed that same route long before, mostly hitch-hiking and sleeping semi-rough. But this time it was all first-class and over-tipping.' For a fraction of a second he looked clear through her. Then he focused again, and shrugged sadly. 'And if you want another irony… obviously I didn't impress her at all. I only put her off, it would seem, judging by what happened afterwards. Though it didn't seem so to me, at the time.'

He thought for a moment. 'No… but I must have left a trail a mile wide - ' He nodded to Audley ' - for him to follow - what was it, David: " Where did you go?" , and " Who can vouch for you, that you were there?" , and " Which day was that?" - I couldn't remember which day it was, exactly… but I'll bet you found enough over-tipped waiters and chamber-maids and hotel managers who recalled the silly young Englishman and his bellissima signora, eh?'

Audley made one of his extra-ugly faces. 'I wasn't after you, Peter.'

'Yes, you were. And you checked.' The old bitterness lay beneath very thin ice. 'And you pushed me.'

'And you were scared.' The ugly face became brutal. 'If you had such a bloody-clear conscience - why were you so scared?'

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'Has it never occurred to you why?' The ice cracked. But now it was anger which showed.

'My God, man - it was because I had a bloody-clear conscience that I was scared! I knew it couldn't be the holiday, so it had to be something else. So I thought it was the Greek, don't you see? I thought he'd been up to something really nasty that I didn't know about. In which case I was out of a job again - and compromised - and with hardly any money, too!'

All the vivid memories of 1958 suddenly animated Sir Peter Barrie's face, melting its ice to reveal both anger and bitterness. 'You're absolutely right - I was scared! I was scared stiff, if you must know.'

'Ah…' Audley came as close to embarrassment as he was capable of doing when caught in an error. But then he shrugged it off quite easily, as he always did. 'So that was why you served up the Haddock?'

Sir Peter's mouth tightened. 'Which I have regretted ever after. And never more so than now, I think.' He looked at Elizabeth suddenly.

'He was on the list,' snapped Audley. 'I would have come to him without your help, sooner or later.'

'Would you?' Sir Peter ignored him. 'What are you up to, Miss Loftus?'

'What did you say about him, Sir Peter?'

'Huh!' Audley sniffed. 'Actualy, he said very little, as I recall.'

'But also too much. I said - ' Sir Peter's features contorted ' - or, something like, I said… " If you're looking for holidays abroad - mysterious holidays - why don't you try Dr Caradog Thomas?

He's always going on holiday abroad. And his last holiday was the most mysterious one of all, you'll find - ask him about his Romanesque churches - ask him how he liked Cluny."' He controlled his face with an effort. 'I was frightened, Miss Loftus. So I cracked. And I said, in effect… "Do it to my friend Haddock - not to me!"' He paused. 'And now I am justly served, with my own treachery. Which is how the past always serves us, I suspect.'

He really loved the man Thomas, his ex-friend, thought Elizabeth. Even after Thomas's betrayal of their friendship - or the combined and ultimate betrayal of it by Thomas and the beautiful Miss Philadelphia Marsh - even after that, he still loved the man, his once-upon-a-time friend. Because, in spite of all that, he counted his betrayal the greater one.

She looked at Audley, and guessed that he had known all this too.

'I don't know what you're up to now.' Sir Peter pulled her back to him, but then stopped suddenly. 'No - I know you can't tell me that - can't or won't - I know that. But I still have dummy2

two things to tell you, neither of which you may find very much to your taste, perhaps. But there it is.'

Audley surely knew all this. But whether he had or not, his instinct had been right, to drop everything in order to make sure of catching Sir Peter Barrie to start her off on Dr Caradog Thomas.

'Yes, Sir Peter?' she stepped meekly into his silence.

The silence continued for several long seconds. 'He forgave me, you know, Miss Loftus.

Naturally.'

Tff - ' It was the last thing she'd expected until she heard it. Then it was… natural, of course. ' He forgave you?'

'I still have this letter - his second letter, which he wrote after Delphi's death… Quite a long time after, because I was away, and I didn't hear about it at the time.' Another silence. 'I have both his letters still. But I will not show them to you. But… he very carefully explained why he left the service - that it really had nothing at all to do with the Intelligence badgering. Nothing to do with me, in fact: "Like you, I am mine own executioner, mine own liberator" - I'll give you that much.'

Another silence set in. But this time she must let it live out its natural life.

'And the other thing is - ' Once again he turned to Audley ' - that you're wrong, David Audley. Because if it's Haddock you're after now, then you're just as wrong now as you were back in - back in whenever it was, when you persecuted us both. Check me again, if you like - you can have a free run. But leave Haddock alone - it's simply not in him to be a traitor. I'd stake my life - or Xenophon's profits for the year, whichever you reckon the more valuable - on that. Because he worships different gods.'

It wasn't until they were in the lift that Audley spoke again, beyond the minimal grunts and required pleasantries of farewell.

'A remarkable man, Elizabeth. And not a second-class man, either. But he was quite right to leave the Civil Service. He was a man of action - a born money-maker, not a spender.

The Greek understood that. Whereas… whereas Haddock Thomas was something else again.'

'What else, David?'

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Audley stared at the red button. 'A man of different action. A better man, too.'

'Better?' She had to remember that Audley had cleared both of them. 'Even though he seduced his friend's girl?'

The lift stopped.

'Seduced… and married, Elizabeth. And I rather think she was his one true love.' He looked at her as the lift-doors opened. 'Or is that too sentimental for you to swallow?'

Audley had married a much younger woman too: that was something else she had to remember. 'So you still think he's innocent?' She met his gaze. 'In spite of Major Parker?'

'I think… I think you are supposed to make your own mind up about that, my dear.' He gestured for her to leave the lift. 'So what do you want to do next? Or can I return to my more important work at Cheltenham? You can always use Major Turnbull for your leg-work - his legs are younger than mine.'

She stepped out of the lift, and the decisive click of her high heels on the Xenophon mosaic floor mocked her irresolution.

'Well, Elizabeth?'

If he had wanted to go back to his Cheltenham investigation nothing either she nor the Deputy-Director could have done would have stopped him, decided Elizabeth: Cheltenham was important enough for him to have appealed over both their heads.

Therefore he did not want to go back. And that meant he was more concerned with Haddock Thomas than he pretended to be.

Paul, she thought suddenly. If Paul meant business, then this must be the business he meant -

'Well, Elizabeth?' The question was repeated just a little too casually, confirming her suspicion.

'I need to know more about Thomas before I go to see him, David.' She needed to talk to Paul. 'I'd like to have a look at the Debrecen records.'

'I can tell you all about that.' He relaxed slightly. 'Most of it is what I put into it myself.'

'Who else can tell me about Thomas?' She didn't want him around when she met Paul.

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'Who would you recommend? That we can rely on?'

He stared at her for a moment, as though in doubt. There is someone I can perhaps lay on for you. But it'll need a phone-call or two. And we'll have to go to him.'

She smiled. 'Okay - will you do that, David?' But she must give him more than that to do.

'And will you brief Major Turnbull for me, while you're about it?'

His doubt increased. 'Brief him about what?'

About what? She needed something quite complicated and time-consuming, yet reasonable. *

'About what, Elizabeth?'

She found herself staring past the nearest bank of Xenophon jungle, towards the reception desk and at the beautiful receptionist he had bullied, who was watching them uneasily.

She was beautiful -

'I'd like to know a lot more about Thomas's wife, David. Sir Peter Barrie's ex-fiancee?' The idea expanded as the two sudden deaths telescoped over the many years which separated them. 'Particularly the circumstances of her death.'

He frowned. 'It was an accident, Elizabeth. We did look at it carefully, you know - ?' But he knew he couldn't really question the request. 'All right, if it will put your mind at rest, we'll see what Turnbull can turn up. But he'll be wasting his time.'

Time was what she needed. There was something going on which she didn't understand, but which relegated Cheltenham to the second division. And if anyone knew what it was, Paul would know enough to guess at it. And she could always handle Paul, at a pinch.

'I'll meet you back at the office after lunch, David,' she concluded.

6

It was all according to what you were used to, thought Elizabeth as she paid the taxi-driver.

They were all accustomed to meet in pubs up and down the river, as well as in more respectable places - to meet, and to meet people whom they did not wish to be seen meeting in those too well-frequented respectable places: that was apparently the way dummy2

David Audley had always operated, and Paul emulated him in this, as in other things. But, although she liked to regard herself as entirely liberated and equal to all occasions, there were still pubs and pubs. And the Marshal Ney was quite evidently one of those in the

'and pubs' category.

She could see that the taxi-driver agreed with her as she tipped him. He had been doubtful when she had named the place and specified its location; but now that they were here, surrounded by urban decay and the smell of the river (or of something worse), he was certain that it was not really the sort of destination for a well-dressed lady from Whitehall -

or, at least, a lady whose face precluded any romantic or illicit intention.

'Right, love?' He watched her study the pub sign above the door of the saloon bar. 'The Marshal Ney - right?'

There was no name on the sign, only a representation of what might be the bravest of Napoleon's marshals, although it looked more like a pirate brandishing a cutlass from astride a kangaroo.

Elizabeth's heart faltered. There wasn't a soul in sight, only a lean black cat which paused in its unhurried crossing of the road to eye her. Then she remembered something Paul had once said. 'Do they call it "The Frenchman"?'

He nodded, and engaged the gears, and gave her up for lost. That's right, love - "The Frenchman" it is.'

She watched the taxi move slowly away - slowly, because the cat itself was in no hurry to give it right of way on its own territory - and then pushed at the door. It yielded unwillingly, with an unoiled screech.

If anything, the smell inside was more insistent. But there, to her enormous relief, was Paul, elbow-on-bar, nursing his Guinness, with his ear inclined to a shrivelled little man on the other side.

'Elizabeth!' He straightened up - almost stood to attention. 'What a delightful surprise!'

Her relief, which had almost graduated to gratitude, instantly evaporated. But she could hardly say 'What a dreadful place! Why did you bring me here?' with the possible owner of the dreadful place staring open-mouthed at her.

'Meet my friend Tom.' Paul indicated the little man. 'Tom - Elizabeth.'

'Lizbuff.' The little man climbed on something behind his bar, raising himself to her level, dummy2

and offered her his monkey's paw, the fingers of which were stained bright nicotine-brown.

'Tom.' She shook the paw.

'You don't wanta believe 'im, though.' The little man half-glanced at Paul, screwing up his face, which he was able to do the more expressively because he seemed to have no teeth.

'In what way shouldn't I believe him?' Elizabeth questioned this sound advice innocently.

'I ain't's friend, for starters.' Tom emitted a curious sucking noise. 'An' 'e ain't surprised, neither. 'E was expectin' you.'

'Oh yes?' He had only confirmed her most recent conclusion, but it was still irritating to be computed so accurately. 'And what made you so sure, Paul?'

'I wasn't sure - not quite.' He was unabashed by Tom's betrayal. 'Tom - why don't you just push off to your other bar, like a good chap, eh?'

'Oh yus?' The little man didn't move. 'Lady's teetotal, is she? Ain'tcha got no manners, then?'

'Will you have a drink, Elizabeth?'

'It's a little early for me.' She smiled at Tom. 'If you don't mind.'

'Suit yourself, Miss.' Tom stepped down off his box and shuffled towards a faded curtain at the other end of the bar. But then he stopped and turned back, with his hand on the curtain. 'Prob'ly jus' as well. You wanta 'ave yer wits about yer wiv 'im, Miss. 'Cause 'e's artful.' He nodded. 'Artful - like the other one.' He watched her with sharp little eyes. 'The big fella - okay?'

'Okay.' She wondered how much he knew - or guessed - about their business. 'Thank you, Tom.'

'And thank you too, Tom,' Paul called after the little man as he disappeared through the curtain. 'I'll do the same for you some time.'

Elizabeth studied him. 'Why were you so sure I'd come?'

He returned the scrutiny. 'I wasn't sure. It depended on… oh, several things.'

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'Such as?'

'Does it matter - now you're here?'

Artful. It was a curiously archaic word, but nonetheless accurate. 'Let me guess. You thought maybe I wouldn't get away from David Audley? "For starters", as Tom would say?'

'That was certainly a consideration.' He drank again. 'Let's say, Elizabeth, that I did you the compliment of assuming that you would. And that you would then do what I would do, if I were in your dainty shoes.'

She had to clear this matter first. 'But you're not, are you.'

'No. More's the pity.'

'So what has all this got to do with you?'

He thought for a moment. 'If I was to say that what happens to you does concern me - ' He held up his hand quickly to forestall her ' - no, let me finish - that would not be good enough, I know! So I'll give you a choice: either I'm insatiably inquisitive, and when something rather extremely interesting is happening I like to know about it - especially when I've been written out of it.' He smiled. 'Curiosity and sour grapes, maybe?'

Some truth might be there, but nowhere near all of it. 'Or?'

'Or…' He took another moment. 'You know, the way our revered department works, Elizabeth, is never in straight lines. We circle round problems, in different dimensions, looking for openings. We behave eccentrically, even amateurishly, and certainly unpredictably.' He squinted at her suddenly. 'How did you get away from David?'

Whatever it was that he didn't want to say, it must be closer to the truth. But she would come back to it from a different direction. 'I'll tell you how, Paul - if you'll tell me why you tried to follow me this morning.'

'To the Xenophon Building?'

She stared at him. 'What? I started from outside there. But - ?'

'You thought you'd lost me? You did. But I've seen David use that silly trick before. And the coincidence of Xenophon was worth a try, so I went back and lurked behind the Magdala obelisk. And back you came.'

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'What coincidence?'

'Oh - come on, Elizabeth!' He cocked his head at her knowingly, but also with a suggestion of anger. 'Stop buggering around, for God's sake!'

'What do you mean?' She hated to be sworn at like that, and he knew it.

'What do I mean?' The anger increased. 'I mean… I mean that I stuck my neck out for you this morning, to the edge of blowing a secure classification, when I gave you Ed Parker.

Because you weren't cleared then for the material in which his name comes up - I know, because I punched it up on the computer not ten minutes before, and your name wasn't on it. There were only four names there: Jack Butler's, of course. And then Latimer, Oliver St John and Audley, David Longsdon, and finally poor bloody Mitchell, Paul Lefevre. And the computer duly registered that I'd made that particular inquiry, so any moment now I shall be in trouble, for sure.'

'Paul -'

'No. I haven't finished. So then you went in for your little session with Fatso, and did your Joan of Arc bit, letting yourself be summoned by your voices. Which I also know, because I waited for a bit, and then I punched the Beast again. And low and behold! There was a new name on the clearance! Which was - would you believe it - none other than Loftus, Elizabeth Jane. Recognize that name?'

' Paul - '

'I haven't finished, dear Elizabeth Jane.' He bulldozed forwards. 'Which inquiry the computer also duly registered. But you can only die once, so they say… So what did Elizabeth Jane do then, I ask you? Or, what did she eventually do? Why, she went and stood outside the London headquarters of Xenophon Oil Incorporated, did she not? Which are presided over by none other than Barrie, Sir Peter William, KBE, whose name also rang a bell, because it figured in a certain list, from long ago, to which Elizabeth Jane now has free access. Correct?'

As a small boy, he must have been objectionable, she decided. Indeed, she had known girls at school like him, whose power lay in their precocious understanding of how systems worked, and who never scrupled to use their knowledge. But, on the other hand, he had stuck his neck out - for that last and as-yet-unrevealed reason.

He nodded. 'But that was all of two hours since.' He looked at his watch. 'What have you done with David, Elizabeth Jane?'

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He had never called her 'Elizabeth Jane' before. But there was an edge of bitterness in that additional 'Jane' which could mean that he was going off her at last, thank heavens!

'I gave him a job to do. Or two jobs, actually.' When she thought about it, she didn't really want him to go off her in bitterness: she wanted so very much for him still to be a friend, but even more than that she needed him as a colleague, to pick his brains.

'Two jobs?' He grinned. 'I'll bet he didn't like that!' The grin vanished. 'Was one of them - '

The rattle of the curtain-runners stopped him. 'What is it, Tom?'

The strange sucking noise was repeated. 'Thought you might like a refill, Doctor Mitchell.

An' maybe it's not too early for the lady now?'

'Go away, Tom,' said Paul.

'I only arsked - '

'And I only said "Go away".' Paul addressed the curtain, which had closed again, and then caught Elizabeth's eye, which had just taken in the emptiness of the saloon bar of the Marshal Ney public house. 'You don't need to worry, Elizabeth Jane: he's nipped out and put a "Closed" sign on the door, so we shan't be disturbed. And his standard charge is pound a minute, or double-or-quits. But he won't play with me, because he says I cheat when we cut the cards.' He shrugged. 'Which isn't true, actually - I'm just lucky at cards.

But half the burglaries in this part of London are probably planned here anyway at the same rate - a pound a minute, tax-free. Or double-or-quits.'

It was all according to what you were used to, remembered Elizabeth. '"One of them", you were saying?'

'Yes. Was one of those jobs to talk to Neville Macready? About Sir Peter Barrie?'

Neville Macready was their economic intelligence specialist, so that would have been a sensible move, thought Elizabeth. So she would not deny it. 'And if it was?'

'I've already asked him.' He accepted her question as an admission all too easily because it suited him. 'Xenophon's money is Texas money, ultimately. So Barrie's loyalties are American, in the final analysis. Macready says he's buddy-buddy with the State Department at a high level when it comes to global decisions. He advises the Americans, and then they tell him what to do. And then he does it, more or less - sometimes more, and sometimes less, but always thereabouts.'

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'Indeed?' She tried to sound more knowledgeable than she was. 'But Xenophon's big in the North Sea.'

'Oh, sure. And Barrie was one of the driving forces there early on. That's how he got his

"K". In fact, Mac rates him a pretty sound chap, all in all… I think he must have tipped us off now and then, about American intentions, for Mac to be so protective.' He cocked an eyebrow. 'I hope you haven't been nasty to him - you or David? I don't think Mac would like that very much.'

'No.' She shook her head hastily. Maybe she should have seen Neville Macready herself.

But after that one look at the Haddock Thomas material on screen - and only on screen, because no print-out was allowed - it had seemed even more urgent to pick Paul's brains further.

'I should bloody-well hope so!' He pulled a face. 'Barrie can probably pull strings all the way to the Cabinet Office. You're messing with the top brass now, Elizabeth Jane. And don't say that I didn't warn you, either!'

He was patronizing her again, but this time she had to be nice to him, no matter what he said. 'You did warn me.' Why was it so hard to smile at him? 'I'm grateful for that.' The smile came at last, even though she was ashamed of it. 'So now I really would like to know what the hell's going on, Paul dear.'

'Uh-huh?' The smile weakened him, but insufficiently. 'What d'you think is going on?'

That was fair enough really. He had given her what he thought was good advice, and she hadn't taken it. And he had also given her information, which she had used, and he could yet be in deep trouble for that. So now he wasn't going to give her anything she didn't deserve.

'I think two quite separate things are going on, actually - related in one respect, but quite separate in another. Am I right?'

'Could be.' He waited shamelessly.

'How did you know I'd have to get away from David Audley to keep this illicit rendezvous?'

He shrugged. 'Simple Sherlock Holmes deduction, from known facts and soundly-based assumptions.' He grinned. 'And I also asked him what he was doing.'

'And he told you? Just like that?'

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Another shrug. 'It was while you were playing Joan of Arc. And he was there, like Mount Everest waiting for Mallory. Or was it Irvine?' He pretended to frown. 'No matter. All you have to remember is what happened to both of them: they were never seen again.' He nodded.

The thought of Audley cooling his heels at the office a second time inhibited her from playing his game. And if that meant seeming prissy, then so be it! 'You know that David has been told off to help me? And Major Turnbull too?'

'The Major? Phew!' He sketched surprise. 'I didn't know that … I did know about David…

from David. Better you than me, Elizabeth Jane - that's what I know. Better you than me.'

It was time to play dirty. 'Perhaps I'll ask for you next - seeing as you know so much already, Paul. And you're so keen to help.'

Mock horror. 'Oh no! Perish the thought!' Then he was suddenly serious. 'Someone's got to mind the shop in Cheltenham. Though without David there isn't much I can do except cross my fingers and hope for the best.' He weakened even as he spoke. 'What do you want?'

'If you want to help me, then just tell me about the Debrecen List.'

"The Debrecen List?' His face closed up. 'But you know all about that now - ?'

'Only what's in the record.'

'Well, you'd do better to ask David.' He was himself again. 'I was… God! Was I at prep school then?' He scratched his head. 'I was in short grey trousers and long socks, anyway -

long socks with elastic garters under the turn-overs… No - you'd better ask David. He was right there - in the middle of it all!'

'But I'm asking you. Because you're on the "Need to know" list.'

'That was pure accident. It was only because of something which came up last year, when Fatso was in America - you remember the flap there was then, last summer? When we were all on holiday relief as acting duty-officers? You were on the edge of it, I seem to recall. I put through a call to you one evening - which you handled with your customary efficiency.' He smiled. 'You remember?'

'Yes.' She nodded cautiously.

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'Well, that was Fatso. He'd got himself into all sorts of trouble over there, asking the wrong people the right questions.'

'But there was nothing about… about Mr Latimer in the file, Paul.'

He gave her a sly wink. 'Yes… well, there wouldn't be, would there? Old Fatso doesn't wash his dirty linen in private - he buries it deep, so no one can get wind of it.' He thought for a moment. 'But… let's see now… if you compare the date of entry of that item about the death of a man named Robinson, and the CIA maybe reactivating their Debrecen operation because of it, then I think you'll find that it coincides with the absence of one Oliver St John Latimer on a private and unofficial visit to foreign parts. Which I take to be cause and effect.'

Elizabeth stared at him, desperately trying to recall the tantalizing ingredients of the Debrecen material from her one quick - too quick - reading of it: from those very strangely hot-and-cold beginnings in 1958 which had been equally strangely terminated the following year, through the long, empty silence afterwards, over one whole quarter of a century.

'But that wasn't the start of it.' It didn't need any stretch-of-memory to produce the one other Debrecen entry, which had preceded Oliver St John Latimer's trouble by a year. 'Or the re-start?'

Paul stared back at her. The Irishman, you mean? The also-deceased Irishman?' The stare became blandly cynical. 'I had nothing to do with that - that was all David Audley's work. I wasn't even in England then.'

'But the Irishman was going to tell us about Debrecen.'

'Maybe.' He shrugged. 'Whatever he was going to tell us, he was killed before he could talk. And it wasn't David's fault. He seems to have behaved fairly heroically, reading between the unwritten lines.'

'Yes.' She had never thought of loyalty as being one of Paul's few virtues, so the temptation to press him was irresistible. 'But then David needs to be heroic where Debrecen is concerned, doesn't he?'

'What - ?' He covered up whatever it was - could it really be that virtue? - by leaning over the bar and staring at the curtain ' - what I need is another drink, Elizabeth Jane - Tom!'

'And what I need is for someone to tell me the true story of the whole Debrecen episode, dummy2

Dr Mitchell.'

'You don't want much, do you!' He still concentrated on the curtain. 'Drat the man! Tom!'

But the curtain still refused to open. 'But you've looked at the Beast, anyway.'

'The computer has been edited.'

'What d'you expect?' He gave up. 'Look, Elizabeth Jane - Miss Loftus - everyone has a skeleton in the closet somewhere. You have, I'll bet… I know I have… and so has Research and Development. And you never know who'll come poking in the closet some day. So what d'you expect?'

'Who edited the computer?' She somehow couldn't imagine Colonel Butler breaking the rules. And although rules meant nothing to David Audley, he lacked the seniority to doctor securely classified material. 'Was it Latimer?'

'No. It was already neutered when Fatso became Deputy-Director last year.' He shook his head quickly. 'It must have been old Fred Clinton. He made the original decision to abort the operation. So he had over twenty years to think about it.' He shook his head again, but slowly this time. 'You'd better ask David, my dear.'

'So you keep saying. So everyone keeps saying.'

'So maybe it's good advice.' He looked at her almost desperately. 'No one knows more about Debrecen than he does. At least… no one on our side - no one who's still alive, that is. All I know, beyond what's in the file, is hearsay from him, what he's let slip. And that's worth nothing.'

He was suddenly so miserable that she decided to chance a straight question. 'What d'you want to tell me, Paul?'

He swallowed. 'Can't you guess? I'd rather you did, if only to set my mind at rest a little.'

He attempted a Paul Mitchell smile, but achieved only a painful grimace. 'I think you have guessed, actually.'

She had to put him out of his misery, she owed him that. 'You mean, why Latimer put me in charge, and not David?'

The grimace improved slightly. 'That's my girl! And - ?'

'It's really David's skeleton - isn't it?' She didn't need to wait for confirmation. 'He was in charge of the original operation. And he always had a lot of influence with Sir Frederick dummy2

Clinton. So if there was a bad mistake it was his - right?'

'Right.' He looked at her expectantly.

'And Latimer is gunning for David.' That didn't need confirmation either. But the next statement did. 'But he reckons David might be - no, David is… clever enough to muddy the waters if he was in charge - ?'

'Right again.' He nodded. 'Fatso wants David out. But with David in charge… anything could happen.' He stopped suddenly. 'Look, Elizabeth… I know David pretty well. He recruited me - '

'He recruited me, too,' Elizabeth heard herself snap.

'So he did. But you're the '82 vintage. I'm the '74, and I know how his mind works.

Everyone thinks he's devious - that he's a meticulous planner. And it just isn't true.

Because what David likes, and what he does best and enjoys most, is working from hand-to-mouth in an emergency, improvising and botching up and making good.' He frowned at her. 'It's like… he's like - have you ever heard of the Sopwith Camel, Elizabeth - Miss Loftus?'

'The - what?' It took her a second to adjust from David Audley's idiosyncrasies to Paul Mitchell's. 'It was - it was a First World War aeroplane, wasn't it?' She was only doubtful for another half-second: with Paul it had to be that war. 'It was. But what - '

'It was. And it wasn't very fast. And it had no rate-of-climb worth talking about. And it was a little bugger to fly, spinning pilots into the ground if they gave it half a chance.' He leered at her ghoulishly. 'But in combat it could turn on a ha'penny. And when the Hun bounced it… if a Camel pilot got one second, to pull his stick, no one on God's earth - or in God's sky - knew where the Camel was going. The Camel pilot came down on his tail, out of nowhere.' He stared at her. 'And that's David - to the bloody life!'

It wasn't loyalty, thought Elizabeth. And it wasn't admiration, either: it was something much more complicated, which she didn't have time now to explore.

She didn't have time! 'But I'm not a Sopwith Camel, Paul. And David will still have time to -

to pull his stick, or whatever - ' She floundered in the midst of a metaphor she didn't fully understand.

'That's right - exactly right.' He evidently understood his own imagery. 'But he's escorting you, don't you see? If anything goes wrong - if you fail abysmally, or if you get shot down… and you are his recruit - his pupil - as well as his responsibility… Christ! If there's dummy2

one thing Jack Butler would never forgive - one thing that would discredit David finally and for all time - it would be that. And Oliver St John Latimer knows it. Because he's an Audley-watcher too. And he's watched him longer than I have. And he knows what he wants. And… he's not stupid, is our Fatso - he's bloody good.' He gave her another dreadful smile. 'And that's half the trouble, of course.'

Half the trouble? If that was half … ? But that was another thing to think about tomorrow.

'So he's done everything right, you see.' Paul had the bit between his teeth now. 'Jack Butler won't be able to fault him when he gets back from his leave, whatever he may suspect privately. Because - Item One - that American was on the Debrecen List - the Americans' list, which is in the file… and I've been busy checking off some of the English names, so I know. And I don't doubt he's acquired some evidence that that "tragic fall" was

- ' He gave her an innocently-raised eyebrow ' - an efficient shove, maybe?'

So that had been Major Turnbull's function, she understood: to confirm legitmate suspicion and justify further action -

'Yes.' He read her face too easily, 'So - Item Two - take appropriate action?' The eyebrow remained raised. 'One dead Debrecen American. But two recent entries in the Debrecen file. So let Loftus, Elizabeth Jane win her spurs. It's time she did a bit of field-work, to get experience and earn her keep. But give her David Audley, who is elderly and should be responsible, and who was her "recruiting-sergeant… and who knows all about Debrecen -

Good thinking, Mr Deputy-Director. Defence of the Realm properly secured, essential training of promising staff advanced, and duty well and truly discharged.' The eyebrow lowered. 'And Fatso's back well and truly protected while he inserts his poniard into David Audley's back - see how it works, Elizabeth Jane? Because David can't refuse to help you - see?'

What she saw was a Paul she hadn't seen before - not so much cynical as strangely bitter.

But then the curtain scraped on its runners again.

'Right, then!' Tom sucked his toothless gums noisily.

'Buzz off, Tom.' Paul continued to stare at her. 'You're too late. You're too late and I'm too late. We have to go-'

'Oh yus?' Tom advanced nevertheless, until Elizabeth couldn't ignore him. 'Got 'is measure, 'ave you, Miss?' He flashed an irreverent eye at Paul Mitchell. 'Looks like 'e's lost's sixpence, an' found a dud shillin'.'

'If you don't buzz off this minute, Tom - ' Paul spoke with quite uncharacteristic malevolence ' - I'll have the Old Bill object to the renewal of your licence next time, if it's dummy2

the last thing I do on this earth.'

He was so obviously serious that she found herself looking at him again compulsively, and the scrape of the curtains closing was a distant sound in a much larger silence.

'I'll tell you one thing about David, that I do know… when he really gets himself into trouble.' He fixed the malevolent look on her. 'And one thing about the Debrecen file - the thing he has in common with it.'

She had read the file, but it was suddenly a blank in her mind as she thought about David Audley, with whom she had only worked once. Only that had been -

'They both kill people, Elizabeth - Elizabeth Jane… Miss Loftus.' He stumbled over the confusion of names. 'Or… people end up dead, one way or another, when they get together.

And I have a very strong presentiment that they're going to do it again, this time, between them.'

It was really very strange, very strange indeed, this almost fastidious abhorrence he had about violent death, thought Elizabeth. And it was strange not because this time she herself might be involved on the edges of it - that really wasn't strange at all - but rather because his whole ten-year civilian academic career, and his devoted hobby over the last ten years, involved the concentrated study of that 1914 -18 bloodbath in the trenches of France and Flanders.

'But it doesn't worry you, does it?' Calculation, only half-masked by curiosity, had replaced honest passion. 'Not one bit, eh?'

'Of course it does.' Normally she could lie more readily, and much more convincingly. But this time he caught her off-balance, in the middle of remembering another reason why his hatred of violence was so odd -

'No, it doesn't.' Calculation had taken over. 'Old Fatso's not so stupid - I'm the stupid one.

He's got your number right to the last decimal point, naturally: fitness reports, psychological profile, and all the little - nasty little - small print… all those bloody-minded, coldblooded naval ancestors of yours, of the flog 'em and hang 'em brigade, from the Nore and Spithead.'

What she remembered was that, when the chips were down, Paul himself had a natural talent for violence, instinctive and efficient. 'I really don't know. But then I don't really know what you're talking about, either.'

'No, you wouldn't.' He nodded mild agreement. 'And your old man, too - that's the special dummy2

beauty of it, from Fatso's point of view: not just the chance to up-anchor, and make sail, and put to sea… But a bloody-marvellous father-figure target to sink as well - right, Elizabeth Jane?'

The passion was back. It was deep-layered now, under that false mildness, and then under mocking calculation and curiosity. But it was there all the same, and she half-wished that it worried her more, instead of merely irritating her.

But then it was anger, rather than irritation. 'I don't see what my father has to do with this.'

The anger flared. 'Or with you.'

'Nothing to do with me.' He felt the heat. 'As of this minute I was never here, and we never met.' He straightened up, and gestured towards the door. 'And seeing as we haven't met, and I shall have to buy an alibi to prove that I was somewhere else - that I am somewhere else… or at least half-way there - ' He frowned suddenly, and made a silly face. 'When you gave David those jobs… what did you say you were doing? I mean…just curiosity - ?'

This time she wasn't off-balance, by one guilty half-second. But she couldn't tell him. 'You can take me with you, and put me off in Bond Street. I'll take a taxi from there.' But she mustn't leave him time to work that out. 'Only… you said, Paul, that when David and Debrecen got together - that when they came together - ?'

'People end up dead?' He nodded. 'And so they do.' Another nod. 'Back in '58 - there were two - two, if you count one in America, as well as one over here.' Pause. 'And in '83… well, there was one a few years before that, when the KGB hit someone up in Yorkshire.' Pause.

'But then there was '83, down in Dorset. About which I know no more than you do, because all I know is what is in the record.' Pause. 'And then there's '84… which was also in America. And which is also in the record, more or less.' This time the pause was so long that she had almost decided that he had finished. But then he nodded. 'But mostly less, rather than more. Because, for a secure file, it's still bloody non-committal, don't you think?

What David calls "half-arsed" - whatever that means… "Half-arsed", would you say, Miss Loftus?'

'What else does David say about it - about Debrecen?'

'Ah… now, as everyone keeps telling you, you'd better ask him, I think. And then draw your own conclusions. Because in my experience he never says quite the same thing twice.

So we should maybe compare notes some time - over dinner, say?'

She had to remember that he was still Paul. And not getting what he wanted only made him want it more: for Paul, failure was a beginning, not an end. 'He won't tell me the truth?'

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'That depends.' He pointed at the door again. 'I have to establish my alibi.'

'Depends on what?'

'On lots of things.' He swivelled on his heel, away from her, then towards her. 'David knows his duty. Do you know yours, Miss Loftus?'

'I know what I've got to do, Dr Mitchell.'

'Do you, Miss Loftus? And does it include scuppering David Audley to please Oliver St John Fatso-Latimer, pray?'

'No, it does not - '

'But are you sure of that, Miss Loftus? And is David Audley sure of it?' He held the pub door open for her. 'What you both want to ask yourselves is… do either of you really know what you are doing? As opposed to what you think you're doing?'

7

'Gorbatov — that is absolutely correct, Elizabeth.' Audley shifted his long legs in the Morgan's confined space. 'It all starts with him. Before Gorbatov, Debrecen was without light, and void, so far as we were concerned.'

For a man hypothetically cast as a prosecutor at his own court-martial, if not commander of the firing squad afterwards, David Audley had been just a little too relaxed, Elizabeth had thought.

True, he had protested briefly when she'd insisted on driving. But that had been more for form's sake than genuine desire, since they both knew that he was a bad driver, unable to keep his mind on the road at the best of times, and that this time she wanted his mind on other matters.

And true, he had been momentarily querulous at the sight of the little Morgan, into which he would not fit easily. But then, again, he had quickly adjusted himself to the imposition, mentally as well as physically, launching instead into a long anecdote about a hot-shot USAF pilot he'd once known, who had once owned just such a car -

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'Flew Voodoos, out of Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire - photographic reconnaissance — took some very pretty snapshots for us on one occasion too, much to the annoyance of a certain ally across the Channel… Bought himself one of these — same colour, British Racing Green, naturally. And you know what tickled him most, Elizabeth?'

Too relaxed, she thought. But no, she didn't know, she had said.

'Bought it from the factory (he'd been on the waiting list for years, of course), and paid for it in cash… some of which we'd just given him, for services rendered… but most of which was gambling profits — he was a mean poker player… But, anyway, he paid in cash, and there was seventeen shillings and fourpence change to come from his money. And they only had pound notes, so they sent an apprentice lad across the road to a pub to get him his seventeen-and-four, down to the last penny. Tickled him pink, that did.'

Much too relaxed. It hadn't tickled her at all.

'What was his provenance?' Although they weren't quite out of London proper the traffic was already thinning in the brief gap between closing time and early departure home.

'Was he ever in the real army - Red Army?'

'So he maintained. One of the heroes of the Patriotic War, who ran up the red flag over the Reichstag, or the Brandenburg Gate, or some such place, in '45. But I have my doubts, although he had his army stuff off pat, certainly. So they say.'

She was meant to pick that up. 'You never interrogated him?'

'No.' He gazed ahead sightlessly. 'He came across just about the time I came into the Service. So I was doing my homework while they were taking him apart. And I suppose you could say he was out of my league.'

Elizabeth drove in silence for a time, beckoned by the motorway signs. Paul had warned her that she would be out of her league in this affair, but that wasn't a bad way of improving one's game. All the same, the idea of an age of the world when David Audley had not been in the Blues' team overawed her somewhat: it was a defect in her powers of imagination that she could not readily enough accept that those who were old had once been young - that dear old Major Birkenshawe had once been a dashing subaltern, and even Father had been a dewy-eyed little midshipman - even Father!

'There were three of them, who assessed him - all Fred Clinton's trusted cronies. One was a don from Cambridge, who'd been a Doublecross consultant; one was ex-SOE -one of the few Fred had been really thick with, and had kept an eye on; and there was a soldier, an ex-dummy2

regular who'd watched Fred's back during the war. And he was the one who didn't reckon Gorbatov as a front line warrior: "In the army, but not of it"… meaning that he'd been NKVD from the cradle, keeping watch on the lads as they carried the red banners westwards.'

The West, the final blue sign ahead proclaimed, echoing him and inviting her into the fast lane.

'His version - Gorbatov's version - was that he'd been talent-spotted by one of Ignatiev's lieutenants in 1950, as a politically reliable career soldier. A very tough egg by the name of Okolovich - Anatoli Okolovich. And we knew all about him … In fact, he was an up-and-coming man at that time, and an invitation from him to join the happy band certainly wouldn't have admitted refusal: it would have been either the Communist Party or the farewell party.'

That was one of Paul's little black jokes, so maybe it had started as one of Audley's.

Elizabeth took a quick sidelong look at the big man beside her. He was so utterly unlike Paul in so many ways that the ways in which they were like each other - ways which were sometimes no more than similar phrases and jokes trivializing unpalatable truths -

emphasized their underlying similarity. So -, allowing physically for Paul's age and much better looks, and mentally for his admiration of Audley, was this the shape of Paul Mitchell to come?

'So he did the sensible thing, and ended up in '56 as General Okolovich's leg-man in eastern Hungary, when the balloon went up there. Except that, according to him, he'd been feeding the General with soldierly warnings about trouble in store… which Okolovich had unwisely bowdlerized before passing on to his ambassador, one Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov - you remember him, Elizabeth?' He turned towards her. 'What's the matter, Elizabeth?'

She glanced at her mirror again. "There's a police car about three hundred yards behind us.

He's waiting for me to put my foot down.'

'Ah!' He nodded, and then hunched himself to view her speedometer. '72-3? Young woman in British Racing Green sports car? Do you always play with policemen like this?

It's very naughty.'

'I just don't want to get stopped, that's all.'

'No? But you could show him your card then - and make him hate you. And then put your foot right down again, and make him hate you even more. Paul - your own Paul - does that all the time, so I'm told.'

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'I'm not Paul.' She decided not to rise to 'your own Paul'.

'Is there any reason why I should be hurrying? When are we meeting Major Turnbull at this pub of yours?'

She studied her mirror again. The police car would drop her at the next junction. 'Would that be about 5.30? You know more about opening times than I do.'

'I suppose so.' He looked at her innocently. 'I take it that you've had lunch? You couldn't have spent half the morning at that salon of yours - ?'

They both knew that she had ostentatiously placed a distinctively-labelled Rochard Freres bag in the car, so he couldn't deny her cover-story. 'I snatched a sandwich.' But, on second thoughts, that casual reference to Paul might be a hint that he guessed - or, being David, somehow knew - where she'd been. 'I hope you had something, David - I'm sorry, if I kept you hanging around, waiting for me. That was thoughtless of me.'

'Not at all! I like your style, young woman.' Audley chuckled. 'Putting the Defence of the Realm second to Jimmy Rochard's summer frocks is like old Macmillan sitting on the Front Bench when he was Prime Minister, ostentatiously reading letters from his gamekeeper before his official bumpf.' Another chuckle. 'Same with your Paul - or our Paul, if you prefer… First thing every morning, he should be reading his overnight SGs. And what does he do?' He gave her a knowing look as though wishing to share an answer known to them both; which reminded her oddly of the object of their journey, since in Latin he could have actually worded the question to convey their shared certainty.

'What does he do?' She was certain that he did know about Paul and herself now, but she decided to play hard to get. 'I'm sure I don't

know - ?'

'Why, he reads his morning post from all those 1914-18 veterans with whom he zealously corresponds, before they finally fade away.' He cocked his head, half-smiling, half-frowning. 'What is he into at the moment - the Battle of Loos, is it?'

Elizabeth shrugged. 'I've really no idea.' But Paul was right: once a Sopwith Camel pilot pulls his stick, no one knows where the Camel is going! 'But I do remember your Mr Andropov. He wasn't very nice to the Hungarians, was he?'

'Correct.' A minute, and slightly more than a mile, passed while Audley consulted his own memories. 'So you can appreciate why General Okolovich was scared in '56, having given the egregious Andropov demonstrably incorrect information about the state of the dummy2

Hungarian nation before the rising. Because when the dust had settled, and they'd buried the 30,000 dead - including all the good Russian soldiers who'd turned their tanks over to the Hungarians, and offered to fight for them… when they had been shot too, if they were lucky - Comrade Ambassador Andropov was after blood. So Okolovich was very scared indeed. And while Okolovich was scared, poor old Gorbatov was comprehensively terrified. Because he hadn't got anyone worth a damn to shop. So he knew he was for Siberia, if he was very lucky - or the chop, if he wasn't. And he knew enough to know which was more likely.' Audley waved a huge hand across the windscreen. 'Actually, if he had reckoned on Siberia he wouldn't have minded, because he was born there - his parents had been shunted off there in the twenties, because his grandfather had a Tsarist commission, but hadn't annoyed his other ranks sufficiently to be lynched out of hand when the Red Revolution reached his regiment - he liked Siberia, did Andrei Afanaseevich Gorbatov.' Audley nodded at the windscreen. 'But then he remembered this colleague of his - or nodding KGB acquaintance - who'd done a tour in Canada during the war, and gone off to the North-West Territory of Canada, to tell the Canadians what a splendid fellow Uncle Joe Stalin was. And this fellow had told him about all the endless trees and snow, just like Siberia, but with the birds and the booze, and no questions asked afterwards. And Gorbatov then conceived the idea that if he followed the yellow-brick road to the West there was a land over the rainbow - with trees and snow, and women and drink, and no questions asked, like home only better.' He nodded again. 'So when he came over to our side he offered all he had in exchange for the North-West Territory. He thought he might be safe there, too, as well as happy.'

The police car had fallen away, out of sight if not quite out of mind, baulked of its prey.

But she wasn't sure, now that there was nothing behind her, whether they hadn't passed the word on. So she would just have to keep her eye on the rear-view mirror.

'So our people said "Maybe". Only at first they were disappointed, because he gave them the usual chicken-feed about Hungary. Which they knew already, because of all the Hungarians who had come over - not just the ex-Communist patriots, but the AVRM secret police types, who were afraid of both sides… But then he gave them Debrecen, and that was something new.'

Elizabeth steadied her foot on 70. It was a curious international idiosyncrasy that the Americans, who worshipped the individual, supplied cars which were equipped to adhere to speed limits, while the regimented Europeans let their drivers take their choice, and pay accordingly.

'Something new.' Audley agreed with himself. 'That's what concentrated their minds: they'd never had a smell of it before - and, according to Gorbatov, it had been functioning for at least three years, before he nerved himself to run. Which was when Okolovich took possession of his records, so the warnings he'd sent could be doctored out - then he knew he was being measured for a necktie.'

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Elizabeth nodded at the road ahead. That was a fairly ordinary scenario for defection, anyway. In the West it was often much more complicated, because life itself was more complex, with all its secret guilts and its multiple moral choices. But KGB colonels were not the type to experience sudden blinding lights accompanied by divine voices telling them to change course: with them it was usually naked self-preservation which dictated action.

'He was quite frank about it. Although our Wise Men didn't altogether believe him. They were inclined to think that he wasn't so clever as he pretended to be - that he might well have given Okolovich dud information, and was about to get his just deserts. And he had a fairly sizeable drink problem, which he said had been caused by worry… But they reckoned it might have been the chicken which laid his egg for him - the drink problem.

And what also made 'em think he wasn't too bright was that he didn't rate what he had about Debrecen as being the jewel in his crown. Because he hadn't had anything directly to do with it, it was way above his clearance as well as being outside his jurisdiction. It just happened to be something he knew the bare minimum about in general, but two specific things about by pure accident. He actually thought we knew about it already - took it for granted, even. Huh!'

Now, at last, they were getting to the lean meat of the official record, which had dismissed Colonel Andrei Afanaseevich Gorbatov in one short paragraph. 'What did he say about it… Debrecen?'

'In general? Huh!' Audley sniffed. '"That place where they process the foreigners - you know." Which they didn't. So they left it for a few days, and then worked back to it one evening when his vodka gauge was into the red. Only to discover that that was all he did know - not his directorate, big-time stuff for First Fifteen players while he had to scrum-down with the Hungarians.' Audley paused. 'But there were these two times when someone was off sick, and he had to sub for them. It was just on the transport arrangements - picking people up from an airfield, who'd come in by light plane cleared from somewhere in the west, or south-west - picking 'em up and delivering 'em, secret VIP

treatment, semi-disguised subjects - hats, dark glasses, raincoats. All he knew was that they were Anglo-Saxon - or, Anglo-American - mostly youngish, or even young. And he knew the dates, near enough, over these two three-week periods in the summer. That was all.' He nodded to emphasize the last word. 'In the end they took him apart - leaned hard on him. But that was all he had.'

But that wasn't all that was in the record, thought Elizabeth. 'All?'

'They didn't like it, of course.' Audley breathed in deeply, and expelled a sigh of remembrance. 'Most particularly, they didn't like the bit about the semi-disguised VIPs dummy2

being youngish or young. Because that smelt too much like laying down new claret, for drinking in the seventies. Like the Cambridge thirties vintages were laid down.' Audley spoke off-handedly now, reminding Elizabeth that if there was one thing he hated, and invariably referred to in his most casual voice, it was the infamous Cambridge gang. For he was a Cambridge man himself, and desperately proud of it.

'So what did they do?'

'They went for Debrecen, of course.' Audley's voice harshened again. 'This was '57 -

Hungary was still wide-open to us then, after '56, in the sense that the Hungarians all loathed the Russians so much that they'd do anything for us.' The harshness was almost gravelly. 'And we had any number of Hungarians who were prepared to go back, if they knew we wanted something.' He drew another breath. "That was when we got all the physical data - pictures, measurements, the lot.'

That had certainly been precise: the long-disused Imperial Hapsburg hunting-lodge in the forest, well away from the city and effectively in the middle of nowhere which the Nazis had reanimated and uglified with military perimeter and buildings as a training centre for their Brandenburg elites, which had operated far beyond the battle lines in Russia, which lay only a few miles away; and which, when the wheel had turned full circle, the Russians had in turn occupied, to train a very different elite to fight a very different war in the opposite direction, so it seemed.

All the physical data. 'But they'd gone by then?' She spurred him.

'Uh-huh. The birds had flown.' She just caught him twitch under her spur. 'The eggs had hatched, and the fledglings had departed for warmer climes, never to return.' He looked at her suddenly. 'That was the difference: never to return.'

'Why did they close it down?'

'Ah… well, at first the Three Wise Men thought it was because of the Rising in '56, simply.

And they were half-right, anyway.'

'How - half-right?'

'Because there were Hungarians who'd seen too much, in the nature of things, Elizabeth.'

He made a face at her. 'Because there were AVRM Hungarians - most of them were bastards, and some of them got lynched in '56.' He looked at her again suddenly. But this time he really saw her, as he had not done before. 'Jesus Christ, Elizabeth! You don't really remember '56, do you? When the Iron Curtain was split open wide for a time, and you could drive all the way to Budapest, and the people in the villages would cheer you on, dummy2

and offer you drinks? And Suez - when Radio Cairo went off the air after our Canberras had hit it? You were just a baby then, of course.'

Momentarily his guard was down: Hot heart, cool head was what he preached, which was the old KGB-NKVD axiom. But the recollection of long ago - and perhaps of a mistake he had made in that far-off time - was animating him now, and betraying him as it did so.

'I'm not quite with you, David - ?'

'It was the Age of Innocence, love. Or relative innocence, anyway - when I was young… or, if not quite young, not senile, anyway.' He grinned at her hideously. 'Old memories - senile reminiscences, no more.' He flexed a leg, and massaged its constricted knee. 'The fact of it was that he wasn't the only defector. Because there was this Hungarian AVRM who came over at about the same time - probably for much the same reasons as Gorbatov. Only he went over to the Americans, not our people. But he'd run all the rackets in the Debrecen district, and he was nobody's fool. So it transpired.'

So that was what had happened, Elizabeth realized in a flash: the British had stumbled on something, more or less by accident. But, when it had gone cold on them, they had naturally offered it to the Americans - naturally, because after Suez they must have been hell-bent on ingratiating themselves with their former allies, and Comrade Colonel Gorbatov had said ' or Anglo-American' , so they had something to offer.

'And what did he say?' And that, to clinch the matter, helped to account for those two lists

- one British, but the other American.

'He'd got the other half of the sweepstake ticket.' Audley nodded. 'Which he shouldn't have had. But he was a lot smarter than old Gorbatov, anyway. Because, when he came across, it was Debrecen that he reckoned was his ticket to the good life - the bit printed in Russian, which the Americans would want to read, do you see?'

Elizabeth saw, but didn't quite see. Because the record was inexact here, to say the least, and what Paul had told her about David confirmed its equivocation about the exact nature of Debrecen: ' he never quite says the same thing twice' .

But she had to cut through all that now, after the Pointe du Hoc and their Xenophon interview, and all the miles which were slipping away now, at more than one for each minute, towards Major Turnbull and the onetime Squadron Leader Thomas.

'What was Debrecen, David?' If he'd never said the same thing twice he probably wouldn't say the same thing now, when his neck was on the block. But even the difference between what he said now, and what he had once said, was something she had to establish. 'Really?'

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He took the point of the question, judging by the mile-or-more he used to think about it, at 70 mph, while estimating both ends against the middle.

'Uh-huh.' He took another half-mile. 'Well, that's the million pound bingo question, Elizabeth.' He tried to stretch a leg again. 'It used to be the sixty-four-thousand dollar question, but we've had inflation since then.'

Another mile, tenth by tenth, almost empty and featureless, and boring now that there was nothing sniffing her British Racing Green tail across the Wessex countryside, which was opening up on either side. But she could still afford to wait for her answer.

'Our Three Wise Men were never 100 per cent convinced - just about 80 per cent.' About half a mile. 'And neither were the Americans.'

'Why not?'

'Why not?' Four-fifths of a mile. 'Deep down, they didn't want to believe that young Americans could betray 1950s America - even though they put a man on it who believed that everyone was guilty, until proved innocent. And even then probably not. He was a hard man - in some ways a monster.'

That led straight to the next question, but he continued before she could get it out. 'Our people had fewer illusions. Not because they were smarter, but because they had bitter recent memories. And also we'd just come down in the world - and down with a bump, after Suez. So we weren't just the poor relations - we were maybe the baddies. So what was there to betray? A British Dream, like the American Dream? What dream?' He glanced at her. 'So what was Debrecen? Our people weren't sure - but they knew they were on to something. And they reckoned there might be an American angle, and they needed to get in with the Americans again, after Suez. So they decided to offer them what they'd got as a present, in the hope of re-establishing co-operation.' He tossed his head. 'That was my first big job: carrying tribute to Caesar.' Then he shook his head sadly. 'I had no idea what I was getting into - no idea, poor innocent youth that I was!'

Elizabeth noticed that her speed had crept up to 85, but mercifully there was nothing behind her. And there was nothing of the truth in his last words, either: he had been a rich bachelor in his thirties in '58, and the reverse of innocent for sure, then as well as now. She dropped back to 70. 'What went wrong?'

'Hah!' He brightened perversely at the memory. 'Absolutely nothing - at first. In fact, when they knew what I'd got with me, it was all roses and violets. Because it was exactly what they wanted, so they thought -because they had their appalling Hungarian, you see. About dummy2

whom we didn't know, but who had given his half-ticket to them, so they had a much better idea of what Debrecen might have been than we did. They knew more - and they'd also had a look at the place, just like us. But with the same result. And they really didn't know what to do next, or even where to start.' The brightness remained, but it was as frosty as a short winter's day.

'And then in flew Sir Frederick Clinton's new star, with a warm Special Relationship smile on his face and the rest of the ticket in his briefcase. Roses and violets, Elizabeth.'

But dust and ashes to come, thought Elizabeth grimly. 'You had the dates Colonel Gorbatov gave you. But what exactly were these people doing in Debrecen? Why were they there?'

Audley gazed out of the car window at his side, as though he had suddenly found the rural view more interesting. 'You've read the record, haven't you?'

'Yes.' She waited for him to continue, but instead he went on admiring the Hampshire countryside. '"Hand-picked subjects, with good career prospects, psychologically equipped for deep-sleeping".'

'Yes.' Audley nodded at a cow which, from its melancholy expression, looked as though it had heard all about the new EEC milk quotas. 'So?'

'So what was so particularly important about Debrecen?'

Audley turned towards her. 'Isn't that enough?'

It ought to be enough, thought Elizabeth with a deep-down shiver: the idea of long-term treachery, waiting to mature like wine, but cellared instead in the dark recesses of certain human souls. But somehow it wasn't. 'No, David.'

He smiled a sudden genuine smile, which cruelly reminded her of that smile of Latimer's.

'Quite right, Elizabeth. But how do you know?'

Elizabeth was torn between the two smiles. Because if Paul was right and Latimer was gunning for David… if it came to the crunch - whose side was she on? Whose side? The answer confused her horribly, it was so immediate. And she knew she must cover her confusion. 'Don't ask me how. I don't really know.'

'Of course! Who ever does, when it comes to instinct? Don't worry, my dear - be glad that you've got it, that's all.' He nodded. 'Everyone thinks they have it, but it's atrophied in most people - like the hunting instinct. I knew a troop-sergeant in Normandy who'd never dummy2

fired a shot in anger until we landed, but he always knew when there was an 88 waiting for us.' Nod. 'Your Paul hasn't got it - with him it's mostly reason and logic, plus a little experience and a lot of knowledge… all topped off by low cunning and an eye for the main chance. But most women have more of it than most men, anyway. So just be thankful.'

Her Paul, again. Yet, for another inexplicable reason, she felt impelled to defend him now.

'You do my Paul less than justice, I rather think. He's very loyal to you, for a start, David.'

'Loyal?' He half-spluttered. ' Loyal?'

'Or… or protective, let's say.'

He said nothing for another mile, digesting her indiscretion; which must either have confirmed his guess or confused his certainty; and that seemed to be enough for him, too, for the time being.

'Debrecen -' He rubbed both his knees simultaneously ' - what the unspeakable Hungarian had given them, among other things, was names, Elizabeth. Not the traitors' names, which he didn't know… the names of the Russian top brass he'd welcomed, on behalf of Rakosi -

he was one of Rakosi's front-men. Rakosi was the Hungarian top man, Elizabeth.' He half-apologized for assuming her ignorance of mid-twentieth-century history. 'Because the Russians couldn't ship in their top brass, to Debrecen, without going through the motions of trusting Rakosi, who was their front-man. Uh-huh?' Pause. 'So he was there with the red carpet, first for Shelepin, and then for Zhurkin, and also for Semichastny - all future KGB

bosses, but also all top Komsomol youth leaders. And two of them genuine war heroes -

Shelepin was a Hero of the Soviet Union, for his partisan work behind the German lines, and Zhurkin had flown Russian fighters all the way from the Spanish Civil War to Korea -

he was a sort of "Red Douglas Bader", with his tin legs… But they were all real heroes of the people's revolution - even Semichastny, who was trained as a chemical engineer in the Ukraine - son of an illiterate mill worker, pre-revolutionary, whose umpteen children had all made the grade under the new regime: getting a handshake from them, and a pat on the back, and a "Right trusty and well-beloved" commission - which was to be filed in the archives of Dzerinsky Street, never to see the light of day - all that would have been like being tapped on the shoulder by Her Majesty, and blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury… Or by the President of the United States - or bussed on each cheek by the President of the Republic - do you see, Elizabeth?'

Or touched lightly by the Chancellor of the University, and gowned colourfully for excellence? Touched in the remote hope that the twin evils of ignorance and intellectual arrogance might forever be expelled?

'You mean, it was just a morale-raiser?' She heard her incredulity. 'All that trouble? And dummy2

the risk - ?'

'Ah…' The long legs bent again, and the knees came up for massage. 'There was another reason - or two reasons… Because there was another name. And, if the Wise Men of Research and Development and the Pentagon had it right, it was the big name - the Name of Power, Elizabeth. Although you'll never even have heard of it. Because if you punch the name on that wretched Beast of ours the thing will perform its two favourite actions: first, it will not answer your question, but will request your authorization instead; and second, it will sneak on you to the head teacher and master-at-arms, whether you have clearance or not.' He let go of his knees and smiled at her. 'But I am a different sort of beast. A human beast, am I. And I spit on the new beast - may it be visited with sudden extreme variations of temperature and floods of water from the sewers, and electronic illnesses hitherto unknown. And, most especially, I spit on the memory of its prophet and servant, Comrade Professor Kryzhanovsky - Kryzhanovsky.' He pronounced the Name of Power without benefit of Russian sound, syllable by syllable, much as a Russian might have attempted Worcestershire. 'Vladimir Ivanovitch Kryzhanovsky, Elizabeth.'

This, again, was the authentic Audley: the Audley whom Paul loved to imagine-as casting himself as one character after another out of his beloved Rudyard Kipling.

'I've never heard of him, David,' she said meekly.

'No, you wouldn't have done. He's long dead, thank God. And… hmm… and since it was natural causes maybe we should thank Him, blasphemy or not - ' He stopped suddenly.

'Yes, David?'

' Hmm …' He growled the sound from the back of his throat. 'I was just thinking that maybe the blighter's had the laugh over us after all these years. Or, if he hasn't, he has now, anyway.'

If this was the authentic Audley, she might get more by letting him simply think aloud than by prodding him with questions. But the miles were slipping away towards their destination, and time with them. 'Who was he, David?'

'He was a psychologist, and by all accounts a damn good one. Moscow-trained, but cut his teeth in the Ukraine. Which was where he got to know Semichastny - and that was where Semichastny got in with Khrushchev, of course. But we didn't get a line on him until '54, when the Petrovs defected - at least, not a line that put him right in the heart of the KGB

reorganization, anyway… But he wasn't just a psychologist, he was big on the whole new technology scene. Like, he was in on the beginning of the personnel selection in the space programme. One of the first papers of his we got was entitled The Symbiosis of Man and dummy2

Machine: Future Trends - or something like that.'

Elizabeth's chuckle was only half-forced. 'I can see why you don't - or didn't - like him, David. If he was a computer psychologist -'

'Ah - now that's just where you're wrong, Miss Clever-Clogs,' Audley interrupted her quickly. 'Or… not quite right, anyway. Because I think he was even more shit-scared of the computer than I am - or of its Fifth Generation, which he foresaw thirty years ago.

Although he called it "The Fourth Evolution" - "evolution" was his codename for revolution, which caused him to skate very gingerly and obtusely round its edges, with impenetrable clouds of jargon.'

A road sign arrested her attention momentarily. They were off the motorway now. The miles had flown, and time had flown with them.

'When the machines start thinking for themselves - what a brave new world it will be,'

murmured Audley. 'All the right answers supplied without asking! Our old capitalism will be in serious trouble - but his old Marxist/ Leninist-Communism will be a ridiculous, incompetent, irrelevant joke… that's what he foresaw, I shouldn't wonder. But he didn't say so. He was sitting much too pretty for that.'

The turn-off was only a few miles away. 'What did he do at Debrecen, this…

Kryzhanovsky, David?'

'Season your impatience, Elizabeth. The one thing leads to the other. What Comrade Professor Kry-zan -off- sky saw was the rise of information technology. He was one of their experts on Bletchley Park, he made a study of it. Knew all about Ultra, he did - and said what idiots we were, not to build on it. He'd have made them all Heroes of the British Empire, with special perks and privileges. And kept 'em all behind the wire for the rest of their lives.'

'David -'

'Just let me finish, love. What he said - or is reputed to have said, because we've never had a sight of the document in which it was said, if there is one - was that as the machines were improved, so human intelligence-gathering of the old-fashioned variety would inevitably be downgraded. And, at the same time, methods of vetting would become more efficient.'

He sniffed. 'Which is something I've yet to see, I must say - but you can't be right all the time… Anyway, his blueprint for the future was technology at one end of the spectrum -

satellites and computers and listening devices, plus a sort of super-GCHQ. Then a much-reduced conventional intelligence force in the field, mostly engaged in surveillance of the homeland - keeping that nice and tidy… with only a minimum of conventional foreign-dummy2

based agents. But then, right at the other end, the new generation of Kry-zan -off- sky boys and girls, hand-picked in their own countries.'

She was going to miss the turning for sure. 'The deep-sleepers, you mean?'

Audley didn't answer immediately. 'Well… that's what some people thought. But that was pretty much old-hat.' He fell silent again. 'It's possible he had a variation on the old theme.'

There was a sign way ahead, at the bottom of the long hill they were descending. 'A variation, David?'

'Yes.' Another silence. 'How would you go about catching a traitor who never betrayed any secrets, Elizabeth?'

'Who never - ?' It wasn't the right name on the sign. She accelerated angrily. 'Never betrayed anything?'

'And never communicated with any control. He has no contacts, no drops - nothing. No connection at all, for years. And then only the very occasional, unscheduled, one-sided, one-off word from on-high. And then not to give information, but to do something - or to try not to do something - in the future.' He looked at her. 'Like, not being a spy in 10

Downing Street, reporting on the Prime Minister, but being one of her top advisers not reporting on her - just advising her.' He shrugged slightly. 'Or, better still, being the Prime Minister.' Another shrug. 'Or, say, being Oliver St John Latimer putting David Audley out of business - that would be a famous victory for the other side now, wouldn't it?'

There was another sign ahead.

'That's our turning up ahead, Elizabeth,' said Audley conversationally. ' "Fordingwell 5 -

Little Balscote 8" - we want Fordingwell, the King's Arms, okay?'

'You don't mean it - ' She was surprised at the steadiness of her voice ' - do you?'

'Huh!' Audley harumphed scornfully. 'Tut-tut, Miss Loftus - such lack of confidence in our admirable Deputy-Director! No, of course I don't mean it. Oliver St John Latimer is a fat, self-satisfied, pen-pushing, button-pressing paperhanger. But, on the one hand, he's a Clinton appointment from way back, and old Fred never erred. Meaning that he's done more damage to the KGB in Britain over the years - and real damage, too -than… oh, than almost anyone.' He grinned at her mischievously. 'It was merely an illustration. Not that he may not be doing the devil's work now, no matter how good his intentions. But that's a minor problem.'

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He knew. But of course he knew. Only now, compared with Debrecen, that certainly was a minor matter. 'An illustration of Debrecen?'

'Uh-huh. At least, according to the Americans.' He nodded. 'Catch 'em young - choose 'em well. See 'em just that once, on the home ground - one by one, with the full treatment, VIP

treatment, to reassure 'em that they'll always be loved and honoured, even if only in secret

- that was rated very important psychologically, since they'd be on their own ever after, right to the grave.' He craned forward to study the road ahead, which had narrowed almost to single-track as they climbed away from the main road. The Americans were very hot on the psychological aspect of it, once the Comrade Professor's name had been dropped - whispered in their ear by the Hungarian. Because they'd had their eye on the Comrade Professor for some time.'

There was something not quite right about what he was saying. 'The Americans? So what did you think?'

'Oh… I never really went for it. Or not hook, line and sinker, anyway.' He sat back. 'Not far now. And I could do with a nice cup of tea and a big plate of sandwiches. It's a splendid old place, the King's Arms - you'll like it, Elizabeth. Good meals, soft beds - good cellar. It's an old coaching inn. And this evening we'll meet our contact, who lives a few miles away, just the other side of Balscote.' He smiled at her. 'You'll like him, my dear. He's a sharp old swine.'

Damn him! 'Why didn't you go for it?'

'Too neat and tidy, in the first place. All the bits fitted too well - in theory. And there was no bloody way of confirming them.'

'You mean, Debrecen had already been closed down - the place?' As the car breasted the ridge she saw roofs ahead, down below in the next valley, where the coaches had once presumably forded Fordingwell's stream. 'Was that because of the Hungarian Rising?'

'No. It was because of the Hungarian's defection, more like. Plus Old Gorbatov.' He made a face. 'But all neat and tidy, like I said.'

Elizabeth frowned. 'But didn't that compromise the whole operation - their defection?'

'You think so?' He sounded a little scornful. 'So where should we start our counter-operation, just in case?'

She slowed down to pass a farm tractor, which had courteously pulled on the verge for her. 'You had those dates.'

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'That's right - clever Elizabeth!' He waved at the tractor-driver. 'Two years before, certain persons - mostly young, or youngish, age not known exactly - certain persons - Anglo-Saxon, or maybe Anglo-American, nationality not known exactly - spent some days abroad in high summer, when half the likely lads in the Western World were stretching their wings:

" There's the haystack, Audley, my lad" , says old Fred Clinton. " Find me some needles" . Phooey!'

They were among the first houses.

'No computers, remember, Elizabeth. Just one temporary secretary and two researchers was all we could run to. Apart from which, it wasn't at all the sort of job I'd expected to be doing - sweating over lists of names, and generally having to behave like a grubby divorce investigator.' He sighed. 'Delusions of grandeur.'

'But - ' She had to keep an eye open for the King's Arms now ' - it was important, surely - ?'

'Ah! Now was it?' He gestured ahead. 'It's a bit further on… The Americans thought so.

They had a whole team working on it. But I didn't -I wasn't so sure.'

'Why not? If Kryzhanovsky was top brass, David. And Shelepin and the others?'

'Oh yes - all big time stuff.' He nodded. 'But we only had the Hungarian's word for it. Plus old Gorbatov's dates. But suppose they weren't on the level - what then, Elizabeth?'

The road widened suddenly, into a miniature village square, with straggling uneven terraces of houses set back on three sides, and the church on her right, away beyond the churchyard and inevitable war memorial.

'It could have been all pure disinformation, designed to divert us from more important things - as it damn well did, in fact, whatever it was. Over there - ' He pointed across the square ' - see the sign?' , A coaching inn it certainly was, complete with an arched gateway to admit its coaches into a cobbled yard beyond. But there was another farm tractor labouring across her bows, towing a waggonload of baled straw.

'Go under the arch,' ordered Audley. 'Or suppose it was half-genuine, eh? Like… if the Hungarian was kosher, so they'd thrown old Gorbatov at us, like a bit of over-ripe beef-strictly expendable, with the wrong dates - how's that for size?'

Elizabeth stared at the King's Arms, computing both ends of the puzzle against its middle.

The trouble was, though, it had more than two ends: because, although David was an expert on disinformation tactics, both Eastern and Western (and it was even his contention that every operation should have a disinformation cover built into it as its first line of dummy2

defense), it was also the case that David was defending himself now against Oliver St John Latimer. So he had a vested interest in debunking Debrecen in 1984, even more than in 1958.

'Go on, Elizabeth - ' He pointed ahead again ' - I'm dying for my cup of tea. And my sandwiches. And my pint. In that order, but with very short intervals between.'

Wisps of straw from the bales lay in the street, and as she stared a faint breath of wind animated them as though they still had life in them.

Delusions of grandeur, she thought: Audley's then, back in the 1950s, but perhaps hers now, in the 1980s - and Paul had warned her about that, in so many words, risking his own professional skin in doing so.

And… all those great names which Audley had casually dropped - great Russian Names of Power from the past, about which she had read during the last two years - Andropov and Ignatiev, Shelepin, Zhurkin and Semichastny - names not really so very different from those ruthless English Elizabethans about whom she had taught her history scholarship sixth formers, almost only the day before yesterday: William Cecil for Yuri Andropov, and Francis Walsingham for Alexander Shelepin - and Sir Thomas Gresham and Archbishop Bancroft, and all the rest of the Tudor sixteenth-century espionage apparat.

But now she, little stupid Elizabeth Loftus, who had thought herself so clever, was here in her green Morgan outside the King's Arms, Fordingwell, beside her own private Francis Walsingham, trying to out-think him - what foolishness was this?

But then Father nodded at her, agreeing with her at last for once!

'Come on!' said Audley irritably, almost old-maidishly. 'When you get to my age, young woman - then the creature-comforts begin to matter.'

She looked at him. 'If all that's true - or any of it -then why did Major Parker go to see Squadron Leader Thomas - Dr Thomas? And why did someone push Parker off the Pointe du Hoc?'

'What?' He hadn't expected her to bite back. But he was still her own Francis Walsingham, and didn't like being bitten. 'Jesus Christ, Elizabeth - you tell me! Or, better still, you ask Major Turnbull - our mysterious, equivocal galloping major - you ask him about the late Mrs Squadron Leader Dr Thomas - ' He looked at his watch ' - you ask him that in about fifteen minutes' time, young woman… And then you ask me the same question - right?'

She put the Morgan in gear. The square, was wide-open, and there was nothing coming dummy2

left and right, so she went through the archway trailing an angry, irresponsible zroom, to halt one yard short of a trough of geraniums inside the yard with a jerk which would have put Francis Walsingham through the windscreen if he had not been wearing his seat-belt.

'We're booked in, I take it?' If it had been Paul she might have added ' And in two single rooms?' But that was one thing she didn't have to worry about with David Audley, because of his dearly-beloved Faith.

'Yes - ' He struggled with his safety-belt' - how d'you get this damn thing off?'

She almost helped him, but then didn't. If he was so clever he could get himself out of the car, she thought savagely.

The square of the old coaching yard was a mixture of English hostelry styles, from what might be half-timbered seventeenth century - or more like eighteenth century, because Fordingwell would have been nowhere until the coaching age - to Dickensian brick and mock-Tudor additions -

But then she thought as she headed for the hotel entrance … in fifteen minutes - how the hell am I going to kindle Major Turnbull, with David Audley beside me?

Horse-brasses, post-horns, old prints (or not-so-old) of hunting and coaching - reception desk ahead, unoccupied - dining room on the right, tables laid for dinner, nice-and-cosy, beams overhead and candles on the tables, ready for the inevitable pate maison and prawn cocktail and whitebait -

Bar, or maybe lounge, on the left -

Broken teacup on the floor, with spreading spilt tea across the dark-red Cardinal-polished tiles -

There was a small crowd of people in the bar, but they were not drinking. And now a waitress from her right, blank-faced and unseeing and unwelcoming, crossing ahead of her, into the lounge -

Elizabeth stopped, partly because she was uncertain, but mostly because the waitress was quite obviously not going to give way to her - was pushing past her even now, even before she had decided to stop - so that her attention was pulled in the girl's wake.

The crowd split apart as the waitress reached it, allowing Elizabeth to take a split-second memory-photograph of it: the ruddy-faced young man in shirt-sleeves, the archetypal young farmer on his knees - the man in well-cut tweeds - the man in an ordinary shapeless dummy2

suit - the youth in sweat-shirt-and-jeans - grouped around a man lying flat on his back on the glistening tiles.

'What did the doctor say?' The young farmer half-shouted at the waitress urgently, on the edge of panic.

'Is 'e breathing?' The waitress joined him on the same edge, breathlessly.

'God Almighty - what did 'e say?' The young man stared at the girl for an instant, then switched back to Major Turnbull irresolutely, and then looked up to the girl again. 'Sandra

- for God's sake - what the 'ell did 'e say?'

The man-in-tweeds blocked off Elizabeth's view momentarily, as he knelt beside the Major.

'I think he's stopped breathing,' he announced.

Adrenaline flowed in Elizabeth as she pushed forward. 'Can I help?'

They look at her.

'Are you a nurse?' asked the man-in-tweeds.

'The doctor said, is 'e breathing?' said Sandra. 'Because - '

Elizabeth knelt beside the Major, feeling for his carotid pulse.

'Give her room!' commanded the man-in-tweeds. 'Is he alive?'

Four minutes to brain-damage - but how long had they been arguing over him?

Her own brain was trying to work. She put down her bag and chopped him hard on the sternum - once, twice - as she remembered the St John Ambulance man do to the dummy in the sixth-form First Aid class.

'Get him flat.' The Major's false teeth were awry; she had seen them a few hours ago, unsmiling at her, but now she had to get them out of the way, to do what must be done, however hopelessly. 'Help me get him flat!'

Hands everywhere flattened the Major. 'Arch his back - support his neck.' The hands continued to obey her unquestioningly, as she remembered how the girls had tittered when plain Miss Loftus had kissed the dummy, mouth-to-mouth. But no one was tittering now.

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Someone took the teeth from her. He had looked a dreadful greyish-white before, but recognizable. Now he was a complete stranger as she held his nose shut and sealed his mouth with hers, to try to bring him back from wherever he had gone.

Her own hope expanded as she felt his chest rise beneath her. But then, as she paused and counted silently, and tried again, and then again, she knew that it was her breath of life inside him, not his.

Keep trying, the St John's man had said -

The tweed-man touched her shoulder and she saw that he was holding the Major's wrist as though he knew what he was doing. 'There's still no pulse, nurse.'

'The doctor's coming,' said Sandra to no one in particular and everyone in general. 'And he said he'd call for the ambulance.'

Elizabeth looked down at Major Turnbull - at what had been Major Turnbull, but wasn't any more. The doctor and the ambulance could come now, but the Major would have no use for them. And, by the same token, she knew exactly what she must do, according to the rules.

'Hold his neck up again - and his back.' These weren't the rules. And maybe she'd done everything wrong anyway, by the St John's man's rules. But she had to try once more, rules or no rules.

Again the sickeningly slack mouth, and the stubbly cheek, and the faint smell of after-shave. Father's rare evening peck-on-the cheek had been brandy-flavoured, and old Major Birkenshawe's moustache always smelled of tobacco and whisky; and Paul's mouth, that one and only night -

She sat up, shaking with fear and distaste with herself.

'He's gone, poor devil,' said someone. 'It must have been his heart.'

Her fear expanded almost into panic. No one with a heart condition passed R & D's medicals. And she was breaking the rules.

She picked up her bag and stood up. 'I'll get a blanket,' she said.

They were all staring at the Major. And who would want to question a Sister of Mercy after what she'd done already? 'I'll get a blanket from my car,' she repeated unnecessarily.

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Then she was in the passage again, with the still-empty reception desk in front of her - and then she was outside, backing into the Olde English coaching inn yard, with David Audley still fumbling around to get their overnight bags out of the car.

'Put them back in, David.'

'What?' He stretched, and stamped one leg. 'What?'

So little time! 'Put them back in.' She seized the car-key from him and threw the nearest bag into the car. 'Major Turnbull got here ahead of us. And he's dead.'

He stared at her for only a fraction of a second, and then threw the bag in his hand into the car and turned away towards his side of the car without any change in his expression.

Get in - start car - reverse out -

'Not too fast,' murmured Audley. Turn right.'

Not too fast - turn right -

Audley twisted in his seat. 'You watch the front. I'll watch the back,' he said.

8

There was nothing remotely menacing down the main street of Fordingwell: it was just a village street, nicer than most because the houses and little shops were set well back, a line of neatly-pollarded trees on one side and a scatter of parked cars on the other, with a few people going about their Fordingwell business.

Take it easy, Elizabeth - not too fast,' murmured Audley soothingly. 'Down the hill and over the bridge. The speed limit ends there. You can put your foot down then.'

Just ordinary people, they looked to be, left and right: butcher, baker, candlestick-maker - a knot of children, a young man chatting up his girl - a young motor-cyclist, black-helmeted, eyes on the girl, further down - a trio of men packing tools into a van outside a fine Georgian house locked in scaffolding -

Down the hill and over the bridge - but watch that motor-cyclist, just in case -

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'Where are we going?'

No answer. Audley was intent on his wing-mirror.

Odd, how her palms were sweating on the wheel when she wasn't in the least hot. ' Young ladies do not sweat, Elizabeth. Nor do they perspire. If they do anything, they "glow" .' But her palms had always sweated when she took her first look at exam papers, and she had always surreptitiously wiped them on her skirt under the desk.

Over the bridge. No sound of any motor-cycle, and the road up the hill beyond was Roman-straight and empty. And steep, too - foot down - in Fordingwell's coaching days, if this was the old main London road, they must have had an extra team of horses here in the winter, to haul the coaches up in the snow, and slow their descent, like on Shotover at Oxford - but her own horses were pulling her away now, leaving Fordingwell, and the King's Arms, and Major Turnbull behind in their own shared forever.

'Where are we going?' Audley repeated the question. 'At this moment I have not decided where we are going. But take the first side road to the left, anyway. And then maybe left again - south-south-east is the general idea, for the time being. Just use your bump of direction.'

There would be a maze of little country roads ahead, because in England there always was.

'Is there anything behind us?'

Audley fiddled with the mirror again. 'Not as far as I can make out.'

'There was a motor-cyclist… The maps are under your seat.'

'Yes. But I think he was more interested in that pretty girl in the Laura Ashley dress.'

They were over the brow of the hill. And, sure enough, there was a sign-post coming up.

Funny that David had noticed that the girl had been pretty, when she hadn't. And funnier still that he had identified what she was wearing - David, of all people! Did Faith wear Laura Ashley dresses - or little Cathy? A bit old and a bit young, respectively, she would have thought. But they were all the rage, of course. But funny, all the same - David, of all people! Screamingly funny, even.

And now she could read the name on the sign-post - and that was funny too - Hell's Bottom 2 - and funnier still, again, that the road to Hell's Bottom wasn't as broad and wide as the road to hell ought to be, it was a narrow, pot-holed track. But she had better not start laughing, just in case she had hysterics, with everything being so funny.

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She decided against Hell's Bottom. 'You're sure it was a Laura Ashley dress, David?' she said instead.

He looked up from a map, which he had found, first at her, then in his mirror again, and then back at her. 'How was he dead, Elizabeth?'

She wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt, one after another. 'Heart attack, it looked like.'

Audley stared at her for another moment, and then bent over his map again, studying it intently. 'Along here, about a mile, on the left - "Lower Hindley", it should say on the sign.

And that'll put us on the Winchester road, sooner or later.'

Her own wing-mirror gave her a sudden long view back, of a reassuringly empty road.

'We're going to Winchester, are we?' But she couldn't decide where she would feel safer: alone in this empty countryside, unprotected, or lost in a busy city, still naked.

'No.' Then he shifted awkwardly. 'Well…'

'What?' Another sign-post was silhouetted on the next rise. 'Well what?' But then she understood. 'You mean - you mean I'm supposed to be in charge. Is that it?' She snapped at him, although she had not intended to do so.

'No…' He bridled. 'Or… yes, I suppose so.'

It was ridiculous - Elizabeth Loftus pretending she was in charge of David Audley. It had always been… if not ridiculous, then mischievous, Latimer's strategy. But Latimer had never envisaged what had happened in the King's Arms, Fordingwell. Because what they both knew was that the odds against Major Turnbull having a heart attack to order at a rendezvous were even more ridiculous.

'Hah - harumphl' Audley cleared his throat. 'You are … absolutely sure… that he was - that he is, that is to say… dead, Elizabeth?'

Elizabeth felt herself hardening as he forced his words out: they were all the bloody same -

Paul and David, Father and Major Birkenshawe - all the same, the bloody same, when it came to their man's world: all the bloody, bloody same, notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary, from Queen Boudicca to Mrs Thatcher.

Lower Hindley. Touch the brakes - accelerate - there was a little more loose gravel on the silly road than she'd bargained for, but her little beauty was equal to it any day - any day!

'You're not scared, are you, David?'

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He steadied himself. 'Yes - just then, I was - ' He reached down for the map, which had fallen off his knees ' - but before that I was merely frightened half out of my wits. Because what I don't understand always frightens me - ' The road twisted unexpectedly, and he rolled against her ' - as it should do you equally, Elizabeth dear.'

The road straightened - Lower Hindley 5 - and Elizabeth finally straightened herself out with it. Perhaps she should have been terrified - and ought to be frightened still. But there was a difference between being terrified and merely horrified, she decided: or, only briefly horrified, but then momentarily irresolute, faced with the unexpected. And then (which was now the exact opposite of funny, whatever the opposite might be) - sickened, maybe - ?

Those teeth - those dreadful false teeth in her hand - slimy-hard! And that mockery-of-a-kiss, almost a French-kiss, against that toothless mouth, and those toothless gums -

But even that wasn't quite the truth. 'I broke the rules back there, David. Doesn't it say,

"When a contact is compromised - " - what does it say? "Run like hell", is it?' That was it, paraphrased. 'You were a long time in the yard, getting the cases out. So I didn't know quite what to do.' But there was still something in the back of her mind, which she couldn't reach.

Audley sniffed. 'As it happens… I was stretching my legs, trying to get some feeling back into them.' Sniff. 'This isn't a very comfortable vehicle.' He kicked out at the car irritably.

'What did you do, for God's sake?'

What was it, that she couldn't reach? 'He wasn't breathing - he had no pulse.' Those lessons in the First Aid class, which the Headmistress had made compulsory for every mistress, obliterated everything for an instant. ' Whatever you do, don't give up' , the St John's man had said. ' Not until the doctor comes.'

Audley turned towards her, but wordlessly.

'If you must know, David, I tried to revive him. Only I didn't try for very long, and you're supposed to keep trying. But then, by our rules, I shouldn't have tried at all. I should have left immediately, shouldn't I!'

There were times when Audley's ugliness became brutal, almost Neanderthal, and this was one of them. 'I see. So you did the wrong thing both times - is that it?' He started fiddling with the wing-mirror again, but gave it up in favour of turning round. Not that he could see much that way. 'Damn car! Can you see anything behind?'

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'No.'

'Neither can I. So we may be lucky. Or they may only have wanted Major Turnbull.' He looked at her again. 'So now you have to do the right thing, that's all.'

He wasn't going to help her. 'I want to report in, David.' That was easy. 'And I want protective back-up.' That was prudent as well as according to the rules, even if poor Major Turnbull had only succumbed to natural causes: nobody could fault her for any of that.

'Fine. So we want a telephone, short of the new technology we ought to have. And a phone in a Police House would be ideal. But I doubt that Lower Hindley boasts a policeman of its own.' He peered ahead. 'Just keep going.'

Just keep going, thought Elizabeth automatically. But then she thought why Major Turnbull?

'Why should anyone want to kill Major Turnbull?'

'God knows!' He smoothed the map on his knee. 'But he went to the Pointe du Hoc. So maybe they picked him up there.'

'Major Turnbull was researching Mrs Thomas's death, David. And you said that was above board - back in 1958 - ?'

'Uh-huh?' He couldn't deny the most obvious implication. 'Meaning what?' There was an unnatural note to his voice. 'Meaning I missed something, back in the deeps of time?

Perhaps he did have a heart attack.'

Elizabeth remembered what Paul had said about David Audley and Debrecen, when they came together. 'You don't believe that, do you?'

'No,' said Audley. 'I can't say that I do.'

'No.' She felt suddenly outraged at the flatness of his reaction. 'Neither do I.'

Audley pointed ahead, to the left, without warning. 'Over there, Elizabeth - pull in there.'

'Over there' was a sudden line of flags-of-all-nations, waving over an assortment of used cars on the edge of the road, and a trio of petrol pumps set back on a forecourt beyond them, all of which had appeared from behind a small wood suddenly.

Elizabeth slowed automatically, on command, and steered towards the pumps. There was dummy2

an ugly little kiosk behind them, and a ramshackle scatter of garage buildings beyond, with a combine harvester outside them as its main customer.

'Stop,' ordered Audley.

Elizabeth glanced at her petrol gauge, and hated him. The needle was on low, and she ought to have thought of that herself.

' Stop, I said,' snapped Audley, before they reached the pumps.

Elizabeth jammed her foot on the brake.

Audley sat there beside her silently, like an overpowering dummy, while a fat red-faced bald-headed man in greasy blue overalls stepped out of the garage door, wiping his hands on an oily rag, and stared at them questioningly for a moment. And then disappeared back inside the garage.

'Perhaps you're right,' said Audley finally. 'Perhaps I did miss something. Or anyway… if we have to make pictures, it's better to make bad pictures than good ones. I agree with that.'

A knot of anger twisted inside Elizabeth. 'Making pictures' was common departmental shorthand for footling hypotheses. But her picture of the Major on his back among strangers was no hypothesis. 'I wasn't aware that I was making any pictures.' She controlled her anger. 'I was simply asking a question.'

'Huh! This whole operation could be a picture.' Audley tossed his head. 'Just to show me making a whopping mistake back in '58. So now we're seeing the modern details drawn in, for good measure.' He turned towards her. 'A bit more colour here and there, and it'll be ready for the framer. And then Master Latimer can hang it behind his desk - and me with it.'

She stared back at him. 'Are you telling me that Major Turnbull could have been killed just to discredit you, David? And Major Parker before him? And Debrecen - ?'

'If it was disinformation once, it could be disinformation again?' he completed her question. 'That's certainly not beyond the bounds of ingenuity. There's a man on the other side, an old acquaintance of mine, who is undoubtedly capable of it. And if I was in his shoes I know exactly what I'd be doing next, Elizabeth.' He smiled his ugliest death's-head smile at her. 'But that can wait. Because the question is - what are you going to do next, love? After you've reported in?'

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Elizabeth glanced towards the garage buildings. There would be a phone there, so she could report in easily enough, and get all the protection in the world, and all the good advice too. But none of that really answered his question.

The fat man came out of his doors again to stare at her once more.

'Would you rather have someone else alongside you, Elizabeth?' asked Audley gently. 'You can send me packing quite easily, you know.'

She watched the fat man. In a moment or two he would come across and ask her what her trouble was. And she couldn't begin to tell him. 'Did you make a mistake, David - back in 1958?'

The fat man turned his head slightly, his eyes still on her, and spoke to someone inside the garage.

'Not so far as I know.' He paused as the fat man disappeared again into the garage. 'I suppose you could say Major Turnbull could be an end-product of someone's original error… whatever that was. But after so many years I think it would be a little unfair to suggest as much. It's still 1984 which has killed Major Turnbull; Elizabeth - not 1958. So…

even if I made a mistake in 1958, we must not compound it by making another one now.

That is what matters.'

'Even if it ruins you, David?'

'Ruins me?' His voice came closer to her. 'My dear Elizabeth - you've all got it quite wrong!

You - and your Paul, doubtless - and most of all our esteemed Master Latimer, if you think that. The only thing that can ruin me is if I play fast and loose with you now, Elizabeth.

What the hell do my antique follies matter? Now is what matters.'

'We have to know why he died, David.'

'Okay! But we already know what he was doing. So all we have to do is back-track along his route, for a start - eh? So we drop everything else, do we?'

The fat man had emerged again, but she turned to Audley as he did so, frowning. 'But, David - '

'Exactly right, love! If we back-track, to find out what it was about Mrs Thomas that I missed, all those years ago, then we stop doing what we were planning to do. Is that what you want to do?'

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That was it. Killing a field-man in his own country sounded all the alarms, but really solved nothing, because there were others to take his place. All it gained was time, if it drew maximum effort away from what mattered.

'Can I 'elp you, Miss -' The fat man leaned on the car, lowering himself with difficulty, his piggy-eyes travelling up leg and thigh and bosom until they reached her face, and registering inevitable disappointment then ' - Miss?' She watched the eyes shift to Audley, uncomprehending as they took in the whole unlikely mixture: the hard-faced elderly gentleman with the plain woman in the sports car, engaged in a heart-to-heart exchange on his forecourt, maybe father-and-daughter, not bird-and-boyfriend as he had expected from the car.

'I'd like some petrol,' she said.

'Right.' He stood back. 'You'll need the pumps for that.'

'And a telephone?' Audley leaned across her.

'No - ' The fat man caught sight of the note in Audley's hand ' - yes, there's one round the back, in the office.'

Audley looked at her as the fat man walked towards the pumps. 'Moment of truth, Miss Loftus.'

Moment of truth, thought Elizabeth.

In fact, he had more or less told her to do what she had intended to do this morning. And that, oddly enough, was pretty much what the book said too: plans should be adhered to unless compromised. And since no one except David and she herself knew the plan, it could hardly be compromised yet. But it could be the wrong plan, nevertheless.

But the fat man had reached the pumps now.

'Very well, David.'

'Very well?' His expression was made up of doubt and curiosity in equal parts.

'We'll go on as planned, to see your contact first. Then I want to meet the famous Haddock Thomas as soon as possible. And I'll ask James Cable to look after the Major until we get back.'

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He relaxed. 'We'll need transport. Let James look after that, too.' He thought for a moment.

'Tell him to lay on a plane at South Five, Elizabeth. Flight at six A.M. -Marseilles for Monaco. They'll fix the documentation and cover. You might suggest a little gambling party - the big spender can be me, and you can be my PA. And tell him to arrange a car and a driver - tell him to get Dale on to that.' He smiled at her suddenly. 'Decisions, decisions! But, for what it's worth, I agree with you, Elizabeth: going on is usually better than turning back.'

But who was really making the decisions? She wondered, as she rolled the car forward the last few yards to where the fat man was fretting by his pumps.

After a few miles of his instructions, after they had reached the Salisbury road, and used it for another five miles and then left it for another labyrinth of minor roads, she felt able to draw on her account again.

'You're sure we haven't been followed, David?' She looked into her empty wing-mirror.

He shrugged. 'We live in a technological age, my dear. So they may have bugged you somehow. And one day they'll probably have a satellite on your tail, I shouldn't wonder.'

He massaged his knees again. 'But, for the time being, there are reasonable limits we can assume, as to their omniscience.' He stretched his massaged legs in turn. 'Meaning…

anyone could have kept a tail on poor Turnbull, after he asked too many questions in Normandy. But they don't have the resources to follow everyone everywhere.'

'Why did you abort Debrecen, David?'

'Good question!' He touched his wing-mirror idly, as though the previous question still echoed in his mind. 'You know what I did - when old Fred asked me to draw up a list of Debrecen possibles, Elizabeth?'

She had to adjust her imagination, back twenty-six years, to another David in another time.

And she couldn't do it. 'No, David?'

'I made a lot of money, actually - you turn right up here, by the church. I spent some at first

- some of my own money, too… but I made a lot in the end - over there - see?' He pointed.

'And ultimately I made a lot for General Franco too, when I rediscovered Spain.' He nodded. 'Maybe that's stretching it a bit… But I always like to think that I paved the way for the second British invasion, since Wellington.' He nodded to himself. 'Did you know, Elizabeth, that I had an ancestor killed at Salamanca, charging with poor Le Marchant?'

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'What on earth are you talking about, David?'

'What?' One knee came up again. 'Market research is what I'm talking about, love. I funded a friend of mine - half with Her Majesty's funds, half with my funds, I admit - to find out where the British took their holidays-abroad. And then I sold our research to the holiday-business - through my partner, who was the front-man for the enterprise… and he made a fortune too. Which was fair enough, because he did all the real work - he had a diploma in statistics, from Oxford… But, what we found out, between us, was where people went for their holidays in '58 - places and dates and reasons. Although what he found out was in general, and what I found out was in particular. Because we quizzed some particular people about their colleagues - the ones I was interested in, but who hadn't filled in our innocent questionnaire. And some of 'em did fill in the forms, but not always correctly, as it turned out when we started cross-checking.' He gave her a twisted smile. 'It was a damnably weary business, I can tell you. But I got some sort of list in the end - not far now.' He pointed. 'Another mile or two, you turn right. Then there's a pond and a track among some trees on your left. Down the track, and tuck the car behind the trees - okay?'

He hadn't used the map since they'd left the Salisbury road. So, wherever they were going, he'd been there before, and not just once, thought Elizabeth. 'So what happened then?'

'Then the real fun started, my dear. I left my pal to carry on the survey - it was good cover, if we had struck gold, if anyone from the other side came sniffing around, looking for a rat.

And by that time we were making honest money, too. I let him buy me out in the end.'

Audley chuckled suddenly. 'All above board - paid Her Majesty back her share, plus interest - so whatever Master Latimer gets me for, it won't be for ancient peculation. But I made a bob or two all the same.' He chuckled again. 'And if I mentioned the name of our little company you might be surprised. Maybe I should have stayed in the business and told old Fred to find another genius.'

'What happened, David?'

'I started to snoop, my dear. Eliminated the impossibles, snooped the possibles until it hurt. Then zeroed in on my short-short-list.'

'And that was where Dr Thomas came in?'

'More or less.'

'And Sir Peter Barrie?'

'Him too.' Audley nodded. 'I gave him a damn good going-over.'

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'But you told him you weren't really after him.' Elizabeth frowned.

True.' Audley rubbed his knee. 'But sometimes I tell lies.'

Sometimes? 'Even though he'd already resigned from the service?'

'Uh-huh.' He pointed ahead. 'Your turning - '

'I can see it. Why did you give Sir Peter the treatment, David?'

Audley said nothing for a moment. 'He wasn't "Sir Peter" then.'

Elizabeth looked for the pond. 'Of course not. He was - a clerk in a shipping office, was it?'

'Yes… just a clerk in a shipping office. And I'm afraid that's the point, Elizabeth: he was just a clerk.'

'But he was on your list all the same.'

'Oh yes! He had been an assistant principal. Only he didn't really fancy the life - the Civil Service life. And it was a funny sort of period, the first half of the fifties, that life.'

Pond - okay! She scanned the woods for their turning. 'How - funny?' There it was: a track between two holly bushes.

'Oh… hard to say, exactly - I was never a civil servant. But I'd guess the war had interrupted the pattern. A lot of odd types went in during the war. Some of 'em left at the end of it, but a lot stayed on - maybe over-promoted, too. Different tradition, as well. Like, your old-fashioned civil servant, he'd say "Here's this piece of paper on my desk. But have we any legal powers to act in this matter? If not - why the devil is it on my desk?" But your war people - they felt that everything was the business of government. Different traditions made for a curious atmosphere. Tensions, too… And then there was Suez, of course. Stop here, Elizabeth.'

The track had curved, so that the metalled road was lost in the trees behind them. Just ahead there were a couple of tiny cottages, hull-down behind their private hedges, over-shadowed by several giant beech trees. It was a very private place.

'I talked to his old boss - Peter Barrie's boss. He reckoned Barrie had let the side down by quitting, when he was lucky to be in the Service: 'I've seen bright young types like him before - the shine wears off 'em'… That was the typical over-promoted brigade talking. No dummy2

wonder Barrie didn't hit it off with him!' Audley showed no sign of moving. Instead he turned towards her. 'The truth is, my dear, at that moment Peter Barrie didn't have a friend in the world. And I already had a shrewd idea that it wasn't going to be so easy to dig up dirt on young men who hadn't actually done anything wicked. Except take their holidays at the wrong time. But he wasn't in any position to make waves, so I made him a test case, to see just how good I was at tracking - and bullying.' He wrinkled his nose with distaste. 'I found I was quite good. But I also found I didn't enjoy it much.'

'But you cleared him.'

'Oh sure! He had a perfect alibi. I mean… well, you remember what he said? He impressed half the waiters in Italy - they remembered his girl and his generosity, in that order. In fact, it was such a damn good alibi it was suspicious - who ever heard of an innocent man with a perfect alibi? So even though he wasn't really on the list any more - he'd quit the Service and he was just a clerk to an egregious Greek - in spite of that I did my damnedest to break that alibi, just for the hell of it. And I checked him back to the cradle, too.' The distasteful memory showed again. 'But the rest you know: I couldn't break it, but I got on to the Haddock from it.'

'And you cleared him, too. Was that another perfect alibi?'

Audley gave her a jaundiced look. 'Not quite so perfect, maybe. He'd given out that he was visiting Romanesque churches in Burgundy. But actually he was shacking up with Barrie's girl, first in a hotel in Cannes, and then in a little cottage on the edge of the Vaucluse, at a place named St Servan - ' He caught her expression ' - St Servan? You know it?'

'How wasn't it perfect?'

'The alibi? St Servan is perfect… The alibi - ' He shrugged slightly ' - was an honest philanderer's one… or a lover's, let's say.'

Elizabeth blinked questioningly at him.

'Ham-hmm…' He blinked back at her. 'She was an uncommonly attractive young woman, was Delphi Marsh - Delphi Thomas. And it was… and still is… an idyllic spot, St Servan.'

Another shrug. The sun, and the wine, and the smell of the wild herbs - lavender, and thyme, and rosemary - hah-hmmm - ' He cleared his throat. 'Lovers, Elizabeth - lovers… are not always in the habit of walking abroad, establishing perfect alibis for others to unravel.

They often keep themselves to themselves. They - let's say they have other things to do, shall we?' He didn't shrug this time. But the effort of not shrugging was somehow mutually embarrassing. 'Or… or, as I remember them from long ago… shall we say instead that Haddock Thomas didn't need to impress the fair Delphi by over-tipping the waiters? He dummy2

was quite a man.'

Elizabeth matched his not-shrugging effort with her not-letting-her-mouth-gape effort.

Because what he was saying was itself impressive, and for a wildly different collection of reasons - reasons beyond his simple embarrassment at her pathetic inability to understand how lovers behaved among the wild herbs of Provence.

She forced herself to nod wisely. Because David Audley's famous memory of things long-past was nonetheless impressive (even though he'd had time, and reason enough, to refresh it recently).

'Uh-huh.' He was glad to be able to press on. 'So he couldn't account for his St Servan fortnight as exactly as Barrie could, for his Italian progress - which was more like a royal jaunt in Tudor times, with memories and largesse scattered behind it like confetti - do you see?'

What she saw was that Haddock Thomas - Dr Caradog Thomas more recently, and Squadron Leader Thomas formerly - must indeed have been impressive, to have been so much more certain of himself than Peter Barrie (or, anyway, more attractive, all those years ago).

Because Sir Peter Barrie had been pretty goddamn impressive, and certain, and attractive just this morning.

'Yes, David - ' But this time, as she tried to nod wisely again, she saw something else grimacing at her which took all the conviction from her voice.

'You do?' He caught her doubt, and threw it back at her angrily. 'Do you? Do you, Elizabeth?'

That only made her more certain: he had already conceded the impossible, that he might have made a mistake - or even mistakes - all those years ago. But he had not yet admitted the slightest possibility that those mistakes had related to Haddock Thomas. Or, for that matter, to Sir Peter Barrie. He had cleared them both once, and innocent they both remained, notwithstanding the Pointe du Hoc and the King's Arms, Fordingwell.

'I see well enough.' Her instinct was to hit back. But that would only betray her insight into his obstinate faith in himself. Thomas's alibi stood up well enough, one way or another.

'And you found nothing else to suggest he was a Debrecen man - obviously.'

'That is… correct, Elizabeth.' He looked as disappointed as a boxer poised to parry a weak punch, with his own knock-out counter-punch ready, only to have the towel prematurely thrown into the ring.

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'Yes.' She mustn't smile - she must appear innocently serious. And she had to get away from Haddock Thomas. 'But you investigated other people - other names on the list - ?'

'Oh yes. Yes…' He studied her speculatively for a long moment. 'I worked over maybe two-thirds of the short-list before we consigned Debrecen to oblivion.' He watched her narrowly.

'And - ?'

He shrugged. 'Cleared a couple. More or less.'

'Including Sir Peter Barrie?'

'Three, then.'

'More or less?'

'Didn't do them any good.' He sniffed. 'You put a question mark beside a name, and then rub it out. But the erasure still shows.'

She began to see why he hadn't liked the job. 'And - ?'

'Ruined a couple more. More or less.'

He had probably ruined Haddock Thomas. Or at least driven him out of the Civil Service, whatever he said to the contrary. But she didn't want to return to Thomas. 'How?'

He thought for a moment. 'They had two question marks.' He looked at her. 'Another one I killed. More or less.'

Again, she remembered Paul's assessment of Audley plus Debrecen. 'Killed, David?'

'Not personally.' Audley showed her his hands. 'Clean - see?'

There was, as always, a slight ink-stain on one of his fingers; the result (so Paul said) of his religious use of a leaky gold fountain-pen given to him by his wife as her first birthday present to him, years ago.

Audley considered his hands critically for another moment, then bunched them into fists on his lap. 'He was the closest thing I had to success, actually. If that's what you'd call success.' The fists tightened. 'He probably was a traitor. Though whether he ever visited dummy2

Debrecen is another matter.' He looked at her. 'I leaned on him… and he conveniently shot himself.' He raised his shoulders slowly and eloquently. 'Or maybe the KGB shot him - I was never quite sure. But if they did, it was very expertly done, anyway. And I didn't expect it.' He gave her a dreadful smile. 'Mistake Number One, possibly?'

One untimely death, plus Haddock Thomas's resignation: was that an emerging pattern?

'Was that why the operation was aborted?'

'Partly that.' He was studying the cottages ahead of them now: cottages, idyllic, English, as opposed to cottage, idyllic, French, near St Servan-les-Ruines, thought Elizabeth. 'Not everyone I was bullying was as friendless as Peter Barrie. Haddock, for example - he had friends in several high places, rather surprisingly… You see, it wasn't popular, what I was doing - there were accusations of "witch-hunting"… or, in the American vernacular,

"McCarthyism" - the Senator wasn't just history in those days, either.'

She had clean forgotten about that. "This was happening in America, too… Of course!'

'Of course?' He came back to her quickly. 'My dear Elizabeth, that was really the chief reason why we aborted… That is, apart from the fact that I was fed up - and Fred was worried about Research and Development getting a bad name… which was a lot more important than my being thoroughly pissed-off, in the final reckoning.'

'It went wrong in America?'

'Wrong? Huh!' he emitted a growling noise. 'It depends what you mean by "wrong" -

"Define your terms", I should say: maybe "wrong" in '58 might mean "right" in '84 - eh?'

Irritation tightened her hands on the steering wheel, so that she suddenly became aware of them. They were no longer sweaty, merely disgustingly sticky. And she herself felt cold now, in the shadow of the trees, and tired and thirsty with it. Whereas he seemed altogether to have forgotten that he had been dying for a cup of tea an hour ago.

The Yanks had three things going for them that we didn't have.' He was lost in his own memory now. 'They had the resources. And the man who was running their show was a real professional, much more experienced than I was…' He trailed off, memory engulfing him altogether.

Elizabeth dredged her memory. 'And he enjoyed his work?'

'That's right.' He focused on her. 'I told you, didn't I?'

'You also said you didn't get on with him.'

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'An understatment. He disliked and mistrusted the English in general, and me in particular. He only worked with me because he hated traitors even more - he was a good hater. Old Scottish Presbyterian stock, out of Virginia from way back. They were always good haters.'

Audley had done his homework on his hostile colleague, typically. 'And you returned the compliment?'

'I didn't fancy him as a drinking crony. He didn't drink, anyway.' He retreated behind more English understatement. 'But more than that, I was a little scared of him, to be truthful.'

The thought of Audley scared was itself a little frightening. And the more so because he was also quite notoriously a lover of America and all things American. 'Why, David?'

'Huh! I was afraid I might turn up on his private Debrecen hit-list one day, for one thing.

But I also didn't like his methods, they were a bit rough for my effete tastes - I suspect he regarded Senator McCarthy as a much misunderstood man. But he was damn smart, all the same.'

'So what went wrong?'

'Hmmm…' He thought for a moment. 'What we thought at the time was that he'd trodden too hard on too many toes - as I was doing - only much worse. And that was part of the truth: that he forced good men and true to gang up against him, because of the damage he was doing.'

'And the other part?'

'Other parts, my dear… The other part we knew about was that when the good men got the dirt on him and he needed friends, we - if I may mix metaphors - we put the boot in.

Because I convinced Fred that if he prospered in the CIA we could kiss goodbye to the Special Relationship, what there was left of it.' He compressed his lips. 'Mistake Number Two, in retrospect?'

Elizabeth waited for the third part of the truth.

Audley drew a slow breath. 'What we think now - which we came to long afterwards, and much too late - is that maybe - just maybe - it was the KGB which fabricated the dirt on him… which was that he was taking bribes to discredit innocent liberals.' Another breath.

'Oh, it was all done neatly and painlessly, the way good men do bad deeds: he wasn't able dummy2

to make a martyr of himself, or anything like that.' He cocked a defensive eyebrow at her.

'You understand?'

'Mmm…' What she understood was that he was ashamed, but he wasn't actually going to admit it. 'But David -'

'Yes?'

There was no way of putting it except baldly. And she was too tired to put it any other way. 'If the KGB framed him… that means Debrecen was genuine. Surely?'

'Oh no - it means no such thing.' He had been ready for the question. 'When you fish with a net, you don't just get what you're fishing for - you get all sorts of things. Just because we were fishing for one sort of traitor - a very rare and special sort, which maybe didn't even exist - it doesn't mean that we didn't catch anything else edible, which just happened to be swimming in the wrong place, at the wrong time.'

Fish, thought Elizabeth

And then Haddock -

Dance for your daddy, my little laddie!

You shall have a Haddie

When the boat comes in!

Was Haddock one of those other fish, if not a Debrecen man?

'Come on, Elizabeth. Let's go and get some well-earned refreshment.' Audley opened the car door before she could open her mouth, and she knew that he would avoid any question she put to him. She could only follow him - as she had been doing ever since their meeting in the foyer of the Xenophon Building. Damn!

And - damn! - her heels sank through leafmould into mud, threatening to unbalance her, if not to take her shoes off her feet. And - damn again! - she had no sensible country shoes in her overnight bag.

'David - ' She grabbed the car for support as she tried to extricate herself from the mud ' -

David - '

He was busy stretching his long legs again and flexing his shoulders on the other side of the car, free at last of it, just as he had done in the yard at the King's Arms. And then he stopped suddenly, and turned towards her with a new expression on his face, of quite dummy2

idiotic pleasure, which matched the sun slanting over the cottages behind him rather than the beastliness of everything he had just been telling her.

'By the big holly tree - Holly Cottage,' he jerked his head, still smiling foolishly. 'Name of Willis - same as the cricketer, okay? I'll join you in a moment.'

Her shoes were free, and her feet were still inside them. 'Where are you going, David?'

'To have a look at the road.' He nodded. 'Just to make absolutely sure.' He misread her expression. 'Don't worry, Elizabeth. I promise you I'd never have brought us here, of all places, if I rated the risk a remote possibility.' He shook his head. 'Not here, Elizabeth.'

What was so special about here - beyond their own safety? 'You take the cases.' The smile came back. 'I'll just check the road, to make assurance doubly sure - Holly Cottage, name of Willis - okay?'

' You take the cases' ? She watched him retrace their route down the track for a few yards.

Then he cut off into the trees confidently, as though he knew where he was going; which only confirmed her impression that he had been here before.

But that was David Audley, of course: having been somewhere before, and knowing someone there, was his stock-in-trade, acquired over the years. He had certainly been there before, in the foyer of the Xenophon Building, if not up to Sir Peter Barrie's holy of holies; and there had been that hail-fellow-well-met Egyptian general, who had been so old-world courteous and menacing at the same time - that was the world of David Audley, to the life-and-death of it.

Huh! And ' You take the cases' - that was Audley too, she thought, as she hauled out the two overnight bags, and tucked her bag under her arm as best she could, and set out towards the holly tree.

At least, they weren't too heavy. And at least the beaten track, away from its verges, was firm enough. All she had to do was avoid the puddles and the scatter of horse-manure along the way.

It was the biggest holly tree she had ever seen: holly was slow-growing - slower-growing than oak, was it? Or was it that people hacked at holly every year, for their Christmas decorations, to cut it back and diffuse its growth?

They had hacked back Debrecen, between them. But it had grown in spite of that -

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She caught her heel in another soft patch, as she was gazing up at the topmost branches of the tree, and had to set the bags down in order to extricate herself again. Her shoes were muddy now - her best and newest Italian shoes, foolishly chosen this morning (God! Only this morning!) when she had dressed for London and Oliver St John Latimer, not for a muddy lane in the middle of nowhere and bloody David Audley - and now, as she straightened up again, a case in each hand, her handbag - her best Italian handbag, matching her muddy shoes -was trying to slip past her elbow -

The tiny sound caught her in the midst of an ungainly attempt to catch the bag between hip and elbow, and it was just sufficient to divert her attention: the bag escaped her, glancing off her knee to land in a pile of fresh horse-manure.

Elizabeth swore aloud that particular forbidden word which nevertheless described the handbag's fate exactly - and then found herself staring straight into the eyes of the little old man who had been watching her performance through a gap between the tree and the hedge.

For a moment they looked through each other with equal embarrassment. Then the little man peered past her down the lane, towards the Morgan.

Elizabeth put down the cases and rescued her handbag. Florentine leather ought to be equal to English horse - manure, she hoped. Then she looked at the little man again.

'If you sponge it, it should be all right,' said the little man politely, in an educated voice at odds with his faded, collarless shirt, which had been inexpertly patched in several places, and his old pair of army battledress trousers which were supported by even more ancient braces barred with rust-marks from their metal clips, as though they had supported the trousers of other men of different heights, or trousers of different lengths.

'Thank you.' After the other word, her voice sounded incongruously demure in her ears.

He smiled at her. 'If it's Mr Harvey you want - Andrew Harvey? - he lives in the other cottage, my dear.' He pointed. 'But you can leave your cases here, just inside my gate. I'll keep an eye on them, they'll be quite safe. Then Andrew can come and collect them.' The blue eyes twinkled. 'Mustn't have any more mishaps, eh?'

How old was he? wondered Elizabeth. When it came to the Ages of Man, there were really many more than Shakespeare's seven in these more complex and better-medicated times.

Or, anyway, if this old man was a good ten years beyond her own dear old Major Birkenshawe - those parchment-folds of skin at his neck, and the mottling on the back of his hands, gave that away - his voice still had an edge to it, and that brightly twinkling eye was a long way from childishness.

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'No - ' It wasn't just the distant crashing in the undergrowth, away behind her towards the car, which cut her off: it was the sudden look on the little old man's face, which lit up as though the sun had come out.

'Willy!' shouted Audley from behind her.

'Dear boy!' exclaimed the little old man happily.

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'David, dear boy!' The little old man ducked down from the gap in the hedge, to reappear behind his white-painted picket-gate on the other side of the tree. 'What a pleasant surprise!'

'Don't talk daft, Willy.' David's face bore the same foolishly beatific expression as the little man's. 'I phoned you just this morning - remember?' He short-cutted across the grass towards them, oblivious of the horse-manure.

'Ah - ' The little man flicked a glance at Elizabeth ' -ah. But you are early, David, And that is a pleasant surprise, even though I have not had time to kill the fatted calf for you, consequently.' He opened the gate, and held out both hands to Audley.

'Yes, I'm sorry.' Audley took both the hands, then enfolded the little man in a bear-hug.

'There was a slight hitch in our programme… so one of our engagements was cancelled.'

'Not to worry, dear boy.' Once released, the little man turned his attention instantly to Elizabeth again, catching her with her mouth open in astonishment. She had never before seen Audley embrace anyone, even his wife, let alone another man. 'Now…just let me solve this young lady's problem. Now, my dear -'

"That's no young lady,' Audley interrupted him. 'Willy - meet Elizabeth Loftus. I told you I wouldn't be alone.'

It was the little man's turn to register astonishment; which he did for several seconds, as he took in Elizabeth again - face and hair, pink dress, muddy shoes and manured handbag.

But where he had been smiling at her before, now he was frowning. 'Indeed?' he said coldly.

Audley heaved a sigh. 'Oh, for Christ's sake, Willy! Elizabeth and I are colleagues, and we dummy2

are working - we are not engaged in some illicit escapade behind Faith's back.' Anpther sigh. 'Good God Almighty!'

Elizabeth watched the little old man's face break up from hardening disapproval to such embarrassment as made her instantly sorry for him. And, after all, he had at least done her the back-handed compliment of assuming the worst; whereas Audley, judging by his blasphemous reaction, couldn't even see the funny side of it.

'Mr Willis - ' She mustn't smile, and the fact that Audley regarded the possibility with irritation made that easier ' - I'm sorry - I should have introduced myself straight away.'

'Don't be sorry,' snapped Audley. 'Silly old bugger!'

Poor old Mr Willis struggled to get his face together again. 'Miss - ah - Loftus - Loftus…

Mrs Loftus - ?'

' Miss.' Audley's brutal tone, coupled with the warmth of his embrace and the look on his face when he'd got out of the car, served only to emphasize his regard for the old man.

'Sometime senior scholar at LMH - and First-Class Honours. And a hockey Blue when Oxford beat Cambridge, as well as everyone else… which is more than either of us can say, when we played our little games.' He had got the bit between his teeth now. 'Service rank… equivalent to assistant-secretary in any appropriate ministry. But not my mistress at the moment. Actually, more like my boss at this moment. So treat her respectfully, Willy.'

As he turned to Elizabeth she saw that this litany, or maybe the incongruity of its last items, had restored his good humour. 'Elizabeth, may I introduce you to Mr William Willis, Master of Arts from your university, sometime Commanding Officer of the Prince Regent's South Downs Fusiliers and latterly of the Intelligence Corps, former senior Latin master, Immingham School… and permanently - alas - my godfather and guardian.' He raised his hands apologetically. 'Which is presumably why he was so worried about my morals and your marital status just now, the silly old bugger.' He turned back to his unfortunate godfather-guardian. 'Good God, Willy - as if I had the time, never mind the inclination!'

'Miss Loftus.' The litany had also given Mr Willis time to get his act together again. 'First - I was never a real "I" Corps wallah. And I only commanded a line battalion of infantry very briefly, until they decided I was too infirm of body, if not of purpose - a depleted battalion too - audiet pugnas vitio parentum, rara iuventus. And second, I am your colleague's - or your subordinate's - former godfather and legal guardian. I relinquished those daunting responsibilities long ago, on the occasions of his confirmation and twenty-first birthday respectively.' He almost managed his original smile. 'Before that, he was a sore trial to me.'

'I can well imagine that, Mr Willis. He's a sore trial to me now.'

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'Ah… yes!' Honesty was allied with recent embarrassment. 'You really must forgive me - '

He held the gate open for her ' - do please come in - let him bring the cases… which he should have been carrying in the first place, of course.'

Elizabeth stepped carefully through the gateway, avoiding the vegetables which had fallen from Mr Willis's basket when Audley had bear-hugged him. 'There really is nothing to forgive, Mr Willis.'

'Oh, but there is!' He ignored Audley and the fallen potatoes and broad beans equally.

'And it is not even as though it is entirely his fault, either. For he did say that he might bring someone - ' He directed her along the side of the cottage, under a great cascade of clematis, alongside a bed thick with columbines and wallflowers ' -it is I who am at fault.'

' Silly old bugger!' repeated Audley, behind them.

'"Silly", unfortunately - "old", inevitably.' Mr Willis pointed her past his back-door and his dustbin, towards the garden proper. '"Bugger", I reject. Shall we settle for "fool"?'

The sitting-out side of the cottage, where thick thatch was lost in more spreading clematis, was ablaze with roses - old cottage roses competing with modern hybrids - round a tiny patio, and a lawn full of daisies to the exclusion of grass.

'Do sit down, Miss Loftus.' He indicated a trio of elderly deck-chairs. To continue my apology - but I see you are admiring my daisies.'

It didn't sound like an apology, thought Elizabeth as she lowered herself cautiously on to the faded canvas. "You have a lot of them, Mr Willis.'

'I'm thirsty, Willy,' complained Audley.

'A cup of tea, Miss Loftus?' The old man still ignored Audley. 'Or… at this hour I sometimes treat myself to a glass of hock-and-Seltzer. I find it most refreshing.'

Elizabeth smiled at him. 'That would do very well, Mr Willis.'

'Capital!' He lowered himself into the chair next to her, and then waved at Audley. 'Well -

don't just stand there, dear boy. Take the cases inside. The hock and the Seltzer is in the refrigerator, and the beer is where it always is. So chop-chop! He bobbed his head at the lawn. 'Yes… my daisies - they were there when I first came here, and I fought a great war with them, with one of those frightening selective weedkillers. But after a year or two they started to come back. And then one evening I was sitting here, planning another dummy2

massacre… and I thought suddenly how beautiful they were, with their little rayed-sun faces, sacred to the Mother Goddess. So I went and put the weedkiller in the dustbin, and we're all perfectly happy now, living together.' He watched her, but he wasn't smiling. 'It's my age, you see.'

What was he talking about now? She still had her smile pasted on her face,but although it suddenly felt out-of-place she didn't know what to do with it. 'Your age?'

'That's right. I thought I heard a car - he did telephone me, and he did say he might have someone with him. And there you were… and there he wasn't… But also I come from a generation which does have difficulty in acclimatizing itself to the fullest implications of the sexual equality revolution. Which is why I jumped to that most unfortunate - indeed, unpardonable - quite unpardonable - assumption.' He continued not to smile. 'Simply, when he said why he was coming, I expected one of his wary young men. You must be acquainted with the type. Perfectly respectful, even respectable. But always looking around, not to say over their shoulders, but noting everything just in case. Which I know, because for a brief space of time at the end of the war, I had something to do with their breed. Or different breeds. I used to divide them into foxes, ferrets and hounds, for convenience's sake: different animal for different job… Is it the hen-house you want raiding?

was what I used to say to myself. Or something fierce to put down a hole? Or is it a hunt, and the quarry has to be tracked and driven out of a field of kale or a briar-patch?' He studied her for a moment. 'But you don't look like any of those, my dear young lady. In fact… in fact, if I didn't know better -or worse, perhaps… I really don't quite know what I'd make of you.' The scrutiny continued, like the non-smile. 'But no doubt that is part of your stock-in-trade.'

Elizabeth became aware that she was still smiling. But there was an undoubted nuance of disapproval in what he had said, though of an entirely different sort from that in the look he had given her when he had taken her for the plainest playmate of all time. So perhaps she ought not to be smiling.

But the devil with that! He had served her with misunderstanding, and then good manners and the story of his daisy lawn, and with hock-and-Seltzer to come, only to give him time to study her at leisure. So she owed him nothing yet.

'Is that your complete apology? Or is there more?' She worked to improve her smile. 'I am a vixen? Or - I don't know the term for a female ferret.' He looked a bit like an elderly ferret himself, thin where he had once been wiry, but still sharp enough to catch the unwary. 'But with hounds I suppose the word is "bitch"?'

He sat up, and the canvas stretched dangerously under him. 'My dear Miss Loftus!' He blinked at her, pretending embarrassment. And then looked at her sidelong. 'Loftus…

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Loftus… Now, where did I read that name? Unusual name - ' He compressed his lips and stared at his daisies. ' Loftus?'

Audley appeared with a clink of glass and a somewhat disgruntled expression on his face.

In turn, he handed them tall, cool glasses, and took one look at the third deck-chair and decided against it, ending up standing, looking down on them as from a great height.

Elizabeth formed the impression that, after his initial pleasure in returning to a man whom he loved (and who returned that sentiment with interest), he was no longer quite so sure it had been a good idea.

He settled on her finally. 'Well, What have you told him?'

The old man sat back. 'Dear boy, she has hardly got a word in edgeways yet.'

'I can well believe that.' Audley buried his face in his beer.

'Loftus - of coursel' Mr Willis turned back to her, his hock-and-Seltzer still untasted. ' The Times obituary column! My favourite reading!' He beamed his delight at her. 'When you get to my age you'll be just the same, you know.'

'He knows he's still alive if he isn't in it,' murmured Audley.

'That's not too far from the truth.' Mr Willis nodded happily at Elizabeth. 'In your fifties you worry when your contemporaries die. In your sixties and seventies you shake your head sadly, for the way of all flesh. But after that it's a cause for secret congratulation -I am still here, in spite of everything, you say to yourself… But - Loftus - '

'Elizabeth Loftus. Miss Loftus to you, Willy,' said Audley.

'No, no - Captain Loftus, RN - and with that rare piece of purple ribbon, and that £10 per annum pension for valour - ?' It wasn't really a question, because he had read her face.

'Fought those German E-boats in the Channel - invalided out, and wrote history books?'

His expression amended itself hurriedly. 'Two or three years ago… he died?'

Three-and-a-half, corrected Elizabeth. Or three million? 'He was my father, Mr Willis.'

'There now!' He didn't try to disguise his old man's satisfaction with an undiminished memory. 'It must be a great comfort to you, Miss Loftus - to have that cross, with its ribbon.'

'She gave it to the Navy, Willy,' said Audley, almost casually.

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Audley knew that score, thought Elizabeth. But he didn't know it from her, because she had never added it up for him. And he wasn't flaunting his knowledge now to let her draw that conclusion, but only to put this difficult old man in his place. All she had to do was to hammer the point home.

'It wasn't my medal, Mr Willis,' she said meekly.

'Ah…' He nodded, equally meekly. But that was how it always was in the presence of Father's VC: everyone was a push-over in its shadow, somehow. And the fact that she hadn't sold it to the highest bidder - with the fact that she neither wanted to keep it, nor needed to sell it, carefully hidden - was always to her credit. So now she must cash in on that.

'But we're here on business, I'm afraid, Mr Willis. Of which my father would have approved.'

'Ah…' Something in him hardened unexpectedly. 'But… you mustn't go on addressing me as "Mr Willis", my dear. For then I must continue addressing you as "Miss Loftus".' He sipped his hock-and-Seltzer. 'I'm only "Mr Willis" to boys and tradesmen - and then only to my face. Behind my back… well, in pre-war days I was always "Willy" - sometimes even

"Little Willy", rudely.' He nodded. 'But in the war I became "Wimpy" for "J. Wellington Wimpy", because my brother-officers considered me somewhat loquacious. Which, compared with them, I was - since all of them were inarticulate, and some of them never spoke at all, so far as I remember. Except to order drinks from the mess waiters, anyway.'

He smiled at her again at last. 'But David here belongs to the earlier period. So, for convenience's sake, if you joined him… then I might perhaps address you less formally?

As "Elizabeth" - greatly daring?'

'Greatly daring?' Audley echoed him derisively. 'Huh! You can call her anything you like, just so you stop talking for a moment and start listening, Willy. Because we have some urgent questions for you.'

The old man looked up at Audley with a strangely mixed expression on his face, of affectionate distaste. 'Dear boy, I know - '

'I'm sure you don't - '

'Or I can guess well enough, more's the pity, from what you let slip on the telephone.'

Obstinacy joined the expression. 'Knowing what I know about you… and about other matters.'

'Other matters being Haddock Thomas.'

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'Other matters being other matters.' Mr Willis came back to Elizabeth. 'The decline of the nickname is a phenomenon I have observed in recent years. When I was a boy they were common. And in the army every "White" was "Chalky", or sometimes "Blanco", and

"Millers" were almost invariably "Dusty". But now it does not seem to be the rule - I wonder why?'

'Haddock Thomas, Willy,' said Audley.

' Doctor Thomas to you, dear boy. And to me,' corrected Mr Willis. 'Dr Thomas - yes? Or no, as the case may be?'

'You know him. You were both in that classical association of yours. You were on its committee together.'

'That is factually correct. Although he was a grandee, and I was a humble member, far below the salt.' The old man's face had changed: now it was blandly innocent. 'He's well, I hope? He was younger than me, though grander. But even he must have retired from full-time teaching by now, surely?'

Audley considered his one-time guardian and godfather for a moment, then drank some beer, and then reconsidered him. 'You're not going to be difficult, are you; Willy? Elizabeth wouldn't like that.'

'I - difficult?' Mr Willis turned his innocence on her. 'Why should I be difficult?'

Why indeed? wondered Elizabeth. 'We do need to know about Dr Thomas rather badly - '

She couldn't call him "Willy": She couldn't call anyone Willy ' - Mr Willis.'

'Badly? Rather badly?' There was a glint of mischief in his eye. 'Now, by that do you mean

"urgently"? Or is it a Freudian slip, and you need to know badly … in order to do badly?'

'Willy - '

'No!' The old man silenced Audley with a gesture, without taking his eyes off Elizabeth. 'I will tell you a story, Miss Loftus. A little story?'

'So long as it is little,' snapped Audley.

'Many years ago, Miss Loftus - more years than I care to number… but it was the year our 1st XV swept the board in the schools' rugger, that I do recall - many years ago, a ferret dummy2

came to see me.' He cocked his head at her. 'A ferret - yes?'

Elizabeth nodded.

Mr Willis nodded back. 'A frightened ferret, actually. But perhaps that was because he had a powerful letter of introduction with him, from a foxy type I'd known in the war - a foxy type which had metamorphosed into a hound - a wolfhound. Or a wolf - the leader of the pack, no less!'

'Willy - '

'The ferret wanted to know about a young man of my acquaintance. But at first he didn't show me his letter. Are you with me? So because I didn't trust him I demanded to know why I should give him more than the time of day, and that shortly - '

'It was 1957, Elizabeth,' said Audley from above. 'Sir Frederick Clinton was sniffing out my private life. Get on with it, Willy, for God's sake!'

'What?' The old man's voice cracked with irritation. "Well - now that you've altogether spoilt my story - have you got a letter, Doctor David Longsdon Audley?'

'Do I need a letter?' For the first time in Elizabeth's experience there was a note of something less than confidence in Audley's voice. 'Don't you trust me?'

'No, I certainly do not, dear boy! I haven't trusted you since you were sixteen years old. I didn't trust you then, and I certainly do not trust you now.'

'Why not?' Audley shook his head, almost as though bewildered.

'Why not? Well, if you don't know - ?' Mr Willis stared up at him. 'I hold you in my affection, and I have the highest regard for your abilities and intelligence, you know that - '

'Why not, Willy?'

'Because your ways are not my ways, and your gods are not my gods. Because we live on different planets. Because I will not make the same mistake as Marcus Aurelius did, David.'

'Bugger Marcus Aurelius!' Audley's voice was harsh. 'You spilt the beans about me to Fred Clinton's man. And Fred and I come from the same planet.'

'But you have not got a letter, David,' the old man spoke gently, almost regretfully. 'Have dummy2

you?'

'Who am I supposed to get a letter from? The Queen? Or the Prime Minister - '

'Certainly not her.' Mr Willis shook his head. 'I'm afraid there's no letter you could produce which would induce me to tell you anything I know about a good man… except that he is a good man… in case you are able somehow to twist it to your own purposes.' He shook his head again. 'You gave me time to think - you shouldn't have done that. But you did.

And I have.'

Elizabeth stared from one to the other, from the old man, gently regretful but utterly determined, to the big man, utterly nonplussed.

'I think there's something you should know, Mr Willis,' she heard herself say.

'My dear young lady, I'm sure there's a lot I should know. But at my age one becomes resigned to the knowledge of one's ignorance.'

'Dr Thomas was investigated many years ago,' began Elizabeth.

He raised his eyebrows at her. 'If that's what you want me to know, my dear, I'm afraid it is old intelligence. I heard that story many years ago. Not from Dr Thomas himself, but from another colleague. But perhaps you have a different version of the story?'

She must discount his gentle manner and his years, which were equally deceptive: he had had time to think, and he had deceived them both - not least probably at the start, by pretending to mistake her status, in order to gain more time in which to study her. But that was a game he could only play once with her. 'I have the true story, if that's what you mean. Because Dr Thomas was cleared, Mr Willis. Is your story different from that?'

'I'll bet it is.' Audley gazed around casually, at the cottage thatch, at the roses, at the daisy-lawn, and finally at Elizabeth. 'He indulges himself with his liberal conscience. His is the generation of Our Gallant Russian Ally and smiling Uncle Joe Stalin, the great anti-fascist.

And the heroic International Brigade in Spain before that.'

'Dear boy, they were heroic - while you were hardly more than a snivelling child.' The old man's voice was mild. 'And we would both be dead most likely - maybe a year or two later, in some bloodbath somewhere other than Normandy, and less victorious - if our Gallant Allies hadn't fought Jerry all the way to Moscow and back.'

'Very true, Willy. But they did not fight for us, you silly old bugger.' Audley's voice had become equally mild, and weary with what must be an endless division of opinions dummy2

between them, thought Elizabeth. 'Nor even did they fight beside us, like my Gallant American Allies, whom you affect to despise with such hypocritical doublethink.' He toured the scenery again, and came back to Elizabeth once more. 'You see, Elizabeth - as I was saying? He indulges his liberal conscience, and his tortured 1930s guilt complexes…

and we hold the sky suspended above him - and for his peace-loving pupils, so that they can enjoy the same luxury - do you see?' He smiled hideously at her. 'I should have remembered that. I should have got a letter from somewhere.'

This would never do: they would tear themselves to pieces arguing old disagreements, to no possible purpose! So they had to be separated.

She drained her hock-and-Seltzer. 'Get me another drink, David.'

'A capital notion!' Mr Willis drained his glass, and offered it up for replenishment. 'And your own glass, dear boy. And leave us to exchange great lies, and forget our course - eh, Miss Loftus?'

She waited until Audley had gone. '"Elizabeth" will do, Mr Willis.'

He studied her again, and she knew that she was being re-measured, just as she had re-measured him. So she must allow for that.

'Let me guess, Mr Willis: your Dr Thomas was driven from the Government service back to teaching by security persecution, although he was pure as virgin snow - would that be close?' She had to hit him hard, he would expect nothing less.

He still measured her, playing for time. 'And if it was?'

'It would be partly true, I think. But do you know who vetted him?'

That was news to him, her unspoken name. And it hurt him too, enough to dry up his reply.

'David did as he was told.' The tactics of the hockey-field in a fast break-through applied now. 'And he cleared him. And then something else came up. So he was ordered to vet him again. And he obeyed his orders again - he didn't like it, but he did it.' She prayed that Audley would take his time, with the hock and the Seltzer and the beer. 'And he cleared him again.' In other circumstances she would have given him a chance to react, but not now. 'And that was in 1958. But now something else has come up - ' Time hammered at her back, forcing her to play her highest cards by instinct, against her better judgment ' - a man died recently, we think, because of it - ' Once played, the cards made their own logic ' - and do you know why we came here early - shall I tell you?'

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Suddenly he looked older, and much more frail, so that for a moment she had scruples.

Then she remembered Major Turnbull's false teeth, and her heart hardened because of that.

'Now there's another man dead, Mr Willis. Someone I knew.' She didn't know Major Turnbull at all. But Major Turnbull was nonetheless someone she knew - ' Grime has nothing whatsoever to do with coal-mining, Miss Loftus' , he had said. So she knew him. 'Do you know what I am, Mr Willis?'

He stared at her, still struck dumb against his nature. And she knew in that instant that Audley wasn't coming - that he wasn't stupid, so he trusted her just enough to take his time.

'I'm David's letter, Mr Willis, is what I am.'

'His… letter?' That sparked him, out of his ancient memory of whatever Sir Frederick Clinton's letter-of-power had contained.

'In a way, yes.' She mustn't blow it now. 'I don't suppose you could tell me what Sir Frederick wrote, that made you change your mind all those years ago?'

He raised his eyebrows again. 'Good gracious, no!' He opened his mouth to continue, then closed it tightly on unsaid words.

'No, of course.' That must have been strong medicine of Sir Frederick's, she thought - to open his mouth, and then to close it like that. She smiled a hard little unsmiling smile at him deliberately. 'He must have had something pretty good on you, though.'

'My dear young lady - ' He weakened almost comically ' - we all have our little secrets, which we would fain remain secret. Mine is safe, I'm glad to say, since I alone guard it now.'

Elizabeth kept her nasty smile in place, and waited patiently.

He looked over his shoulder, shifting himself gingerly. But there was still no sign of Audley. 'You said… you are David's letter?' He was putting two and two together nicely.

'Then - I'm afraid it must be my old eyes, but I can't read what's written on you, my dear.'

'No?' When he called her 'Elizabeth' she would have won. 'You're quite wrong about David, you know, Mr Willis. You shouldn't be worried about what he may do to your good Dr Thomas - he still believes that he made no mistake there.' She nodded. 'You should be worried for David. Because he's a softie, like you.'

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'He is?' He still wasn't quite convinced. 'But you're not?'

Smile. 'Since you like stories, Mr Willis - do you remember the one about young Prince Edward at the Battle of Crecy?'

He goggled slightly. 'He was the one who became the bloodthirsty Black Prince, was he?'

He rubbed his chin with an audible rasp, reminding her unbearably of Father, who also hadn't shaved too closely in his old age. But then he pointed at her. ' Schoolmistress - the car's wrong, and the clothes are wrong - but that's what I would have said, before I knew you better.' Then he shook his head apologetically. 'I'm sorry - Prince Edward of Crecy, you were saying - ?'

Damn the man! 'I'm here to win my spurs, Mr Willis. And my designed job is to get both of them - Dr Thomas and David. Because someone thinks Dr Thomas may be a traitor. And David… because he may have made a mistake, but he won't admit it.' She would have liked to have spun it out, but there was a limit to the time Audley could give her. 'But I'll settle for Thomas if you give me the chance.'

He took only half-a-second to digest that. 'How will my giving you Haddock Thomas help David? Always supposing that I can?'

But she was ready for that. 'If he admits the possibility that he was wrong, then he's got a chance of turning the tables.'

'And supposing he wasn't wrong?' His expression depressed her. 'What then, Miss Loftus?'

'Then I shalln't win my spurs, shall I?' They were too far into truth for comfort now. Or was that the truth?

He seemed to sense her doubt. 'Or you could just be telling me another story?'

'I could.' There was no more time for finesse. 'But if I'm not, then your good Dr Thomas has all the time in the world, but your wicked David hasn't. And there are two dead men who have no time at all - and you can ask David about them.' She sat up in her deck-chair, feeling the canvas stretch dangerously under her. 'David! Where are those drinks you were supposed to be getting? We're dying of thirst out here!'

'Coming!' Audley's voice reached them faintly from inside the cottage.

She challenged the old man with a look. 'Well?'

'You're an evil young woman. And I have insufficient experience of evil women.' He sat dummy2

back. 'Evil boys - yes… Housemasters' wives - yes, to my cost… And their daughters, latterly.' He heaved a sigh. 'But then, I must suppose that you are your father's daughter -

if, as you say, he would have approved of what you are doing…'

There was no reply to that: what Father might have thought of this was far beyond her imagination.

Clink of glasses - David Audley as the drinks-waiter was equally unimaginable. 'Where have you been, David?'

He looked daggers at her, which she hoped were stage-weapons. 'I have been carrying your bag up to the spare bedroom, Elizabeth. And, since there is but one spare bedroom, I have been searching for the Willis camp-bed - a relic of forgotten military campaigns, upon which I hope to snatch a few hours' sleep before long.' He presented the tray to Mr Willis.

'Because we must be up-and-away before dawn, Willy. So I hope you have a reliable alarm-clock.'

'No problem, dear boy. Thank you. I shall ask the telephone to wake us all up.' The old man looked up at Audley over his glass. 'So you have not been altogether open and above-board with me, it would seem?'

'I haven't?' Audley lifted his tankard of beer off the tray, eyed the third deck-chair again, and then sank down on to the flagstones.

'Not that it surprises me.' The statement was delivered to Elizabeth. 'He was always a strange little boy, you know, Elizabeth. And an even stranger youth - gregarious enough on the surface, but solitary and secretive underneath. It was partly due to his upbringing, of course.' He returned his gaze to Audley. 'So, at all events, it is you who are in trouble, as much as - or perhaps rather than -Haddock Thomas?'

'Me?' Audley raised one shoulder. 'Could be. But I look after myself perfectly well. So don't worry about that, Willy.'

'Ah… now you must do better than that, if I am to help you. For Elizabeth here - she has been most persuasive. But not quite persuasive enough.'

'Indeed?' Audley's face was set obstinately.

'Be reasonable, dear boy. Why should one superannuated pedagogue wish to spill the beans about another? Such an action required the courtesy of an adequate explanation.

You believed Haddock to be loyal after vetting twice long ago - correct?'

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Audley didn't look at Elizabeth. 'Yes.'

'And you believe him to be loyal still?'

'Yes.'

'In spite of evidence to the contrary?'

'There is no evidence to the contrary.'

'But there have been… occurrences?'

Audley said nothing.

'What makes you so sure of Haddock?' The old man accepted his brief as devil's advocate.

Audley's lip twisted. 'What makes you so sure of him, Willy - that we have to go through this rigmarole?'

'Hmm…' The old man gave Audley a flash of loving approval, which he extinguished instantly when he remembered Elizabeth. 'So we both confide unshakably in our judgements - yours from long ago, mine of a somewhat newer vintage. So why should we fear? Magna est veritas et praevalebit, dear boy - and Truth shall bear away the victory?'

Audley sniffed. 'If you believe that, then don't fight on my side, Willy.' But then he shifted his postion, bringing up his knees in front of him and clasping his arms across them in a quaintly youthful way which was quite uncharacteristic, but which Elizabeth found oddly touching. For this was how he might have faced the old man forty years ago or more. 'My world isn't like that, Willy dear, you silly old bugger. And your world wasn't like that either, come to that… Besides which, the received wisdom in this case is that once upon a time I made a bad mistake somewhere down the line - do you understand?' Mr Willis nodded. 'We all do, dear boy - we all do.' He didn't look at Elizabeth. 'But you didn't make it with the Haddock - agreed?'

'Right. And nor did I make it with Sir Peter Barrie, who is the other candidate here.'

Audley flicked a glance at Elizabeth.

'Sir Peter - ?' Mr Willis perked up. 'Doesn't matter.' Audley shook his head. 'The point is that I have the distinct feeling that I did make a mistake somewhere. I didn't think so at first, but now… now we've lost a man. And that makes it a First Division match, Willy, I'm afraid. Because the other side wouldn't have played so rough without damn good reason - '

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He frowned ' - although I've been uneasy from the start, to be honest.'

'Why?' The old man caught the frown. 'The original vetting wasn't just routine.' Audley shook his head. 'I can't tell you about that, Willy - sorry…' Another shake. 'But the Other Side must have known how we'd react - how we couldn't let it go. Not after other things, just recently.'

'"The Other Side" meaning the fellows with snow on their boots and red stars on their caps?' inquired Mr Willis gently. 'The same chaps we ran up against at Balaclava and down the Valley of Death, when they were under different management?'

Audley's face screwed up. 'Uh-huh. And I also can't help feeling that they must have known damn well that it would be me who would be sent down the Valley again. Because I was there last time. And they know about me, you see. They've even got a man over there who's an expert on me, who knows all my little secrets.'

Elizabeth switched back to Mr Willis just in time to catch a curious flicker pass across his face. ' All your little secrets, dear boy?'

'All except the ones you know, Willy, anyway - about me being a sullen and solitary youth, and putting my hand up Mrs Clarke's niece's skirt in the old barn, on those occasions when I wasn't being solitary.' Audley rested his chin on his knees.

The old man waved a mottled hand irritably. 'Don't be flippant, David. What do you mean?'

'What indeed!' Audley raised his head. 'What I mean is… whether I was right or wrong about Haddock Thomas and Sir Peter Barrie back in '58, there is another interpretation of what I did then, which fits an altogether different scenario for it - one which will even do well enough if I was right, but much, much better if I just happened to be wrong.' He raised his chin arrogantly. 'Which I wasn't, as it happens. But who's to say that now, when old Fred's dead, and Brigadier Stocker - and my old tutor at Cambridge - among others?

Because if Haddock is a traitor, then why not David Audley too?'

Old Mr Willis's jaw dropped slightly. 'But that's daft, David.'

Audley shrugged. 'There's a man back in our office - a "grandee", you would call him, Willy - a bloody basket-hanger I'd call him - who's gunning for me. But he doesn't matter, I can take him any day, with one hand tied behind my back and one foot stuck in a bucket.

But if the KGB is setting me up now - if they're sicking me on like a hunting dog on to a motorway, after a real fox or an imaginary one - then that could be tricky.'

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Good God! thought Elizabeth: This was something which not even Paul himself had thought of -

although David himself had pointed at it already, when he'd said 'If it was disinformation once, it can be disinformation again… There's a man on the other side … if I was in his shoes I know exactly what I'd be doing.'

'I see.' The old man eased himself forward, first to the edge of the deck-chair, then up and out of it. 'Let me get you something, then.'

Audley fumbled around for his glass. 'That's very civil of you -'

'Not that!' Mr Willis shook his head at Elizabeth. 'Carrying bags and looking for camp-beds, indeed! More likely, he's already had more than his fair share, surreptitiously…'He shuffled towards the cottage, still shaking his head.

Audley's eyes fixed on her over his beer as he drank. 'And just what did you say to him…

other than what he let slip?'

He didn't sound at all grateful, thought Elizabeth. 'I asked him what was in Sir Frederick's letter.'

'Huh! Old Fred must have had something juicy on him, to make him swallow his liberal conscience.' He gazed up at the thatched roof, on which a flight of house-sparrows was dog-fighting noisily. 'They first met during the retreat to Dunkirk, in which Willy's battalion was massacred and Fred acquired a mysterious DSO. And they never quite lost touch after that. In fact, I suspect Willy did a job or two for him later on. But he's never talked about it.' His eyes came back to her. 'And I'll bet he didn't tell you a damn thing, either.'

'He said he had a little secret, actually.'

'He did?' He watched the birds again. 'I'll bet it wasn't so little! But when you've got a man's secret, you've got the man himself. "If I told thee all was betrayed, what wouldst thou do?" - he knows his Kipling, does our Willy: he read me that when I was a boy. And now someone seems to be trying to tell me that, in a way… The only trouble being, I don't know what this particular secret of mine is.' Once more he came back to her. 'What else did he say?'

'He said his secret was safe now.'

'Mmm…' He nodded. 'It would be now that Fred's dead. Because Fred kept all his promises, right to the end. Lucky Willy!'

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'And lucky David.' The voice came from behind them: the old man had returned noiselessly. 'Why lucky Willy, pray?'

Audley waited until the old man had seated himself. 'Your little secret - your little sin… or your little mistake, anyway… it died with old Fred, presumably? Or did you miss that obituary?'

'No, dear boy. But it didn't say much about him, did it?'

'No.' Audley shook his head. 'But then it couldn't, could it? It could hardly say how he burnt the midnight oil all those years so that you could indulge your liberal conscience in safety, could it?' Audley paused. 'Why "lucky David"? I don't feel so lucky at the moment.'

'Oh, but you are, dear boy, you are!' The old man searched for his glass on the flagstones, and then sipped from it. 'Lucky in love - to have such a beautiful and understanding wife, and intelligent to boot… and a daughter who takes after her mother, not her father.' He set down the glass carefully. 'Lucky to be a round peg in a round hole - or whatever shape it is, it is your shape, at all events.' He looked at Elizabeth. 'Lucky in this instance too, to have so loyal and persuasive a colleague - undeservedly lucky there indeed, as in those other regards.' He smiled at Elizabeth. 'And he was lucky in war, also. For I vividly recall - all too vividly still! - having occasion to trace the route of his armoured regiment across the Norman bocage, shortly after its passage therein… Purely by chance, you understand, Elizabeth. For I had other fish to fry… But it was not difficult - it was well-marked with burnt-out tanks and the fresh graves of their occupants. So many, in fact, that I gave up stopping to check identities after a while, where there were identities, as the odds on finding his name shortened. For I wasn't so sure that he was so lucky then, you see.' He switched to Audley suddenly. 'Forty years to the day now, that would be, almost - eh, dear boy!'