October Men

"What more do you want?"

Richardson considered the question. "Well, just when did David say this—during the beef or the apple pie?"

"Is that important?" Freisler's forehead crinkled again. "But obviously it is. ... Well, I will try to recall. ... It was, I think, before the pie, Mr. Richardson."

"Very good, Professor. Now—what happened next?"

"Next?" Freisler paused, his face heavy with concentration.

He was beginning to take the game in earnest at last. "Next it dummy2

was Mr. Howard who spoke."

"The oilman."

"He is in the oil business, yes."

Richardson nodded encouragingly. There was nothing odd about David entertaining oilmen; in his Middle Eastern days he had been as thick as thieves with some of them and he was not a man to jettison good contacts. In fact it was agreed in the Department that half the secret of his success lay in his ability to hold on to them.

"What did he have to say?"

"He disagreed with me. He said—"

"Confined? Don't you believe it, man—you're just plain old-fashioned unpopular. You've been right too many times, and you've said 'I told you so' afterwards. People don't love you for that, David —not in any business."

"Yes. And then?"

"David just grunted. And Lady Deacon asked him how he had won his reputation for foretelling the future so accurately—a silly question, but he couldn't very well grunt at her—"

"All I do is extrapolate on the past and the present, Helen. It isn't too difficult if you have enough accurate information.

The trouble is we seldom have enough to do the job properly, so most of the time I'm just guessing like everyone else.

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Nobody sees into the future. I'm not an astrologer."

"How unromantic!"

"There was a little silence then—what you call an awkward silence, I think. So I took the liberty of pointing out that Adolf Hitler had his astrologer who had not done him very much good. But then Sir Laurie Deacon reminded us that the astrologer Theogenes foretold that young Octavius would succeed Julius Caesar—Octavius went to see him incognito and Theogenes threw himself at his feet—and what had David and I to say to that?"

"And what did you reply to that?"

"I said that Theogenes was no fool and that he would have made it his business to know who Caesar's heir was. And David said—"

"I agree with Theodore—there's always an unromantic reason somewhere. I remember how the news of the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by the Irgun back in

'46 came in to London two hours before it happened. One of the big agencies got a flash, and then an hour later it was cancelled. And then an hour later the place was blown apart.

But it wasn't a case of second sight. It was simply that the agency's man was an undercover agent for the Irgun and he knew what was going to happen. Only his friends postponed the job and they forgot to tell him. And the moral of that is that we very seldom know what's actually going on under our dummy2

noses in the present, never mind the future."

"Jolly good, Professor. And what happened next?"

"Ach! Next. . . . Is it you are wanting what we ate now, or what we were saying?"

"Both, for choice."

"So! Well—we ate and we talked . . . after David tells his story of the King David Hotel—yes—comes the housekeeper from the kitchen—"

"Mrs. Clark."

"Mrs. Clark, that is right. She comes with the pudding in a deep dish and the thick cream, and as David's wife serves it she says to Sir Laurie Deacon, 'This is specially for you, Laurie, although it is David's favourite too.' It is made with apples—" Freisler wrinkled his nose in disgust "—and cloves, which spoil the apples for me ... and then the oilman Howard says—"

"I know a character who's got his own private line into the future."

David said: "I take it you mean your boss, Narva."

"Oh—you can laugh, David. But Eugenio Narva is one hell of a smooth operator. And then some."

"I never doubted it. He has remarkable flair for doing the right thing—and not doing the wrong one."

Deacon said: "You mean, like pulling out of Libya when he dummy2

did? That certainly was nicely judged—remarkable is the right word for it. I wish we had done the same."

Faith Audley said: "He got out just before Colonel Gaddafi's coup?"

"Not just before, my dear. Well before would be more accurate, eh Howard?"

"He pulled out sure enough. But that isn't what I meant by the future—I think Gaddafi was as much of a surprise to him as it was to everyone else—"

David Audley said: "Not to me it wasn't."

"Okay—not to you, David. But he didn't have you on his payroll. What I mean is that he got out of Libya because he wanted his ready money for something else."

"The North Sea."

"Right—you're on the button, David. The North Sea . . .

which is a long, long way from the sands of the desert, I can tell you."

Faith Audley said: "I didn't know there were any Italian companies drilling in the North Sea."

"There aren't. Narva didn't go into the exploitation business, he went into the equipment side. He pulled me out of the desert because I cut my teeth on offshore work, I suppose, and I knew roughly what he wanted."

"And what did he want?"

"A middle-man's finger in all the pies that were going—rigs—

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he ordered two of them straight off—and all the paraphernalia that went with 'em. And manpower too—he put all the best men he could lay his hands on under the longest contracts they'd put their crosses on. Technical whizz kids, divers, the lot. What he could get he got. I know, because I spent his money like water."

"And there's profit in this?"

"Faith honey, that's where the money is at the moment. Or where it's going, anyway. You only have to compare the development and production costs. ... I guess it takes a production investment of $100 per barrel a day in the Middle East. But in the North Sea it's going to work out at anything from twenty to seventy times as much —it takes a million pounds just for one exploration well, and that's if the weather's nice and kind. Which it darn well isn't most of the times I've seen it."

Deacon said: "What you're saying, Howard, is that at the moment more money is going into the North Sea than is coming out of it. But that's common knowledge—everyone knew it was going to be a devil to develop. If it wasn't for the political stability of the area compared with the Middle East there'd be a good deal less enthusiasm than there is now, I tell you."

"Sure—everyone knew it was going to be tough. What they didn't know was whether it'ud be profitable."

"Oil exploration's always a gamble. But ever since the Groningen strike—"

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"That's just it: Groningen was a gas field, apart from being safe on land. That's where most of the hopes were—in the gas."

"But they knew oil could be there."

"Hell, of course they did. The gas comes from the carboniferous layers under the sandstone in the Permian rock

—sorry, Faith, I'm going technological now, damn it, aren't I!"

"Geological, anyway. But do carry on, Ian. We're all fascinated."

"So says every good hostess! But I will go on all the same.

You see, you do get oil in the older carboniferous layers onshore, but precious little of it, and drilling in the southern sector early on seemed to bear that out—in the end there was plenty of gas, but precious little oil."

"But they went on looking for it all the same."

"That's because they're oilmen. A good oilman's rather like a gold miner—the next hole's bound to be the end of the rainbow, he always thinks. And yet look at the timing: Groningen was in '58. It wasn't until '65 that Phillips and Shell-Esso and one or two others got the courage to take out licences in Scottish waters.

"Then Phillips found the Cod condensate field in the Norwegian sector in '68. But even that only proved there were hydrocarbon reservoirs—it didn't ring the till commercially. There were some damn cold feet about before dummy2

that, I can tell you. It was only when Phillips brought in Ekofisk and Xenophon found the Freya field, that the balloon went up. And then it really went up. But that was only a year or so ago, remember."

Audley said: "But just what has this to do with Eugenio Narva's being able to see into the future?"

"Timing, David—it's all in the timing. Groningen in '58, just a smell of it in '68 at Cod and bingo at Ekofisk and Freya in

'70. But I was buying for Narva in a big way before Cod."

"So he made a good guess. He's a shrewd fellow."

"David, it wasn't a guess. He knew."

Deacon said: "But on your own evidence he couldn't have known. He could only have gambled."

"I tell you—he knew. He was making a bomb in Libya and he pulled out and made another bomb in the North Sea."

Deacon said: "Let's get this straight, Ian—stop being oracular for a moment. You know he wasn't gambling because you asked him and he told you."

"Naturally. He's a straight shooter and I've put in a lot of sweat for him over the years, and what I was doing was giving me the shivers—I knew what the finance boys in the big companies were saying about the North Sea at the time.

They said it was only good for the fish."

"So you asked him what he was up to."

"Right. I flew all the way from Oslo to Naples—to his place near Positano—just to ask him whether he'd flipped his lid.

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And he hadn't."

"What did he say?"

"He said we were on a sure thing."

Lady Deacon said: "And did he have his astrologer with him, Mr. Howard?"

"Not with him, ma'am. His astrologer was in Moscow."

"Moscow?" exclaimed Richardson."

"That is what he said, Mr. Richardson."

"Those were his exact words?"

"Exact words?" Freisler nodded at him knowingly. "Now that is precisely what David wished to be told. Only it was the words of this Signor Narva he desired—"

"Why surely—he said a little bird whispered in his ear. A little bird from East Berlin who had it on the highest authority in Moscow."

Deacon said: "Well . . . that's uncommonly interesting. But it's just as David says—there's always an unromantic reason somewhere."

Lady Deacon said: "What do you mean, dear?"

Deacon said: "The Russians simply had one or two of their own men on the Phillips and the Xenophon rigs, that's all.

It's not in the least surprising. Three-quarters of the men they have over here are more concerned with industrial dummy2

espionage than political and military spying . . . and North Sea oil would overlap both of those spheres anyway. But full marks to Narva for listening in on them—that was rather bright of him."

Ian Howard said: "It was more than bright. It was a goddam miracle!"

David said: "How was it a miracle, Ian?"

"Well, maybe the Russians had their chaps on those rigs, I don't know. But it doesn't matter, because I was on the job long before they were. I was on it weeks before they struck at Cod—before the Freya rig even cleared harbour. And if you can tell me how Narva's little bird in Moscow smelt oil before the guys on the spot in the North Sea did—man, I'll sign the cheques for you and you can fill the figures in yourself—"

IX

"I DON'T SUPPOSE—" Sir Frederick Clinton regarded Richardson with a faintly jaundiced eye "—you are acquainted with William Pitt's Guildhall speech after Trafalgar."

Richardson shook his head. The temperature was perhaps slightly less arctic now he had said his piece, but that was no sure sign that a second and more uncomfortable ice age was not about to set in. He had feared the worst from the moment he had been passed straight along the line, like dummy2

some carrier of a loathsome disease whom no one else dared to handle; this was certainly not the moment to attempt to cap the bon mot which was assuredly coming.

"I was almost resolved to cast you back into the Irish darkness." Sir Frederick lifted a hand towards the intercom.

"You arrive late here, after having contrived to offend everyone in sight, including Brigadier Stocker, who has the patience of Job. . . . Mrs. Harlin, would you be so good as to ask Neville Macready to come up here at once. And will you have the dossiers on Eugenio Narva and Richard von Hotzendorff—Hotzendorff—sent up to me, quam celerrime.

Thank you. . . . And I rather think, Peter, that you have done all this out of a certain intuitive regard—I won't say loyalty—

for David Audley. Who would be the first, incidentally, to warn you against such instincts."

Almost resolved! Richardson sighed inwardly with relief at the benison contained in that "almost"; he was in the clear.

"You have committed us to covering up a clear case of homicide, however justifiable. You have leaked heaven only knows what information to an outsider—a foreigner at that quam celerrime however trustworthy."

"I didn't tell Prof. Freisler anything he didn't already know, sir," said Richardson.

"Except now he knows that he knows it. Did it not occur to you that Sir Laurie Deacon might be a more discreet contact from a security point of view?"

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"I understood he was in Paris, lobbying the Frogs on behalf of the pro-Market boys, sir," lied Richardson hopefully. "In any case, David once told me Freisler has a memory like an elephant. And I rather gathered he'd helped us before."

"Not us—just David. And under the present circumstances that is something I'd prefer not to remember. One David is enough for any organisation. . . . Indeed, the view has been canvassed that even one David is too great an extravagance."

“I —“

"Nevertheless, Peter, like William Pitt's England you appear to have saved yourself by your exertions. I only hope you can save David by your example."

"He is in the clear, sir. I'm certain of that."

"He is in not in the clear. He is never in the clear. He has not defected, if that's what you mean," Sir Frederick indicated a long white envelope on his desk. "I received a letter from him by the midday delivery—a somewhat delayed letter—

explaining that he intended to take a few days of his leave in Rome."

Richardson risked a quick glance at the envelope. It had been sent by second-class post and the postmark was no more than a tired blur across the stamp. It was more than likely, though unprovable, that David had the aged postmistress at the Steeple Horley village shop trained to his needs in such matters.

"Ah! So that accounts for it!" he murmured wisely.

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Sir Frederick stared at him silently for a moment which lasted just too long for comfort. Belatedly Richardson reminded himself that the man had known David far longer than he himself had.

"You do well not to smile, Peter. Because amusing as David Audley's little stratagems may seem to you, I think this may not turn out to be a smiling matter—either for him or us."

"I wasn't smiling."

"Good. Because it looks as though David has raised the devil again. But this time he's done it off his own bat, for reasons best known to himself. And what is worse he may very well not be aware of what he's stirred up."

"You mean he doesn't know about—last night?"

"He doesn't." Sir Frederick frowned. "The moment you obtained his address Brigadier Stocker alerted our Rome people, but by the time they got there the place was already under surveillance. And not just by the police, young Cable thinks—so he thought it advisable not to rush in. It'll be no use phoning, either, because it'll be bugged for certain."

"Christ!"

It didn't need to be spelt out, thought Richardson, watching the frown: David was oozing with brains and inside information, and decisive with it, sometimes to the point of arrogance. But he was strictly a headquarters man by training, and despite his massive physique and rugger-playing youth he probably wouldn't know his arse from his dummy2

elbow if the opposition turned ugly.

"What complicates it is that he has his wife with him too.

Which means he's not expecting trouble."

Richardson nodded. Faith's presence in Rome was conclusive proof that David was convinced what he was doing was safe; during his last assignment in the north of England he had angrily refused to allow her to visit him, even with the department's blessing.

"It couldn't be that this really is just a holiday?" he said tentatively.

"Do you think it possible?"

Excited as a boy with a new bicycle.

"No," said Richardson.

"Neither do I. In fact, after what you've told me—which knowing David I find all too plausible—I'm absolutely sure it isn't." Sir Frederick glanced down at the intercom unit and then reached forward again towards it. "Yes, Mrs. Harlin?"

"Mr. Macready is on his way, Sir Frederick."

"Very good. And the dossiers?"

"I have the Narva dossier, Sir Frederick. The documents relating to Hotzendorff are in the Dead Filing Section, and there seems to be some hold-up there just at the moment."

"I see. Then give Macready the one you've obtained and please hurry the other one up. Otherwise I don't want to be disturbed on any account."

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"Yes, sir—"

The voice was guillotined by the slender finger. Sir Frederick's eyes lifted to Richardson's. "You know Macready?"

"He briefed me before I went to Dublin."

"On the Belgian-Czech arms deal—of course!" The eyes flickered. "But you know his regular field?"

"Industrial intelligence."

"Correct. And he knows his stuff, so the Narva file is probably superfluous—it's more than likely that he wrote it himself."

"And the Kraut? Hotzen-what's-it?"

"Little Bird? Maybe that too. . . . We'll have to see."

Neville Macready was still wearing the preoccupied look he had affected whenever he wasn't talking himself during the Irish briefing, so presumably it was a habit rather than an affectation.

Another screwball, thought Richardson, with half-amused resignation. But then nearly all of Sir Frederick's Permanent Advisers were mad as hatters in at least one quadrant of their behaviour, like the recruits of some intellectual Foreign Legion. Even David Audley, the nearest thing to a human being among them, was decidedly odd—which of course was why this whole thing had blown up.

But at least the screwball was no respecter of persons, like dummy2

David and unlike Fatso Latimer; his knock and entrance were simultaneous, and his demeanour was that of someone accustomed to losing his way and finding himself in the wrong room, if not the wrong building, and no longer disconcerted by it.

"Neville!" Sir Frederick said affably, as though equally accustomed to such behaviour.

Macready's gaze passed over Richardson with a slight frown and cleared as it settled on Sir Frederick.

"Ah, Fred—Mrs.—Thing—said you wanted a word with me about —she didn't seem to know what it was about."

"Yes, I do. ... You've met Peter Richardson, I believe?"

"Richardson?" Macready repeated the name vaguely to himself, and then swung round suddenly towards its owner.

"You were going to Dublin." He turned back to Sir Frederick before Richardson could say a word. "Something gone wrong there?"

"Not as far as I know. This is about something quite different, Neville. North Sea oil."

"Huh!" Macready snorted derisively.

"Why 'huh'?"

"We've made a dog's breakfast of that all right."

"Neville—"

"This bloody crew of nitwits—that's half the reason why I got to hell out of the Board. God knows I'm not a socialist, but if dummy2

Norway and Holland can get their taxpayers a fair cut and still attract capital it oughtn't to be beyond the bounds of reason for us to do it too—"

"Neville—"

"Even Spain, even Spain, knows enough to get their exploitation on the right lines. Whereas all we do is piss around trying to make quick profits while the foreigners are making the real money. It isn't even as though our own major companies are going to fork out —they pay damn little over here because of what they have screwed out of them overseas. And I told them—"

"Neville, it isn't a rundown on Government policy I want."

"Well, it should be. Auctioning blocks indeed! With the access to the geological information we've got now we can pick and choose the best bits just like that. But will we?"

Macready waved a podgy finger. "Will we hell! We'll sell the hottest national asset since the coal mines in the nineteenth century for a mess of pottage. And the Lord have mercy on our souls!"

Richardson listened fascinated. If half the reason for Macready's flight from the Board—the Board of Trade?—had been the nitwits in Government, the other fifty per cent had been the marvellous intemperance of his opinions. As David had once observed, most of the best Civil Servants were unsuitable for their jobs, but Neville Macready was beyond anything he had yet encountered.

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Yet Sir Frederick was equanimity itself; if anything he seemed pleased with the tirade, as though it reassured him that no one else would be tempted to steal Macready's formidable brains from him.

"Eugenio Narva, Neville," he said equably.

"What?"

"Tell us about Eugenio Narva."

Macready rubbed the end of his nose, frowning. Then he abruptly dumped a file he had been carrying tucked under his arm on Sir Frederick's desk.

"There's the Narva file. Mrs.—what's-it—Harlin had it, so I took it. It's all in there. And he's a case in point, too."

"A case in point?"

"Yes. I don't mind him being part of the Italian economic miracle, but I'm damned if I see why he should also be part of the British one."

"Indeed?"

"Not that he's the worst of 'em. Narva's an honest man as well as a smart one, which is rare—apart from his Norwegian interests he's got himself well spread in British firms now, so we'll get some of his gravy."

"What firms?"

"Well, he's got a rig of his own now, but he's also on the board of Singer and Bailey. And he provided the capital for the Enfield Alloys expansion. Last time I read the reports he dummy2

was dickering with the French consortium ETPM, which has a connection with Laing in Britain, and I shouldn't be surprised to see him turn up on Wimpey's one of these days.

He's built a platform yard of his own at Hartlepool, and of course he's got a big chunk of Xenophon now— he bought in low and now it must be worth a packet. But that's in the oil business itself. Most of his money's in equipment and subcontracting. But he'll be in the bidding when the next allocation of licences comes up in March, mark my words."

Macready nodded wisely. "But I suppose you know all that by now."

"Why should I know it?"

"Well, I've already told all this to David Audley. I thought he

—"

Macready stopped with embarrassing suddenness and began to rub his nose again.

"I haven't been able to see David yet," said Sir Frederick smoothly. "He's on leave and I don't want to disturb him.

Just tell me what you told him. For a start."

Macready stared around him vaguely, quickly looking away when he met Richardson's eyes.

"This was a day or two ago, you spoke to David, wasn't it?"

Sir Frederick prodded gently. "On the phone?"

"No. I mean yes, it was two or three days ago," said Macready guardedly. "I was down in the Reading Room—they'd just got in the American Economic Quarterly. David was down dummy2

there."

The Reading Room was next to the Dead Files Section, Richardson remembered. In fact you had to go through the Reading Room to get to the section, a claustrophobic, windowless box, with a table and chair which nobody used, partly because those in the Reading Room were much more comfortable and partly because the weight of the decaying past contained in the surrounding metal cabinets was oppressive. It would be easy to check up on whether David had used it, however, because although the dead files had a low classification they still rated as secret and could only be consulted after signing for the Archivist's key.

"Yes?" said Sir Frederick patiently.

"Eh?" Macready looked at his watch nervously, as though trying to remember some more pressing and congenial engagement. "Oh— well, he just wanted the rundown on Narva. Actually, he seemed to know most of it already—" he gestured towards the desk "—it's in the file, and he'd read it."

"Yes, but of course David wanted to know about the very beginning, didn't he?"

Smooth. Very smooth.

"So he did. But that was before my time here. And it's all conjectural, anyway—even though David had got one of his bees in the bonnet about it."

"Conjectural—yes. But it's interesting all the same, the way Narva moved into the North Sea so early, don't you think?"

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Macready looked up at the high ceiling above him morosely without replying. It was almost as though he was no longer interested himself in the possibilities of further conversation.

"What do you think put him on to it in the first place, Neville?"

Richardson looked from one to the other with intense curiosity. By any normal standard Macready's silence was at the least rude, bordering on offensive; and Sir Frederick's restraint was remarkable, bordering on surprising, since there was no indication that the screwball was inclined to save himself by his exertions, like William Pitt's England. Yet instead of annihilating him Sir Frederick was damn near pleading with him. If this was how screwballs were treated there was obviously a percentage in the role.

Macready sighed. "Frankly, Fred, I haven't the faintest idea.

And that's what I told David. It's not merely inexplicable . . .

it's irrational."

There was an undercurrent of irritation in Macready's tone, as though Narva had been needling him personally. And that, thought Richardson with a sudden flash of insight, might very well be close to the truth after all. He had assumed initially that Macready had been unwilling to shop David, but it now seemed more likely that David had merely asked a question—the very question that Sir Frederick was now remorselessly pursuing—which had been bugging Macready for a long time without any satisfactory answer.

"Yes, that's very much the way we felt about it," said Sir dummy2

Frederick. "The—ah—the timing of it."

"That's exactly it!" Macready swung his arms and started to pace away from the desk towards the window in an oddly disjointed fashion. "He ducked out of the Italian miracle—

but everyone knew that was going to slow down sooner or later, apart from the political mess . . . and Libya . . .

"But the North Sea—" he swung round towards Sir Frederick

"—you know what it's like? It's a sod of a sea, the weather and the waves. And until three years ago they really didn't know how to drill in water deeper than 300 feet anyway.

"And they didn't know enough about the geological structures either. I wouldn't have put any of my money in looking for hydrocarbons in the younger Tertiary sequences, maybe not even after Phillips found that gas condensate field."

Young Tertiary—? Richardson didn't dare look at Sir Frederick.

But Macready was fairly launched now on a submarine voyage far below those treacherous winds and waves. "Even now no one knows for sure whether the block next to where someone's struck it rich is going to show anything. The salt dome structures—"

He paused momentarily and Sir Frederick moved into the hiatus quickly.

"Narva took a big risk, certainly."

"That's what David suggested—" Macready shook his head dummy2

vehemently "—but it's just not on at all. Narva didn't make his stake by taking risks, and men like Narva don't change overnight."

Richardson gave up trying to place younger Tertiary sequences and salt domes and grabbed at what sounded like much more relevant information.

"What sort of chap is this Narva, then?"

Macready missed his step, glancing up at Richardson as though taken aback by the dumb half of his audience suddenly exhibiting the power of speech.

"What sort?" He raised his eyes to a point above Richardson's head. "He's a man who believes that making money is a science, not an art—that's what sort of man. He never has played outsiders. Or he didn't until he went into the North Sea, anyway."

So that was it straight from the horse's mouth: Macready the hard-headed economist and Howard the hard-headed oilman confirmed each other's mystification, and in so doing justified David Audley's excitement. For if David knew no more than any well-informed layman about the oil business (and for all Richardson knew he might be a great deal better informed than most), he would assuredly know all about Eugenio Narva from his days in the Middle Eastern section.

This time he couldn't resist catching Sir Frederick's eye, but before he could speak Macready gave a derisive snort.

"And now you're going to suggest that he had some sort of dummy2

inside information!"

Sir Frederick looked at him innocently. "What makes you think that, Neville?"

"Because that's what David believed. He practically suggested that the Russians had given Narva the green light."

"Which is nonsense?"

Macready squared up decisively in front of the desk.

"Fred—I simply don't believe it was possible for anyone—not the Russians, not us, not anyone—to forecast the presence of oil in commercial quantities. Small amounts, yes—everyone knew there might be some there. After all, it's got the same rock sequences as the major producing basins in the Middle East and the States. But when Narva moved nobody—and I mean nobody— could have known what was there."

Sir Frederick did not attempt to reply; he merely watched Macready with a curiously deferential intentness, almost as though he was the junior partner in the exchange, waiting for enlightenment. Indeed, from the moment Macready had blundered into the room like a fugitive from Alice in Wonderland he had said remarkably little except to spark the economist on from one burst of exasperation to the next. It was, thought Richardson with a small twinge of bitterness, a very different technique from that which had been applied in his own case: it was like David himself had once observed after a tough session—there were some you led, and some you drove, and some you ran behind, hoping to keep up with.

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"But suppose—" Macready turned away from the desk and started to walk the carpet, following its pattern like a child on the cracks of a pavement. "That's what you want me to do, just like David did— suppose . . . suppose, suppose, suppose. . . ."

He stared into space, his brow furrowed.

"Well, they wouldn't help Narva, the Russians wouldn't for a start. He's right wing Christian Democrat—not neo-fascist, but the MSI have certainly made a play for him. And I can't think of any reason why they might want to tempt him out of Italy either, and certainly not into North Sea investment—it wasn't in their interests to encourage that at all. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Could his movement of capital have had that sort of effect?"

asked Sir Frederick encouragingly.

Macready thought for a moment, still moving like a robot over the carpet. "It's hard to gauge exactly. He's nowhere near in the big league even now, and the companies were pretty well committed by then. . . . But he damn well boosted their morale—and he certainly gave Xenophon a shot in the arm just when they needed it. ... Except that all militates against the Russians giving him anything, even if they had it

—"

He swung round and set off again "—because that's the real objection—the technology. . . . Offshore operations are the coming thing all right; they're maybe budgeting for four, five hundred millions on underwater exploration next year, dummy2

world-wide, the companies are. . . . But Houston is where the action is, not Baku—and if anyone comes up with a way of finding oil without drilling for it then it'll be someone from the Capitalist Republic of Texas, not the Azerbaidjan Soviet Socialist Republic, take my word for it. And so far no one has

—you can take my word for that, too!"

"Hmm!" Sir Frederick looked down at his virgin blotter, straightened it, and then examined his fingernails. "I rather think Lockheed's are involved in underwater oil technology these days, aren't they?"

Macready jerked to a halt.

"And of course they would have obtained their underwater experience from working with the American navy on submarine rescue systems, since one thing has a way of leading to another in such fields —eh?" Sir Frederick smiled at Macready, who was now at last giving him the appearance of undivided attention.

"Now, it does occur to me—" continued Sir Frederick smoothly, "—that ever since they have been operating a nuclear submarine force the Russians have also been working very hard on the problems of ultra deep-sea systems. In fact they performed quite creditably in recovering the wreckage of one of their Far East boats off Sakhalin Island last year. So I'm wondering—and I'd be obliged if you would wonder also, Neville—if one thing might have led to another with them too."

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Macready continued to stare at Sir Frederick, though now with an air of calculation.

"I was pretty sure David had something more than hypothesis to work on," he murmured, nodding to himself as if satisfied that both Audley and Sir Frederick could not be really as foolish as their questions. "Just what is it you've got, Fred?"

"What about the Russians?" Sir Frederick's tone hardened for the first time.

Macready shrugged. "I wouldn't have thought anyone is able to operate on the seabed yet without surface supporting vessels, certainly not far from their home base. And as far as I'm aware they haven't had any vessels keeping station in the North Sea." He paused, evidently grappling at close quarters with the possibility of something he had been categorically denying a few moments earlier. "But if they can—Fred, just what is it you've got?"

"Nothing concrete, I'm afraid, Neville. But it does look as though Narva managed to tap a leak in Moscow."

"A leak—not a tip-off?"

"I don't know which. But I agree with you that this isn't the sort of thing they'd give away, and certainly not to Narva.

Only in any case it seems that it was one of our own men who passed on the information." He reached forward to the intercom. "I don't suppose you remember Little Bird?—Mrs.

Harlin, where the devil is that file on Hotzendorff?"

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The intercom was silent.

"Mrs. Harlin—are you there?" snapped Sir Frederick.

The intercom cleared its throat.

"I beg your pardon, Sir Frederick." Mrs. Harlin did not sound flustered, but she did not sound quite like herself. "The Hotzendorff Dossier has just arrived. The Archivist has brought it himself."

Sir Frederick frowned at the machine.

"Yes?"

"He wishes to see you." The sudden tightness of Mrs. Harlin's voice completed the story: Sir Frederick had not wished to be disturbed and in her opinion the Archivist had constituted a disturbance she reckoned she could handle; but he had evidently turned out tougher than she had expected.

"For God's sake, woman—" another voice, distant but sharp with anger, crackled from the intercom.

"Superintendent Cox is with him, Sir Frederick," Mrs. Harlin said quickly. "He will not state his business."

Oh God, thought Richardson, when the Special Branch wouldn't state its business except to the top man, then something unpleasant was invariably about to happen. And he had a premonition that it would happen to him.

X

"MR. BENBOW—SUPERINTENDENT—?" Sir Frederick dummy2

acknowledged the unlikely deputation neutrally.

"Sir!" Cox halted two yards from the desk, noted the presence of Macready and Richardson with two photographic blinks of the eye, and stood at ease with the calm resignation of a veteran bearer of evil tidings.

Benbow murmured something unintelligible and came to a stop alongside him. Then, almost as an afterthought, he took two more nervous steps forward, deposited a grey file on the edge of the desk and retreated again.

"Thank you, Mr. Benbow," Sir Frederick nodded graciously.

"Is there something I can do for you?"

"I asked Mr. Benbow to come here with me, sir," said Cox calmly. "I think we may have an emergency on our hands."

"You think?"

"I think." Cox looked at Sir Frederick steadily. "The Librarian didn't report for work this morning."

"The—Librarian."

"Mr. Hemingway, Sir Frederick," said the Archivist. "He is in charge of the non-classified printed material—newspapers, periodicals and journals."

Richardson tried to place Hemingway. A surprising amount of interesting and useful information emerged from routine publications, but it usually reached him in digested form after having been carried from its original source by some Argus-eyes expert like Macready or Fatso Larimer—or David.

He had hardly ever penetrated to the bowels of the building dummy2

himself, where the Reading Room—

The Reading Room!

"The Duty Officer carried out the routine check at ten-hundred." The neutrality of Cox's voice matched Sir Frederick's. "His wife was in a state—he went out last night and didn't come home. Didn't use his own car. Said he might be back latish. None of the hospitals within a radius of a hundred miles has admitted him. None of the Police Forces in the area have anyone answering to his description in custody." Cox paused. "But ... the Chief Constable for Mid-Wessex advised me to have a word with Brigadier Stacker."

He paused again. "Just that—a word. Only the Brigadier isn't available at the moment, and I thought it best to have the word with you first, sir."

Sir Frederick turned to Richardson.

"Well?" he said heavily.

"What's the description?"

"Grey-brown hair, moustache, blue eyes, prominent—"

"Not the face."

Cox didn't bat an eyelid. "Aged fifty, height five feet ten inches, weight 168 pounds. A photograph won't help then?"

"It won't." Richardson tried not to imagine the face of Charlie Clark's victim. They had been ready to let him see it, but he had managed not to have time to take up their offer. He had already seen one face like that in his career, and he didn't want to seem greedy.

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"Dark grey suit, white shirt, maroon tie, brown suede shoes."

Cox was watching him intently. "Well, we've got Hemingway's prints on file. That is, if—" he slowed down judiciously, "if you can provide anything for comparison."

He was almost there, thought Richardson, looking questioningly at his master.

Sir Frederick nodded. "Go on, Peter."

Richardson met the Special Branch man's gaze. "It could be.

The general description's about right—height, age and so on.

And the clothes are about right. It could very well be."

Cox relaxed. "I take it you have a body?"

"That's right."

One lost and one found. At least the books balanced.

"Suicide or foul play?"

"The verdict will be misadventure, Superintendent," said Sir Frederick. "As it happens that is not far short of the truth.

But officially we shall fail to establish an identity. It will be an unknown intruder for the public record."

"Might I ask where he was intruding, sir?"

"Dr. Audley's place down in Hampshire."

Cox's face went blank—the books had unbalanced themselves again—and then clouded with surprise.

The change in expression was not lost on Sir Frederick.

"Audley had nothing to do with it, Superintendent—at least not directly. He's ... on holiday with his family."

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"I'm relieved to hear it."

"Relieved?"

"Yes, sir." Cox was feeling his way circumspectly now; he hadn't yet been warned off, but he recognised the signs. "I understood he was not a violent man. Off the rugger field, at least. He's never had a weapon booked out to him." He paused. "But we do have a security problem now, sir."

"If the body is Hemingway's, we do—I agree," Sir Frederick's eyes shifted to the Archivist. "What was his security category?"

"Hemingway, sir?" The Archivist looked startled.

"Yes, Mr. Benbow."

"Grade Four, sir."

It was Sir Frederick's turn to look surprised: Grade Four was hardly a security category at all. If the man who delivered the morning milk to the building had needed a category, that would have been it.

"I didn't know we had any Grade Fours here."

"He didn't handle anything requiring a higher clearance, sir.

And he wasn't authorised to go above the ground floor."

Benbow was now pink with embarrassment. "His appointment was quite in order."

"I'm sure it was. But who the devil agreed to it?"

The Archivist braced himself visibly. "You did, Sir Frederick,"

he said.

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"I did—did I?" Sir Frederick scowled reflectively.

Neville Macready, who had drifted away from the group to continue his examination of the carpet's pattern, gave an irreverent snort.

"So I did, so I did!" Sir Frederick muttered at last. "I remember now: you wanted a Grade Two Deputy and I wouldn't let you have him. You're quite right, Mr. Benbow—I apologise."

"It was a matter of finance, sir, as I recall."

"Quite so. ... Hmm! Then where did we get the man from, Superintendent?"

"From the Army, sir. He'd just taken early retirement from the RASC—warrant officer class two. He was in War Department records, so he had the right qualifications. It was a perfectly proper appointment."

"Perfectly proper stupidity, you mean!" Sir Frederick shook his head regretfully. "And he had no access to classified material?"

"None at all," said Benbow emphatically.

"What about the Dead Files? Weren't they next door to the Reading Room?"

"They're properly secured, sir. There's an electronic lock and the key has to be signed for."

"Of course," Sir Frederick nodded. "And you were satisfied with Hemingway?"

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"He was competent."

"Competent?" The renewed question probed Benbow's slight hesitation. "No more than that?"

"There was no scope in his grade for more than that, Sir Frederick." The probe was rewarded with a suggestion of distaste.

"But you didn't like him, Mr. Benbow?"

"I can't say I cared for him. He was—he tried to be friendly, I suppose. He was always talking about what he saw on television—he had a colour set."

The Archivist made television sound like a physical handicap not spoken of in polite society, the coloured version being a particularly unfortunate manifestation of it.

"I didn't know him very well, Sir Frederick," Benbow concluded rather defensively.

"Very good." Sir Frederick stood up. "Thank you for your help, Mr. Benbow. If this body of ours does turn out to be Hemingway, you are certainly not responsible in any way for what has occurred. But even if it doesn't we shall get rid of him. And you shall have a Grade Two deputy for the Reading Room, I promise you . . ."

"Well?"

Richardson waited for Cox to speak first.

"He could have been got at, sir," said Cox. "It would be worth dummy2

their while to have someone in this building, even in the Reading Room. He could report on comings and goings at the least. And on the things that interested us. A foot in the door's better than nothing."

"Richardson?"

"He overheard David talk to Macready here. That's what set him off, I'll bet."

"Neville—was Hemingway there when you met David?"

Macready stopped pacing, shrugged. "He could have been.

We were there—he's just part of the furniture as far as I'm concerned."

"Could he have seen the file?"

"What file?"

"The one David was looking at," said Sir Frederick with well-controlled patience.

Macready frowned. "I didn't see any file."

"David was looking at that file," Sir Frederick pointed to the desk.

"Not when he talked to me," said Macready.

"It is important, Neville," Sir Frederick said softly, but with an iceberg tip of firmness showing.

Macready stared at him. "Oh—come on, Fred! I went down there to look at the new AEQ. I was just going to sit down and David came up—we walked around a bit as we talked. I didn't look under the bloody table for spies—"

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As he trailed off in vague irritation Richardson found himself once more searching for emotion in the faces of the other two men, and finding very little. He felt he was learning something useful about man—management, but he wasn't at all sure yet what it was. But they'd got what they wanted, anyway, even if it was not exactly reassuring: while Macready and David had communed with each other on their own esoteric intellectual plane Hemingway could probably have learnt the file's contents by heart without disturbing them.

"What's in it that's so special, for God's sake?" said Macready suddenly, lurching towards the desk and scooping up the file.

Without another word he split it open with a well-chewed thumbnail and plunged into it, oblivious of his surroundings.

"Superintendent—" Sir Frederick's equanimity was undented by this raid on his desk: he simply ignored it. "I think you'd better get after the Hemingway angle."

"I'll do that, sir," said Cox. For the first time there was a hint of eagerness in his voice. Or was it gratitude?—it sounded quite remarkably like gratitude.

"Captain Richardson—" as the Special Branch man nodded towards him Richardson detected a flicker of sympathy, "—

good luck to you."

It was gratitude.

The speed of Cox's retreat took Richardson by surprise. And then, even before the door had clicked shut, its implications dummy2

presented themselves to him like the figures on a bill run up by someone else which was about to be passed to him for payment.

Since Macready's arrival, and even more since Cox's, he had seemed to be no more than a spectator of a game in which he had already played his part. But Cox had been sent about his business at this point not simply because internal security was his job, but because Sir Frederick did not intend to involve him in its wider aspect. And he, Richardson, had remained—and was still uncomfortably remaining—because that too was part of the design.

Not for the first time he had the sense of being manipulated—

of having only partial freewill: not a bus, not a train, but a tram. . . .

He had not been pulled out of Ireland because he was the only man who could make Mrs. Clark talk: Hugh Roskill was also one of Clarkie's favourites, and Hugh was still convalescing from his last operation and would therefore have been much more easily usable. So it had all along been planned that if the case developed the assignment would be his, and that most obviously because of his special fitness for Italian operations.

But for once the thought of his second homeland aroused no light in his soul, for it was overshadowed by the realisation of what had really happened at Steeple Horley. What had seemed like a daring display of independence had in fact been nothing of the kind: he had not outfaced anyone with dummy2

his demand to go straight to the top on David Audley's behalf

—he had merely anticipated his own orders.

"You don't look happy, Peter," said Sir Frederick.

Well, it still might all be conjecture, because it was no good kidding himself that he was up to calculating all their angles yet. But one thing wasn't conjecture, and it ruddy well cooled his ardour now: Superintendent Cox had seized his dismissal like a thirty-year prisoner snatching a Royal Pardon, without asking questions or waiting for answers. And it wasn't just because Cox preferred the safe routine of checking on a dead Hemingway to the mind-bending frustrations of handling live Macreadys and Audleys, but because he knew enough not to want to know more.

"Should I be, then?" Richardson grinned insecurely. It was just like David had once said, the time to worry was when other people looked sorry for you as they said goodbye.

"You don't fancy a trip to Italy?"

Ten out of ten for Answer Number One.

"To bring David back in chains? Not especially, no."

"Not in chains. . . . Would you rather go back to Dublin?"

"You must be joking!" Richardson shuddered.

"Then what's so awful about Italy?"

"Nothing—about Italy." Richardson hardened his voice. "But there are too many loose ends in England."

"For example?"

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"Hemingway, for a start. If he's the man old Charlie shot—

their inside man here on an outside job—it doesn't damn well make sense—"

"And neither does that." Macready tossed the file on to the table irritably.

"Why not, Neville?"

"Because the idea of Hotzendorff bringing a plum out of Russia verges on the ridiculous, that's why."

"He didn't bring it out. He sent it. And he didn't send it to us, so it seems." Sir Frederick paused. "And it rather looks as though he died for it."

"He died of a heart attack—" Macready frowned suddenly.

"You know what's in the file, then?"

"I read it when the news of his death finally reached us. And then there was the—ah—question of the widow's pension to be settled."

There was a half-second of awkwardness, lost on Macready, whose pension and life expectancy were matters of black and white actuarial certainty, but not lost on Richardson.

"You see, Peter—" Sir Frederick ignored Macready, "—

Hotzendorff worked for us for fifteen years as a courier in Russia."

"A sort of postman," amended Macready.

"But useful enough. He travelled for an East German farm machinery company—he was our main source for the Virgin Lands scheme for example."

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"In North Kazakhstan, which happens to be about 3,000

miles from the North Sea," said Macready, "and has no oil."

"He covered a great deal of territory elsewhere. And he was always very careful—and they trusted him."

"So did we."

"With very much better reason. You don't have to play the devil's advocate, Neville."

"I'm not trying to. It's simply that he wasn't the sort of man to pick up this sort of information. He was just a delivery agent for second-class mail."

"He put in his own reports too."

"Most of which he could have copied from the magazines and papers he bought in the streets. For the sort of thing we've been talking about he just didn't have the background—and he certainly didn't have the contacts, Fred."

Sir Frederick sighed, then shook his head. "You can say what you like, Neville. But at the end of the day the only clue we've got points to him. And—" he tapped the file, "there's circumstantial evidence in here that backs it up, too."

Richardson grasped thankfully at last at the answer to the question which had been nagging him increasingly: "What clue?"

Sir Frederick half smiled. "The one you brought to us, Peter—

the one Narva gave to David's friend, and he gave to David, and Professor Freisler handed on to you: the Little Bird from dummy2

East Berlin."

"The little dickey bird?"

"He started as Dickey Bird, curiously enough, short for Richard von Hotzendorff. He was rechristened Little Bird in

'61. Born in Konigsberg, which is now Kaliningrad, in 1914.

David would have recognised him straight away, naturally—"

"David's signature is on the authorisation transferring the file from active to dead," said Macready. "His and Latimer's.

July 1970—that would be the yearly clear-out."

"So he'd have remembered the circumstantial evidence too, then," Sir Frederick nodded.

Richardson looked at him expectantly.

"Nothing to do with oil, I'm afraid, Peter—Neville's right there. There isn't a smell of it."

"What is there a smell of?"

"The warm South—Italy. Three smells of it, too: Hotzendorff was there first with the German army in '42 and '43. The second time was twenty-five years later."

"Twenty-five?" The addition rolled in Richardson's brain like a jackpot number. "1968."

"Early in that year. He was dead before the end of it."

"And Narva was buying into the North Sea."

"Exactly."

"The Italian trip isn't in the file." Macready's tone was aggrieved.

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"No. We didn't know it until after he was dead."

"And there was a third time." Now there was nothing casual about Macready's question, his voice was sharp.

"Not for Hotzendorff, there wasn't. Not long after he died his wife —his widow—got out of East Germany with her three children. She came to us to enquire about his pension. Or at least his gratuity—"

"She got out? You mean we didn't get her out?" Macready cut in quickly.

"We didn't—she did."

"On her own, with three children? She must be a woman of considerable initiative. The East Germans don't like losing children—did she say how she'd done it?"

"She had friends, she said. And some money saved—it can be done with that. She also said that her husband had placed some money in Italy on his last trip. With a bit of a pension it would be enough to bring the family up, if we could drop a word here and there." Sir Frederick looked from one to the other of them. "She said they'd always planned to retire there one day. We had no reason to doubt her story. . . ."

Oh, brother! thought Richardson—a woman of considerable initiative!

"I suppose Little Bird really is dead—or that he hasn't just migrated to sunnier climes?"

Sir Frederick looked at him a little reproachfully. "I said we didn't doubt her story, Peter—I didn't say we didn't check on dummy2

it. Although it might have been better in this instance if we hadn't."

The obvious question hung in the air between them for a moment, unasked.

"We checked his death in the hospital files in Moscow, and we closed down his contact network—that was all routine.

And then we ran another check on her eight months later in Italy, just to make sure he hadn't been clever." Sir Frederick looked from one to the other of them bleakly. "And it was David Audley who had the job of setting up the checks."

"Okay—that does it." Macready turned away from the desk to stare directly out of the window into nowhere, nodding spasmodically to himself.

"You mean David had the necessary information to spark him off?"

"More than that—he had enough to guess he'd been taken for a ride by someone."

There was no need to expand on that: it would bug David Audley to hell and back to find out that—it would light his blue touchpaper as nothing else would.

Richardson turned back to Sir Frederick. "So Little Bird sold us out to Narva—he went private on us?"

"That's not important." Macready swung back again, the excitement rising in his voice. "It isn't the first time something like that's happened. A little bit on the side for a rainy day, put away somewhere nice and safe abroad—it's dummy2

much safer than defecting, and Italy's a darned sight more comfortable than anywhere behind the Curtain, especially when it's your old age you're thinking of. ... And he was getting on, Hotzendorff was—this wasn't his September Song, he was well into October. . . ." Macready trailed off, head cocked on one side, half smiling to himself as though suddenly taken with that thought, his excitement of a moment earlier apparently quite forgotten. "Where do flies go in the wintertime? Nobody knows. They just disappear—

once they're gone nobody cares where they go. Same with spies. But if they survive they've got to live somehow, just like the flies."

Well into October, and Little Bird had been a small, unimportant creature, thought Richardson. A delivery agent for second-class mail, a pedlar of secondhand facts. Useful, but a foreigner and not irreplaceable, as his very code names seemed to suggest.

And yet a human being, with a wife and a family—maybe more of a human being than the superbright, egocentric Macready—and with human plans for his old age that didn't include risking his neck on second-class mail.

No wonder it wasn't the first time!

"What is important, Neville?" said Sir Frederick coolly recalling Macready to reality.

"Yes!" Macready snapped awake again, looking around him with a curiously distracted expression. "You'd do better to ask David, of course."

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"If he was here I'd do just that," said Sir Frederick with a touch of asperity. "As it is I must make do with you, Neville."

Macready looked at him sharply. He was still not in the least overawed, but it seemed to Richardson that he was already regretting the brief flare of excitement which he could not now leave unexplained.

Then he shrugged. "I can only guess, naturally."

"Guess then."

Macready bowed to the word of command. "So long as you realise it is a guess—the Russians are no damn business of mine, any more than oil is David's."

He stopped.

"Get to the point."

"That is the point. Oil isn't David's speciality. He wouldn't understand all the angles."

"You underrate him."

"Oh, I know he's well informed. But technology isn't his thing. And the Russians are."

He stopped again. He was wrapping something up, thought Richardson; but wrapping up what— The North Sea, Narva, Little Bird—the Russians?

Forecasting where the oil lay was impossible, or a ruddy miracle. But the Russians seemed to have done it.

And for Little Bird to lay his hands on a piece of knowledge as hot as that was a miracle too—but he seemed to have done dummy2

it. (It didn't matter what he had done with it afterwards—that was no miracle, certainly.)

So—two miracles.

The light dawned like a flash of morning sun through a wind-blown curtain revealing bright day outside.

"They gave it to him," said Richardson. "He couldn't have got it on his own, Little Bird couldn't. So the Russians gave it to him—on a plate."

Macready raised an eyebrow in surprise. " Someone gave it to him anyway. But that's only the half of it."

"What's the other half?"

"I'm still only guessing—"

"For Christ's sake—" Richardson exploded.

"Okay, okay! I mean I'm trying to see it through David's eyes, that's all!" Macready sounded quite alarmed at encountering consumer hostility. "It's there in the file—Hotzendorff never complained of any heart trouble. I know people do go out like a light sometimes, but there's usually a couple of warnings.

So it looks to me as though someone gave him the information and then snuffed him out the moment he'd passed it on so he couldn't split on them—"

"Which means—" Sir Frederick paused, "—if that is it, then it was an unofficial leak, because they'd never have needed him for an official one."

"And at a high level, too." Macready nodded quickly to emphasise his point. "That's what's grabbed David—not the dummy2

oil."

Someone at a high level: someone who knew about Hotzendorff— they must have got on to him after all, even if they weren't ready to pick him up. And that meant someone with access to KGB surveillance lists.

And someone who knew about the North Sea bonanza and for some reason, some convoluted political reason, wanted to make sure the British and the other Western nations knew about it too.

And someone with the resources and the ruthlessness to stop Hotzendorff's mouth once he had served his purpose.

Except the irony of that had been that Hotzendorff had passed on the information to the wrong address after all, even though it had added up to the same result in the end.

Always supposing that had been the design.

"And you really think that was how David put it together?"

It was odd: he had tried to make the question sound casual, but it came out abrasively, as though he not only questioned Macready's ability to get inside David's mind, but also objected to it. He had already had his knuckles rapped for letting friendship influence him, and he'd do better to remember an older piece of advice: Gladiator, make no friends of gladiators.

"Eh?" Macready blinked at him defensively. "I tell you I'm guessing. I don't know what goes on in anyone's head, least of all David Audley's. I'm not claiming to." He stared at dummy2

Richardson for a moment, then rounded on Sir Frederick.

"It's the questions he asked. It wasn't just Narva he was interested in—he knew about him, I told you. Or about the North Sea. It was the Russians he kept coming back to."

"What about them, Neville?"

"Mostly questions I couldn't answer off the cuff. He wanted to know what their future projected fuel consumption was, and their percentage increase rate. And where they planned to make up the difference—things like that. . . . And who would be in the know, and how their policies were formulated. But it was the Russians he was interested in—I don't think he gave a damn for the North Sea."

Richardson now saw the encounter in the Reading Room in much clearer perspective. Faced with the same piece of information Audley and Macready had reacted according to their own specialist knowledge, each flying off on his own tangent, oblivious of the other's obsession.

Mention of the North Sea had been enough to launch Macready on his hobbyhorse; and if he had disbelieved the first miracle he had been none the less bugged by the unresolved mystery of Narva's investment. But Audley was already ranging beyond the second miracle to its possible explanation: the existence of someone high in the Kremlin who was prepared to leak valuable information to the West in pursuit of his own ends.

And it was no ruddy wonder David found that possibility irresistible: if there was such a man, and his identity could be dummy2

established, he would be wide open to every pressure from genteel suggestion to outright blackmail.

Or would have been if David and Macready had been more discreet—and less unlucky—in their behaviour.

"Whoever it was, the Russians'll get him now before we can, damn it," he muttered.

"Via Hemingway?" Sir Frederick had evidently advanced along an identical line of thought. "I'm afraid that seems all too likely, Peter. Though I find their behaviour a little strange all the same. We shall just have to see what Cox turns up there. In the meantime—"

He stopped abruptly, frowning down at the intercom.

"—Yes, Mrs. Harlin?"

"I have a call from Rome for you, Sir Frederick." This time there was no apology in the voice, and no hesitation.

"They've got through to Dr. Audley?"

"It isn't from Mr. Cable, Sir Frederick. This is an official call from General Montuori. He is using the NATO scrambler line, priority green. He is on the line now—"

XI

THE WORST OF the sweltering day was over at last, but that brought no consolation to Boselli: the concrete perimeter strip of the airfield had baked for hours and now it was restoring every particle of stored heat to the atmosphere dummy2

around him.

Also his head ached abominably, as though the racket of the rotor of the Pubblica Sicurezza helicopter which had brought him south was still revolving noisily in his brain; it had been just another of the day's awful ironies that those two hours of relative coolness had been an agony of incessant din in which neither thought nor comfort had been possible.

And now there was also the unseasonable humidity to contend with, more enervating than the dry Roman heat to which he was at least resigned. He had expected blue Campanian skies—the General's secretary had made the trip sound like a holiday jaunt—and instead he was enclosed by a haze which obscured the hills in the distance.

But the heat and the ache and the humidity were all in the natural order of things, the old conspiracy of his feeble body and hostile environment against his unclouded mind. It was fear now that dominated him, both the sick stomach fear of physical danger and the chest-tightening panic of professional failure.

The two hard-faced PS plainclothesmen behind him in the car did nothing to alleviate the physical fear. Sergeant Depretis had obviously been an officer of vast experience and proven ability to have made one of the special squads, but that had not prevented him choking in his own blood in the dust of Ostia; and even Villari's miraculous reflexes had not been fast enough to duck a bullet.

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The very thought of Villari clouded his mind with confusion and guilt. The man had saved his life and taken his bullet, and the uncontrollable inner wish that the wound might prove mortal was therefore ungrateful and dishonourable as well as an act of treason and a mortal sin.

But Villari's survival would bring humiliation, because everyone from the General downwards now believed that he, Boselli, had gunned down the assassin.

"One shot—straight through the heart, too! I didn't know you could even use a gun, Pietro."

"Sir—I—I—"

"It's all right, Pietro, you don't have to tell me about it, not yet— Porro's already told me how it was. And I know it was bad, don't think I don't know. The first time is always bad.

It was bad for me just the same—it was a Tommy in 1940, just outside Tobruk, and I was sick as a dog afterwards. But until then I didn't know whether I'd measure up. You can't tell until it happens—remember that, Pietro."

Oh, God! It had been ordinary temptation first—the admiration in Porro's eyes and the General's voice. And he had suddenly become Pietro to the General after all those years of being Boselli— that was temptation doubled and trebled.

But after the General's homily on the moment of measuring up the true explanation had stopped dead in his throat and dummy2

then it was suddenly a thousand years too late for any sort of truth at all, and he was stuck with the lie like a hit-and-run driver who had run too far to turn back.

If only Villari had not been hit! Or, more impossibly, if only what everyone thought was the reality, and he had measured up!

But he had not measured up, and now God was punishing him in the most subtle way imaginable: in his daydreams he had always yearned for the chance of proving himself in the field, in charge of some important operation where no one else could steal the credit, but directly under the General's eye; and now he had his wish and with it his only chance of redeeming himself.

It was exactly as Father Patrick had always maintained—

when God punished He always built a second chance into the punishment, that was the nature of His Grace.

So now he must carry out the General's instructions to the very last letter or be doubly damned as a liar and an incompetent. There would be no third chance.

But then, when he had once more come round to that inescapable conclusion, the self-doubts began again—the doubt that he could deliver even half that the General wanted.

"You heard the tape of what Clinton said—it was very convincing —that note of surprise was a small touch of genius. I think there is no liar in the world like an English dummy2

gentleman, Pietro, no liar in the whole world. They are absolute masters of the half-truth. But I must know the whole truth. . . ."

No liars in the whole world—Boselli could believe that because he had been convinced that the news of the Ostian blood bath had genuinely surprised Clinton.

But the General was right, of course: to send such a man as Audley to interview Eugenio Narva about his investment in the oil discoveries in the North Sea made no sense at all. It was a technologist's assignment, and a routine one at that.

Nor was it likely to be of great interest to the Russians, the more so because it related to the past.

And above all it ought not to be a killing matter.

But at that point the second and more terrifying requirement obtruded.

"And I want Ruelle, Pietro. One way or another, alive or dead—I want him."

A small sound registered in the world outside Boselli's private turmoil, the distant sound of aircraft engines. He raised his hand to lift the dark glasses which had slipped down his nose, remembering guiltily as he did so to whom they belonged. They were beautiful, expensive glasses, self-adjusting to the degree of sunlight: he had always wanted dummy2

such glasses, and it had seemed a crime to leave them lying where they had fallen.

He sighed. If Villari lived he would have to give them back too.

There was nothing as yet to see, only the increasing sound in the northwest to be heard. But it would not be long now before the Englishman arrived.

Captain Peter John Richardson.

Nothing could be more English than that, except that Captain Peter John Richardson was no more and no less English than George Ruelle—Captain Peter John Richardson was another bastard half Italian Englishman.

No, that was inaccurate: he was no bastard of a passing foreign soldier and an ignorant peasant girl, the dossier was clear on that point: the girl had been of good family and the wedding in Amalfi Cathedral was a matter of undoubted record.

Unfortunately those were almost the only undoubted things in the dossier. The man had trained as a soldier, had been seconded to army intelligence in Cyprus and had then been sent on a language course at a provincial English university.

Conjecturally, at some stage in that process he had been diverted into Sir Frederick Clinton's department—it could have been even before he had gone to the university or during his studies (the famous guerrilla leader Lawrence had spied on the Turks while still a student, Boselli recalled with dummy2

a mixture of outrage and admiration. No doubt it was neither the first nor the last time the English had played that game).

What was certain was that he had never returned to the Army, but as the facts ran and reran through Boselli's memory he could reach no conclusion beyond that he had reached on first encountering them: the man was young, but he would be clever and tricky—and doubly tricky because that mixture of English and Italian blood was traditionally a bad one, prone to bring out the worst of each.

That was true of George Ruelle, certainly; it remained to be seen whether it was true of Captain Peter John Richardson.

When it came at last, it came quickly, out of the haze and straight down on to the runway, a compact little executive jet of RAF Air Support Command.

Once down it swung quickly to the right, directly towards the group by the perimeter fence, set its passenger down accurately and quickly no more than seventy-five metres away, and then swung back again on its direct path towards the main buildings.

The first warning was the man's grace. Boselli was always a little suspicious of too much ease of movement, too much physical confidence. That had been what Villari had had, and this man had it too: he gave the pilot a wave and then, as the aircraft left him, took one slow look around him before he started towards Boselli, a small leather travelling bag in one dummy2

hand and his jacket, slung negligently over his shoulder, in the other. He looked as if he owned everything he could see.

A small pain hammered just above Boselli's left eyebrow, a sickening migrainelike pulse. Already he did not like the half-Englishman.

"Signor Boselli?" The toothpaste-white teeth lit up the good-looking brown face, a totally Mediterranean face without a single Anglo-Saxon feature.

"Captain Richardson?"

"Not captain any more." The smile remained in position as Richardson stared into Boselli's dark glasses. He breathed in the heat appreciatively. "Thank God for a little warmth at last. It was raining when we took ofi."

Boselli ignored the pleasantry. "Your identification, if you please."

"Of course." Richardson handed over a plain black little folder. "The mug shot's not a bad likeness, don't you think?"

The man's Italian was as faultless as his face, there was even an irritatingly added perfection in the hint of Neapolitan in it. He was smiling in the photograph, too.

"A formality," said Boselli coldly, handing back the folder.

"Of course." Richardson nodded. "And yours?"

The request caught Boselli by surprise; he had never, in his entire career, been asked for his official card by anyone other than the guards on the department, and that only in the dim past. But although the half-Englishman's intention of putting dummy2

him in his place was perfectly clear he could see no way of refusing it without a direct confrontation, and the insolence beneath the smile was too well-hidden for that.

He fumbled for it in his wallet, but unfortunately it had long settled in the innermost fold and in extracting it he dislodged a dog-eared collection of small private objects, including the appalling snapshot of his wife and mother-in-law taken during the previous summer's martyrdom in Viterbo.

The snap fluttered down between them and Richardson bent effortlessly and gathered it up, offering it back as though in exchange for the card while Boselli hastily gathered up the rest.

"A formality also," said the half-Englishman. "Shall we go, then?"

Boselli followed him to the car seething with the knowledge that he had allowed himself to be overawed, even though it was the English who were in the weaker position. Yet he knew also that it was not the English who mattered, but the General. If he could only obtain results by seeming to abase himself to this nonchalant pig, then that was how the game must be played. At least it was a role he knew how to fill to the last humiliating syllable. Revenge could come later.

Nevertheless it would be a mistake to surrender too tamely, and he must take the initiative to start with.

"This is a serious business, Captain Richardson," he began heavily.

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"You're telling me!"

"I am telling you, Captain Richardson. One of our agents has been killed and another lies gravely wounded."

Richardson chewed on that for a moment before replying.

"I wasn't aware that we were responsible for any of that, signore."

"It occurred as a direct consequence of the actions of one of your operatives."

"An indirect consequence. That would be a fairer description."

"Direct or indirect—the incident occurred and General Montuori is extremely angry about it."

"So is Sir Frederick Clinton."

"But General Montuori did not initiate this affair. He wishes to remind you further that Italy and England are treaty allies and that such actions as this could have grave repercussions within NATO."

That sounded good, Boselli decided happily, because it sounded official. It was beside the point that it was exactly the opposite of what the General had said: But we don't want any political trouble with the English. We're going to need them to keep that wild man Mintoff in line if he gets to power in Malta.

"In fact he expects the very fullest co-operation now, Captain Richardson."

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"Not 'captain', if you don't mind, signore," said Richardson.

At last he was no longer smiling.

"Signor Richardson." Boselli smiled. He might not have to surrender after all. "The fullest co-operation."

"By that I take it you mean a two-way exchange of information?"

"We have no information to exchange. We did not initiate this affair, as I have already pointed out."

"I see." Richardson nodded, regarding Boselli reflectively.

Then he turned away to the left as the car came out of a cutting through the dark-grey volcanic rock. "Monte Vesuvio's hiding himself today, I see. But he's still there all right. He's still there."

Boselli frowned at him, nonplussed.

"You know my family—my mother's family—came from these parts?" said Richardson conversationally.

Boselli nodded as Richardson turned to him.

"Of course you would. A big family it was, but not so big now.

Too many of the men developed the bad habit of getting themselves killed. But we once had vineyards from here to Ravello—red and white Vesuvio, and Ischia and Avellino.

Now only the Ravello vineyards are left, I think. And a pottery at Salerno. . . . And one of my second cousins has a machine-tool works at Torre Annunziata on the right there somewhere. It was his father who used to say that Monte Vesuvio sometimes hid himself, but he was always there." He dummy2

turned back towards the mist-shrouded volcano. "Have you picked up David Audley, then?"

Boselli thought quickly, but could find no objection to answering.

"Yes."

Richardson nodded. "Where did you pick him up?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd be interested to know. At one of the autostrada toll stations, I'd guess—near Naples, maybe?"

"Salerno."

"Salerno! He must have been pushing it, but that figures. ...

So in effect we gave him to you."

"There was a general call out for him, Captain Richardson."

"Signor. But we told you—Sir Frederick told your boss—

where he was heading, so we gave him to you. That's what I call full cooperation. And you know who he was going to see?"

Boselli nodded cautiously. He had the feeling that the haze was about to lift from Monte Vesuvio—and that there might be smoke coming from the crater.

"Narva. Signor Eugenio Narva. Pillar of the Establishment and the Christian Democrats and the Church. Founder and master of Narva Enterprises from the Persian Gulf to Bonnie Aberdeen. Chief shareholder in Xenophon Oil and Singer and Bailey and Enfield Alloys and other companies too dummy2

numerous to mention, plus a finger in North Sea offshore block allocations 311/26, 312/6, 315/4. A very busy fellow, Signor Narva is—I'm sure you've heard of him, Signor Boselli."

Richardson grinned again at Boselli. "You know what happens to Romans who come South, signore—they're no good to the Calabrians because the Neapolitans have taken all their money from them as they pass through. That's why Calabria is so poor. But I'm only half from these parts, so I'll be nice to you—I'll tell you why we are so interested in Narva.

"You see, I'm afraid your General has gone off at halfcock—

we didn't initiate this affair, as you put it. We were only very gently enquiring—and Dr. Audley was doing nothing more than that—about a bit of industrial espionage in which Signor Narva indulged a few years ago. And a very nasty bit of industrial espionage, too—you could even drop the

'industrial' part of it if you liked. The sort of thing that'd raise unpleasant questions in our Parliament."

Boselli experienced a queasy feeling below the belt.

"The sort of thing—your boss was quite right there—the sort of thing that could have grave repercussions, not just in NATO but in the Common Market negotiations. In fact you're dead lucky that my boss is a Common Market man, otherwise our anti-marketeers would be having a field day now."

We don't want any political trouble with the English: the sick feeling worsened. Between them Narva and the General dummy2

represented an appalling range of political and professional problems, never mind Ruelle and these English, who between them personified danger.

"So just don't go on thinking you can call all the shots just because you've got Dr. Audley," Richardson went on coolly.

"I want to see him—and quickly."

Boselli nodded humbly. "We are on our way to see him now, signore."

"Good. And I hope you haven't roughed him up, either."

Boselli tried to look shocked.

"It was just a thought." Richardson gave a conspiratorial nod towards the two men in the front of the car. "Some of your Pubblica Sicurezza special squads can be a bit heavy-handed, especially when they want to show off in front of the Carabinieri."

"I assure you there has been nothing like that. We have merely detained him."

"I'm glad to hear it. Because we're going to need him, Signor Boselli—you and me both, since we're about to give each other the fullest co-operation, that is."

No smile this time, Boselli noted. Perhaps the half-Englishman also required a success for his record.

"You can rely on me, signore." Perversely, he was not wholly forging the sincerity in his voice. His brief, false moment of power had been heady, but followed by self-doubts even before Richardson had bitten back as he realised that he still dummy2

didn't know what course of action to follow next. But clearly the half-Englishman knew what to do, and by hanging to his coattails he, Boselli, might yet salvage something, taking the credit for success and at least sharing the blame for failure.

And already he had learnt something to tell the General: the English were angry about Narva's interference in their North Sea and desperately worried that it should not become an issue of their domestic politics. In such circumstances even the General would wish to move cautiously.

"You can rely on me," he repeated, "Signor Richardson."

"Fine. And Peter is the name—I'm Pietro in these parts."

"I too am Pietro."

"Well I'd better stick to Peter, then. And the first thing you can do for me, Pietro, is tell me about this shooting of yours.

What the hell happened?"

"It was in Ostia, signore—Peter. Ostia Antica."

"The old ruins? What was David Audley doing there?"

"We hoped you could tell us." Boselli shrugged. "Could he have been meeting someone?"

"It's possible. But who started the shooting?"

"We followed him, but—we were ambushed. One of our men was killed, another wounded, as I have told you. And one of theirs."

"Killed?"

Boselli nodded, looking past Richardson at a small family dummy2

saloon they were overtaking. It was piled high with boxes and battered cases on the roof rack and bulging with children: they had passed many such cars already, families travelling southwards—homewards—from the northern factories for their annual holidays.

He remembered the ant which had stopped, bewildered, at the edge of the pool of blood in the dust. He thought he would never see an ant again without remembering that moment: ants and blood were linked together forever now.

"Yes."

"Identified?"

Boselli had already faced this question, and nothing had happened since to change his decision. It was high time the two half-Englishmen were introduced to each other.

"Yes. His name was Mario Segato. Aged fifty-six. Foreman plumber on a construction site in Avezzano—that's about a hundred kilometres east of Rome."

"I know where it is. You mean he wasn't a pro?" Richardson frowned. "A foreman plumber?"

"He was a foreman plumber." Boselli hugged the full story to himself for one final second. "But there was a time when he had a different occupation."

"Which was—"

"Bodyguard to George Ruelle."

"George—George Ruelle?" Richardson sat up. "You don't mean Bastard Ruelle?"

dummy2

"You know him?"

"Know him? I thought he was dead! I thought he'd been dead for years."

"But you know him."

"No, but I've heard of him. My first cousin—my second cousin's father—knew him before he moved north. He said that was the best thing that happened to Campania since the Krauts retreated—the Bastard heading for Rome where the action was. He really was a bastard in the fullest sense of the word. The Italian Stalin, that was his ambition, Enrico said.

But you mean to say he's alive—and—?"

Boselli nodded sagely. "Alive, Signor Richardson, and positively connected with this."

"But I thought the Bastard was drummed out of the Party back in the fifties?"

"So he was. And Segato with him. That is what worries us now—he does not fit the pattern."

"You mean your Communists have gone respectable?"

Boselli snorted. "They will never be that! But they pretend to respectability, and Ruelle—he is a creature from the Dark Ages, a man of violence. A Neanderthal."

"Phew!" Richardson scratched his head. "And old David's in the middle. I'm damn glad you've got him safe and sound."

He stared at Boselli suddenly. "He ducked you both at Ostia, then—just like that?"

dummy2

"So it would seem, signore. There was some—some confusion, you understand—"

He stopped, at a loss for a moment as he realised how grossly he was understating the nightmare situation which had developed in the aftermath of the shooting.

In spite of Porro's best efforts they had been quite unable to contain events. First the local police had arrived, their zeal apparently strengthened by a determination not to let the Pubblica Sicurezza hog any of the limelight. Rumours of a clash between Fascist and Maoist student factions had quickly blossomed into a Roman gangland battle, and then into a terrorist-anarchist bloodbath, which in turn had drawn crowds of sightseers, squads of journalists and a convoy of screeching ambulances. Two busloads of German tourists who had just entered the excavations added a dimension of babel to the confusion.

Confusion was a totally inadequate word for it, and it had taken no special talent for either the assassins or the Englishman and his wife to make their getaway in the last precious moments before it had descended; ironically it had been Boselli and Porro who had been first trapped and then humiliated. . . .

Boselli just managed to control an involuntary shudder at the memory of it as he became aware that Richardson was still staring at him, curiosity and puzzlement mixed on his face.

"There was—some confusion," he repeated mechanically.

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Richardson smiled, but wryly this time. "I can imagine it."

He paused. "I wonder what the devil he was up to?"

"Ruelle?"

"Him too." The half-Englishman nodded. "Perhaps him most of all. But I was actually wondering what Dr. Audley was doing in Ostia Antica in the first place."

Boselli watched him sidelong. In repose, now unsmiling again, the brown face was too long, the jaw too angular, for good looks. But more than that there was an underlying worry in the expression which had escaped him until now. So the English too did not know everything, or did not know quite how to control what they had set loose in Italy.

It was a timely reminder that they were not to be trusted.

Even in the days of their power and glory that had been true; now, in their age of decline, they would be as dangerously unpredictable as an old bull. In that respect at least George Ruelle and his fatherland were now disturbingly alike.

XII

LITTLE RAT-FACE BOSELLI had spoken the truth about Audley's detention, anyway. The villa was new and surpassingly ugly, its salmon-pink tiles and bright red ironwork at odds with the colours of nature all around it. But if it lacked elegance as a home it was a decidedly superior temporary jail, the more so when its prisoner was established comfortably under a gay awning at the far end of the terrace dummy2

with bottles on the table beside him.

Audley did not get up as they approached him.

"Well—hullo, Peter."

It was a low-key welcome, at least when coming from a man who had been plucked off the autostrada by the cops, no matter how well they had behaved or how comfortably they had bestowed him; there was more resignation in it than pleasure, and no surprise at all. But that was pretty much to be expected: Audley had had time since his arrest to compute most of the angles, with the arrival of someone from the department figuring in at least one of them. And being Audley he could be relied on at least not to play the guiltless innocent.

"Hullo, David."

He looked tired, though, thought Richardson. And also there was something else he had never before seen in the big man's face, an obstinate blankness like a safety door closed against him.

"This is Signor Boselli, of General Montuori's staff in Rome, David," he began cautiously.

"Signor Boselli," Audley nodded. He gestured towards the table. "You'll join me? The drinks here are on the house, it seems."

He turned up two fresh glasses and splashed wine into them, topping his own up afterwards. But the wine bottle had been hardly touched before, Richardson noted, while the aqua dummy2

minerale was almost empty.

David lounged back in his chair. "So you've come to bail me out, young Peter. I'm very grateful."

"We have to work our passage first, David."

"Indeed?" Audley murmured blandly. "Go on, Peter."

"After what happened at Ostia you're not the most popular Englishman in Italy, you know."

"At Ostia?" Audley glanced briefly at Boselli. "I'll tell you something for free, Peter: whatever may have happened at Ostia was none of my doing. I'm not responsible for homegrown Italian talent."

There was an element of truth in that, thought Richardson irritably, but it hardly accounted for Audley's lack of cooperation when it must be obvious enough to him that the Italians had the whip hand.

Boselli drained his wine and stood up self-consciously.

"Excuse me, signori," he mumbled. "There are things I must do—excuse me. I will return shortly."

Audley watched him off the terrace, then turned towards Richardson, one eyebrow raised ironically.

"Now you're not going to tell me he's gone for a quick pee, are you, Peter?"

"Not unless you twist my arm."

"Good. So you both agreed on how to handle me." He nodded to himself. "But just because he's got you frightened that dummy2

doesn't mean I have to get talkative."

"Him—? Got me frightened? Him?"

"You aren't? Well, don't be deceived by appearances, boy—

although I admit they certainly are deceptive." Audley stared reflectively in the direction Boselli had gone. "Unless I'm very much mistaken that little fellow is one of Montuori's top guns, specially imported for the occasion."

Richardson goggled at him, and then down the empty terrace wordlessly.

"I could be wrong, of course." Audley stood up. "He's a new one on me I admit. . . . But let's take a turn among those olive trees down there by the cliff. They didn't mind me walking there—there isn't anywhere you can get out, but it's a little more private."

Richardson followed him obediently down the white steps into the sparse little grove of olives until they came to a low stone wall. The roar of the traffic on the coast road far below rose to meet them. Away to the left Salerno spread out invitingly, and he remembered the last time he had been there, with a delectable Swedish girl he'd picked up at Amalfi

—

"I want you to get me out of here, Peter," said Audley in his ear urgently. "I don't care how you do it, but just get me out of here quickly."

Richardson faced him. "It can't be done, David. They've had a man killed, maybe two. Montuori phoned Sir Frederick, dummy2

person to person. He's out for blood. In fact they're both ruddy well out for blood—only it's yours Sir Frederick would like and Montuori isn't so choosy. I rather think it's someone else's he wants more than yours, anyway."

Audley studied his face for a moment, then shook his head.

"Nobody'll get anything unless you get me out of here.

Without me you haven't got a prayer of a chance. You just don't understand what's going on—neither does Fred."

Richardson looked at him in momentary surprise: this was the old Machiavellian Audley right enough—on the scaffold, but ready to bargain that what he had in his head was too valuable for anyone to dare cutting it off. It had worked well in the past, and it had been allowed to work, because in his own way Audley had always delivered the goods. But from the moment old Charlie Clark had pulled the trigger too much had happened, and too much was known, for it to work this time.

"You're dead wrong there, David." It was brutal, but it would be quicker this way. And anyway, he owed Audley something like honesty for old time's sake. "We know ruddy near the lot."

In spite of the noise from below there was a silence between them for a moment.

"The lot?" Audley measured the word.

" 'Near,' I said."

"How near?"

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"Ian Howard. Eugenio Narva. Neville Macready." Richardson paused. "And the Little Bird from East Berlin, of course—the Little Bird who sang in the wrong ear."

Not Joseph Hemingway or Peter Korbel or Bastard Ruelle—

not yet. They were the second wave of attackers, ready if the shock troops failed to break through. Old times' sake didn't go all the way.

"I see."

Audley turned away, staring out over the bay.

"So . . . Neville Macready," he murmured to himself as though that one name accounted for the rest. Disquietingly he seemed almost relieved by it but still unbowed: the shock troops were not through yet.

"David, you've got to come clean with us now. There's no other way."

"Come clean?" The sudden anger, cold and bitter, deepened Audley's voice. "Come clean? Of all the goddam bloody stupid meddling fornicating idiots— blundering, fourth-rate, sanctimonious twats—"

"David—" Richardson was shaken by the sudden loss of control. On occasion he had heard Audley swear before, and more foully, but it had always been for effect, never from despair.

"Not you, Peter—not you." Audley shook his head quickly.

"They couldn't trust me—just this once—and they've blown it because of that, blown it sky high."

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"It wasn't like that at all—" Richardson cut in desperately "—

nobody blew it for you. There was a leak in the department, in the Reading Room where you had that talk with Macready."

"A leak?" Audley said incredulously.

"The Librarian—Hemingway. We traced his contact just before I flew out—"

"The same old story—you've heard it all before." Cox had sounded bored. "He lived in Orpington—stock-broker belt—

and he wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Only the Joneses in Orpington were too rich for his blood, with his army pension and what he was paid by your lot. You're not exactly good payers, are you? But his neighbours thought he was a senior civil servant and he had to live up to what he'd let them think. He was easy meat, Captain Richardson. Easy for an old hand like Peter Korbel—"

"Peter Korbel? Good God—I thought we'd expelled him with Protopopov and the Moscow Narodny Bank man. Months ago!" Audley's surprise was unconcealed.

Richardson grimaced. Their reactions had been identical.

"Protopopov and Adashev went, but we let Korbel stay on for a bit." Over the phone Cox hadn't even the grace to sound apologetic. "He wasn't considered dangerous enough—one of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, Captain. Besides, dummy2

there's going to be a big clear-out in a couple of months' time if the Cabinet agrees. We'd got him on that list. We were rather hoping the Russians would save us the trouble, actually—he's long overdue for retirement. Must be all of sixty. . . ."

"Retirement is right!" Audley snarled. "But you've picked him up now—and Hemingway, I take it?"

"Hemingway's dead." Richardson decided that it was not the time to elaborate on the circumstances of the Librarian's death. Audley had quite enough to worry about as it was.

"And Korbel?"

"Gone—vanished."

Richardson waited for Audley to swear again, but the big man only stared at him in silence for a few seconds and then turned away once more, his self-discipline clamped back tight again.

"But listen, David—" Richardson felt aggrieved that Audley had still managed to ask all the questions instead of answering them—and that he still seemed set on playing both ends against the middle "—there's still a damn good chance the Russians haven't been able to put two and two together.

Maybe Hemingway didn't hear everything. After Ostia. . . ."

The affray in Ostia was the awkward piece in the pattern, the very example of bloody public scandal which men on both sides risked their skins to avoid. It could only have happened dummy2

because the Italian PS men and the Communist agents who were dogging Audley's footsteps had collided head-on and had panicked—that was Boselli's explanation, and if Korbel had been unable to warn his Italian opposite number about Hemingway's death it was an explanation that made sense.

But, even more significantly, the presence of those incompetent Reds surely meant that the opposition didn't yet know what Audley was up to.

That thought roused another one, much closer to home: the opposition weren't the only ones in the dark about Audley's actions there—

"Just what the hell were you doing in Ostia this morning?"

Audley didn't reply. He didn't even appear to hear the question, but seemed totally abstracted in the great sweep of land and sea.

"For Christ's sake, David!" Richardson's sorely-tried cool finally slipped. Only a few hours ago he'd fixed a date with little Bernadette O'Connell of the Dublin Provisional to meet in Mooney's bar next day and eat at Donovan's place in Balbriggan and end the evening strictly non-politically in her flat off Clanbrassil Street. She'd be waiting for him now, her passionate Anglo-Italian boyfriend with his sales list of Belgian sniperscopes and American rocket launchers that would never see the soft light of Irish day.

"David—there have been some of your bloody stupid fornicating meddling idiots who've stuck out their bloody stupid fornicating necks for you this last twelve hours, dummy2

including me for one. If you clam up now the Italians'll turn nasty, and then we've really had it."

Audley met the appeal stone-faced. "If I don't get out of here smartly, Peter, I agree with you: we've all had it. So just get me out."

"Man—you're crazy!" Richardson stared at Audley in bewilderment at his obtuseness. "I tell you for the last time, it's impossible—not after Ostia. And I tell you this too, David: I damn well wouldn't do it now if it was. Either you work with me and little Ratface or you rot here until Montuori decides what to do with you. It's shit or bust this time."

Audley blinked. One corner of his mouth dropped and twitched, though whether in anger or despair Richardson could not tell. He had never before seen quite this look on this face.

"I'm sorry, David. But that's the way it is."

"Sorry?" Anger and despair, and bitterness too. "Yes, Peter, I think you very well may be."

Richardson accepted the bitterness with bitterness of his own at Audley's lack of understanding that he was sorry already.

Sorry for the end of old times' sake, the end of advice and the exchange of ideas, and of evenings and weekends at the old house in Steeple Horley. . . . Sorry for friendship's end even where friendship was a luxury, and maybe a dangerous one at that.

Not that there was any choice, because it would be fatal for dummy2

Audley to have been set loose while the Bastard was at large.

"You know who we're up against?"

"I'm permitted to know, then?"

Richardson ignored the sarcasm. "You've ever heard of George Ruelle?"

"I've heard of him, yes."

It was a flat statement: evidently the Bastard didn't frighten Audley.

"Those were his men at Ostia. David—you were damn lucky to get out of that." He grasped childishly at the obvious justification of his refusal to connive at Audley's escape. "You could have got Faith killed there, never mind yourself."

Audley showed no reaction at the mention of his wife.

"Where is she now, incidentally?" asked Richardson.

"Back in Rome, of course."

Another flat statement: it was none of anyone else's business what Faith Audley was doing, least of all now ex-friend Peter Richardson's —the message was plain enough.

Richardson sighed. "What were you doing in Ostia?"

Audley looked down his nose at him. "Unlikely as it may seem to you—" the blandness was insulting, "—I was showing my wife the ruins."

The simple logic of the answer was embarrassing. He had fallen into the trap of assuming that everything Audley had done was significant, forgetting that the big man had also dummy2

been unaware of what had been happening in England, and had no reason to suspect that anything could go wrong. If he had he would never have hazarded his wife by keeping her at his side, but as it was there had originally been no particular urgency about this journey southwards; indeed, the whole Italian trip had probably been planned as a holiday, with the descent on Narva as a surreptitious side expedition.

Richardson swore inwardly, recalling his pleasure only a few hours earlier at the sight of the familiar signpost to Upper Horley. Even the wild unpredictability of the Dublin IRA was maybe preferable to this, which already had the smell of disaster about it.

"And now you're heading for Narva?"

Audley nodded a little wearily. "I was. Until your new friends picked me up."

"No friends of mine." He emphasised the words hopefully, offering them like an olive branch. "We've got to work with them—they've got us by the short hairs at the moment. But if we can get the name of Little Bird's contact without their getting it, maybe it'ud put Fred in a better mood. They're not on to the real thing yet, I don't think, David."

Audley shook his head. "Don't kid yourself. Montuori's nobody's fool. When he gets to thinking about this he'll work it out right the way through."

"Maybe. But I've an idea it's Ruelle he wants more than anything else, the way Rat face tightened up at the mention dummy2

of him."

"Rat face?"

"Sorry—Boselli. He sounded nervous when he spoke of him, like he was scared. Which I don't wonder at if the Bastard still has his touch after all these years. . . . But you say he's a gun too—?"

"That's right."

"But a new one? New to you?"

"I don't know him."

The Mediterranean had once been Audley's stamping ground, and his encyclopaedic memory was much admired.

So Rat face must be either very new or very special, or both.

"You know he's a gun, though?" Richardson persisted.

Audley shrugged. "Two of the PS guards here were talking about him below the terrace—I didn't encourage them to think I knew Italian, and they were careless. . . ."

"Yes?"

"It seems they knew the man who was killed at Ostia—the PS

man. But apparently it was Boselli who got the killer. One shot straight through the heart at twenty metres. Whatever he looks like that makes him a pro, I'd say."

Richardson nodded thoughtfully in agreement: that sort of practice ruled out amateurs, sure enough. Which meant he had been dead wrong about Signor Pietro Boselli, because fussy little men didn't use one shot at twenty metres. And if dummy2

he'd been nervous it would not have been with fear, but with a craftsman's excitement at the prospect of demonstrating his special aptitude again.

He shivered at the magnitude of his error of judgement, which was all the more unpardonable when he set this new information in perspective: if Montuori wanted Ruelle so badly he would naturally put one of his best men on the job.

Also, Boselli was one good reason why Audley had been so intractably determined to get away again. So long as he was with them there'd be precious little chance of holding out on the Italians.

"Well, we'll have to make the best of him for the time being,"

said Richardson philosophically. "And at least he'll have an eye cocked for Ruelle."

"True." Audley still didn't sound unduly worried about the Bastard—a little surprisingly in view of his Ostian experience, Richardson thought.

"You know he operated in these parts in the old days?"

"Ruelle? I thought Latium was his province?"

A flicker of interest now.

"Not to start with. He led a partisan group up Avellino way in

'43."

"Indeed?" The flicker brightened, steadied. "Well, that might account for it—"

"For what?"

"Eh?" Audley looked at him. "Oh—I mean it might account dummy2

for the presence of old Peter Korbel."

"For Korbel?"

"The art of deserting and surviving—Korbel could write a book about that, and it would take the form of an autobiography." Audley grunted. "You know where he came from?"

"He was born in the Ukraine. The Germans captured him in

'41 —he came to England as a DP after the war, I thought?"

"Yes and no." Audley regarded him donnishly over his spectacles. "He started from the Ukraine right enough, but he came to us the long way round—via Italy."

He paused smugly. "Jack Butler did a rundown on him a few weeks ago, as a matter of fact, after that business of ours in Cumbria. . . . More out of curiosity than necessity, really, because everyone thinks they know everything about Korbel, and none of it matters anyway. But Jack has a more orderly mind than most—he likes to be sure.

"According to him Korbel deserted to the Wehrmacht, he wasn't captured. Told 'em he was a Volga German and made his story stick— or stick well enough for them to recruit him and ship him off to the Italian front. The whole world was fighting here anyway, so he'd fit in whatever he was."

That was true enough, reflected Richardson. The armies which had descended on poor old Italy had been absurdly polyglot. On the Allied side there had been everything from Maoris and Red Indians to Berbers and Japanese Americans, dummy2

and the ex-Red Army men fighting under the German banner had even included two bewildered Tibetans who strayed across their Himalayan frontier accidentally years before. He himself was a living testimony of that racial confusion, with an Amalfitan mother and a father from Tunbridge Wells.

"Butler reckons he'd aimed to join the winning side, but when he got this far he realised he'd miscalculated. So in '43

he mustered out again—and became a Ukranian again too—

and joined up with us after the Salerno breakout."

Again Audley paused. But the drift of his information was clear enough: Korbel had been here in Campania, changing allegiance again, at the exact moment when Ruelle had started operations—Richardson frowned as the curious contradictions in this coincidence began to occur to him.

Even if Korbel and Ruelle had known each other all those years ago their connection now was still very odd indeed. If the Russians had, for reasons which were still totally obscure, decided to investigate Audley's Italian mission, then it would not have been Korbel's job to start things moving—

and even if it had, he would never have called on a bloody-minded old has-been like Ruelle to undertake the job.

In fact, the more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed, because the Russians hadn't even recruited Korbel until the mid-fifties —and by then the Italian Communists had already dumped Ruelle. "David—" he tried to sound half-jocular, "—

you wouldn't be putting me on, would you?"

"Putting you on?" Audley looked at him questioningly.

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"About Korbel?"

"About Korbel getting through to his old pal Ruelle."

As he stared back at Audley the sheer copper-bottomed absurdity of it mushroomed: not just the idea of Korbel suggesting the recruitment of Ruelle, but of the London KGB

resident listening to him, getting through to Moscow Centre . . . and then Centre calling up the Rome resident—

damn it, the thing required simultaneous brain storms in London, Moscow and Rome: it was like piling the improbable on the unlikely, all on a foundation of the incredible—and no one should know that better than David Audley himself: perhaps that was the strangest thing of all.

Richardson was glad he hadn't sounded too serious. It left him room for a touch of stupidity.

"Well, it's one hell of a coincidence, David." He grinned.

"And the Russians don't go much on the old boys' network, either, surely?"

"Old boys' network?" Audley blinked. "No, they don't... in fact there's probably nothing in it—"

And that touch left Audley room to wriggle out. Which he was promptly doing.

"—You're quite right, Peter. But either way it doesn't matter, because we can leave Korbel to Sir Frederick and Ruelle to General Montuori, anyway. They don't concern us, thank God."

If there was one sure thing now, thought Richardson, it was dummy2

that Korbel and Ruelle concerned him very much indeed.

"We concentrate on Narva, you mean."

Two sure things, rather: Audley still knew one hell of a lot more about Korbel and Ruelle than he was admitting.

"Right." Audley bobbed his head in agreement.

"And 'we' means me, David."

"Right."

"And Boselli comes along for the ride."

Shrug. "If that's the way you must have it."

"It's the only possible way."

Audley raised both his hands, fingers spread, in acceptance.

"So— we all go to see Narva. Right!"

And thirdly and sadly: ex-friend David was one big ruddy liar.

XIII

AT LEAST THE General's new instructions made things easy

—that was one good thing: all he had to do was to make sure the Englishmen didn't make a run for it, which under the circumstances of the General's conversation with Sir Frederick Clinton they were most unlikely to attempt.

Nor was it the only good thing, by any means. One had to beware of optimism, particularly as Villari had not yet regained consciousness after his operation. But there was dummy2

hope even there, for if he survived his memory might well be vague about that last split second: the farther the whole episode receded into the past in Boselli's own mind the more vague the truth became and the more he felt disposed to believe what was now the official story. That was the way history was formed after all—by the acceptance of what people wanted to believe.

The important thing was that the General was pleased with him so far. Admittedly, some of that approbation was founded on his edited account of the interview with Richardson, whom he had represented as shrewd and tough and unco-operative, but from whom he had none the less extracted useful information about Narva and the political implications of his industrial espionage activities.

Privately Boselli was convinced that Richardson was by no means as formidable as he had suggested, but that like all the native inhabitants of these parts he was merely untrustworthy and overweeningly sure of himself—and his English blood had merely reinforced those defects of character.

The man Audley was a very different proposition. He had watched the fellow during dinner and had gained very little enlightenment beyond the confirmation of what had been recorded in the dossier: that superficial appearances were deceptive, and that behind the bulkiness of the athlete running to seed—that had been Villari's assessment—there lurked the sort of intellectual he instinctively feared.

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Yet Audley was undeniably nervous, where Richardson was smooth and relaxed. While both had been noticeably careful with the wine, the older man had merely picked at his food while the younger had gorged himself, scorning Boselli's warning that the local seafood sometimes tested foreign stomachs with the boast that his was the least foreign stomach at the table. Indeed, the two seemed to draw away from each other during the meal, the pure Englishman becoming more English, more monosyllabic, and the half-Englishman becoming increasingly Italian.

Boselli had been so fascinated with his study of them that he had forgotten his own hunger, and now as they snaked along the coast road its pangs were already gnawing at his delicate stomach. However, in the circumstances this was probably just as well, for though lack of food had never sharpened his wits—that was a lie spread by the satisfied to appease the starving—too much of it invariably dulled them. Moreover, on this particular journey he would have had difficulty keeping any respectable quantity of food in its proper place, for the road was carved out of the side of the cliff along a tortuous coastline and the police driver seemed desperate to impress his passengers with his skill: on every hairpin bend the black emptiness of the seaward edge was hideously close.

"How much farther?" The big Englishman lapsed into his native tongue, then quickly corrected himself into Italian by repeating the question.

"We must be nearly there now." Richardson swung round in dummy2

the front seat and Boselli picked up the garlic on his breath once more. "That was Praiano we just passed—"

They had all seemed identical, the little towns and villages through which they had come in the darkness, with the same people, the same houses and the same scenes momentarily illuminated. But for Richardson every place was distinguished by some anecdote, or restaurant, or person (usually a girl, but often enough a blood relative). And most of what he said was now coloured with the conviction that his mother's native Amalfi was superior in every respect to the rest of Italy.

"—met this guy Mac—MacLaren, MacSomething—I can't remember, but he came because he'd read we'd got St.

Andrew's body in the cathedral—"

Boselli's headache had gone, dissolved by the General's approval, but the flashing lights and the motion of the car made it hard to think constructively.

"—and he suffered from piles, only being an idiot he thought they were boils—"

The continuous narrative confused him, as perhaps it was intended to. It reminded him again that they were lying, despite their apparent frankness when he had returned to the terrace.

"—and there he was, squatting over a mirror on the floor, trying to put a hot poultice on his—"

Boselli tried to shut out the end of the tale, doubly grateful dummy2

that he had not eaten too much at dinner. Whatever happened he had been the one to see the reason for their smokescreen of co-operation, anyway, and it was up to the General now to trace that missing piece in the jigsaw.

"—married his nurse in the hospital. And I was his best man." Richardson's voice cracked with the memory. "So you could say it all came right in the end—"

The car was slowing down at last.

"The Castel di Ruggiero, signori," said the driver. "Please hold tight."

He brought the car first through a full right angle to the left, directly over the cliff edge so it seemed to Boselli, and then, almost in its own length, through another right angle, until they were parallel to the coast road again, but facing the way they had come. Only now the car was tilted alarmingly downwards.

"That bastard," said Richardson.

Boselli, who had been trying to brace himself against the angle of descent, jerked back, striking his head against the side of the car.

"I wouldn't have called him that," murmured Audley. "A great man by any standards, I'd say he was."

"A bastard by any standards, you mean."

"Who—?" Boselli began, bewildered, only to be cut off instantly by Audley.

"Ah, but that's because of what he did to Amalfi, so you're dummy2

biased. He was the greatest ruler of his time—the greatest ruler of the greatest kingdom. God help us, we could do with a few King Rogers today," Audley grunted. Then, turning to Boselli he continued more courteously: "King Roger II of Sicily, signore—he conquered all this coast and half the central Mediterranean in the twelfth century."

Boselli had made the mental adjustment one second earlier, but too late to forestall the explanation. It was humiliating to be informed about one's own history by a foreigner, though their sudden shedding of eight hundred years to argue about a dead king on the very threshold of Eugenio Narva's house was utterly inexplicable to him at the same time.

The car stopped suddenly in its descent as a figure looked up in the headlights. A powerful flashlight ranged over them, pausing at each face.

"Carry on!" A voice outside commanded.

"So Narva takes precautions," murmured Richardson. "And we're expected, too."

"We are expected," said Boselli primly. "But the precautions are ours, signore. There has been a guard here ever since we learned of Signor Narva's—involvement. For his protection, of course, you understand."

"Against Ruelle?" Richardson nodded. "That's why they let us come halfway down the cliff, eh? They'd just love him to come calling, wouldn't they!"

Boselli shrugged off the observation, deciding that he too dummy2

could show his coolness. He addressed Audley: "I had forgotten for a moment that you are an authority on the Middle Ages, professore. And on the Middle East, too—and did not King Roger use many Arab soldiers in his conquests?"

"Ruddy Normans would use the devil himself if it suited them," said Richardson hotly, as though that old conquest of his beloved Amalfi had happened the week before.

"That's your Catholic upbringing doing your thinking for you, young Peter," replied Audley patronisingly. "The Norman kings of Sicily practised religious toleration in these parts somewhat before it became fashionable—if it ever has."

Boselli's feeling of unreality was now complete: it was as though they were deliberately playing some game of their own, talking about anything but the matter in hand, in order to confuse him.

He dredged into the cloudy memories of his own historical education, which had mostly been at the hands of an aged priest whose views of King Roger, as he now recalled, had exactly coincided with those of Richardson, though perhaps for very different reasons: it had been that wicked Norman, surely, who had not only opposed the policies of the great St.

Bernard, but had also driven an entire Papal army to muddy death in the Garigliano and had taken the Holy Father himself prisoner. He was saved by the car's sudden emergence through a great bank of oleanders into a brightly lit forecourt. The twisting drive down the cliff in the dummy2

darkness, coupled with the historical argument which had risen between the Englishmen like a summer storm, had served to disorientate him. He opened the car door quickly and hopped out on to the pavement gratefully.

As he did so the iron-shod doors in the blank stone wall beneath the lights opened with a clang, framing a white-coated manservant beyond whom Boselli could see a fountain playing in a green-fringed courtyard, like something out of the Arabian Nights.

"Signore." The servant bowed deferentially to Audley. Boselli hurried round the car to take charge.

"I am Signor Boselli," he snapped. "Signor Narva is expecting me."

The servant eyed him coolly, then inclined his head forward in what was little better than a nod.

"Signore—signori—if you will please follow me."

They passed under the arched doorway, through a short passage and into the courtyard Boselli had glimpsed earlier.

Cascades of bright flowers tumbled down the walls out of the night sky, half obscuring the gaps between the slender columns on three sides of the square. The jet of the fountain in its centre sprang from a shell held aloft in the hands of a beautiful bronze nyrtjph whose breasts glistened wetly through the sparkling droplets of water. It was deliciously cool, almost cold, and Boselli had the impression that it would always be cool here, even on the hottest and brightest dummy2

day.

This was what wealth was all about, this privacy, this secret elegance designed to sustain no one but its master. The opulence of the scene pressed down on him, overawing him against his will, for although he was here as the representative of the State, with theoretical powers far beyond that of any individual, he had too often seen the way wealth and influence, wielded with more single-minded determination than the servant of some distant bureaucratic agency would dare to exert, could nullify those powers.

Nullify them—and maybe ruin the career of the servant in the process. Even as it was, Narva would be angered by the intrusion of policemen into his privacy, so it would be prudent for Boselli to maintain a low, apologetic profile, letting the Englishmen do the talking.

The servant led the way through a gap in the colonnade, down a broad stone stairway, and, turning sharply to the right at the foot of it, along another broad stone-flagged walk. On their right the house— the castle, Boselli supposed—

rose up sheer; on the left, beyond a low parapet, was more of that black emptiness from which he had cringed in the car, with the smell of the sea rising up from below.

The walk continued into a vine-covered loggia, set with wrought-iron chairs sharply picked out in the light which shone through wide-open French windows. Here the servant halted, gesturing them into the light. Boselli paused momentarily, gathered his courage, and then followed the dummy2

gesture into the room, screwing up his eyes against the brightness.

Eugenio Narva was like, and yet unlike, his picture in the files.

Like, because the big, aggressive nose and strong mouth, the high forehead and the thick iron-grey hair were all a matter of pictorial record.

But unlike, because when you'd documented everything and recorded everything, you still only had a two-dimensional portrait. Over the years Boselli, who lived in the midst of thousands of such facts and figures, had learnt that in the end. Partly it had come from his own observation, but most of all from his attendance on the General, who always seemed to set greater store by what men didn't say, or wouldn't say—or couldn't bring themselves to say—about others.

He had sometimes felt that the General expected his operatives to have the eye of an artist and the tongue of a poet in addition to their other attributes. Certainly, the compiler of the Narva file had not dared to describe how the man stood, squarely and solidly, as though he had roots in the rock under his feet . . . and that consequently anything made of flesh and blood which collided with him would very likely come off a poor second.

"Signor Boselli?"

dummy2

Boselli started, gulped, bowed.

"I am—Boselli, Signor Narva."

Narva's dark eyes shifted towards the Englishmen.

"May I present Professore Audley and Cap—and Signor Richardson, of the British Ministry of Defence."

"Gentlemen—" This time Narva inclined his head. "You are not from the Embassy, then?"

"From England," said Audley.

"To see me?"

"To see you, Signor Narva."

"Then you have come a long way just to see me." Narva turned back to Boselli, and back into Italian. "And for this reason I have policemen on my grounds?"

"Indirectly, signore—for your protection."

"So it was said. But it was not said from whom I am being protected. And I would like to know, Signor Boselli."

"From the Communists, signore."

A small frown creased Narva's forehead. "I have the most cordial relations with the local Communists. And with the Communist Party. I certainly do not need protecting from them."

"The Russian Communists, signore."

"Indeed?" The frown was replaced by raised eyebrows and bland disbelief. "That is surprising, since I have never had any dealings with them."

dummy2

"Not directly, perhaps," said Audley.

"Nor indirectly, professore."

"You don't think the late Richard von Hotzendorff qualifies as a middleman, then?"

It was the opening move, and an attacking one even though it was mildly executed. Almost imperceptibly the big Englishman had come forward until he stood beside Boselli, while Richardson had drifted to the left.

"Richard—" Narva paused, "—von Hotzendorff."

"Your little bird from East Berlin, Signor Narva."

"And our little bird, too," murmured Richardson lazily. "Our busy little bird flying from tree to tree!"

Narva regarded Audley steadily. "I was acquainted with Richard von Hotzendorff, that is true."

"Acquainted?"

"He once advised me on certain business matters."

"Her Majesty's Government is very interested in those business matters."

Narva's lips tightened. "They were private transactions, professore —transactions made in Italy between an Italian subject and an East German citizen."

"Who happened to be one of our agents in the Soviet Union."

This time Richardson's voice was curt.

"That was of no concern to me, signore."

"But the information he gave you is of very great concern to dummy2

us, Signor Narva," said Audley heavily.

"I find that surprising—in view of the fact that I last saw von Hotzendorff in ... 1968, it was. More than three years ago, in fact."

"Nevertheless it still concerns us."

"And it concerns the Russians too, signore," added Richardson. "Which is why Boselli's merry men are in your shrubbery. You should be grateful we got here ahead of the KGB, you know. They seem to be in a rather disinheriting mood."

Narva stared at Richardson coldly. "Whereas you intend to say 'please' before you ask the same questions?"

Richardson shrugged. "We like to think there is a slight difference, you know. But if you're in doubt I suggest you ask Signor Boselli."

"I shall do better than that." The cold eye settled on Boselli.

"Under which of our innumerable ministries do you come, Signor Boselli?"

Boselli quailed at the thought of the Minister on the telephone to the General. Anything was preferable to that, even the most shameless falsehoods.

"This—mission has been cleared at the very highest level."

"I don't doubt it."

"We have promised the British Government our fullest cooperation."

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"You have, perhaps. But I haven't."

Boselli cleared his throat. "Signor Narva, I assure you—I will take full responsibility—"

Full responsibility! The very words stopped him in his tracks. He had heard them before—the General happily bulldozed through his subordinates' doubts with them—but never, never from his own lips. Indeed, he had risen from nowhere to what had been until this awful day a comfortable and satisfying position by the judicious avoidance of those dangerous words, against which his instinct had always warned him—the same instinct which now groaned in anguish.

"Responsibility for the discretion of two foreign agents?"

Narva dismissed the grand gesture with contempt. "My dear Boselli, oblige me by not treating me as a fool!"

"But I assure you—"

"No! It is I who will assure you, signore! It is of no consequence that you will not tell me to whom you are responsible—of no consequence to me that is. I know the man I want well enough."

Boselli stared helplessly as Narva hooked the ivory and gold receiver from the telephone on the table beside him. Of course he knew the man he wanted; someone like Narva would be on more than nodding terms with half the government. What was surprising was not that he knew exactly where to bring pressure to bear, only that he had not dummy2

acted the moment the security men had invaded his privacy.

But then he had the reputation for being a careful man never given to precipitate actions, a man who waited until he had the exact measure of every danger, every opportunity. It had been an assessment which hadn't fitted Boselli's conception of an industrialist—one more appropriate to a peasant than a man of great affairs. But looking at this granite personality now he understood it at last, and despaired.

"Salvatore—" Narva commanded the receiver, "—get me—"

"It won't do," exclaimed Audley.

Narva paused. "Professore?"

"I said—it won't do."

"One moment, Salvatore." Narva lowered the receiver to his chest. "What will not do, professore?"

"Foreigners."

Narva looked at him quizzically. "You are not foreigners?"

Audley considered him in silence for five seconds. "We are all foreigners somewhere. Here, in this house—in this country, I am a foreigner, certainly."

Narva matched the five seconds before replying. "Go on."

"Do I need to?"

"No . . . not if I take your meaning accurately," Narva spoke slowly. "In England I am the foreigner, eh?"

"We are all foreigners somewhere, as I said."

"But I am a bad man to threaten anywhere."

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"But I am not threatening you—I am asking you for help . . .

just as you may need help in Britain." Audley smiled. "You had better get used to calling it 'Britain,' signore—to call it

'England' only offends the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish.

If you want to, make your fortune out of us then you must get used to our little ways. And there has to be a measure of mutual trust."

Narva replaced the receiver.

"You are trusted in your business transactions, Signor Narva," continued Audley more gently. "Your word is always enough, I have been told. . . . And tonight you are keeping faith with a dead man."

Narva inclined his head fractionally. "You honour me, professore."

"No. Trust is part of your stock-in-trade."

The Italian's face hardened. "But not, I would think, any part of yours."

"You'd be surprised how many people trust me," said Audley evenly. "And not with money, either."

Boselli examined each face in turn, fascinated. So the threat to telephone Rome, though real enough, had been also calculated to draw the Englishman. And the Englishman, in accepting this, was nevertheless taking the initiative.

"I was generalising, naturally, professore."

"Naturally. Because we both know that trust brings in information. ... In fact it was trust that brought you Richard dummy2

von Hotzendorff."

"You think so?"

"I'm certain of it."

"I think you would find that difficult to prove."

"I'm certain of that, too. But proving it is really not important."

"Because I will break whatever confidence—whatever business confidence—I had with Herr Hotzendorff of my own free will?"

"I wouldn't put it quite like that."

"Indeed? Then I would be most interested to know how you would put it."

Audley considered the question for a moment. "Well ... I suppose I would say that unforeseen circumstances might cause you to break the letter of your agreement in order to adhere to its spirit."

"My agreement?" Narva echoed the word with obstinate indifference.

"Hotzendorff sold you information about the discovery of oil in the North Sea, Signor Narva. Are you denying that?"

Narva shook his head. "I am neither denying it nor admitting it, professore. Neither do I deny or admit this agreement of yours—the words are all yours so far."

"Not quite all. You have admitted meeting him."

"I meet a great many people in the way of business. But I do dummy2

not make agreements with them all."

They were back to square one, thought Boselli; the Englishman seemed to be losing the initiative.

"Nevertheless, there was an agreement," said Audley patiently. "And it didn't simply concern money."

It was a statement, not a question, and this time Narva did not reply to it. So the initiative hadn't been lost after all—

"Hotzendorff had a family in East Germany, Signor Narva,"

Audley continued in a matter-of-fact voice. "A wife and three young children. After he died they came to the West."

Still Narva said nothing.

"It isn't easy to get out of East Germany. Especially with three young children. Not for a widow—and not for a widow in a hurry. And especially not for a widow named Hotzendorff, I'd say— wouldn't you?"

Silence.

Narva shrugged. "But not impossible, evidently."

"No, not impossible. The West German Government could manage it. So could the Americans, and so could we, with a bit of extra effort."

"But you didn't?"

"None of us did, no. ... But there are four private groups who would try it if the price was right—two in East Germany and two in West. When Frau Hotzendorff came out we reckoned it had to be one of the East German groups. At the time it dummy2

hardly mattered, anyway."

"Professore—"

"But later on we got curious, signore. And in the end I—we—

found it was one of the West German teams that did the job.

To be precise it was the Westphal Bureau."

"West—" Richardson bit off the name so quickly that his sudden reaction almost passed unnoticed. And yet in that instant Boselli gained an equally sudden insight into the younger man's relationship with the older. A moment earlier he had been reflecting bitterly that he was the mere onlooker here, but now he knew that he was not alone; much of this was going above Richardson's head too.

"You know Joachim Westphal?" Audley cocked his head, knowingly. "A Gehlen graduate before he went private—and Gehlen never had a better man. Very good—very reliable—

and very expensive. . . . And very choosy about his clients, so don't tell me that Hotzendorff had this all set up in advance, Signor Narva. Westphal wouldn't have touched Hotzendorff even if Hotzendorff had his sort of money, which he hadn't."

"No . . ." Narva nodded slowly and thoughtfully. "No, I will not insult you by arguing with you, Professore Audley. You are telling me that I arranged for the escape of Herr Hotzendorff's family from East Germany after his death?"

"Exactly that, yes."

"But you have no proof of this, of course?"

"Westphal never reveals a client's name, as you well know—

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that's part of the deal. But I'm not concerned to prove anything, as I said before. Knowing is quite enough."

"Knowing." Narva chewed on the word. "And this was my

'agreement'—Herr Hotzendorff would trade information in exchange for safety?"

"And money—and secrecy."

"But naturally!" Narva nodded again. "The one would be of no use to him without the others. Not with the risks he proposed to take."

There was no argument about that, thought Boselli grimly, watching the two poker faces. By indulging in such a private deal the East German was not simply double-crossing his British paymasters by passing valuable information to a third party, but was also jeopardising their operations behind the Iron Curtain by taking on additional risks of his own.

General Montuori's sphere of activity did not extend beyond the curtain, but in broadly similar situations Boselli knew how incensed he became. And vengeful too, for his punishment, when the moment for it finally came, invariably fitted the crime. Which of course was never very difficult with double-crossers, once their original master had tumbled to them and their usefulness had ceased to protect them.

"Perhaps it is fortunate for him that he is beyond your reach," Narva said blandly, "if that is what you think occurred."

Beyond everyone else's reach too. And that, no doubt, was dummy2

why Narva felt so strong: he had paid his money and had his money's worth, and the one man who might have compromised him with the British Government was safely out of the way.

Safely and conveniently. If it had been anyone else but Eugenio Narva one might be tempted to suspect that so convenient a conclusion to a politically dangerous business deal had been a little too convenient. But Narva's reputation for honourable dealing was as rock-firm as the man himself—

there Boselli disagreed with the big Englishman's character assessment even while accepting his version of the alleged

"agreement"; trust was not simply part of his stock-in-trade.

Much more simply he was a man of honour. It might be a dying breed, and it might already be dead in the Englishman's decaying island, but it was not yet extinct in Italy.

Indeed (Boselli warmed to the thought) the very fact that Narva had spared no expense to extricate Hotzendorff's family after the man's death—

The man's death! That was the point, the whole point that made the agreement doubly binding in honour for a man like Narva if it had been in getting that information for him that the German had died. Information so valuable that even after three years both the British and the Russians were desperate to trace its source.

That was it. He felt the conviction of it blossom inside his brain. That was it.

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"Beyond everyone's reach, Signor Narva," said Audley heavily, echoing Boselli's thought. "But his family isn't."

"His—family?" For the first time Narva showed something like genuine surprise. "What makes you think his family can help you, Professore Audley?"

"I didn't say they could."

"But you think his wife may—" The surprise gave way to sudden explosive distaste, " —tchah! But you think you can threaten me again, through them!" Narva's hand came up in an exact, economical gesture, stabbing first towards Audley with the fingers held stiff together like a broad cutting blade.

"Well, I tell you this—" the hand moved abruptly sideways to include Boselli, "—and you also—that I do not tolerate such threats. Not to me, and not to them! And that is not a threat, signori. It is a promise."

After that brief flare of surprise and disgust Narva's voice had returned at once to its cool, almost conversational level.

Anger, the brittle wall behind which doubt and fear so often tried to hide, would have been much more reassuring to Boselli; but here there was only determination and confidence—a confidence so strong that it permitted Narva to admit implicitly that he was aware of the Hotzendorff family.

And—

Audley was nodding in agreement.

Boselli clamped his jaw shut quickly for fear that his astonishment should make him look foolish, even though no dummy2

one was looking at him.

"Good—excellent." The Englishman's quiet confidence matched Narva's own. "Now we may have two common interests."

"Two—?" Narva frowned.

"The North Sea and the Hotzendorff family," Audley nodded.

"Profit and responsibility."

"Since when did the British accept any sort of responsibility for Frau Hotzendorff and her children?" said Narva scornfully.

"We pay her a pension."

"A pittance."

"No doubt you augment it. But that's neither here nor there.

We don't want the KGB calling on her—not if someone like George Ruelle is on their payroll."

Narva looked sharply at Boselli. "You have arranged protection for Frau Hotzendorff I take it?"

Boselli looked helplessly from Narva to Audley for support.

He could hardly admit that until ten minutes ago he had never even heard of the wretched woman—or her double-dealing husband.

"Well?" snapped Narva.

"Frau Hotzendorff is in no danger at the moment," cut in Audley reassuringly. "But she will be very soon. And then you will be vulnerable whether you like it or not, Signor Narva—

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as vulnerable as a woman with three children. And that's why you have to tell me what our Little Bird whispered in your ear."

XIV

NARVA WAITED UNTIL the servant had gone before raising his glass to his lips, sipping the wine, then staring at them each in turn as though he had thereby completed a ritual gesture of hospitality which transformed them from invaders into guests.

"You could have saved yourself much time by coming to the point directly, professore," he said.

Richardson was surprised how dry his mouth had become. It was all he could do to prevent himself gulping the entire glass like a schoolboy, and the temptation to do so told him how unaccountably nervous he had become. The little Italian gunman next to him had evidently been as dry, if not as nervous also, but was less inhibited by it: he guzzled the delicious Capri bianco thirstily, like an animal at a desert waterhole.

"We have enough time—now," replied Audley, his own wine still untasted.

"You are very sure of yourself."

"Of that, certainly."

"But not of me?"

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Richardson stared at Audley, uneasily. He had never seen the big man more apparently relaxed, or more confident, and yet beneath this armour there was still that coiled-up tension he had sensed in the olive grove. It went beyond the lies Audley had told, and far beyond the bitter anger he had shown momentarily at the department's intervention. In retrospect it came down to a strange contradiction in his reaction to events: for all that he had beaten down Narva's defences with the threat of the KGB, and above all with the murderous presence of Ruelle in that threat, he himself did not seem in the least frightened by it. And yet at the same time he was, Richardson could have sworn, absolutely terrified of something— something which had transmitted itself in that urgent appeal among the olives— Get me out of here—

"But not of me," Narva repeated.

"Of your reputation, shall we say. I couldn't be sure that you still recognised an—obligation to our Little Bird's nestlings."

Audley's expression didn't change, but he raised his glass in graceful acknowledgement.

A rare bird indeed, thought Richardson—they had all said that and it now pleased Audley to believe it too. But it was possible to see self-interest in having Frau Hotzendorff still tucked under his wing rather than at risk in East Germany, just in case she knew too much. And it was equally possible, even likely, that Audley had planned this sequence of events with that very thought in mind.

"I see . . ." Narva digested the explanation coolly, with no dummy2

indication that he took it as complimentary. "But—pardon me, professore—what I do not see even now is how you propose to protect them better than I can."

"From the KGB?"

"Even from them—in this place. It has been held before against enemies, you know. Once even by an Englishman—

one of King Roger's mercenaries."

Audley cocked his head. "That wouldn't be Robert of Selby, would it?"

"You are an historian—?" Narva seemed surprised, then suddenly gratified. His hand came up again in that curious slicing gesture of his. "But of course! You are that Audley! I knew I recalled the name from somewhere. . . ." He regarded the big man with renewed curiosity. "Yes ... it was not actually Robert, professore, but his nephew, John of Scriven.

He held this castle for eighty days against the German emperor Lothair in the year 1137."

"Successfully?"

"The Germans went away in the end—they usually do. The sun is not good for them, I think."

"I'm afraid it won't drive away the KGB, signore. And it certainly won't stop George Ruelle."

"But you can?"

"I can do better than that."

"How?"

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"By taking away their reason for coming here in the first place." Audley paused. "And I can do that if I know the name of Hotzendorff's contact in Moscow, Signor Narva."

Narva stared at him for a second, then shook his head decisively. "But I do not know that name. I have never known it—it was the one thing the Little Bird would never tell me."

The Little Bird: Narva's use of the code name meant that they were through, really through, at last. But, ironically, it looked like being a barren success.

"What did he tell you?" There was no disappointment in Audley's voice, however, only urgency.

Narva thought for a moment, as though marshalling his memories the better to bring them over in good order.

"First, you must understand one thing, professore—and you

—" Narva included Boselli, "—that I did not suborn this man, I did not bribe him. He came to me of his own free will, unasked."

Audley nodded. "We accept that."

"He told me that he was a courier working for the British. He told me his code name—he said there would be ways for me to check up on that if I wanted to. ... He said that he had discovered a source of information which I might find valuable. It had nothing to do with his work as a courier. He regarded it quite simply as his own property, to be exploited for his own benefit."

"What made him come to you?" asked Richardson.

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"He trusted me, Signor Richardson," said Narva tightly.

"I'm sorry, signore—I didn't mean that. I mean—when he came to you in '68 you weren't involved in the North Sea. But Shell-Esso and BP and Xenophon and Phillips already were, so the information was worth much more to them than to you."

"The North Sea was not mentioned when he came to me."

"Not—mentioned?" Richardson gaped.

"He did not say one word about it, signore. He said he had a source of confidential information about Russian oil policies.

Nothing more."

"But that interested you?" said Audley.

"Mildly," Narva shrugged. "As you know, this country imports substantial quantities of oil from the Soviet Union. It was running at about 16 per cent of our total needs in '68, and the figure is a good deal higher now. But what was interesting me at that time was the possibility that at some stage the Russians would approach the West for assistance in developing their oil industry."

"Is that likely?" asked Richardson.

"I think it is more than likely. In fact I have been buying stock in the Occidental Petroleum Corporation of Los Angeles steadily this year because I believe they will be the first beneficiaries of such a move."

"Because of what Little Bird told you?"

"No, signore," Narva shook his head. "The Little Bird did not dummy2

send me any such valuable information at first. What he sent me was what I could just as easily have taken from the Petroleum Ministry handouts and the Russian technical journals, with a little gossip thrown in. He was a disappointment."

"But you kept him on."

"It was not like that." Narva nodded towards Audley. "We had what you would call 'a gentlemen's agreement'—you are a good guesser, professore—that I would pay only for results.

The Little Bird himself insisted on that. He said it would take time, but he was confident in the end it would pay off for both of us. He said he was quite content to wait."

"And you waited."

"No. He sent regular messages."

"How?"

"I do not think that is any of your business."

Possibly through someone in the Italian embassy, thought Richardson. It might not be too difficult to put someone on the payroll there.

"From the nature of his messages it is possible that his man was in the West Siberian fields—the 'Third Baku'—to begin with," went on Narva thoughtfully. "But if that is so, he moved to Moscow fairly quickly."

"The nature of the messages changed?"

"There was a time gap first. . ." The Italian paused. "I dummy2

remember thinking then that maybe this would be the end of it, and there would be nothing more. But then they started again, only not with Siberian information any more."

"The North Sea?"

"Not at first. To begin with there were details of projected oil exports to the Scandinavian countries—and to Great Britain

—" he nodded at Audley, "—countries with a North Sea littoral, it is true. But there was no mention of that."

It was beginning not to fit, thought Richardson uneasily. Or at least not to fit Macready's hypothesis of a calculated betrayal by a highly-placed official. It looked like a genuine piece of active intelligence by Little Bird.

The trouble was that that didn't fit either—it didn't fit the German's image of a careful operative who ought to have been able to calculate the risks against the possible profit.

"And then suddenly he put through a question," went on Narva. "He wanted to know whether I was interested in North Sea oil."

"That was—when?" asked Audley quickly.

"Early spring. April—or maybe late March."

Richardson looked at Audley. That was well before even the Cod Condensate strike.

"And you were interested, naturally."

"I was interested . . . intrigued might be more accurate."

"Because at that time some people were beginning to have dummy2

their doubts?"

"That is true." Narva nodded slowly. "The natural gas experts were pleased enough. The oilmen were not—that is true."

"Did it surprise you that the Russians had information of value?"

Narva's shoulders lifted. "I knew they were interested in offshore exploitation like everyone else. . . . But I was not aware that their exploration methods were ahead of the Americans. I did not expect anything spectacular, I will say that."

"But then you got it?"

"Not exactly."

"How—not exactly?"

Narva frowned a little, as though searching for the right word. He grunted to himself. "You knew this man—this Little Bird?"

"I never met him, if that's what you mean, signore."

"Hmm. ... He was not an impressive man physically. Not one of those big blond Germans, the Herrenvolk. He was—"

Narva carefully didn't look at Boselli, "—a short person . . .

grey-faced, older than his years—he gave that impression. He put me in mind of the Herr Dr. Goebbels a little, to be frank.

But he was impressive to me nevertheless."

"How so?"

Narva remained silent for a moment. "I think it was his dummy2

confidence which moved me. And I had the impression that he was a very careful man at the same time. It is a good combination, that—confidence and care."

"And he trusted you."

"That too," Narva agreed. "He was prepared to place himself entirely in my hands, and to be paid by results only."

"And you undertook to get his family out?"

"That was to be the final payment."

"If things went wrong, you mean?"

"No. He did not believe things would go wrong—"

They always believed that. Although with his experience Little Bird ought to have known better.

"After he had satisfied me he was resolved to retire, and he wished his children to grow up in freedom." Narva nodded at Audley wisely. "I think it was for them that he did this thing, professore, for his wife and for his children more than for the money. He came close to saying as much. But in any case, I myself have no doubt of it."

Richardson examined Narva closely. The man had no son himself, the wife whom he adored—so the record stated with a flash of sentiment—having died childless. But that did not mean he was without those family feelings which ran ocean-deep in every good Italian; even watered down in his own veins Richardson had felt this un-English characteristic tug at his affections.

More to the point, however, it helped to account for Narva's dummy2

curious feelings for the Hotzendorffs: by the purest accident the little Kraut had found a chink in the tycoon's armour.

And Audley too had found the same weakness, though not by accident.

"Yes—" Audley coughed apologetically "—but things did go wrong."

"Not at first. In fact not until the last."

"Exactly how did they go wrong?" asked Richardson, inflecting the question carefully so that it should not be apparent that this was the first certain intimation he had received that Little Bird's death had not been from natural causes.

"No—" Audley raised a finger "—let's take one thing at a time.

You said a moment ago that what he sent wasn't so spectacular. I don't follow that, frankly."

Narva gave a short, understanding grunt. "Yes, I see that might seem contradictory . . . but I will try to tell you how it was—"

"After that first mention of the North Sea?"

"That is right—and after I had indicated my interest. He said then that his contact had seen a top secret memorandum forecasting Western European oil requirements during the next ten years. The figures were substantially as one would expect, taking into account the development of natural gas and atomic power stations, and allowing for some protection of coal industries. Nothing in the least unusual, there was.

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"But in the section on sources of supply there was an extraordinary discrepancy. And what it amounted to was that by 1978 half of it would be coming from a new source—

something in excess of 200 million tons."

Richardson caught Narva's attention. "But they're finding oil all the time. Couldn't this be Alaska and Canada—the North Slope, or whatever they call it?"

"No." Narva shook his head. "All the other known potential sources were listed—Australian and African as well as American. And Hotzendorff said there were strong indications that it was the North Sea which was the new source."

"So what did you do?"

"I sent three of my best men out—one into Shell-Esso, one to Xenophon and one to Phillips. And I asked Hotzendorff to get more precise information."

"You didn't believe it?"

"Let's say rather I was not prepared to reject it, professore. I know the Russians are very interested in European power sources, they have their surplus production to market, just like any poor capitalist nation."

As an Italian, Narva would know that better than most, thought Richardson. Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi's dealings with the Russians since the mid-fifties had been a source of considerable annoyance to some of their NATO partners.

"Not to mention the political aspects," murmured Audley dummy2

helpfully.

"That is precisely what he did mention next," Narva agreed quickly. "Apparently the Russians foresaw a period during which the Middle Eastern producers would attempt to increase prices as much as possible—that would be maybe until 1975. Then there would be a happy time, when the European nations would be no longer vitally dependent on foreign sources. And finally there would be an increasing chauvinism against the big American companies operating here, particularly as U.S. home production dried up."

"All of which any halfways competent political economist could tell you," observed Audley dryly. "And none of which was what you really wanted to know—eh?"

"It wasn't quite as simply stated as that."

"But you wanted facts, not politics or strategy?" Audley persisted. "You pushed him a bit?"

Narva compressed his lips, as though he had reached an awkward point in his recital of the Little Bird saga. "The men I had sent reported back that there were no signs of any major oil strike. Rather the opposite—Xenophon was even thinking of selling its new rig and pulling out altogether."

"Then what made you half-believe Hotzendorff?"

"There was a difference between what my experts told me and the information he supplied."

"Namely?"

" Certainty, professore—that was the difference! My men said dummy2

nothing had been found yet— they would not say it wasn't going to be found. But these Russian reports weren't simply hypothetical, they were policy decisions founded on something that was evidently a fact, with no ifs and buts."

"It didn't occur to you that they might be taking you for a ride, signore?" cut in Richardson. "Because there isn't one damn bit of evidence that anyone else knew better than your chaps, you know."

"But why should they take me for a ride, Signor—

Richardson?" said Narva. "My success or failure is not important to them—they had no reason, they could have no reason! And I was not taken for a ride, either. That is the fact of it, is it not? We have not reached the figures that Little Bird gave me, I know. But they are going up all the time now

—already they are talking of 150 million tons a year. That is 40 per cent of European needs in 1976. And that is not being taken for a ride, signore—or if it is I would like to be taken on more such rides, I can tell you!"

Narva's vehemence, compared with his usual cool, was interesting. Hitherto only the threat to the Hotzendorff family had aroused him, with its implication of strong family feelings. To this Richardson now added the likelihood that he disliked even the suggestion that he could be deceived. Or could it be that in this one instance he had taken an uncharacteristic risk, and was sensitive about it?

That was worth pushing further—

"But what made you rely on this fellow?"

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"But I have told you! He—"

"Not Little Bird, signore. This contact of his—the Russian chappie he wouldn't tell you about. Didn't he want anything?

Did he spill the beans simply out of love for the West?"

Narva stared at him, slowly subsiding. Then he shrugged.

"There was no money in it, anyway, that I know. When I asked that same question at the beginning Hotzendorff said that no money was required. He said the deed was its own reward."

A political protester, thought Richardson. Or a disaffected technocrat. Or an admirer of some dead poet or persecuted novelist, or even a Russian Jew. If there was anything in this version of the impossible it could be any one of those.

Audley murmured something unintelligible to himself.

"We're still straying from the point. You wanted facts and he didn't give them to you—"

"How do you know that?" interrupted Narva.

"Because you've been saying it all along." There was a sudden nuance of weariness in Audley's voice. "'Nothing spectacular'—and the known facts were against him all the way. But you threw your money into the North Sea all the same." Audley broke off for one moment. "And for that he had to give you proof—just one bit of total proof."

The two men stared at each other over the word like dogs over a buried bone. One dog knew the bone was there, because that was where he had buried it; the other dog also dummy2

knew it was there because other dogs' bones were what he lived on.

"Yes, Professore Audley—he gave me proof."

"What proof?"

"The best proof in the world: his death."

Not one bone, but two hundred and six of them. Tibias and fibias, big juicy thigh bones full of marrow and little crunchy finger bones. All the bones that went to make a man. So brittle that a chance blow might crack them, yet strong enough to lie in the earth for a million years.

Narva sighed. "You are once more a good guesser, professore

— I pushed him. ... It happened that I needed a new field for investment. One inside Europe, politically stable—that was very attractive. And this was the time to start if what he was saying was the truth, before the bigger companies totally committed themselves . . . before the stampede. . . ."

Now he was explaining himself, almost justifying himself, in a way that was equally uncharacteristic. It was almost as though he regretted making good: Richardson began uncertainly to revise his earlier conclusion.

"How did he die?" Audley's harsh question interrupted the process of revision.

"How?" Narva shook his head. "Officially—he had a heart attack. I have been able to find out no more than that."

"But unofficially?"

"Unofficially? There is no unofficially. I do not have the dummy2

resources to investigate a man's death in Moscow. All I have is his last message, and there was no heart attack in that."

"What was there in it, then?"

"I will tell you first how it came about, professore. In the first place I pressed him for proof that this was not a mere precautionary plan. And then I said it was not even enough to know that the Russians were convinced there was oil there, I had to know how they knew this. And above all I had to have the locations of the fields—whether these were in the British sector, or the Norwegian or the Dutch. I told him that without this certainty his information was without value.

And I told him there was very little time left.

"He replied that it would be dangerous to try to go too fast. I would have to be patient, but that he would do his best. In the meantime he asked me to get him a camera—something like the Exakta, which was the East German camera made for espionage work. He said that as a courier he had no such equipment, and couldn't get any without drawing attention to himself—"

Narva fell silent suddenly. Then he squared his shoulders. "I had a suitable camera sent to him. But—I told him that he had better use it quickly."

"You had begun to believe him?"

Narva looked at Audley for a moment without replying. "I would like to think so, professore. But I think also I had become greedy. The new Xenophon rig was almost ready for dummy2

sea, and I had the opportunity of buying a large block of their shares at a competitive price. If what Little Bird said was true I could make a killing. For me the time was exactly right."

"But not for Little Bird?"

"The Little Bird sent me one more message," said Narva. "It was very short, the shortest he ever sent. He said his contact had conclusive proofs—submarine survey methods, scientific data and locations in British and Norwegian areas. But there was a risk that someone was on their track, so they were both coming out at once. They would meet my representative in Helsinki in one week's time. But in the meantime I must get his family out of East Germany as fast as possible. His wife would be ready with the children."

There was no longer any hint of feeling, of emotion, in the Italian's voice, and by God there didn't need to be, thought Richardson—because everyone in the room knew too well how to dress that last message in the widow's weeds of reality.

It was a dead man communicating, a man who already knew he was as good as dead when he transmitted it but was still reaching against hope for life. Even now, long after the thing was over and done, Little Bird's despair was like a view of some distant star exploding—an event at once ancient history and immediate tragedy.

"I had already approached Westphal and we had a contingency contract. He took thirty-six hours to get Frau Hotzendorff and the children out of East Germany into dummy2

Czechoslovakia, and another thirty-six to get them into Austria. And I had the Xenophon stock within a fortnight. Six weeks later Phillips found their condensate field in the Norwegian sector, next to the British block 23/37."

"But you never saw the Exakta film?"

"Since then Phillips has proved the Ekofisk field, and West Ekofisk and Eldfisk—" Narva ignored Audley's question "—

Xenophon has Freya and Valkyrie, British Petroleum has Forties, Shell-Esso has proved Auk, Amoco has Montrose.

And there will be more, Professore Audley, you can be sure of that. . . . And I made my killing. Or killings, if I am to include those who enriched me."

Again, a rare bird—even rarer than he had seemed before: a tycoon with a sense of sin. And of one sin in particular, and that the occupational sin of tycoons—greed! Clearly, whatever turned Eugenic Narva on, it wasn't the piling up of mere treasure on earth: he was driven by much more complex motives.

"So you have no idea about the identity of his contact?"

Richardson looked sidelong at Audley. Now, there was a man with no sense of sin at all . . . and a man now totally cured of that fourth sin of his which had set all the hungry cats among the pigeons again. The problem evidently absorbed him so much that it would never occur to him to be sorry for Narva's good Catholic conscience, only to gamble on its existence.

The only real sin David Audley might recognise now was dummy2

failure.

"No. I have told you so already."

"And the woman—the widow Hotzendorff?" Audley went on remorselessly.

Narva looked at Audley coldly for a moment, then shook his head. "She knows nothing."

"What makes you so sure?"

Narva was saved from replying by the click of the door behind him. Without turning away from them he inclined his head to listen to the white-coated doorman's urgent whisper.

Only in that concentrated silence the whisper was just that bit too loud for secrecy.

This was the second of the day's conversations which had been unexpectedly disturbed by General Raffaele Montuori, thought Richardson.

Only this time he was doing it in person.

XV

WHAT IMPRESSED RICHARDSON most about General Raffaele Montuori was neither his rank and beautiful uniform nor the fact that his arrival scared little Rat face out of his cardboard shoes, but the simple white and blue of the British Military Cross embedded in his rainbow display of decorations. All the others might mean something or nothing, but the MC didn't come up with the rations.

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That was what the book had said about Montuori, of course: he was an old timer close to retirement, but still a hard man, a throwback to days of the Roman legions whom even Sir Frederick had treated with a deference which wasn't purely diplomatic. But it was still a good thing to be reminded of it by that ribbon.

Not that Narva conceded him any special treatment.

"General—this is an unexpected honour," he said formally.

"But you are welcome in my house."

"Signor Narva—" Montuori bowed "—it grieves me that you have been disturbed in this way, at this hour."

"I understand the necessity for it, General."

"Nevertheless we are grateful for your co-operation."

Richardson had the feeling that the two men were communicating very different messages to each other than their apparent platitudes suggested.

"It is freely given."

"That is understood." The General paused. "Though I would expect no less in the circumstances."

So that was the way of it: Narva had served notice that he had talked because he chose to talk, and Montuori had indicated that he would have had to talk whether he liked it or not. But being practical men in temporary agreement neither was prepared to make an issue of the matter.

"Signor Narva has been extremely helpful." Boselli's head dummy2

bobbed. "He has been helpfulness itself."

Momentarily the General's eyes left Narva's face. But they settled not on Boselli, but on Audley.

"In that case it would be unreasonable to take more of your valuable time, signore," said the General. "But if I might be permitted to speak privately with these gentlemen we may then be able to leave you in peace—"

Any similarity between Superintendent Cox's retreat from Sir Frederick's room and Narva's retirement was purely accidental, Richardson decided as he watched the General pour himself a generous glass of Caprese. Anyway, what mattered now was the man who remained, not the one who had gone.

The General turned towards them.

"More wine, Dr. Audley?" he said in almost unaccented English.

"Thank you." Audley held out his glass.

"Captain Richardson?"

"Thanks, General. But I don't use the rank now."

"Indeed? Why not?"

"I don't wear the uniform."

"Your mother must be disappointed."

Richardson held his glass steady. "What makes you think so?"

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"She always intended you to follow in your father's footsteps.

Assault Engineers—is that not so?"

"You know my mother, sir?"

"My dear boy—there was a time after the war when I might have become your stepfather." Montuori smiled. "You will be so good as to remember me to her, perhaps?"

"Of course." Richardson nodded. "It's a small world."

"Yes, I have always found it so. And never more so than now. . . . Would you not agree, Dr. Audley?"

"I think the probabilities usually even out the improbabilities in the end, actually."

"A somewhat unromantic view. But you may be right—I gather you usually are—stop hovering, Pietro!"

Boselli blinked nervously. "Sir—I—I was wondering about Villari—"

"And I am wondering about Ruelle. Did Signor Narva's helpfulness extend in that direction?"

Boselli shook his head. "No, sir. But we did not expect him to know anything—in that direction."

Richardson looked at the little Italian with renewed interest.

He had kept as quiet as a church mouse during Audley's duel with Narva, almost as though he wanted no part of it. And his present nervousness was obvious. But they knew better now—

that the quietness was a deceptive front and the nerves were those of the hunter at the smell of his quarry, Ruelle.

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"That is true," admitted the General, eyeing Audley speculatively. "One of your probabilities, Dr. Audley."

"And Signor Villari?" Boselli's voice sounded stretched and thin.

The General turned slowly towards him. "Armando didn't make it, I'm afraid."

Boselli drew a long breath.

"I—am sorry, General."

"Yes, so am I." The General straightened up. "The bullet was touching the heart. It was just too close, that's all—too close."

"I am sorry."

"Yes. But it was not your fault, Pietro." The General nodded.

"Tell me, Dr. Audley—how is your wife?"

Richardson looked at the General in surprise which was instantly transformed to dismay as it dawned on him that this was no social inquiry—the unexpected question was delivered with a cold precision which altogether precluded that. So it could only mean that the Italians' patience was exhausted and that they were prepared to turn the screws as ruthlessly on Audley as he had done on Narva only a few minutes before.

"For God's sake!" Richardson snapped. "Mrs. Audley's got nothing to do with this, General Montuori."

"Indeed?" The General kept his eyes on Audley. "I'd like to hear you say as much, Dr. Audley."

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"She's—"

"Shut up, Peter," said Audley quietly.

"Damn it, David—"

"Shut up!" Audley raised his hand. "You tell me, General—

how is my wife?"

"I wish I knew." The General nodded slowly at Audley. "And I think you wish you knew too—eh?"

Richardson stared at them. "What the hell—?"

"Calm yourself, Captain." At last the General turned back to him. "I think perhaps you have misunderstood me, boy."

"I don't understand you, if that's what you mean—either of you."

"No, I believe you don't—I really believe you don't!" The General looked at him quizzically. "Where do you think Mrs.

Audley is at this moment?"

"In Rome. With her baby."

"No, not in Rome, Captain. And not with her baby." The General paused. "We made an error, you see. After Ostia, we looked for Dr. Audley and we forgot to look for his wife. But we took it for granted that she was with him. Fortunately Boselli here had the wit to suggest that she might be engaged on some enterprise of her own when he found that she was not with him."

"Faith—?" Richardson made no attempt to hide his disbelief.

The idea of David sending Faith on any dangerous enterprise dummy2

—and of Faith agreeing to go—was plain ridiculous. "You must be joking!"

"No, Captain Richardson. I am not joking—even though Boselli was quite wrong, of course."

"Quite—wrong?" Richardson stared at Boselli, whose surprise now clearly equalled his own. "Wrong?"

"Our second mistake. No—I should say my mistake. And Dr.

Audley's in the first place, I'm afraid. To underrate the nature of the beast—"

"I made no mistake," said Audley sharply. "Except to assume the security of my own department—that was a mistake, I agree. But I didn't even know the beast was loose, as it happens."

"Good God Almighty!" exclaimed Richardson as the jigsaw pieces in his mind shook out of the old ill-fitting pattern into a new and hideously better-fitting one.

David's extraordinary nervousness—his lies and his inconsistency. Even his urgent appeal Get me out of here . . .

and Richardson had let friendship and bitter embarrassment confuse him, stopping his suspicions from crystallising.

"They've taken Faith!"

Audley gave no sign that he had even heard: it was Montuori who nodded.

Richardson's brain accelerated: a kidnapping ... the oldest and crudest trick there was, although in high fashion now.

And still the cruellest and most effective trick too—in the dummy2

right circumstances.

Yet although the KGB was capable of it, the more so with someone like Ruelle at the helm of the operation, that still didn't make this thing explicable, pattern or no pattern.

"But—for God's sake, David—why? What have they got to gain?"

"I would have thought that was obvious, Captain," said Montuori. "Since they have not stopped Dr. Audley from taking action, then they must want him to do some of their work for them."

"But they don't need him, sir. If they already know about Little Bird—"

"But they don't," Audley cut in.

"What do you mean?"

Audley sighed. "I mean the Russians know nothing about Little Bird—or about Faith."

"But Ruelle—and Korbel—?"

"Ruelle and Korbel—yes, they know. . . . But tell me, Peter, what do you know about Ruelle and Korbel?"

"They work for the KGB, damn it."

"Ruelle did once maybe, but a long time ago—and Korbel won't for much longer. They are two old men, Peter. Two failures who have outlived their usefulness, and they know it.

And for that reason they have become very dangerous."

Where do flies go in the wintertime? Nobody knows—they dummy2

just disappear—

"You think Ruelle is acting independently?" said the General.

"Without official sanction?"

"I don't think, I know."

"How?"

"Because he told me so, General Montuori. When he abducted my wife at Ostia he made it very clear to me that he was answerable to nobody, and that I was to deal only with him."

"And what does he want of you, Dr. Audley?"

"He wants the name of the high-ranking official who leaked the North Sea oil strike to Richard von Hotzendorff in 1968.

He also wants—or Peter Korbel wants—the details of the report Hotzendorff made."

"And just what does he propose to do with those items?"

"That he didn't say. I can only guess that Korbel believes the report is worth a fortune still. But as for Ruelle—" Audley shook his head "—perhaps he thinks he can use that name to restore his own. I don't know whether it's power or mischief that he's after— maybe both."

So that was it, thought Richardson: not a deep-laid Russian plot after all, but a stratagem by two twisted, embittered old men!

They had known each other once and had maybe met again to curse the ill-fortune which had betrayed them, and the years which had left them high and dry, and which were now dummy2

fast running out on them. So naturally they had jumped at the last unexpected chance which Hemingway the librarian had dumped in their laps.

And equally naturally, because they were old men and losers, the chance had gone wrong on them, first on the stairs at Steeple Horley and then in the hot, dusty streets of old Ostia.

After that the stakes had become life and liberty as well as money and power.

"Mischief—yes, that is Ruelle," murmured the General. "And they used someone else to make you do what they know they are not capable of doing—that is Ruelle too. The Bastard still runs true to form." He looked at Audley shrewdly. "What exactly were his terms, then?"

"They will hold my wife until they have used my information.

Then they will let her go."

"And you believe that?"

"No, not a word of it," Audley shook his head. "Until I give them what they want Faith is safe, I believe that. But after that we'll both know too much to be left alive—I know how Ruelle's mind works."

"He'd finish both of you, yes—I see you understand the animal."

"I understand him perfectly, General."

Audley sounded calm and collected now, as though the hideous problem of saving his wife's life was an academic one divorced from reality.

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"That's all ruddy fine, David—understanding how the Bastard ticks. But he's still got Faith and you haven't got one damn thing to trade for her even if he was on the level."

"That's true, Peter."

"And you don't know where they've taken her, sir?"

"Regrettably—no." Montuori shook his head. "We have one witness who saw a woman answering to Signora Audley's description in a car with several men on the road from Ostia Antica to the autostrada to Rome. That is the last we have seen of any of them."

"Well, if Narva hasn't got the answers—and if Frau Hotzendorff hasn't either—what the devil are we going to do?"

"Peter, I never expected them to know. And even if they had, it wouldn't help Faith."

"Then why did you come here?"

"Simply to make sure that I had Hotzendorff figured out properly. Only Narva could tell me that."

"Okay!" Richardson's irritation splashed over. "So what are we going to do to save her?"

"We're not going to lose our heads—we're going to use them."

Audley's voice tightened. "How badly do you want the Bastard, General?"

"Badly. I've waited a long time for him."

"They wouldn't let you have him?"

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"The Party?" The General's lip curled. "Oh, they kicked him out, but they've kept him in view. Times have been known to change, Dr. Audley."

"But now—things may be different?"

"They may be. But that will not save your wife, Dr. Audley."

The General eyed Audley closely. "I assume that you have a plan of action?"

"It depends very much on your help."

The General nodded slowly. "I can afford to wait a little longer— perhaps."

Audley gave the General an appraising look, as though calculating the odds.

"No state security is involved," went on the General smoothly. "So go on, Dr. Audley—what do you propose to do?"

Audley looked at them both.

"Why, if you're going to help me—which I admit I'd hardly hoped for—we can go on with my original plan."

"Which was—?"

"So far I've only lied and bullied and cheated. Now it's time to start making dirty deals."

"With whom?"

For the first time, the very first time since they had met again, Audley smiled. But it was not a goodwill smile and the eyes behind the spectacles were not bright with anything dummy2

remotely like happiness. Richardson found himself hoping that nobody ever had cause to smile at him—or about him—

like this. If tigers smiled, as the poets alleged, then this was how they did it.

"Someone who'll know just how to find where Ruelle's gone to earth, General."

Montuori stared at him, stone-faced.

"You mean the Party?"

"They'd know his bolt-holes—you said yourself they've kept an eye on him."

"But I didn't say they'd give him up—not to me. They might not stand in my way any more, but they wouldn't help me, and they'd never let me lean on them. They wouldn't like the precedent."

"I'm sure they wouldn't. But I wasn't thinking of asking you to lean on anyone—and I'm not making the deal with them at all. After all, they don't really want anything that we've got—"

A dirty deal . . . and a dirty deal not with the Italian Communist Party: premonition was like a punch in the gut.

But would David really go so far?

"—but Moscow does."

David would.

"There's a man I know in the Kremlin—Nikolai Andrievich Panin. I think he might be persuaded to help us, if the price was right."

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Richardson managed to control his impatience until the door had closed on the Italians, but only just. "Will he come?"

"Panin?" The tiger's grin returned. " 'I can call spirits from the vasty deep'—that's always the million-dollar question, Peter—but will they come when I do call for them?"

"Well, will he?"

"Not in person. But of course he doesn't need to—and we don't need him to. Just a word from Comrade Professor Panin is what we want. A word from him would be quite enough to start things moving."

That was certainly true enough. Even a whisper from the very loftiest pinnacles of the Kremlin, which was where Panin now operated, would gather strength as it echoed downwards, like the small fatal sound on an avalanche slope.

The trick was to stay clear of the disaster area thus created.

"They'll get through to him, anyway. No one'll dare stop a call like that."

Richardson nodded. Again that was well calculated. By selecting someone so far up the official ladder, Audley had brushed away the danger that some officious bureaucrat would try to be awkward. Just as the name Montuori would clear the Italian lines, so would the name Panin clear the Russian. And night or day, the Kremlin switchboard would know where to put the call.

"So the answer is—yes, Peter, I think I can call this spirit dummy2

from the deep. I think he'll talk to me."

That was the final element in the chain of reasoning: not only did Audley know Panin personally, but he judged himself to be of sufficient interest for the Russian's curiosity to be aroused. And judged correctly, thought Richardson, wryly remembering the flurry in the department dovecote at his unscheduled disappearance. David Audley was too unpredictable to ignore!

Audley was looking at him rather apologetically, though, as though that thought was catching.

"I'm afraid I may have made trouble for you, young Peter."

Understatement of the year: what this private call to Moscow would do to Sir Frederick's blood pressure, never mind Fatso Latimer's mischief-making tendencies, only God Almighty could compute. Not to mention Peter Richardson's career. It would be back to the 39th Assault Engineers on Salisbury Plain most likely.

But there was Faith Audley to think of ... and maybe Peter Richardson had learnt a thing or two himself these twenty-four hours.

"Think nothing of it, David. My main brief was to bring you back in one piece. And they did tell me to be nice to your hosts, so maybe we can blame the General—"

Richardson stopped as a less charitable thought struck him.

There was in truth nothing he could do now, and Audley not only knew it, but had intended it to be that way from the dummy2

start. First he had tried to get free and then he had struck a bargain with the General. But from the moment Faith had been kidnapped he had had this private deal with Moscow in his mind as being the only way he could track down Bastard Ruelle.

"Yes . . ." Audley considered the lie with a professional's detachment, "we might confuse the issue that way, at the least."

"But what I don't see still is what you've got to trade with Panin, David. If the KGB got Little Bird then they must have got his contact, darn it—and as soon as Rat face has briefed the General he'll realise that too."

"If I know Raffaele Montuori that's just what he won't believe, Peter," Audley shook his head knowingly. "You're being gullible now—you're believing what doesn't make good sense."

"I'm believing the ruddy facts, man. That's all."

"The facts? But there aren't many of those—and that's a fact to start with."

"Little Bird's dead. That's one you can't argue with."

"Peter, it's the key fact. Everything else is powered by it.

Without it there's nothing—nothing at all."

"Sure—that's what convinced Narva, I take that point."

"But you're not taking it half far enough. Because why the devil should the KGB kill him and then fake it up as a heart attack—on their own patch? And if they picked up his dummy2

contact, since when have they changed their policy on spy trials? Come to that, why didn't they pick up his other contacts—our contacts?"

Richardson remembered belatedly what Macready had concluded, which he had somehow forgotten: someone gave him the injormation, and then snuffed him out the moment he'd passed it on so he couldn't split on them. . . .

But—

"And you might ask how the KGB let his family get out too, Peter. I don't care how efficient Westphal is—they had the time to get her under surveillance first. And Westphal's men wouldn't have stirred a finger then—they'd smell an ambush a mile off, they're experts at it."

"But, David—Narva said—"

"Phooey to what Narva said. Narva was set up, just as Little Bird was set up."

"Set up for what, for God's sake? Why should they be set up?"

Richardson tried not to let his impatience show. "You're not going to tell me there's no oil in the North Sea, because there's a ruddy lake of the stuff."

"But has it ever occurred to you, my lad, why Narva never received that final report on it—the one that really counted?"

"Because the KGB got it first, of course."

"And then staged a false heart attack and let everyone else go home?" Audley shook his head. "That just doesn't wash, I tell you."

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"Then what does?"

Audley stared at him over his spectacles for a moment, like an Oxford professor with a hitherto bright pupil suddenly afflicted with culpable intellectual blindness.

"Do you recall the Garbo network during the last war, Peter?"

he said.

The professorial look was too much—after so much.

"A little before my time, that was."

"A pity." Audley chose to ignore the sarcasm. "Garbo was a Spaniard who worked for us—for the Twenty Committee.

Masterman called him the Bradman of the double-cross world. He was a perfect genius at inventing imaginary sources of information—imaginary agents—to deceive the Germans."

"So what?"

"So Little Bird's Russian contact, the one who passed on useless information from Western Siberia—he has the smell of Garbo about him."

"The smell—?" Richardson screwed up his memory, trying to pinpoint the moment of falseness in Little Bird's tale.

"Garbo—"

"I—I have read about him, actually," Richardson admitted, already regretting the sarcasm. "But I seem to recall he passed on false information. And this certainly wasn't false—

two hundred million tons of oil a year say it isn't."

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"I never said it was."

"Then what are you saying, for Christ's sake?"

"I'm saying there has to be a man somewhere in the Kremlin who wanted to slip the word about the North Sea—someone high up. Why—well, maybe Neville Macready could answer that for us, but it doesn't really matter now. What matters is he wasn't a traitor. He just wanted to make sure that we kept drilling."

"Why didn't he tell us then? Why did he tell Narva?"

"Because we would have wanted to know too much, and he didn't want to give away technological secrets. To convince us he'd have to put himself is our hands and he'd be at our mercy then. But if he could get Narva to switch his investment to the North Sea he reckoned he would tip the balance without betraying his country or risking his neck.

"But his problem was to sell the truth without the proof, and that's where Little Bird served a double purpose, poor little sod—"

A double purpose—

"—Alive he sold Narva the truth. And dead he proved it."

The best proof in the world!

Richardson saw the plot in the round at last: Little Bird had been manipulated into conning Narva with a mixture of truth and falsehood, only to be conned himself. And if that was how it was, then Comrade X was a true cold-hearted bastard, who deserved to be sold down the river in his turn.

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"The only thing that went wrong was—"

Audley stopped abruptly as a small figure burst through the French windows, skidded to a halt and stared at them in speechless surprise.

"Manfred! I told you not to run on the terrace—you will slip and then—"

The gently chiding voice tailed off as its owner appeared framed in the opening behind the little boy, to stare at them both with the same wide-spaced eyes.

Mother and son, as like as two flowers on the same stem, blue and rich honey and spun gold.

It couldn't be—and yet it ruddy well had to be, thought Richardson, seeing the evident look of recognition on the woman's face as the cornflower blue eyes settled on Audley.

Of course Richard von Hotzendorff had lost his first family in the war, and it was reasonable to expect him to have married a younger woman the second time round. But he had somehow expected a competent, muscular Hausfrau, and Narva's description of the man had reinforced the expectation. Yet the real somehow was wholly unexpected: somehow the grey Goebbels-figure had captured this gorgeous Rhinemaiden.

"Dr. Audley!"

"Frau von Hotzendorff—I—I—regret—"

Audley had the grace to sound genuinely regretful, at least.

And with good reason, since this whole KGB scare was a dummy2

thing of his own making to twist Narva's arm . . . except perhaps if Audley failed the Bastard Ruelle might indeed turn his attentions to the Rhinemaiden.

The door opened behind them.

"Sophie, my dear—" Narva went forward quickly and embraced the woman "—it is good to see you."

"Eugenio, I'm sorry I rushed away as we came in, but Manfred will go off to the ramparts—"

"Ah!" Narva swept Manfred into his arms, lifting him up high. The little boy's arms and legs wound round him affectionately. "So Manfred wishes to go on sentry duty on the ramparts!"

"Uncle, there should be cannon there. Why do you not have cannon to drive away the pirates?"

"Because cannon will not deal with pirates, my love—pirates do not attack castles, they are too cowardly. To deal with pirates you put your cannon in a tall ship and you hunt them and seek them out and blow them out of the water—that is what you do with pirates— you blow them to bits!"

"I know! I know! It is all in that book you gave me, the one with the big coloured pictures."

"Good—so you liked my book?" Narva set the boy down.

"Now there are many other books in your bedroom for you to see. Your brother and sister are there already, and there is a tall glass of fizzy orange for you, but if you don't hurry the fizz will have all fizzed away. So off you go and I will come dummy2

and see you tucked up in bed and we will discuss pirates—"

"—And how to blow them out of the water?"

"Exactly!" Narva watched Manfred scuttle away, his eyes warm. Nor did their warmth diminish as he raised them to Manfred's mother, Richardson noted. What had once been a debt of guilt and honour was something more than that now, evidently.

Sophie von Hotzendorff's glance shuttled uneasily between Audley and Narva. "There is trouble, Eugenio—for you to want me to bring the children—?"

Narva nodded. "But you will be safe here, Sophie."

"Safe?" She looked at Audley.

"It concerns your husband, Frau von Hotzendorff," said Audley. "It is to do with what he was doing when—before he died."

"But I do not—did not—know in detail what he was doing. He would never tell me, apart from his work for the business. I told you so when we met, Dr. Audley—and it was the truth."

"Yet you did not tell me everything that was the truth—there were things you didn't tell me."

The blue eyes turned in doubt to Narva.

"It's all right, Sophie my dear," Narva's voice was reassuring.

"He knows about Westphal."

"Then there is nothing else to know. I didn't lie to you, or to the man I saw in London, except in that."

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"Your husband told you what to say if . . . if he didn't come out?"

Sophie nodded. "Yes, Dr. Audley. If a man named Westphal—

or giving that name—came to me I was to go at once with him, with the children. He said we were to take nothing with us, just to lock the door and go as though we were visiting the neighbours next door."

That was the Westphal trademark. For every client everything was laid on, everything prepared. And paid for.

"But not to tell us?"

The delicate hair shook the answer.

"He sent that message to you?"

"No. He told me before he left ... for the last time."