Spy Story

Chapter Sixteen

I HAD BEEN given cramped rooms, almost circular in shape, at the top of the north tower. Above me, in the conical roof, there was the endless gurgling of the water tanks. Before it was properly light I heard Mason's peremptory rap upon the bathroom door. 'Hot water,' he called.

'Leave it there.'

'I need the kettle for the others.'

Outside the night was still dark enough to see the stars. I sighed and went down the iron stairs to the bathroom. There was no electricity, a fact I confirmed by clicking the light switch half a dozen times. Mason knocked at the door again. 'Coming,' I said, 'coming.' A dog began to howl from the courtyard.

The light from the glazed slit window was just sufficient for me to see a white rectangle on the floor near the door. I picked it up. Mason rapped again and I put the folded sheet of paper on the washstand while I unlocked the door.

'Locked doors?' said Mason. His manner conveyed all the condescension of a man who had been working while others slept. 'Who are you frightened of?'

'The fairies,' I said.

'Where do you want it?' Mason said, but before I could decide he'd poured the hot water into the washbasin.

'Thanks.'

'If you want more, you'll have to come down to the kitchen. The cold's working.' He turned the tap to show me what cold water was, and then closed it off again. Mason was like that.

He looked around the room to see how untidy it was. Toliver had put shaving kit, pyjamas and shirts and underwear in the chest, but now these items were distributed around the bathroom. Mason sniffed. He looked for a moment at the folded sheet of paper, too, but he made no remark.

When he'd gone, I again locked the door. I unfolded the sheet of paper. It had been torn from a school exercise book by the look of it. The message had been typewritten on a machine that badly needed a new ribbon. Some of the characters were little more than indentations:

You're making our newly arrived friend very uneasy. I don't have to tell you he's Remoziva's A.D.C., but he insists that everyone be coy about it. Hence the charades this evening. Did you meet him? It sounds as if it was some time when you worked for us — late 'fifties? — a conference he thinks.

Someone should tell the old man about this. I don't think he'll like it. I can't go, and using the phone here would be too risky. But if you took your usual long walk and got a bit lost you could get as far as the phone box at Croma village. Just tell them about Erikson and say that saracen confirms it. If they give you instructions for me, wait till we're all together and then ask Toliver or Mason where you ran buy some French cigarettes. I will then offer you a packet with three cigarettes in it, so you'll know who I am. You might think this is all going a bit far, but I know these boys and I'm staying covert — even to you.

They're all touchy now while Erikson is here, so leave by the kitchen garden and the paddock and keep to the south side of the big rocks. Skip breakfast, I've left some sandwiches for you in the old greenhouse. You could always say you made them last night. Keep to the south of the peninsula, there's a footbridge on that side of Angel Gap. It looks rickety but it will hold you. Head for the cottage with the collapsed roof, you can see the bridge from there. The road is four miles beyond (running north/south). The post office is on that road. Turn right on the load and it's the first house you come to. The box is on the far side — take coins with you. Keep moving, I can't guarantee these boy scouts won't follow.

And if you think they would hesitate to knock you off to make their plan work, think again. They are dangerous. Burn this light away. I'll be around if you run into problems getting away this morning.

I didn't remember the Russian skinhead. But if he was from Russian Naval Staff (Security Directorate) he could have been at any one of a dozen Joint Security conferences I'd attended in the 'fifties. If he was from the G.R.U., the chances we'd met were considerably greater. It was all getting too rich for my blood, and I wasn't any longer on salary for this kind of action. If Soviet General Staff Directorate were joining Toliver's troop, they'd put his boy scouts into long trousers and tell them about girls. And I didn't want to be around when it happened.

I read the note again, very carefully, and then tore it into small pieces. In a remote country house like this flushing it down the toilet was not good enough — it needs only one man-hole cover lifted between here and the septic tank.

I burned the paper in the sink when I'd finished washing and shaving but it left scorch marks that I could not completely erase with soap. I started to shave while the water was still warm. To say I didn't like it was an understatement. If they were going to get rid of me, a secret note — that I must destroy — advising me to take a chance on a rickety footbridge in a snowstorm… that might be the perfect way to arrange it.

But doctors can't pass a street accident, nor dips an open handbag, coppers can't pass a door with a broken lock, Jesuits can't pass sin in the making, everyone falls prey to their training. The idea of Erikson coming off a submarine weighed heavily upon me. And it would stay that way until I contacted Dawlish's office via the local engineers, as he'd so thoughtfully explained the latest system. I knew that even if I spent all morning thinking about it I would eventually try to find that damned post office phone, but I couldn't help thinking that: if Toliver had failed to bring that line of communication under his control or surveillance he was a darn sight less efficient than he'd so far shown himself to be.

Perhaps I should have passed up the post office, and the sandwiches too, and evolved a completely different plan of action, but 1 couldn't think of anything better.

I went down into the hall. It was a gloomy place with amputated pieces of game adorning the walls: lions, tigers, leopards and cheetahs joined in a concerted yawn. An elephant's foot was artfully adapted to hold walking-sticks and umbrellas. There were fishing-rods and gun cases, too. I was tempted to go armed but it would slow me down. I contented myself with borrowing a donkey jacket and a scarf and went through the servants' corridor into the pantry. There was a smell of wet dogs and the sound of them barking. I could hear the others at breakfast. I recognized the voices of Toliver, Wheeler and Mason and I waited to hear the voice of Erikson before moving on.

I welcomed the blizzard. The wind roared against the back of the house, and made the windows kaleidoscopes of scurrying' white patterns. It would take me two hours, perhaps more, to Angel Gap. I buttoned up tight.

The south of the peninsula was the high side. It was the best route if I did not stumble over the cliff edge in the snow storm. The other coastline was a ragged edge of deep gullies, inlets and bog that would provide endless detours for someone like me who didn't know the geography, and no problems for pursuers who did.

I didn't go directly into the kitchen garden, for I would have been in full view of anyone at the stove. I went down the corridor into the laundry room and from there across the yard to the barn. Using that as cover, I made my way along the garden path behind the raspberry canes and along the high wall of the kitchen garden. I stopped behind the shed to have a look round. The wind was blowing at gale force and already the house was only a grey shape in the flying snow.

The greenhouse was not one of those shiny aluminium and polished-glass affairs you see outside the garden shops on the by-pass. This was an ancient, wooden-framed monster nearly fifty feet long. Its glass was dark grey with greasy dirt and it was difficult to see into it. I pushed the door open. It creaked, and I saw my sandwiches on the potting bench, conspicuously near the door. It was a shambles inside: old and broken flower pots, dead plants and a false ceiling of spiders' webs entrapping a thousand dead flies. Outside, the wind howled and thumped the loose panes, while whirling snow pressed little white noses, against the glass. I didn't reach for the sandwiches, I froze, suddenly aware that: I was not alone. There was someone in the greenhouse, someone standing unnaturally still.

'Mr Armstrong!' It was a mocking voice.

A figure in a dirty white riding mac stepped out from behind a stack of old wooden boxes. My eyes went to the shotgun carried casually under arm, and only then up to the eyes of Sara Shaw.

'Miss Shaw.'

'Life is full of surprises, darling. Have you come for your sandwiches?' Her coat shoulders were quite dry, she'd been waiting a long time for me.

'Yes,' I said.

"Last night's pork, and one round of cheese.'

'I didn't know you were here, even;'

'That building worker's coat suits you, you know.' The smile froze on her face, and I turned to sec someone coming from the kitchen door. 'Mason, the little bastard must have seen me,' she said.

It was Mason. He was bent into the wind, hurrying after us as fast as his little legs could carry him. She had her left hand under the shotgun's wooden foregrip and raised it level.

Mason came into the greenhouse like there was no door. In his fist he had one of those little Astra automatics with a two-inch barrel extender. It was just the sort of gun I would have expected Mason to choose: about thirteen ounces total weight, and small enough to go into a top pocket.

'Where did you get that?' said Sara. She laughed. 'Have you discovered the Christmas crackers already?"

But no one who has seem a.22 fired at close range will smile into its barrel. Except maybe Mickey Spillane. I didn't laugh and neither did Mason. He pointed the gun at Sara and reached out for her shotgun.

'Give it to him,' I said. 'Don't make headlines.'

Mason took the gun and, using one hand, he undid the catch and broke it open. He gripped the stock under his arm while he removed the shotgun cartridges, and then let it drop to the floor. He kicked it under the potting bench with enough energy to break some flower pots. The cartridges he put into his pocket. Having disarmed Sara he turned to me. He ran a quick hand over me but he knew I wasn't armed, they'd searched me immediately after I'd landed in the plane.

'O.K.,' he said. 'Let's move back up to the house.' He prodded me in the arm with his automatic: and I moved along the bench towards the door, looking at the potting bench in the hope of spotting a suitable weapon.

Mason was too near. Once outside the greenhouse he'd keep me at a distance and my chance to clobber him would be gone. Lesson one of unarmed combat is that a man with a gun muzzle touching him can knock the barrel aside before the armed man can pull the trigger. I slowed and waited until I felt the muzzle again. I spun round to my left, chopping at his gun with my left hand and punching at where his head should have been with my right fist. I connected only with the side of his head but he stepped back and put an elbow through a panel of glass. The noise of it was amplified by the enclosed space. Again I punched at him. He stumbled. Another panel of glass went and I didn't dare look round to see if it had alarmed those still at breakfast. The dogs in the courtyard began barking furiously.

The girl shrank away from us as Mason struggled to bring his gun hand up again. I seized his wrist with my right hand and the gun with my left. I pulled, but Mason had his finger on the trigger. There was a bang. I felt the hot draught as the slug passed my ear and crashed out through the glass roof. I swung my elbow round far enough to hit his face. It must have made his eyes water. He let go and fell to the floor amongst the rusty gardening tools. He rolled away rubbing at his nose.

Sara was already reaching for the shotgun. 'Good girl,' I said. I pushed the little Astra gun into my pocket and ran out into the blizzard. The path was slippery, and I cut off it into the cabbages. There was a rubbish heap against the wall at the bottom of the garden. That would be my best place for climbing over it.

I was halfway down the garden when there was the deafening bang of a twelve bore and a crash of shattering glass that seemed to go on for hours.

Even before the last few pieces broke there was a second blast that took out another large section of the glass-house. She hit me with the second shot. It knocked me full length into a row of brussels sprouts and I felt a burning pain in the arm and side.

I had no doubt that more cartridges were going into the breech. In spite of the damaged arm, I set a new world record for the kitchen garden free-style, and went over the wall in a mad scramble. As I fell down the other side of it, another shot hit the weeds along the top of the wall and showered me with finely chopped vegetation. The ground sloped steeply behind the house but my feet didn't touch the ground for the first half mile. I hoped that she'd have trouble getting over the wall, but with women like that, you can't be sure they'll have trouble with anything.

By the time I reached the stream I realized that Mason — not the girl — was Dawlish's contact and the author of the note. He'd pressed the gun against me reasoning that I'd know how to break free. It was the best he could do, if he was to have any chance of talking his way out of that one. I felt sorry for him but I was glad I'd hit him hard. He was going to need some corroborative evidence to show Toliver. Sara Shaw must have followed him when he took the sandwiches there for me. Then she'd waited to see who turned up and why. I hoped that she could not guess, for now I suddenly found it easier to believe Mason's contention that they were a dangerous mob.

My arm was bleeding enough to leave a trail behind me. I changed course for enough time to make it: look as though I might be going to the bridle path. There I slipped the donkey jacket off, bound the silk scarf around the bloody part of my sleeve, and pushed my arm down into the donkey-jacket sleeve to jam it tight. It hurt like hell but there was not time to do anything more. I hoped the pressure would stop the bleeding. A shotgun spreads an inch per yard of range. I'd been far enough to get only the edge of it. My clothes were torn but the bleeding was not serious. I kept repeating that to myself as I hurried on.

I made good progress, avoiding the outcrops of rock upon which the flailing snow had settled to make a glaze of ice. But losing the use of my arm made keeping my balance more difficult, and twice I fell, yelping with pain and leaving a dull red mark in the snow.

In spite of the low visibility in the snowstorm, I felt sure that J could find the tail of Great: Crag. After that, it was merely a matter of keeping close to the edge without falling over. But everything is; more difficult in a blizzard. I even had trouble finding the big clump of conifers that marked the stepping-stones over the burn. When I did get there I became entangled in the brambles and undergrowth and had to kick hard to get out of it.

I didn't curse the weather. As soon as it cleared I would become visible to anyone with the sense to ascend to the Crag's first terrace And there were plenty of people back there with enough sense far that. And more, much more.

The clifftop path required care. I had not walked it before, though I had seen the course of it from my solitary picnics on the heights of Great Crag. The path was an old one. Here and there along its course there were metal markers. They were simple rectangles of tin, nailed to stakes that had almost rotted. The paint had long since flaked away and the metal was rusty but there was no mistaking their military origin. There is something common to all artifacts of all armed forces, from tanks to latrines. I hurried along faster whenever I had the rusty patches to guide me. I feared that the snow storm was passing over. The dark clouds were almost close enough to touch. They sped over me, mingling with flurries of snow and allowing me sudden glimpses of the rocky seashore nearly a hundred feet below.

Not only the markers, but the path itself, had in places eroded. I stopped for a moment and made sure that: my arm was no longer leaving a blood trail. It wasn't, but there were ugly retching noises from inside my sleeve and I guessed that I was still bleeding. I was looking forward to that period of numbness that doctors say happens after wounding but I was beginning to suspect that that was just their rationalization for prodding the painful bits. Both my side and my arm were throbbing and hurting like hell.

I looked at the tiny footpath where the metal tags led. It was no better than a man-made ledge along the windy cliff face. Not at all the sort of place I ever visited, outside of nightmares. But ahead of me there was an acre of underbrush, so I took the cliff path, edging along it carefully, but dislodging pieces that spun of into space and fell somewhere that I dared not look.

After a quarter of a mile the blazed path narrowed suddenly. I stepped even more gingerly now, edging forward a step at a time, cautioned by large sections of path edge that crumbled under the touch of my toe. The ledge continued round a gently curving section of cliff. Soon I reached the point at which I could see below me a tiny bay. Through the driving sleet I studied the path ahead. I had hoped it would soon rejoin the clifftop but it continued to be a ledge. The section at the far side of the bay was especially worrying. The sharp edge of cliff resembled the prow of some gigantic ship far out over the fierce green sea. The curved profile of the cliff continued above the path. It looked as though a man would have to bend almost double to pass along it.

Standing still, in order to see through the whirling snow, brought a resurgence of doubts and fears. I decided to retrace my steps. I would go back to the bridle path and continue up over the higher part of the cliff. But as I studied the face of the promontory I saw that there was a thick tangle of thorn dangling over the cliff, like a lace tablecloth. The men who'd made the path had not laboured on it without good reason. If it was easier to make a path along the cliff face than along the cliff top then surely I would find it easier to follow it.

The overhang was not such a severe test as I feared. It's true that I spread my arms and flattened my body against the cliff face in a fearful embrace, leaving a ghost of blood there, but I edged along crablike and gave up the testing probes of the path ahead.

'No atheists in a foxhole,' they say. And none on a narrow cliff path around a headland cither, if my journey was anything to go by. Spreadeagled close against the cold wall of stone, I felt a gust of wind batter against it; hard enough to make the prow-like cliff shake as if about to fall. The same wind was provoking the ocean into great white-tops that thumped the shingle far below. Again and again the wind Dried to prise me away from the cliff and carry me with it, but I stayed motionless until its brunt was gone. Vertigo, as all its victims know, is not a fear of falling but an atavistic desire to fly, which is why so many of its sufferers are aviators.

I rounded the headland, and breathed a sigh of relief before seeing another bay and another headland. Worse, this section of the path was blocked. It looked at first like a fall of rubble but the boulders were too evenly matched in colour and size; balanced precariously upon the smallest of toeholds they shimmered as a gust of wind thumped the cliff face, roaring upwards and scooping in its draft both snowflakes and fragments of cliff.

Alone on this extreme edge of the peninsula I tried to comfort myself with the thought that I could not be seen from anywhere on Blackstone. I released ray grasp on the rock and, moving my arm very slowly, I bared my wrist to see the time. Would they by now have mustered their full manpower to form a line across the peninsula's waist? I shivered with cold, fear and indecision, except that there was no real decision to make. I had to go on, as fast as possible.

The ledge widened. It was enough for me to quicken my progress to something like walking pace, if I pressed a shoulder to the rock. Still I could not discern the nature of the blobs that covered the cliff face like pox upon an ashen face. Even when I was only ten yards away I still could not see what was waiting in my path. It was then that an extra large breaker, a gust of air, or just my approach seemed to cause the cliff itself to explode into whirling fragments. The grey blobs were all over me: a vast colony of sea-birds, sheltering from the storm. They raised up their enormous wings, and climbed into the blizzard to meet me. Blurred grey shapes circled the intruder who had invaded these ledges to which they returned each year to nest. They dived upon me, screaming, croaking and clawing and beating their giant wings, in the hope that I might fall, or fly away.

By now I was climbing through the colony itself, my hands lacerated and bloody as I groped through the ancient nests of mud, spittle and bleached vegetation. My feet were crunching them and sliding in the dust and filth of a thousand years of stinking bird droppings.

I closed my eyes. I was afraid to turn, my head as I felt the wings striking my shoulders and felt the fabric tear under their beaks and claws. I still didn't slacken my speed, even when I found enough courage to look back to where the sea-birds wheeled and jeered and fidgeted in the crevices. The wind had continued the work of destruction and now the brittle nests were shattered by the air current that roared up the cliff face, like a great flame licks a chimney, taking the colony with it and grinding all to dust.

Ahead of me I saw a bent piece of rusty tin and persuaded myself with, all kinds of twisted rationalizations that the path would be easy going from this point onwards. There was still another headland to negotiate, but it was easy only compared with the journey I had already made. After that, the path sloped gently upwards until it regained the cliff edge. I sat down, hardly noticing the thorns and mud. For the first time I became aware of the fast shallow breathing that my anxiety had produced and of the thumping of my heart, as loud as the breakers on the shingle a hundred feet below me.

From here I was able to look north-west across the width of the peninsula, and I didn't like what I could see. The buzzard, which was still driving hard against the cliffs at sea level, had thinned enough for visibility to increase to a mile or more in between the flurries. If they were after me, a dozen of them could put me up like a frightened partridge. I stood up and started off again. I forced myself to increase the pace, although my tortuous cliffside journey had left me in no state to attempt records.

From this place on the cliff top, my path was mostly downhill. This world was white and a thousand differing shades of brown: bracken, heather, bilberries and, lowest of all, the peat bogs. All of it dead, and all of it daubed with great drifts of snow that had filled the gullies and followed the curious pattern of the wind. There were red grouse, too. Disturbed, they took to the air, calling, 'Go-back, go-back,' a sound that I remembered from my childhood.

Already I fancied I could see the dark patch that would be the pines at the little croft. I promised myself cubes of chocolate that I never did eat. I walked as soldiers march, placing one foot before the other, with hardly a thought for the length of the journey, or the surrounding landscape. 'All my soldiers saw of Russia was the pack of the man in front of them,' said Napoleon, as though the ignorant rabble were declining his offers of side trips to St Petersburg and the Black Sea resorts. Now I bent my head to the turf.

A shaft of sunlight found a way through the cloud so that a couple of acres of hillside shone yellow. The patch ran madly up and down the slopes and raced out to sea like a huge blue raft until, a mile or more off-shore, it disappeared as if sunk without trace. The clouds closed tight and the wind roared its triumph.

Once I knew where to look, there was no difficulty in finding the foot-bridge. It was a good example of Victorian ingenuity and wrought iron. Two chains across the Gap were held apart by ornamented sections of iron, into which fitted timber flooring. Shaped like stylized dolphins, smaller interlocking pieces had tails supporting two steel cables anchored into the ground at each end as supplementary supports. That, at any rate, must have been how the engraving looked in the catalogue. Now a handrail was hanging in the gully and one chain had slackened enough to let the frame twist. It groaned and swayed in the wind that came through its broken flooring, singing like the music of a giant flute.

Adapted into a fairground ride it might have earned a fortune at Coney Island, but suspended above the demented waters of Angel Gap only the cliff path behind me was less welcoming.

There was no going back now. I thought of that trigger-happy girl — custom tailoring for cadavers, and cuisine française while you wait — and I shuddered. If she'd not been so keen to kill me that she'd fired from inside the greenhouse, I'd have been a statistic in one of those warning pamphlets that the Scottish travel and holidays department give people going grouse shooting.

Any kind of bridge was better than going back.

The off-sea wind had kept the cliffs virtually free of ice, but the bridge was precarious. There was only one handrail, a rusty cable. It sagged alarmingly as I applied my weight to it and slid through the eyes of the remaining posts so that I fancied it was going to drop me into the ocean below. But it took my weight, although as I passed each handrail post it paid the slack cable to me with an agonizing whinny. Without a handrail I could not have crossed, for at some places the floor of the bridge had warped to a dangerous angle. I had to use both hands and by the time I reached the other side my wounded arm was bleeding again.

I hurried up the hill so that I could get out of sight. Only when I was hidden in the copse did I stop. I looked back, at the ocean roaring through the gap, and at as much of the peninsula of Black-stone as was visible through the storm. I saw no pursuers, and I was truly thankful for that, for I could see no simple way of wrecking the bridge.

I took off the short overcoat and with some difficulty pulled my jacket off too. I'd lost a lot of blood.

It took me over an hour to do the four miles to the road. The clouds broke enough to allow a few samples of sunlight to be passed around among the trees. There were sunbeams on the road when I finally caught sight of It. Perhaps by that time I was beginning to expect a four-lane highway with refreshment areas, gift shops and clover-leaf crossings, but it was what they call in Scotland a 'narrow class one' which means they'd filled the ditch every two hundred yards in case you met something coming the other way.

I saw the two soldiers sitting at the roadside when I was still a couple of hundred yards away. They were sheltering under a camouflage cape upon which the snow was settling fast. I thought they were waiting for a lift, until I saw that they were dressed in Fighting Order. They both had L1 A1 automatic rifles and one of them had a two-way radio too.

They played it cool, remaining seated until I was almost upon them. I knew they'd put me on the air, because only after I'd passed him did I notice another soldier covering me from fifty yards along the road. He had a Lee Enfield with a sniper-sight. It was no ordinary exercise.

'Could you wait here a moment, sir?' He was a paratroop corporal.

'What's going on?'

'There will be someone along in a minute.'

We waited. Over the brow of title next hill there came a large car, towing a caravan of the sort advertised as 'a carefree holiday home on wheels'. It was a bulbous contraption, painted cream, with a green plastic door and dated windows. I knew who it was as soon as I saw huge polished brass headlights. But I didn't expect that it would be Schlegel seating alongside him. Dawlish applied the brakes and came to a standstill alongside me and the soldiers. I heard him saying to Schlegel'… and let me surprise you: these brakes are really hydraulic, actually powered by water. Although I must confess to putting methylated spirit in for this trip, on account of the cold.'

Schlegel nodded but gave no sign of the promised surprise. I suspected that he'd acquired a thorough understanding of Dawlish's brakes on the way up here. 'I thought it would be you, Pat.'

It was typically Dawlish. He would have died had anyone accused him of showmanship, but given a chance like this he came on like Montgomery. 'Are you chaps brewing up, by any chance?' he asked the soldiers.

'They send a van, sir. Eleven thirty, they said.'

Dawlish said, 'I think we'll make some tea now: hot sweet tea is just the ticket for a chap in a state of shock.'

I knew he was trying to provoke the very reaction I made, but I made it just the same. 'I've lost a lot of blood,' I said.

'Not lost it exactly,' said Dawlish, as if noticing my arm for the first time. 'It's soaking into your coat.'

'How silly of me,' I said.

'Corporal,' said Dawlish. 'Would you see if you can get your medical orderly up here. Tell him to bring some sticking plaster and all that kind of thing.' He turned to me, 'We'll go into the caravan. It's awfully useful for this kind of business.'

He got out of the car, and ushered me and Schlegel into the cramped sitting-room of the caravan. All it needed was Snow White: it was filled with little plastic candelabra, chintz cushion-covers and an early Queen Anne cocktail cabinet. I knew that Dawlish had hired the most hideously furnished one available, and was energetically pretending that he'd hand-picked every item. He was a sadist, but Schlegel had it coming to him.

'Useful for what kind of business?' I said.

Schlegel smiled a greeting but didn't speak. He sat down on the sofa at the rear, and began smoking one of his favourite little cheroots. Dawlish went to his gas ring and lit it. He held up a tiny camper's kettle and demonstrated the hinged handle. 'A folding kettle! Who would have believed they had such gadgets?'

'That's very common,' said Schlegel.

Dawlish waggled a finger, 'In America, yes,' he said. He started the kettle and then he turned to me, 'This business. Useful for this business. We watched you on our little Doppler radar set. Couldn't be sure it was you, of course, but I guessed.'

'There's a submarine out there in the Sound,' I said. I sniffed at Schlegel's cigar smoke enviously but I was now counting my abstinence in months.

Dawlish tutted. 'It's naughty, isn't it? We've just come down from watching him on the A.S.W. screen at H.M.S. Viking. He's moved south now. Picked up someone, did he?'

I didn't answer.

Dawlish continued, 'We are going in there, but very gently. The story is that we've lost a ballistic missile with a dummy head. Sounds all right to you, does it?'

'Yes,' I said.

Dawlish said to Schlegel, "Well if he can't fault it, it must be all right. I thought that was rather good myself.'

There's only a broken-down footbridge,' I warned. 'You'll lose some soldiers.'

"Not at all,' said Dawlish.

'How?' I said.

'Centurion bridge layer will span the gap in one hundred seconds, the R.E. officer told me. The Land Rovers will follow.'

'And the tea van,' said Schlegel, not without sarcasm.

'Yes, and the naafi,' said Dawlish.

Takes the glitter off your story about looking for a lost missile warhead,' I said.

'I don't like Russians; landing from submarines,' said Dawlish. 'I'm not that concerned to keep our voices down.' I knew that anything concerning submarines made Dawlish light up and say tilt. The best part of Russian effort, and most of their espionage successes over a decade, had been concerned with underwater weaponry.

'You're damned right,' said Schlegel. I realized — as I was supposed to realize — that Schlegel was from some transatlantic security branch.

'Who are these people that Toliver has over there?' I asked. 'Is that some kind of official set-up?'

Schlegel and Dawlish both made noises of distress and I knew I'd touched a nerve.

Dawlish said, 'A Member of Parliament can buttonhole the Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary, slap them on the back and have a drink with them while I'm still waiting for an appointment that is a week overdue. Toliver has beguiled the old man with this Remoziva business, and no one will listen to my words of warning.'

The kettle boiled and he made the tea. Dawlish must have slipped since I worked under him, for in those days he ate M.P.s for breakfast, and as for M.P.s with cloak and dagger ambitions — they didn't last beyond the monthly conference.

'They said the man who came ashore was Remoziva's A.D.C.,' I said.

'But?'

'Could have been a very good friend of Liberace,forall lean tell: I don't know any of Remoziva's associates.'

'But Russian?' asked Schlegel. The sun came through the window. Backlit, his cigar smoke became a great silver cloud in which his smiling face floated like an alien planet.

'Tall, thin, cropped-head, blond, steel spectacles. He traded a few bits of phrase-book Polish with a character who calls himself Wheeler. But if I was going to stake money, I'd put it on one of the Baltic states.'

'Doesn't mean anything to me,' said Dawlish.

'Not a thing,' said Schlegel.

'Says he knows me, according to your Mason — Saracen — over there. I had to thump him by the way, I'm sorry but there was no other way.'

'Poor old Mason,' said Dawlish, with no emotion whatsoever. He looked me directly in the eye and made no apology for the lies he'd told me about Mason being charged with selling secrets. He poured out five cups of tea, topping them with a second lot of hot water. He gave me and Schlegel one each, and then tapped the window, called the soldiers over and gave a cup each to them. 'Well let's assume he is Remoziva's A.D.C,' said Dawlish. 'What now? Did they tell you?'

'You think it's all really on?' I said, with some surprise.

'I've known stranger things happen.'

'Through some tin-pot little organization like that?'

'He's not altogether unaided,' said Dawlish. Schlegel was watching him with close interest.

'I should think not,' I said with some exasperation. They are talking about diverting a nuclear submarine to pick him up in the Barents. Not altogether unaided is the understatement of the century.'

Dawlish sipped his tea. He looked at me and said, 'You think we should just sit on Toliver? You wouldn't advocate sending a submarine to their rendezvous point?'

'A nuclear submarine costs a lot of money,' I said.

'And you think they might sink it Surely that's not on? They could find nuclear subs easily enough, and sink them, too, if that's their ambition.'

'The Arctic is a quiet place,' I said.

'And they could find nuclear subs in other quiet places,' said Dawlish.

'And we could find theirs,' said Schlegel belligerently. 'And don't let's forget it.'

'Exactly,' said Dawlish calmly. 'It's what they call war, isn't it? No, they are not going to all this trouble just to start a war.'

'You've made a firm contact with this Admiral?' I asked.

'Toliver. Toliver got the contact — a delegation in Leningrad, apparently — we've kept completely clear by top-level instructions.'

I nodded. I could believe that. If it all went wrong they'd keep Toliver separate, all right: they'd feed him to the Russians in bite-sized pieces, sprinkled with tenderizer.

'So what do you think?' It was Schlegel asking the question this time.

I looked at him for a long time without replying. I said, 'They talked as though it's all been arranged already: British submarine, they said. Toliver talks about the R.N. like it's available for charter, and he's the man doing the package tours.'

Dawlish said, 'If we went ahead, it would be with a U.S. submarine.' He looked at Schlegel. 'Until we can be quite sure who Toliver has got working with him, it would be safer using an American submarine.'

'Uh-huh,' I said. Hell, why would these two high-powered characters be conferring with me at this level of decision.

It was Schlegel who finally answered my unasked question.

'It's us that will have to go,' he said. 'Our trip: you and me, and that Foxwell character: right?'

'Oh, now I begin to see the daylight,' I said.

'We'd consider it a favour,' said Dawlish. 'No order — but we'd consider it a favour, wouldn't we, Colonel?'

'Yes, sir!' said Schlegel.

'Very well,' I said. They were obviously going to let me bleed to death until they got their way about it. My arm was throbbing badly by now and I found myself pressing it to still the pain. All I wanted was to see the army medical orderly. I wasn't cut out to be a wounded hero.

'We think it's worth a look,' said Dawlish. He collected my empty cup. 'Oh, for God's sake, Pat! You're dripping blood all over the carpet.'

'It won't show,' I said, 'not in that lovely humming-bird pattern.'