Here Be Monsters

And the Pointe du Hoc too, give or take a week or two, thought Elizabeth as she switched also.

Audley's face was a blank mask. 'You said you were getting something, Willy. But I don't see anything. And I'm hearing nothing whatsoever of interest.'

Mr Willis raised a mottled hand. 'Season your impatience! " Comes the deer to my singing -

Comes the deer to my song" - you remember that Red Indian poem we found, about the hunter lying in wait? You have sung your song, so now I have sung mine, over the telephone just a moment ago. And you are still most undeservedly lucky, because this deer is getting into his Jaguar car not far away - very close, indeed - and coming, because I have asked him to do so… And that he is even here, in his little house across the hill, is further proof of your outrageous luck, when he could have been the other side of the country, in his new factory in the Cambridge Science Park. Although, I do admit that I did ask him to dummy2

stay, after you telephoned me this morning.'

'Who, Willy?' Audley interrupted him sharply.

'Wait and see. Meanwhile I shall use these unforgiving minutes to tell you what you don't know about Waltham School.' He reached down for his glass, but raised his eyes to Elizabeth as his hand closed on it. 'Or perhaps you do, eh?'

The eyes were sharp and bright, belying the rest of the face. 'It's a very good school, I believe, Mr Willis.'

That's not the half of it, my dear.' He let the hock-and-Seltzer moisten his lips. 'Waltham is that rare perfect blend of pretension and common sense: it is that rare public school - or private independent school, in the modern jargon - in which any sensible child would like to be a pupil, or any fortunate teacher would like to be a master… or even an ancillary hanger-on - ' He watched her carefully ' - yes?'

If he was testing her then she might as well pass his test. 'It does take girls in its sixth form though, doesn't it?'

'Only as an experiment.' He twinkled with satisfaction. 'But my spies tell me that the experiment is shortly to be abandoned, in any case. Does that please you?' He waited only long enough to accept her nod. 'And to what do you attribute Waltham's excellence, eh?'

Enough was enough. 'You tell me, Mr Willis, I'm not an educationist.'

'Money, Elizabeth, money!' He slapped his knee, delighted with the outrageousness of his answer. 'Enlightenment based on hard cash - the wickedly acceptable face of multi-national capitalism is its sure foundation.' He challenged Audley in turn with this sudden departure from liberal conscience. 'Did you know that, dear boy?'

If Audley knew it, he didn't show it. 'I'm not an educationist either, Willy. I'm a heptagonal peg in a heptagonal hole - remember?' The old man pointed at him. 'Immingham is what you are - St Martin's School, Immingham: a very minor public school, with much more pretension than common sense… even though it did get you into Cambridge, David.'

'We beat Waltham at rugger. And you taught there, Willy.'

Mr Willis pointed at him. 'We beat Waltham because I coached the 1st XV - and because the headmaster regarded rugby as a form of Christianity. And there is no disgrace in giving one's whole loyalty to a second-rate battalion.' He gave Elizabeth an old-fashioned look.

'Besides which, I doubt if Waltham would have taken a second-rate classics master, dummy2

Elizabeth.'

Audley had the agonized expression of a man who wanted to say something agreeable, but couldn't quite bring himself to do so.

'But at least those were the days when the classics still mattered, before Oxford and Cambridge had sold their birth-right, and the pass with it.' Mercifully, the old man was still staring at her. 'You know what they used to say about a classical education, my dear?'

It was not the moment to recall her brief career as fifth-form Latin mistress, acting, temporary, unpaid and only prepared one lesson ahead. 'No, Mr Willis.'

'Hah! It enables us to look down contemptuously on those who have not shared its advantages. And it also fits us for places of emolument not only in this world, but in that which is to come.'

Elizabeth could no longer pretend she wasn't looking at Audley, because he was growling now.

'Take no note of him, Elizabeth,' the old man pulled her back to him. 'That is an apocryphal rendering of a remark allegedly made in a Good Friday sermon in Oxford Cathedral. And it is no longer true, alas - although it once was… except at Waltham School, perhaps. For there the classics still have status, thanks to the tradition established by the Haddock who was senior classics master there for many years.'

Audley had finished grinding his teeth. 'You were talking about money, Willy, I thought?'

'Money and the classics, dear boy.' Mr Willis was unabashed. 'And eventually the Haddock.'

Waltham was rich, Elizabeth remembered. In fact, it was an envied by-word in the profession, both for its salaries and for its disdain of fund-raising appeals. 'Money, Mr Willis?'

'There is a charitable trust, Elizabeth. The school was founded in the nineteenth century -

Victorian buildings grafted on to the late Tudor mansion built with the stones of a Cistercian abbey. Added to in the thirties, rebuilt in the swinging sixties - and recently vastly extended to the design of Europe's most expensive architects' partnership, to win some international award or other. And all thanks - though not publicly - to PAM.'

Audley breathed in. 'PAM - Lord God!' he murmured. 'Of course!'

'Pan-African Minerals,' Mr Willis nodded. 'Just a few Victorian businessmen, with a little dummy2

venture capital, who speculated here and there - and elsewhere.' Mr Willis cocked an eye at Audley. 'Didn't they get into Mexican railways, too? And Malayan tin? And now they're into everything from hotels and holidays to car import franchises? They have certainly learned to speak Japanese. Because one of Waltham's old boys - old American boys - was on General MacArthur's staff, looking the place over before the Korean War. Isn't that so?'

Audley said nothing.

'Well, whatever… PAM is huge now, and it has always poured money into the school. Its background hardly matters: what matters is that Waltham hands out scholarships like no other school, although it has always been very secretive about it. Just… the awards committee goes walkabout every year, and back come the pupils. still mostly British…

including new British, black, brown and yellow, incidentally… but also from the old African connection, now Nigerian, and Zambian, and Zimbabwean, and all the rest… But also Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese - and Chinese before long, I'd guess, the way things are going… But only first-class material. You can't buy into Waltham, no matter who your father is - eh?'

He had stopped because he was aware that they were both staring fixedly at him. And when neither of them spoke he stirred uneasily.

'Yes… well, you'll soon find out more, no doubt. I only know about the school - and what I know is fairly out-of-date, too.'

'Go on, Willy,' said Audley mildly. 'This is all quite fascinating to non-educationists - eh, Elizabeth?'

Elizabeth didn't like his non-educational look, which was as though to rebuke her for not knowing any of this before, except that Waltham had seduced her scholarship girls into its sixth form.

But now Willy was getting the message too. 'Otherwise it's a normal school.' He shrugged to late. 'The pupils are uniformed - not in wing-collars of course, just jacket-and-tie".

Uniform is only to keep the parents happy. In Britain good schools have uniform - go to France or Germany, and it doesn't matter, but people expect it here. And out of class they wear their own kit - that was a Haddock-innovation.'

He fell silent again, but they waited him out again.

'Academically… when I said "first-class", I didn't quite mean that. The aim is to get the boys into good universities, but not just Oxbridge. It isn't a crammer's school, where the bright ones sit like cuckoos, with their mouths open, waiting to be fed. God knows, I've felt dummy2

like a thrush sometimes, trying to fill the greedy little buggers!' He shook his head.

'Waltham is said to go for character - the emphasis is on learning how to learn, and they pick for that ability.' He stopped abruptly, staring from one to the other of them. 'And, talking of cuckoos, I wish you wouldn't both sit there with your mouths open. Disagree -

or agree… Or say you believe in comprehensive education, and I'm an elitist-fascist - or knock over a glass, or something.'

Elizabeth looked at Audley, but didn't really need to: if Debrecen had ever been a place in which talent was processed early, then what about the actual talent-spotting, earlier than that? If Haddock Thomas had been a Debrecen-graduate, what better job could he have than talent-spotting? And in what better place than Waltham School? If the old Jesuit boast

- catch 'em young - had any force -

'But we are cuckoos, Willy,' said Audley smoothly. 'So feed us some more worms, there's a good chap.'

'Worms? Can of worms, more like!' Mr Willis looked around. 'Where is the dratted man?'

'Worms, Willy.' Audley pointed at his open mouth.

'Dear boy - ' The old man's voice belied his words ' - what else do you want? Religion?

Oddly enough, it's quite strong at Waltham in a real sense, because those who take part in it do so voluntarily. The school has a chaplain, but the Master isn't in orders. As a matter of fact, I believe he's a linguist with a Liverpool degree, if it's still the same man I met once.

But the staffs very varied, at all events - and very well paid. And the selection process matches the pay. There was a joke, a few years back, about Waltham staff recruitment, in some educational magazine - or it may even have been in the Times Ed Supp - to the effect that, if you were shortlisted, but didn't quite make it, you could always get a university fellowship or a job piloting the next American Moon-landing, as a consolation prize.'

'And Haddock would have a hand in that, I take it?'

'Oh yes - Second Master at Waltham was never a bottle-washer's job, so the Master could go off junketing. The Master always led the school from the front - the Liverpool man was highly visible in the life of the place. And there was a Third Master who handled the timetable and the donkey-work. Second Master was big time - I told you the Haddock was a grandee. In fact, he was really de facto chairman of the staff selection board and the scholarship panel, and took it in turns with the Master to go trawling in foreign parts dear to PAM, and keeping up University contacts. Sort of foreign secretary to the Master's prime minister, you could say - ' The old man caught himself in the mid-flow of his eloquence as he happened to glance from Audley to Elizabeth ' - hmmm!'

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'Go on, Willy.' Audley had more successfully assumed an expression of guileless interest.

'Worms, did you say?' Mr Willis fixed his gaze on her. 'And I said cuckoos. But snakes is what I'm thinking now! Or wolves - wolves pulling down old bulls for sport, maybe.'

Elizabeth cursed her inexperience. 'Nobody's pulling anyone down for sport, Mr Willis. I told you the way things were - and how they are. We are not concerned to establish anything other than the truth.'

'The truth? Only the truth?' He dropped her almost contemptuously. 'What I do not understand, David, is why you are wasting your time on Haddock, believing as you do.

Could you not be better employed?'

'I could indeed, Willy,' agreed Audley. 'I have much better things to do - much better, and probably more pressing, and certainly more important things. From which I have been untimely ripp'd, Willy. However… as I was at pains to explain in words of one syllable… I think I am being set up, one way or another. And I think the basis for that setting-up may be some error I once made - not in regard to the snow-white Haddock - or in regard to his former friend. But I'm certainly not going to wait around for the trap to close. And Haddock is the only clue I've got at the moment.'

'But he's no traitor, dear boy - not in a thousand years!'

'So he's been set up too, then.' Audley's voice lifted defiantly. 'And so clearing him -

clearing him for the third time, Willy - could be reckoned as much my job now as it ever was, as well as saving my own valuable skin. Remember those rules you made? Bloody impossible rules - when I saw you after old Fred had recruited me in '57 - remember?'

What rules? wondered Elizabeth, altogether frozen out of the exchange. And, when it came to the crunch, David Audley was a notorious rule-breaker.

But now there came another crunch, of tyres on the track on the other side of the privet hedge, accompanied by the opulent engine-noise of a much larger car than hers.

Audley stood up. 'A Jaguar, Willy. Is this deer coming to your singing?'

'Ah!' The old man eased himself out of his deck-chair. 'He took his time, but he is here at last.' He peered over the hedge, but then looked down at Elizabeth suddenly, smiling his old-ferrety-smile. 'A character-witness, I think you might call him. But then, if a man is innocent… A very tricky thing, innocence. Guilt is much more easily provable.'

She watched him round the side of the cottage, and then turned to Audley. 'I'm sorry, dummy2

David.'

'Sorry?' He wasn't listening to her.

'Haddock Thomas may be innocent. But he fits the Debrecen specification just as well at Waltham School as in the Civil Service. Maybe even better.' She mistrusted them both - the godson and the godfather. 'Much more ingeniously, anyway.'

'Yes.' He was listening to her now. 'Yes, he does.'

It wasn't the answer she was expecting - so much so that it shut her mouth.

'Yes.' When he smiled this dangerously sweet smile of his, he wasn't ugly. 'You've done well, Elizabeth. I certainly wouldn't like to be caught between two such dreadful old men!

But you did well.'

'I did?' She hated the way he seemed able to read her, too.

'But you're quite wrong.' The smile vanished. 'The monsters on the Other Side are smart.

But they're not that smart.' He shook his head. 'I made no mistake about Haddock Thomas and Peter Barrie. Not then and not now - may I swing for it if I'm wrong!'

Someone was coming. 'So long as I don't swing with you, David.' She observed him look past her, his face rearranging itself into its more usual expression of brutal neutrality.

The newcomer was a tall bespectacled young man, with fair hair and a ruddy complexion ravaged by acne. He took in Audley with a single glance, then his eyes focused on her legs for an instant before travelling inexorably upwards towards disappointment. It was a progression she had encountered many times before, to which she knew she ought to be inured.

'My dear Gavin - let me introduce you - ' Mr Willis managed an extraordinary octogenarian skip round the young man ' - Miss Elizabeth Loftus, daughter - only daugher, if my memory serves me right - of the late Captain-Loftus VC, the distinguished naval historian.'

'Miss Loftus.' The young man hastened too late, as they all did, to take her hand. To cover up that disappointment he would treat her sympathetically, if he ran to form.

'Mr Gavin.'

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'Thatcher, actually, Miss Loftus - Gavin Thatcher.' The ruined cheeks creased into a shy grin.

'But no relation to our other Sovereign Lady,' said the old man. 'That splendid woman!'

'Wimpy - you're a trouble-maker.' The young man looked at Audley. 'And you're the godson, sir? He's told me about you.'

'Oh, yes?' Audley pretended to know an ally when he saw one as he extended his hand.

'And you're from the Cambridge Science Park?'

'Watch yourself, Gavin!' snapped Mr Willis. 'He's tricky.'

Elizabeth stirred herself to intervene while she was still in credit. 'Mr Thatcher - '

' Doctor Thatcher,' Mr Willis corrected her. 'And she's tricky too, Gavin. The female of the species, in fact.'

For a moment the young man didn't know what to say, but could only blink at her. 'Is that your car out there, Miss Loftus? The green Morgan?' He touched Audley with another look, but rejected him on the grounds of age and size. 'How long did you have to wait for it?'

'I bought it second-hand.' What was he after?

He frowned. 'This year's model - the registration?'

'I bought it from an American serviceman, Dr Thatcher.'

'With a right-hand drive?'

He was damnably observant, for a very young Jaguar driver. 'He was posted unexpectedly to a place where there are no cars - left or right.' She smiled at him. 'I was lucky.' She didn't want to antagonize him, but the old man had left her little to lose. 'Were you one of Dr Thomas's pupils, Dr Gavin?'

Mr Willis sighed theatrically, and then circled round them to pick up the tray on which Audley had brought the drinks. 'Hock or beer, Gavin?'

'Nothing, thank you.' Dr Thatcher stared at her. 'Why do you want to know, Miss Loftus?'

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Mr Willis straightened up. 'Gavin was the top classical scholar of his year. And a double-first thereafter… Compared with him you are an historical plumber, David - a hewer-of-wood and drawer-of-water, intellectually speaking. His involvement with the so-called high technology of the computer age stems purely from the Haddock's advice, allied to his latent skills. It seems that some classicists are quite surprisingly competent in computer skills - rather the same way some mathematicians are allegedly muscial, if you scratch them sufficiently. Is that not all common knowledge in high places?' He looked questioningly at Audley.

Gavin Thatcher shook his head. That's rubbish, of course, Dr Audley.'

'Rubbish that the Haddock didn't steer you to Business School after Cambridge?' Mr Willis's voice was almost old-maidish. 'Rubbish that he didn't then tell you about - who's that young fellow you introduced me to, your partner-in-crime - ? The ex-IBM Old Walthamite who had the idea for those esoteric devices you are presently selling to the Americans?'

Gavin Thatcher shook his head again. 'Who exactly do you work for, Dr Audley? May one ask?'

'Does it matter?' Audley jerked his head towards the old man. 'If we're vouched for, does it matter?'

That wasn't the way to handle the top classical scholar of his year, decided Elizabeth. 'We work for the Government, Dr Thatcher. In an indirect sort of way, which we can't explain.

But we're also working for you. And I hope we're working for Dr Thomas most of all, as it happens.' She risked a glance at Mr Willis. 'True, Mr Willis?'

'Good God, young woman - don't ask me!' Put on the spot, Mr Willis squirmed uncomfortably. 'I'm just a silly old bugger!'

'Oh?' It wasn't what she'd hoped for. But she still had something in the bank with this young man. 'But you summoned Dr Thatcher to talk to us - about Dr Thomas, surely?' She looked at the young man.

'Somewhat equivocally, Miss Loftus. If not mysteriously.' Because she was plain he didn't want to be cruel to her. 'I was planning to return to Cambridge this evening. But he insisted that I must delay my departure, because of an urgent matter involving Dr Thomas.

What do you want to know?'

'Dr Thomas was the Second Master?' What did she want to know, that he could tell her?

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'Yes.' Doubt began to overlay his surrender.

'I've never met him, you see.' She must not give him time to think. 'What's he like?'

'Like?' He seemed momentarily astonished at her ignorance, to the extent that he flicked a glance at Mr Willis. 'Well… tall, thin, eloquent and short-sighted - you mean, what's he like

- ?'

'He played rugger rather well when he was young,' murmured Mr Willis.

'Not in my time. He just taught the theory of the game.'

'And the classics,' murmured Audley, in a tone matching Mr Willis's.

'Yes - ' Gavin Thatcher could sell his esoteric devices to the Americans, but he couldn't play Audley and Mr Willis and Miss Loftus simultaneously.

'Yes?' Elizabeth gave him the rest of her capital. 'Greek and Latin? Tell me about that.'

'Yes.' He relaxed perceptibly: whatever doubts he still had, he couldn't relate them to Virgil's verse or Caesar's prose. ' " Gallia est omnis divisa in partes Ires' - or " Hell! said the duchess" - that's as near as damn-it what he said, in his first lesson, on my second day at Waltham. And he said all the best Latin was exact, and compact, and elegant, and Caesar's was as good as any, so we'd begin with him. And all we had to remember was that the Gallic Wars were like Cowboys and Indians - "How the West was won".'

He stopped, and Elizabeth hoped against hope that neither Audley nor Mr Willis, who both liked to hear the sound of their own voices, would say anything. They didn't say anything.

Gavin Thatcher drew a deep breath. 'I remember… " Thus with the years seasons return, but not to me returns day or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn" - with the emphasis on day… and

" Me only cruel immortality preserves" - emphasis on me only because the order of words is one of the glories of Latin verse, of course. Although Latin isn't in the same class as Greek.'

Elizabeth didn't dare look at either of them: Gavin Thatcher was already out of her class, in that other world of gold, at which lesser mortals might just guess, but in which they could never travel.

'I remember quoting Catullus at him - " Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus advenio"

- which we hadn't been told to read… And he gave me hell after that: he damn well concentrated on me!'

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He wasn't trying to be arrogant, Elizabeth cautioned herself: he was only treating them as equals, after Mr Willis had dismissed Audley as a mere historical plumber - and David in his time had been a scholar!

This time there was no danger of them speaking. 'In Greek we read Xenophon - " The Sea!

The Sea!" - and the Gospel according to St Mark, and the Odyssey. Greek was the real thing, of course - the big thing. Not just the language, which is more fun than Latin - more intricate - but the ideas, do you see?' He paused.

'The Gospel according to Haddock,' Audley whispered to himself.

'The Gospel according to anyone worth his salt,' murmured Mr Willis. 'All the rest of history is a postscript, a mere postscript.' He smiled at Audley. 'You were wasting your time, dear boy. I told you so all those years ago, but you wouldn't listen.' Then he sighed.

'But the greatest wonder of all, to me, was that they actually paid me for teaching this glorious stuff!'

She didn't want them arguing again. 'He taught you philosophy?'

'Not as such.' Gavin Thatcher shook his head. 'But that was pretty much what it was all about, somehow. The languages were ends in themselves, but also means to greater ends.

Or an end - know thyself." Make what you can of that", Haddock used to say. "Some people have learned a great deal from it."' He frowned at her, suddenly embarrassed again. 'Is this really what you want? What else do you want me to tell you?'

'What else did Haddock tell you?'

'Well…' The frown cleared '… he told me to join the school choir, for one thing.'

'He's a Christian then?' Somehow it surprised her.

'No. Not really, I don't think - '

'He's a Welshman. Or his parents were Welsh.' Mr Willis gestured vaguely. 'The Welsh are forever singing. They don't seem able not to.'

'They're forever playing rugger too,' said Audley. 'He said the ways of God were far too strange for him, as a matter of fact.' Gavin Thatcher ignored him. 'He always said he would have expected the Messiah to have started from - and improved on — The Nicomachean Ethics. And then, why didn't He ensure that His teaching was written down straight away dummy2

in Greek - or Latin - so the whole civilized world could understand it, instead of in Aramaic, or Syriac, or whatever? Which was like trying to spread the Good News in Cornish.' He grinned at her. 'But he never said any of that in front of the Chaplain. He liked Old Tank - we all did.' He looked at his watch quickly, and then at Mr Willis. 'I really do have to be going, Wimpy. I'm supposed to be seeing a chap in Cambridge after dinner, about some more venture-money. And it's a hell of a drive from here.' He smiled apologetically at Elizabeth. 'And I don't think I've been much help, either.'

'He steered you into business, did he?' asked Audley. 'He kept in touch, after you left the school?'

"That's par for the Waltham course, dear boy,' said Mr Willis. 'They have a good after-sales maintenance service for their products.'

'The Master advised me, actually, Dr Audley. But Haddock opened a few doors for me.'

Gavin Thatcher bent down to put his glass on the tray. 'And he did once give me one bit of priceless business advice.'

'And what was that?'

The young man stared at Audley. 'It was the last time I saw him while I was still at school, before I went up to Cambridge. He said that in my first term there would be the Freshers'

Match in which rugby-playing newcomers would have a chance to show their ability.'

Audley nodded. 'I remember. Yes?'

'He said I was to forget what he'd taught me. On that occasion only I was to play for myself, and not for the team.' He looked at Elizabeth. 'The purpose of the Freshers' Match isn't victory for one side, or even a good game, you see, Miss Loftus. It's selection. And I was a wing-three-quarter then - do you know about games, Miss Loftus?'

'Gavin, dear boy - ' Old Mr Willis levered himself to his feet again ' - she has a hockey Blue, from a year in which her dark blue trounced your light blue.'

'I beg your pardon, Miss Loftus.' Only his complexion saved him from blushing. 'Then you'll know that no one passes to the wing in such games, of course.' He paused. 'So Haddock said I must ask for my old position, as fullback. And then, when I got the ball in the open, I was to run with it. And if I had to kick it, I was to kick ahead, not into touch -

and kick so high, and follow up so fast, that when the ball came down I would be there.'

'And that, Miss Loftus, is the secret of making your first million before you attain your thirty-first year,' said Mr Willis. 'Right, Gavin?'

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'You are an old bastard, Wimpy!' Gavin Thatcher's eyes ranged from Elizabeth to Audley and back. 'Dr Audley - Miss Loftus - '

'"Silly old bugger" is the majority view. But come on, then - ' the old man shepherded the younger one ' - you must not drive too fast in that big car of yours, and kill yourself. Why do you not have a car like Elizabeth's? Or is it status? Will you have a Rolls-Royce next time?'

Elizabeth knew only that the young man was going, when she didn't want him to go. And the thought pushed her further than she would have gone if she had had more time. 'You loved him, Dr Thatcher - Haddock?'

' Loved him?' The outrageous idea arrested him as he was ducking under the cascade of clematis at the corner of the cottage. 'I was terrified of him half the time - and I hated him the other half. You just wait and see for yourself - ' Whatever other truth he had to impart was lost as Mr Willis pushed him from behind, muttering almost incomprehensibly as he did so.

'"Loved him"! Stuff and nonsense!' The old man disappeared too.

Audley was looking down at her, almost sympathetically. 'Well, Elizabeth?'

'Well - what?'

'Well, you're quite right: hate is akin to love. And you've now had Peter Barrie, and Willy… and that far-too-bright young devil, sucking his high-tech silver spoon, on Haddock Thomas - or the Haddock, as Willy insists on rendering him. So what have you got?'

'And I have you, also. But I have only the ones you wanted me to have, David.'

'True - very true. But then you've got the man who vetted him in '58 - vetted him twice.

And you've got an ex-friend, who lost his girl to him. And you've had a colleague, and newer friend, neither of whom has nothing to gain or lose - one of whom cares more for me than I him, whatever he may say… but who is not about to compromise his principles for me. Which is more than I can say for myself.' He drew in a breath. 'Because if I thought Haddock Thomas had screwed me back in '58, , then I'd be screwing him now - vengeance plus self- preservation, Elizabeth: that's just about the most potent cocktail you can serve, believe me.' He nodded. 'To which now you've added an ex-pupil, my dear.'

'But Haddock still appeared on the Debrecen List, David.' Over the privet hedge the sound dummy2

of the big Gavin Thatcher car interrupted her. 'If there ever was a Debrecen List.' Audley's expression became ugly. 'All I got on Haddock was nothing. And all you've got on Haddock is nothing, too.'

'Including what Major Turnbull didn't give me?' She matched his ugliness with hers. 'And Major Parker jumped off the Pointe du Hoc, did he? Nothing plus nothing, is that?' From ugliness to brutality was only a short step. 'Or did you miss something?'

'If I did, then it was because he was too clever for me - and so was Peter Barrie. And they'll be much too clever for you now, if it's proof you're after - '

'Proof?' Old Mr Willis brushed past his clematis. 'What sort of proof is that? Proof to sway an English jury, than which there is nothing more oblivious to proof? Or proof- spirit? In which case we can now drink something stronger than anything you have consumed so far. And I have a casserole in the oven. So are you going or staying now, dear boy?'

'I thought I smelt something in the kitchen. Staying, Willy. But going long before dawn, as I told you.' Audley sat down again, rather wearily. 'I'm getting too old for this sort of thing.

And much too old to be reminded to know myself. It's far too late for that now.'

Mr Willis sat down. 'You haven't succeeded there yet, then?'

'Good God, no! I look at myself in the shaving-mirror each morning, to check for the tell-tale signs.' He shook his head. 'But when you see the signs, it's too late.'

It worried her to see him like this. 'What signs, David?'

He looked at her. 'What you should be worrying about, Elizabeth, is what you're going to put in your report to your master, the sainted Oliver, after we have visited St Servan-les-Ruines tomorrow.'

'About the sainted Haddock Thomas, whom everybody loves - including you, David?'

'Oh - not sainted, believe me.' He shook his head again.

'Certainly not sainted!' Mr Willis echoed him.

'But everyone loves him.'

'And he loves everyone.' Mr Willis admired his daisies. 'The boys -'

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'And their mothers. And their sisters.' Audley admired Mr Willis's daisies too. 'And their aunts. Strictly out of term, of course. He was always careful that way. And his colleagues.'

'And their wives.' Mr Willis nodded agreement. 'And their sisters.'

Audley nodded. 'Their colleagues' sisters. And the wives' sisters.'

Elizabeth remembered the fair Delphi, Haddock Thomas's best friend's girl. 'And their fiancees?'

'Them too,' agreed Audley. 'And you too, tomorrow. All grist to his mill, if it wore a skirt.

He had a lot of love in him, as I recall.'

'He enjoyed the occasional tipple, too. As I recall. And probably still does.' The old man smiled reminiscently at his daisies, and then turned the smile to her. 'There comes a time, my dear young lady, when one's… ah, one's attraction … to - to, not for… the fair sex declines. But I have never yet been rejected by the cork in a bottle - at least, not now that there are these mechanical openers which require no strength.'

'So, you see, Elizabeth - ' Audley abandoned the daisies ' - not a saint, the Haddock.'

'Just very careful,' agreed Mr Willis. 'Not to say judicious, in his sinning.'

They were playing with her. 'And a lover of the Classics, as well as an incomparable teacher. He loved to teach.'

'That above all - ' The old man turned to Audley ' - David?'

'You think so?' Audley considered the proposition seriously for a moment. 'I think… when I took him to the cleaners, and then hung him out to dry, back in '58… whatever was to his hand at the time, that was what he loved best. He was just a natural-born great lover, I'd say.'

'But not a traitor, David.' The old man wasn't smiling.

'No evidence, Willy. Not then - so probably not now. But then, with the very good ones…

the very good ones, Willy - not just the clever ones, or the lucky ones - the ones we've missed, because we missed something - or someone has missed something… because the very good ones are the ones Elizabeth and I are after… with them, Willy, evidence doesn't really come into it. With the very good ones, we don't have to say "yes" or "no", but just

"maybe".' He had flicked glances between them as he spoke, but now he was back with the old man. 'And if "maybe", then we have to take a closer look at your Gavin, to see just what dummy2

sort of high-tech contracts - and contacts, too - he's into, which the Russians would also like to be into. And then maybe - it's a great word, "maybe" - we'll just tip the word, so as he won't make his first million before he's thirty-one. Or his tenth million before he's thirty-five. Maybe, by the time we've finished with him, he'll go and teach Latin and Greek at Waltham - like Haddock Thomas did, even - ?'

'David - ' The old man's voice had the beginning of an outraged squeak in it.

'Are you going to make him a "maybe", Elizabeth?' Audley cut him off. 'With your two dead majors, you can hardly do anything else, unless you back your judgment as I did, back in '58. And as everyone now seems agreed that I made a mistake you can hardly do that, can you?'

She knew why he was so weary now; and it was not just because he was old enough to be her father, and he'd had a hard day, which had included a dreadfully untimely death behind them only a couple of hours ago, which could only be natural against the odds; it was also because of something he'd just said - which was something he'd been saying all along, or hinting at off and on, which she'd never quite been able to grasp.

'What signs, David? In the mirror?' She was weary too: it had been a long day, since Paul had seen his tripod masts in the mists of this morning. But she could see them now, at last.

'What signs?' He nodded at the old man. 'He's to blame.'

'I am?' The accusation made Mr Willis forget his outrage. 'How?'

Audley scowled at him. ' "Wer mil Ungeheuern Kampft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird" - don't you remember your "know thyself advice, you older Ungeheuer?'

He switched the scowl to Elizabeth. 'Trust him to spout Nietzsche at me, not Plato, or any of his other Greek hoplites! And this was back in '57, after I'd been recalled to the colours on his recommendation - his bloody recommendation, too!'

'A most misunderstood philosopher, Nietzsche.' The old man's face became bland as he turned to her. 'Do you not have the German language then, Elizabeth? And you an historian? I remember David arguing with me that all the best medieval history books were written in French and German, so Greek was really a waste of time, and he could keep up his Latin without taking any more exams.'

'The hell with that!' exclaimed Audley. 'Do we harry Haddock to an early grave? And do we persecute Peter Barrie, just in case, because he'll do just as well? And do we persecute everyone they've promoted or advanced, to make double sure, because we're not sure?

Because that's the self-defense option now - yours and mine, Elizabeth.'

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What was an Ungeheuer? 'You know I don't speak German, David.'

'Just check your mirror. Or look for the horror that sits grinning on your pillow, in the small hours - it always shows up in the dark, no matter who is there beside you: "he" - or

"she" - let's say "we" - "we who fight monsters must take care, lest we become monsters too thereby".' He picked up his glass, and frowned at it because it was empty, and then looked at her. 'You'll have to decide for yourself tomorrow, Elizabeth. But, speaking purely personally, I'm buggered if I'm going to become a monster - either for the sainted Oliver, or for the KGB.'

10

'Over there, Elizabeth.' Audley ignored the taxi-drivers. 'The red Fiat - the fellow in the dark glasses.'

'David - '

But he was already stepping out, oblivious of the puddles.

The roar of an aircraft reversing the thrust of its engines drowned the rest of her appeal, but he turned back to her into the noise as it shrieked and then died away. 'What?'

'Where's Richardson?' The sun came out from behind its cloud into a patch of Mediterranean-blue sky, flashing on every reflective surface and sharpening up every shadow with an alien clarity.

'What?' He squinted at her.

'Never mind.' She fumbled in her bag for her own dark glasses, more for self-defense than appearance: she had composed herself for this encounter, but she should have known better that there was no armour against reality so far from home. 'I'm coming.'

He swung away, back on his original course, without a second look at her. And she had composed herself inadequately for that too - Audley trailing her into the field, which he now plainly wasn't doing, so that her composure slipped, with no greater problem than to avoid the puddles.

But at least Audley knew the man, for he was shaking him warmly by the hand as she dummy2

reached them.

'Miss Loftus - ' The man swept the case (which Audley hadn't offered to carry; but she was getting used to that) out of her hand and into the open boot almost without looking at her '

- into the back, please.'

For a southern Frenchman, almost as swarthy as an Arab, the accent was startling Public School English, unsettling her further.

'You too, David.' He looked around the car park quickly. 'Let's get the hell out of here.'

A nasty humiliating suspicion enveloped her as she did as she was told. 'Captain Richardson?' The car slammed her back in her seat.

Richardson, Peter John, Captain (Royal Engineers), retired? She had decoded a dozen SGs from him in the last six months, each about the same unbreakably code-named subject, but all from Northern Italy.

'Richardson is me. But I left the captain behind twelve years ago, Miss Loftus.' He swung the wheel. 'I answer to "Peter".'

He might answer to 'Peter', but he drove like a rush-hour Italian, thought Elizabeth. 'What happened to Mr Dale - Peter?'

He continued to drive like a maniac, without bothering to answer.

'She said "What happened to Mr Dale?", Peter,' said Audley.

'I heard the first time. You're going to have to be quick this time, David. Otherwise you're going to be in trouble.' Not captain Richardson studied each of his mirrors in turn. 'And I don't mind you being in trouble. But I do mind me being in trouble - in France. Because I've still got a clean slate here.'

Audley settled back. 'Just answer the lady, there's a good fellow. All they told us before take-off was that Dale wouldn't be meeting us and you would. But they didn't tell us why.'

He drew in a breath. 'And the lady is in charge, not me.'

'Is that so?' Richardson took a look at her in his mirror. 'I'm sorry, Miss Loftus.'

'Don't be.' She watched Audley's fingers drum on his knee. 'What about Mr Dale?'

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'I have a message for you, actually. I'm to tell you the Major wasn't a natural event -

whatever that means: the Major wasn't a natural event?'

Audley's fingers stopped drumming.

'Thank you.' The steadiness of her voice surprised her. 'And Mr Dale?'

'Probably safe, back in Paris by now.' He looked at the clock. 'Most likely asleep in his bed.'

Elizabeth closed her eyes for a second. 'Why did he leave?'

'He saw someone he knew, but not quite quickly enough. So he didn't reckon to his cover any more. And I just happened to draw the next-shortest straw, unfortunately.'

'The French, you mean?' asked Audley quickly. 'The DST?'

'Among others.' Richardson's voice was almost contemptuous. 'His face is all too well-known in certain official circles, anyway - like yours, David, if I may say so.'

'Ah! The French… Stupid of me, I agree, Peter.' Audley recovered quickly. 'I do rather have this damned blind spot about the French, Elizabeth. I've lived here twice - once when I was a mere boy, on exchange, before the war… and once for several very happy and frequently inebriated years later on, after Cambridge, as a tax exile. And, of course, I invaded them in

'44 - it is a really wonderful country to invade, with all the wine and women. So some of my very best friends are Frenchmen, and I do rather take them for granted… Which is stupid, Peter, I do agree.'

And she had been stupid too, thought Elizabeth: the French had been on to the Pointe du Hoc, and they would surely have traced Major Parker back to St Servan after the Americans and the British had demonstrated their interest in him. And, as she had cause to know from even her limited experience, the DST was jealous of foreign intelligence intrusions.

'Stupid?' Richardson snorted. 'Apart from your youthful indiscretions - about which I'm glad to say I know nothing… my God, David! You're a three-time loser anywhere. But here of all places!'

'Here?' Elizabeth glanced for a second at the dense holiday-traffic on the other side of the autoroute, heading south, and then at the sign pointing them northwards, past Avignon and Orange, to distant Lyons and faraway Paris. 'Why here?'

Richardson reached down and threw a map back into her lap. 'Don't you do any dummy2

homework in London? Doesn't the Plateau d'Albion mean anything to you?'

She looked at him. 'The Plateau - ?'

' Perfide Albion is us, Miss Loftus,' said Richardson. 'The Plateau d'Albion is where the French have got their ..IRMBs siloed - plus one or two longer-range missiles now, I shouldn't wonder. Right, David?'

Audley took the map from her. 'St Servan's in the sensitive radius?'

'What the hell d'you think? It may not be in the red radius, but it's for damn sure in the pink. And they may not be able to log every tourist who drives along the Nesque gorges, but they'll have logged every foreigner resident in the pink zone. And there are enough large hoof-prints around your Dr Caradog Thomas by now to make them decidedly twitchy, I'd guess - ' Richardson leaned back ' - unless you know something that I don't know, anyway - ?'

Audley looked at her at last. 'I think we maybe are in trouble, Elizabeth. Or… like the man says… we're going to have to be very quick, in and out.'

'And gone,' agreed Richardson. 'If we can get away from St Servan in one piece, Dale's got a man in Avignon who can split you up. And then you can head for Belgium, not the nearest frontiers, which will be covered. Or you can throw yourselves in the embassy in Paris and shout "Sanctuary! Sanctuary", like the Hunchback, and make it a diplomatic incident. Just so long as I'm back home in Italy, I don't give a damn!'

'It's that bad? Is it, Peter?'

The shoulders lifted. 'Search me - this is not my territory. But Dale ran like a frightened rabbit. And he doesn't scare easily.'

'Among others?' Elizabeth had been trying in vain to get a word in edgeways. 'What others?'

'Yes,' agreed Richardson. 'He thought the Other Side was maybe savouring the tourist attractions of the Vaucluse. So that also helped to concentrate his mind.'

'The KGB?' Audley notoriously hated departmental euphemisms.

The shoulders lifted again. 'He wasn't sure. But he wasn't happy.' Richardson rocked in his seat. 'But don't get me wrong: he ran because he saw this DST heavyweight - not because dummy2

of any damn Red.'

It was all going wrong, thought Elizabeth. It had gone wrong in Fordingwell, before it had properly started. And now it was going wrong in France, before they had even reached St Servan-les-Ruines. And she couldn't even say that she hadn't been warned: Paul had seen his damn tripod masts looming out of the mist yesterday. Perhaps David Audley had seen them too - perhaps that was why he hadn't demanded to run the show, even.

'So you're in charge, here on the ground, Peter,' said Audley mildly.

Richardson muttered something Italian. 'In charge? Do me a favour, David! We're consultants, not the cloak-and-dagger brigade. I'm supposed to be in Milan at this moment -

where are you supposed to be? What's Dale really supposed to be doing?' He tossed his head. 'I'm sorry, Miss Loftus, but it's the truth: I'm not really in charge of anything - we don't have the resources for that sort of game. So Dale's got two watchers - a nice enough couple, husband-and-wife, and she's pretty as a picture - and they're such bloody amateurs that they might even get away with it, I don't know… But amateurs, all the same - and if I was properly in charge of a surveillance which attracted a personal appearance of Dr David Audley - and, saving your presence, David, your presence attracts trouble like a pile of butcher's offal attracts flies - then I'd need six people, at the very least. And they'd have to be good. And even if they were, I'd want them changed every three days.' He began to accelerate past a line of lorries labouring northwards up a gradient. 'In a high security zone, Miss Loftus, it's like the old Arab proverb: guests start to smell on the third day.' He pushed the Fiat past the last lorry. 'But now you are in charge. And I await your orders.'

They were all the same, though Elizabeth bitterly: the smell of trouble made them all take refuge in someone else's responsibility if they couldn't run for cover. 'What did Dr Dale tell you about Dr Thomas? I assume he briefed you before he left?'

'Oh, yes - ' He took another look at her, and met her dark glasses again with his own ' - yes, he did that. But he didn't know quite what he was supposed to be doing, of course. Any more than I do.'

'What did he say?' There was no point in sharing her own doubts with him: one of the things she had to learn fast was not to sympathize with other people's minor problems. She had given her youth to Father's every whim, anyway: so if ex-Captain Richardson didn't like his job he could complain to someone else later. If he should be so lucky.

'Not a lot, really.' He didn't like not knowing, and he didn't like her much either - just as he didn't much go for Audley. In fact, he was probably adjusting ugly bastard Audley to ugly bitch Loftus at this moment.

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'Tell me not-a-lot, then.' It was really no different from teaching recalcitrant third formers, who had to be driven before they could be led.

'He's an old man - an old dog retired to his kennel in the sun.' He shrugged. 'What is there to tell?'

'For Christ's sake, Peter!' exploded Audley. 'Stop shitting us!'

'An old dog - okay.' Audley's sudden anger calmed her even more. Because, if Haddock Thomas was an old dog, and Richardson was a dog in the prime of its life, then it must be hard on an old dog like Audley with a bitch like Elizabeth Loftus alongside him.

'An old dog, Mr Richardson?'

'Huh!' Audley growled as he subsided into his own kennel. 'An old Caradog, more like!'

'What?' Richardson made no sense of that.

'Dr Thomas, Mr Richardson,' said Elizabeth.

'"Doc" - M'sieur Doc, to be exact - that's what the locals call him - ' He massaged the steering wheel' - but that's funny, you know. Because Dale said it didn't have anything to do with him being Doctor Thomas - " le est professeur" , is what they say, if you push them.

Like, in Italy, we say professore, not dottore. So I don't know why he's "M'sieur Doc".'

Audley grinned at her, with sudden pure wicked pleasure. 'Haddodt, son of Cymbeline, or Cunobelin, King of the Brigantes and Enemy of Rome, before Queen Cartimandua handed him over to the Romans, Elizabeth - remember?'

Caractacus - Caradoc - Caradog - Craddock - Haddock… and finally M'sieur Doc, in his final metamorphosis, thought Elizabeth. 'So what do the locals say about him, Mr Richardson?'

'Nothing to his shame, Miss Loftus.' Richardson leaped over all Audley's nonsense to come to the point. 'They think the world of the old devil, as a matter of fact.'

'Old devil?'

'I merely quote Andy Dale. The old boy first came there on his honeymoon, and he's owned the cottage for donkey's ages. It seems his wife died young, but he still used to come down every summer, and sometimes in the spring too. So he's pretty much part of the scenery. Goes every morning to get his bread and his two-day-old Times, and every dummy2

evening for his drink with the lads - he likes his drink… Chats up the women - likes them too… Waves at the girls, and they wave back.' Richardson paused. 'In his younger days he did more than wave, apparently.'

Audley gave her an 'I-told-you-so' look.

They think the world of him, anyway: "the famous English professor".'

'Does he have visitors?'

'He has lots of visitors. That is, apart from his local cronies who crack bottles with him regularly. It seems his old pupils call on him quite often. And there are parties of boys from his old school come in the summer. Usually half-a-dozen, plus a master. The boys camp out in his little garden. The word in the village is that they talk together in Latin and Greek, and he tells them tales of Jules Cesar and his great wars in these parts.' He stared at her in his mirror. 'Real subversive stuff, eh?'

'Recent visitors?'

'No boys at the moment. There was an elderly American a week or so ago - " professeur Americain" , according to the locals, Dale says. Stayed one night at the Vieille Auberge. Name of Parker. Visited him in the evening. Left next morning.'

'Name of Parker?' Audley shook his head at her. 'It just doesn't make any sense, Elizabeth.

Even if Parker was running scared - if he knew the CIA was on his heels - one side or the other - '

The CIA?' Richardson gave a start. 'Oh Christ, David! Not them too!'

'Does he have a phone?' snapped Audley.

'Yes, he does - Christ! David - us and the Other Side… and the Yanks! You'll never get away with it -

'Parker could have phoned.' Audley ignored Richardson. 'They could have met somewhere safe perfectly easily. He didn't need to leave tracks a mile wide, Elizabeth - right to Haddock's door.'

'Haddock?' Richardson waited in vain for an explanation. 'I was going to suggest that we might just pass you off as another visiting professor, David. And if you go in and out like greased lightning, and get what you want from the old devil and then run like hell… But if dummy2

the entire intelligence population of Western Europe has been sniffing round St Servan - no wonder Andy Dale abandoned ship!'

It was worse than that, thought Elizabeth. If they hadn't been on to Parker when he'd visited Haddock Thomas, the French would surely have been on to him after the Pointe du Hoc. So they were damn well bound to be in St Servan - she should have expected that even without Dale's confirmation. So they would be driving into a trap now.

Audley was looking at her. 'Well, Elizabeth?'

'Our turn-off is about ten kilometers ahead,' said Richardson. 'But I can turn left, into Avignon, instead of right. And if there's anyone on our tail, they won't be expecting that.

Or, even if they are, I can run them around and zip into the underground car park in the piazza by the papal palace - they'll have to be bloody good to follow us there before we can ditch this car and run. And Dale's man in Avignon will split us up and get us out from there.' He shrugged. 'I can come back to the car, if you like, and make like I'm waiting for you.' He shrugged again. 'If they made me at the airport then I haven't got anything to lose.

And I haven't actually done anything… except chauffeur a three-time loser a few miles. So they'll just hold me for a day or two, and maybe lean on me a bit, and ask me for my name and number.' Another shrug. 'Or with any luck they'll just follow me back to the Italian frontier, and see me off the premises.'

What should she do? wondered Elizabeth desperately.

'It's less than five kilometers now, actually,' said Richardson. 'And counting.'

She wanted to ask Audley what to do. But if she did then she'd never be able to make a decision again without remembering that she hadn't measured up, this first time.

'They might not be following us, of course.' Richardson thought aloud for her benefit. They could be so sure of us that they're just waiting at St Servan. Or they may not be there at all -

I don't want to influence you, Miss Loftus. Because they could be as incompetent as we are, even. Unlikely as it may seem.'

That was dirty play. Because they both knew that the French might make big mistakes, usually for political reasons, but they seldom failed at this level, and particularly not where the Americans and the British were involved, who were soft targets.

' Harumph!' Audley emitted a strangulated sound, after having tried almost pathetically to keep silent. 'Remember what Colonel Butler always says: " Booger them! Thee do tha' owern thing, lass!"'

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Colonel Butler had certainly never said anything like that in her hearing, if it was a Lancashire accent which Audley was attempting to reproduce.

But the French motorway signs were coming up ahead -

Pride or prudence? Or common sense? Father believed that women had been fabricated from Adam's rib without any of those qualities -

Major Birkenshawe had said once, when she had come to say 'Goodnight', although she had not been going to bed, because she had been typing one of Father's manuscripts at the time: 'Come on, Loftus

— you knew Jerry was going to hit you with his E-boats, that last time - because you'd got the Ultra decode - Liza, my dear! Off to bed? Just trying to get a straight answer from your father - eh, Loftus?'

And Father had said, without looking at her, as though she didn't exist, 'My dear Birkenshawe —

the Navy, unlike the Army, isn't hired to run away. It's hired to fight -Goodnight, Elizabeth - '

'Turn right, Mr Richardson. I have absolutely no desire to visit the underground car park at Avignon. So let's go to St Servan.'

Richardson drove, as he was told: signalled, slowed, drove… slowed again, signalled again, and finally accelerated without another word, letting his silence pronounce his disapproval.

Elizabeth stared out of the window, trying to see what she found herself looking at. She had always wanted to visit Provence: it was one of those places every schoolteacher ought to know, the land of van Gogh and Cezanne, and Madame de Sevigne, and Daudet and his mill, and Tartarin de Tarascon, and St Louis at Aigues-Mortes, and above all the monumental relics of the Romans. But in Father's time she had never travelled anywhere, and now she couldn't see anything at all - just a rich foreign countryside like a great busy market garden full of fiercely growing things glimpsed in gaps in cypress hedges and lattices of bamboo.

Why was nothing ever as it ought to be, not even freedom and power and adventure?

'Hah-hmm…' Audley cleared his throat, as though to attract her attention. 'Quite right, Elizabeth. For the record.'

She looked at him in surprise. 'For the record?'

He smiled. 'You didn't ask me for advice. You did your own thing. But, for the record, I am advising you nevertheless… to go on to St Servan.' He tapped Richardson on the shoulder, dummy2

somewhat urgently. 'Got that, Peter Richardson? " Dr Audley insisted - " - got that?'

'Uh-huh.' They burst out of a shadowy avenue of cypresses into open country at last, with hills ahead, and other hills behind misting into a heat haze. '"There is the enemy - there are the guns": if Captain Nolan comes back from the Valley of Death he will dutifully recall what Lord Lucan said to Lord Cardigan. Just so he comes back all in one piece is all he cares about now. But he will dutifully and gratefully recall every last word and syllable afterwards. If there is an afterwards.'

Elizabeth still looked at Audley, trying hard not to feel affection for him. Because sentiment was always dangerous in this game, and with someone as devious as David it might well be dangerously misplaced, too. 'Why, David?'

'I was going to ask you the same question, my dear."

Why?'

'I asked first.'

'But you're in charge. I am but a soldier-of-the-line -… Or, in these parts, a time-expired legionary cheated in his discharge.'

'Then, if I'm in charge, I can pull rank on you, David.'

Another smile. 'And I recruited you, didn't I? So I have no one else to blame, except myself?' He also chuckled. 'Fair enough!'

It wasn't fair enough: if they had played dirty with her, they'd played even dirtier with him. But it was a dirty game, and no one had forced him to play it. And she had other, dirtier doubts about him, anyway.

'I'm too old for this sort of thing. But, more than that - much more than that - I'm too busy: I have much more urgent and important things to do, than worry about some allegedly horrendous mistake I made, years ago - That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools -

'So now I must stop what I ought to be doing, and manoeuvre to protect my back from my enemies on my own side. And I can't blame them, that's the trouble. Because, in their shoes I might be doing just the same thing. Because there is something bloody queer about all this - I know that, if I know nothing else.'

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Audley fell silent and Peter Richardson drove furiously. And the orchards and almond-groves had fallen behind them: now there were vineyards, immaculately cultivated, with distant ruined castles on the low hills on either side of them. 'What we're doing, Elizabeth, is running out of time. Because this whole affair revolves around time, I suspect. Because Parker didn't need to call on Haddock Thomas the way he did - he could have taken his time to set up that meeting. And why did he go over that cliff at the Pointe du Hoc? They could have taken him out any time - just as they could have taken out Haddock Thomas.'

'And Major Turnbull?'

'Turnbull?' The car swerved slightly. 'What's with old Brian at the moment? I heard Jack Butler had acquired him after he'd lost his cover. Is he in on this?'

'Mmm… ?' Audley pretended not to have heard the question properly. 'What about him?

Brian alias Turnbull?'

'Nothing. Difficult old sod.' Richardson shook his head. 'Remember me to him, though.

And… just tell him it wasn't my fault, that business about his cover. But if he'd stayed where he was he'd have been on borrowed time - tell him that.'

Thoughts jostled Elizabeth's mind, relevant and irrelevant. She had the other half of his name now, which she had never known, or even needed to know: the unimportant (and quite inappropriate) half. Brian -

'I'll do that. If I see him.' What Richardson didn't need to know Audley wisely didn't tell him. 'You wanted to know, Elizabeth - why, was it?'

If someone, somewhere, had wanted Major Turnbull dead, for whatever reason, then it would have been no problem putting a contract out on him: that didn't prove anything more than Richardson had already done, with that message of his. The fact of Fordingwell

- the terminal event - was less important than its timing; which was what Audley had been saying.

'We have to go on, Elizabeth, because we don't have any choice in the matter. That's all.'

Audley leaned forward. 'Would that be Bomb Disposal logic, from your Royal Engineers days, Captain Richardson?'

'Uh-huh.' Richardson held the wheel tightly, letting the car drive itself along a Roman-straight road towards the hilltop ahead, which boasted a tricolore above its ruined tower.

'But there were such things as anti-handling devices even in our day, designed to blow us up. So we didn't just hit it with a hammer because it wasn't actually ticking.' He half-turned towards Audley. 'And you seem to think your bomb is still ticking, if I heard you dummy2

correctly?'

'My bomb?' Audley sniffed, and turned to Elizabeth. 'There speaks a peace-time bomb disposal officer, my dear. When my old chemistry master was a bomb disposal officer in London in 1941 he always had half-a-dozen bombs - and a couple of land-mines - on the go, in the Blitz. He always used to say that it wasn't a question of when he'd be blown up, so much as where. In fact, the last time he came back he got the Head to set the sixth-form scholarship class a variation on the old Would you save the baby or the Elgin Marbles?

question: Would you save a row of houses in the East End or the local sewage works? And, I tell you, that really stretched us. Because we'd never seen a sewage works, let alone an East End house.'

'So what was his answer?' Richardson fell into the trap.

'He never got round to telling us.' Having caught his man, Audley returned happily to Elizabeth. 'If I'm wrong about Haddock, it'll take you months to get any sort of lead, And if I'm not wrong it'll take you forever. But in the meanwhile I want to get back to a bomb of my own at Cheltenham, which could go up any minute. So let's hit this one with a bloody hammer… And if it goes off in our faces - if he laughs at us, and tells us that there isn't one damn thing we can do now… because there isn't one damn thing we can do - except maybe I can resign, and you can get a feather in your cap, if you want to wear a feather… if he laughs at us, that'll be something better than nothing.'

'I don't want that sort of feather, David. But what if he doesn't laugh?'

'Oh, he'll laugh - old Haddock'll see the joke, whether it's on him or us. He won't have changed. Aged, maybe… but not changed.' Audley nodded. 'He should be just about ready for drinking now: aged in the wood.' Another nod: he was excited, rather than pleased, at the prospect. 'Besides which… if I don't quit - and I'm damned if I'm going to quit for Oliver St John Latimer - what can they do to me? The way things are at Cheltenham, they need me more than I need them right now.' Another nod. But this time the excitement was smoothed by rather smug confidence. 'So what can they do to me?'

'Oh, great! Bravo!' murmured Richardson. 'Vintage patriotism, 1984: "My country needs me - but it's paying less than the going rate". But you're asking the wrong question, I suspect.'

'And what is the right question?'

'You may well ask!' But Richardson didn't seem disposed to answer.

Audley waited, and Elizabeth decided to wait too.

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The landscape was closing in on them again. There were more orchards now, as well as vineyards - peaches, or almonds maybe, or even olives, but something exotic, anyway; but, more strange than the flora (and there was no sign of any fauna, except Frenchmen in French vehicles, which made the road even more foreign), was the suddenly-jagged landscape.

'It's not worth looking, Miss Loftus.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Just because you can't see them, it doesn't mean they aren't there. Or, anyway, that they haven't got us covered. They're at St Servan, anyway.'

'I was looking at the countryside, actually.'

'Uh-huh?' Richardson drove in silence for a time. 'Nice, isn't it? Myself, I don't like the French. But then my mother was Italian, so I suppose I'm biased. However… your Italian -

he has his faults, but he wants to be a gentleman, even when he's picking your pocket, or cutting your throat. But your Frenchman - he's got style, but no one would ever accuse him of being a gentleman.'

'Balderdash!' said Audley. 'Poppycock!'

'Possibly,' agreed Richardson equably. 'But when it comes to self-interest - call it La France, if you like - he can be mean and smart, is what I mean.'

'It isn't what he means at all, Elizabeth,' said Audley. 'Come to the point, Pietro.'

'Okay. Have it your own way.' Richardson shrugged. 'The further we drive up this pretty road - and if those clouds weren't in the way you might just see Mont Ventoux, Miss Loftus

- the further we drive up it, the queasier I feel.' Another shrug. 'If we were just tourists…

but no one's ever going to accuse you of being just a tourist, David… And if Andy Dale got just a whiff of KGB up there, at St Servan, before he glimpsed this French DST fellow…

And now you say that it was the Yanks led you to this old boy in the first place - ' Shrug ' -

God knows what he's done - I don't want to know, not now: I want to be able to say Mein Gott! I voss only obeying orders: I voss only drivink ze car! — just so we get in quickly, and then get out quickly. Will you at least do that?'

It was looking less and less like a good idea, and more and more like a stampeded amateurish error, thought Elizabeth. 'We won't stay for lunch, Mr Richardson. All right?'

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'I hope you won't, Miss Loftus - I hope you won't!'

"There's a two-star restaurant in St Servan,' said Audley.

'La Vieille Auberge.' Richardson nodded. 'Have you ever been in a French slammer, Miss Loftus?'

'Shut up, Peter,' said Audley. 'Just drive.'

'Onomatopoeic, Miss Loftus,' said Richardson. 'American slang for the sound of the prison door closing. And I'll bet there isn't a CIA man to be found in a thirty-mile radius of us now. Because they're not nearly as stupid as their allies like to think.'

'Shut up, Peter,' said Audley again. 'Just drive.'

Peter Richardson just drove.

'Have you been in the field long, Miss Loftus?' he said at length.

'Drive, Peter,' said Audley.

She couldn't even concentrate properly on the countryside, after she found she couldn't think straight. Not even when she saw a strange field, and caught a stranger smell.

'Lavender,' said Richardson obligingly. 'Or a sort of lavender. What they grow is some sort of hybrid - the real stuff grows wild, higher up, with thyme and rosemary. I remember stopping off up here - oh, it must have been fifteen years ago - when I was driving my first girl down to Amalfi, to see my mother's folks. We stopped off further north, though - Buis-les-Baronnies, it was… It was okay then, because there were no missiles on the Plateau d'Albion… Now, when I come over, I keep to the autoroute, just to be on the safe side.'

Eventually he stopped, quite deliberately.

'Phone-box here, just round the corner. Got to make a call.'

Elizabeth sat in silence, until it became oppressive.

'Have I made a mistake, David?'

Audley stared down the village street, in which nothing moved. 'We all make mistakes.

Maybe I made a mistake, a long time ago. If I did, then maybe we've both made another one now. Join the club.'

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Richardson came back.

'That's okay. He's just gone out on his terrace, to read his morning paper. He'll have his coffee. And then some more coffee. By the time we get there he'll be thinking about his first drink.' He let in the clutch.

'But I still don't think I made a mistake, Elizabeth,' said Audley.

Peter Richardson just drove, again.

There were hills now, and twisting valleys, up and down, and through and around, with scrubland rising up here and there above fertile fields, hinting at the wilder country of Peter Richardson's real lavender. And -

And that had been the country to which Haddock Thomas had taken his beautiful scheming Delphi, long ago. And had he returned here to die here, because this was where he had once been happy?

And there were villages, set high up on one side, or low down on another - low down, but still on promontories in their valleys, each with its ruined medieval castle tower and its church - each at once different from the last one, yet identical.

It was perched on the side of a ridge - a plateau, almost - also just as different, but just the same -

'I'll go straight in, and drop you off outside his place. I can turn round at the top, somewhere… I have to come down a different way, but I'll sound the horn - one short, one long, one short - as I come by, underneath his terrace. Then I'll fill up the tank at the gas station, and I'll have a drink at the auberge - for an hour?' Richardson glanced over his shoulder at Audley. 'Same signal -okay?'

Elizabeth cracked. 'And if everything isn't all right?'

'Long-short-long… if I'm lucky.' He signalled and slowed to leave the main road. 'Dead silence if I'm not. Okay?'

Elizabeth craned her neck to try to take in the terrain of St Servan-les-Ruines, but too late, because of listening to Peter Richardson: the huddle of the village was already lost behind a screen of trees, and she had lost the shape of everything. But it was still so peaceful that the whole charade was utterly unreal, anyway.

'Here we go, then,' said Richardson, in a voice so suddenly-serious, like a fighter pilot dummy2

making his low-level run, that she was jolted from unreality to reality.

It was larger than it had seemed, on that first uninformed look, when it had been just another village: there was a street, and another street, with shops in it - even a shop with dresses in it, which no English village would ever have possessed; but then no English village she knew of still had a baker's shop - a butcher's shop - never mind a two-star auberge —

The Fiat swung sharply, through 180 degrees, under a cliff of ancient stonework, towards a tiny fortified gateway, under a cascade of flowers which reminded her insanely of old Mr Willis's cottage far away in soft green England, which was so near in time, but so desperately and helplessly far away in miles.

'Where are the ruins?' She heard her own voice almost with surprise, it was so sharp and confident.

'What ruins?' Richardson slowed to negotiate the gateway.

'St Servan-les-Ruines?'

'Search me.' He changed gear once he was through. 'It all looks fairly ruined to me. I never thought to ask.'

Just as unexpectedly as they had arrived in the village, they were unexpectedly out of it again, into an area of stunted old oaks and scrubby vegetation, but with an equally sudden view of a fertile and well-cultivated valley below, bathed in hot sunshine.

Yet not quite out of it after all, maybe: the narrow road fell gently towards a final huddle of houses perched on a flat shelf in the hillside amid a cluster of shade trees.

'Prepare to abandon ship,' said Richardson. 'Dale's people will have their eye on you from up there.' He pointed up the hillside, to a modern house almost on the crest of the ridge, not unattractive, but sited with fine (and presumably French) disregard for an otherwise unspoilt landscape. 'He was lucky to pick that up, it overlooks the old dog's kennel perfectly… They're supposed to be a honeymoon couple. But I won't tell you any more, just in case the worst comes to the worst.' He twisted towards Elizabeth as he slowed down. 'Honeymoon couples inspire a certain delicacy even in the worst and most nosey of people, Andy Dale reckoned, Miss Loftus. And they keep themselves to themselves.'

Where had she heard that before, just recently - ?

'Out,' said Richardson, just as she remembered. And the remembrance of Haddock Thomas dummy2

and his bride here all those years ago, and in the very year which mattered, was a cold and desolate thought, quite unwarmed by its irony.

But Audley was already out of the car, and had skipped round to open her door with uncharacteristic good manners.

'Good luck - ' Richardson's glasses were black in the glare ' - to us all, Miss Loftus.'

The house was very old, and not very large though unnaturally high for its size, but sturdily restored up to the iron water-spouts under its pantile roof.

The car accelerated away, leaving Audley standing somewhat irresolute before the choice of a front door and the wrought-iron gate in a shoulder-high garden wall. Then he resolved his irresolution simply by peering over the wall on tip-toe, and choosing the gate for her.

There was a little shady garden, under a pergola of some sort of vine, with all the light and colour concentrated on the edge of a terrace, where a man in a panama hat sat amidst a blaze of red flowers and scatter of books and newspaper pages, with a glass in his hand and a puff of blue-grey tobacco smoke above him.

But the gate had squeaked, and the man changed the picture as it fixed itself, turning towards her.

'Dr Thomas?'

'Hullo there - ?'

Slow, gravelly voice, the sound filtered through many years and many bottles. But years of what else? wondered Elizabeth: just many years of hie, haec, hoc, and Caesar's Gallic Wars?

Or many years of treason?

She felt Audley's large presence at her back, pushing her forward, overawing her from behind even in the shadow. And in that instant she steeled herself against disappointment.

For, whatever he was, and whatever he had been, Haddock Thomas could only be an anti-climax in the flesh, innocent or guilty.

'Hullo there?' He peered towards them over his spectacles, which had slipped far down his nose.

Elizabeth advanced. Just for this brief moment she might be as beautiful as Helen of Troy for all he knew, and that wouldn't do at all.

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'Dr Thomas?' She whipped off her dark glasses and entered a shaft of sunlight which cut through the canopy above.

'Yes.' He placed his glass carefully on the table beside him, rose to his feet, and finally removed his panama. 'Once upon a time, anyway.'

The light had half-blinded her for an instant, but her next step took her into shadow again.

Nothing very special, indeed: neither horns nor halo, neither Caliban nor Hyperion in retirement. Just another old man.

'Forgive me, Dr Thomas.' In that moment of half-blindness she had missed his first reaction to her. Now she saw only that he wanted to recognize her, from his gallery of wives and sisters of long ago, but couldn't do so. 'Elizabeth Loftus, Dr Thomas.' Just another old man: younger than old Mr Willis, but much taller and thinner, and sun-browned (sun-browned with perhaps a hint of dear Major Birkenshawe's whisky-flush, maybe), leathery-tanned by age and sun and alcohol. 'We haven't met.'

'Until now.' He smiled the correction at her, and pushed his spectacles up his nose with his index finger. And then smiled again, without embarrassment at what was in sharp focus at last.

'But we have met,' said Audley from behind. 'Back in the deeps of time, Haddock.'

Haddock Thomas stared past her, frowning slightly, but only with the effort of memory, with no outward hint of any emotion. Yet then, if he wasn't what he had seemed all these years, he would be good, thought Elizabeth bleakly. Too good, in fact.

'Don't tell me, now.' For the first time there was the very slightest hint of Welshness beneath the gravel. 'My eyes are not what they were - ' The eyes, faded china-blue, came back to Elizabeth ' - too much staring into the sun, you see, Elizabeth Loftus. Long ago it was a matter of life-or-death to look into it - "The Hun in the Sun" behind you was very likely to be the last thing you ever saw, with no need to worry about old age. But from this terrace I have watched the sun over too many cloudless days, and the moon rise over starlit nights of dreams - Axel Munthe was right, he knew the price of sinning. But, of course, he also knew that the price was worth paying, for the sin. And that's one of the world's troubles today: the crass belief that we have a right to something for nothing.

When, in fact, we have no rights at all - and even nothing is expensive. Indeed, nothing may prove to be the most expensive commodity of all -even more costly than the sun itself.'

'He was always like this, Elizabeth,' said Audley. 'Or, perhaps not quite so philosophically pompous when he was younger. But quite bad enough, as I remember.'

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Haddock Thomas continued to look at her. 'It's the voice, you see, Miss Loftus - Mrs Loftus

- ?'

'Miss, Dr Thomas.' She mustn't like him: they had all succumbed to him - his pupils, his equals, even his interrogator and the friend whose girl he had taken - they had all liked him.

'Miss Loftus. The eye can be a great deceiver. Not merely in the present - not merely the picture which lies, or the quickness of the conjuror's hand - it deceives memory too. Smell is much better, perhaps best of all, so long as it lasts. But sound now… "a tinkling piano in the next apartment" and the cry of John Peel's hounds, and the leather on the willow…' He placed his cigar on an ash-tray beside his glass and then offered her his hand. 'And now I believe they've proved that every voice has its print, as unique as every finger, Miss Loftus.'

Audley loomed in the corner of her vision, in full sunlight.

'And David Audley?' He relinquished her hand and offered it to Audley. '"Dr Audley, I presume?" should I say?'

Audley said nothing for a moment, as the sound of a car, close but invisible, rose from below the terrace wall.

Beep-baaarp-beep!

'Haddock.' The two men measured each other for changes. 'It's been a long time. But you look well.'

'A long time, indeed. So do you. still doing the same job? Much higher up, though?'

'The same job, Haddock,' said Audley gently. 'I follow my destiny.'

'Still on The Wall?' Haddock Thomas looked at Elizabeth. 'I'm sorry, Miss Loftus. An old joke - a very old joke, indeed.'

She mustn't let them patronize her. 'But they say the old jokes are the best ones, Dr Thomas. May I share it?'

'I don't know that you will find it very amusing.'

'An RAF joke?' She watched him. 'Or a Civil Service joke, perhaps? Or a schoolboy joke?

Give me a clue.'

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He measured her with a look. Actually, he had measured her already, but with an eye only on bust and waist, hip and leg, quite unashamedly. But this time the measurement was a different one. 'It is a Kipling joke, Miss Loftus. A Rudyard Kipling joke.' The Welsh was more pronounced. 'Are you a reader of the great mart's works?'

She dared not look at Audley. Paul always made outrageous fun of his obsessive weakness for Kipling, deliberately quoting back to him. But somehow she didn't think this was that kind of joke. 'I read him when I was a child, Dr Thomas.'

'But not afterwards? A pity! Much of his best work is for grown-ups. But then the English have a blind spot there. Which is all part of their guilty misapprehension of their history, as well as of him. But no matter, eh?' He was looking at Audley now. 'I told him - oh, it must have been almost before you were born, I told him - that he would never gain preferment in his line of business… Or, that when it was offered to him, he would not want it - like Kipling's Roman centurion… who was not a Roman at all, of course, for he had never seen Rome, nor known the heyday of Rome, but only lived with his legends and his illusions.

But there! I told him he would gain no preferment, and receive no thanks, if he chose to serve on The Wall - the Great Wall - the wall which the Emperor Hadrian caused to be built, to keep out the dreadful barbarians, when he realized that the game couldn't be won.' He smiled. "The same emperor, my dear, who knew how small and defenseless and ephemeral was his soul - " Animula vagula blandula, hospes comes-que corpora"… But he would have none of it, for he knew the Roman's reply: " I follow my destiny" , he said. And off he went!'

' Harumph!' grunted Audley. 'One of the things you must understand about the Welsh, Elizabeth, is that they are greater liars than rugger players. For this is the advice I gave him, not the advice he gave me.'

'Is that so?' Haddock Thomas glanced at Audley for a second. 'Well, let's say that we gave each other the same advice, then? And I took his advice - but he did not take mine, eh?'

Given half a chance they would go on sparring like this forever, thought Elizabeth. But if Peter Richardson was right they did not have forever left.

'You had a visitor last week, Dr Thomas. An elderly American.' She tried in vain to match Audley's casual tone. 'Can you tell us about him?'

Haddock Thomas measured her again as he smoothed his thinning hair and replaced his panama.Then he shook a little brass bell which had been hidden on the table and gestured Elizabeth to an empty chair. 'Yes… yes, I wondered about that.' He smiled at her again.

'After what David's said, I mustn't be a Welsh liar, must I?'

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She sat down. And she caught him admiring her legs as she crossed them carefully, the way she had been taught to do. 'I beg your pardon - ?'

He gestured towards Audley. 'Get a chair, David… It wasn't really just his voice, Miss Loftus: he's been in the back of my mind for a week or so… when I can't honestly remember recalling him these last ten - or even twenty - years or more.' He watched Audley retrieve another chair from the shadows under the vines. 'But that's not true, either… It's more like never quite forgotten, but never quite remembered.' He cocked his head at her. 'One day you will discover how very protective memory is, my dear: it tries to dignify us as well as soothing our pain, so that we can believe that we are the masters of our fate… at least, if we are satisfied with the outcome, anyway - eh?' Once again he was watching. 'Free will is always better than predestination, don't you think?'

He was pushing her out of her depth, making her wonder how she had got here, to St Servan-les-Ruines, after all those years with Father.

'The American reminded you of David?' The memory of Father steeled her to the more important business in hand. 'Major Parker?'

'Major Parker - ' For one fraction-of-a-second he looked clear through her ' - Major Parker!'

'Who saved your life?'

'Is that the story now?' Haddock Thomas looked past her. 'Ah, Madame Sophie!'

A minuscule Frenchwoman deposited two glasses and another bottle on the table, swept away the half-full bottle with a hiss of disapproval, and was gone before Elizabeth could react.

Haddock Thomas shrugged at Elizabeth. 'You didn't knock at the front door, so she hasn't looked you over - so she disapproves of you.'

'But she'll finish the bottle herself, nevertheless?' said Audley.

'That may well be.' Haddock Thomas pointed at Audley. 'You know too much, David -

about people. That is one of the things I remember about you now.' He filled the three glasses, and presented one to Elizabeth. 'And you know too much about me, I am thinking now, Miss Loftus. For a stranger.'

'She knows far too little about you, my dear fellow,' said Audley, reaching for a glass. 'That is the whole trouble.'

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'The whole trouble?' Haddock Thomas looked at each of them in turn. 'But whose trouble?

Mine, would it be?'

'Ours, Dr Thomas,' said Elizabeth. 'Didn't Major Parker save you once? A long time ago?'

'A very long time ago.' He nodded. 'But you know his name nevetheless. And you know he was here - a very short time ago. Did he tell you that?'

'Did he save you?'

'He plucked me from the sea - yes. He and a spotty-faced youth in a helmet much too big for him. I could have kissed them both. Perhaps I did, I don't remember. Did Major Thaddeus Parker tell you that also?'

'He didn't tell us anything, Dr Thomas. He's dead.'

'Dead? How - ?' He looked at Audley suddenly. 'Not my trouble, did you say?'

'I didn't say, as a matter of fact, Haddock.' Audley sipped his wine. 'Your trouble…

perhaps. Mine - certainly.'

Haddock Thomas said nothing for a moment, but simply stared at Audley. Then he started to say something, but stopped.

'Why did Major Parker come to see you, Dr Thomas?' asked Elizabeth.

'Why should he not?' Haddock Thomas still didn't look at her. 'How did he die, Miss Loftus?'

'He was murdered, we think.'

Again, Haddock Thomas didn't react immediately. Instead he took up his own glass and turned away from them both, looking out over the valley beneath, full-face into the sun, drinking slowly but steadily until the glass was nearly empty. Then he poured he last of it on the ground at his feet.

'They threw him over the cliff at the Pointe du Hoc, Haddock,' said Audley brutally. 'Just about where he climbed down that morning, before he rescued you. We think he may have had a rendezvous there. But it wasn't the one he was expecting.'

The old man turned slowly back to Audley, ignoring Elizabeth. 'So it's all starting again, is dummy2

it, David? After all this time? Is that really possible, man?'

Elizabeth was tired of being ignored. 'Perhaps not, Dr Thomas.'

This time he did look at her.

'If it never ended, Dr Thomas - ' She looked down Admiral Varney's nose at him ' - why then, it has no reason to start again, has it?'

'Never ended.' It wasn't a question, he merely repeated the words. And it wasn't hatred or anger in his eyes, let alone fear. But it might be distaste. Then he turned to Audley once more. 'What do you think, David? Or what do you believe - which is better?'

'It doesn't matter what he believes.' With a little practice she might catch an echo of Admiral Varney's voice, too. 'If Major Parker was a traitor, Dr Thomas, then what are you?

That is what matters.'

This time he didn't look at her. 'By damn, David! You've got a hard one here, and no mistake! Is this what it's like now? Or maybe the one our Ruddy wrote about -

'When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut what remains - One of them, maybe?' He set his glass on the table and filled it to the brim, and then picked it up and turned towards her. 'And if I am a traitor too, Miss Loftus - what then? Will you cut up these remains?'

They were exactly where she had always feared they would be, once she had let herself be pushed too hard and too fast. But then, out of nowhere, she remembered Father. 'Some people say youth is sweet, Dr Thomas.' Her youth had not been sweet, that was what memory told her. 'But I have observed that time running out is even more valuable when you are old. Is that so?'

He still wasn't frightened. But he showed his teeth when he smiled, for the first time, and she realized, also for the first time, that it wasn't only the memory of Father that was driving her.

'Is that some sort of threat, Miss Loftus?'

But she had seen those teeth before. And they were not like Father's at all, of course -

Father's had been his own, because he never ate sweets or took sugar in his tea.

'Not a threat.' She hadn't touched her wine. 'This is my first job, "in the field" as they say.

Or "first combat mission", for a Spitfire pilot, would that be?' She tipped her glass, and the dummy2

wine slashed out like a pool of blood, engulfing the few drops he had spilt. 'I sent a colleague out yesterday to inquire into your past.' Some of the wine had splashed on her shoes, staining them indelibly, she noticed. 'So now he's dead. Do you have any explanation for that, Dr Thomas?'

Haddock Thomas stared at her in astonishment. Then he looked at Audley - who was also staring at her. 'Do you have an explanation, David?'

Audley turned his head slowly, without taking his eyes off her until he was almost facing the old man.' The received wisdom is that I made a mistake, Haddock. Long ago.'

'A mistake?'

'About you.' Audley paused. 'Or if not you, then Peter Barrie, maybe.'

' Peter Barrie? That's foolishness, man!'

'Yes. That's what Peter Barrie said - about you.'

Haddock Thomas moistened his lips. 'Have you any evidence?'

'Two dead men is what we have,' said Elizabeth.

Audley shook his head. 'Not a thing. But then, if I did make a mistake… then you're good.

One of you - or both of you.'

'And if you didn't make a mistake?'

Audley drew in a deep breath. 'Let me make a picture for you, old comrade - if that's what you are - if I made a mistake.' He drew in another breath. 'Long ago… something went wrong on the Other Side - something slipped. So there had to be a salvage job, to save their inside man.' Another breath. 'If it was Peter, then they acted very quickly: he resigned, and became a nobody. There was no evidence against him - he just had to start again somewhere else. If it was you… if it was you, they were a bit slower. Or they decided to take more of a risk. But in the end they reckoned you'd never be altogether trusted. So you started again, too.' Audley shrugged. 'You each did well, anyway. And in the way they wanted you to do well, like maggots in an apple.'

Haddock Thomas sat back. 'A maggot, am I? But - '

Audley raised a finger. 'There's more. One of you - or both. Plus Delphi Marsh, of course.'

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The old man sat up. 'Now, David - '

'She would have been your contact. Or your alibi. She complicated things very nicely at the time - moving from one of you to the other, as required. I spent a lot of time on her. Maybe she was my real mistake.'

Haddock Thomas's jaw tightened. 'Now, you can leave Delphi out of this, David. Make all the pictures you like of me, and of Peter. But leave her out of them.'

'I'm afraid I can't. Because she comes in again, you see.'

'Again? What?' The old man's hands tightened into bony fists on his lap. 'How?'

'Our colleague who died yesterday was looking into Delphi's death, Haddock,' said Audley gently. 'He couldn't have found anything so quickly. But I think I know what he didn't have time to find, in any case.' He switched to Elizabeth suddenly. 'You see, Elizabeth, Mrs Delphi Thomas wasn't pregnant when she had her road accident. And that isn't a picture - that's a fact.' He turned back to the old man. 'Sorry, Haddock.'

The old man shook his head. 'No need to be sorry, man. We only invented that baby to make Peter angry, rather than sad. It was the least we could do for him, to make him hate us both.'

'Was that it?' Audley cocked his head. 'Well, indeed! And I always thought she trapped you with it! Now there's a turn-up for the book!'

'Not so clever, eh?' The old man wasn't smiling. 'And is that your picture, then?' He frowned suddenly. 'But then… if you believed that… then you can hardly believe your picture, David - ?'

'Not a word of it.' Audley sounded almost cheerful. 'I spent a lot of time on you - all three of you. And I was in my prime then, not the doddering fool I am now. And now I've all the wisdom of hindsight to add.'

'And what does hindsight add?'

'Well, for a start, if either you or Peter have been working for the Other Side these twenty-thirty years, you damn well haven't earned your keep. I had a devil's advocate run-down on you both, a couple of days back. And, in your very different ways you both qualify for the firing squad - but theirs, not ours, old comrade.'

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Elizabeth sat up. 'You never told me that, David.'

'You never asked, Elizabeth. And, besides, I wanted you to come to your own conclusion.'

He shrugged unapologetically.

'I see.' Haddock Thomas poured himself another drink. 'But then, again, I do not see at all.'

'What don't you see?'

'I don't see why you are here - here to rake up a past which I have no desire to recall in this fashion.'

'My dear Haddock, I do not want to be here.' Audley sniffed, and held out his glass to be refilled. 'As a matter of fact, I was busy with something much more important than raking up your fairly innocent past.'

'But two men are dead, nevertheless.' Haddock Thomas turned to Elizabeth. 'He talked about old times, Miss Loftus - Major Parker did. He said he had come back for the D-Day anniversary, and he thought he'd look me up. He had very little to say. But then we really didn't have anything in common.'

'Least of all treason,' murmured Audley.

'But now he is dead.' The old man stared across his valley again, shading his eyes with his hand. 'And your colleague is also dead. While investigating…'He trailed off. 'And for those two reasons - not wholly inadequate reasons, I must now admit - for those two reasons you are here, David. In fact… in view of our shared past, you could really hardly avoid coming to see me - no matter that you believed me to be innocent. Perhaps that might even supply a greater compulsion - ' He half-looked at Elizabeth ' - rather than leave me to other tender mercies…' He returned his gaze to the distant hillside. 'When the received wisdom (whatever that may entail… but "received wisdom" is difficult to argue with, I agree!) - the received wisdom is that you made a mistake.' He continued to stare across the valley, but fell silent now.

Elizabeth found herself wishing that she hadn't poured her drink on the ground. She was thirsty, and she had ruined her shoes. And for a moment she had also shown herself an Elizabeth Loftus who rather frightened her.

'But I didn't make a mistake,' said Audley.

Elizabeth gave him a look of pure hatred, which she couldn't disguise.

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'He's getting drunk again, you see, Elizabeth.' Audley brushed aside her hatred. 'He must have a liver like an old boot. I remember getting him drunk back in '58 - very drunk… and it wasn't difficult even then.'

'You didn't make a mistake,' agreed Haddock Thomas. 'But, whereas that is what you believe, it is what I know, you see, David. Marxism, with all its egregious little heresies, socialism included, has never attracted me.'

'I know. You spent a whole night telling me, indirectly.' Audley smiled at Elizabeth. 'The uniting theme of all classical literature is the right and wrong uses of authority - Antigone telling Creon to go bowl his hoop, according to Sophocles, and also Augustus in Res Gestae… You made a great impression on me that night, Haddock. I just couldn't see you doing a Philby on us.'

'No?' Haddock seemed to be fascinated by something far below and far away. 'I'm flattered.'

'You should be.' Audley closed his eyes. ' "This amazing mental dimension, where nothing is barred, and the extent to which you can think is only limited by the limits of your own comprehension and imagination: it's like being let into the Universe itself - the whole atmoshpere of the classics is of a boundless, expanding, gloriously fascinating, bloody marvellous universe - and let's throw our thoughts out there!"'

'Did I say all that? Well, I must have been pissed, I agree!' The far-away horizon still engrossed the old man. 'And you must have a bloody-marvellous memory, David.'

'No. Just a tape-recorder under the table. We weren't so good with bugs then, but you didn't know the difference. And I played it again just the day before yesterday, to refresh my not-so-bloody-marvellous memory. We didn't have bugs, but we weren't wholly inefficient.'

'But you have made a mistake, nevertheless.' Haddock Thomas turned to Audley at last.

Audley opened his mouth, then closed it. 'What did I do wrong?'

'Nothing then.' Haddock Thomas looked sad. 'But everything now, I suspect.'

This time Audley's mouth remained open.

'You said you were busy doing something important. But you're not doing it now, are you?'

Haddock opened his old hands on his lap in an eloquent gesture. 'Could it be that they want you busy here, wasting your time and mine, simply so that you can't be busy there, dummy2

David?'

Haddock Thomas turned back to Elizabeth. 'I always used to tell my boys that the Latin language is simple and logical. And Greek is even better - more elegant, even. But if you look for complexities, you will only end up by deceiving yourself. So look for the simplicities, and all the nonsense will disappear.'

Audley stood up. 'Can I use your phone, Haddock?'

'My dear fellow, of course - '

The garden gate squeaked and clanged at their backs, cutting him off.

'Or perhaps not,' said the old man, staring past them. 'Because, unless I am very much mistaken, you are about to be taken into custody, David. In which case you will be here for some time, I'm afraid.'

Elizabeth saw two things unforgettably, in the instant of disaster, which were all the more memorable for the difference between them.

The DST men who came through the gate were old Mr Willis's creatures: hounds who moved left and right, ready for anything while they made way for the huntsmen behind them who would make the arrest, if not the kill.

But they were moving, and Audley wasn't.

At least, he wasn't until he raised his glass to Haddock without turning round.

'My mistake - this time, if not last time, Haddock.' He sipped the wine. 'But then, you got me into a lot of trouble then, too, I seem to remember.' He took another sip.

'Oh no!' Suddenly Haddock was very Welsh. 'It wasn't me then, and it isn't me now. We all make our own mistakes in the end, David. We don't need any help from outsiders.'

EPILOGUE:

Mistakes and Monsters

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Colonel Butler had an atavistic preference for handling difficult situations standing up, like any old red-coated infantryman facing cavalry. So when Audley finally arrived he had positioned himself by the window, away from the funk-hole of the Director's desk.

'Well, David?' For one last moment he pretended to admire the view across the Thames, which he considered vastly inferior to both his neat Surrey hedgerows and his native Lancashire dales.

'Jack.' Audley sounded unabashed. But then he had never been an easily abashed man.

'Good leave?'

'Curtailed leave.' Neither did Audley look more crumpled - tie always carelessly knotted, good suit always creased - than he habitually did. 'What the hell have you been doing?'

'Ah… now latterly I have been in the pokey, in a gentlemanly sort of way.' Audley grinned disarmingly. "The French didn't treat us badly, actually - thanks to Peter Richardson getting off a call to Dale just before they swooped. It was all really more embarrassing than unpleasant.'

'Oh yes?' Colonel Butler was not disarmed. 'And is that how you would describe what happened to Brian Turnbull, David?'

The grin vanished and the shutters which Butler knew of old came down. 'Yes. That was a bad scene, Jack. But not my fault.'

Butler concealed his astonishment with some difficulty: he had not expected Audley, of all people, to weasel out of it like that. For tactical reasons, if not for moral ones, Audley had always been ready to take the blame in the past, even when it had not been properly his.

'No?' He tested his incredulity casually.

'No, Jack.' Audley shook his head.

Another tack, then. 'Yes. That's what Oliver Latimer says.'

'What?' Audley frowned. ' What?'

'Latimer says you were only obeying orders. He has taken full responsibility for everything that has happened.'

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'Well - ' There was a flicker of fire behind the shutters ' - well, you can fuck that for a game of soldiers, Jack - for a start!'

'Indeed?' Torture would not have wrung that from Audley. But, as Butler had calculated, he was never going to let himself owe anything to Oliver St John Latimer. 'But he did give you an order. Is that not so?'

' Phooey! Audley gestured angrily. 'I wouldn't have obeyed it if I hadn't wanted to.' He tugged at his tie. 'Christ, Jack - I was all ready to make a bust at Cheltenham… or almost ready, anyway. I could have gone to the DG - or the Joint Committee - no trouble. You know that as well as I do!'

'But you didn't.' Butler controlled his own anger. 'So your man in Cheltenham is probably in Moscow by now, with all those American transmissions in his head. And … we lost Brian Turnbull.' He almost added Who was one of my subalterns in Korea, under another name, in another time, damn you! But there was nothing to be gained from that: the letter he had to write, to that elderly maiden aunt in Eastbourne who was all the next-of-kin Brian Turner had, was his business, not Audley's.

Audley was staring at him. 'We would have lost Turnbull anyway, Jack. Even if I hadn't screwed things up. Or someone, if not him.'

Now they were coming to it. 'What do you mean?'

Audley took time to think. 'You asked me what the hell I've been doing, Jack. And the answer is that I've been making the mistake I was supposed to make - no question about that. I let myself be taken, and they took me. And, at a guess, it was Panin.'

'Panin?'

'Uh-huh. Old Nikolai's been laying for me for years - he knows me as well as I know him, from way back. You should remember, Jack. It was about the time we met again, long after the war, you and I. And he was one of Professor Kryzhanovsky's recruits too, so he'd know about the whole Debrecen nonsense without even having to look it up: he knows exactly how I tick - all he had to do was to wind me up. And killing people has never worried him, because he's a monster: he kills people selectively, like daisies in his lawn.'

Butler remembered Professor Nikolai Panin: that deceptively gentle face, slightly sheep-like with its badly-set broken nose; he had been… he had been a scholar once, not a psychologist - or archaeologist - ?

'They wanted to get the Cheltenham man out, Jack. And I made another mistake there, dummy2

because I didn't think he was on to me… Or, anyway, I didn't think he was going to run quite so quickly. But if I'd been there, in Cheltenham, I'd have maybe picked up the signs last week, when those American transmissions were coming through.' Audley shook his head. 'I don't know… But they didn't know - that's the point. So they wanted to get me out of there. But I'm just a bit too senior to have a convenient accident - ' He cocked his head at Butler ' - which would have resulted in a reciprocal sanction, maybe? Or something like?'

Butler said nothing. Audley might guess how the land lay there, but it was still beyond his certain competence.

'Okay.' Audley accepted his silence. 'But my guess is that, with what the Americans were doing to him, the man Parker was ready to run, so he was expendable. So Parker was to hand, and he was also one of their possibles from the alleged Debrecen List. And they must have known that he had a connection - an innocent connection - with Haddock Thomas, whom I had cleared back in '58. So they set Haddock up with Parker, and then killed Parker rather crudely, so as to set me up, Jack. Because they were pretty sure we'd react to the Debrecen List, after what happened to Latimer in America last year.'

Butler thought about Elizabeth Loftus's Interim Report, which lay in his top drawer a few feet away, and understood what Audley had left unsaid there: the unanswered questions in the whole Debrecen affair had been festering in the files for a quarter of a century - that was an unacceptable truth of it.

'But the way it worked out - ' Audley spread his hands ' - it worked out the way things always do: better than they'd planned in one way, and worse in another - '

Butler held his tongue with a shrewd idea of what must be coming.

'And you don't need to look so bloody innocent, Jack.' Audley was too quick for him. 'We both know that Oliver Saint John Latimer has made himself a Debrecen-expert since last year. And maybe Nikolai Panin was relying on that - I wouldn't put it past him, by God! In which case he would have reckoned that the fat sod would be only too pleased to set me up - right?'

Colonel Butler knew he couldn't have that. 'Oliver acted perfectly correctly, David. Apart from accepting all the responsibility.'

'Oh, sure! Oliver's not stupid,' agreed Audley. 'He didn't pull me out of Cheltenham until Turnbull had sussed things out. And he put poor little Elizabeth in charge - ' He held up his hand to cut Colonel Butler off ' - because it looked like a good training… Don't tell me, Jack! I can just hear the sainted Oliver justifying himself.' He sniffed contemptuously. 'So what happened was that I was hooked - partly because I thought Latimer was after me, dummy2

and partly because I suspected that I was about to be framed by the Other Side - the Other Side being Professor N. A. Panin… All of which pushed me into making a mistake at Cheltenham, I agree! But I was hooked, anyway: Oliver had to do what he did, and so I had to do what I did, not only to watch my back, but also to protect poor old Haddock. And Peter Barrie, too.'

Butler thought of the other memo in his drawer, from Neville Macready, warning him away from Sir Peter Barrie of Xenophon Oil, whose peace of mind was not on any account to be disturbed by any persecution, pending the completion of the Egyptian talks. And, as always, Macready was extremely persuasive.

'But I didn't turn up on the Pointe du Hoc,' continued Audley. 'Poor old Turnbull did, instead. And although I did leave Cheltenham for a day or two, there was no guarantee that I wouldn't return there. So they had to do something to make sure of me.' Audley's face became blank. 'If Latimer had sent Elizabeth to the Pointe du Hoc it would have been her. But he sent Turnbull, so it was him. But once we'd lost someone in the field, whoever it was… Jack, I couldn't quit then.'

They had been taken, thought Butler. It had been Latimer and Audley, but it might very well have been Butler and Audley. So the final and inescapable responsibility was his.

But then he thought: why was Audley so relaxed, for God's sake?

And then he thought: it couldn't be because David was in the clear, technically (on Latimer's order), or even actually (because even a clever man couldn't be condemned officially for being not quite clever enough, in these labyrinthine circumstances - not so long as he was Director, anyway!).

Audley's face broke up. 'Sorry, Jack. I fucked it up - I know!' But then he gave Butler a sly look. 'But all is not lost, actually.'

The sly look accelerated Butler's post-mortem thoughts. He had already prepared himself for the Minister's anger, and Number 10's recriminations: the fact that GCHQ Cheltenham still wasn't secure would actually strengthen the Government's stand on hard vetting and de-unionization. So, when this particular defector surfaced in Moscow eventually, Research and Development would survive, if only because it would be politically convenient for it to continue to do its important duties, beyond the scope of normal intelligence. But that still left a fearsome problem unsolved which Audley had overlooked.

'And the Americans?' It was unfair, when the CIA had raised the hare in the first place. But the British had let the animal escape, and that was what mattered. 'We've lost their transmissions, David.'

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The sly look remained. 'They won't make waves this time. And you can thank Paul Mitchell for that, Jack.'

Butler schooled his face. Putting David Audley and Paul Mitchell on anything together should have warned him that they would exceed their brief. 'What have you done?'

'Nothing really.' Audley trod the pattern of the carpet geometrically. 'It was just… he was handling the signals traffic the fellow was receiving.' He twisted at a right angle towards Butler. 'And… we were monitoring it to see what he was particularly interested in, to get a back-bearing on it, to find out what they wanted to know - eh?' Their eyes met briefly.

'Yes?'

'Paul had this idea.' Audley twisted again. 'He cleared it with Latimer, and then he talked to the Americans. And - so - they adjusted some of their figures for him, on a one-off irrational deviation, to destroy the readings. Which means that in about a month's time the Russians will have some inexplicable decimal points. Nothing very serious at the moment… but it will become serious.' He looked at Butler sidelong. 'And then they'll begin to wonder whether I didn't leave Cheltenham deliberately, if we play our cards right -

whether their Cheltenham man isn't really our Cheltenham man in drag, do you see?'

Butler saw.

'The choice is ours, strictly speaking,' said Audley. 'I didn't know he was going to run, as I say. So we can play it in a lot of different ways, for the time being. And, if you like - in fact, I'd recommend it - you can ask the Americans which way they want to play it. Because that way you can tell them you let him run - that you deliberately ordered me away from Cheltenham, to give them the choice… Only, you'll have to do that bloody quick, Jack.

Othewise, they'll smell a rat.'

What Butler thought was that Audley had covered himself, on both flanks and in the rear.

In fact, both Oliver St John Latimer and David Audley had covered themselves, although in very different ways, even as they had made different mistakes. But that was mere professionalism. Except that there was still one complication, which could not be overlooked.

He could send Audley away, and think of it at leisure. But that was not the way he had once commanded his company in the best days of his life. So it was not something to be fudged now, as though it didn't matter. 'Elizabeth Loftus, David.'

Audley's mouth lifted, one-sided. 'Dear Elizabeth - yes, Jack?'

He underrated her, thought Butler. In the last analysis women were still merely sex-objects dummy2

for David Audley: he was a product of his class and his education, pickled in the aspic of time in spite of his intelligence, when neither Mitchell nor Cable would have made the same mistake. 'She has submitted an interim report, David.'

The corner of the mouth remained contemptuous. "That was her brief. And she's had a couple of days to think about it. So what?'

So Audley was about to learn something, thought Butler. And that must be a lesson for him, too. 'She wants more time, to consult the record, David.'

'I don't bloody wonder! She was rather pitched into the deep end, poor woman!' Audley was still innocent. 'And with me, too. So she was a bit out of her depth, Jack.'

There were times when cruelty was satisfying. 'What do you think of her?'

Audley drew a magisterial sniff. 'She'll do, Jack - she'll do.' He nodded. 'She doesn't panic in adversity. In fact, she's one tough lady… But, you must remember, she's my recommendation… for our obligatory female - ' Much too late, he caught a hint of something hostile in the question. 'What does she say, then?'

Being a little worried was always good for Audley. 'She thinks we perhaps ought to reopen the Debrecen List, David.'

'Oh?' Too late, Audley realized he was too late. 'She lists five possibilities.' Butler recalled Elizabeth Loftus's report easily because it had been impeccably typed, although she had not had time to submit it to Mrs Harlin, never mind the computer. 'But she discounts two of them as unlikely. She merely left them in the margin for me to bear in mind.'

'Uh-huh? Which leaves three. One of which is the reopening of the Debrecen List, presumably.' Audley nodded, but then smiled. 'Well, at least I convinced her about Haddock Thomas, and Peter Barrie, anyway.'

'No. Actually, you didn't.' Butler savoured the change in Audley's expression. 'She thinks we should take another look at the list. With Haddock Thomas and Barrie on the top of it.

The two names she discounted are Latimer's and yours, David.'

Audley stared at him for a moment. 'Ah… Yes, I suppose you could say that we fit quite well, at that.' He pursed his lips. 'The right original date… and I did help to screw up the

'58 inquiry. And Latimer put me in the right place to do it again this time. So that's fair enough, Jack. I'd go along with that, anyway.'

'But she discounted you all the same.'

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'Ye-ess… monstrous decent of her.' Audley was smiling again, but it was a different sort of smile. 'So what does she know about the other two that I don't?'

'Nothing. She says she only knows what you want her to know. And you have a deep subconscious affinity with each of them.'

'I like them both - if that's what she means, Jack.'

'More than that. You see them both as alternative Audleys. People you might have been -

the pure tycoon or the pure scholar-teacher, each a round peg which found its round hole.

Which, of course, you never really have, thinks Miss Elizabeth Loftus.'

Audley took another and longer moment to think about that. 'And what does Colonel Jack Butler think?'

Typical Audley! 'He thinks he'd like to know what Dr David Audley thinks. Which is what Dr David Audley is paid to do.'

Audley nodded slowly. 'He thinks she isn't stupid. '58 - and '57 too - were years of decision for all three of us… Haddock and Peter Barrie and me. Each of us changed directions. But there's no disgrace in that - there was no disgrace.'

'You don't regret it?'

Audley raised an eyebrow. 'That's a funny question from you, Jack. You answer it for yourself before you ask me.'

Wild horses would never tear the word duty out of David Audley, Butler realized: saluting the flag was a public action, but kissing it was a private one, not to be mentioned. And regrets didn't come into it.

'What matters is what I think of Haddock Thomas. And Peter Barrie, Jack.' Audley spoke casually, almost lightly. 'What I still think.'

Butler nodded. 'So you think I should not act on Miss Loftus's recommendations?'

'On the contrary. Indeed, if I were you I'd take up all five, just to be on the safe side.' There was a glint in Audley's eye now. 'With a sixth from me, of course.'

Butler knew the glint. 'Which is?'

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'You must put Elizabeth Loftus in charge.'

'Why her?'

Audley made a face. 'Isn't she the obvious choice?'

'Why her, David?'

Audley looked into space for an instant, then concentrate on Butler with peculiar intentness. 'Back in '58, before started on the Debrecen List, I was on the way to becoming a pretty bloodthirsty character. I'm not at all sure that wasn't why old Fred Clinton put me on it - and kept my nose to the grindstone… to teach me that if there's no different between them and us, then we might as well join 'em and have done with it.' He held Butler's eye without blinking. ' came damn near to resigning. But in the end I decided to rejoin the human race, even if only as a part-time member.'

Butler nodded slowly. 'You want to cut Elizabeth Loftus down to size in the same way?'

'Not quite.' Audley shook his head. 'But there was moment, back in France when we were pushing old Haddock, that Elizabeth began to enjoy what she was doing bit too much.

And she must have already had those recommendations of hers in the back of her mind by then. Which is fair enough… except that we just could have another little monster in the making, I'm thinking.' He shrugged. 'Maybe that was what old Fred thought, back in '58 - I don't know. And maybe she'll prove me wrong, don't know that, either.' He grinned suddenly. 'Although do, actually. Because I was in my prime back in '58 - didn't make mistakes then, like now, Jack… But, either way, she'll know what she is, monster or not, when she finished with Haddock Thomas. And when he's finished with her.'

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