The Alamut Ambush

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Anthony Price is editor of the Oxford Times. His first novel The Labyrinth Makers, won the Silver Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association. His subsequent novels include the award-winning Other Paths to Glory and War Game.

Anthony Price

The Alamut Ambush

Macdonald Fumra Publishers

Copyright © 1971 by Anthony Price

To Katherine, James and Simon

PROLOGUE

JENKINS WALKED SLOWLY round the Princess, fumbling with the buttons of his overalls.

It was late – he had heard the chimes of midnight on his way in from Blackheath – and he was dog-tired. And it was also an imposition to be called out during what were at least technically dummy2

the last hours of his leave, which he had purposed to spend getting some order into his new flat.

Yet he knew that it was neither the hour nor the imposition which were sapping his concentration, but the suppressed excitement of the day's events. For a year now he'd felt ambition stirring, and for the last three months he'd sensed the faint scent of promotion trailing him like after-shave. Tonight it was strong in his nostrils: he had the feeling that life hadn't let him down after all.

The trick was to do things right, and there he had Hugh Roskill to help him. Hugh could be trusted to advise him without trying to steal any of the credit – although it wasn't like the old days, Hugh was still almost family.

He ran his finger idly along the thin buff-gold line that ran the whole length of the Princess, just below the meeting place of the black and the grey, the line that was the last lingering memory of the great days when there was coachwork to car bodies.

He'd never quite been able to make his mind up about Hugh. Up on the Eighth Floor they all had some sort of fagade, and Hugh's was the familiar, nonchalant R.A.F. one that he'd long grown accustomed to during his childhood, when Hugh and poor old Harry had been inseparable. Yet Harry had been no great brain, and it was certain that nonchalance alone never got anyone to the Eighth – which was where he himself intended to go. So there had to be a lot more to Hugh somewhere, as Aunt Mary had always maintained there was ...

He shrugged, running the finger down from the line into the mud splashes.

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The mud was the most obviously interesting thing about the Princess. No rain for ten days, and the gale tonight blowing miniature dust devils in the dry gutters, but nevertheless the lower half of the car was thickly coated with mud, and undeniably recent mud.

It might be this that had alerted someone, even though it was the oldest and crudest cover-up trick in the book. But the Special Branch man who'd delivered the Princess had been uncommunicative. It was far more likely that the unknown but influential owner of the car had delusions of grandeur...

Jenkins yawned, rubbed his eyes and looked down at the red rexine-covered handbook, with its gold lettering – another subtle touch of class there. It reminded him that he'd never had a Princess through his hands before — a few months ago that would have been a challenge in itself, to prove that no matter what came along, he was the best. But now it was just another car to be cleared, just routine, and he was mildly niggled that Maitland had found himself some other pressing engagement while McClure and Bennett were still snarled up in Northern Ireland.

Abstractedly, his mmd still half on Roskill, he plugged in the tape recorder and began to unwind the flex ... It was true that Hugh did seem more serious these days, almost preoccupied, on the occasions they had met. But that wouldn't make any difference now; It was serious advice he wanted.

He shook his head. Best to get the matter in hand over quickly, to salvage some horns from the night. For tomorrow he'd need to be dummy2

on top form...

He picked up the little microphone.

'Vanden Plas Princess 4-litre-R, black and grey, registration number...'

I

THE RATTLE OF the chain was much louder than the bell itself: after one dull clunk the bell had jammed, but the chain went on rasping and clattering against the stonework.

It was, thought Roskill, almost the last bit of Audley's old house that hadn't yet been transformed by his new wife. The carpets were new and the curtains were new, and the new central heating roared away in the distance. The splendid old furniture was still in place, but now it shone with polish in the candlelight. The house even smelt different, with the mustiness of age overlaid by an amalgam of odours suggesting female efficiency. And there didn't seem to be any back-teasing draughts any more – the place was almost cosy.

But the bell was a genuine piece of Audley before the Age of Faith, as eloquent as a 'Do not disturb' sign.

The only other unchanged object was – surprisingly – Audley himself, for the evening had so far revealed exactly the same confusing mixture of arrogant humility and courtly rudeness which had first fascinated Roskill years before the famous Mirage briefing, when the big man had casually forecast Israeli intentions dummy2

with such uncanny accuracy.

Roskill had marked him then as an acquired taste worth cultivating for the future and possibly one day the man who'd take Sir Frederick's job. It was only when he had come to know him better that the doubts had been born: the ruthlessness was there, and the brains, but the singleminded drive was lacking. At heart Audley was an amateur.

Yet out of this insight had come a curious, almost masochistic affection. He didn't really trust Audley, but he liked him.

'That frightful bell!' Faith grinned at Roskill as she rose from the table. 'I must get it fixed so that David can't just sit there ignoring it. You know, Hugh, I sometimes think he's got — what do you call it? – xenophobia, is that it?'

Audley regarded his young wife tolerantly.

'Xenophobia? Perhaps I have. But then it's an ancient and very sensible disease, love. The xenophobes survive long after the xenophils have been knocked on the head during the night by the strangers they've let into their homes.'

Roskill gestured to the table in front of him. 'And the law of hospitality? Isn't that ancient too?'

'A simple extension of the laws of self-preservation, Hugh. And a fiction more often than not: "The raven is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements". That's the true face of hospitality. And the other face shows the guests quietly opening the back door for their friends outside after lights out.'

The bell chain rattled again and the clapper briefly un-jammed dummy2

itself.

'And I suppose I should say "the bell invites me" now!' Faith started for the dining room door. 'I wish I could tell you that he doesn't believe what he's saying, Hugh, but I'm afraid he does believe it. Only I'm miscast as Lady Macbeth, hopelessly.'

Audley watched her out of the room. 'And I'll tell you something else. Bells that ring after ten at night are alarm bells.'

Roskill frowned across the candlelight towards the grandfather clock which ticked away heavily in the shadows. The front door banged and there was a murmur of voices.

'So now it's only a question of whether the trouble is yours or mine.

Probably mine, but I can still hope it's yours. In fact it puts me in mind of the old tale of the Rake and the Hounds – do you know it?'

Roskill shook his head. He had heard and disbelieved that there was an irrational side to Audley, and now here it was. Perhaps the flicker of the candles brought it out.

'It's a Hebridean tale. The rake was coming home over the hills early one morning after a night's debauch when he saw a man running in the valley below, looking over his shoulder all the while. And although there was nothing else to be seen the rake knew at once that the man was being pursued by the hounds of Hell.

'Then the man looked up the hillside and saw the rake, and he turned and ran straight towards him. And when he reached the brow of the hill he stopped to catch his breath, looked at the rake, and then staggered on past. And the rake knew very well what he dummy2

had been thinking: "He's a black sinner too – maybe the hounds will stop and take him instead of me".'

The door opened behind Roskill.

'It's Major Butler, David,' said Faith. 'He wants an urgent word with Hugh.'

Roskill swung round. Butler loomed solidly in the doorway, silhouetted against the brighter hall behind him. There was a glitter of raindrops on his head – the weather had broken at last.

'For Hugh?' Audley didn't look at Roskill. 'Well, Butler – we've just reached the brandy stage – allow us to finish that before you take him away. And join us in the meantime – sit down. Your ill tidings can wait a few minutes.'

'No need to take him away, Dr. Audley.' Butler dabbed at the damp red stubble on his head as he sat down. 'A brandy would be acceptable though. As to the ill tidings – your leave's up tomorrow anyway, Hugh. What other sort of tidings can there be?'

Roskill knew then with certainty that he was about to be double-crossed – knew it and was filled with gladness. All that remained was to act out a convincing role: should he struggle in the snare or submit with cold dignity? Which would be more in character?

'Jack, you know darned well when my leave ends.' Struggle, then –

even a rabbit struggled. 'At eight a.m. tomorrow I shall shave off this beard. At ten I'll pick up my mail at the office, and by three I'll be at R.A.F. Snettisham. There's not one thing you can do about it

– it was all settled months ago. I belong to the R.A.F. for the next ten weeks. Not to Sir Frederick, and certainly not to you.'

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He looked round the table for moral support. Faith radiated honest sympathy, but Audley's sympathy was tinged with relief: the hounds had passed him by...

'Ten week's refresher, Jack – that's the agreement. Ten weeks to keep me up to the mark so I'll still have a career when Sir Frederick puts me out to grass. They wouldn't be thinking of breaking that, would they, Jack?'

Go on – break it, Jack.

'The beard.' The suggestion of a perverse smile passed across Butler's mouth. Butler had been due for some leave when Roskill returned, but then the best press gangs were always made up of pressed men. 'That's one reason why I'm here. They'd like you to keep it, even if it does make you look like a pirate.'

'I'm not going to Snettisham with a beard.'

'You're not going to Snettisham at all, Hugh. Not for the time being, anyway.'

'The beard's coming off and I'm going to Snettisham.' Struggle harder and feel the wire tighten.

Butler looked pained. 'Don't be childish, man. If you put your pretty uniform on again tomorrow you'll stay in it. And not at a nice lively place like Snettisham. More likely somewhere like Benbecula – or wherever they send the awkward ones nowadays.

On the ground, certainly. There'd be no more flying.'

They had to want him very badly to spell it out as crudely as that, with what they took to be the ultimate threat. Or so they thought.

That might well be the only thing they didn't know about him –

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that one big, secret ace in the hole. And as long as they didn't know it, it was his strength, not his weakness.

One final protest should be enough for the record..

'They might as well ground me anyway. If they won't let me keep up with my flying they're as good as doing that already. Is this Sir Frederick's idea of a gentleman's agreement?'

Faith pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. 'I think I'll go and make a lot of strong coffee – before I'm sent packing.'

Butler turned towards her hastily. 'Don't go, Mrs. Audley. The brandy's fine – please don't leave us.'

Audley grunted angrily. 'I don't think she likes watching Hugh blackmailed any more than I do. It's too much like old times for both of us.'

'At least hear me out,' Butler looked at Roskill. 'I think you may not want to go back to the R. A.F. quite so quickly then – I mean that, Hugh. And it really is perfectly in order for you to listen, Mrs.

Audley. You may even have something to contribute.'

Faith sat down again willingly enough, and Roskill felt a pang of disquiet. It was like her to be curious, but it wasn't like Butler –

solid, security-conscious Butler, who mistrusted women and hated amateurs.

And of all women, Faith. For Butler had deplored Audley's original involvement with her – 'that over-bred, under-sexed schoolteacher with foam-rubber tits.' It was an uncharacteristically facile assessment, except possibly as regards the foam rubber, but what mattered was that it didn't fit this sudden partiality: Faith wouldn't dummy2

hold her tongue, and Butler would know it.

'Get on with it, then, Jack. I can't wait to hear why I have to keep my beard.'

Butler took a slow breath, almost a sigh. 'On Tuesday night somebody stole a car belonging to a Foreign Office man named Llewelyn.'

Audley sat up. 'Llewelyn? David Llewelyn would that be?'

'You know him?'

'I used... to know him.' Audley began guardedly and ended casually. 'I played rugger against him as a matter of fact.'

'So someone pinched Llewelyn's car,' said Roskill after a moment's silence. Butler had evidently hoped that Audley was going to elaborate on his acquaintance, but Audley's mouth was tightly closed again. 'That's a normal occupational hazard in London these days.'

'It was taken in Oxford.'

'Still close enough for the city gangs.' Butler ignored him.

'He parked the car at six thirty p.m. in Radcliffe square, just next to All Souls – he was having dinner in All Souls that evening. By midnight it had gone. They picked it up at Bicester at seven p.m.

next evening.'

Roskill looked at the map in his mind. Bicester was just north, or maybe north-east, of Oxford. And hardly more than a dozen miles away. There was an R.A.F. maintenance unit there, not far from the American base the F-111's were moving into soon. And an Army camp – a fair-sized ordnance depot.

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'So some jokers missed the last bus home and picked their own transport. It happens.'

Butler nodded. 'It happens – aye. In fact it's what the police suggested. They found the car in an Army depot area, beside a public road.'

Audley began to say something, and then stopped abruptly, and looked down into his brandy glass. And if Butler was normally resistant to Faith's charm, Audley equally could never resist hypothesising. So now they were both acting out of character.

Roskill started to stroke his chin and rather to his surprise encountered his beard: the very idea of preserving it was ridiculous, and also out of character...

Butler was a colleague, a friend even, so he must now be doing simply what he had been told to do. But Audley ranked as a friend too, and there was something which had scared him off – even though the hounds of Hell had passed him by. So there was something very wrong with the idea of some R.A.O.C. private lifting the Foreign Office man's car.

'What sort of car was it?'

'Vanden Plas Princess – the 4-litre one.'

The poor-man's Rolls-Royce, the company director's tax dodging limousine.

'All right, Jack. If you want me to play "spot the deliberate mistake" I'll play it, though you could just as soon have told me.

For starters – the wrong sort of car lifted from the wrong place.

How's that?'

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'Why was it wrong?' asked Faith.

'Too obvious. It's not a popular make. If I wanted to get back to barracks I'd pick something easier to get into and easier to drive.

And something less conspicuous. And I wouldn't lift it from somewhere in the centre of Oxford like Radcliffe Square, if my memory of the place is right. I'd pick up a Mini from a dark side-street. Right, Jack?'

'But it did turn up at the depot, Hugh,' Faith persisted. 'Why make a mystery out of nothing?'

'The mystery's all Jack's, not mine, Faith. But as it happens it also turned up too late. If it was a substitute for the last bus it'd have been ditched within an hour. Once there was a call out for it they'd have spotted it before midday.'

'They still could have missed it. A parked car is just a parked car if it's not in a "no parking" zone.'

'No, Mrs. Audley,' said Butler. 'They didn't miss it, we do know that. It was parked near enough to one of the depot entrances to be in the way. When it was noticed the engine wasn't even cold.'

'All of which you could have told us in two minutes flat, Jack.'

Roskill masked his unease; again, it wasn't like the man to go the long way round. 'You're being rather a bore now. Why don't you just come to the point?'

'The point?'

'I don't know what Llewelyn does, but if David doesn't want to say, it's probably veiled in bullshit. So some bright boy in security will have smelt the same rats I have, and after that the procedure's dummy2

straightforward: they checked it out and they found it was bugged.

The point is – where do I come in?'

'Aye, it smelt,' said Butler heavily. 'It smelt of fish and chips and it had the previous evening's Oxford paper in it, and it was muddy.

Which suggested to the local police that it was a casual job. But they had a look for prints and they couldn't find one, not one.

Which made them think again, because it was a bit too careful.'

'I thought everyone knew enough to wipe off their fingerprints these days?' said Faith.

'Just so, Mrs. Audley. But only the professionals do the job really thoroughly. When the police delivered it back to London they suggested a closer look might be in order. Young Jenkins was given the job of looking – you met him last year, Mrs. Audley.'

'I did indeed!' Faith smiled reminiscently. 'Lots too much hair, but very good-looking. He's nice.'

'He's damn good, too,' Roskill said. Jenkins was the star up-and-coming performer of the electronic backroom boys, which excused his hair and the irreverance that went with it. 'If there was anything in the Princess, Alan Jenkins would have found it And I take it there was something?'

'There was, Hugh.'

'Well, for Christ's sake, man, don't be so mysterious. What sort of bug was it?'

'We don't know.' Butler looked obstinately at Roskill, as though he wanted to look away, but couldn't. 'Jenkins is dead. It blew him apart, whatever it was. He's dead.'

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'He's what?'

It wasn't a question: Roskill knew he'd heard perfectly well – he could hear the distant thump of the boiler and the whisper of the hot water in the pipes. It blew him apart, whatever it was ... Not Jenkins, of all people.

'He was told to remove any bugs he found,' said Butler flatly.

'Llewelyn wanted his car back on the double. Jenkins was working alone, taping his report as he went along. He'd checked out the interior of the car, and the engine and the boot. He was working in the pit underneath when he spotted this bug, just about under the driver's seat. He started to remove it, and then said, "That's interesting". Just that – and then there was an explosion.'

Faith put her hands to her cheeks.

'They haven't reconstructed things accurately yet – it happened just after midnight, this morning. But from what he said just before it sounds as though someone took a lot of trouble. All we know is that it was one of the latest plastic explosives almost certainly, with maybe one of those new proximity activators. But it must have been attached to the bug as well – it can't have been just bad luck, otherwise he wouldn't have spotted something interesting.'

Not Jenkins. Roskill groaned to himself inwardly. Lots of hair but very good-looking. But not good-looking any more.

He'd never thought of Jenkins as good-looking. Just intelligent and eager – that had been how he had looked that first time, at the Battle of Britain Open Day at Snettisham. Harry's younger brother who was a genius with electronic gadgets and bored with his dummy2

trainee managership. It had seemed such good sense to find a useful square hole for so square a peg...

'It was quick, Hugh,' said Butler. 'He never knew what hit him. He wasn't expecting it – damn it, no one was expecting it.'

No one had expected it – and bloody Llewelyn had wanted his precious car on the double. But that was half-baked, unfair thinking; of course no one expected it. Chicago in the twenties, maybe Berlin in the worst days of the Cold War. And Northern Ireland today. But this wouldn't be an I.R.A. job: if the police had driven it all the way from Oxfordshire it was a real professional piece of work.

'But why, Major Butler – why?' said Faith. 'Why should anyone want to blow Jenkins up?'

'Not Jenkins, Mrs. Audley. Jenkins was an accident, an innocent bystander. Killing Jenkins was like poisoning a food taster – no sense to it. It was Llewelyn they wanted, and it looks as though whoever rigged the device was plain bloody-minded. But then the whole thing was a botched up affair, half clever and half stupid: if they wanted to kill Llewelyn they could have done it with much less fuss. And if they wanted to put the fear of God into him they needn't have taken so much trouble.'

Butler was right. It was like a futile accident – as futile as a sudden skid on a patch of oil. Better to think of Jenkins skidding into a lorry: nothing anyone could do about it, and at least it was quick.

Except that this patch of oil had been deliberately spread by someone, and it would be a sweet thing to see that same someone's dummy2

face rubbed in it.

Roskill savoured the prospect for a moment: Butler had been right about that, too – for him Alan Jenkins overshadowed Snettisham.

So for the first time a desire for a tangible revenge — a new sensation that – would coincide with a job.

Then he stopped short in mid-thought, suddenly at a loss. That wasn't how things worked at all. Further, they worked the opposite way round: any sort of personal involvement, however innocent, was anathema. In this instance he ought to be the last person conscripted, not the first.

And doubly the last. Whatever Llewelyn did it had nothing to do with aviation or avionics, or he would have encountered him already. A bungled assassination was first and last a Special Branch matter, not a fit assignment for an avionics man. One might just as well despatch a chopper to intercept a bomber.

So what the devil was Butler up to? Roskill felt a cold tingle of caution crawl up his back. Butler was a good fellow, solid and sensible, but an establishment man to the core, prepared to put his hand to any awkward job loyally. And notoriously he was given such awkward jobs...

But it would be useless to ask outright for the truth. Butler would be ready to fend off such a question. Better simply to play it straight, with caution.

'And why would anyone want to blow up Llewelyn?'

'Perhaps Dr. Audley could tell us that.'

Audley slowly put down the empty glass he'd been nursing and dummy2

stared at Butler.

'The last time I set eyes on the man was maybe ten years ago. It was in a pub in Richmond – he apologised for treading on my hand in the game we'd played that afternoon. He'd trodden on it deliberately, of course; it was just part of his game. And that was the last time I met him. Ten, maybe eleven years ago.'

'But you know of him, then,' Butler prodded.

Audley looked at Butler reflectively.

'Too late, I did. He was a bastard,' Audley turned towards Roskill.

'But he knows what he wants – just as Butler here knows what he wants. Unfortunately for him, he's not going to get it.'

'David, what on earth are you talking about?' Faith's face, turned towards her husband for the first time, seemed thinner and whiter in the candlelight.

'That's your cue, love,' said Audley. 'In a moment you're going to start disapproving of me. So will Hugh. Or on second thoughts maybe Hugh won't. Hugh's a downier bird than they think – not just an overgrown ex-fighter pilot with a crafty streak. I think Hugh's smelt a rat too.'

A rat, certainly. But what sort of rat?

'Hugh's not talking, very sensibly, love. And Major Butler's not talking either now! Perhaps I'm being rather unfair to Butler, though. He's only doing his job.'

'Unfair?' The irritation was plain in Faith's voice. 'Aggravating and pompous. And under the circumstances callous too, I think.'

'There – you've started to disapprove.' Audley's sudden enjoyment dummy2

of the situation was aggravating: this was the old Audley, one maddening step ahead of the play and relishing the fact. Again, it was all very well for Audley to enjoy himself; Butler hadn't come for him.

Or had he?

It flashed across Roskill's mind that Audley was now behaving exactly as he himself had done when Butler calmly cancelled Snettisham: wriggling in the snare. But Audley was an altogether more formidable creature. When it came to traps he would be a wolverine, almost untrappable...

'You never did finish your story about the hounds of Hell, David, did you?' Roskill murmured. 'I take it that the rake was lucky: the hounds passed him by and he turned into a prodigal? The question is, which of us are the hounds going to take?'

Audley smiled appreciatively. 'You were just a touch slow there, Hugh, but you got there in the end. I think they were after me all the time, don't you?'

Faith looked from one to the other of them. 'What hounds?'

Roskill watched Butler. 'What David means, Faith, is that Jack there could just as easily have waited for me at home if he wanted to preserve my beard. More easily, in fact. But instead he had to come here and tell you all about it, and make a great performance of it, when strictly speaking he shouldn't have done so at all.

' And normally he wouldn't have done. But he did – didn't you, honest Jack? Because it wasn't me you wanted at all. It was David!'

Butler lifted his chin. 'Audley can help. It's as simple as that.'

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'Well, why the bloody hell – pardon, Faith – can't you ask him straight out?'

'Simple again. He might have refused.'

'No one gives orders to him any more? Are you an over-mighty subject now, David?'

'No "might" about it. I have refused. In this matter I am an over-mighty subject, as it happens. Llewelyn can stew in his own juice...'

'David!' Faith was outraged. 'You can't say that, not when someone wants to murder him – not when they've already murdered Alan Jenkins. Don't you want to catch the people who did that?'

Audley shook his head at her. 'Faith, love – can't you see that's what you're supposed to say to me? Can't you understand that nobody's ever going to catch whoever booby-trapped Llewelyn's car? He'll be away and long gone. And even if he wasn't, and we caught him, then we'd only have some stupid devil who thought he was doing his patriotic duty.

'And that wouldn't stop them blowing up Llewelyn if they're set on it, any more than it would bring young Jenkins back to life. And they don't want me to avenge Jenkins, anyway – no one's ever going to do that.'

No one would do that, no matter what, thought Roskill bitterly. No one could avenge an accidental death.

'But if they find out why it was done they can still save Llewelyn,'

said Butler. 'You can help there.'

'You can't refuse, David,' said Faith.

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'I'm not supposed to have any choice, and that's a fact. Your tender social conscience and Hugh's special relationship with Jenkins are designed to weight the scales – just what was so special about Jenkins, Hugh?'

Coming from almost any other man it would have been offensive in its implication. But Audley was curiously naive about such things, and prudish too. He meant exactly what he had said, and if he had suspected anything else he wouldn't have spoken at all; Roskill simply wouldn't have been sitting at dinner with him.

But it was none of his business nevertheless, and it was on the tip of Roskill's tongue to say so when he glimpsed Faith's face, stricken with ludicrous embarrassment; she was all of fifteen years younger than her husband, but a million years older in this – the embarrassment was for his naivete, not for any homosexual tendencies Roskill might possess.

Ludicrous, though – and how Alan would have laughed at it, with his obsessive pursuit of dolly girls who needed no pursuing!

He had to take pity on her.

'Nothing like that, Faith. Jenkins was a friend of mine. I got him into the service.'

That would have to do. It was as much as the service knew, anyway. The private guilt and grief was all his own – his own and Isobel's . . .

'Hugh – I'm sorry. But it wasn't your fault.'

Not his fault. An accident. Nothing they could do about it and he never knew what hit him. Epitath for both the Jenkins brothers.

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One way or another he'd done for them both now.

But this was mere self-pity. The important thing now was somehow to succeed where Butler had failed: to do what the bastards wanted him to do – to involve Audley. And that could never be done by moral blackmail, or not so crudely anyway. Nor could it be done while both of them were still in the dark.

'I know it isn't my fault. It isn't David's either, so you might as well let him off the hook. Just tell us this, Jack: am I still in on things, or was I just the sprat to catch the mackerel?'

'They want both of you.'

It might be true. Or it might be that Butler was still trying to catch the mackerel.

'They'll just have to make do with me then.' He couldn't risk winking at Butler, with Audley sitting directly ahead of him. More likely neither of them would see it in the candlelight, anyway. 'Just tell me what Llewelyn is up to that might make a target of him.'

Butler shook his head slowly. 'That's the rub, Hugh. Apparently Llewelyn isn't up to anything.'

'Nonsense!' Audley exploded. 'Llewelyn isn't the sort of man who is ever up to nothing. He isn't capable of doing nothing.'

Faith said: 'But you said you didn't know anything about him.'

'I said I hadn't met him for years. Until last year I'd forgotten about him, and when I came up with him again it was too late to take precautions. He'd got me kicked out of the Middle Eastern group.'

Roskill looked at him incredulously. Audley had been the brains of that group and virtually a law unto himself. And under Sir dummy2

Frederick's special protection.

'Nobody told you that, did they, Hugh? Come to think of it, why does everyone think I transferred to the European section? What do people say about it?'

Roskill strove to rearrange his thoughts. The rumour was that Audley had been miffed at having his warnings ignored, and that after the Aden withdrawal he had schemed diligently to manoeuvre himself out of an area in which there was no longer either credit or honour to be gained.

'They say you were – prudent,' he replied cautiously.

'I abandoned a sinking ship, did I?' Audley smiled bitterly.

'It was thoughtful of Fred to put that around – better for my image!

But actually I was sacked – kicked upstairs and promoted out of Llewelyn's way. I asked too many awkward questions and gave too many inconvenient answers.'

So Llewelyn was definitely Middle East; it had been on the cards from the moment Audley had been involved.

'I can't think how I didn't meet up with him much earlier. He must have kept very quiet until he was sure the power was in his hands.

Then – wham! I think he damn near convinced the J.I.C. diat I was an Israeli agent.'

Rumour had said that too: Audley had worked far too closely with the Israelis.

'I did a little quiet research on him after it was all over.' Audley sighed. 'Just for my peace of mind, of course.

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'Outwardly he's all empiricism and pragmatism, outsmarting the Russians and the Chinese. But inwardly he's a raving idealist. I think he dreams of becoming a political Lawrence of Arabia – or at least getting back to the U.N. partition lines of '47 if he can't undo 1920. An admirer of all things Arab, anyway – providing they fit in with his dream of the new Middle East.'

'Would you say there's any substance in his dreams?' Butler asked.

'There's something in it, certainly. He wants to underwrite the new nationalisms, and that would seem to be backing a winning streak.

But he thinks that deep down the Arabs would rather deal with us than with anyone else because we're the only ones who have had any sort of love affair with Arabia.

'The trouble is that the real Lawrence types always seem to turn up on the wrong side – like those bright characters in the Yemen. And he tried to stop them.'

Audley gave Butler a sidelong glance, as though it had suddenly dawned on him that he was being drawn. 'Anyway, that was why I was – promoted: my advice didn't always fit his scheme of things.

And admittedly I'm not exactly anti-Israeli.'

There was a lot left unsaid there, thought Roskill. If Llewelyn was a schemer, so was Audley. In fact Audley could probably be as bloody-minded and obstinate as anyone when it came to the crunch, for all his air of donnish reasonableness.

But for the rest, it made sense. The great powers might be chary of blowing up each other's civil servants, but some of the smaller powers were much less inhibited, particularly the Middle Eastern dummy2

ones. There were harassed bureaucrats in Washington and Moscow who sweated without great success to curb such tendencies. The Israelis; went their own remorseless way, apparently regardless –

and some of the Arab guerrilla groups were both uncontrollable and unpredictable ...

'But if he doesn't approve of you, darling, why does he want your help now?' Faith asked. 'And why doesn't he ask you straight out?'

'It would stick in his throat. But I suppose he thinks I've got some useful private contacts.' Audley shook his head. 'He's wrong of course.'

'He doesn't think so,' said Butler. 'The truth is, Mrs. Audley, your husband was the sharpest man in the group, and they know it. And he had his own grapevine.'

' "Had" is right. I haven't got it now. I've been out nearly a year, and that's a lifetime – I'm out of touch completely. They should know that I can't pick up the threads just like that. It won't do – it simply won't do – and I'm surprised Llewelyn ever thought it would.'

'He's seen the driver's seat in his car, Dr. Audley,' said Butler harshly. 'He's frightened.'

'Frightened? You're damn right he's frightened. So am I – and so should you be. But he'll put himself on ice and expect me to go poking around. And I'm not going to! I'm not equipped to deal with maniacs.'

'You don't have to. Just get a line on the who and the why – that's all.'

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Audley gestured abruptly. 'No! It's not on. Besides, I've got Faith to think of now. So even if I could, I wouldn't. You can tell them I'm just not interested.'

Not interested – that would be the heart of the matter for a man like Audley in anything that involved choice. Only because of that would he allow other, weightier reasons to become decisive.

Butler pushed back his chair and stood up.

'I'll tell them just that. But on your head be it then, Dr. Audley.'

'Not on my head, Major Butler. That's a hat I don't choose to wear.

It doesn't fit.'

Butler's eyes shifted momentarily to Roskill, and then back towards Audley, calculation naked in them now.

'If it's not yours then it's Hugh's, whether it fits or not – spare me a moment outside, Hugh – so I'll see myself out, Mrs. Audley. And I'm sorry to have troubled you.'

Roskill followed Butler to the square of cobbles in the angle of the old house, in the pool of light from the porch lantern. It didn't help to be dragged out like this – Audley would know very well what he would be up to – but if there was anything to be salvaged now he had to know more.

'Don't ask me to go straight back and convince him, Jack. It won't do any good now. You've botched it – you've bloody well botched it. It'll be damn difficult now.'

Butler faced him, relaxed and without a hint of apology.

'I warned them. I told them he'd tumble to it. But Stocker reckoned he might quit if they tried to force him – he's got just enough dummy2

money of his own to do it – and Fred would play merry hell if that happened. So they seemed to think they'd got nothing to lose.'

He snorted. 'They're running scared, that's the trouble.'

'I don't wonder at it. But what the hell has Llewelyn been doing?

They must have some idea.'

'Stocker said they hadn't the faintest idea, but things must be bad for them to come crawling to Audley like this when they both hate his guts. But Audley's got a big reputation for puzzle-solving, especially after the business with that Russian last year. And he's got some juicy Middle Eastern contacts of his own, remember.'

'He swears he hasn't now.'

'So he says. All I know is they want him and they want him badly.

And now it's up to you to get him – you and Nellie No-tits in there.

She's probably giving him hell now. I hope she is; it'll make it easier for you.'

Roskill knew he had to make allowances for Butler's blind spot, but there was a point at which allowances became pusillanimity.

'You really are a bugger sometimes, aren't you? And not even a very clever one this time, as it happens. You want to watch it, Jack.

It might become a habit – making mistakes about women.'

Butler's heavy shoulders slumped and then stiffened again, and Roskill was aware too late that he had hit harder than he intended.

The man had children – three little snub-nosed, red-haired, miniature Butlers, all female – but he had never once mentioned a wife. Roskill had never thought to ask about that, and now he never could.

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'Aye, that could happen.' Butler stared into the darkness before meeting Roskill's gaze. 'But this is strictly business. They say she has a well-developed social conscience and they aim to catch at him through it. And through you too, Hugh – through you.'

Now there was regret in his voice, and a curious echo of that lost Lancashire accent. If there was anything more to be got out of Butler, now was the time.

'And that was the only reason why I'm involved ?'

A shake of the head. 'I don't know. They know you got Jenkins into the service, that you know his family. And Audley likes you, they know that too. But I think there was something else behind that...

You went to Israel before your leave, didn't you?'

'That was nothing. I only met a few of their pilots — I saw their tame Sukhoi 7 and some Mig 21 modifications, and we talked about the SAMs. It was pure routine.'

Butler nodded. 'I don't know, then. But they want you sure enough.

There's a briefing tomorrow at eleven thirty – not at the office, either. Officially you're at Snettisham. The meeting's set up at the Queensway Hotel, just off Bloornsbury Square. Room 104. You and Audley, if you can swing it. You and your beard, anyway.'

Butler eased himself into the driver's seat of his Rover. He reached for the ignition.

'And Hugh – I'm sorry about young Jenkins. It was bloody bad luck, pure bloody bad luck.'

Alan Jenkins was already a little unreal, thought Roskill sadly.

Already one of the absent friends, fixed forevermore in the past dummy2

tense, merely to be remembered and regretted. Not even a ghost, but just another of the shades, like Harry. It was appalling how quickly death could be accepted. But then he'd never really known Alan as he had kiiown Harry: the age gap had been small enough, yet impassable.

Yet it was civil of Butler to regret him, a decent gesture after their recent passage of words. It called for a civil answer.

'If it hadn't been him it would have been some other poor devil.'

'But it was doubly bad luck for him, though. It should have been Maitland. He was the one on call.'

'Why wasn't it Maitland, then?'

Butler switched on the engine. 'Act of God, the insurance companies would call it. That gale last night brought half a tree across Maitland's telephone wires – he lives out of London, down East Grinstead way. They couldn't get through to him. The other two chaps were out of town and Jenkins had just come back. He was the second stand-by. Pure bad luck.'

He looked up at Roskill as he reached for the transmission selector.

'But if you want to get your own back on bad luck, Hugh – get Audley. It's as simple as that.'

Roskill watched the Rover's tail-lights down the drive until the beech hedge cut them off. So Jenkins's death had been doubly accidental – a useless, cruelly coincidental death. He turned despondently towards the porch. It would take more than coincidence to make Audley change his mind.

He stopped with his hand on the iron latch, staring at. the dummy2

weathered oak. Were those the original adze marks on it? Pure bad luck . , . yet perhaps Audley would be more interested in bad luck, at that – he had once said that he was not a great believer in luck, either good or bad: he maintained it was very often something a man received according to his deserts...

There was a germ of an idea there: a trick and a deception, certainly, but also an idea. Yet it would have to be good to catch a suspicious-minded Audley; it must do better than fit the facts, but must carry its own inner conviction. It must intrigue him. It must –

Roskill caught his breath, still gripping the latch. It did fit the facts.

It fitted them so perfectly that it ceased to be a deception even as he tested it in his own mind.

God! It was like carrying a supposedly forged masterpiece to an art dealer, only to realise at the last moment that the forgery bore the irrefutable marks of authenticity on it!

He started as the latch moved under his hand and the door opened suddenly in his face. A gust of warm air hit him.

'Hugh! What are you doing standing out in the cold? You look as if you'd seen a ghost.'

Roskill stared at her. 'I think I have, Faith – I think I have.'

Faith put her hand on his arm. 'It's Alan Jenkins, isn't it? I'm so sorry – I can't quite believe it even now.'

'I'm going to ask David to help me. Do you mind?'

'Mind? Of course I don't! I think it's his duty to help you.'

'Even after Jack Butler tried to use the way you felt as a lever?'

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Faith shook her head ruefully. 'I'm used to that sort of thing now.

It's the way they think – always the indirect way. It's the way David himself thinks half the time. He can't help it. You're the only normal one among them I believe, Hugh. And don't you dare change.'

Roskill looked at the floor in confusion, thinking guiltily of what he was planning, and worse still why it would appeal to her dear David. Really, she deserved better than tliis...

'But it's no use, Hugh. He won't help you. It isn't that he doesn't care about people, because I know he does. But they hurt his pride terribly when they took him off the Middle East – he won't admit it, and he laughs it off like he did this evening. But it mattered to him much more than he pretends because he really cared about the Jews and the Arabs. He had real friends among them, on both sides

– that was why he was so good at his job. And I think he really hates that man Llewelyn. So it won't be any use – I haven't even tried to convince him, so I know you won't be able to.'

A pity Butler was on his way back to town; it was a speech he ought to have heard. And if true a valuable insight equally into Audley's mind: beneath that air of calculation the man might even be committed to some sort of humanitarian ideal. He might have a dream like Llewelyn's in fact. Perhaps that was what really fed his dislike of the man.

So much the better now, Roskill thought.

'I must try nevertheless, Faith,' he said gently. 'Because there's something I believe we've all overlooked up to now.'

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Audley was sitting back, waiting for him, his final refusal cut and dried and ready for use.

'It's "no" to you, too, Hugh. I'm sorry, but I'm like that American statesman who said that if he was nominated for the presidency he wouldn't stand, and if he was chosen he wouldn't sit. So have another drink and don't bother to ask me.'

Roskill smiled. It seemed so clear now: it was like saying that the earth was round. But they had all been so busy thinking of themselves that no one had noticed it – except Faith, who had spoken the truth because she hadn't understood at all.

'Hugh, what's the matter?' Audley was looking at him, perplexed.

'Have I said something amusing?'

The matter was that it was amusing: Llewelyn scared enough to pocket his pride and try to manoeuvre a man he disliked – and who hated him – into rescuing him. And all for nothing.

That was what Audley would surrender to: not the tragedy of it, but the savage joke.

'The bomb in the Princess, David – it wasn't for Llewelyn at all. It was for Jenkins. Just for Jenkins.'

II

ROSKILL LAY ON a groundsheet in the soaking bracken, watching Mrs. Maitland shepherd her children into her dummy2

Volkswagen half a mile below him.

The eight o'clock sun was low enough behind him for the forward slope of the ridge to be a textbook observation position, which made him feel slightly foolish. If she had walked right by him she still wouldn't have known him from Adam: she was a perfectly innocent housewife running her kids to school. But Audley had been insistent on every precaution being taken; nothing must be allowed to alert anyone about what they were actually doing.

He watched the little car bump down the rutted track to the metalled road, and then along the curve of the road for a mile until it disappeared from view. Then he backtracked to the exact point where the Maitland's telephone wires left the main cable, their more slender poles striding across the open field to the cottage and the farm beyond.

He adjusted the binoculars fractionally, scanned the area for the umpteenth time and saw nothing fresh. In all probability there was nothing, or if there had been it had by now been hopelessly obliterated by the repair men whose tramplings were evident even at this distance. At best it was a long shot, but everything had to start somewhere, and this was that inescapable starting place.

He replaced the binoculars in their leather case and folded the groundsheet. Mrs. Maitland would not return for at least forty minutes; Maitland himself had been gone half an hour and would be on his train by now. It was time to move.

He searched the landscape once more, wondering as he did so if he was duplicating the actions of an earlier observer. Then he turned dummy2

and retraced his way to where the Triumph was parked among the pines. He unlocked the boot and replaced the binoculars and the sheet. Shutting it he glimpsed his reflection in the shining cellulose, distorted and wholly unrecognisable. In leather jerkin, flat cap and gumboots – and with the ludicrous beard – he wasn't quite sure what he resembled. An itinerant Basque revolutionary, perhaps, but hardly a pirate and certainly not a stray G.P.O.

linesman. Equally, however, not his elegant self.

He stumped off heavily down the hillside. The break in the weather hadn't lasted, thank God; the ground was still wet, but was drying fast, which was just as well if there was going to be much crawling about like this. It was no use telling himself that he was a country boy, born and bred, for over recent years he had become half-naturalised into a townsman. Not that this little bit of heath, field and woodland was true countryside; anything close to London as this was little better than the enclosures at Regent's Park Zoo, open space preserved to give the human animals the illusion of a natural setting.

He shook his head. If there was nothing left to show that the wires had been deliberately brought down, should he invent evidence to keep Audley happy? It had been what he had originally intended, after all, before the possible truth of it had dawned on him. Yet Audley had taken little convincing; it was almost as though he'd welcomed the idea, despite his previous intransigence. Perhaps deep down he knew that he wasn't quite big enough to turn Llewelyn away.

Or perhaps it was simply that the logic of Roskill's solution made dummy2

such crude proof unnecessary. It was there in the events themselves: every step of the car theft and booby-trapping had been marked by the same contradictory cleverness and stupidity.

But the cleverness and the stupidity had both been carefully calculated to lead directly to the removal of the fatal bug by an expert – and by one expert in particular.

The Jenkins Gambit, Audley had called it: the best way to kill a food taster is by poisoning his master's dish — it looks like an occupational hazard!

And it had so very nearly worked, too. With someone as important as Llewelyn menaced, Jenkins was almost certain to be overlooked. The assassins could not reasonably have expected anyone like Roskill, with a personal commitment to sharpen his perception, to appear on the scene – and even he had only stumbled on the more likely truth by accident.

The only real flaw in their planning was the telephone wire: the coincidence that had alerted Roskill. They should have waited until Jenkins came on duty by normal routine — unless for some reason they were unable to wait, in which case it was not a flaw, but a calculated risk...

At least finding the place had been easy enough. Although the repair men had worked on the other side of the hedge their vehicles had chewed up the roadside verge, deeply rutting the debris of the previous summer. He had had no difficulty spotting it on his early morning reconnaissance drive along the road, in the half-light.

The tree itself, contrary to Butler's report, had not come down – it merely leaned drunkenly away from the road, ten degrees out of dummy2

true. The damage had been done by a huge dead limb which appeared to have snapped off two-thirds of the way up. Falling in the field it had brought down Maitland's wires and conveniently left the main cable intact.

Roskill squelched his way over the ruined verge. The elm had grown up on the far side of a deep roadside ditch; with its one-sided root system – he could see the stumps of roots which had been severed when the ditch had last been cleaned out – it was hardly surprising that it had started to fall away from the road.

Elms, he remembered, were notoriously unstable at the best of times.

He peered up at the new scar high up on the trunk where the limb had been ripped away. There were no signs of saw marks, nor any tell-tale sawdust scattering at the base either. It looked depressingly like a natural break, the result of the extra pressure when the tree canted over.

Not for the first time he felt a touch of doubt chilling his beautiful theory. It would be damned embarrassing if he was forced to double-cross Audley into making a fool of Llewelyn. Worse, if Jenkins wasn't the target it was Audley who would be made to look the fool, and Audley would be a nasty enemy to make in the department.

He launched himself clumsily across the ditch, throwing his weight forward and embracing the elm as the soft earth crumbled under him.

The grass on the other side of the hedge was also torn and trampled dummy2

and sprinkled with legitimate sawdust, where the fallen limb had been cut up into manageable sections and stacked. It was good burning wood, too, dead but not rotten.

Dead, but not rotten: there was something maybe not quite right about that. He ran his eye up the trunk again: it was odd how the great branch hadn't fallen in a line with the tree itself – yet if it had done so it would almost certainly have missed Maitland's wires. As it was it had peeled off towards the left, almost as though it had been ... pulled.

Pulled! He kicked himself mentally for missing the simplest method of all: hitch a cable to the dead branch and pull obliquely.

It was not only the obvious way but virtually the only way, and he'd been a monumental idiot not to see it at once.

And yet it would take immense strength to do it – not only bringing down the branch, but also very nearly the tree itself. It would take more than manpower to do that.

He looked up at the elm again, then down to the torn turf, trying to gauge the likely direction from which the pulling had been done. It had to be out in the field to the left of the wires.

He moved carefully away from the hedge, searching the ground intently. It had been dry on that night, and for some days before, but this land was low lying. Further out in the field there were tussocks of coarse marsh grass. It would never be less than damp here.

And there they were!

Hardly more than twenty yards from the elm, and somewhat closer dummy2

to the hedge than he had expected, were four symmetrical bruises in the grass where the wheels had spun for a moment before winning their tug-of-war with the branch.

Roskill's pulse beat with excitement: four tyre marks made the evidence conclusive. The act of dragging a heavy object on the ground would have produced deeper rear wheel marks and shallower front ones, even if the vehicle was four-wheel drive. But the downward pull had equalised the forces at work — another few yards, indeed, and it would have been the front tyres which would have dug deeper into the ground. These marks were exactly those which a Land-Rover would make in the act of sabotaging the line, unremarkable in themselves but irrefutable evidence in context.

He experienced a curious mixture of gratification and anger. His logic – and Audley's confidence – was vindicated by this tattered piece of low-grade pasture. Here Maitland had been deliberately cut off, so that Jenkins should keep the appointment.

Somebody knew too bloody much about the technical section, that was certain. And somebody knew too much about Llewelyn's movements.

Roskill felt for the camera in his webbing haversack. And somebody, he thought grimly, had come unstuck, nevertheless.

III

AUDLEY WAS STANDING on the pavement in Grosvenor dummy2

Gardens, ten yards from its junction with Buckingham Palace Road, which was precisely where he had said he would be, to the yard.

In fact, thought Roskill, he looked rather like a solitary, oversized waxwork which had been stolen from Madame Tussaud's and then abandoned to become a pedestrian obstacle: he stood unmoving, engrossed in a dull-looking, stiff-covered mag;azine, oblivious of the passers-by who eddied round him and of the traffic which accelerated past his nose.

Even when Roskill slid the Triumph alongside the kerb beside him he did not move at once. And nor, when he did move, did he bother to verify that it was Roskill. He methodically closed the magazine, turning down the page – so much Roskill could see from the driver's seat – and simply got straight into the car, without a word.

Roskill engaged the gears. 'Well, we were right,' he said.

Audley grunted and nodded. 'You mean you were right. I was reasonably sure you would be, whether you found anything or not.

But I'm glad to hear it; it's always nicer to be certain.'

He subsided into silence and it occurred to Roskill that he wasn't going to ask for details. That might indeed be proof of a touching confidence, but now seemed far more likely to indicate that Audley was trying to forget how very nearly he had missed the chance of making a laughing-stock of his enemy.

But he wasn't going to get off as easily as that.

'They pulled it down with a Land-Rover,' said Roskill, 'Not the whole tree – just one big branch. The tyre-marks are perfectly plain dummy2

when you know what you're looking for.'

He reached under the dashboard for the envelope.

'Photographs, diagram and report – all in there.'

Audley slid the material half out of the envelope, riffled through the photos briefly and then pushed it all back.

'You didn't talk to anyone?'

'I didn't talk to anyone. Nobody saw me. And I developed the pictures myself.' Roskill kept his tone neutral. 'It's our own little Top Secret.'

'We'll keep it that way, then.' Audley slipped the envelope between the pages of his magazine. 'I don't want anyone round while we're checking up on Jenkins. I don't even want them to know that we're checking on him, in fact. The chances are that they'll find out sooner or later, but I want to put that off as long as possible. But I don't want to tell any lies, so I think our lines should be what Kipling called "suppressio veri, suggestio falsi" – do you understand, Hugh?'

Roskill understood very well, and bitterly too: once Llewelyn found out that they were investigating Jenkins he would soon put two and two together. And the moment he realised he was in no danger the joke was over. Indeed, to get a full and perfect revenge Audley needed to complete his assignment first, for only then would it become a matter of record and unsuppressible.

But it was a sad thing that the only way Jenkins could be avenged was by enabling Audley to indulge his own private feud...

'I understand that perfectly well,' he said evenly. 'We're going to dummy2

make him sweat.'

'Make him sweat – yes.' Audley turned in his seat and looked hard at Roskill for a moment. 'But I don't think you do fully understand, all the same. At a guess I'd say you're thiking that there's not much to choose between Llewelyn and me – a couple of right bastards.

But I just happen to be the bastard who suits you at the moment –

is that right?'

It was a question that didn't admit equivocation.

'I think,' said Roskill reluctantly, 'that you can do the right thing for a paltry reason. In this case your reason doesn't – dignify – what we're doing.'

Audley nodded thoughtfully. 'A petty vendetta? Yes, I can see your line of thought. I ought to have seen it before. And there's something in it, too. But you knew that when you came back to tempt me last night, and it didn't stop you.'

'I'm not complaining. You asked rne a question and I gave you an honest answer. And as you said, it suits me well enough.'

Then perhaps I ought to question your motives too, my dear Hugh

– I ought to wonder why they were so sure of you.'

'I told you last night – I recruited Jenkins in the first place.'

"Not good enough."

'I know his family too.'

'Still not good enough. You also admitted last night that you weren't to blame. There isn't enough there for a guilt complex.'

Audley paused, waiting in vain for an answer.

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'Very well, then! Let's get back to my base motives for a moment. I admit that the chance of making a fool of Dai Llewelyn did attract me – it still does. But it wasn't enough to make me change my mind. It was the fact that it was Jenkins and not Llewelyn who was the target – I find that very interesting. The poor boy said it was interesting the moment before he died, and by God he was right!'

Roskill frowned. He had been so busy with practical problems that he hadn't really faced up to the ultimate one. It had simply hidden itself at the back of his mind, nagging at him: why the hell would anyone blow up Alan?

'You see, Hugh,' Audley continued, 'Llewelyn isn't such a bad candidate for assassination, because in his own way he's a pretty important person. I know Butler said he wasn't up to anything. But when you wield the sort of influence Llewelyn does there'll always be sufficient motive for somebody to have a go, if that's the way they're inclined.

'But Jenkins wasn't important. At least, he shouldn't have been. Yet he suddenly became supremely important to somebody.'

'Somebody who knew too bloody much about the way the Department works, too,' said Roskill. 'They must have known exactly what would happen if Maitland couldn't be contacted.'

'They also knew where Llewelyn was. They knew how everyone's mind worked.' There was a note of puzzlement in Audley's voice.

'Yet if it was accidental death they wanted to simulate they set about it in the most extraordinary manner. A simple road accident would have been so much neater. Nobody would have thought twice about it. Unless of course they didn't know where Jenkins dummy2

lived. Did he live in some inaccessible place?'

'I really don't know.' Roskill thought hard. 'He was always changing his digs, certainly. I think he did it to get his old girlfriends off his back – he'd never leave a forwarding address.'

'Well, that might account for it.' Audley's head bobbed. 'They had to catch up with him quickly and they didn't know where to find him. But they knew what his job was – that really might explain it!'

It was a cold thought: failing to find him, they had created a situation in which Jenkins and his death had converged on each other, with death riding in a Vanden Plas Princess.

They were both silent for a time. Then Audley spoke.

'The point is, Hugh, I don't think other people will see things quite the way we do. When they realise that the heat's off Llewelyn I think there'll be a great big sigh of relief higher up. Then the reaction will set in; they won't want too much fuss and bother.

They won't want any awkwardness. And that will mean that they won't want us poking around, because we're liable to become awkward. They know me too well already – and you've got this mysterious personal stake of yours...'

Audley tailed off, waiting once more for an explanation. But that was in line with what everyone said about the man: the facts and figures were never enough for him – he nagged endlessly at the whys behind them. So now he'd never give up, he'd never leave such a loose end as Roskill's motive for vengeance untied behind him.

'Let me put it another way, Hugh. There's got to be some mutual dummy2

trust between us. I've trusted you. Don't you think you can trust me?'

Roskill looked at him in surprise. 'You've trusted me?'

'I have indeed! Last night I chose to believe that you thought out the Jenkins angle on your own, without any prompting from Butler. I've given you the benefit of the doubt, in fact.'

'What doubt?'

'My dear fellow – hasn't it occurred to you that Llewelyn might have calculated that I couldn't resist making a fool of him? I wouldn't put it past him, you know!'

'But the facts – when you look at the facts, David. Llewelyn didn't bring down that tree, damn it!'

'Facts can be arranged. But, as I say – I chose to believe you. That's why I've let you convince me – which is what they'd planned in the beginning. If Butler failed, there was Faith. If Faith failed, there was you – I simply want to know why in the end it was you!'

Koskill sighed. It would have been better if he had revealed rather more the previous night, when Audley wasn't concentrating on him. Now, in simple self-defence, he'd have to give him Harry.

Harry . . .

' I didn't know Alan Jenkins very well really, David. He was in electronic counter-measures, the bugging business. It was his brother I knew – his elder brother.'

He paused, searching for the right words. But how could one explain a man like Harry to a man like Audley? He would know all the theory of it, from David and Jonathan onwards, but his dummy2

understanding would be as two-dimentional as the pages he'd gathered it from.

To talk about comradeship and friendship was inadequate; to mention affection debased it with physical undertones – though by God if it had been the army of Alexander the Great instead of Queen Elizabeth's air force, there probably would have been that too!

Harry ...

'Harry Jenkins – he was a good friend of mine in the squadron. My wing-man. He was a first-rate chap.'

Friendship is Love without his wings – was that Byron? But they had had their wings too.

'I spent several leaves at Harry's family place at East Firle, down in Sussex.'

East Firle ...

Up in the morning at cock-crow and over the hills, past the old burial mounds and down into Alfriston. On over the Cuckmere, up the hillside again, down under the Long Man, beer and pickles at Jevington. Then onwards more slowly until Pevensey Levels spread out below, along the last magnificent roll of the Downs towards Beachy Head, where the car would be waiting for them with Mrs Jenkins at the wheel. It was a golden memory.

'We used to walk a lot. I got to know the family pretty well – nice people. Harry's father had a fighter wing in '45. He's dead now.'

Dead too, thank God. All the Jenkins males were dead now, but at least the old man hadn't been the last, chafing in a house full of dummy2

women, even women as delightful as Aunt Mary.

'Oddly enough it was Alan I knew least – he was always away at school. I didn't actually meet him until just after I'd left the squadron. He'd just started with Alpha Electronics and he didn't much like 'em. And you know how Sir Frederick is always on about keeping our eyes open for talent.'

'What happened to Harry?' Audley drew him gently back to the point.

'Harry had my flight – my job – on my recommendation. He took over from me when I came to the department.'

For Roskill, read Jenkins.

'He flew into a hillside in Wales a week later.'

Carnedd Dafydd – he'd seen it from the pass beyond Capel Curig on the way to Holyhead a few months afterwards, the clouds driving like smoke across it.

'And you feel it should have been you, not him?'

'No, hardly that.' Roskill shook his head sadly.

Poor Harry! The better man by far, but never the better pilot. "It was Harry's mountainside."

'But your guilt nevertheless?'

'You might call it that – I don't know what else you could call it. I suppose I might feel better if I'd left the squadron for pure patriotic reasons...'

Instinctively Roskill felt that a shadow of the truth would satisfy Audley now.

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'The fact is, David, that I was rather bored with flying. Fred dangled this job in front of me – this job and a step in rank. So Harry and Alan are dead because I was bored. I know I didn't kill them – I just recommended them. And now I'd feel a lot better if I could wipe someone's eye. Silly, isn't it?'

Audley nodded slowly. 'Yes, it's silly. But I know the feeling, Hugh. It's like slashing a bed of stinging nettles when you've been stung – silly, but very satisfying.'

Roskill relaxed carefully. More by good luck than calculation he had struck the right note for Audley.

'Tell me, Hugh,' said Audley conversationally, 'how would they accept you down at – where was it – East Firle now? Do they blame you in any way?'

'Good Lord, no! They don't know I had a hand in anything. They probably wouldn't blame me if they did know, either — they aren't that sort of people.'

With his mind on a parking space thirty yards ahead Roskill's guard was momentarily down and it wasn't until he was actually swinging into the space that the significance of the question hit him.

'You don't mean – Christ, David! You're not going to ask me to go down to East Firle?'

'Someone's got to go.'

Roskill grabbed blindly for the handbrake, grappling with the implications of what appeared so obvious to Audley. That anything could have happened at East Firle, snuggled so peacefully under the Beacon, seemed not only unlikely, but unthinkable. Yet–

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'Don't play dumb, Hugh, just because you don't want to go. It has to be you, because you can go down there as a friend of the family.

You've got a perfectly innocent motive for being there. If I was spotted there our game would be up. But they may take you for granted – for a time anyway.'

'Who's "they"?'

'That's for you to find out. Maybe nobody now. But something happened when Jenkins was on leave. Otherwise they'd have had time to set up a different sort of accident – a more accidental one.

But something happened so quickly that they didn't have time to catch up with him, remember? Something so important they had to take the devil of a risk to make sure they shut him up quickly.'

'But what makes you think it happened at East Firle?'

'I don't know where it happened. But we have to start there.'

Roskill sighed. Alan would most likely have spent part of his leave at home – like Harry, he had had a strong homing instinct. It was unarguably his assignment: he was cornered. But a beastly assignment, for of all places he least relished snooping around that one, where he had once been happy.

'Very well, David. I'll go to Firle. And you haven't the least idea what I'm supposed to be looking for?'

'At this moment not the slightest. But we may pick up a clue or two in a short while.'

'From whoever's waiting for us in the Queensway? But they're going to be obsessed with Arabs and Israelis, whichever of 'em had the biggest down on Llewelyn. And that's not going to help us dummy2

much.'

Or was it? He looked searchingly at Audley. Jenkins's death, botched or not, had not been a small-time operation. It had involved manpower and equipment and murderous determination.

And information – above all information. There would hardly have been the time to acquire the relevant intelligence about Llewelyn and Jenkins simply to set up the operation, therefore the likelihood was that the killers had merely used what was already known to them.

And that eliminated all the jealous boyfriends, wronged husbands and vengeful fathers Jenkins might have left in his wake; it narrowed the field to the professionals, beyond all doubt – the very men who could have killed Llewelyn if they had wanted to do so.

'Let's just wait and see for the moment, Hugh – let's see what they've got in Room 104. But first let's find out what they don't want me to know – so you go on up and see them now. I'll give you a few minutes on your own with them.'

Roskill frowned at him across the Triumph's bonnet. What the hell was the man playing at now?

Audley's eyes glinted behind his glasses. 'One of your little jobs on the side is going to be to keep an eye on me, you know. At least, I hope it will be, because then we needn't worry about anyone else from the department dogging us. So I want to have time to recruit you.'

Roskill tried to immobilise his face. The one and only time he had actually worked with Audley, that had been his job exactly; it dummy2

wasn't Audley's loyalty that had worried them then either, but simply his unwillingness to explain what he was up to until after he'd been up to it. Secretiveness was apparently the man's besetting sin.

One couldn't blame them, but he hadn't liked the job then and he didn't relish it now, with its insane subdivision of loyalties mocking the real job in hand.

Audley mistook his exasperation for honest reluctance.

'I know how you feel, Hugh,' he apologised. 'It isn't quite cricket, is it? But we didn't make the rules and we have to play the game their way.'

Alan and Harry and East Firle – and now Audley was making a game of it all, damn him! For the first time Roskill almost regretted the chance that had allowed him to escape from flying. The sooner he could pick those tricky brains clean, the better.

IV

OF THE FIVE faces which turned towards him as he entered the room Roskill recognised only two. Worse, the friendly one was scowling angrily and the dangerous one welcomed him with a smile.

'Ah, Roskill,' said Stocker. 'I'm glad you were able to come.'

Butler's scowl deepened. But that at least was understandable: the night before he had loyally obeyed orders he disliked, and had dummy2

appeared to fail. Obedience, ambition and incongruously active conscience had been fighting inside Butler for years, each one baulked by the other two.

Roskill looked coldly at Stocker. What was it Audley had said they thought him to be – 'an overgrown ex-fighter pilot with a crafty streak'? Best to oblige them then.

He shrugged. 'I can't say I'm glad. But Jack's very persuasive when he puts his mind to it.'

'And Audley?'

It was the big man sitting in the easy chair in the corner who spoke.

The other two were nondescripts, Special Branch or Stacker's Joint Intelligence. Committee understrappers. But the big man's rather battered face and unquestionable air of authority would have identified him even without the faintest suspicion of Welsh intonation.

'Mr. Llewelyn, I presume?'

'Is Audley coming?' Stocker echoed the question this time, and he was no longer smiling.

'He should be here any moment.'

The smile came back. So it had been Stocker's idea – and sure enough there was a suggestion of surprise crossing Llewelyn's face. One up to him: he had judged Audley better than Stocker, even after all these years. Two of a kind, evidently.

'You are very persuasive too it would seem, Squadron-Leader Roskill,' said Llewelyn softly.

'I had moral support from another quarter.' They had counted on dummy2

Faith so he might as well throw her into the scales. 'But I wouldn't say he's any happier than I am.' Casually, now. 'In fact neither of us go much for your methods.'

'Needs must when the devil drives, Roskill.' Stocker could afford to be conciliatory now. 'And to be fair you must admit that we wouldn't have got you both any other way. The situation was not –

ah – straightforward, was it?'

'It isn't straightforward even now as far as I'm concerned.'

Llewelyn leaned forward. 'But you've worked with Audley before.

And with quite remarkable success I hear.'

'Only once. And I can't claim any of the success – I was a messenger boy. And there was an R.A.F. angle to that job, anyway.

Whereas this one – '

'This one is different, yes.' Llewelyn sat back agdn, considering Roskill speculatively. 'Do you know anything about Middle Eastern politics?'

'Very little more than the next man.'

'But you've travelled in the Middle East. You were in Israel just before your leave.'

The last thing Roskill wanted was a question and answer session.

Llewelyn must be made to do the talking.

'If you want to know how to avoid a SAM, or whether the Sukhoi 7s the Egyptians are operating have anything approaching a Digital Integrated Attack System, Llewelyn, I can tell you. And I could give you a fifty-fifty guess on the attack system the Israelis are using. And if you pushed me I just might tell you how far I think dummy2

they've got with the laser fire control ressarch – which is further than most people believe. And I could describe three strips of tarmac in the desert for you. That's the Middle East I know about.'

Llewelyn grinned. 'I take your point. But which side do you favour?'

'Professionally speaking, the combat effectiveness of the Israelis is as near 100 per cent as I've ever seen anywhere.'

' Not professionally speaking — personally.'

'I don't give a damn either way.'

'I can't believe that.'

'I don't give a damn what you believe, either. But I'll tell you what I believe. I believe that if I'd been born in 1920 I should have flown a Spitfire in 1940 – unless I'd been born in Germany. In which case I should have flown a Messerschmitt 109. And just as happily, too!'

'And there's no right and no wrong?' Llewelyn's Welsh lilt was stronger now. A true believer, thought Roskill – and God save us from the true believers...

'The Arabs and the Jews? I should say they're both right and both wrong, and I wouldn't trust either of 'em. But neither of them is on my side, so for Christ's sake let's get down to business.'

Audley would be bursting in any moment, and so far nothing of value had been achieved.

Llewelyn and Stocker exchanged glances, as if to reassure each other that they had the right tool to hand, a crude one, but serviceable.

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'Very well, Roskill,' said Llewelyn. 'It may not interest you to know it, but despite appearances there is at this moment an outside chance of some sort of Middle Eastern settlement. The best chance for a long time, in fact, despite recent events – perhaps because of them even. Just one gesture of mutual trust might tip the balance –

and one gesture of mutual hate might tip it the other way.'

'Such as your death?'

Llewelyn regarded him steadily. 'Strange as it may seem – yes. I've been working behind the scenes – just how is no concern of yours.'

Just as Llewelyn had been right about Audley, so Audley had been right about Llewelyn: he had been up to something.

'Who wants you dead then? Who wants the balance tipped that way?'

'That's the difficulty. There are hawks and unofficial groups on both sides. But we'll discuss that when Audley's here. It's Audley I want to discuss now – would you call yourself a friend of his?'

'In as far as anyone is – yes.'

Llewelyn nodded, unsmiling. 'Good. It's a friend we need to protect him.'

'Protect him? I'm not a bloody bodyguard,' Roskill demurred. 'I wouldn't know where to start – and I've never fired a shot in anger in my life. You need another sort of friend for that!'

'Not from other people – from himself,' Stocker cut in. 'Audley's a brilliant man, but he's not a practical man and he goes his own way. This time he could run into something nasty if he does that, and we must have early warning of it – from you.'

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'If there's trouble we want to handle it,' said Llewelyn soothingly.

'But even if he doesn't run himself into anything we still have to know what he's doing. You kept an eye on him last time, Stocker tells me. We just want you to do the same again, no more, no less.'

'Under protest, I did it – did Stocker tell you that? And did he tell you I wasn't very good at it, either? Audley's not a confiding soul at the best of times.'

'But you know him better now – and it shouldn't be more difficult than persuading him to come up here. If you can do the one I'd trust you to manage the other.'

Roskill looked at them woodenly, barely controlling the urge to smile: they were all so bloody good at computing the angles – and that went for Audley too – that it was a wonder they didn't disappear up their own orifices.

Except that it was neither a laughing matter nor a game; the memory of Alan Jenkins spoiled the fun and ruined the game.

'So you'll do it?'

Actually it was appropriate that Llewelyn and Audley should each cast him to betray the other, for in a way the whole business was founded on his actions. He, and no one else, had set them on their collision course; how many more collisions would it take to resolve his cowardice?

The knock at the door startled him, and before he could collect his wits he was looking up at Audley in the: doorway – Audley who had arrived just ten seconds too early, even though he knew the question had already supplied the answer.

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Not to panic, though.

He looked from Audley back to Llewelyn. 'Yes, I'll do that,' he answered.

Audley's eyebrows lifted. 'You'll do what?'

'My dear fellow, it's good to see you again,' Stocker rose elegantly from his chair beside the table. 'And good of you to come.'

Audley grunted, staring over his spectacles directly at Llewelyn, who stared just as directly back. The pot and the kettle; the Mountain and Mahomet. Old acquaintances who had forgotten nothing over the years – and learnt a little too much.

'Llewelyn needs no introduction, I know,' continued Stocker, overcoming the impossible simply by ignoring it. 'But I don't believe you've encountered Yeatman before.'

Audley tore his gaze away from Llewelyn and nodded to the smaller of the nondescripts.

'And – ' began Stocker.

'Cox,' said Audley. 'Special Branch.'

'We've never met, Dr. Audley.' Cox didn't seem put out by being pinned like a butterfly in Audley's memory, merely curious.

'Rome '68. You were pointed out to me,' said Audley, reaching for a chair. Ignoring everyone else he turned back to Llewelyn.

'So someone wants you dead.'

'It would appear so.'

'Is there a short list?' Audley spoke as though the list ought to be long rather than short.

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'Anyone with a vested interest in another Middle Eastern war,'

answered Llewelyn equably.

'Like the P.F.L.P.?'

'It's possible. Or the Sons of Eleazar.'

Audley shook his head. 'If – ' he underscored the word heavily ' if the Sons of Eleazar wanted you dead you're on borrowed time. But it isn't their policy, anyway.'

'Policies change.'

'Has there been a change of policy then?'

Llewelyn considered the question for a moment. For a man discussing his own death he was remarkably cool, Roskill thought.

'To be honest – no, not as far as I know.'

'Have there been any similar killings in recent months? Or attempts?'

'Not in Europe as far as I know.'

'I'd like that checked out.'

Llewelyn nodded towards Yeatman.

'And I must have a complete run-down on what you've been doing recently.'

'Yeatman will supply you with whatever you need.'

Roskill squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. He never found an upright chair yet that fitted his behind. Worse, Audley seemed to be steering the conversation away from what seemed to him to be the crucial questions.

'Who are the Sons of Eleazar, for heaven's sake?' he asked.

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'Second generation of the Jewish terrorist groups – like the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvai Leumi, you might say,' said Llewelyn.

'Another war would suit them very nicely and assassination is part of their tradition.'

'Absolute balderdash!' Audley growled. 'There's not a shred of evidence to prove continuity. I grant you they were terrorist groups, the I.Z.L. and the Stern Gang, but the P.L.F.P.'s their equivalent today. They were occupied territory phenomena —

Lohamei heruth Yisrael, "Freedom fighters of Israel", that's what the Stern Gang called itself. The Sons of Eleazar are simply the lunatic fringe of the Israeli hawks, and even they don't think war is desirable – just inevitable.'

'It's the same family tree,' said Llewelyn. 'They don't like peacemakers now any more than they did when they murdered Bernadotte in '48.'

'And Abdullah and Nokrashi? My God, man – if it's murder statistics you want I can give you ten Arab ones for every Jewish one. It was the Arabs who gave us the word assassin, not the Jews.'

'And the Jews gave us zealot,' said Llewelyn mildly. 'But I don't think etymology is going to help us much. The concepts of political murder and fanaticism are somewhat older ihan our words for them, after all. The point is that in my opinion it could have been either of them, Roskill. What I want you and Audley to try and find out is which one. You can leave the rest to us then.'

'But so far your evidence is merely hypothetical, Arabs and Jews have been known to kill people. Some Arabs and Jews don't like dummy2

peacemakers. You are a peacemaker. Your car blows up. Therefore it was blown up by Arabs or Jews. I don't think my old algebra master would have gone much on that – and algebra's another arabic word.'

Roskill looked round for support.

'Aye,' said Butler. 'And when it comes to peacemakers I could give you the name of two Belgian firms and a Swiss group – and a Czech one, I shouldn't wonder – who'd weep bitter tears the day peace was declared. There's not so much profit in ploughshares these days – small arms shares pay better dividends.'

'And some of their salesmen have been known to protect their terriitory with their product,' said Roskill. 'So far we haven't got a shred of proof about anything.'

'Two shreds – so far we've got two shreds,' said Cox. 'One from Bicester, one from the car.

'We did Bicester pretty thoroughly yesterday, because there was just a chance someone might have seen the car while it still had someone in it. We drew a blank there, but two people think they saw something very near where it was left at about the right time.

One said "Wog", meaning apparently "Middle Eastern, inclined to Arab"; the other was more educated – he said "Cypriot, maybe", which could mean "Middle Eastern, inclined to Israel".'

'That's a shred, right enough,' said Butler.

'Agreed – just a shred. The car's a bit stronger, though.' Cox consulted a small red notebook for a few seconds. 'T.P.D.X. – do you know what that is?'

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'At a guess, one of those innumerable plastic explosives?'

'Quite right. A plastic explosive. Russian, very new – and strong medicine. Just the thing for guerrillas, and sure enough the Russians obligingly supplied them with a consignment of it in January. It was the first time anyone received any outside the Soviet Union, as far as we know.'

'Well, that pins it on Fatah – if that's what was used in the car,'

exclaimed Roskill.

'It was used on the car all right, but it doesn't pin it on Fatah,' Cox shook his head sadly. 'That would have been too easy!

Unfortunately they moved it — or a good deal of it – to one of their front line posts in the Ghor as Safi area, south of the Dead Sea.'

Roskill groaned. 'Don't tell me! The Israelis raided the place!'

'Right again. Softened it up with an air raid on January 20. The next day what they euphemistically call a "purging operation" was effected. In this instance they purged Fatah of a large amount of T.

P.D.X., among other things of lesser importance.'

'So it fits the Bicester evidence exactly – Wog or Cypriot. It could have been either of them.'

'Was the Ghor as Safi raid laid on to take the T.P.D.X.?' Audley asked.

Cox looked questioningly at Yeatman.

'We rather think it was,' said Yeatman. 'I'd lay you three to one on.'

Audley tapped the table. 'Then what you're saying is that they're so damn good they can scoop up the stuff within a fortnight of its dummy2

arrival, and then so damn clumsy they can't wrap it up properly.

Frankly, I don't think they would use it – ever. They just wanted it out of circulation. But if they did use it, it would go off under the right man.'

Roskill caught his breath: Audley was temping fortune now.

'Perhaps it did,' said Butler, thoughtfully. 'Perhaps –'

'Blow up what's his name — Jenkins? In the way most likely to ensure the Special Branch and heaven knows who else would be called in?' Audley ridiculed the idea with a wave of the hand. 'Let's stick to what's within the bounds of probability at least. And I think that rules out the Israelis.'

'They have been known to miscalculate, you know,' Llewelyn protested. 'Karameh, for example. The Nahal Diqla business and the Abu Zaabal raid.'

'By our standards that's not a very high striking rate,' Audley replied. 'But don't worry. I'll check out the Cypriots its well as the Wogs.'

'When you do, Dr. Audley,' Yeatman said, 'you might make a special effort in the case of your friend Colonel Shapiro.'

Now at last, thought Roskill, they were coming down on the target area. Shapiro was Audley's special Israeli buddy: he had been at Audley's wedding, and at Cambridge with Audley years before.

And though the man seemed rather comical, his was top grade military intelligence and hard as nails, blooded in '56 and '67.

'And what has Shapiro been doing?'

'He left town, as the Americans would say, in a sudden cloud of dummy2

dust the morning of the day Llewelyn's car was stolen. Instead of having lunch with you, Dr. Audley – your regular Wednesday lunch, I believe – '

Audley blinked unhappily.

' – he plunged into rural Sussex and lunched with another friend at Lewes.'

'And then, apparently, he drove cross-country,' Llewelyn took up the story, dead-pan, 'to dine at All Souls, four places away from me.'

Roskill strove agonisingly to listen and to think at the same time.

Lewes was – what – maybe ten minutes' drive from East Firle?

'One of those little coincidences which make life interesting,'

continued Llewelyn. 'In the terms of personal alibis. Colonel Shapiro has what might be called a watertight one. I can testify that he didn't lay a finger on my car. But in any accessory role, or as a mastermind, I'm afraid he's guilty until you can prove him innocent. It does rather look as though he put the finger on me, if that's the correct term. Don't you agree?'

They had ambushed Audley neatly and cruelly. But with Shapiro as their No. 1 prospect, it was no wonder they'd wanted him above everyone else.

'As a matter of fact, I don't agree at all. Jake Shapiro would never set up anything so crude. And since Americanisms are de rigeur this morning, I'd say it's much more likely that he's been framed.'

Audley spoke calmly, his composure quickly restored. 'Besides, he'd be even less likely to miss you than Eleazor's sons – if he dummy2

wanted you dead you'd be dead. The only surprising thing is that he's in this position.'

He turned from Llewelyn back to Yeatman. 'And since you're so well posted on comings and goings, where were all the other possible suspects? The Fatah man, for instance – I don't even know who the current top man here is now – did he leave town? And the P.F.L.P. man? And that new Egyptian who's got Howeidi's job –

what's his name? – Razzak? He's new in town.'

It was Yeatman's turn to look put out, but it was Stocker who answered.

'You can count Razzak out – unless leaving town on Wednesday according to plan is suspicious circumstance in itself, that is. I happen to know that he went to Paris to see their ambassador. He asked me on Monday which was the best early boat train.'

A premonition rose in Roskill's mind like a telltale wisp of smoke from a haystack, catching him unaware.

'Boat train?' he echoed.

Stocker looked at him sardonically. 'Unlike you, Squadron Leader, there are people who are not enamoured with flying.' (How little they knew!) 'Colonel Razzak only flies when he has to, it would seem, and in this instance he was in no hurry.'

'We'll check it out all the same.' Audley hadn't missed it either, evidently. 'Dover-Calais, I take it?'

'Newhaven-Dieppe as a matter of fact. A longer sea trip but a less depressing journey, I'm told.'

Roskill stared stupidly at his knee, not trusting himself to look dummy2

anyone in the eye. If Lewes was in easy driving distance of East Firle, Newhaven was almost within easy walking distance. Razzak and Shapiro were like two bearings on a map: their point of intersection in time and space could have turned that peaceful stretch of downland into a place of danger. The coincidence once again was too glaring to ignore.

'You're quite right to suspect everyone, Audley,' said Llewelyn.

'The possibility of Shapiro's innocence has occurred to us. You actually favour the P.F.L.P., don't you, Cox?'

'The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as such – no,'

said Cox judiciously. 'They've been getting more responsible – or maybe more respectable – recently, rather like the student revolutionaries. But there are one or two offshoots which do frighten the life out of me.'

'Such as?'

Cox considered Audley in silence for several seconds. 'The one that worries me at this moment in time hasn't even got a name yet.

Not a name I can put to it,' he said reluctantly. 'Or at best only part of a name.'

It wasn't reluctance, but diffidence. Cox had never met Audley before, but he would know the big man's reputation well enough.

Roskill remembered his own first traumatic encounter with him again: he had been desperately afraid of having his own cherished theories disdainfully shot down in flames.

He looked at Cox carefully for the first time. He didn't look like a policeman – not the bulldog, bloodhound or alsatian varieties dummy2

anyway. Mongrel with a discernible fox terrier bloodline, unremarkable in any gathering. But that, of course, was the modern Special Branch trend; a hairy hitchhiking student had only recently complained to him that the special fuzz was becoming hard to pinpoint.

What was certain, though, was that Cox's ability would belie his appearance: there'd be no dead wood around Llewelyn and Stocker.

The same thoughts, or something like, must have been running through Audley's head. 'Even part of a name is a beginning,' he said encouragingly. 'A name and a feeling about it. I've started with no more man that often enough.'

Cox nodded. 'That's about it – a name and a feeling.'

'And the name?'

' Hassan.' Cox paused. 'It's a man, or the code name for a man, not a group. The man who gives the orders to a group, maybe an inner P.

F.L.P. wing, or an off-shoot, or maybe some-tiling entirely new –

we don't know.'

'And what has Hassan done so far?'

'Apparently nothing. The only references we've had to Hassan are in the nature of forecasts. Rather messianic forecasts, too.'

'Such as?'

'We've had four, possibly five. And when I say "we" I mean the joint committee we set up with the Interpol people in '69. The West Germans got the first when they were rounding up everyone after the Zurich air crash. They all add up to the same thing, anyway –

when Hassan gets going he won't make any mistakes.'

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'Then that would seem to rule out Hassan in this instance, Tom,'

said Llewelyn.

'That depends, sir, on whether he intended to get you or merely to frighten you.'

'He's frightened me – no doubt about that. But he could have done that with far less trouble – and without any accidental bloodshed.'

Cox shook his head. 'I don't think he's fussy about that.'

'Which means, I take it,' said Audley, 'that something unpleasant happened to your five sources?'

Cox looked at him sharply. 'Yes – and no. Two of them were released – three if you count the one in France, but we don't really know for sure about him. The French aren't very cooperative these days. All three of them have disappeared, anyway.'

'And the other two?'

'They were held on weapons charges. Each of them had a sub-machine gun hidden in his digs – in each case, oddly enough, it was an Israeli Uzi they'd got, too.'

'Not so odd, really,' said Stocker. 'The Uzi happens to be the best thing on the market. It's standard issue in four or five gentile armies – what you might call an Israeli export triumph.'

'Well, the Germans didn't take kindly to it in the hands of a couple of Arab students – one was a Syrian, actually, and the other an Iraqi. They were going to throw the book at them.'

'But they didn't?'

'They never got the chance. The Syrian committed suicide – he was dummy2

in a secure jail in Bonn. But the Iraqi was picked up in a little town near the Swiss border.' Cox paused for effect. 'He was sprung by four masked men armed with Uzis. It was only a little police station, of course – and they weren't expecting anything. But it was a neat job all the same, and the Germans haven't had a smell of him since. And believe me, they've looked hard.'

'All of which is vastly exciting,' said Llewelyn, 'but doesn't prove a thing. I've seen your Hassan file, Tom. It's interesting, even disturbing. But if Hassan exists he doesn't appear to have reached England. And if he is here we don't even know what his aims are.

You just can't give me one single, useful, tangible fact to back this

"feeling" of yours.'

Llewelyn spoke lazily, only a few degrees from contempt, his Welsh origins again rich beneath his words — Roskill was reminded of a mineworkers' union organiser rejecting an absurd wage offer made by a not very bright Coal Board spokesman. For a man under possible sentence of death the union organiser was admirably cool, but nonetheless exasperating. The temptation to come to Cox's support was irresistible.

'I don't agree at all.' He tried to match the Welshman's lilt with the sort of public school drawl that would be most offensive. 'I don't know much about your Arab-Israeli feuds, but I do know that whoever fixed your car was well organised and ruthless and bloody-minded. And that goes for suicide and jail-breaking too. It means that this character Hassan looks after his own – one way or another. Which makes him a good prospect.'

He looked to Audley for support and was disconcerted to receive a dummy2

blank stare.

'We'll check him out,' said Audley noncommittsilly.

Like Llewelyn – irritatingly like Llewelyn – he was also playing it cool now. Roskill shrugged and relapsed into silence, masking his annoyance; this was presumably how the poor bloody pawns always felt.

Llewelyn smiled ait him. 'All are prospects and all must be checked out. Quite right again. But checking takes time and I can't go on living a – how shall I put it? – restricted life for ever. It's boring and it wastes a lot of valuable time. So – ' he turned to Audley – 'just what do you suppose to do about it?'

A muscle twitched momentarily in Audley's cheek, as though a boring and restricted life of indefinite duration might be no bad thing for Llewelyn.

'Forty-eight hours,' he said. 'Give me that long to look up a few old acquaintances and do a little horse-trading. Then I may be able to tell you where you stand.'

'Horse-trading?' Stocker looked at him curiously. 'I wouldn't have thought you had much to trade with?'

'I haven't. But I've no doubt Roskill has. If you've no objection to his letting slip something here and there I think we might make out well enough.'

'Yes, I suppose you might at that.' Stocker eyed Roskill. 'You must have quite a few marketable titbits about the Middle Eastern air forces tucked away by now — and I've no objection to your disbursing a few in a good cause.'

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'You haven't?' Roskill looked from, one to the other incredulously, dismayed at their calm assumption that he would so easily squander his hard-won capital. It went against all his instincts –

and worse, if it ever leaked out it would ruin his reputation. 'Well, I bloody well have! I'm not going to play both ends against the middle for anyone, no matter what!'

'Don't worry, Hugh,' Audley reassured him. 'We won't sour your contacts. In fact I may be able to provide you with a few very useful ones. There's no cause for alarm.'

Roskill subsided sullenly. The bugger of it was that playing both ends against the middle just about described what he was doing already – and the middle against each end, too. And. God only knew what Audley and Llewelyn and Stocker were really up to.

'Talking of contacts, Squadron Leader Roskill, I think you've one exceedingly useful one of which you may not be aware,' said Cox.

'The Ryle Foundation.'

The Ryle – ' A moment earlier Roskill had been halfway to telling himself that at least there could hardly be any more unpleasant surprises ahead, but evidently there was no limit to them.

'The Ryle Foundation?' He heard his own voice echo Cox uncertainly.

'I believe you know Lady Ryle quite well,' said Cox. 'And Sir John Ryle.'

'I know the Ryles, yes.' The voice sounded more like his own this time, no matter how he felt inside. 'But I've never had anything to do with the Foundation – and I don't think the Ryles have either.'

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But obviously they did; or one of them did. He couldn't even remember whether it was relief or education or both, for the life of him. 'But Lady Ryle does a lot of charity committee work,' he concluded cautiously.

'She's an honorary life vice-president, as a matter of fact. And she's on the educational grants sub-committee.' Cox sounded as though he had expected Roskill to know much better what Lady Ryle did or did not do.

Education rang a bell. Old man Ryle – or was it the grandfather? –

had robbed the Persian Gulf blind in the days when anything within range of a British gunboat was fair game for British mercantile enterprise. And then in a fit of conscience had divided his loot in half, one to buy the family into respectability and one to bring the blessings of education to the Arab world.

It was coming back now, a word here and a sentence there.

Grandfather Ryle had been in on the ground floor in oil. But when he'd sold out he'd wrapped the share he gave back to the Arabs so tight there'd never been a breath of either scandal or do-gooding inefficiency about his Foundation; it had been constructed to show solid annual profits in terms of S.R.N.s and agricultural diplomas.

No bloody arts and crafts for granddad – the words had been John's. He remembered them quite clearly now.

'You're not going to tell me that there's anything subversive about the Foundation, for God's sake?' Roskill came out of his nose-dive and climbed to counter-attack. 'It's as solid as UNESCO – probably a damn sight solider in terms of secure finance.'

'You do know something about the Ryle Foundation then?'

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Roskill gestured vaguely. 'Second-hand stuff – I remember the Ryles talking about it now. They said – '

The penny dropped. Butler had said as much the night before: They know you got Jenkins in . . . and Audley likes you . . . but I think there's something else behind that too . . . His connection with the Ryles had been the clincher: what they knew about that – the thought that they knew anything – made his flesh creep. But that wouldn't be what interested them now: there must be something very wrong with the Foundation, whatever its appearance of respectability might be.

'What did they say?' Cox prompted.

Jenkins and Audley and the Ryles, thought Roskill bitterly: no wonder they'd changed their own rules to recruit him! What would have trebly disqualified him under normal circumstances made him the ideal candidate with time pressing them so hard. No time to plant a professional carefully and painstakingly in the Foundation; they needed someone with a ready-made introduction to it. And in him they had the one with the other – the sinking feeling in his stomach told him they knew it, too ...

'What's wrong with the Ryle Foundation?' he asked harshly.

Cox looked to Llewelyn.

'I know some of your Arab specialists think the Foundation's clean,' he began.

'Elliott Wilkinson swears it is, and he works for them,' said Llewelyn.

Audley snorted derisively.

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'Well, I don't agree with them,' said Cox bluntly. 'If Hassan's men are here, I think they could well have come in through it. And frankly, I think they are here.'

V

ROSKILL WAS TIRED and uncomfortable and thirsty and bored.

He couldn't quite decide which sensation led the others; as he thought of each one in turn it took over the lead, but they were all jostling one another for a dead-heat.

On the whole the discomfort was probably the most acceptable.

The chairs in the lecture hall were plastic and form-fitting, but the form they had been designed to fit was not his, no matter how he tried to rearrange himself. But at least he was accustomed to such a state of affairs and even expected it.

The thirst would have been bearable but for one daunting possibility which had occurred to him three seconds after he had realised he was thirsty: since this was primarily an Arab occasion the drinks promised after the lectures might be aggressively non-alcoholic, in strict deference to the Prophet's ordinance. True, it was an Anglo-Arab evening, but the nature of the refreshment would depend on which half dominated the organising committee –

the Arabs would want to cater for the boozy British, and the British would want to defer to nonexistent Arab sensibilities. He could only pray that the Arab faction had come out on top.

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At the moment boredom was ahead. The speaker droned on and Roskill looked again helplessly at his watch. Theoretically the fellow should have finished ten minutes earlier, but somewhere along what he had disingenuously called his 'lightning journey through Arab literature' he had taken a wrong turning and had become lost in medieval Persia. It had taken a good – or bad –

quarter of an hour to talk his way back to the main road and he was still two centuries behind schedule.

The organisers had unwisely kept their dullest speaker at the end.

Or perhaps they hadn't expected him to be so goddamn awful; on paper the opening session on the problems of aid and education had sounded even drearier and in practice only the obvious competence and intelligence of the young American-trained Arab who conducted it had saved it.

But then the young Arab had been a Ryle man, and the Foundation always paid for the best. Judging by the lightning traveller they needed the best, too: he was an educational stumbling block in himself.

Roskill tried to stretch his legs into another position. His tiredness was not so much the product of his early morning expedition along Maitland's telephone line as the result of the afternoon's Middle Eastern cramming lesson which had followed hard on the morning's head-shrinking conference. The idea had been that he should not betray himself too fatuously at this evening's bun-fight by confusing the National Liberation Movement with the Popular Democratic Front or the Palestine Liberation Movement with the Palestine Armed Struggle Command, should those mutually hostile dummy2

bodies crop up casually in the conversation.

But the Foreign Office crammer had waxed something too eloquent for a good teacher. Names and initials had flowed from him: Ashbal, Mapam, Group 62, Friends of Jerusalem, Friends of Arabia, Saiqa, P.L.O., P.L.A., P.L.M., P.O.L.P., A.N.SA.R. and A.

L.F. – as an incantation, repeated quickly enough, it would probably summon djinns from the desert, but it had gone in one of Roskill's ears and out the other.

Unfortunately it had stayed between the ears just long enough to answer the crammer's quiz with deceptive competence.

'Bravo, Squadron Leader,' the crammer had beamed at him.

'Another two or three afternoons and we'll make an Arabist of you!

And a Zionist too if you can spare a morning. The right jargon's half the battle — just string it together with a few slogans and you can pass anywhere...

'In action this evening? Is that the C.A.A.B.U. gathering at the Dorchester? No – the Ryle Foundation one, isn't it? Well, not to worry, Squadron Leader – the Ryle people are as near non-partisan as it's possible to be these days – they don't encourage too much P.

L.O. talk. Can't afford to with all that real estate of theirs on the West Bank in Israeli hands, you know. If you don't stick your neck out you'll get by – you can say you're a desalination expert. No one's likely to know much about that . . . Just remember half of what I've told you and be a good listener – they all want to talk all the time, so that shouldn't be too difficult..."

Boredom and tiredness combined to pull away from thirst and discomfort at last, and Roskill's thoughts wandered back to the dummy2

morning, when Audley had stood by the Triumph grinning at him triumphantly.

'We got more than we gave away, Hugh – you put up a first-rate show, too. Not too smart to make them think twice — that was just the right note to strike!'

But that not-too-smartness had not been a consciously-struck note, Roskill had reflected uphappily, grinning back at Audley.

'A put-up job from start to finish, of course,' Audley had said.

'They no more suspect Jake Shapiro than I do. It's this Hassan they're scared of – Llewelyn believes in him as much as Cox.

Which probably means they've got more on him than they're willing to admit. They just want to double-check it through me.'

'So what do we do?'

'We shall do what they want us to do – today, at any rate. You'd better go and see that Foreign Office crammer of theirs this afternoon – and then you can go to that Ryle meeting tonight as Cox suggested. It might even be useful, you never know.' Audley had rubbed his hands. 'And I've got a lot of catching up to do to find out what the hell's really happening ...'

Very pleased with himself, David Audley had been, like an old warhorse smelling battle on familiar territory.

Roskill had been very much less pleased; it might be a jolly game for Audley, but he sensed that in Audley's game he was becoming something less even than a junior partner. And yet he could see no way of avoiding his downgrading: without Audley he didn't stand a chance of attaining his own vengeance, and the big man was dummy2

incapable of playing second fiddle to anyone. So all he could do was to follow instructions, keeping his own counsel and never forgetting his objective.

'And first thing tomorrow you can slip down to Firle and scout around,' said Audley. 'You can reach me at home if you turn anything up. After that we may have something of our own to work on.'

Slip down to Firle! Roskill's jaw had tightened at that – so easy to say and so agonising to carry out!

Well, there would come a time maybe when Audley wouldn't find it so easy to control the action . . . there would come a time...

Roskill started guiltily, catching himself in the very act of falling off his chair. He looked around him, fearful lest he had drawn attention to himself, but the rest of the audience seemed either equally withdrawn or, like the fat Arab with the scarred face in the row ahead of him, unhappily restless. There was a subdued undercurrent of movement – of legs stretching and bottoms searching for comfort.

He looked at his watch again, to find that only another five tortoise-minutes had crawled past. The bloody man was still only at the beginning of the 19th century.

' . .. and so we come to what may be considered the dawn of modern times...

The speaker paused to consult his notes. But as he raised his head, his mouth opening to greet the dawn, the fat Arab began to clap vigorously.

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For a moment it was touch and go; the speaker looked around wildly and those of the audience who were still with him stirred uneasily. But the Arab clapped more enthusiastically than ever, looking to left and right as though to shame the laggards into action.

The crammer's advice not to draw attention to himself flashed through Roskill's mind, only to be instantly extinguished as his hands came together on their own initiative. The woman on his left looked at him briefly in surprise and then joined in, followed by the man on her left. Spontaneously applause flared up in a dozen different parts of the hall, those who genuinely thought the lecture had ended rushing to join the dissidents who knew all too well that it hadn't.

Last to join in were the handful who had actually been listening, but when they did so they clapped louder than the rest to hide their embarrassment. There were even a few shouts of 'bravo' – one coming from the Arab himself. Such was the storm of applause that in the end the speaker's chagrin turned to gratification. He had probably never encountered such enthusiasm before.

Altogether, thought Roskill as he joined the stampede towards the refreshment room, it was a notable landmark in Anglo-Arabian understanding: for once the silent majority had cooperated to liberate themselves.

He held back until the worst of the crush along the tables had thinned out, disagreeably aware that the contents of the silver bowls ahead of him was as fruity as he had feared. After carefully dummy2

scanning the faces of the waiters and waitresses dispensing it he edged his way towards a wizened little man whose magenta nose promised sympathy, even though he was presiding over a bowl in which sliced fruit floated like dead fish depth-charged to the surface.

'Is there any alternative to this – this – ' Roskill indicated the bowl

'whatever it is?'

A glimmer of recognition lit the bloodshot eyes. There were some pale, intense English faces among the gathered friends of Arabia he had already seen, but there were also ageing, darkened skins which must have weathered in the forts of trucial levies and Arab Legion messes. There had to be something under the counter for them.

The eyes took in Roskill's tan, which had been started under Israeli skies and consolidated in Greece.

Roskill slid a 50-penny piece across the white tablecloth, under the napkin by the man's hand.

'For the love of God,' he hissed, 'give me a decent drink.'

'This is a very thirst-quenching drink, sir,' said the little man, without looking down but with his fingers testing the coin's heptagonal shape. 'For the Arabian gentlemen, that is.'

He bent down briefly behind the table, reappearing with a tall glass on the side of which he deftly fastened a sliver of cucumber.

'Window-dressing, sir – merely window-dressing,' he murmured reassuringly.

It still looked more like a long drink suitable for the Arab gentlemen, and Roskill sniffed it suspiciously.

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It was Scotch. He took a slow sip. And not just Scotch, but the purest, mellowest, most exquisite malt whisky, unadulterated and possibly the largest straight measure he had ever received. The Foundation certainly looked after its own, and with his weak head for spirits he'd have to watch his tongue.

He nodded gratefully and turned away to scrutinise the crowd again for the faces in Cox's file of probables and possibles. So far he hadn't seen one of them, wide though the range at the gathering was: pouchy, easy-living faces; lean, bitter faces; ugly, pitted complexions like the surface of the Moon and that almost feminine beauty which was the inheritance of Circassian ancestry.

The faces reminded him of what the Foreign Office man had said in his enthusiasm: the Middle East had melted down so many races, conquerors and slaves alike, that spotting bloodlines was a game for the experts. Turks, Mongols, Greeks, Albanians, Normans, Napoleon's veterans and Australians oif the Imperial Light Horse – the greatest of Islam's admirals had been red-haired.

The historical allusions had been lost on him – the fellow was as bad as Audley – but the roll of honour, or dishonour, had stuck.

But with all those in the family tree, he had thought, it was surprising that there wasn't more military talent around.

None of which helped him now, anyway. He swung round to try another segment of the crowd, colliding with the man behind him as he did so. For a horrible second he was fearful lest some of his precious whisky might be lost, only to discover that he'd already drunk most of it.

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'I beg your pardon,' he apologised quickly.

'No damage done.'

A tall, grey-haired man – one of the leathery English. Roskill's eyes dropped: sure enough there was one of the tall glasses in the man's hand, with an identical piece of cucumber window-dressing on its rim.

The pale blue eyes twinkled at him in recognition.

'Havergal. I don't believe we've met?'

There had been a Havergal on the official programme, among the Ryle committee members – a colonel with a string of decorations.

'Roscoe,' said Roskill, slurring the last syllable unidentifiably. The collision had brought him into a mixed discussion group from which there could be no quick escape: they were all looking at him.

'Desalination's my field,' he said. If the crammer was right that should slow them down.

'And is there anything growing in your field?' It was the same fat Arab who had rescued them all in the lecture hall.. 'Are you going to make the desert bloom?'

'Given time and money,' Roskill replied guardedly. All scientific enterprises needed time and money.

'You don't think atomic energy might offer a short cut, then?' the Arab persisted. 'Van Pelt's report is premature in your opinion?'

Roskill drained his glass. The only Van Pelt he knew was Lucy, the pint-sized virago in the Peanuts comic strip. He pretended to consider the question, to the obvious irritation of the gaunt young man opposite him who looked as if a banner rather than a glass of dummy2

fruit cup ought to have been grasped in his fist.

There was a chance there.

'Given time and money,' he repeated dogmatically, 'we can win enough land to resettle every refugee in the Middle East.' He looked the young man in the eye and was relieved to meet the glare of fanaticism.

'The land they need,' said the young man belligerently, 'is the land that was taken away from them. They want justice – not bloody resettlement.'

Roskill saw his own role in sudden perspective: a fanatical desalination man was born inside him – a cutter of political knots with a sharpened slide-rule, as oblivious of reality as the hot-tempered young man and the maxi-skirted amazon who was nodding her head in unison beside him. Once start them up properly and Van Pelt's inconvenient report would be forgotten.

'Crops don't grow on justice – they grow on land. And one bit of land is no different to a peasant from another – ' – he bulldozed his way over shocked expressions – ' – providing he can get his plough into it. If half the capital that goes into arms went into desalination research – '

His heretical views were drowned in a chorus of protest; they were suddenly all talking at once about Palestine and Zionism and

'bourgeois city-dwellers' – all except Havergal and the Arab, who had evidently heard it before.

'Desalination research!' The young man made it sound like a nasty branch of biological warfare. 'The sine qua non of peace in the dummy2

Middle East isn't research – it is the overthrow of the economic, political and militarist base of the racist-chauvanist state of Israel!'

'We must cure the moral schizophrenia of World Jewry at the same time,' cried the amazon. 'That cannot be done until every last refugee has been restored to her homeland.'

They all started to talk again, so loudly that people nearby turned to look at them. Roskill felt suddenly like a boy scout who had made a fire with two sticks and set the whole forest ablaze. And he could see no quick way of stopping them before everyone's attention was drawn to him.

It was the Arab who doused the flames – simply by raising a plump hand from which the index finger was missing.

'I think Mr. Roskill isn't denying that there is a refugee problem,'

he interceded. 'He's merely emphasising that our military struggle must never blind us to our long-term aims. As one of your own prime ministers said – Lloyd George, I think it was – "a land fit for heroes". And doesn't Chairman Mao himself say "Today's fighter on the battlefield is tomorrows worker in the paddy field"?'

Roskill mumbled agreement, in confusion not so much because he had said no such thing as from hearing Lloyd George recruited with Chairman Mao to support what he hadn't said.

Christ! The man had called him — 'Roskill'!

He couldn't have heard what hadn't been said, which could only mean that he knew already. Which meant in turn that not only had Roskill himself failed to spot anyone, but that he'd been spotted himself – and by someone whose face was not in the suspect file.

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'Let's charge your glass again, my dear chap,' said Havergal genially.

Sobered, Roskill allowed himself to be steered away from the group. The crowning indignity was that the Arab actually covered their retreat.

'These technological people,' Roskill heard him begin deprecatingly, 'experts in their own spheres, but politically naive ...'

By God, it was true enough!

Havergal pushed him gently through the crowd to the wizened waiter's corner.

'Same again, Wadsworth,' he commanded, conjuring up more of the elixir from under the table,

He handed Roskill back his glass. 'Nearly a nasty accident there, Ross – it is Ross or haven't I got it right?'

All the British top brass on the Ryle Foundation were politically respectable – reliable even – except Llewelyn's friend Wilkinson, against whom Audley had warned him. In any case, it was hard to imagine Havergal taking any part in the sort of enterprise he must have fought for most of his military career. And the cat was out. of the bag, anyway.

'Roskill.'

'Roskill?' Havergal tested the name. 'I don't think I've seen you at any of our gatherings before. I take it you're just back from the field. Are you Red Sea or the Gulf or the Med?'

Havergal was far too courteous to say 'Who the hell are you, sir?'

but that was what it amounted to. There would be no putting off a dummy2

wily old bird like him for long, either – it would be far safer to conscript his help. But that could only be attempted after positive clearance, and in the meantime put off he had to be.

'I'm a friend of Sir John and Lady Kyle's.'

'Indeed?' Havergal craned his neck and peered over the heads around them. His intention was obvious.

'Lady Ryle doesn't know that I'm here tonight.' He had known in his bones that his failure to reach her during the afternoon might turn out awkward.

'She doesn't?' Havergal's tone was neutral rather than disbelieving.

'Well, it will be a pleasant surprise for her, won't it? She's coming this way – shall we go and meet her?'

The courtesy was rock-hard now – and the good-mannered gesture allowing Roskill to lead the way was a command.

If you only knew, Colonel, thought Roskill, if you only knew...

He saw her first: the dark head so carefully tinted that only an expert might guess the first grey hairs were being kept at bay, her outward air of confidence and breeding tempered as ever by an equally evident inner warmth and gentleness No wonder all those charities liked to have her on their committees. 'My dear, I believe I've got a friend of yours here,' Havergal sounded less assured now, as though he found the prospect of embarrassing her distasteful.

She saw him. 'Hugh!'

'Isobel.'

Hints and lies about desalination clogged in his throat, even though he knew she'd be quick to pick them up: practice had made that dummy2

second nature for them. Already she was covering her surprise with pleasure.

'Hugh – how lovely to see you!' She turned to Havergal. 'Squadron Leader Roskill and I are very old friends, Archie – it was kind of you to help him to find me. But Hugh – I thought you were up at Snettisham?'

'Snettisham?' Havergal snorted the name as though he knew it, frowning. The rank and the place name added up to an active profession which had nothing to do with desalination, but the beard and the clumsy deception contradicted the addition. Even the fact that he might connect the Ryles and Snettisham wouldn't account for the reason why someone like Isobel Ryle should be so happy to meet so dark a horse. 'I know your C.O., Roskill – or I used to know him.'

'Valentine?' said Roskill. Valentine had flown Hunters in Aden and up the Gulf in his younger days. That placed Havergal appropriately.

Havergal nodded, measuring Roskill speculatively.

'Something came up to change my plans,' said Roskill. And to change my plans this evening, too, he thought. However much he hated to involve her it was unavoidable now. 'Can I see you later tonight?'

He glanced at Havergal, coming to an immediate decision. 'And you, too, Colonel Havergal?'

'Are you going to the dinner after this reception, my dear?'

Havergal asked Isobel.

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'No, Archie. I've – I've only just got back from holiday. I've got a million things to do.'

'I'm not going to the dinner either,' said Havergal. 'I had a prior engagement.' He looked at Roskill. 'Which I shall break.'

'Can't it wait until tomorrow, Hugh?' Isobel sounded doubtful. 'I really do have a lot to do – and I'm awfully tired.'

'I don't think it can wait, can it, Roskill?' said Havergal. 'And if it concerns both of us, I'm afraid it's something I've been afraid of for a long time.'

VI

IT WAS ONLY after he had actually parked there that Roskill realised he had driven into Bunnock Street from habit, not necessity.

He hated the dingy cul-de-sac, with its blank-faced houses; it always had orange peel and empty cigarette packets in its gutters, a place altogether out of place in what was otherwise a rather smart district. Even the people who lived in it seemed ashamed of it, for he had rarely seen any of them coming or going; presumably there were back entrances which let into what were now more salubrious mews, leaving their front doors to visiting dustmen.

All that could be said of it now was that it looked better by night, by the barely adequate street lighting.

The trouble was the Bunnock Street had three advantages which in dummy2

the past had always triumphed over his distaste. It invariably offered parking space, as though those of its residents who had cars were unwilling to trust them to it; it was discreetly placed in relation to the Ryles' flat, which was a good five minutes by road, but only an eerie two-minutes' walk through St. Biddulph's churchyard; and, since discretion was all that was normally required, it had a phone box conveniently sited at its junction with King's Row. No adulterer could ask for more.

After he had carefully turned the car round and located it beside one of the lamp posts, Roskill made himself comfortable in the passenger's seat and sat for a time staring down the curving street, as he had done so often before when waiting for Isobel. The waiting then had had a meaning which cancelled out the beastliness of the view, but now it was duty and not even the excellence of the Ryle Foundation's whisky could prevent it from being depressing.

After a time he looked at his watch. It was nearly forty-five minutes since he had left the reception and now half an hour since he had phoned the Department – but that, too, had been depressing with its odds-against encounter with someone who knew him well

– and who now almost certainly knew him even better.

'... Archibald Havergal? You must be joking!'

Howe's Etonian-Oxonian drawl had packed a world of patronising incredulity Into the words.

'Do you know him?'

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'Know him? My dear old Hugh – I can't even believe in him! I didn't know they christened anyone "Archibald" since Queen Victoria's day – but I suppose he could date from her times –

Colonel Archibald Havergal – marvellous!'

'Just get me his record and a security clearance on him, you idiot.

And – ' he had steeled himself to say the name ' – a clearance for Isobel Ryle, too. Sir John Kyle's wife. R-Y-L-E – '

'You don't need to spell it out, old boy. I've seen the Lady Isobel from afar. Strictly Horse of the Year Show, Crafts and Good Works – a dishy piece in a do-gooding sort of way, but a bit long in the tooth for you and me .... Not to worry, though! Your name's back on the V.I.P. card again, so we'll put a girdle round the world for you in thirty minutes if you like – was it thirty minutes? It'll take us half an hour, anyway, Hugh. It's not the facts, but the clearance – we have to find the decision milkers for that...'

Roskill had been squirming by then, and he was squirming still.

Even the certainty that Howe himself would probably be vastly embarrassed when what he'd said in jest caught up with him. didn't help. It might have been better if he'd tried to get straight through to Stocker, but the evening had been disastrous enough without being quizzed on it wliile it was still fresh in his mind and before it could be suitably edited on to paper.

But now he couldn't delay the evil moment any later: Howe had had his half an hour and Havergal would soon be at the flat.

He opened the door on the passenger's side to step out on to the pavement, only to discover that it just failed to clear the lamp-post.

It was just that sort of night, he warned himself...

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As he feared, it was Howe chastened almost into seriousness who answered his call.

'Havergal's straight up-and-down and true blue – absolutely to be trusted. When he came back from Hadhramaut in '64 -he'd been somewhere back-of-beyond north of Saywun – they wanted him to work for us out there. But he's nobody's fool and he wasn't having any. He said the sun had set on the Empire and he was too old to be out after dark. Also he rather likes the Arabs, warts and all. That's why he agreed to help the Ryle Foundation – though he made damn sure it was above board first: he checked it out with us.'

'And it was above board?'

'It was then. No doubt you know better now. Apparently you should have been shown the file on it this afternoon, but it was snarled up in the works somewhere. I'll have it sent round to you tonight if you like, together with all the stuff in your in-tray you were supposed to collect this morning.'

Howe knew he wasn't at home and was gently fishing for his precise location. Roskill peered down at one of the lines of graffiti on the wall: it was meticulously done in Latin. Home was never like this. 'I shan't be home until later. I'll give you a ring then if I want anything. What about Lady Ryle?'

Howe didn't answer at once, whether from delicacy or a lingering shred of embarrassment it was impossible to gauge.

'Lady Ryle is considered a good risk, at your discretion. Nothing's known against her, as far as the Foundation is concerned.'

As far as the Foundation was concerned. Howe was relying on his dummy2

discretion – or appealing to it. Or perhaps he didn't think he had the gall to inquire further.

In ordinary circumstances that might not have been a miscalculation, Roskill told himself ruefully. But as it was it didn't take into account the trauma of the past twenty hours and sordidness of Bunnock Street. Discretion no longer mattered, only the pretence that this could be regarded as a legitimate question.

Such an opportunity might never occur again. 'And just what is known about her?'

The delay was briefer this time.

'I wondered whether you'd ask that,' said Howe. 'I didn't think you would, you know.'

'But I have.'

'Indeed you have!' Howe laughed shortly. 'Well, they know about you, old boy – chapter and verse.'

'I never doubted it.' God damn them to hell.

'Then I won't bore you with the details. It states that Ryle turns a blind eye for the sake of the children and the better to pursue his own fancies. What might be called "a civilised arrangement", relying on the good sense of all parties. I congratulate you, Hugh –

you appear to have got the best of both worlds...'

Or the worst of both worlds, according to what sort of worlds one found desirable...

Roskill walked thoughtfully back up the street, pausing only to pick up the slides and the little projector from the car boot before dummy2

heading for the flat. It hadn't really surprised him that his liaison with Isobel was known. From the very beginning they had been careful, but never secretive – their precautions had been designed rather to avoid embarrassment than to deceive the world in general and John Ryle in particular.

John, of all people, had no cause for complaint: he had virtually propelled Isobel into Roskill's arms, or if not Roskill's, then those of some other member of the squadron. Yet it sounded suspiciously like John who had supplied the chapter and verse on them; perhaps the eye he had turned had not been sightless.

He shrugged to himself as he pressed the buzzer. At all events it would have taken no special investigation to establish that they were more than good friends. More than mere friendship was probably what had decided the Department in its quest for quick results.

He was still testing that probability when Isobel opened the door, more desirable than ever to him now that there was a hint of distress beneath that celebrated composure.

'Hugh, darling —'

'Is Havergal here?'

He pricked his ears and then relaxed before she could answer. It was a question rendered unnecessary by her greeting: he would never be a darling in Colonel Havergal's hearing.

'He's phoning, Hugh – from the box down the street.' She searched his face. 'I know I shouldn't ask you what you're doing, but when Archie won't phone from the hotel and won't phone from the flat –

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Hugh, what are you doing? And what's Archie doing?'

'Did he ask you about me?'

'Only how long we'd known each other and where we met.'

Nobody's fool, certainly. He hadn't bothered to ask her questions she couldn't answer, and hadn't risked any phone that might be suspect in order to ask somebody who could. And he'd know who to ask, sure enough. The question was – how full would the answer be?

'He was checking on you, wasn't he?'

Roskill reached out for her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. It was enough to discompose anyone, having their carefully segregated public and private lives suddenly mixed. A mixture like this one could be downright explosive, too.

He smiled at her. 'Of course he was checking on me, Bel – and I've been checking on him.'

'And I can't ask why, can I?'

'Not really. But it's nothing to do with us – or with John. So there's nothing for you to worry about.'

'But it has to do with the Foundation?'

The buzzer cut of his reply: Havergal had done his checking quickly enough.

Isobel's eyes were still troubled and her lady-of-the-manor's competence which was a joke between them seemed altogether to have deserted her. Yet Roskill knew instinctively that it wasn't this emergency that had thrown her, so much as his own appearance in dummy2

it, in the wrong place and out of character. Anyone else, any stranger, she would have taken in her stride.

He squeezed her hand again. 'Don't worry, Bel – just be Lady Ryle to both of us. Let her cope.'

Lady Ryle was the armour in which the real Isobel lived: beautiful, damascened armour, in the latest style and perfectly fitting, reflecting the wealth and good taste of the wearer but only hinting at the vulnerability beneath it. Poor Isobel! With him at least she had learnt to do without it, and now he was urging her to put it on again.

She looked at him, reading his thoughts. 'All right, Hugh – Lady Ryle for you both. But don't think you can pull the wool over Archie's eyes too easily – he's good at seeing through phonies.'

This echoed what Howe had said, Roskill warned himself – and it was substantially his own first impression. Havergal might be full of years and whisky, but he was still as tough as old boots and sharp as the bootmaker's awl. It would be as well to stay on his good side.

But the prospect of that dimmed the moment the old man entered the room. Either the check-up had proved unprofitable or it had occasioned second thoughts, for the eye that settled on him was distinctly jaundiced – what it saw it didn't like. Before such an eye a generation of red-necked British subalterns and raw Arab levies had undoubtedly quailed.

'Good evening again, Colonel Havergal,' said Roskill carefully. If it was to be war he wasn't going to fire the first shot.

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Havergal glanced over his shoulder, making sure that Isobel wasn't behind him – presumably her armour required a moment's fitting.

'Roskill,' the Colonel finally acknowledged him, 'I've been talking to Fred Clinton about you.'

In other circumstances Roskill might have whistled: Havergal had certainly gone straight to the top. Indeed, since Sir Frederick was never available for casual queries, this was an old boys' network operating at an exalted level. It was disquieting, that.

'Despite your bull-in-a-chinashop tactics, he vouches for you,'

Havergal continued. 'I took you for a beginner, but it seems you aren't. It seems I must rely on you.'

The soft answer died on Roskill's lips. The only thing that Havergal would ever do with a doormat would be to wipe his feet on it.

'We're rather in the same boat then,' he said casually. 'He said much the same about you. We shall both have to make the best of it — in the national interest.'

'My dear Roskill, that rather depends on how you define the national interest – if there is one in this instance. There was a time when interest and responsibility and honour coincided. Now they don't often seem to do that.' Havergal stared at Roskill unwaveringly. 'In any case, my concern at the moment is with the Foundation — I don't care to involve myself beyond that.'

'And what exactly is it about the Foundation that disturbs you at the moment, Colonel Havergal?'

Havergal shook his head. 'You tell me, Roskill.'

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Roskill considered the Colonel in silence. This was where the man's full file would have been a godsend – it would have given him some clue as to where leverage might be applied. He hadn't asked Howe enough questions, not expecting this hostility.

To Havergal Roskill had signified something he'd been afraid of for a long time ...

. . . Havergal, who'd retired and been forced to watch his work erased as his country withdrew from the lands it had dominated in his youth. The fact that he liked the Arabs, admiring the uncomplicated simplicity of Islam as so many Englishmen before him had done, only made it worse: the Red Navy ships anchored off Basra and Aden and Alexandria, and the M.I.G.S lined up on the old R.A.F. strips in Egypt, Iraq and now even at Khormaksar, signified that they'd only changed one master for another, and a worse one at that.

But then he'd encountered the Foundation – something; useful and above board that fitted his personal inclination and his specialist knowledge . . . something worth living and fighting for.

Isobel came into the room bearing a coffee tray. Typically, her coffee was not in delicate bone china but in enormous N.A.A.F.I.-

style mugs on which Kitchener's portrait and the legend 'Your Country Needs You' was superimposed on a large Union Jack. – 'I know you'd both rather have Scotch,' she said in her Lady Ryle voice, 'but with the way Wadsworth pours drinks I think you've both had more than sufficient.' She set the tray on a low table and motioned them both into chairs. It was the first rule of the experienced hostess to get her antipathetical guests on soft dummy2

cushions, naturally: stand-up rows were less easy to pursue when sitting down.

'I was about to ask Colonel Havergal about the Ryle Foundation, Isobel,' Roskill said quickly. 'But perhaps you could answer me –

where would you say its special usefulness lies? Compared with other agencies?'

'We're rather unspectacular really, Hugh. We never make headlines.'

'What do you think, Colonel?'

Havergal grunted, sensing danger but unable to locate its direction.

If he knew his Liddell Hart, though, he'd recognise the strategy of the Indirect Approach.

'I'll tell you what I think,' said Roskill with false diffidence. 'I think you're right, Isobel – I think it does a very valuable job because it's never been the least bit political – even in the old days it never had any British strings attached to it. It never produced future statesmen or generals – just nurses and farmers and primary school teachers.'

It was a mash of snatches of half-remembered lunch conversations at Ryle House – mostly John's remarks, not even addressed to him.

It surprised him that they had stuck in his memory, like flotsam left at a freak tidemark. But it served now to rouse Havergal. 'That's true enough – you've done your homework,' he said cautiously.

'We've never been a short-cut for the clever intellectuals. We've never sent anyone to Oxford and Cambridge – or to Harvard. Old Jacob Ryle wasn't one of Cecil Rhodes's admirers. He laid it down dummy2

in black and white – get the good second-class brains and train 'em to do something useful. Work 'em so hard they won't have time to get up to mischief – '

Havergal stopped abruptly, as though he'd followed Roskill's lead one step too far on to dangerous ground.

'But it hasn't worked out like that, has it?'

Havergal remained silent. It was quite clear to Roskill now that he'd come to the flat to get information and not to give it; to get it and use it to purge his beloved Foundation of impurities which now contaminated its down-to-earth aims.

He'd agreed to come because he'd thought – and reasonably enough

– that Roskill was a bungling beginner. But apparently Sir Frederick had told him otherwise, and that had put him on his guard.

But that wouldn't serve the present crisis, to which the health of the Ryle Foundation and an old man's peace of mind were secondary.

It was enough to know that the Foundation was vulnerable, for that could only mean one thing.

'Let's not pretend any more, Colonel. The Ryle Foundation is being used as a cover for illegal Arab activities. You might as well admit it.'

Havergal looked at him coldly. 'I don't have to admit anything, Squadron Leader Roskill. And as to so-called illegal Arab activities – like the national interest, they are a matter of definition.

I rather think I am as good a judge as you are of whit is illegal and what isn't, and for much the same reasons.'

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'But Archie – ' Isobel intervened ' — we can't have the Foundation used for that sort of thing. Hugh's absolutely right.'

'Isobel, my dear, there was a time when I would have agreed with you – and with Roskill,' Havergal said patiently. 'But the world has changed since then, and if the Foundation's still going to do a worthwhile job it has to change too – just to stay in being.'

'Then you condone what may be happening?' said Roskill.

'Condone it? Don't be a fool, man – of course I don't condone it. It threatens the Foundation. But I understand it – I knew that if I was an Arab I wouldn't be sitting around talking. Do you think the Foundation would last ten minutes in the Middle East today if we tried to crack down on it? We'd be finished.'

'So what exactly is it that's worrying you if you know all about it?'

'I don't know all about it,' Havergal shook his head. 'I wish I knew more, and what I've been trying to do is to keep it within safety limits. But what worries me is you.'

'I worry you?'

'Not you personally, but what you represent – the stupid, half-baked political shysters who direct you!' Havergal's control of his invective in Isobel's presence was remarkable. 'Weak when they should be strong, strong when they should be understanding.

Always talking about Britain's responsibilities – they couldn't distinguish a responsibility from a bottle of Worcestershire sauce!'

It was the ancient lament of the soldier over the politician's incapacity, and it roused a sneaking, service-bred sympathy in Roskill. Except that the soldiers always underrated the politician's dummy2

difficulties just as much as the politicians underrated the soldiers' –

so that the military dictatorships were every bit as grisly as the civilian variety.

But he was letting his reactions side-track him. What mattered was that Havergal didn't seem to have a clue about the present emergency: he thought the authorities were simply getting nosey.

'Shysters or not, Colonel, they can wreck your Foundation from top to bottom.'

'Hugh!' Isobel sounded like a fencing master who'd discovered that her two favourite pupils were using unbuttoned foils.

'It's perfectly all right, my dear,' said Havergal. 'Threats are part of Roskill's stock-in-trade. Mostly empty threats now, though. The Foundation's too widely based for them to do it any real damage –

they might even do it a bit of good in some quarters.'

He looked at Roskill shrewdly. 'And I don't think they would try anyway. Their hearts aren't really in the game these days – they don't care who kills who in the Middle East so long as the oil flows.'

So that was what had nerved Havergal to hold out for information without giving it: he'd reckoned any threat against the well-respected Foundation had to be backed by bluff only. And until two nights ago he'd probably have been right.

But now by giving him the information he wanted Roskill could win the game, not lose it...

'In the Middle East perhaps they don't care, Colonel. But at home they do.'

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Havergal frowned.

'The night before last we lost a man – a friend of mine – right here in London,' said Roskill. 'And we nearly lost another one. One of my bosses, as a matter of fact – one of your top shysters. I think you could say his heart's in the game this time. Just this once, Colonel Havergal, we mean exactly what we say.'

'A friend? Hugh – who was it?' Isobel's incredulous expression mirrored Faith's – to both of them death was always an unforeseen accident on the road or a hushed prognosis in the consulting room, never a deliberate act.

He'd meant to break it to her gently, choosing the time and place, but now he saw that her distress would serve to bring extra pressure on Havergal. In any case he had to tell her now: he could see her already conjuring up in her mind the faces of the friends of his that she'd met and liked – Jack Butler and Colin Monroe, young Richardson who had captivated her, even David Audley, who had rather frightened her. But it would be a worse shock than any of those.

'It was Alan Jenkins.'

'Alan!'

With Faith it had been shock, but with Isobel it was at once more than that. For Isobel alone knew about Harry, and being Isobel grasped all the implications of Alan's death instantly – they had talked Harry's death into the ground enough times.

Havergal gave Roskill a look of mingled distaste and curiosity: he knew that the play had been reversed, but he didn't quite know dummy2

whether it had been deliberate or accidental – whether he was dealing with a cold-hearted bastard who had set the whole thing up, or an officer and a gentleman who had made the best of a dirty job and struck lucky.

Roskill knew the feeling — he had felt it himself about others, Audley among them: you never really knew whether it was luck or cleverness. And now he had learnt ithat it was possible not even to know the truth about oneself.

Whatever it was, though, it served. Havergal's shoulders sagged half an inch and for the first time he looked his age. Roskill began almost to feel sorry for him, only to check himself before the feeling took root: the old man should have stuck to his retirement –

or at least served the Ryle Foundation in a way that didn't play ducks and drakes with his oath of allegiance. Personal definitions of the national interest and the nature of illegal organisations might be all right for debating societies, but those who indulged such fancies in real life couldn't complain when real life caught up with them.

There was no point in doing a victory roll, however. It might even be premature if he failed to handle Havergal with compassion now, of all times.

'We don't want to injure the Foundation, Colonel. That isn't the object at all. And we're not going to let the Special Branch loose on it.' Strictly, that might not be true, but it sounded reassuring. 'But there are things we've got to know – like how you got wind of what was going on.'

He prayed that Havergal wouldn't turn that question against him, dummy2

because Cox's hunch was based on extremely tenuous circumstantial evidence, and not on anything that was 'going on' at all.

But Havergal's defences were breached. He sighed and squared his shoulders in resignation.

'I'd been expecting it for a long time, if you must know.'

'Because you think any Arab worthy of his salt would be up to something?'

'Not just that.' Havergal shook his head. 'Have you got the Ryle Map, my dear?' he said to Isobel.

Isobel nodded. 'It's in the study.'

'Would you get it for me?' Havergal turned back to Roskill. 'Do you know how the Foundation works?'

'Not in detail.'

'Not many people do. And perhaps that's why this has happened,'

said Havergal mournfully. 'We're a pretty unobtrusive lot. We don't turn out top people – or damn students. Just good mechanics and midwives, and that sort of thing ... You know why old Jacob Ryle set it up like that?'

'Didn't a railway have something to do with it?' Roskill could remember that disastrous railway, old Ryle's first charitable enterprise, had been a family joke.

'A railway – yes. He built a line as a present for one of his tame sheikhs. It cost a fortune. And then he found that there was no freight to run and precious few passengers – the local camel train dummy2

did the job perfectly well at a hundredth of the cost. He'd simply put the camel drivers out of work – until they knifed the engine driver, that is! They say you can still see some of the track when the sand gets blown away...'

He looked at Roskill. 'The point is that after that Ryle decreed that we'd work from the bottom. Each area has its own local committee

– they set up the projects and they send us suitable young people to train. We arrange for the training at our own technical centres, and then we shunt the trainees round the projects – they work their passage, and that makes the projects cheap to run. And the young people see a bit of the world and learn what hard work is before they go back to their own patches.'

There was a note of pride in Havergal's voice now. 'So we get useful jobs done, and we don't make trouble for the countries we work in. Wherever we're established we're just part of the landscape.'

He moved the mugs to one side as Isobel spread a map of Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East on the coffee table: a map with a rash of little coloured symbols on it.

'It's quite simple,' said Havergal. 'The green stars are the selection committees, the red squares are the training centres and the blue triangles are the work projects. Do you get the picture?'

Roskill got the picture very well indeed. He had no idea that the Foundation operated on so grand a scale: the green stars were spread thickly over the Middle East, as were the blue triangles. The red shapes were thickest there too, but spread out also into Europe, from Italy to Sweden and Scotland – and behind the Iron Curtain dummy2

even.

Roskill bent over the map in awe: there were also red squares in Israeli-held Jordan and in the Gaza strip – the ultimate purity test!

As a self-supporting educational foundation in a war-torn world it was a remarkable achievement and the Colonel had just cause for pride.

But another possibility sprang from the map in red, blue and green: as the cover for an illegal network it was ready-made and perfect –

secure in its well-established respectability and accepted without question as part of the landscape, with its members and trainees moving unobtrusively back and forth. No wonder Havergal had been expecting the worst!

But his suspicions had to be founded on more than mere assumption of the worst, nevertheless.

'What actually put you on to them?'

Havergal smiled bitterly. 'The failure rate.'

Koskill waited patiently while Havergal nodded knowingly to himself, his bitterness fading at the recollection of his cleverness in spotting the reason for it.

'Jacob Ryle couldn't bear the idea that any of his charity might be wasted – particularly after what happened to the railway. So he framed the organisation of the Foundation to avoid wasting money on trainees who wouldn't finish the course – or who didn't do what they'd been trained for.'

'Drop-outs, you mean?'

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'That's the modern jargon, yes,' Havergal nodded. 'Not enough intelligence or not enough guts. In the early days some of the local committees weren't too choosy – usually they were just trying to do favours for their friends. Ryle wouldn't stand for that, though; if a committee failed to deliver the right goods he changed the committee.

'After a time everyone got the message. There were still the odd failures, but they were rare – there were years when there weren't any that couldn't be explained.'

Ryle had wanted his money's worth, thought Roskill, and quite naturally the old bandit had applied his business methods to his charitable enterprise: shape up or get out. Once the tradition was established firmly all it needed was a competent statistical section to keep an eye on it.

'That was the pattern when I joined the Foundation – even lasted through the decade after Suez,' Havergal continued. 'But it began to change about six months after the June War.'

'You mean the drop-outs began?'

'The drop-outs. I didn't spot them at the time, of course. The figures take time to show up. And even then I didn't smell a rat until I realised that the wrong ones were quitting.'

Roskill nodded. The drift of the Colonel's argument was clear enough. The drop-outs of the old days would be due to stupidity, idleness or instability: the new drop-outs would be young men with exactly the opposite qualities, but with other fish to fry.

'And what have you done about it?'

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'Nothing at all.' Havergal gazed unblinkingly at Roskill. 'There's nothing I can do.'

'I thought you sacked committees that didn't deliver the goods?'

'We used to, but not any more. Times have changed since Jacob Ryle's days – and particularly since '56. We have to tread more delicately now. And the committees that are up to mischief aren't in my territory, anyway.'

The look in Havergal's eye suggested that times had not chiinged so much in his territory, and wouldn't change as long as he was in charge.

'Where are they?'

'Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq – we've got fifteen committees in the four of them. According to my reckoning there are only seven doing their proper job now.'

'Whose territory would that be?' Roskill fumbled in his memory.

'Elliott Wilkinson's?'

Havergal pointed his chin at Roskill, his loyalty to the Foundation in collision with the plain implication of Roskill's question. It occurred to Roskill that if the Colonel already suspected Wilkinson of chicanery he probably had his own plans for dealing with him.

But there was no point in pressing the matter – it would only shut the old boy up altogether.

Roskill hurriedly led him off at a tangent. 'But all this is circumstantial evidence – statistical stuff. It takes one hell of a lot of statistics to make one piece of real truth.'

He looked at the Colonel narrowly. 'If you can supply us with dummy2

names and details of the drop-outs, that would be a start, anyway.

And names of the committee men too. If you can do that there's a fair chance I can get my bosses to cross-check them and leave the Foundation itself alone.'

Havergal thought for a time. 'If it ever got out there'd be hell to pay, Roskill.'

'If it doesn't get out there may be hell anyway. But I tell you what I'll do to prove good faith: I'll give you some of the names we've got. And I'll show you some of the faces we've got that haven't got names.'

He reached down beside the chair for the projector. This had been what the man had been after all along, and it was ironic that Roskill had intended from the start to give it to him: the names and faces of the Hassan suspects and every contact of theirs Cox had been able to dig from British files and coax from European ones.

Five suspects and twenty-five contacts: not a great many and most of them looked alike to Roskill anyway. But maybe Havergal, with all his years of Arabian experience, could distinguish them from one another. He might even do more, for as Cox had gently pointed out exactly half of them were graduates or officials of the Jacob Ryle Memorial Foundation Trust.

VII

ROSKILL LEANT GINGERLY against the wall of the Bunnock dummy2

Street phone box and listened to the buzz of the bell on the other end of the line, far away in Hampshire.

He settled down to wait, resigned in the knowledge that Audley would put off answering as long as possible in the hope that the noise would pack up and go away. His only hope of a speedy answer was Faith.

For the second time during the evening his eye was caught by the carefully inscribed line of Latin: Meum est proposiium in tabema mori. 'Meum' was 'my' and 'est' was 'is' – 'my something is.' He dredged into his vestigial Latin. 'Mori', he recalled from the rolls of honour, was 'to die' – Pro Patria mori. Which left him with 'My something is to die in a something'. The nearest word to 'taberna'

was 'tabernacle', but the idea of dying in a tabernacle was plainly ridiculous – the sort of guess he had chanced in Latin translations so often, only to elicit the Latin master's eternal complaint: nonsense must be wrong ...

The buzz-buzz stopped with a click at last and Faith answered rather breathlessly.

'You want David? Who's calling – who shall I say? Isn't that – '

Faith stopped short, turning Roskill's Christian name into an exhalation of air. It was odd how although she affected to despise the rigmarole of security she was quick to apply the rules.

'I'll get him,' she concluded grimly.

Again Roskill waited. She'd probably been in the bath or the lavatory and Audley himself had been sitting in the room next to the phone, obstinately deaf to it.

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It couldn't be 'tabernacle', but without knowing what 'propositum'

was there was no way of guessing. He rather sympathised with the other anonymous commentator who had scrawled 'Sod the Students' directly underneath the inscription – the authentic voice of Bunnock Street.

'Hullo, Hugh!' Amdley's voice rang loud and clear in his ear, disdainful of rules and caution alike.

'Is this a safe line?' Roskill exclaimed, more in surprise than annoyance.

'Safe? Safe line?' Audley repeated vaguely. 'I haven't the faintest idea. But if it isn't, then some poor devil's been wasting an awful lot of time listening to nothing. What's up?'

Roskill gritted his teeth. 'I think I'm blown, for a start,' he said.

'Somebody recognised me at – at that meeting I went to.'

'The Ryle do?'

Roskill beat his fist against the side of the telephone box. Audley had to be doing this deliberately.

'You're quite sure this line's safe?'

'I tell you – I haven't a clue,' said Audley. 'But it doesn't matter anyway. All that sort of thing is grossly exaggerated. Nobody's got the manpower or equipment to tap phones just on the off-chance –

they only tap when they're sure. And if anyone's on my line, God help them – they'll have had a job breaking the code Faith uses when she orders her groceries. I tell you, Hugh, you're all hagridden with bugging and half the time it's a lot of cock!'

He snorted derisively down the line at Roskill. 'And if they've got dummy2

one of those voice-actuated things clipped on somewhere, how do they know we don't know about it? We could be staging this for their sole benefit... So you were spotted. Well, who spotted you?'

Roskill carefully described the fat Arab.

'A Lebanese?' Audley demurred. 'No, he's certainly not a Lebanese.

Before I was kicked out I'd already been sidetracked there for six months and I know all their top men – he can't be all that new. But never mind: I'll identify him for you tomorrow morning. It shouldn't be difficult. Now – tell me about the Ryle Foundation.

Obviously Cox was right about that!'

'Yes, but – ' The trouble was that Havergal's memory had proved suspiciously disappointing when it came down to hard identifications. The session had left him with the feeling that the old man had to some extent outsmarted him in the end, and he tried hard to conceal this now in reporting the dialogue.

But Audley merely grunted approvingly as he listened.

'A neat line of reasoning – I think I'd like this Colonel Havergal of yours, Hugh. He was before my time, of course, but I can see why Fred would have wanted to get hold of him – if it was Fred. And I agree with you it might be Elliott Wilkinson he's gunning for. The Arabs would be damn difficult to unseat with things as they are, but Wilkinson's not quite invulnerable.'

'You know him?'

'I used to. But I didn't know he was mixed up with the Ryle people.

It doesn't surprise me one bit that he's up to no good, though.'

'He's pro-Arab?'

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'He isn't pro anything – it wouldn't be so bad if he was. He's just old-fashioned anti-semitic. Thirty years ago he'd have ended up behind the wire on the Isle of Man – if he hadn't got to Berlin first.

Horrible bloody character. If it wasn't Jews it'd be Catholics or blacks – if he'd lived in the sixteenth century he'd have been a champion witch-smeller. The devil of it is that he's got some very close contacts with our Arab section now – too damn close. And Llewelyn trusts him, the fool.'

'But there's still nothing to connect him with Hassan. We've only got Cox's instinct and a handful of names.'

'Cox is a good man, Hugh. And we've got more than that now.

Things are beginning to come together.'

'Things?'

It was all very well for Audley to retire comfortably to his country seat to think beautiful, complicated thoughts while he, Roskill, crouched in smelly Bunnock Street.

'I've been doing my homework, Hugh – catching up on Master Llewelyn.'

Llewelyn. Always the Welshman was uppermost in Audley's thoughts. Alan Jenkins's killers were probably a secondary consideration, a mere means to an end, whatever he might maintain. They were still each looking for revenge, but not the same revenge.

'It seems he's one of the errand boys between the Americans and the Russians at Jarring, the U.N. mediator – strictly an errand boy, whatever he likes to think. But a busy one. I can see how dummy2

mortifying he'd find being blown up just now, when things are moving.'

'He said there was a chance of peace in the Middle East.'

'I doubt that. But there is going to be a cease-fire, that's certain –

the Rogers Plan is definitely on.'

The radio that morning had seemed very much less certain, but Audley obviously had better sources.

'It's all cut and dried. The Egyptians will accept first, and the Russians are going to lean on the Syrians . . . Then the Israelis will argue among themselves – that's probably laid on so that the Gahal right-wing bloc can be kicked out of the government – but they'll agree in the end. It's all set for early August. Myself, I don't think it'll go as smoothly as – as my informant thinks.'

'So what's all this got to do with us?'

'With us? Well, in the long run God only knows what will happen

– I've been out too long to make any useful guesses. I suppose it depends on what sort of deal the Americans and the Russians have cooked up ... and whether the Middle East hawks can queer things . . . But in the short run they're just coming up to the maximum risk period. Once the cease-fire's agreed, maybe it can stand up to a certain amount of double-crossing, I don't know. But just before – that's right now – this is the time the guerrilla groups ought to be trying to wreck it.'

Audley paused. 'And there's one thing that's gingering up the Great Powers – there's a rumour that Nasser is a sick man. The word is that when he was in Russia earlier this year the doctors there told dummy2

him to take things very easy. But the way doings are, he can't, and that's what's got the Russians moving – they don't want peace, but they want to take the steam out of things just in case.'

'Whereas Hassan wants trouble?'

'Exactly. In fact I think that's what Llewelyn's been expecting. And not just him either – there's an unofficial clampdown in Israel at the moment, and Egypt's on the alert too. There are a lot of nervous people in the Middle East just now, Hugh, and that's a fact!'

It was all high-powered, big league stuff and it made Roskill's own research seem a schoolboy enterprise in comparison. But it didn't get them any closer to knowing what to do next.

'There are some bloody nervous people here in London, too, David,' Roskill reminded Audley. 'It's them we've got to worry about.'

'Ah – I was coming to them. There are two men who could really tell us what all this is about – Jake Shapiro and the Egyptian, Razzak.'

'Did Razzak get the early boat from Newhaven?'

'If he did it took him a remarkably long time to get to his eribassy in Paris. He seems to have lost a few hours on the way somewhere, that's certain.' Audley paused. 'As a working theory I agree with your reading of things this morning. It's far too much of a coincidence, all three of them being roughly in the same place. It does sound as though Razzak met someone down there, and Shapiro was watching them. And one way or another your friend Jenkins saw something he wasn't meant to. And if it was big dummy2

enough to get Jake out of bed that early it could be a killing matter right enough!'

'You still think Razzak met Hassan, whoever Hassan may be?'

'Not Hassan himself – that was never likely. But maybe one of his top men. Razzak didn't go walking on the Sussex Downs for fun –

that's for sure. The trouble is that we don't know enough about the man; he's new in London and I daren't go checking on him in records in case someone gets wind of what I'm doing.'

'I thought you knew all the brass,' Roskill needled him.

'Blast it, Hugh – I do – but – ' Audley stuttered for a moment.

'That's the whole trouble: he's not really a coming man. Maybe he was ten years ago, but from Suez to the June War he was just a field officer – a tank man. He had a regiment on the frontier in '67.'

'Then you do know something about him.'

'I do,' said Audley rather reluctantly. 'But I only know what Jake Shapiro himself told me when we had lunch last week – the day Razzak's appointment came through, apparently.'

'Shapiro spoke about him?'

Audley bridled. 'It was just – conversation. Jake and I don't talk shop much any more. We haven't got anything useful to say to each other.'

'But what did he say?' Roskill persisted.

'He said Razzak was... brave.'

From Audley it sounded strange, almost a criticism.

'Brave?'

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Audley seemed to shrug down the telephone. 'When the Israelis were beating the stuffing out of the Egyptians in '67 Razzak was one of those who dug their heels in – apparently he put up a real fight.'

One of the hard-faced, bitter ones, he'd be. Roskill remembered the blank, irreconcilable stares he had noticed at the Ryle reception.

For men like that any talk of cease-fire would be a betrayal, and that brought Razzak shoulder to shoulder with Hassan.

'But I'll be able to tell you more about him soon,' Audley went on.

'I'm having breakfast with a man who knows all about him tomorrow morning.'

Roskill grunted. That, of course, was half the secret of Audley's success: if he didn't know something, he could usually be relied on to know someone who would.

'I should have thought Shapiro would be your man. He knows Razzak – and he was down there at Firle. If you can get your hooks into him – '

'Nobody gets their hooks into Jake. The best we can hope for is that he'll be willing to trade with you, Hugh.'

'You', not 'me'! Roskill groaned. This was the same convenient formula Audley had invoked earlier at the Queensway Hotel, but after his objection to it Roskill had hoped it would be allowed to die a natural death.

'Hell, David – he's your buddy. I hardly know the fellow. You go trade with him.'

'I want to keep out of it as long as I can, Hugh. As soon as Jake dummy2

knows I'm involved he'll be likely to raise the price.'

'But you're a friend of his.'

'Friendship doesn't stretch this far. But don't worry – he's not likely to ask you anything about aircraft. Missiles, maybe, but most likely tanks, and I can get you that Anglo-Belgian report on the Scorpion and the Scimitar. Offer him the inside information on that welded aluminium armour of theirs. He'll be sure to like that'

Audley sounded suspiciously like the Foreign Office man who thought no one would know anything about desalination.

'But supposing he doesn't?'

'Give him the Ryle Foundation, then – I'm damn certain he'll go for that.'

It was lamentably clear that Audley was perfectly prepared to see Roskill compromise himself with anybody and everybody in the higher cause of his own tortuous designs, so there was no point in prolonging the conversation. Any moment now Isobel would be arriving beside the car, and he hated the idea of her standing waiting for him in the shadows of Bunnock Street.

'Where do I find Shapiro, then? And don't forget I've got to go down to Firle tomorrow morning, either.'

'That's just it, Hugh. You can reach him tonight: he'll be in a fly-blown club called Shabtai's in Silchester Lane – just behind St.

Bartholomew's Hospital. He'll be there about ten thirty – he's currently wooing a doctor in Bart's.'

'A doctor?'

'A female doctor, man – there's nothing odd about Jake. He's dummy2

ambitiously normal, you might say. His sense of humour's neanderthal, but he's a decent chap if you don't try to double-cross him too obviously. Just don't let him bully you, and whatever you do don't try and keep up with him when he's drinking – he's got a leather liver.'

Razzak and Shapiro sounded equally formidable in their different ways, Roskill reflected unhappily. They were both tank men and therefore had to be mad to start with – anyone who chose to enclose himself in a slow, vulnerable steel coffin couldn't be wholly normal, whatever Audley might say.

He could only hope that Audley had guessed correctly, and that he was about to enlist the aid of the right madman.

By the time he had returned to the car he had managed to convince himself that it could hardly be so very far from the mark. If it was based on what looked like a string of coincidences, that was in its favour. Strings of coincidences were like unicorns and mermaids –

they simply didn't exist in nature, and sensible men treated them with suspicion.

Alan had been killed deliberately and Alan had been at Firle when Shapiro and Razzak had passed so close to each other. And certainly, if anyone was mixed up with Hassan it would be Razzak

– and if anyone had reason enough to spy on them it was Shapiro.

Yet for all that he would have preferred to have met the Israeli after his expedition to Firle, not before it. He had great hopes of Firle: if there had been any sort of meeting there, it had probably dummy2

been set up in the belief that those wide open downs were a private place. But that was a very typical mistake a foreigner and a townsman might make; in reality there were very often watching eyes in the countryside, ready to note strange faces which would have passed unnoticed in the anonymity of a crowded city street.

Perhaps no one else had seen as much as Alan had, but the chances were at least fair that someone else had seen something.

There was a click from the passenger's door and a rapid tapping on the window – Isobel's characteristic tap.

He reached over and unlocked the door, and Isobel slid hurriedly on to the seat.

'Start the car, Hugh,' she said urgently. 'Drive off!'

Roskill frowned at her: Isobel was not totally unflappable, but this urgency had the sound of fear in it.

'There are two men in the churchyard watching you,' she whispered. They're just out of the lamplight – I took the shortcut and I almost bumped into them. I'm certain they were watching you – let's get away from here, Hugh, please.'

He fought the urge to turn around. If they were watching him from just inside the churchyard, beyond the radius of the last lamp, then he wouldn't be able to see than anyway. Whereas underneath the lamp beside the car his every movement would be clear to them.

He looked, ahead down Bunnock Street, which stretched empty and malevolent before him. Isobel could hardly be imagining things: there was nothing else here for anyone to watch. And her dummy2

instinct for flight was simple common sense – Bunnock Street was not a place to linger in when seventy-five yards and five seconds away, beyond the curve of the terraced houses, was the safety of the main road.

He reached forward towards the ignition, but even as his fingers closed on the key a fearful thought exploded in his brain, paralysing his hand.

Underneath the lamp beside the car.

'Start the car, Hugh!'

Beside the car!

'That's interesting,' Alan had said. And he had stared at something for a split second and there had been a white, blinding flare of light . . . torn metal and flesh slapped against the floor and walls of the pit, the crack of the explosion magnified in the confined space of the underground garage, echoing still while pieces of the one-time Vanden Plas Princess bounced from the ceiling and clattered to the floor...

Roskill's fingers slowly left the key. He didn't have to look down to see that his hand was shaking — he could feel it shaking.

'What's the matter, Hugh?'

The blind moment passed, and Roskill felt cold and calm – it had been like that when the Provost had suddenly changed from a beautiful little flying machine into an uncontrollable and disintegrating piece of flying junk: the moment of panic and then the businesslike preoccupation with saving himself which was half the battle. Only believe and ye shall be saved ...

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'Somebody's moved the car, Bel,' he said gently. 'There's just a chance they might have – tampered with it.'

'How do you know?'

'I parked right nest to the lamp-post, Bel – the passenger's door couldn't be opened when I left it.'

'But I got in?'

Roskill nodded. He had been slow, almost fatally slow, sidetracked by his own thoughts and then by Isobel's fear – slow to remember the Vanden Plas Princess.

'Tampered with?' Isobel was calm now, too – beautifully and wholly Isobel, and not to be fobbed-off with half-baked explanations.

'It could be nothing. But if those chaps back there in the churchyard had anything to do with Alan, then they know how to booby-trap cars.'

It could be nothing – but to bug the car they had no need to move it. And if they had done nothing but that to it there would be very little point in hanging around to see the fireworks.

But there was no need to spell that out to Isobel.

'I see. And just what do you propose to do about it, Hugh?'

She was sitting more stiffly, but the tone of her voice was still perfectly controlled – altogether much more the experienced charity president questioning her treasurer over an adverse financial report that the female half of the illicit liaison caught sitting on something hot.

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'Well, we're safe enough so long as we don't do anything,' said Roskill. 'I doubt you came into their calculations, but just to make things look convincing I'm going to put my arm along the back of your seat and you can cuddle up to me – just to allay any fears they may have.'

Isobel moved towards him somewhat gingerly, as though he was personally wired to whatever might be under the bonnet.

'We always said we'd never do this sort of thing in public,' she murmured in his ear. 'And certainly not in this disgusting place.'

She was bloody well cooler than he was, thought Roskill until he felt for her hand and found that it was trembling.

'What sort of shoes are you wearing? Snazzy or sensible?'

'Sensible. You said we weren't going to eat at anywhere smart.'

All the better to run in, if it came to that.

'In a moment I want you to get out of the car, Bel, and walk down the street – walk, mind you – don't run unless I shout. But if I shout then start running.'

'And what will you be doing?'

'Christ – I shall be running too, and I can probably run a lot faster than you can.'

'Why can't we get out together?'

It was odds on that if the car was booby-trapped it would be the ignition that set it off. They couldn't have had time for anything much more elaborate. But it was just possible that the driver's door was rigged for a second-time opening explosion, a trick that dummy2

conveniently removed the victim from the actual place where the booby-trappers might have been seen.

'It'll confuse them, Bel. But they probably won't do anything anyway. They'll think we've had a quarrel more likely. Just walk smartly away and don't turn round – and don't worry.'

Isobel looked hard at him. 'You're not going to do anything noble, are you, Hugh?'

'I'm not going to do anything stupid, if that's what you mean.'

'You promise?'

'Promise?' Somehow he had to belittle the danger now, to get her moving. 'My darling Bel – you remember the verse Valentine put up over the bar in the Mess at Snettisham – the advice on when to eject –

Some lucky Thracian has my noble shield, I had to run: I dropped it in a wood, But I got clear away, thank God!

So f------the shield! I'll get another just as good.'

He tried to grin at her. 'We've both got to bale out – just do what I've told you. I've no ambition to die for my – '

He stopped as the answer to the question which had been dogging him earlier rose unbidden in his mind: Audley would certainly know what 'propositum' and 'taberna' meant – he must remember to ask him at the next opportunity.

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'Hugh?'

'It's nothing, Bel. I've just remembered something unimportant I've got to do. Now, off you go!'

The very irrelevance of what he was saying seemed to reassure her.

It even served to calm Roskill himself: it was somehow unthinkable that anything could happen to him until he had the answer to that ancient piece of Latin wit – probably lavatorial wit, too ...

Isobel gave him one final look, drew a deep breath and grasped her bag decisively. Then, with a firm, unhurried movement she opened the door, stepped gracefully on to the pavement – her entrances and exits were always elegant – and set off down Bunnock Street like a swan navigating the town drain.

Roskill watched her progress with one eye on the driving mirror, in which the entrance to St. Biddulph's churchyard was framed.

Ten paces and she was out of the street light's circle and into a patch of half-light... and then ten more and she was almost on the edge of the next circle, from the lamp on the other side of the street. Beyond that she was virtually out of reach of a danger and it was time for him to move.

With his hand on the door handle he risked turning to get one good, clear look at the churchyard entrance. There was the loom of something darker beyond the pool of light – something that was moving now. In that second it dawned on him that Isobel's door was the obvious one to use. He levered himself awkwardly across towards it, bumping himself painfully on the gear-lever as he did dummy2

so, and swung himself on to the pavement.

In doing so he had another glimpse of the churchyard: there was a figure, two figures now, there. But in the very instant that he saw them there was the roar of an engine from the other end of Bunnock Street and the glare of powerful headlights which swept over the nearside curve of the street and then over Roskill – and then on to the men themselves.

They threw up their hands across their faces and broke left and right away from the beam of light as though it was a death-ray, leaving Roskill rooted in the shadow of his own car.

The car behind the headlights hurtled the last few yards of the street – a big maroon Mercedes – lurching to a stop within inches of the Triumph, obliquely across its bows.

The rear window slid down smoothly and a swarthy, scarred face peered out of it.

'Squadron-Leader Roskill?'

A plump, good-humoured face he had seen before earlier in the evening – the fat Arab.

The door swung open and a pair of beautifully polished shoes glinted momentarily as the Arab levered himself out. Beyond him Roskill glimpsed Isobel standing irresolutely halfway down the street.

'Forgive me for arriving so – so rudely, Squadron-Leader,' said the Arab, limping towards him slowly. 'But I don't think your car is fit to drive any more.'

'I wasn't intending to drive it.'

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'You weren't?' The fat man cocked his head in curiosity, and then nodded it. 'How very wise of you! Then I can only presume that you are already aware that it's been – is nobbled the word? One nobbles racehorses, so I think one might nobble cars, don't you?'

He patted the Triumph's bonnet appreciatively.

'And those two gentlemen who didn't like the headlights,'

continued the Egyptian, 'I suppose we'd better see them on their way.'

He snapped his fingers at his driver and the driver's mate and pointed towards the churchyard. Wordlessly the men obeyed him, like the well-trained gun-dogs they were.

The Arab patted the car again. 'One of your little electronic gadgets was upset, I suppose,' he said conversationally. 'Or would that be telling?'

He smiled, and the only thing Roskill could think of doing to hide his doubts about the whole situation was to smile back.

'Nothing so elaborate, I'm afraid,' he replied self-deprecatingly.

'Let's say I'm just suspicious of cars these days.'

'So my journey was really unnecessary after all?'

'Not at all. It's very reassuring to know I've got unexpected friends watching over me.'

The fat man chuckled. 'You are a most popular person, Squadron-Leader. No sooner had my man settled down to follow you, than he noticed that someone else was doing the same thing. And as that made it very difficult for him to follow you, he followed them instead – very sensible fellow.'

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'And what did he see?'

'He saw them take your car away. And they got away from him then, because he wasn't expecting that. So he phoned me– '

' – And you knew what to expect?'

'When my man told me they'd brought the car back I had my suspicions, certainly.'

'But you don't know what's been done exactly?'

It was curious that the fellow was so eager to explain exactly how he'd come storming into Bunnock Street like the U.S. cavalry. It made Roskill want to push him further, to find out what he didn't wish to explain. Like, for example, who the devil he was—which was one question Roskill couldn't humiliate himself with.

A shrug. 'They didn't take it away to give it a wash and a polish, obviously.'

'A shot of T.P.D.X. in the right place, maybe?'

For the first time the smile slipped a fraction. The Arab cocked his head again slightly and the light from the lamp above them picked out a long whitish scar that ran down from his cheekbone downwards, to be lost in one of his jowls.

But before he could begin to reply Isobel appeared beside his right shoulder. The Arab swung half round and faced her, incorporating a little bow into the movement.

'Lady Ryle – I do beg your pardon,' he said quickly. 'I was almost sure I'd seen you in the headlights...'

'Colonel Razzak,' said Isobel in her coolest Lady Ryle voice, 'I dummy2

thought I recognised you too, but in this light I wasn't sure at first either.'

Razzak!

No wonder the man had behaved as though Roskill knew him –

and no wonder he knew enough about Roskill to be suspicious in the first place.

But – damn it – it wasn't so much Razzak's arrival as his physical appearance that beat everything. From Audley's brief introduction he had imagined a lean, fanatical Bedouin – a throwback to those great days of Arab empire over which the Foreign Office man had enthused. He had never dreamed that the hero of Sinai would be hidden in the body of a roly-poly Levantine carpet salesman.

'It is a compliment that you should recognise me in any light, Lady Ryle.'

In another moment the fat slob would be kissing her hand. Except that the thought was hardly charitable to a man who had just broken the speed limit to stop them both being shredded into little pieces: no matter what his true motives were, and fat and ugly notwithstanding, Razzak's account was in credit.

And that, in itself, was an unforeseen complication. It didn't exactly exculpate Razzak from Alan's death. No sensible man resorted to violence in a foreign and neutral country if it could be avoided, and just because he had avoided it tonight it did not follow that he had done so in Alan's case. It could simply be that Alan had known too much, whereas Roskill knew practically damn all – after the Ryle reception debacle that must have been obvious dummy2

enough.

But that only made tonight's emergency more frightening: it meant that there was someone else beyond Razzak's control – and that could include both Hassan and the Israelis — who was prepared to turn a London back-street into a shambles for no very good reason.

The door behind him opened suddenly with a crash that made him jump. Framed in it was a Goliath of a man in shirtsleeves and a vast Fair Isle pullover.

The Goliath took in the scene with one slow dance from right to left – Roskill, Razzak, Isobel and the Mercedes with its doors open and its headlights glaring – and then swung his own glare to Roskill.

'I don't know wot your game is, mate,' he said in tones in which anger and scorn were carefully balanced, 'but you just go and play it somewhere else!'

Razzak stared coldly at the man for a moment, and then turned again towards Isobel.

'Allow me to offer you the hospitality of my car,' he said. He turned to Roskill. 'And you, too, Squadron Leader.'

The Goliath snorted.

Roskill leant into the Triumph and gently slid the keys out of the ignition.

'You can't leave it outside my property,' barked the Goliath, gratefully seizing the chance of being awkward. 'I'll have the bloody police take it away!'

Roskill was almost relieved that the man had sworn at last; the dummy2

absence of obscenities in his opening broadside had made his anger more threatening.

'The bloody police will be coming for it very soon anyway,' he replied with assumed indifference. 'It's a stolen vehicle. You lay a finger on it and you'll be in trouble.'

That might at least protect the car from outrage – and the Goliath from sudden death – until he could get the department's specialists to look it over, and in the meantime it took some of the wind out of the man's bellying sails.

He locked the car doors carefully and followed Isobel into the Mercedes. Razzak leant forward and flashed the headlights off and on before settling back beside them.

'You know, I have always admired, the independent spirit of the British working class,' he said gravely. 'But whenever I encounter it myself I have a great desire to kick it in the teeth. And yet I am a peasant myself, and I find my reaction most contradictory.'

'I think he had the right of it, Colonel Razzak,' replied Isobel equally seriously. 'We were probably disturbing his television and we may have woken the baby. Those are two capital crimes in England, you must understand.'

'The right of it?' Razzak nodded thoughtfully. 'He takes us for criminals, and there are several of us and only one of him — but he has the right of it! How admirable!'

The gun-dogs came out of the churchyard and headed towards them, watched closely by Goliath. As he slipped into the driver's seat the younger of the two shook his head at Razzak.

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'No one there now, Colonel,' he said obsequiously.

Razzak nodded again, and turned back to Isobel and Roskill. 'Can I take you now to wherever you were going, perhaps?'

Isobel glanced at Roskill. 'I think I'd prefer to go home, if you don't mind, Hugh. I've rather lost my appetite.'

'If that's what you wish, Lady Ryle.' Roskill was not quite able to keep the relief out of his voice. But her common sense would tell her what he was thinking, anyway: if he was someone's target –

and bizarre though that thought was, it appeared to be the case –

she would only be a liability to him now.

Isobel reached for the door handle. 'I'll take the short cut home, then – don't worry about me. I'm sure you and Colonel Razzak have important things to discuss.'

Razzak cut in before Roskill could reply. 'Allow me to send Captain Majid with you just in case, Lady Ryle – he would be honoured to accompany you.'

'Colonel, I couldn't possibly – '

Razzak held up his hand. 'Please! Let us say no more about the matter. Captain Majid will accompany you and make his own way home when you are safely in your house. Jahein here can drive me perfectly well, so long as he remembers it is a car he controls, not a tank.'

The driver got out of the car – rather sulkily, Roskill thought – and the older Arab moved behind the wheel.

'It's very kind of you, Colonel,' murmured Isobel. 'One thing, Hugh

– when is the funeral?'

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Roskill frowned, perplexed. 'The funeral?'

'Your friend,' she said with a hint of irritation. 'I would like to send a wreath, old-fashioned as that may seem to you.'

Isobel had known the Jenkins family in Harry's day, Roskill remembered – in the halcyon time when they'd all been equal and innocent recipients of the Ryle hospitality. And Isobel, who never forgot a birthday or an anniversary, would undoubtedly be an inveterate wreath-sender. It was the side they had not got in common: strange, but he hadn't once thought of Alan's funeral –

only of his death.

'I'll phone you when I know,' he said.

He watched her walk away beside the Egyptian captain, very tall and straight and entirely Lady Ryle now. It was at times like this that he wondered what the hell he was doing with his life, while knowing that if he could have the same time again he would make exactly the same decisions. A part share in Isobel was worth ten times a whole share of any other girl he had ever known.

VIII

'A REMARKABLE WOMAN,' murmured Razzak.

'Yes, she is. And it was civil of you to send your man with her, Razzak.'

The man behind the wheel gave a suppressed snort, and Razzak himself chuckled.

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'Not civil at all, Squadron Leader – a mere trick to rid me of the noble captain. If I had thought there was any danger I would have despatched Jahein – is that not so, Jahein?'

The grizzled head bobbed.

'You see, we are old soldiers, Jahein and I, and the captain is a new soldier set beside us to see that we don't get into trouble. He is like a – what is that shellfish that fastens itself to the rocks?'

'A limpet?'

'A limpet! Yes. Or a pilot fish that swims beside the shark – that might be more like it. But every now and then we give him the slip, don't we, Jahein?'

Jahein spat out a few words of Arabic in a hoarse, almost strangled voice. Their meaning was lost on Roskill, but they sounded so marvellously obscene that no translation was necessary.

Razzak laughed. 'Sergeant-Major Jahein has a very low opinion of Captain Majid – and bad as it is for discipline, I must agree with him. Majid is a nuisance. But fortunately he is an obedient nuisance, so he doesn't get in the way too much – like now, for instance. Let's get out of here before he comes back, Jahein.'

Jahein jerked the big car forwards, narrowly missing the Triumph, and embarked on a clumsy turning operation, swearing continuously under his breath.