The Labyrinth Makers

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Anthony Price

The Labyrinth

Makers

First published in Great Britain in 1970 by Victor Gollancz I

Every August 14 for twenty-three years Mrs Steerforth put the same In Memoriam notice in the Daily Telegraph: STEERFORTH, John Adair Steerforth, Flt Lieut, DFC, RAFVR.

Lost at sea, September 1945. On this, his birthday, not forgotten

–Mother.

It was not Mrs Steerforth's fault that the notice was inaccurate. She had spent a whole week composing it, adding words and then subtracting them, until in the end she decided that brevity was the soul of dignity.

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The words 'not forgotten' were her only concession to sentiment, and they were the direct result of the inaccuracy. It was the thought of the cold and restless sea that made her heart ache; she was resigned to her son's death, but not to his lack of a known grave.

So for Mrs Steerforth the draining of the lake brought a sort of happiness: she was able to bury her son at last.

By the time Audley became involved with them, the lake, the aircraft and the man had parted company.

The lake no longer existed and the aircraft was spread out over the floor of a hangar at Farnborough. The man had been collected and taken away in a large cardboard box and later reassembled with unnecessary care in a much larger wooden one.

Audley never actually saw any of them, except in photographs.

There would have been no point in his doing so, even had it been possible. The reports were clear and adequate; he wouldn't have found anything more of value, for there had been nothing of value to find.

Yet he saw that lost lake many times in his mind's eye. Not as it had become, a marshy puddle in a muddy wasteland. And not, perhaps, as it had been on the day it had closed over Steerforth.

The overhanging trees grew taller in his vision, the enveloping weed was thicker and the water more rank. He saw it as the remote and secret place it was, a drowner of small adventurous boys which had lost its reason for existing when the mansion on the hillside dummy4

above it had burned a century earlier.

Then Steerforth had given it back a new reason for being there, a secret of its very own.

But it was not the moment of impact he saw. He could never even decide whether it was skill or chance that slipped the plane so exactly between the random beeches and set it down so precisely.

Chance more likely, for in that torrential downpour a frantic pilot could have seen little. And luck could be so cruel, certainly.

It was the long decay afterwards which he saw, and the slow journey to nowhere.

He saw Steerforth changing into a horror, and a gorgeous windfall for millions of tiny, hungry eaters; and then into a mere framework, Icarus turned Yorick. And in that framework generations of pond life in turn lived and died, untroubled except for the small upheavals of bones and buckles, buttons and fastenings, each settling into its natural resting place.

And he saw the night when that well-ordered world ended.

The lake did not die in one spectacular cataract, but slowly and without fuss. In the darkness no one saw the streams rise further down the valley; and no one heard the slither and splash as matted balls of weed slid down the fuselage and engine cowlings, scouring the mud to reveal the faded khaki drab beneath.

Yet by dawn the Dakota had ceased for ever to be part of the ecology of the pond. It had regained its shape as an intruder, squatting in a shallow pool surrounded by mud flats.

No going back now; John Steerforth, loving son, not-so-loving dummy4

husband, sometime hero, sometime villain, had surfaced at long last. A man who had left the footprints of trouble behind him–and time had just not quite succeeded in obliterating them.

A few more years, and his reappearance wouldn't have mattered: a natural statute of limitations would have neutralized him for ever.

But now he was waiting for the unwitting causes of his resurrection.

Audley saw them lumping up the track beside the muddy scar of the natural gas pipeline–the track which their machines had gouged across the lower edge of the lake with such disastrous results. Sour-stomached after a weekend's drinking, the sons and natural sons of a long line of canal-cutting, railway-laying, tunnel-digging Irishmen.

First they saw the flooded pipe-trench, some stolidly, some gleefully, only the foreman aghast. And then one of them looked up the valley . . .

Audley's vision always faded at that precise point, where the official records began. First the navvies, then the police. After the police, in a welter of garbled air disaster messages, an ambulance which would have been too late almost a quarter of a century earlier.

Then, in the exhaust of the ambulance, the first journalist had arrived, exulting in a fine off-beat story which had broken in time for the midday editions.

And last of all, an RAF crash crew, baffled at finding a plane they hadn't lost.

It was the RAF who eventually stirred the dusty files and set them dummy4

on the move towards Audley. But it was the journalists who first introduced him to Steerforth. In The Times the introduction was brief and formal: Wartime RAF/ wreck is/discovered; with more panache, however, the Daily Mirror splashed ONE OF OUR

AIRCRAFT is FOUND above a superb photograph.

Both introductions were incomplete, for the first facts were vague.

It was as yet simply an echo of a supposedly wartime tragedy, with names withheld. But it was the picture and not the text that stirred Audley's imagination in any case. It reminded him of another picture he had seen years before of the barnacle-covered bones of a Lancaster bomber which had appeared briefly on a North Sea sandbank during an exceptionally low tide. The Dakota in the lake shared the same atmosphere of loneliness and loss, which not even the self-conscious airmen in gumboots posed beside-it could altogether dissolve.

But where Audley had looked and read, and then had turned to another page, there were others who had read between the lines —

painstaking, unimaginative men chosen for their retentive memories, whose job it was never to forget names and faces.

Steerforth and his Dakota had been on their lists as long as any of them could remember, unremarked until tracked down at long last.

Even then it was not their business to ask questions; to take the appropriate action had always been the limit of their satisfaction.

Yet that in the end was enough to make Steerforth's resurrection certain and to set Audley's phone ringing before dawn just one week later.

As a child Audley had feared and hated the telephone bell. At the dummy4

first ring he was off like a jack-rabbit in search of cover, desperate to avoid being sent to answer it. When cornered he was always too nervous to listen properly, but stood sweating and tongue-tied until the exasperated caller rang off. 'Is the boy deaf or just plain stupid?' he remembered his father ask rhetorically.

Long since he had taken the measure of the beast, but his hatred remained. He would not have it beside his bed, and even the Department now accepted that no one should phone him at home except in the direst emergency.

That knowledge, and the looseness of his pyjama cord, filled his half-awake mind as he shuffled unhappily through the house, fumbling, blinking and grunting as he switched on each light in turn. Only in the direst emergency . . .

It was one of Fred's middlemen. Disarmingly apologetic, deferential, precise–and leaving not a millimetre for argument.

He replaced the receiver and settled his glasses firmly on his nose.

To be hauled out of his warm soft bed at such an hour was bad enough. To be then summoned to London at the same hour was worse: it suggested that someone had been caught with his trousers down, or his pyjama trousers even.

But to be required in addition to dress for a funeral–that was utterly ridiculous!

Funerals meant going outside, into the field, among strangers. And he was not a field man, never had been and never wanted to be.

The back room among the files and the reports was his field. It was far more interesting there, more rewarding and infinitely more dummy4

comfortable. And it was the only place he was any good.

He sat at his desk, staring into the night outside. No one he knew had died recently. He focused on the darkness and his mind wandered away into it. Two hours to dawn maybe; the dying time now, when those who had fought hardest in their hospital beds suddenly gave up the struggle. This hour, this blackness, suddenly reminded him of long-forgotten boarding school ends-of-term. The boys with the furthest to go got up now, all excitement, to catch the earliest trains. He had caught a much later train, with no particular joy.

Methodically he switched on the tea machine, showered, drank the tea. The Israelis were certainly not up to anything. Shapiro could be relied on there at least. And the Russian ships were in the wrong place for the Arabs to try anything important.

Uncalled for and long forgotten end-of-term memories intruded.

He remembered the boy in the next bed for the first time in over twenty years. Which was interesting: it meant that the right key unlocked a whole set of memories, and then one could recall and clarify the past, flexing the memory like the muscles.

Whose funeral? Half-dressed, trailing a faint smell of mothballs and fumbling with his ancient black tie, Audley decided he was hungry. But there was no time and his funereal suit reminded him that he had to watch his weight now. Where once the trousers had needed braces, now they were self-supporting.

He opened the safe and removed the files on which he had been working. Ever since May '67 they had expected marvels from him.

And that had been no miracle, but mere exasperation and lurking dummy4

sympathy for the Israelis. They had ignored it, anyway, just as they had ignored the Lebanese report and the Libyan one before it.

Audley sighed. It was not Fred's fault, he thought. Fred was good.

Perhaps it was his own fault, a defect in presentation. The difficult thing is not the answer, he reflected, but the working.

The light grew as he drove. No rain today, but a cold, unseasonable wind, just right for a funeral to cull the weaker mourners. The countryside was only just waking up, but the towers of London were already ablaze with light, and there was much more traffic than he expected. Every year it started earlier and ended later, and one day the start and the end would be indistinguishable. I must retire early, he thought. To Cambridge.

With malicious pleasure he parked in one of the habitual early birds' places, near the entrance. Here there were fewer lighted windows, surprisingly–except for a row high up, with one blank window in the middle. So that's my room, Audley thought.

Inside the sergeant's eyebrows raised fractionally as he passed. But it gave him no pleasure. Only by order, routine and unchanging habit could the hostile world be kept at bay. Even the presence of Mrs Harlin in her usual place–Mrs Harlin certainly represented all those virtues–could not turn 6 a.m. into 10.

But it was simple common sense not to take his irritation and disquiet out on Mrs Harlin. She was the source of certain simple comforts, and in any case secretarial staff were taboo. In his limited experience Audley had observed that those who took dummy4

advantage of secretaries, either mentally or physically, usually lived to regret it.

He could not bring himself to wish her a good morning, however, but only the tortured semblance of a smile. And she rewarded him by editing her welcome to a stately and sympathetic nod.

'Dr Audley–Sir Frederick wishes me to tell you that there is a file on your desk. If you would let him have your observations on it in the conference room at 7 o'clock he would be most grateful. The regular records staff is not available yet, so if you require anything else perhaps you could ask me?'

Audley blinked and nodded.

'And I am just about to prepare a pot of tea for Sir Frederick. May I bring you a cup?'

'That would be very kind, Mrs Harlin.'

The world was upside down, and he, the last man right way up, had to go along with it. Even his own familiar room seemed in the circumstances unfamiliar, with darkness outside, but without the atmosphere of a day's work done.

His only comfort lay in the file itself, which was not too thick and freshly photo-copied. Sixty minutes allowed, and he no longer felt any disquiet, only that old examination thrill. He extracted a red biro from his breast pocket and a fresh notebook from his stationery drawer.

When Mrs Harlin slipped in unobtrusively with his tea ten minutes later he was already prepared for her.

'There's some more material I'd like, Mrs Harlin. To start with, The dummy4

Times and the Mirror for last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Then from Records–here, I've made a list.'

Mrs Harlin was poker-faced. 'I'm truly sorry, Dr Audley, but Sir Frederick requested that you concentrate on that one file for the moment. He said that everything else would be available in due course.'

Candidates would not be permitted to consult text-books. And Fred had foreseen that he would start cutting the corners straight away.

Which was in itself informative, though aggravating.

By 6.45 he had completed the initial reconnaissance of the material. He closed the file and turned to the five photographs he had spread over his desk.

Five faces . . . five men. Four had baled out and lived. One had stayed aboard and had taken twenty-four years to die.

He lined up the survivors. Tierney the second pilot and Morrison the radio operator, the men with such good memories; Maclean the navigator and Jones the passenger, who had mildly contradicted each other. If they were all still alive it would be interesting to discover how much Tierney and Morrison had decided to forget, and how much Maclean and Jones had managed to remember.

He stared at them for a time, then turned them face downwards and drew the fifth face towards him.

John Adair Steerforth.

Photographs could lie just as persuasively as people, but this was surely Lucifer's face: handsome, proud and dissatisfied. Perhaps there was a trace of weakness about the chin, but the mouth was dummy4

firm and the slightly aquiline nose aristocratic. Women would have loved him very easily–hard luck on them that he was dry bones. Or maybe good luck?

At least the funeral was explicable now. But his own role and his involvement was still inexplicable. On the face of it there was not the slightest link with the Middle East here.

On the face of it. He opened the file again. A document like this was no simple collection of facts. It had a story of its own to tell.

The newness here was deceptive: the material and language was dated. But it had been cut since, possibly twice, and edited–once clumsily, and then more skilfully. Audley recognized the pattern.

He gathered up the scattered papers and his notebook. Now was the time for some of the answers.

Fred welcomed him with a graceful apology.

'Butler and Roskill I believe you know, Dr Audley. And this is Mr Stocker, who represents the JIG.'

Butler and Roskill were both European Section men as far as Audley remembered. He had once briefed Roskill on the Dassault company's dealings with the Israeli air force, and the young man had impressed him. Butler looked exceedingly tough, with his short haircut and bullet head.

But Stocker was the one to watch, particularly as Audley had never quite understood the exact role, or at least the ultimate power, of the JIG.

Fred gathered them with a glance.

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'You've all read the Steerforth File now. What do you make of it?'

Butler would be first.

'A collection of non-information,' said Butler in a voice that was Sandhurst superimposed on Lancashire. 'A lot of clumsy people looking for something, and we never came close to finding out what it was.'

'I don't think they were all that clumsy,' said Roskill mildly. 'I think they were in a hurry.'

'Well, we were clumsy. The interrogations weren't handled firmly–

there was no co-ordination. We should have leaned harder on the ground crew. And on the Belgian.'

Audley wondered what a firm Butler interrogation would be like.

'The RAF Court of Inquiry was just whitewash. The trawler captain's evidence proved nothing.' Butler was getting into his stride now. 'And the survivors' evidence was conflicting.'

'Baling out isn't a clear event,' protested Roskill. 'I once baled out of a Provost. I don't believe I gave a very clear account of it, though.'

Butler shook his head.

'The conflict was between the two who were vague and the two who rehearsed from the same script. It was all too pat–first the radio, then the engine. It smells–to me it smells.'

Good for Butler, thought Audley. He was worrying the right bits of evidence, sniffing instinctively at the weaknesses. A firm Butler interrogation might be a lot more subtle than the man's personality suggested.

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'On this evidence,' concluded Butler, 'there's no proof that the Dakota ever came down at all. It could have been a put-up job from start to finish.'

Good for Butler again.

'But it did crash,' said Roskill. 'We've got it.'

'Roskill has the advantage of you there, Butler,' said Fred. 'You've been out of England–and you're not such an avid newspaper reader as Dr Audley. The Dakota came down in an artificial lake in Lincolnshire, not in the sea at all. And last week that lake was accidentally drained–it was an accident, wasn't it, Roskill?'

Roskill nodded. 'Carelessness, anyway.'

'And Steerforth?' Butler asked.

'Steerforth was still in the cockpit,' replied Fred shortly. 'Now, gentlemen, as you will have read, our interest in this began by pure chance, when it was learnt that the Russians were interested in the missing aircraft. First there was the known agent, Stein. Then there was the military attache. And there was also the Belgian, Bloch, who claimed he had nothing to do with the others.

'We couldn't touch the attache, of course, and as Butler has pointed out, we didn't get anything out of anyone. We came to a dead end.

Officially Steerforth was a dead hero, who chose to crash at sea rather than hazard life on land. Unofficially he was a smuggler who'd picked up something so hot he didn't dare crash with it. You will note the references by the crew to the unauthorised boxes in the cargo space. Steerforth's property, apparently.'

'But at least the other side didn't get anything either, so the matter dummy4

was more or less shelved. Until the Dutch got in touch with us in 1956, that is.'

He pushed three slim files across the table.

'Ever since the war they've been busily reclaiming more bits of the Zuyder Zee, and in every bit they find wartime aircraft wrecks–

German, British, American. They're very good about them. Very correct and dignified, with no sightseers or souvenir hunters allowed.

'But one day they came to ask what was so special about Dakota wrecks. Every time they came across a Dakota they'd had all sorts of Russians sniffing around. Just Dakotas. British Dakotas. It didn't take much checking to decide which Dakota interested them.'

Butler cleared his throat.

'But we've got Steerforth's Dakota now.'

'Indeed we have. We've got the Dakota, and Steerforth, and the mysterious boxes. But there was nothing in the Dakota, and nothing in the boxes either.'

'Not exactly nothing.' Roskill unwound himself. He was a nonchalantly clumsy man who gave the impression that he hadn't finished growing, and that upright chairs tortured him.

'Builder's rubble, that's what the boxes contained. Or perhaps I should say bomber's rubble, because the experts are more or less agreed it's Berlin stuff, vintage '45. Otherwise the Dakota was clean.' He grimaced. 'If you don't count a ton of mud.'

'Had the boxes been tampered with?' asked Butler.

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'The wood was pretty rotten, of course. But no–the lids were untouched. I'd say they were as consigned.'

'Identification positive?'

'Steerforth or the plane?'

'Both.'

'Oh, yes. No trouble there. Numbers for the plane, perfectly readable. Identity tags and teeth for Steerforth –and an old arm break. Absolutely no doubt.'

'Cause of death?'

'We can't be precise there. Drowning while unconscious is my guess. There was no evidence of physical damage.'

Butler looked round the table.

'And nobody spotted it for twenty-four years?'

Roskill shrugged. 'It was out of the search area. Overhanging trees, thick weed. God only knows how he put it down there. And the weather was poor for a week or more afterwards, the worst sort of search weather. It's not so surprising–it's well off the beaten track.'

Roskill added three more slim, identical files to those on the table.

'It's all in there. Plus my estimation of the probable course of the aircraft–he must have made a much wider turn than was assumed after the crew and the passenger baled out. That's what put the search off the scent, apart from the low cloud they had to contend with. He would have crossed the coast again a good ten miles south of the direct route–if he hadn't put down in the lake. Which was a damn good piece of flying, as I've said.'

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'Why did the plane crash?'

'It's in my report,' said Roskill, with the smallest suggestion of asperity.

Butler persisted. 'How well does it tally with what the crew said?'

Roskill shook his head. 'It's going to be very hard to say. It was the port engine they complained about, and it took a clout from a treetop coming in. That and twenty years under water–it doesn't make the detective work easy.'

He looked round the table. 'To be honest, we may never know.

There can be a million reasons. If it's plain human error, like fuel mismanagement, we'll certainly never know now. They'd been losing height–we know that from the survivors; I've known cases where a pilot had an engine malfunction and simply shut down the wrong engine. Not even a DC-3 would stay up then, and at that height it would have been fatal. Or maybe he simply misread his altimeter. I tell you, there are a million ways it might have happened.'

'All right, then,' said Fred, heading off any further technical argument. 'How does this fresh information change your interpretation of the original conclusions, Dr Audley?'

Audley looked up from his notebook to meet Fred's mildly questioning gaze, which in turn caused the other three men to look at him. He had been reflecting just a moment before, with satisfaction, that so far he had not said a word since arriving.

But then he really had nothing yet to say–nothing, at least, which he could say in front of strangers. He certainly couldn't say 'What dummy4

am I doing here, for God's sake?' at this stage in the proceedings.

'Dr Audley?'

It would be an interesting academic exercise to discuss the nature of an unknown object which was able to retain its value over so many years. No secret terror weapon, no list of traitors now in their graves or their dotage could last so long. Newer and far more terrible weapons had made the technology of the 1940s antediluvian. And a whole generation of younger and differently-motivated traitors had superseded the honest simpletons and rogues of Steerforth's day.

And no single Dakota could carry enough mere loot to hold the Russians' interest down the years. Or in the first place, when they were bulging with German valuables.

'I assume,' he said tentatively, carrying on his thoughts aloud, 'that the Russians are still interested. That's why we are here now, at this hour, without our breakfasts?'

Fred smiled.

'They are indeed, Dr Audley. In fact I'm afraid they were down at the crash site pouring beer down navvies and interviewing talkative aircraftsmen before we were. But I meant have you anything to add to the Steerforth File in the light of his reappearance?'

Audley started to adjust his spectacles, and then stopped awkwardly. He had been trying to control that gesture for years, without real success.

'I mean, are the Russians still interested, after having learnt that those boxes contained rubble? Did they learn that? It's an important dummy4

distinction.'

'Assuming that they did–what then?'

'I should have to know rather more about Steerforth. There is a possible sequence of events, but I wouldn't like to advance it yet.'

'Why not?' This was Stocker at last. 'You have a reputation for drawing remarkably accurate deductions out of minimal information. I'd very much like to hear what you make of this.'

Audley felt a flush of annoyance spreading under his cheeks. It galled him that he had a reputation for understanding without reason. Intuition had its place, and was valuable. But only in the last leap from the ninth known fact to the inaccessible tenth, and never at the very beginning. And even at the last it was not to be trusted.

He knew he ought to control his feelings, and hold the only real card he possessed. But he couldn't.

'I'll tell you one thing I do know'–he tapped the Steerforth File with his index finger–'that Major Butler was more right than he knew when he said that this was non-information. I'd like to see the original file, for a start.'

'The original?'

Audley sighed. Maybe he did have that flair. It would be easier to admit an inspired hunch than to explain that he could look between the lines of this material to see the gaps in the narrative, the sudden thinness of the material, the changes of style, the tiny inconsistencies of editing. All of which suggested the removal of something too intriguing to be left to the common gaze.

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He looked to Fred for support.

'Quite right too,' said Fred. 'You shall see it. Stocker only wanted to know—'

'—I only wanted to see Audley pull a rabbit out of his hat.' Stocker smiled, and was transformed by his smile from a faceless JIC man into a human being. Audley felt that he had been small-minded and pompous.

'And you did pull a rabbit out. Only it was not the one I expected.

I'm sorry to have played fast and loose with you. Sir Frederick warned me. But the missing bits don't concern Steerforth, I assure you. You'll still have to find out about him for yourself. Which I believe Sir Frederick is arranging for you.

'On which note I will bid you good morning. It has been a pleasure to see you at work, even if only briefly. But I shall be seeing you again soon.'

Audley could only blush, and shake the hand thrust out to him.

Then Stocker was gone, and the atmosphere lightened perceptibly.

Audley observed that both Butler and Roskill were grinning.

'I really cannot understand,' said Fred, 'why the JIG always produces threat reactions in you people–even in you, David.'

There was no point in suggesting that Fred himself had formalised the conference in Stocker's presence by dropping all the Christian names he usually affected. He probably intended to foster the JIG

mystique, not reduce it.

'It has a perfectly reasonable co-ordinating function, which you all know perfectly well. But no matter. Have you any more immediate dummy4

questions?

Roskill stirred. 'One thing–only I don't quite know how to put it.

This Russian interest, after all these years–couldn't it be just a case of bureaucratic obsession?'

'And we could be making a fuss about nothing? Or something that has become nothing? It could be, Hugh, it could be. But if it isn't–

then it could be rather interesting. Weighing the possibilities, I think we have to go ahead, at least for the time being.'

'Have you got any more questions, David?'

'I have–yes. But not about Steerforth. First, if it is decided that I must attend his funeral–I must assume it is his funeral–I must be allowed to have my breakfast first. I cannot go to a funeral on an empty stomach. Second—'

Fred held up his hand.

'David, I do apologise. You shall breakfast with me in a few moments. Mrs Harlin has the matter in hand. And then you will be going to the funeral–you've got the transport laid on, Hugh?'

'8.45 from here, Sir Frederick. It's a good two hours to Asham.

We'll pick up the other car in Wantage.'

'Very good. And you're concentrating on locating the original cast, Jack?'

Butler nodded. 'Mostly routine, but it may take a little time. They may be all dead, except the Joneses.'

'I hope not for all our sakes. In the meantime, gentlemen, I have some explaining to do, I believe, for Dr Audley's benefit. I'll excuse you that.'

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The departure of Roskill and Butler cued in Mrs Harlin, with breakfast. And breakfast conceived on a scale which shattered Audley. The condemned man's meal, or at least one designed to give an elderly vicar strength to go out to evangelise the Hottentots.

Before they had even sat down Fred moved to forestall argument.

'I know you're not a field man, David. But I don't see this quite as a field assignment. More an intellectual exercise in human archaeology.'

'But I deal with words, Fred, not people. I'm no good at interrogating. I don't know how to start.'

Fred snorted.

'Absolute nonsense. You interrogate our people all the time.

Extremely closely, too, if what I hear is true.'

'I know them. That makes it different. Get me the reports on this as they come in. I'll do the job just as well that way–probably better.

But why me, anyway? I'm a Middle East man.'

Fred lowered his knife and fork.

'And a damned unpopular Middle Eastern man, too.'

Audley stopped eating too. Here was the truth at last.

'Did it ever occur to you, David, that you might annoy someone with that recent forecast of yours–before the Lebanese business?'

Audley bridled. 'It was true.'

Fred regarded him sadly. 'But undiplomatically packed. It didn't leave anyone much room to manoeuvre in.'

He cut off Audley's protest. 'Damn it, David, it wasn't a report–it dummy4

was a lecture. And an arrogant lecture, too. You're a first-rate forecaster who's stopped forecasting.'

'I've never twisted the facts.' Audley could sense that he was digging his heels into shifting ground. 'That forecast was accurate.'

'If anything, too accurate. If you were a gambler I'd say your cards were marked. And you're too far in with the Israelis.'

'I've used Israeli sources. I don't always believe what I get from them though.'

'You lunch with Colonel Shapiro every Wednesday.'

'Most Wednesdays. He's an old friend. But so are Amin Fawzi and Mohammed Howeidi. I meet a great many people.'

Fred sighed, and started eating again.

'I don't give a damn, of course. As far as I'm concerned you can have your own old boys' network. You can poke your nose anywhere, as it suits you. But that last report was the final straw.'

Good God, thought Audley: he was being taken out of circulation.

Banished to the Steerforth File, where he could not cause any annoyance except to four ageing members of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.

Yet Fred was smiling, and that didn't fit.

'For a devious character you are sometimes surprisingly transparent, David. If you think that you are going to be put out to grass, you are mistaken. You ought to appreciate your value more clearly than that. What you need is a dose of reality. You've been leading a sheltered life for too long.

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'In any case, you surely don't think the JIG would send one of their troubleshooters here at such a godforsaken hour just to watch you being cut down to size?'

Audley remembered the edited Steerforth file and felt a pricking of humiliation. He had gone off at half-cock.

'And you can thank your rugger-playing past for this. too. Or rather your impact on Dai Llewelyn–you remember him?'

Audley frowned. There had been quite a number of Welshmen in the old days. Mentally he lined them up, and Dai Llewelyn immediately sprang out of the line-up–an exceptionally tough and ruthless wing forward for the Visigoths. A far better player than Audley had ever been, older and craftier.

'He remembers you rather well. He says you were a blackhearted, bloody-minded wing forward, and not bad for a mere Englishman.'

'He was the black-hearted and bloody-minded one. If I've got the right Llewelyn, he was a rough player.'

Fred nodded. 'He's still a rough player for the Arab faction in the Foreign Office. But he seems to have a certain regard for you. He said your talents ought not to be wasted –provided you didn't play against his team. He has a marked weakness for sporting metaphors.'

Audley remembered Llewelyn well now. Almost a stage Welshman, all rugger and Dylan Thomas, until you crossed him.

Then you had to look out.

It was on the tip of his tongue to protest that he hadn't been playing against anyone. But it wasn't quite true, and the thought of dummy4

Llewelyn marking him again was somehow a shade frightening.

He sensed that it would do no good any more to protest that he was a Middle Eastern specialist.

Fred shrugged off his objection.

'David, you're like a good many thousands of ordinary British working men: you are going to have to learn new skills. Or rather, you must learn to adapt your old skill in a new field. And I think you'll find the new field gives you greater scope. You've got the languages for it. You'll just have to catch up on the facts.'

Fred reached over and rang the buzzer.

'You wanted to know what had been taken out of the Steerforth File . . . Mrs Harlin, would you get me the Panin papers?'

Audley jumped at the Harlin presence at his shoulder. She moved as stealthily as a cat. Then the name registered.

'Nikolai Andrievich Panin. Does that name ring any bells?'

The tone implied that he was not expected to know very much, if anything, about Nikolai Andrievich Panin.

'Didn't he have something to do with the Tashkent Agreement?' he said tentatively.

Even that was too much. Fred raised his eyebrows and pushed himself back from the table.

'How in the name of God did you know that?'

'I just know he's a sort of troubleshooter–someone like Stocker, I suppose, except that he usually deals with internal affairs,' said Audley, trying to gloss over what appeared to be a gaffe. 'Once he dummy4

was an archaeologist, or something like that. A professor, anyway.'

He hadn't said anything in the least funny, but Fred was laughing nevertheless.

'Like Stocker? I must tell Stocker that. He'd be flattered. And he'd also be impressed, because you seem to know quite a lot for a Middle Eastern man. It was his idea that we should give you Panin, too. If you can do half as well with him as you have with Rabin and Mohiedin, there'll be no complaints.

'But you wish to know his connection with Steerforth. It's quite simple: he's only been in England once, and that was to look for Steerforth 25 years ago. He was the fly-by-night attache who turned up at the Newton Chester airfield.

'When he became more important he was edited out of the Steerforth file, which is an open one.'

Mrs Harlin entered noiselessly, carrying a red folder as though John the Baptist's head rested on it.

'Actually,' continued Fred, 'we know very little about the man. But we do know that every year he spends a month in the spring excavating a site in ancient Colchis. Keeping his hand in, as it were. It's the only sacrosanct date in his calendar.

'Or it was sacrosanct.' Fred stared at Audley. 'This year he packed in after only four days and flew back to Moscow the day before yesterday. And for once we know why.

'It seems he thinks Steerforth is still interesting, even with a load of rubble.'

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II

A cold wind came off the shoulder of the Downs, over the low wall of the churchyard, and straight through Audley's old black overcoat.

But he preferred the chill of the open air to the mockery of the service in the little church; there had been too many double meanings in the beautiful old words.

'For man walketh in a vague shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them . . .'

It all applied too exactly to Steerforth. And whatever the priest said there was not going to be any resting in peace for him.

Resurrection was the true order of the day.

But now at last the wretched business was coming to a close and his work could begin: the official intrusion into private grief.

He scrutinised the mourning faces again. They were a disappointing lot. A few journalists; the RAF contingent from Brize Norton, with Roskill uniformed and anonymous among them; and a scattering of morbid onlookers. Only Jones represented the Steerforth file, and Jones could hardly avoid his wife's husband's funeral.

He had hoped for a better catch. But it seemed that not one of Steerforth's crew had come to see his captain's bones committed to the earth at last. Perhaps they didn't read the papers; perhaps they were all dead and buried too.

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The rest of the mourners were Roskill's concern, anyway. His own lay just ahead: the family group already labelled in his memory, but only glimpsed for a moment in the flesh as they had followed the coffin out of the church. At least his point of contact was obvious, and he weaved his way through the crowd to catch him as he shepherded his family towards the lych-gate.

'Mr Jones?'

The man turned slowly. He had a rather heavy, outdoor face. The years had filled it out and lined it, but the dark, alert eyes were still those of the young airman in the file. What the file had not suggested was the uncompromising air of self-possession.

'My name is Audley, Mr Jones. I'm from the Ministry of Defence.

Would it be possible for me to have a few words with you later?'

The eyes and the face hardened. But if there was a hint of resignation there was certainly neither fear nor surprise.

Jones gestured courteously for Audley to proceed through the gate in front of him, a measured, easy gesture. It might have been two old friends meeting on a sad occasion which did not admit an exchange of words, and it effectively sealed off Audley from the other mourners.

'Of course. I suppose you people never really give up. I've been half expecting you.'

Audley was nonplussed. This formidable man was already outrunning the script. No cock-and-bull cover stories would be any use on him, even if Audley had felt able to construct them. Nor would he repay pressure.

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'If it's inconvenient just now, as I'm sure it is, I could see you this afternoon. But I'd rather not put our meeting off until tomorrow.'

Jones considered the family group by the line of cars in the lane, as though gauging their mood.

'No. Better now while they're busy with their thoughts. But I'd rather you didn't bother my wife. And my daughter–I should say my step-daughter–is obviously of no interest to you. If I talk to you now, will you guarantee to leave them alone?'

They were getting perilously close to the cars.

Audley felt that nothing but honesty would serve here. 'You know that I can't guarantee anything like that. But I'll do my best.'

'Fair enough. You can be a Ministry of Defence man charged with deep condolence from the Minister himself. That will please the old girl at least. And then you can come and have a drink with us.'

Jones's tone implied that he did not consider the occasion one for condolences, which was not really surprising under the circumstances. 'The old girl' could only mean Steerforth's mother, for Jones was not the sort of man who could refer to his wife in such terms.

Margaret Jones, the Margaret Steerforth of 25 years before, was still an attractive woman — one of those women who fined down with age. Her beauty had not faded, but had mellowed to serenity which not even the present strain had disrupted.

'My dear,' Jones took his wife's hand in an easy, affectionate way–

he did everything with the same air of confidence, 'this is Mr Audley, from London. He is representing the Minister of Defence.'

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Audley muttered a few conventional words awkwardly. He still thought of her as Steerforth's wife, and had to force himself to address her correctly. She looked at him as though she could sense the cause of his confusion, but was far too well-bred to let it disturb her.

'It's good of you to come, Mr Audley,' she said evenly. 'The Air Force authorities have been very considerate. As you can imagine, this has all been rather a shock to us, the past coming back so suddenly after all these years.'

Jones took the pause which followed–Audley could think of no appropriate reply–to introduce the older woman who hovered at Margaret Jones's shoulder.

Audley took in the blue-rinsed white hair and well-corseted figure.

Not quite grande dame, but trying hard to be, he thought, and mercifully not too sharp-looking.

'I heard, Martin. As Margaret said, the authorities have been most considerate. And you are connected with the Royal Air Force, Mr Ordway?'

It seemed simpler to say that he was. Mrs Steerforth dabbed her eye with a handkerchief.

'It took me back many years to see those young officers carrying the — carrying my son. So young, they were. Always so young.

Just like Johnnie and his crew. You were too young to take part in the war, Mr Ordway?'

She looked at him. Then her eyes unfocused, dismissing him.

'He was such a fine boy, Mr Ordway. And such a good pilot–they dummy4

all said so. I miss him still. We all miss him.'

She spoke as though Jones, right beside her, did not exist. Yet clearly she wasn't trying to be offensive: hers was simply the narrowed viewpoint of the elderly, the self-comforting assumption that her feelings would be shared by all sensible people. An assumption in this case probably fed by an obsessive love.

Jones seemed resigned to her disregard, but her words hung embarrassingly between them and she pressed on to make things worse, focusing on Audley again.

'And this is my granddaughter,' she said with emphasis, '—my son's daughter.'

The baby girl of this morning's file was a tall, thin ash blonde, and there was no doubt about her parentage. She had not only her father's fairness and bone structure, but also the same haughty stare. Only it was coloured now by indifference, not discontent: Steerforth's daughter evidently found her father's funeral something of a bore.

The Jones boys, both in their late teens, were less thoroughbred and more sympathetic. Where their step-sister looked bored they were obviously intrigued with this forgotten chapter from their mother's past.

'My dear,' said Jones, 'I've invited Mr Audley back to the farm for a drink. I can show him the way and Charles can drive you back. It was rather a squash coming, anyway.'

The elder Jones boy hastened to protest his ability with the family car and his mother seemed almost pleased by the prospect. It dummy4

occurred to Audley that she saw him as a target for her mother-in-law's proud memories rather than a welcome guest.

But the opportunity was too perfect to miss, whatever ulterior motives prompted it, and he accepted with the merest pretence of reluctance.

As he led the way to the car he caught a glimpse of Roskill talking earnestly with a young man holding a notebook. Prising out the list of mourners. He caught Roskill's eye briefly, and had no time to avoid being snapped by a photographer who seemed to spring up from nowhere.

'Have you had much trouble with the Press?' he asked.

'Not more than I expected. None with the locals–I was NFU

chairman last year and I'm well in with them. We had a few chaps from London–they must be damn short of news. But I was civilised with them and they were reasonable enough. There's no story to be had here anyway.'

They reached the car, and for a moment their eyes met over the roof.

'He was a good pilot, you know,' said Jones conversationally. 'But I wouldn't have described him as a fine boy in a hundred years. He was a selfish bastard.'

Obviously, reflected Audley as they drove off, there was little to be gained from a gentle approach either. Jones had accepted him with too little surprise to be trapped into revealing any long-held secrets he still wished to hold.

'You didn't say that 25 years ago.'

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'I don't remember what I said 25 years ago. But I had squadron loyalties then. And I hadn't met his widow then, never mind married her.

'I know I didn't believe that he was dead, certainly–and I didn't say that either. Turn left here.'

They branched off the secondary road on to an even narrower one which steadily climbed the shoulder of the Downs. Already the plain was flattening out below them.

'Why didn't you think he was dead?'

'Don't you think you had better explain what you want? And you can show me your credentials first, just in case. I do remember that there were some rather odd characters asking questions in the old days. I take it you are some form of military intelligence.'

Audley smiled to himself as he passed over his identification.

Some form indeed!

Jones passed back the wallet. 'You don't look the type. But I assume that is to be expected. Not that you aren't big enough.'

'Why didn't you think he was dead?' Audley repeated.

Jones was silent for a moment.

'It's not going to be easy remembering anything fresh,' he said slowly. 'But you'd better get one or two things clear from the start.

'I had nothing to hide then, nothing personal, and I've got nothing to hide now. I flew with Steerforth that one time only–as a passenger. You've read the record, I'm sure. I'd been stuck in Berlin with food-poisoning. It just happened to be his plane I flew back in. He was always wangling the Berlin flights.

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'And I hardly knew him. I only went to see his widow because the other chaps were crocked up. I fell for her then, and I married her as soon as it was legal, when Faith was just a tot.'

Jones paused again.

'They are two of the four people I love best. I'll tell you now that I'm not going to have them pushed around by anyone. And I'm not going to be pushed either. Not just to set your records straight. I don't care what he did.'

Audley pulled the car on to the shoulder of the road, on to a patch of smooth, wind-driven turf. He turned the engine off and sat back, wondering how Roskill or Butler would handle this man.

'You're ahead of me, Mr Jones. A long way ahead of me.'

'That's where it's always best to be.'

The wind whipped the downland grass beside the car. It was peaceful, but not in the least still, very much like his own Sussex Downs. He watched the birds wheeling and diving over the fields.

Down below a toylike tractor was busy.

If Jones had not believed in Steerforth's death he must have had long years of uncertainty, waiting for the knock on the door. But would that have sharpened his wits so much over the years?

Sharpened them so much that he was able to identify Audley straight off?

Jumping to conclusions was what he himself was supposed to be so good at. It was disconcerting to be on the receiving end.

'Why did you expect me, or somebody like me?'

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'I didn't. But you didn't surprise me. I'll never forget all those questions at the time. They left a mark on me when I'd been softened up. When I baled out of that Dak I was sure I was going to get killed–I can remember quite clearly thinking how unfair it was to be killed after the war was over. I've always associated Steerforth with trouble ever since, and when he turned up again I was just waiting for it.'

'You said you hardly knew him. But I'd have to know someone pretty well to call him a tricky bastard.'

Jones opened the car door. 'Let's get some air,' he said. 'It's easier to be frank in the open.'

Audley followed him over the springy turf on the hillside until he stopped by a wire fence. Audley experienced the familiar downland sensation which both excited and frightened him.

Down below him the neat patchwork of fields, the squat churches and neat houses with smoking chimneys–that was the rich, fat, peaceful land of England. Up here on the Downs was a different ambience, more ancient and hostile. The downlands could be creepy on a hot, still day. And in the evenings there always seemed to be things moving outside the circle of a man's vision.

All right then, he thought, as Jones carefully took a pipe from his pocket, tapped it on a fence post, and sucked it thoughtfully, let us see how frank we can be.

'Let's start then from your theory that he wasn't dead. Why wasn't he dead?'

'It was too damn convenient, for one thing. The customs men dummy4

coming down on the squadron, like that, and Steerforth conveniently missing.'

'He'd been smuggling?'

'Christ, man–don't let's play games. You know he'd been smuggling. Half the squadron was up to some little game or other.

It was an open secret. The only rule was not to overdo things, but Steerforth wasn't the man for rules.

'What I thought afterwards was that he'd made his killing, just one step ahead of your chaps. And now he'd planned a neat way of getting out, with no one looking for him. It was nicely calculated–

the squadron got its scapegoat, unofficially of course. And no one bothered to dig very deep. Officially he was just another dead hero.'

'Who left his wife and family just like that?'

'Maybe I've done him an injustice. It seems now that I probably did. But I know he didn't give a damn for his wife and family. You can take that for a fact, whatever the old girl says. He'd had babies and nappies right up to the neck–believe me, I know.'

Jones frowned. 'And that business about baling out–I thought a lot about that, and it never quite made sense. He really was a good pilot, you know. I saw the plane he brought back from the Arnhem drop, and if he could fly that he could fly anything. There were any god's amount of airfields he could have put down on in eastern England when we came back from Berlin that last time. But no–as soon as we made a landfall–out we had to go.'

'His second pilot explained all that at the inquiry.'

'His second pilot? What was his name?

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'Tierney.'

'Tierney?' Jones thought for a moment. 'Tierney. A ferrety-looking chap, with a little moustache? He was Steerforth's shadow. If Steerforth was up to something, he'd have been part of it.'

'But you baled out.'

Jones gestured impatiently. 'When the captain says bale out no one argues the toss. And I'm telling you what I thought later, not what I thought at the time. I can remember a bit now–it started to rain like hell. A thunderstorm. Tierney and the wireless operator yelled for me to jump. The Dak was lurching around as if it had been hit. I was bloody scared. I thought I was going to die.'

'I see. He disappeared too conveniently and you needn't have baled out at all. But if you thought this later on why didn't you say so?'

'I only started to think it when everyone began asking us questions.

It wasn't just the inquiry–that was routine. It was later on.

'First there were two chaps who said they were Poles. They wanted to know where the plane had gone, if it had been found and so forth. And then they wanted to know what it was carrying–they said that friends had got some of their stuff out of Poland and Steerforth had agreed to carry it out. At a price, of course.'

'And what did you tell them?'

'There wasn't anything to tell. There were some boxes in the cargo bay, but I thought they were down in the drink with the Dakota–

that was common knowledge. They seemed pretty upset by it all, as though it was my fault, so I told them to shove off.

'Afterwards it dawned on me that they must have thought I was one dummy4

of his crew. Which meant I'd probably have been in on the deal.

And that made me think. The way they hung around our pub, that made me think, too. So when I went down there again I took a Pole who was in the squadron with me–Jan somebody–with me—'

'—Wojek. Jan Wojek.'

That's right. How did you–but, of course, you'd have him in your records like me!' Jones shook his head resignedly. 'All these years, and we're all still in your files, Jan and I. And Tierney and Steerforth, and all the others . . . Once filed, never forgotten.

Though I suppose you've got it all taped in computers now. It's frightening.'

'You took Wojek down with you to the pub.'

'All right. We went down to the pub, and I told Jan to tell these two to bugger off–which he did in no uncertain manner.'

He paused, and then slipped his fist into his palm.

'By God, I remember it now! Because I was surprised at Jan getting so angry with them. He came back to me breathing fire.

'He said they were no more Poles than he was a Scotsman. Bloody Russians, he said they were–and Jan hated Russians as much as Germans. He reckoned his elder brother was at that place–Katyn?–

where they killed all those Polish officers. We hadn't heard about it officially, but there was a grapevine among the Polish aircrew.'

So that was how it had all started, thought Audley. The first report had come from Wojek simply because he hated Russians on principle. It had happened before, often. National hatreds were poor sources of useful infomation, but excellent watchdogs.

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But Jones was almost enjoying his memories now, warming to the task.

'Then there was another foreigner. A little chap, not at all like the other two–one of them was very sharp. In fact I can remember him–

the Russian–quite well now. I only saw him properly twice, maybe three times in the pub. But he was one of those people you can't really forget: he had a broken nose–it gave him a sheep-like look from a distance. Not from close up, though.'

Audley's stomach muscles tightened. Jones had described Nikolai Andrievich Panin with remarkable accuracy.

'Have you got him in your files too?'

Audley started guiltily. Jones was too quick by half. And I, thought Audley, am not very good at this job.

'Of course. But we'll talk about him again some other time. Tell me about the little foreigner.'

'He was nothing. A Frenchman, I think. And scared out of his wits.

I never even gave him a chance to explain what he wanted. He just muttered something about Steerforth's cargo and I told him to go to hell. I can't remember anything more about him–except that I think he was quite relieved to clear off.'

That fitted too. The Belgian had been an ex-policeman with a dubious wartime record. He had readily admitted that he had been hired, and paid, anonymously to trace Steerforth's plane. There had been no mention of any missing property. But he had soon sensed something bigger and possibly more dangerous, and he had wanted no part of it, he said.

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A little man, but a big complication, thought Audley. He gave an extra dimension to the Steerforth mystery, which admitted only one explanation. But it was an explanation as yet without any facts to support it.

'Then there were your people,' said Jones. 'But you'll know all about that, I've no doubt.'

'There are two points I'm still unclear on,' said Audley slowly. 'You hardly knew Steerforth, yet you knew he was a selfish bastard?'

Jones nodded.

'I married his widow. My knowledge of Steerforth is second-hand, but I'd say it's better than first-hand really.

'When I decided to ask Margaret to marry me I wanted to make sure I didn't have a ghost lying in bed between us. Maybe some men could just forget that there was a past. I couldn't, because I just wasn't sure he was dead. So I had to exorcise him, alive or dead. To do that I had to make her tell me about him.'

'Wasn't that rather cruel?'

'If she'd loved him it would have been. But they didn't even like each other any more. Only she didn't know that until she'd heard herself say it–to me. Then I knew I wouldn't have to share her with him.'

Audley cast a sidelong glance at Jones. Half a loaf would never have been good enough for him. The file had assessed him as an innocent bystander whose involvement with Steerforth had been accidental. Only his subsequent marriage with the man's widow made him suspect. But now that too could be discounted. Not only dummy4

was there no likelihood that he was withholding anything on Steerforth, but it was unlikely also that Steerforth would have confided in a wife who bored him.

Nevertheless Jones's own assessment of that last flight tallied usefully with Butler's and his own: it had the smell of a put-up job.

The silence of the hillside was broken by the sound of a car climbing the gradient. As it reached the level stretch below them it began to accelerate, then slowed down and pulled into the verge beyond Audley's. Roskill got out and looked expectantly up at Audley.

Again he had the feeling that the action was outrunning the script.

For Roskill to disturb him like this only trouble was sufficient reason.

He stumped down to the road with undignified haste.

'I'm sorry to break in on you, Dr Audley,' Roskill apologised, 'but when I phoned in to the office to say I was coming home there was an urgent message for you. I'm to tell you that the professor–no names, just the professor -has been positively identified in East Berlin. And rumour puts him on a flight to London on Tuesday.'

Audley blinked unhappily, and Roskill completely misconstrued his reaction.

'I'm sorry it sounds so bloody mysterious, but that's exactly what the Harlin said, and I'm afraid it comes from that JIG character, not Fred.'

Audley tried to think. A moment before the task ahead seemed reasonably clear, no matter how unfamiliar his own role in it was: a dummy4

simple and leisurely reconstruction of the events of the last week in Steerforth's career, with the willing or unwilling help of the survivors of his crew. Panin had only been a potential complication.

But now Panin was a reality, and Panin appeared to be on the move. And unlike Audley, Panin knew exactly what he was doing.

He grasped the nettle. 'Hugh, I'm going back to London at once.

You run Jones home and then get tracing the crew as fast as you can. Tell Butler to drop everything and get after the Belgian.'

He turned towards Jones, who had stepped on to the road a discreet distance away.

'Trouble?' There was a suggestion of amused sympathy in Jones's eyes.

'What makes you think that, Mr Jones?'

'The same reason I wasn't too surprised to see you. If you've got Steerforth, you've got trouble: you can't just bury men like Steerforth.'

'You may have him too, Mr Jones.'

'I've got a shotgun too. Just leave me your telephone number, and I'll let you know if I shoot something interesting.'

III

Audley stared from his study window out across the South Downs and tried to make sense of Nikolai Andrievich Panin.

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Usually he found it relaxing to watch the evening spread over that landscape, dissolving the familiar landmarks one by one. But Panin refused to let him relax on this evening.

The Russian had to be the key to Steerforth. It was his involvement alone which had kept the dead pilot alive in the files over the last decade; it was his interest which- had aroused the department and had even provided Fred with an honourable way of sacking Audley: Panin was big enough to make the sack look like promotion.

Big enough, but wholly enigmatic. For no one seemed to know what made Panin tick and what kept him wound up. He hadn't been tagged as a coming man until after he had arrived, and then it was too late. They had simply never caught up with him.

Audley looked down at the thin file in front of him and the pathetic handful of notes he had made during the afternoon. Kremlinology was at best a foggy enterprise, more divination than detection, full of Delphic hypotheses about men whose passion for secrecy appeared at times to be pathological.

But Panin had raised this passion to an art form.

There wasn't an ounce of meat on the bones of the man's career. He had allegedly been at Moscow university before the war, and certainly returned to it afterwards, emerging as an acknowledged expert in the arts and customs of the ancient Scythians, for what that was worth. In between he had been a staff officer in Khalturin's crack division of Chuikov's army, and that in theory brought him to Berlin in 1945. But between the time he had been identified across the public bar of the Bull Inn, Newton Chester, dummy4

and his appearance at the famous Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, when Kruschev had denounced Stalin, nobody seemed to have set eyes on him. He had been as quiet as Steerforth.

So someone had been keeping Panin on ice among his Scythian burial mounds, in preparation for the better days between the Twentieth and Twenty-Second congresses. Yet he wasn't one of Kruschev's 'golden boys', like Polyansky: he was everybody's man and nobody's man.

Moreover he seemed to Audley to have the remarkable talent of knowing unerringly when to be somewhere else.

He had been as far away from the Kruschev faction in '64 as he had been from the doomed followers of Malenkov and Molotov in '57.

Even the single relationship which tied him in with the intelligence agencies was equivocal, through the last hypothetical co-ordinator of the KGB and the GRU, Mironov.

But Mironov was a Brezhnev appointment, and he had no links with Brezhnev. And when Mironov flew so mysteriously into a Yugoslav hillside four days after the fall of Kruschev, Panin was visiting a dig in the far-off Altai mountains.

Intelligent anticipation or inside intelligence? The file didn't say, and the bare facts wouldn't tell–and the facts about Panin always seemed to be weeks or months out of date when they finally filtered through.

Even Audley's own Middle Eastern knowledge was made useless by Panin's shrewd uninvolvement with unprofitable causes. If he had been in the ranks of the Shelepin-Semichastny followers dummy4

during Kruschev's defeat, he had been conspicuously absent from them when Kosygin clipped their wings during the June War-Glasboro period.

But a Kosygin man would surely not be on such friendly terms with Grechko, the bully of the East Germans and the Czechs . . .

except that any friend of Grechko ought not to be a friend of Moskalenko . . .

It was no use, no bloody use at all. The names and the convolutions of power swam before Audley's eyes. In the Middle East the protagonists were like old friends, whose reactions were at least partially predictable. But here he was among blank-faced technocrats and strangers, of whom Panin was the strangest of all.

It would take months of study before any of them would start to talk to him through their comings and goings, absences and appearances, and in the oracular reports of their words and deeds.

He had to find a short cut to the man's character, or at the very least, to his motivation in 1945.

Suddenly he realised that his line of thought had been interrupted.

Mrs Clark's geese, the guards of his privacy, had been disturbed; they were shrieking their displeasure at a car which was nosing its way up the track towards the house. He could see its headlights flashing intermittently between the overgrown hedgerows.

Courting couples occasionally tried the lane, which didn't look as if it was going anywhere when it left the main road. But nowadays the geese always intercepted them and drove them back. Yet this driver was not deterred; the headlights halted for two or three seconds near the glow of Mrs Clark's cottage, but then moved dummy4

forward again. It could only be coming to him now, thought Audley savagely, and it couldn't be a friend, since no friend of his would ever come calling casually.

The car finally emerged from the lane on to the broad expanse of cobbles, swinging round to stop precisely in front of the porch. It was a white Mini, a tiny toy of a car — nobody he knew drove such an object. But the driver seemed in no hurry to get out, and Audley dared to hope that the engine would start up again. Then the door opened and a tall, tweedy woman in glasses and headscarf climbed out.

Audley was halfway down the stairs to the front door before the bell clanged. If it was charity he would buy it off as quickly as possible, and if white elephants were required for some village occasion he would promise a whole herd of them.

He hardly ever used the main door, and was embarrassed to find that Mrs Clark, ever burglar-conscious, had shot both the huge iron bolts. And when he swung the heavy door open there was an agonised protest of ancient hinges which made him smile: it was altogether too like the opening sequence of a Hammer film, with himself as the ghoulish butler. The coming plea for Oxfam or jumble would be an anticlimax.

But his caller made no plea. She stood waiting in the pool of light, obviously expecting him to speak first.

'Can I help you?' he volunteered at last.

Now she was surprised, and it dawned on Audley that she knew him and had assumed that he knew her. For a long moment he dummy4

groped for her face in his memory, without success. Somebody's wife? Somebody's sister? Somebody's—

'Dr Audley, don't you remember that we met this morning. Faith Jones–Faith Steerforth?'

He made the identification as she spoke. Somebody's daughter! It was unpardonable, but her unexpected glasses and the shadows thrown by the harsh overhead light had deceived him.

For another long moment he stared at her, at a complete loss for words.

'Aren't you at least going to ask me in?'

The 'at least' was like a gauntlet thrown down before him.

It assumed hostility and carried the fight into the enemy's territory.

But how could she have become hostile to him so quickly?

'Miss Steerforth–Miss Jones,' he apologised. 'Forgive me. Please come in.'

He motioned her through the hall, down the passage and into the sitting room. She looked around her with unashamed curiosity, as though valuing the place.

'You've got a lovely house, Dr Audley. And lovely furniture. I didn't know policemen were so well paid,' she said aggressively.

That flecked him on the raw. He thought of the long struggle to preserve these things that he loved so much, and of the things that had gone to save the rest.

'This house, or what's left of it, has been in my family for a long time, Miss Steerforth. Or is it Miss Jones?' He tried to keep the dummy4

anger out of his voice, and achieved a sneer instead.

'I call myself Jones, Dr Audley. But you can call.me Steerforth if you prefer. That's the name on my birth certificate.'

She took off her glasses and regarded him with the same disconcerting haughtiness he had felt outside the churchyard at Asham, doubly disconcerting now because the to-hell-with-you look which characterised the surviving pictures of her father was even more pronounced. Except now it was tinged with hostility rather than boredom. Only something her mother or step-father had told her could have roused her like this. And only the card he had given to Jones could have enabled her to track him down. But that didn't ring true of Jones–it was puzzling.

He realised suddenly that he was out-staring her out of sheer surprise and curiosity. There was uncertainty just beneath the arrogance, and it would be prudent to give that uncertainty time to grow.

'I was just about to have a drink, Miss–Jones.' He moved to the door without giving her a chance to refuse. 'I'll get you one too.'

It was only when he had reached the kitchen that he remembered he didn't have a casual female drink in the house any more. He could hardly offer her a choice of beer or brandy, which left only too-good Claret or execrable Spanish burgundy. He searched for the burgundy abstractedly. Why the hell had she come to disturb him? And why did she think he was a policeman? Not that those answers were of any importance, since she could know nothing about the father she had never met.

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He fumed as he pulled the cork. He had lost his confidence with young women; since his break-up with Liz he had been like the pilot who hadn't dared to go up again immediately after the crash.

The sooner this nuisance of a girl was packed off, the better.

But the nuisance looked so woebegone and vulnerable when he returned to her that his determination weakened. She had put on her glasses again, but it seemed that her supply of courage had run out: the strange old house and the strange policeman had begun to overawe her.

He set a glass on the table beside her. 'Now, Miss Jones, what's the trouble?' Confident neutrality was the note to strike. 'But I must tell you straight away that I'm not a policeman. I think you've been misinformed there.'

She looked down at her feet.

'I think–I think maybe I've made a fool of myself,' she said slowly.

Audley relaxed. It wasn't going to be so embarrassing after all. So long as she didn't start to weep, anyway; anger was preferable to tears any day.

'I've driven all the way from Asham making up things to say to you. But now I'm here they all seem rather stupid and melodramatic. I don't know what to say now.'

Audley gestured towards the wine. 'Drink your drink–it isn't very good, I'm afraid. Then let's hear some of the things you made up and I'll tell you if they fit.'

'They don't fit–I can see that now. But my father–my step-father, that is–said you were a sort of high-up policeman.'

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'Your step-father told you that?' It still didn't sound like Jones.

Faith Jones shook her head in embarrassment.

'No, he didn't. That's what makes it worse. I overheard him talking to Mummy. Not deliberately–I'm not an eavesdropper. I was in our spare room, and you can hear every word that's said in the dining room underneath. And I wouldn't have listened, except that I heard my father's name–my real father's name.' She paused. 'It was rather a shock. I just couldn't stop listening.'

'Why was it a shock? You must have heard them talk about him before. You must have asked them about him.'

'They've told me lots about him. Grandmother talks about him all the time, even now. But—'

And it came tumbling out. The brave pilot, hero of the Arnhem drop, with a medal to prove it. Jones had been a little more guarded, or more honest, and had admitted that he hadn't really known her father. But even he had stretched a point and pretended that he believed Steerforth had stayed with the Dakota to save other people's lives. And the little girl had thought herself lucky to have two gallant pilot fathers instead of one, and had never missed the one already in heaven.

And then she had grown up and strayed into the wrong room, and overheard a conversation with a very different flavour.

'It was Mummy who started it. She always sees through people.

She said: "That man asked you about Johnnie, didn't he?" And Daddy didn't want to answer at first, but she insisted. She said she had a right to know.

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'And then finally he said: "The bastard was up to something big,"

or something like that. And he said he'd always suspected that he'd been up to no good, but it must have been even more important than he thought, because you were here asking questions.

'And Mummy asked who you were, and he said you were obviously a special sort of high-up policeman. He said you put on a good act pretending that you were doing a boring job you didn't enjoy. But underneath he thought you were hard as nails–he said you were a mailed fist in a velvet glove.'

God bless my soul! thought Audley. Jones had seen clear through him, and then had drawn the wrong conclusion because it was the logical one. How many others had made the same mistake, he wondered, from Fred downwards? It was amusing–it was even rather satisfying. But it was ridiculously wide of the mark, and this young woman had presumably seen more clearly, with less reason and more intuition.

He leaned forward and filled her glass again.

'No mailed fist. Just an ordinary hand in the glove, Miss Jones.

What happened then?'

'Then it was awful, because Mummy said: "So it's all happening again." And Daddy wanted to know what was happening again.

Then she started to cry–and she never cries, or almost never.'

Her voice faltered, and Audley was terrified for a moment that she was going to follow her mother's lead. But she bore up, and continued.

'She said that after he'd disappeared two of his crew had kept dummy4

coming round asking about him as though he were alive. And then they'd asked her if he'd left any messages or instructions. They wouldn't leave her alone.

'Daddy was nice to her then, and said she ought to have told him.

And she said he was the only one who didn't pester her with questions.'

That was one good thing, thought Audley. It put Jones in the clear beyond all doubt. If he hadn't put the key questions in so many years he certainly hadn't been looking for any answers.

'And what happened then?'

'Daddy said she didn't have to worry. He said he'd make damn sure no one pestered her again. If they did he'd get in touch with you–

he'd put your address in the book.'

'So you went and looked me up.'

Faith Jones nodded.

'But why come and see me now?'

The corners of her mouth turned downwards appealingly. For a moment he could see the little girl with the two brave fathers who had suddenly and cruelly discovered that one might have feet of clay.

'I realise it was silly now. I was so mixed up–but I wanted to come and tell you, or ask you, not to bother them any more. Because they really didn't know anything about –about whatever it was he did.

'And, Dr Audley, I want to know what he did that was so awful. I mean, I ought to be told, oughtn't I?'

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She looked at him as if she was screwing up her courage to say something awkward.

'When I was at college no one was ever interested in the war. We were all CND–I went on the marches. But though I've never admitted it I've always been terribly proud of my real father. When I was browsing through Blackwell's in Oxford years ago I saw a book all about his aeroplane. I bought it and I read it. It wasn't very interesting, but I read it. I — I know a lot about Dakotas.

'And now I've learnt that he wasn't very nice at all–because if my step-father says he was a bastard, I'm sure he was. Daddy doesn't often make mistakes about people.'

Audley forebore to point out that Daddy–her switching between fathers was confusing–had not been so right about the mailed fist.

But she'd made her point, and he would have to produce some sort of answer out of common decency. Except that Steerforth was in some degree a classified subject.

She was looking at him, half expectantly, half fearfully. And she was, despite her glasses, rather an attractive girl in a scraggy, angular way. Not his type, in as far as he had a type. Not at all like the unlamented Liz . . .

'Have you had anything to eat?' he asked, with sudden inspiration.

She shook her head.

'Good. Then we'll both have something. My Mrs Clark has left me an immense piece of cold ham. Come to the kitchen and carve it for me — and bring your glass with you.'

She followed him obediently, and the incongruity of the situation dummy4

struck him. Steerforth had not even been a name to him twenty-four hours ago. He had encountered him at dawn and buried him before midday. And now he was having supper with the man's daughter.

What made it more odd was that he really knew nothing about this girl, who was in some sense part of his work. He had been much better informed about other girls who had been permitted to slice ham and cucumber on his kitchen table, and who had certainly not been connected with important matters. And that had been due more to personal inclination than professional precaution. Not that it had helped much, he reflected. Perhaps his passion for information had ended by inhibiting other varieties of passion.

At least such considerations did not complicate this relationship.

Audley stopped with his hand halfway into the cutlery drawer as an idea welled up in his mind. He observed her out of the corner of his eye. That Steerforth face of hers was not so apparent now, but it was there all the same, undeniably there. To use her was against the rules, but in certain circumstances that face might have its uses.

Jones wouldn't like it, but Jones didn't have to know: this was between father, real father, and daughter. And if Stocker and the others didn't like it either, they would still be mightily impressed with his unexpected expertise with young women. So to hell with all of them!

The only drawback was that he would have to tell her at least some of his hypothesis. But then it was only a hypothesis, as yet little more than a hunch without real evidence and totally without any key information.

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He dismissed the possibility that she was not what she seemed. The time factor, the logic of her presence and his own instinct ruled it out. But he interrogated her gently throughout their kitchen table supper nevertheless–three glasses of wine had just sufficiently loosened her tongue and restored her confidence.

At least she was satisfactorily ordinary–the very blueprint of an educated middle-class female. High school, Young Farmers' Club forsaken as she moved leftwards to Bristol University and CND.

Then gently rightwards again as she worked for a diploma in education, and so to teaching at a custom-built comprehensive.

Except that she taught physics and chemistry–he was careful not to show unemancipated surprise–and had no steady male admirers.

'Shouldn't you be teaching now?'

But of course they had a huge half-term at state schools, and she had compassionate leave into the bargain.

'What were you doing at Blackwell's?'

'Blackwell's?'

'You bought a book on Dakotas there.'

'I went to a commem ball there–at Oxford, I mean.'

The ball had not been a success. 'I don't mind men making passes.

But he took it for granted.'

Audley nodded sagely. 'Wouldn't have happened at Cambridge. I mean, it wouldn't have been taken for granted.'

She smiled at that, and Audley judged the ice to be sufficiently melted. It was time to get her interested.

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'Miss Jones, you want to know about your father–you want to know what he did, in fact. And the answer is that we really don't know. All I can do is to tell you what we think he did. Perhaps you'll be able to help us a little in return. Would you be willing to do that?'

She looked at him uncertainly. 'I don't see how I can help you. I don't remember him–I only know what Grandmother told me.'

'No matter. Anyway, I take it she told you what was supposed to have happened–lost at sea, and all that?'

She nodded. That story would have lost nothing in Grandmother's retelling.

'Well, there were certain people who were very interested in the whereabouts of your father's plane at the time. Presumably because of what it was thought to be carrying.'

'The crew—' she began. 'The two who pestered my mother—'

'Forget about the crew for the moment. These people weren't crew members. One of them was a Belgian and the others were Russians.'

'Russians?'

'Your father was flying regularly to Berlin, twice a week often.

That was when we were just setting up the four-power allied control commission there. His squadron was on a freight run. But there was also a great deal of what you might call private enterprise on that run too. You could get just about anything in Germany in those days if you had cigarettes to trade with, and there were a lot of valuable things about with temporary owners.

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Your father was very well-placed to transport the merchandise.'

'You mean he was in the–what did they call it?–the black market?'

She spoke coldly, almost contemptuously.

Audley sipped his coffee. 'You shouldn't think too badly of him for it, actually. It's a rather modern idea, not letting the winners plunder the losers blind. There were a lot of chaps doing it.'

'My step-father didn't do it.'

Jones was evidently on a pedestal.

'No, I don't believe he did. But your father was in it up to the neck, and one day he seems to have picked up something extra special.

Something hot.'

'But you don't know what it was?'

'We don't–not yet. And I don't think he really did either. Or at least he didn't understand its true value.'

Faith Steerforth broke in: 'But whatever it was–you must have it now. If it was on the plane.'

'There was nothing on the plane. That's the whole problem.

Nothing but seven boxes of broken bricks.'

'Somebody had taken it?'

'We don't think so.'

'Then he never had anything. Or maybe someone switched those boxes before he was given them.'

She was quick enough, certainly.

'It's possible. But we don't think it's likely. The Russians must have been satisfied about the Berlin end before they came over here.

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They're very thorough when they want to be–so thorough that they never forgot about the plane. In fact they already know there wasn't anything in it. But they are still interested!'

She shivered.

'That's what's so beastly. It's what frightened Mummy–people being interested again all these years afterwards. It must have been something terribly valuable.'

'Not valuable in terms of money, Miss Steerforth. The Russians don't have to worry about money.'

She stared at him. 'But he didn't have it, whatever it was. So what's all the bother about now?'

Audley was about to answer when the grandfather clock struck in the distance–eight, nine, ten.

'It's very late, Miss Steerforth. Isn't anyone expecting you?'

She glanced at her watch, but shook her head.

'I'll go to a hotel somewhere. But you must tell me why there's this trouble first. I promise I'll go then.'

Audley thought for a moment. There were no such things as conventions these days, after all.

'You can stay here if you like. There's a spare bed–and I'm a Cambridge man, I assure you.'

She looked at him in surprise. Patently–and rather humiliatingly–

she had not considered him in that light at all. He was still some sort of policeman, and consequently sexless.

Then she smiled. 'That's very kind of you, Dr Audley,' she said.

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'But please stop calling me "Miss Steerforth". I know it must be confusing for you, so just call me "Faith". He chose the name, anyway.'

'Steer–your father did?'

'Yes. It's silly really. Grandmother told me that long before I was even born he said he'd like to have three daughters, to look after him in his old age. And he'd call them Faith, Hope and Charity. It's silly, because he said he was naming them after three old aeroplanes.'

For the first time Steerforth came alive to Audley. No longer bones in a lake, but a man who had lived and made ordinary, everyday plans–plans for three daughters, anyway.

'Malta,' he said. 'That was where his old planes came from. At one time in the war they had just three to defend it, and they called them Faith, Hope and Charity.'

She looked at him. 'I'd like to stay if I may, Dr Audley.'

He couldn't help smiling at her. It was actually rather pleasant to have some female company again after so long.

'Very well, then–Faith. I'll tell you what all the fuss is about. It's really quite simple in outline: somehow your father picked up something valuable, and then everyone thought it was lost at sea with him. Only now we know he wasn't lost at sea and he wasn't carrying the thing when he crashed. Yet the Russians are still interested. Now doesn't that suggest anything to you?'

He waited for her to speak, but she wouldn't be drawn.

'Well to me–Faith–it suggests that whatever he'd got hold of was dummy4

already here. If the Russians are so sure it's the only possibility left.

And once you accept that, actually, the other awkward bits in the puzzle fit much better.'

'Other bits?'

'There were those seven boxes of bricks, which shouldn't have been on board. All four survivors saw them. Your stepfather and the navigator couldn't describe them very clearly. But the other two were very helpful.'

'The two who—'

'Those two, yes. Warrant Officer Tierney and Flight Sergt Morrison. They should have conveniently forgotten the boxes if they were valuable, but instead they remembered. And by remembering they put everyone off the scent. Which is exactly what they intended. Because what's lost at sea doesn't have to be accounted for, does it?'

'But that would mean—' she squared up to the implication '—that he meant to crash!'

'That's exactly what it means, yes.'

'You can't mean he crashed in that lake deliberately.'

'I don't mean that. That was a real crash–and it wasn't meant to happen. What was meant to happen was the story Tierney and Morrison actually told.'

'But my step-father wouldn't have stood for anything like that. He would have spoken up–I know he would!'

'He was just a passenger. He did as he was told, and he didn't really know what was happening. In fact it was just the same as the dummy4

boxes: two vague stories, and two detailed ones–much too detailed.'

She regarded him thoughtfully. 'All right, I take your point,' she said slowly. 'But I don't see how you make it fit what's happening now.'

'Where doesn't it fit?'

'Well, if the real boxes were already in,' she paused. 'And if my father was dead . . . then Tierney and the other one got everything long ago. You're twenty years too late, and so are the Russians–

you're just wasting your time.'

'Maybe I am–but the Russians aren't.'

Not Panin. Of all people, not Panin. That had to be an article of faith.

'So they're infallible, are they?'

'Not infallible, but not stupid. Besides, there is an alternative, you know. In fact you as good as suggested it yourself.'

She frowned at him. 'When did I?'

'You told me that Tierney and Morrison pestered your mother. The Belgian and the Russians were only interested in the plane. But those two were desperate to find your father. Even our people noticed that at the time.'

'They were his friends.'

'So they hounded his widow? No, Faith. He hid it and he didn't tell them where. And then he disappeared–and there wasn't a thing they could do about it.'

There was no point in adding that what had probably hit the dummy4

surviving conspirators hardest was the growing suspicion that they had been double-crossed by Steerforth, just as the Belgian had been double-crossed.

Faith Steerforth looked past him, into the darkness outside.

'Then it's still where he put it,' she said softly, half to herself.

'It's the only explanation that makes sense of what's happening now, Faith,' said Audley. 'The Russians must have come to the same conclusion, too. And they think it can be found.'

IV

Audley set his cup of vile coffee down on the plastic tabletop and glowered into it. Meetings with Jake Shapiro, with the exception of their standing Wednesday lunch, were always in places of Jake's choosing and always in uniformly horrible places.

And the vision of Faith Jones poking around the old house in his absence didn't appeal to him either, even though her behaviour as an unsolicited guest had been unexceptionable: she had neither messed up the bathroom nor talked at him during breakfast.

But there was no other course of action open to him. He had to meet Roskill this morning, and he had to keep the girl to hand now that he had decided to make use of her. It was no good consulting the resident Kremlinologists; he had recognised Tom Latimer's hand in the Panin file, and if Latimer was still undecided about the man then no one else would be of use. And that left only his own dummy4

sources.

The kitchen swing-doors banged at the back of the narrow coffee bar as Jake barged through them. He slapped the waiter on the back, whispered in his ear, lifted a cup of coffee out of his hands and swept on past him without stopping. He slid the cup along the tabletop and eased himself along the bench opposite Audley.

'David, my not-so-long-lost friend! It's good to see you again so soon–but not on a Saturday. I thought it was always the day when you stayed home and cut those rolling lawns of yours–and for me it is the Sabbath! So you have me worried on two counts!'

Jake's humour had been degenerating for nearly twenty years from its original abysmal Cambridge level, and Audley's only defence was to sink unwillingly to that level.

'I thought you'd like to know that there's a jobbing machine shop down in Gosport which makes spare parts for all those grounded Mirage IIICs of yours, Jake.'

Jake slapped his thigh in delight.

'Just what we've been looking for! Now we shall not have to buy them from the South Africans — the way they've been getting through their spares must be baffling the French. Or if not baffling them, amusing them. But seriously old friend, what is this business of Saturday working? It's not good, you know. And besides, I have a date with my El-Al stewardess this morning, so spit it out.'

Now for the moment of truth. If Jake had heard a whisper that he'd been shifted from the Middle East he wouldn't give much, even for old times' sake. Jake was an honest horse-trader, but only when the dummy4

trading prospects were reasonable.

'Nikolai Panin, Jake. What can you tell me about Nikolai Panin?'

The grin faded from Jake's face–too quickly for a genuine grin. He brushed his moustache thoughtfully.

'Panin's not a Middle Eastern man.'

'No, he isn't. I'm just doing a little job for a friend, and I need to catch up on him.'

Jake raised his eyebrows.

'Little job? Don't let them snow you, old friend. Panin's a hot number these days–are you in trouble?'

As ever, Jake was quick to sense changes in the wind. Much too quick.

'My only trouble is I'm too good by half. Don't worry about me.

Just tell me about Panin.'

Jake pursed his lips, and then nodded.

'You might be the right man for Panin at that! You're both secretive sods.'

'Both?'

The Israeli gave a short laugh. 'Don't tell me you don't know, David. If you asked me to I could pretty soon number off the Central Committee, left, right and centre. The ones that matter, anyway. But not Comrade Panin–nobody knows who pulls his strings. And if we did we'd know quite a lot more about some other people!'

He drank his coffee thirstily.

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'You know about Tashkent?' he continued. 'That's what really put him on the map in a big way. Up to that time he'd always been an internal man, as far as I know.'

'What does he really do?'

'What does he do? Bugger me, David, if I really knew exactly who does what in that goddamned Byzantine set-up do you think I'd be sweating out my time on this little island, trying to screw tanks out of you?'

'Is he KGB?'

'That's another million dollar question. If you ask me they're all KGB, right down to the children and the nursemaids. Particularly the nursemaids. But your Panin, I just don't know. He's a fixer, a smoother-out.'

'Tell me something he's fixed.'

'Well, since you ask me, I think he had a hand–or maybe I should say a foot — in kicking out Kruschev. But I couldn't prove it. Then again, he's always kept well in with the military. Very proud of his war record, too. He was a fighter, not a commissar. Joined up with the 62nd Army on the Volga, came through Stalingrad, slogged it all the way to Berlin. Came out as a staff major with the 8th Guards–one of Khalturin's little lambs. I wouldn't have liked to have been a German squaddie in a house they'd decided to take.'

'For a gullible lad sent straight from the kibbutz to buy our tanks, Jake, you're quite well posted on him.'

Shapiro grinned. 'I do my homework, unlike some who are more celebrated for it. Besides, I've met the famous Panin.'

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'You've met him? Where?'

'Embassy party at Delhi, just after Tashkent–I was doing a little research on whose tanks had lasted longer in the Rann of Kutch.

And there he was–and he talked to me in excellent English, too.'

'What was he like?'

'Like? He's got the face of a rather sad clown–nose broken in the war and set badly. Or maybe not set at all. But he knew me, because he immediately started to talk about the Masada dig, which I'd just visited. He was too bloody clued-up by half. And I didn't know him from Adam. So I went straight off and tried to find out about him, and came straight up against a brick wall, more or less.

'In fact I've been studying him off and on ever since–as I've no doubt lots of western layabouts have been. And with precious little success, because you've now got the sum total of my studies. In return for which I expect to get the sum total of yours in due course, my dear David.'

Nothing was more certain than that Jake would render a bill of some sort.

'And that really is the sum total?'

'I might be able to come up with a few more names. But it wouldn't signify, because he covers too much territory. That's the trouble —

you can't pin him down. In any case, David, you'd best tell me more exactly what it is you want.'

Basically the Israelis knew no more than the British: they both knew simply what was common knowledge. But Audley had dummy4

expected that. What they did have, however, was by far the best record of events in Berlin in 1945; it was a mere byproduct of their long hunt for the missing Nazi butchers, but it was rumoured to be astonishingly complete. That, though he didn't know it, was going to be Jake's special contribution.

'Well,' began Audley judiciously, 'there are several periods of Panin's career I'd like to fill in, but I think you'll only be able to help me with the early one, which is really the least important. I may not even need it, but if you could pass the word to one or two of your Berlin old-timers, they might know something.'

Jake's face hardened. Different nations had different raw places, tender spots, where no leeway was ever allowed. For the Indians and Pakistanis it was Kashmir. For Frenchmen it was 1940. For Jake, and for may other Israelis, it was still the missing Nazis of 1945. He should have remembered that.

'I give you my word, Jake, that as far as I know this has nothing to do with war criminals. Absolutely nothing. And you know how I feel about that.'

The Israeli relaxed. In as far as he trusted any Anglo-Saxon he trusted Audley. Which was not far, perhaps, but far enough.

He nodded. 'Okay, David. I'll drop a word to Joe Bamm–you can always get him at our Berlin place. He's forgotten more about the old days than most other people ever know. In return, if you turn up any little thing about one of them, don't you sit on it.'

He looked at his watch. 'Is that all, then? Because if it is my Delilah awaits me.' He paused, unsmiling again. 'But just you dummy4

watch it, David, my old friend. You're not dealing with simple Jewish farm boys and stupid Arab peasants any more. You're dealing with real chess players now. If I were you I'd wear belt and braces. They haven't changed one bit, the Russians, whatever your starry-eyed liberals say.'

Audley had one more self-appointed contact to establish before going to the office, but there was no time unfortunately to make it a face to face one. The hated telephone had to be used this time.

'Dr Freisler? Theodore–David Audley here.'

Theodore Freisler was outwardly the archetypal German of the twentieth century world wars, hard-faced and bullet-headed. But within the Teutonic disguise lived an old nineteenth century liberal, whose spiritual home was on the barricades of 1848. His books on German political history were highly regarded in the new Germany, though even in translation Audley found them unreadable. The mind which produced them, however, was at once gentle and formidable: Theodore was a wholly civilised man, the living answer to Jake's unshakeable suspicion of everything German.

'Theodore–I'm glad to have caught you. I'm always expecting to find you've gone back to Germany.'

Theodore had quite unaccountably settled in Britain, in an uncomfortable flat near the British Museum, during a historical conference in 1956. And although he was always revisiting Germany and talking of returning to the Rhineland he had showed dummy4

no sign of actually doing so. Audley had wondered idly whether he was producing some terrible successor to Das Kapital, to set the next age of the world by the ears.

'One day, David, one day. But until that day I shall make my personal war reparation by letting your chancellor have most of my royalties. That is justice, eh?'

'You'll have to work a lot harder to shift our balance of payments, Theodore. But you may be able to help me just now.'

Their friendship had started years before when Theodore, no Nazi-lover, had volunteered the information which had set the Israeli propaganda on the German experts in Egypt in its proper perspective. Since then he had been Audley's private ear in West Germany on Arab-Israeli policies.

'I am at your service, Dr Audley.' The formality marked the transition from banter to business.

'Theodore, I've got a riddle for you: what is it that was of great value to the Russians in 1945, was attractive enough for a private individual to steal, and is still of interest to the Russians today?'

There was a short silence at the other end of the line.

'Is this a riddle with an answer?'

'If it is I haven't got it.'

'Do you have any clues?'

'It came out of Berlin in the summer of '45, possibly in seven wooden boxes, each about the size of that coffee table of yours, Theodore. Roughly, anyway.'

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'You don't want much, do you? In 1945 there were a great many things of value to be had in Berlin, and the Russians took most of them. But of value now—'

'You can't think of anything?'

'Give me time, Dr Audley, give me time! But it is time that makes a nonsense of your riddle. There was much plunder to be had then, but that would not interest them now. Not even Bormann's bones would interest them now! That is perhaps the one thing that you can say for them: their sense of material values is not so warped as ours in the West.'

'But you're interested?'

'Interested in your riddle? Yes, of course. It is the lapse of time which makes it interesting. But can you give the date of the theft more precisely?'

'Not the theft, Theodore. But it left Berlin end of August, beginning of September.'

Theodore grunted. 'I will ask my friends, then. But it is a long time ago, and I cannot promise success. Also, some riddles do not have answers. And if there is an answer, is it a dangerous one? I don't wish to embarrass my friends.'

'To be honest, Theodore, I don't know. But just give me a hint and I can get someone else to do the dirty work.'

Theodore chuckled. 'Ach, so! I do the searching, others take the risks and the good Dr Audley sits in his ivory tower putting all our work together–that is the way of it! But I think I shall move circumspectly, since you do not know what it is I am to find.'

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Audley had to take it in good part, for it was true enough.

'If you're too busy—'

'Too busy? I'm always too busy, David. But not too busy for a friend–never too busy for a friend. And besides, it interests me, your riddle. Something old, but still valuable to them, eh? And

"them", I presume is the Komitet Gosudarst-venoi Bezopasnosti?'

'That's by no means certain, Theodore.'

Nothing was certain, that was the trouble. All he had was an elaborate house of cards built on only partially interlocking theories. But as he drove back to the office Audley felt fairly satisfied. He had set things moving for which he did not have to account to Stocker: Jake would dig further out of sheer curiosity, and anything Theodore turned up could be cross-checked in the Israeli Berlin files as well as the London ones. If only he had one good hard fact to convince himself that it was all worthwhile . . .

Without that one hard fact, however, there was really nothing he could do. Butler was hard at work in Belgium; half an hour with Roskill should be long enough to work out Monday's schedule.

There was no point in rushing things, and he could look forward to a blessedly peaceful weekend. Even the presence of the Steerforth-Jones girl seemed acceptable now. It made a change to have a girl about the house again, even though she hardly qualified as a girl-friend. She might even cook Sunday lunch!

Even the department was reassuringly empty, with Mrs Harlin's chair unoccupied, a certain sign of the absence of external crises.

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On such a quiet Saturday as this Lord George Germain had lost the American colonies–and well lost them, too, in the interest of his long weekends.

He tiptoed past Fred's door and slipped into his own room noiselessly.

Stocker, the man from the JIG, was sitting in the armchair opposite the door.

'Good morning, Audley. I hope you don't mind me lying in wait for you like this in your room, but I wanted to get to you first. Have you made any progress?'

Audley composed his face. 'Here and there,' he said guardedly. 'It's rather early days yet for anything concrete -if there is anything.'

Stocker gave him a thin, satisfied smile.

'Well, I can give you something nice and hard: Nikolai Panin's coming to see you.'

Audley carefully set his brief-case alongside the desk, undipped it and drew out the Steerforth file. It never did to let anyone throw you. Or to show it when they did. Friend or enemy, the same rule applied.

But if Panin was coming to England, then the thing -whatever it was–must truly be in England and could be found. Until now he had never quite believed in his own theory: it had been a mere intellectual exercise in probabilities. Now it was all true because it had to be.

'You don't seem very surprised.' Stocker sounded disappointed.

The devil tempted Audley, but only momentarily. There were dummy4

times to take undue credit, but assumed coolness was usually more highly regarded than omniscience.

'On the contrary,' he replied mildly. 'I'd rather discounted the possibility. But then we've got twenty years of lost ground to make up. He didn't say what he wanted of me by any chance?'

Stocker sat back, seemingly reassured by Audley's fallibility.

'Actually he doesn't know yet that he'll be meeting you, so you have one small advantage at least. To be precise we've simply been informed that a certain Prof. N. A. Panin, a distinguished member of the Central Committee, would like to visit England informally, in a semi-official capacity. Apparently he wants to discuss "a matter of mutual interest" with what they term "an official of appropriate seniority".'

'That hardly describes me. It might describe you.'

Stocker laughed shortly. 'It had the Foreign Office a little baffled, I think. Indeed, they were all too ready to agree that it was more our concern than theirs. Their Mr Llewelyn actually suggested that this might be very much up your street — I believe he's a friend of yours?'

God help the Israelis, thought Audley. And Allah protect the poor Arabs too.

'Anyway, I'm going to lay down a welcome mat for our distinguished visitor, Audley. And then you are going to take over from me. You are going to show the professor all the sights of interest.'

They had it all worked out: mark the mysterious Professor Panin dummy4

with the inconvenient Audley. No matter that Audley isn't trained for this sort of thing. What he doesn't know he can't give away.

Or did they really think he could do what no one else had yet done?

'And just what am I expected to do with him?'

'Be nice to him. Find out what he wants and why he wants it. Get to it first. Then give it to him.'

'Give it to him?'

Stocker coughed apologetically. 'The official view is that whatever it is, it's unlikely to be more valuable than his gratitude. If it was valuable to us he'd never come openly asking for help, which is what he appears to be doing. It's thought that one good turn may lead to another.'

'And what do you think?'

'My dear Audley, I've always found gratitude a somewhat intangible thing. But on the whole I go along with the official view. We don't want to offend him if we can help it. We'd like to know a lot more about him, but we don't want him to put one over on us, if you see what I mean.'

Audley didn't–and did to the uttermost degree. Everyone was in the dark.

'But I've got freedom of action?'

'Within all reasonable limits.'

'And I can have Roskill and Butler as long as I need them?'

Stocker smiled. 'But of course–and anyone else you need. Roskill and Butler have got German and Russian–but then you're quite a dummy4

linguist too, aren't you?'

Audley couldn't make out whether he was being superior or matter-of-fact. Fred was always matter-of-fact because he never needed to be superior.

'I read them. I've got no ear for languages.'

'No matter. I'm told the professor speaks perfect English. Anyway, you've got until Tuesday to wrap it up. He comes in on the scheduled Aeroflot flight at 11.30. And for the record — just what have you got on Steerforth?'

Audley looked at him bleakly. 'He took something and hid it. If Panin thinks it can be found we must agree with him, I suppose.'

Stocker got up. 'In that case I suggest you find it first, Audley.

Then all your troubles will be over. If you need any help just ask for it–I'll see you're not held up.'

When he had gone Audley sat staring despondently at the file. In the past he had stood as an adviser on the fringes of operations which had seemed to him ingeniously simple or hopelessly devious. Or brilliantly complex. Or plain stupid. Whatever Panin was about, it wouldn't be stupid. And this time he was in the barrel.

V

'There's the place,' said Roskill, pointing down the street. 'Two small boys with their noses against the window.'

Audley followed him through the dense Saturday crowd, many of dummy4

whom seemed bent on playing chicken with the motorists. The pavements were hardly less dangerous than the road, with mothers bulldozing their way ahead with prams and pushchairs from which children peered through ramparts of cornflakes and soap powder.

Roskill adroitly slipped into the wake of one of the most aggressive pram-pushers and Audley skipped after him.

The crowds parted left and right before the woman's advance, which continued providentially to a supermarket just beyond their destination. There she slewed the pram inwards with superb timing and Audley and Roskill were able to join the two small boys unharmed.

'I dunno wot it is,' said one boy to the other. 'They got the red, white an' blue wrong way round too.'

'Which one?' asked Roskill.

The boys looked round in surprise. Then the smaller pointed to one of the numerous model aeroplanes on display.

Roskill peered down. 'Bristol Blenheim Mk IV,' he said. 'Those are Free French markings–the French who were on our side in the war.'

He straightened up. 'Morrison's had this shop for twelve years,' he said, indicating the legend above the shop window, The Modeller's Shop. The large off-white letters needed repainting, as did the shop itself. 'Not exactly a gold mine, apparently.'

Audley took a deep breath and pushed open the door. Ahead and just above him an enormous yellow-nosed Stuka was just beginning its dive: on every side colourfully illustrated boxes advertised the progress of half a century's war in the air. To most dummy4

of them he could not put a name with certainty: bright, barbaric little biplanes and triplanes and more familiar modern British aircraft in respectable green and brown camouflage. And–yes–an Israeli Mirage swooping down on a hapless Egyptian MiG. No mistaking those two!

'Can I help you, sir?'

The thick mousey hair of 25 years ago had thinned and retreated.

The nose had reddened and sharpened and spidery gold spectacles sat on it now. The whole face had aged prematurely and less gracefully than Jones's, a sagging and unhealthy version of the filed photograph.

'Are you two gentlemen together?'

Odd how obscene the innocent statement sounded these days–a commentary on the times!

'We are, Mr Morrison.'

'Yes, sir. What can I do for you? We've got one of the finest ranges of models in Southern England. Planes, ships, cars, armoured vehicles, British and foreign. Working models too.'

'Planes we're interested in, Mr Morrison.'

Morrison was obviously trying to place them both, and having no success.

'You're in luck, sir, then. We've just got the latest Airfix range in—'

'Dakotas.'

'Dakotas? Yes, we've got Dakotas.' The little man turned, scanned the shelves behind him and selected a box. 'This is by far the best dummy4

Dakota model, sir. The Airfix one. It's been on the market for several years, but it's very popular. With alternative American wartime transfers, or Silver City civilian ones.'

'We're after a Royal Air Force Dakota, Mr Morrison.' Roskill was joining the game now–a cat and mouse game when played like this, but one which might be over quicker this way.

'Well, sir, in that case I should buy the Airfix model and then some RAF transfers separately.' Morrison shifted his glance from Audley to Roskill.

'And you've got 3112 Squadron transfers?' Audley spoke this time, and the man's gaze came back to him.

'I beg your pardon?'

'3112, Squadron,' said Roskill. 36547–G for George. Pilot–Flight Lieutenant Steerforth, navigator–Flying Officer Maclean, second pilot–Warrant Officer Tierney. And radio operator–Sergeant Morrison.'

Morrison looked from one to the other uneasily.

'Who are you? What do you want?'

'We don't actually want a Dakota, Mr Morrison. We've got the Dakota. We've got Steerforth. And now we've got you.'

'Who are you?'

'In fact there's only one more thing we want, Mr Morrison, and you are going to tell us all about it. With no lies this time.'

Morrison took off his glasses and polished them furiously. Sweat glistened on the pouches under his eyes.

dummy4

'Please tell me who you are,' he pleaded.

Audley hated himself. 'We are not your old comrades, Mr Morrison,' he said brutally. 'And we've no time to waste arguing.

You brought it in to Newton Chester.'

Morrison's will crumbled like a piece of rotten wood.

'I–yes,' he mumbled.

Audley breathed out. Some men's defences could only be approached with all the precise formality and deliberation of an eighteenth century siege, with parallels and saps, gabions and fascines. Surrender was a mathematical certainty if the attacker had the force, the time and the patience. But others could be knocked off balance and taken by a coup de main before they could recollect their wits. Morrison was a weak man who had fallen to a crude surprise attack. A text book case.

'What was it?'

Morrison gestured unhappily. 'I don't know. I swear I don't know.

He never told me.'

' Steerforth never told you.'

The wretched man shied away from the name as though it would shrivel his tongue.

'What did Steerforth tell you?'

'It's such a long time ago–I don't remember.'

'You're in trouble, Morrison. We know perfectly well that you haven't forgotten. You read about the Dakota in the papers a few days ago. You haven't forgotten.'

dummy4

Morrison turned his head from side to side as though his collar was too tight.

'I think he said it was–incredible. But he wouldn't say what it was.

He just said it was worth the risk. He said it was priceless.'

The words tumbled out now as though Morrison couldn't get rid of them fast enough.

'And it was in the boxes.'

Morrison nodded. 'I suppose so.'

'How many boxes? Seven?'

'I think so.'

'Were they heavy?'

'I don't know. He–Steerforth–and Tierney carried them aboard. I just kept a look-out.'

That was all he was worth. Just a look-out man.

The shop door-bell rang. Audley turned to find an entire family trooping in, breaking the spell utterly, destroying the illusion.

Morrison sighed with relief.

'What time do you close, Mr Morrison?'

'Five-thirty.'

'We'll be back at 5.25. We can take our time then. I know you can remember a great deal more if you try.'

He turned to go, but the man's courage had risen in the presence of others.

'I didn't catch your name, sir.'

dummy4

Audley toyed with the idea of maintaining the element of uncertainty. But it would be embarrassing if Morrison then did the sensible thing and called the police. In any case, they had him now, and their official status would probably strengthen their hand rather than weaken it. He held his identification open for Morrison to see, just above the spotty face of the latest customer.

'Until 5.25, then, Mr Morrison. Don't go away.'

Outside the crowds seemed even thicker and more determined. The two small boys were still glued to the window, and one of them instantly buttonholed Roskill.

'Mister. Wot's that one?'

Roskill peered into the window again. 'Savoia-Marchetti SM 79,'

he said shortly. 'Italian torpedo bomber.' Then he turned to Audley.

'There's a tea shop over the road. We can wait there.'

Audley nodded morosely. He had told Faith Jones he would be home by three, then by six. Now it would be more like seven. His quiet Saturday routine was totally dislocated. And Sunday would be equally ruined, since it was now clearly imperative to grill Tierney and the others as quickly as possible.

Roskill was a man who put his stomach first, an old campaigner: he consumed a schoolboy's tea with relish before attempting to make serious conversation, while Audley toyed with a sickly cake.

Finally he dusted off the crumbs, carefully wiped his fingers and grinned at Audley.

'That was bad luck, just when you'd got him on toast. But I've got a tape of it in case he gets forgetful'–he patted his coat pocket–'or dummy4

stubborn. Do you think he knows what it was?'

Audley shrugged. It was quite possible that Steerforth had kept the nature of the cargo to himself, or shared the secret only with Tierney.

'It isn't vital yet, anyway, Hugh. What we need is a line on the hiding place.'

'Always supposing it's still there.'

'It's there.' He had to keep on believing in that.

'But they won't have the answer.'

'They won't. But remember, they've never really thought of looking for it. If they're like Jones they'll have thought that Steerforth was alive, which meant there was no point in looking.'

'How are they going to give us a line on the stuff then?'

'It's the time factor, Hugh–they can narrow down the time factor for us. Remember the breakdown of Steerforth's movements in the file?'

'You mean between the flight in on Tuesday and the flight back to Berlin on Friday?'

Audley nodded. 'That's the crucial period, yes. They brought the boxes in on Tuesday evening. They got them off the plane somehow–we want to know how and where. There must have been a temporary hiding place then.'

'Steerforth was duty officer from 08.30 on Wednesday to the same time on Thursday, wasn't he?'

'Right. And he went to London all day Thursday with the navigator dummy4

and Wojek the Pole. So he had just Tuesday and Thursday nights to shift the boxes, which didn't give him much scope, I'm hoping.'

'And you really think we stand a chance of tracking the stuff down?'

'Depends on how much we can make people remember, Hugh. And whether we're lucky–as he was.'

Roskill cocked an eyebrow. 'Steerforth was lucky?'

'If I've got it worked out right he had to have one real piece of luck.

Look at it this way: he takes over a cargo in Berlin to deliver to that Belgian Butler's looking for at the moment. He takes a look at it and decides to keep it for himself.

'Now he's got two problems. First he's got to double-cross his employers so they won't come chasing him. He does that by pretending he can't bring the stuff out on the first trip and then by losing the aircraft, complete with a dummy cargo, on the second trip.

'But he's also got the practical problem of finding somewhere to put the genuine cargo in the meantime. And he has to come up with the answer to that sometime during the flight back on Tuesday. The first problem sounds harder, but it wasn't really.

They just had to get their stories right. They'd had to bale out once before, so they knew the drill. It was the second problem that was awkward.

'It has to be some beautiful, simple, hiding place, because he hadn't time for anything elaborate. And that's where he was lucky, because it was so good that those boxes are almost certainly still where he put them.'

dummy4

The traffic and the crowds had thinned appreciably when they left the tea shop. The pavement outside Morrison's Model Shop was empty.

But when they were halfway across the road Roskill paused in mid-stride, cursed and accelerated.

'I think the little bastard may have run out on us,' he exclaimed.

Audley hurried after him. The blind on the shop door was pulled down, to reveal its 'Closed' legend, and the door itself was locked.

Roskill looked up and down the street. 'These shops must have a back entrance,' he said. 'If you'll watch the front I'll try the back.'

Audley settled down self-consciously in front of the window. At his eye-level it was clean, but lower down small dirty hands and runny noses had left a tide mark. The models on show were meticulously made; he could even see tiny pilots in the cockpits.

Did Morrison spend his free evenings crouched over a desk with glue and tweezers and fine paint brushes? Or did the manufacturers have a staff of middle-aged women who spent their lives endlessly assembling their products to catch the imaginations of small boys?

It seemed an age before the door rattled as Roskill unlocked it to let him in. He felt absurdly like a thief being admitted by his confederate–the more so because Roskill dropped the latch as soon as he was inside.

'Has he gone?'

Roskill shook his head and beckoned him.

'No, he hasn't gone anywhere.'

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Audley followed him through the shop into an untidy stockroom. A dingy office ahead was littered with invoices and printed lists which had overflowed an old roll-top desk: Morrison was an untidy businessman. But Roskill pointed to an open door on the left, leading to what was obviously a cellar beneath the shop.

'He's down there. And he's dead.'

Audley squeezed past a packing case and stared down the worn wooden staircase. A single naked bulb hung from a flex at the foot of the stairs, and Morrison lay in a heap directly beneath it. One of his legs rested awkwardly on the stairway, the trouser leg rucked up to reveal a pathetic expanse of white flesh. There was a hole in the sole of his shoe. Halfway up the stairs his glasses lay, unbroken. He had been a small man in life. Now he seemed even smaller.

Audley felt a mixture of revulsion and relief. He had feared, or half-feared, a pointless suicide, for which he might have had to take some of the blame. This ridiculous accident would be less embarrassing, however inconvenient.

'He fell down these stairs?'

'Maybe.' Roskill looked at him coldly. 'And then again maybe not.'

The hair on the back of Audley's neck prickled: that 'maybe not'

was like a death sentence.

'I took a very quick look at him. Just on the off-chance that he wasn't as dead as he looked,' said Roskill. 'He had a nosebleed before he ... fell down the stairs.'

'Before?'

dummy4

'He bled down his shirt. But you don't bleed down your shirt when you're falling downstairs. And you don't go to the cellar when your nose is bleeding — not when the washroom's out in the yard.'

'Are you saying that someone killed him?'

He stared down the staircase again, taking in the ancient, flaking whitewash on the walls and the dust-laden cobwebs hanging from rusty nails. It didn't make sense. Violence was rare because it almost always stirred up more trouble than it stifled. Nor was it the present Russian style, certainly not in England, where it was capable of launching a major scandal.

But reason and instinct wouldn't raise Morrison from the dead. And there was no sweeping him under the carpet either.

'All right, Hugh. We'll go by the book. I'll phone the police first.

Then you phone the department. Tell the duty officer to warn Stocker. And when Butler phones in tell them to warn him too–if someone followed us down here they could be following him over there.'

It was like a nightmare; bad enough to be pitched into the field, out of his depth–but worse to be involved in incomprehensible violence.

'How much do you want the police to know?'

'We've got to know how he died. But either way we shall have to get them to go easy on it — you better get Stocker on that. No doubt he'll know how to do it. And go through Morrison's pockets while I'm phoning–there might be something there.'

He turned back to the faded black telephone in the untidy little dummy4

office. The important thing now was to keep the initiative, to emulate Fred, whose dealings with the Special Branch were always conducted in a manner which left no doubt as to who was calling the tune.

'. . . This is Dr D. L. Audley of the Ministry of Defence.' L'Etat, c'est moi. 'I am speaking from the Modeller's Shop in—' he stumbled for want of the address. But there it was on an old-fashioned letterhead. 'There seems to have been a fatal accident, but I'm not altogether satisfied with the circumstances.'

That was the authentic Fred note: not so much an investigation as a consultation required. Just in time he remembered the final refinement: 'Kindly send a senior officer with your squad.'

When Roskill took over the phone he went back into the shop, which was clean and cheerful compared with the stockroom. Just behind the counter was a low stool, with a small, smooth-edged hole in the linoleum below it–the hole Morrison had worn over hundreds of uneventful days, sitting waiting to sell models to small boys.

Audley's brief flicker of self-satisfaction faded. No more pocket-warmed coins would cross this counter; the supermarket next door would inevitably take over.

He'd met Morrison for five minutes and bullied the life out of him.

Whatever the cause of death was, the guilt was his, and he'd compounded his crime by feeling nothing but distaste and annoyance for the inconvenient thing in the cellar.

He looked down at the cutting Roskill had taken from the man's a dummy4

wallet: ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS FOUND. No one deserved to have his minor crimes come looking for him after half a lifetime, least of all a crime which had gained him nothing but a bad conscience. It was a poor recompense for Normandy, Arnhem and the Rhine, the days of fear and danger.

There was a peremptory rap on the door, which caught him unprepared. He had expected to hear the familiar klaxon first.

'Dr Audley? You put through an emergency call?'

'I am Audley. I put through the call. Mr Morrison appears to have fallen down the stairs into the cellar–through there. He's dead.'

He lead the party, which had shed a uniformed man at the door, through into the stockroom. Roskill, still busy on the phone, nodded to them without pausing in mid-sentence.

The leading member of the squad peered down the staircase for a moment, nodded to the other two men and turned back to Audley.

He was a large man, taller even than Audley, with a mild, quizzical expression. He looked as if he had seen everything, heard everything, believed very little of it, and could no longer be surprised by anything.

'I'm Detective Inspector Roberts, sir. Could I see your identification please?'

Audley passed the folder over.

'And this gentleman?'

'Squadron Leader Roskill, my colleague.'

'Might I ask who he is telephoning?'

dummy4

'The Ministry.'

'Are you here on official business, sir?'

'We are.'

'Might I know the nature of that business, sir?'

'Mr Morrison was helping us with some information concerning a matter we are investigating, inspector. A matter falling under the Official Secrets Act. He was only marginally concerned with it.

We spoke to him briefly early in the afternoon and arranged to see him again at 5.25, just before he closed. We found the shop locked, and Squadron Leader Roskill went round to the service entrance.

He found the body at the bottom of the stairs.'

Roberts nodded. 'You said in your message that you were not altogether satisfied with the circumstances here, sir. Could you tell me why?'

Audley repeated what Roskill had said.

'Inspector, there was no question of any proceedings against Mr Morrison. He was disturbed by our visit, but there was no reason why he should take his own life. If he wanted to, in any case, I don't think he would have used such a method. When I first saw him down there I thought it must have been an accident. I still think so.

'But if there is any question of foul play it is of the very greatest importance that this is established quickly.'

Roberts gave him an old-fashioned look.

'Can you think of any reason–any reason that you can tell me–why anyone might harm Mr Morrison, sir?'

dummy4

'Honestly, inspector–no. This sort of thing just doesn't happen. Not now–not here.'

'A lot of strange things happen now — and here, Dr Audley.'

'Not this sort of thing, inspector. But if it has, we have to know, so I'd like you to make a special effort.'

Roskill joined them, thrusting out a hand to be shaken.

'I'm to blame, inspector. Sorry about that, but when you don't like the look of a thing you can't make it look right by thinking about it.'

The inspector smiled for the first time, and it occurred to Audley that his own confidence over being able to handle the police from a lofty height was misplaced. Everything he had said had been either pompous or stilted, while Roskill had set everything in perspective and at the right level in a couple of easy sentences.

'Dr Audley's right, of course–this sort of nastiness is out of date now,' Roskill continued. 'But people don't fall downstairs when I want to talk to them either. They run away.'

He passed over a sheet of paper to the inspector.

'You'll want to do some checking on us. There are some names and telephone numbers to check on.

'And just to set your mind at rest I can detail our movements for you. There was a family in here when we left–I can describe the badge on the boys' blazers. And there were two lads outside all the time–from a local secondary school almost certainly. They may have seen something, and they'll remember me. I can give you a full statement.'

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The inspector relaxed visibly, and it further dawned on Audley that he had equally stupidly overlooked the need to establish not their status, but their innocence. His own assumption of authority and their equivocal position had set an awkward question of protocol, which he had not had the sense to resolve simply because it had never occurred to him.

The shop doorbell rang.

'That'll be our surgeon,' said Roberts. 'Are you a medical doctor, sir?'

Audley shook his head.

'Well, you won't mind if we get on with things. And I won't detain you long. In fact Squadron Leader Roskill can give us all the necessary details, and you can endorse his statement later if you wish.'

Which was one way, thought Audley, of saying 'I don't quite know who or what you are, you self-important sod, but I'd much rather deal with your underling anyway'. And fair enough, too.

Complicated trouble this early on a Saturday, with the evening still stretching ahead, would be enough to set any policeman's teeth on edge.

Roberts turned away without waiting for an answer, under cover of showing the way for the police surgeon and the photographer who was with him.

Roskill caught Audley's eye.

'I got straight through to Stocker. He's going to smooth things down, and he said we'd better clear this end up and then pack it in dummy4

until tomorrow. But if you like I'll hang on here and see if they find anything–I can give you the details in the morning.'

'Can they get Butler back?'

'He'll be back.' Roskill grinned. 'He won't get much sleep, but that'll only sharpen his claws. Oh–and they're sending a man up to Knaresborough to keep an eye on Tierney and another down to Asham to watch over Jones now. Just in case, Stocker said.'

There seemed to be manpower to spare, certainly. It had never been like this in the Middle East. But he didn't like the way Stocker was manipulating the action, and there was a suspicion now at the back of his mind that Roskill's primary role might well be to keep Stocker informed of the progress of events.

It was time to assert himself a little, anyway.

'Very well, Hugh. You stay on here. You can pick me up tomorrow and we'll take Tierney as planned. But I don't think he'll be so easy, so we'll do it in two stages. First, you and Butler can approach him officially. Then—'

He paused for effect.

'Then Miss Steerforth and I will have a go.'

The effect was gratifying enough: he had every bit of Roskill's attention for the first time since tea. But to leave him dangling now would be small-minded. If he was reporting back to Stocker it was only because he had been ordered to. And it was not Roskill's fault that the afternoon had ended so badly: leaving Morrison had been Audley's own mistake.

'If Tierney's the man he used to be he'll be tricky, Hugh. He'll know dummy4

more and tell less. So I'd like you to push his good side, and if that doesn't work I'm going to tempt his bad one. We might get somewhere between us.'

VI

As he drove homewards Audley felt a black depression settling on him. The familiar countryside, springlike after the previous day's chill, made it all the worse; he should have been driving home to a quiet, secluded weekend. Instead he was driving from trouble towards trouble, with trouble on each side of him.

Faith Jones had had the best part of a day to pry and fret around his house, and there was no guarantee that she'd be willing to go north with them next day, for all the good that might do. There was no certainty even that she'd still be waiting for him.

But the girl was the least of his unhappiness. The last two hours had confirmed his fears that he was simply not up to this job–it was all a horrible error of judgment. The breaking of Morrison had been luck, not skill, and he knew in his heart that sending in Roskill and Butler first against Tierney next day was less part of a crafty plan than mere hopeful cowardice. Theodore Freisler had put his finger on the truth: he was afraid of the dirty work.

Worst of all was Morrison's death. It didn't seem real yet, but when the unreality wore off Audley suspected that he was going to be frightened.

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But as he turned on to the cobbled forecourt, with the anger of Mrs Clark's geese ringing in his ears, he noticed with pleasure that someone had cut the grass–a bit of Mrs Clark's famous initiative.

The grass was his invariable Saturday job, and it had nagged at his mind all day.

And Faith Jones's Mini was still there, in the old barn where he had told her to put it that morning. He pulled in alongside it.

The stone-flagged kitchen was cool and calm after the uncomfortable afternoon and the sweaty drive home. And Faith Jones, in the blue-jeans-and-shirt uniform of youth, was pouring a beer, just as cool and calm.

'Your Mrs Clark told me that you always pour yourself a glass of beer when you come home late from the office. She says you can always keep on the right side of a man if you greet him like this, too. Even if he doesn't want it–it builds his self-respect, she says.

Personally, I think it's a much older custom. I think Mrs Clark has got a racial memory going back to Anglo-Saxon times.'

She offered Audley the beer with a curtsey that somehow avoided being either serious or mocking.

He accepted it, nonplussed. 'I didn't know Mrs Clark was aware of my drinking customs. But it's very welcome, Miss Jones.'

'Don't go formal on me. You agreed to call me Faith last night, and you've been "Mr David" to me so much today that I can't possibly call you "Dr Audley" any more.' She smiled at him, and he took cover in his glass.

'And as for Mrs Clark not knowing about your drinking habits, dummy4

there's precious little Mrs Clark doesn't know about you. And what Mrs Clark doesn't know by learning and experience she knows already by instinct I would guess. So since I've spent quite a lot of today with her I'm afraid I know rather a lot about you too now.'

Audley choked on his beer. The roles had been reversed now, with the proverbial vengeance.

'But don't worry,' Faith went on airily. 'She thinks quite highly of you. In not quite so many words she told me that you'd be a very good catch for any girl of sense. And she's been busy giving me angling hints all day.'

Audley floundered, trying desperately to find something to stop the conversation.

'She must think quite highly of you too, to confide in you after such a short acquaintance.'

'I took care to tell her that I was a farmer's daughter. But I think it was despair as much as anything. Once she'd made the mistake of taking me for your latest girl friend she clutched at me like a straw.

She thinks my predecessors have been too few–and all highly unsuitable!'

'You shouldn't have led her on, Miss–Faith.' Audley knew he was still floundering. 'You should have explained that we had a–a business relationship.'

He knew as soon as he had said it that he had made himself more ridiculous, and she made things worse by seeming to take him seriously.

'I don't think Mrs Clark would quite have understood such a dummy4

relationship–any more than I do, really.' And then suddenly she was serious. 'I couldn't very well tell her that you're out to prove that my father was a thief, and maybe worse.'

Audley put down his glass and stared out at the neat, well-cut lawn, with his back to her. Her banter was after all preferable to reality, but because it only concealed her misgivings the truth was better out.

'I've already proved that. I did it this afternoon. I bullied a little inoffensive shopkeeper who sold toy aeroplanes and who used to be your father's wireless operator. I made him admit it. And now he's dead.'

'He's–dead?'

'His name was Morrison. I think he died accidentally, falling down stairs. But one of my colleagues thinks he didn't.'

'Didn't fall downstairs?'

Audley turned round. 'Didn't die accidentally,' he said harshly.

Faith Jones was frowning at him.

'David–what are you?'

Audley opened another can of beer and offered it to her. She shook her head and he poured it for himself, carelessly, watching the froth well over the rim of the glass.

'What are you?' she repeated. 'What do you do? Are you really some sort of cloak-and-dagger person–the sort one reads about and never quite believes in?' She paused. 'But I suppose you wouldn't admit it if you were, so it's a silly question.'

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Not silly, but unanswerable, thought Audley. At present he was a sheep in ill-fitting wolf's clothing, but she'd never believe that.

Then his eye caught a slim blue and gold book lying with a browsing pile on the mantelpiece above the boiler.

'Do you believe in fairies, Faith?'

She looked at him blankly.

' Puck of Pook's Hill is on the shelf behind you. There's a bit in it at the beginning where Puck gets huffy at being called one. Give me the book and I'll show you.'

He riffled through the pages to find the passage he almost knew by heart. '. . . "What you call them are made-up things the People of the Hills have never heard of" . . .

'Except of course that we have heard of them. But I know just how Puck felt now. You can't generalise about–the People of the Hills.'

He turned back a few pages. ' "Giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound and water spirits; heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night riders . . ." I'm not a troll or a night rider, certainly. You might call me a hill-watcher.'

She shook her head in despair.

'Be serious, David.'

'But I am being serious. Your step-father wasn't really very close–

I'm not a policeman. I'm more like a meteorologist, a Middle East weather man. At least, I was until yesterday. I tried to forecast what certain countries were going to do. Does that answer your question?'

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Faith thought for a moment before answering.

'The Middle East–that's what all those Arabic papers and things in the sitting room are about.'

Audley nodded. He'd have to cancel Al Ahram and Al Kuwat al Muslaha and the rest now and wade through Molodaya Gvardia and Ogonyek just as painfully.

'But my father had nothing to do with the Middle East. He only flew in Europe.'

'That is true. I'm a little out of my territory.' And out of my depth, he nearly added. 'Which is why I just might need your help. After this afternoon I'm not sure I ought to involve you–or if you're willing to be involved. But you said last night that you'd give a lot to find out just what your father did.'

She looked at him in surprise.

'Do you mean there's really something I can do? I wouldn't have thought you–you People of the Hills –would ever use outsiders.'

'They don't–but I do. I've got all sorts of odd characters digging already. You'd be surprised.'

She started guiltily, hand to mouth. 'One of them wouldn't be called Esau, would he?'

'He certainly would.' Esau was Jake's private nom de guerre - it was an ancient joke between them that he grew his own hair shirt, to belie his name.

'I'm sorry. He phoned just about teatime. But he left a number–it's on the pad by the phone, and it's good until 7.30.'

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Audley almost ran to his study. Jake wouldn't phone unless he had come up with something worthwhile.

The number was not one he recognised, and it turned out to be one of the fly-by-night Soho clubs where Jake seemed to spend much of his free time. But they were only too happy to summon Mr Esau.

'Esau?'

'My dear David! Your little girl friend–whom you so shamefully neglect–she remembered to give you my message!'

'She isn't my girl friend.'

'No, of course not. Your secretary-housekeeper with the county accent. How stupid of me to misplace her!'

'Come to the point, Esau.'

'The point? My friend, the point is that I value you so highly that instead of rushing to my morning assignation I put in a call to that other friend of mine.'

Jake's interest in Panin was evidently more than casual to have galvanised him so quickly. But of course Jake was ambitious.

'David, you know that your friend has returned to the scenes of his youthful conquest?'

'I do.' The Israeli Berlin end was good, evidently.

'I never doubted it, even though you carelessly omitted to tell me.

But no matter. My friend mentioned it in his acknowledgement. He promises to give the matter some of his valuable time. But in the meantime he did give us a snippet. Have you ever heard of G

Tower?'

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'No, I haven't.'

'Neither have I. But it seems that your friend spent quite a lot of his time there back in the old days. G Tower–you'd better look it up.

I'm sure you'll have lots of information on it, whatever it was.'

'I shall give it my earnest attention. And that was all?'

'All! At such short notice I think that's not at all bad. But, yes. It is all for the time being–except that there is a small matter that I'd like your advice on.'

The bill, or its first instalment, was about to be presented. With Jake there was always a bill.

'But I won't burden you with it now. My–secretary-housekeeper is waiting for me, as I've no doubt yours is, David. I'll have a word with you next week some time.'

'I shall be at your service.'

Even before he had replaced the phone Audley was weighing the advantages of getting through to the department to have G Tower located quickly against the disadvantages of handing his discovery to others. He rejected the disadvantages almost at once. There just wasn't enough time in the morning for him to do it before driving north. And he knew that secretiveness was another particular occupational vice which he had to watch. Some people tended to become submerged by facts. He always had to fight the urge simply to keep them to himself.

He nerved himself to override protests. The information service was there to be used, but hardly for apparently esoteric intelligence on a Saturday evening.

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But when he got through he was surprised at first by the helpful reception, until it dawned on him that the word really was out.

Stocker must have been as good as his promise. So of course they would establish the identity of G Tower, and with the utmost despatch. And then they would phone him back.

And then they would pass on the details to whomsoever else it also concerned . . .

He returned to the kitchen to find Faith laying supper, as domesticated as any of her predecessors.

'Ham and salad again–Mrs Clark says you live on it through the spring and summer . . . Did your Esau deliver the goods?'

'He may have done. I shall know later this evening.'

She stopped work and faced up to him.

'If I'm going to help you, you know, David, you're going to have to take me into your confidence. If that poor man really was killed this afternoon I've a right to know what I'm letting myself in for.

And I'd prefer to know what I'm doing.'

'That's reasonable enough. Providing, of course, that I can trust you.'

'You want me to tell you that I'd fight for Queen and Country no matter what?'

'Would you?'

'No, I wouldn't. Would you?'

Audley shook his head.

'The same question doesn't apply to me. I'm old-fashioned. But I dummy4

didn't put the question properly. Can I trust you to trust me?'

Faith made a sour face. 'That's a hard one, isn't it! And a dirty one, too.'

'I don't see why it should be. You'd give me answers on much more difficult questions. You'd tell me that the Americans were wrong in Vietnam. You're sure that Porton is as wicked as Aldermaston.

You think moon rockets ought to be beaten into ploughshares. But it doesn't matter, because I'm not putting the question to you–I have to put it to myself.'

He took the cutlery from her and continued the work.

'Who cut my lawn today?'

She shook her head in disbelief. 'What an odd person you are! I cut your lawn for you. When Mrs Clark came with your groceries this morning and found you gone she practically ordered me to do it.

She even showed me how to start the mower. What's that got to do with trusting me?'

'Mrs Clark is a good judge of character. If she trusts you with the mower and the lawn, then perhaps I can trust you in other matters.

Are you willing to find out exactly what your father did, for better or worse?'

'I want to. And I can't see the harm in that.'

'There could be more to it than that. I told you last night that your father took something. There's a Russian who knows what it was.

And he wants it so badly that he's willing to ask us to help him find it. At least, that's what we think he's going to ask us.'

'Is he a good man or a bad man?'

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'He's a very important man.'

Faith shivered. 'If good and bad aren't words that mean anything to you, then you'd better not trust me. Because I'd be an idiot to trust you.'

Audley caught himself on the very brink of accusing her of naivete. Of course she was naive–and so was he to expect anything else. Again, too, that unforgivable crime: if he was to use her he had to persuade her first.

'We just don't know about him, except that he has great power and influence in his own country. And that's why we've got to find out what it is and why it's so important to him. We'd like him for a friend, but we can't trust him. You must see that!'

'It always comes back to trusting people. You never trust them and they never trust you! It's just a game to you!'

'Trust them!' He felt the anger he couldn't stifle tighten his throat.

'Be like Dubcek? Or like Nagy and Maleter? And Jan Masaryk?

Christ, woman, we don't have the right to trust them.'

He could see the pit ahead of him, but he was no longer able to avoid it. He didn't even want to avoid it now, anyway.

'Of course it's a game. And if everyone played it sensibly we'd be a damn sight better off. It's the people who try to turn the pie-faced noble sentiments and the crude doctrinaire slogans into practice who start the shooting. So you'd better pack up your cosy scruples and your moral dilemmas and take them back to school with you, Miss Jones. They'll look better on a blackboard.'

He paused for breath, and despised himself. There was a flush on dummy4

her cheeks, the colour spreading as though he had hit her.

Shopkeepers and schoolteachers were easy game. And tempting game, too, after the Stockers and Joneses, who could always keep him in his place.

'I'm sorry, Miss Jones. None of that was fair. And you could be right,' he said dully. 'But I do care about the game I play–or used to play. In fact, I think I've been landed with your father because I cared too much about it: I hated to see the Middle East turned into a Tom Tiddler's ground–mostly by your friends the Russians, but by us and the Americans too. I've no right to take it out on you, though.'

She turned, and he thought for a moment that she was simply going to leave the room. But instead she reached for a chair and settled astride it, resting her chin on the back.

'What do you want me to do, then?' she said.

He regarded her with surprise. She had not seemed the sort of person to submit to bullying.

'You mean that you're still willing to help me?'

'More than ever now, David. I don't pretend to understand you. Or maybe, it's just that I don't understand what makes someone like you do this sort of thing. But I somehow don't think you'd commit yourself to what was wrong. And I'm sorry I said it was just a game. That was–well, it was far worse than what you said.'

No olive branch could be more fairly offered.

'Let's eat first,' he said, absurdly relieved that she was not going to pack her bags.

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As they ate she chattered unselfconsciously about her day — a strange day among strangers in a strange house. It was curious they had all accepted her, the postman, the Co-op milkman and Mrs Clark. Did people take it for granted now that bachelors would have girls around the house from time to time, or was it that she was unselfconscious? Audley found it soothing except that his first false impression of her haughtiness outside Asham churchyard niggled at his sense of contentment. He wasn't usually so far wide of the mark.

There was a dreamlike quality about the meal. It wasn't just that she was so different from Liz–though without her glasses she was probably as pretty, if considerably less well endowed physically. It was rather that behind this normality, behind the milkman's attempt to sell her double cream and Mrs Clark's assumption of her role as Liz's long-delayed successor, was the cold reality.

They were not friends, or even chance acquaintances: they were links in a chain of events going back half a lifetime, joined by a man long dead–and now by a man newly dead. The tranquillity of small talk and washing up on the draining board was false.

Somewhere out there in the growing darkness skilled men were still taking the Dakota to bits. An hour away Morrison was on a slab and Roskill would be waiting for the police surgeon's report; across the Channel Butler was hunting the Belgian who had been scared out of his wits all those years ago. And beyond all of them was Panin.

They were the real world. This was a gentle illusion.

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In the end it was the telephone bell which shattered that illusion.

He caught Faith's eye on him as he sat willing it to stop, and was startled by the hint of understanding. He shook his head to dispel the idea. Dreams could not be shared so easily. She had more reason to be nervous about any step towards the truth, however much she desired to know it.

The calm, well-bred and rather bored voice on the phone finally snapped him out of his introspection. Dr Audley wished for particulars of G Tower . . .

'A bomb-proof anti-aircraft complex in Berlin, sir. They started building it in the winter of '41. In the Zoological Gardens — south of the Tiergarten, across the Landwehr Canal. Just beside the zoo's aviaries–nice piece of Teutonic town planning.'

A flak tower. He remembered a monster towering above the ruins of Hamburg in 1948.

'Much bigger than that one, sir. More like a fortress than a flak tower. Every mod con–internal power generators, water supplies, the lot. . .

'Main battery on the roof–eight heavy guns and four light batteries.

Under them the garrison quarters, with ammunition hoists. Then a military hospital, fully equipped, staff of 60. Under that the cream of the Staatliche Museum collections, safe as the Bank of England.

And then two floors of air raid shelters, with room for 15,000–

though they got twice as many in towards the end. Plus 2,000 dead and wounded. It was safe right up to the end–eight-foot of reinforced concrete and steel shutters–but not very pleasant.'

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Audley tried to envisage 30,000 panic-stricken civilians crammed into a concrete box with Russian shells and bombs smashing against its sides.

'But quite safe, as I said. It's even thought that Goebbels planned at one time to direct the defence from there–there was an emergency broadcasting station on the ground floor, and the main communications centre–L Tower, that was–was just nearby. But in the end he stayed at the other end of the Tiergarten.

Audley was no longer listening. Instead his mind was racing back over the previous thirty-six hours, to the one assumption he had been at least reasonably sure of, but which was suddenly crumbling before his eyes.

'. . . also at Friedrichshain, smaller of course. G Tower was by far the biggest. About 130 feet high.'

It had been a preconception, of course. And even if it didn't fit the facts any more, it still rang true.

'And there were animals in the zoo right up to the end.'

The boredom was replaced by incredulity. 'Bloody lions and hippos mixing it with the Russians, I shouldn't wonder.'

Abstractedly he thanked the man, who seemed quite taken with the Wagnerian last hours of the Thousand Year Reich as it affected the unfortunate beasts in Berlin zoo, and replaced the receiver.

He began to reach down towards his brief-case, but stopped midway. He knew perfectly well what was in the Panin file, which reposed there entirely against regulations. And it was no use pretending that there wasn't a possible link here between Panin and dummy4

Steerforth, even if it wasn't the sort of link he had envisaged.

Indeed, if it made sense in 1945 it made nonsense in 1969.

But it would have to be checked.

Theodore Freisler might well know the answer. But there was one man who would certainly know it. He took his address book from its drawer and looked at the grandfather clock, weighing the lateness of the time against the slightness of his acquaintance with Sir Kenneth Allen. Their meeting in Rome had been strictly social, but nonetheless daunting; Audley had felt intellectually laundered after half an hour's conversation, then weighed up and courteously dismissed as a middle-weight.

But the great man had been on occasion consulted by the department, and whatever he might think of Audley he would never turn him away. Moreover, if the bored voice was now passing on his G Tower information, then Stocker might come to the same conclusion, and he wouldn't hesitate to haul Sir Kenneth from his high table or senior common room. And if Stocker's was the second call — that rewarding possibility was enough to decide him.

When he returned to the kitchen a quarter of an hour later Faith was just finishing the last of the washing-up. She turned towards him with a look of muted expectation which faded as she saw his own puzzled expression.

'Didn't you get what you wanted?'

'What I wanted?' He sat down at the old kitchen table and stared at the scarred and scrubbed wooden surface. 'I didn't get what I dummy4

expected, certainly. And I got rather more than I expected, too.'

He looked up at her.

'You know, Faith, I think I know what your father's cargo was.'

'. . . we met at Rome at the Egyptian studies symposium, Sir Kenneth.'

'Indeed, I remember you well, Dr Audley,' That beautiful voice was heavy with authority, but utterly free from arrogance. 'Your paper on Shirkuh was admirable. I entirely agree with you that Nur ed-Din and Saladin have taken too much attention from him. But what can I do for you?'

'I think you may be able to help us with a problem we have in the department.'

That made it official, but Sir Kenneth was not a man to be hoodwinked anyway.

'Indeed?'

'I believe you were on the Allied Art Treasure Committee in Berlin in 1945?'

'I was, Dr Audley. A relatively humble member, though.'

'Do you remember G Tower, Sir Kenneth?'

Faith was staring at him.

'The Schliemann Collection.'

She frowned.

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'Troy, Faith–Troy! The topless towers and the windy plains–Troy!'

The frown faded. Her jaw dropped a fraction, and then tightened.

She said nothing.

'You've heard of Heinrich Schliemann?'

'Of course I've heard of him,' she said sharply. 'He discovered Troy, everyone knows that.'

'More than Troy, Faith. Much more than Troy. He found the royal treasure–one of the greatest treasure troves of all time.

'He stole it from the Turks and he gave it to the Germans. And after the war the Russians found it, and they took it–and they lost it. No one's set eyes on it since the summer of 1945.'

Anger was not an emotion in which Sir Kenneth Allen indulged, but his displeasure was magisterial: '. . . in that matter, Dr Audley, the Russian High Command was something less than straightforward with us. I do not question their removal of the Schliemann Collection from G Tower, or their right to it as spoils of war. They had suffered great loss of their own treasures, great loss. They had the right to a measure of recompense.

'But to remove it–and there is no doubt that they did remove it —

and then to allow it to be lost: that was an unpardonable act of carelessness.

'Some of my colleagues still believe that it was never lost, and that it rests in the Kremlin vaults. Mere wishful thinking! If it had survived it would have been restored to East Berlin, to the Staatliche Museum, long ago.'

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Faith sat down opposite him, her shoulders drooping.

Then she braced herself. 'You said you think you know? But how sure are you–and how do you know, anyway?'

'Nikolai Andrievich Panin, Faith–that Russian I told you about.

He's my clue. You see, I thought if I could find out just what he was doing in Berlin back in 1945, before he came looking for your father's Dakota, it might give us a line on what was supposed to be in the plane.'

Her eyes widened. 'It was the same man then?'

'That's really what all the fuss is about. He was just a nobody then, doing what he was told. But he's very far from being a nobody now.'

'And what was he doing–when he was a nobody?'

'He was a soldier. One of the very few who made it all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin. But before that he was an archaeologist, and there's only one thing that would interest him in G Tower.'

'G Tower?'

'That was where he was working after the Russians took the city. It was an anti-aircraft fort as big as a city block. A fort and a hospital and an air raid shelter. And a treasure house.'

'. . . Coins, tapestries and sculpture were recovered, but not the Schliemann Collection. All the Staatliche has now of Troy is a pathetic handful of minor objects.

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'And what makes the tragedy absolute, Dr Audley, is that but for England's stupidity the collection need never have gone to Berlin in the first place. Schliemann offered everything to the British Museum — as a gift. And Winter Jones turned him down . . . He turned him down because there was no room for it!'

Fate had been cruel to the treasure of Troy. The Russians and the French had bid high for it. The Greeks, having overlooked it in one sack, claimed it by right of Homer. But all three nations had combined to help Schliemann resist Turkey's demand for the restoration of her property, each in the hope of receiving it as a reward.

And the British turned it down as an inconvenience!

'The irony of it, Dr Audley, is that it would have been safe in every museum except the one which acquired it. . .'

So the Germans got it, only to lose it to the Russians, who in turn lost it (in Sir Kenneth's considered view) to some grubby black marketeer who melted it down for its simple gold value.

King Priam's gold. Hecuba's crown, and rings for Helen's fingers.

The drinking cup of Paris and the weapons of Hector.

'Of course it didn't really come from Homer's Troy: it was a thousand years older than that. But that is beside the point, Dr Audley. It was beautiful and it was beyond price.'

Someone else had said that already: little Morrison, that very afternoon–echoing Steerforth.

Audley looked across the table at Steerforth's daughter, the dummy4

offspring of a man who might well have pulled off one of the great art thefts of history. She presented a picture of dejection, and he sympathised with her: it was hardly a distinction for a respectable chemistry mistress.

'Cheer up, Faith! I could be wrong.'

She regarded him unhopefully.

'You don't think you are wrong, though, do you?'

'I could be. In a way I shall be surprised if it is the Schliemann treasure Panin's after. Up to now I'd discounted the possibility of mere loot–it shouldn't interest the Russians as much as this. And it certainly shouldn't interest a man like our Russian. He's got far bigger matters to attend to than a heap of golden trinkets stolen from a museum.'

She shook her head at him. 'You really don't understand what you've been saying, David, do you? It's just a heap of golden trinkets to you! I suppose you've never read about what Schliemann discovered.'

She didn't wait for him to answer.

'I know you know about Schliemann. Everyone knows it–it's a good capitalist legend. Inside every banker there's a romantic archaeologist! And one in the eye for all the experts who said Troy was a fable!'

She thought for a moment, before speaking.

'When I was a little girl I read a book which described your heap of trinkets. I can't remember all the details now, but I do remember one bit about the jewellery.

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'There was a golden diadem, David, one of a pair. All gold wire and little rings and leaves and tiny ornaments. There were over 16,000 pieces in it. And that was just one item in the hoard. Just one item! And there were thousands of golden objects. Earrings and rings and bracelets and buttons and cups and ornaments.'

She paused. 'Nowadays people don't take Schliemann very seriously–he dug up the wrong Troy, and everything he dug up he thought was part of Homer, when it wasn't at all.

'I expect the real Trojan war was just a squalid little squabble over trade and taxes–not at all like Homer's war either. Nothing like the legend at all. But the legend was glorious and heroic and the treasure he found fitted it perfectly, so in one way he wasn't wrong at all. And if your Russian archaeologist is half a real man–if he's got any heart at all–he'd never rest while there was a chance of giving it all back to the world.'

She shrugged helplessly. 'And that's what my father stole–and it's not just loot, David. It's not just stealing from someone: it's stealing from the whole world. It's–it's a crime against humanity.'

Her sudden anger astonished him almost as much as her unaccountable knowledge. Scientists, even female ones, were in his experience neither so vehement nor so well-informed on classical art.

And now she was pacing up and down the kitchen.

'My gallant father! The bastard!'

He felt bound to check her, to defend the unfortunate man, whatever he'd done.

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'Hold on there, Faith. We still don't know that he took it. And if he did, we don't know that he realised what he was taking. It was just loot to him–stolen gold for the taking. And he wasn't the only one who reckoned there was something owing to him for services rendered!'

She turned on him.

'Didn't know? Didn't know! Oh, David–he knew! He knew all too bloody well! He knew because I know–doesn't it surprise you that I know so much about Troy?'

Again she didn't wait to be asked, but stormed furiously on: 'I know because I inherited a big, beautiful book from him all about Heinrich Schliemann and his wonderful discovery of Troy. And I loved that book because it was his–I've read it a dozen times. When I was little I even wanted to be an archaeologist because of it–that's a laugh now, isn't it!

'I found all his books in the attic when I was little. Mostly he had rotten taste–pulpy thrillers with a bit of pornography that I didn't understand, printed abroad. And a set of unread Dickens.

'But there was this one beautiful book that I adored. To me that was his real book. And it was, wasn't it! He must have bought it to find out just exactly what he'd got his dirty hands on.'

She stopped, and looked at him in anguish.

'Clever David!' she said bitterly. 'You guessed right, didn't you?

And now you've got the one extra little bit of evidence you need from the villain's daughter. But you did try to soften the blow, you really did. And that was kind of you.'

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He pitied her. She must have known subconsciously the moment he had mentioned Troy, and then had blundered on until her conscious mind had picked up its own warning signals. It was a cruel way to come to the truth.

And what made it worse was that he still couldn't blame Steerforth in his heart. It had been just loot to him. But to her it would always be the unforgivable crime because it had betrayed childhood love and admiration, however she tried to rationalise it.

'Never mind,' he said 'We'll set the record straight: we'll get it back.'

VII

The geese awoke Audley from an uneasy, confused dream. Yet he knew as he woke that it had not been a dream really, for he had never been completely asleep. It had come from the no-man's-land between thought and sleep, a mere jumble of the day's undigested experiences.

He remembered that he had been reading Ceram's Gods, Graves and Scholars, which had been the only thing on his shelves which mentioned Schliemann and Troy in any detail. And Ceram's words had fed his tired mind with images–images of the original panic-stricken burial of the treasure, which had been so hasty that the keys were still in the mouldered locks of the boxes; images of the Schliemanns working feverishly and secretly to hack their prize out of the deep trench in the mound at Hissarlik, with the wreckage of dummy4

six later Troys and three thousand years poised above them.

And images of Steerforth working no less feverishly to hide that prize . . .

And then he had thought irrelevantly of the animals in Berlin zoo, caged not far from the treasure, with the Russian shells bursting about them. Had the Berliners eaten their elephants in the end, like the Parisians in 1870?

It was the beginning of a half-nightmare, which switched back to the trench at Hissarlik. But as he looked down into it, it became the wooden staircase in Morrison's shop. No treasure for Morrison . . .

Then his mind registered the shrieking of Mrs Clark's geese.

At first he thought it was morning, until he saw the moonlight streaming in through his open windows. The damned birds had woken him once before in the night, protesting at some prowling cat or fox, and there was no stopping them once they had started.

All one could do was to shut out as much of the noise as possible.

He reached out for the light switch, only to discover that it no longer seemed to work. He fumbled for his spectacles and shuffled towards the window, cursing under his breath.

He stopped dead a yard from the window, shocked totally awake: someone was crossing a moonlit patch of lawn just beyond the cobbles.

He blinked and drew to one side of the window, covering the lower part of his face with the dark sleeve of his pyjamas–white faces showed up even in darkened windows. The figure, moving delicately across the grass, disappeared into the shadow beside the dummy4

barn. Ten seconds passed like an age, and then two more shadows crossed the moonlit patch from the driveway entrance to the safety of the barn's shadow.

The geese still cackled angrily and Audley felt his heart thump against his chest. Three was too many for him. He had no gun in the house–he had never needed or desired a gun. Faith was asleep just down the passage. If mere burglary was the intention–God! He hadn't even put the Panin file in the safe. But if it was burglary he might frighten them off by switching on the lights.

But the light hadn't worked, he remembered with a pang of panic.

And if it wasn't burglary ... he saw Morrison again, in unnaturally sharp focus, at the bottom of the stairs. This sort of thing just doesn't happen! They'd got no reason –but he didn't know what reason they'd got.

I mustn't think–I must act, he told himself savagely. If you can't fight, run away. If you can't run away–hide!

He whipped his dressing gown from the bed, stuffed the torch from his bedside drawer into his pocket and sprinted down the passage.

She was lying on her side, snoring very softly, one white shoulder picked out by the moonlight. He shook the shoulder urgently.

'Faith! Wake up–and be quiet!' he whispered.

She moaned, and then came to life, startled.

Before she could speak he put the palm of his hand to her mouth.

'We've got visitors,' he hissed as clearly and quietly as he was able.

'Three visitors. We're not going to wait to find out what they want . . . we're going to hide . . . if you understand what I'm saying dummy4

— nod.'

She nodded, wide-eyed.

'Hide your clothes, smooth down your bed–and I'll meet you outside your room in half a minute!'

She nodded again.

He slipped out of her room and raced down the passage again to his study, blessing the day he had chosen to transfer it to the first floor. Pausing only to grab his brief-case he flew back to his bedroom, hurriedly bundled his clothes into a drawer, and pulled up the bedspread.

Faith was waiting for him, pale in the moonlight and hugging her dressing gown round her. She followed him obediently as he made his way to the deeply-recessed window at the head of the stairs.

Audley handed her the brief-case and the torch. Very gently he released the heavy iron catches which held back the shutters and closed out the moonlight. Then he took the left-hand catch and began to turn it anti-clockwise.

Oh God, he prayed, it's always worked before–let it work now!

He gritted his teeth and pulled. Very slowly, and with the smallest subdued rumble, the whole section of the wall between the window and the carved oak newel post which ran from floor to ceiling began to pivot outwards. Behind it was a second wall of smooth stone, broken only by a narrow aperture set low down in the outer corner.

'In you go,' he whispered. 'Crawl along for about ten feet and you'll come to some stone stairs. Wait there–and mind your head!'

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She stood irresolutely, looking from him to the pitch-black hole.

'Where does it go?' she whispered back urgently.

'For God's sake, don't argue–remember Morrison!'

Reluctantly she bent down and wriggled into the aperture, shining the torch ahead of her. For a moment Audley stood in the darkness, straining his ears. The geese had temporarily run out of abuse, and the silence was thick and heavy. Then from somewhere below him, inside the house, there was a muffled click.

Audley pulled the wall almost shut and eased himself backwards into the hole. Mercifully it was always easier to shut than to open.

He reached up and felt for the iron ring on the inner face, and then fumbled for the locking bar. They could turn the iron catch until domesday now.

Awkwardly he crawled backwards along the cold, dusty stone floor until he was able to lift his head and turn round at the foot of the flight of stone steps. Faith was sitting hunched about halfway up.

She shone the torch into his eyes.

'David, I'm not going a step further until you tell me where the hell we are.'

'We're perfectly safe now.'

'I don't care how safe we are. Where are we? What is this–place?'

'It's a priest's hole.'

'A priest's hole?' She shone the torch around her. Cobwebs and dust and rough stone.

'Go on up the stairs. But mind your head until you get to the top.

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There's a room there.'

At the top of the steps they emerged into a tiny room, barely big enough for the polythene-covered mattress which was its sole contents, apart from a pickaxe and a battered pewter candlestick with a new candle in it and a box of matches beside it. The room was doorless and windowless, but there was a faint draught of air from two small pigeon holes. It was dry, but cold.

Audley lit the candle and turned off the torch. Then he stripped off the plastic covering from the mattress to reveal an old army blanket.

'Wrap that round yourself,' he said, squatting on the end of the mattress.

She looked at him in the light of the spluttering flame. From her expression he was not sure whether she was going to burst into tears or laughter.

'A priest's hole! I've never seen one before!'

She wasn't going to cry.

'It's not surprising, really. It's an early sixteenth century house, and this was an obstinately Catholic district. Once it was a much bigger house too–we're living in what used to be the servants' quarters, next to the old barn. The rest was burnt down years ago.'

'David–it's romantic! Did the secret pass from father to son, right down to you?'

'Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. My family didn't move here until the Prince Regent's time, and no one told us any secrets. I'm probably the first person to know about this room for centuries.

And I only found it by accident.'

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'By accident? You opened that crazy door, or whatever it was, by accident?'

'Nobody opens that door by accident, Faith. It's designed not to be found even if you're looking for it.

'No, they built this room by adding a false wall to the end of the barn, where it joins the house. Except for this room and the passage to it, that wall's over ten feet of solid masonry, only the barn's so long you don't notice it until you measure it accurately.

And that's how I found it.'

He pulled his dressing gown tightly round him. In the little stone box of a room spring had not yet begun to thaw out winter.

'I had an idea of building a squash court in the barn. It cost too much, but I found out that the outside length didn't match the inside one. I had a feeling that there might be a room here then–no one builds walls ten feet thick. But I couldn't even find an echo. I had to cheat in the end–I broke through the roof, and then through the ceiling.'

He pointed to an irregular patch of new plaster above her.

'So I learnt how the door worked from the inside: the catch turns a diagonal bolt on a ratchet. But you can lock the bolt from the inside–and there were dressed stones ready to pile up in the entrance hole so there wouldn't be any echo there if the priest-hunters started knocking around.

'And the whole wall there is wedge shaped–the false wall–and built on an iron plate. The old owners probably had servants to help swing it out, but I've fixed a little roller at the bottom, underneath.

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And the whole thing pivots on the newel post. It's–rather clever.'

She smiled at him in the candlelight. 'There was a good Catholic David Audley in Elizabethan times, obviously! Did you find any relics in here?'

'Relics?' He stared at her. It was hardly the moment to admit that he had actually hoped for long-lost treasure, and had been bitterly disappointed at finding only a few bits of worm-eaten wood and a candlestick. 'No, I'm sorry to say that the hole was very empty.'

'And this mattress? Is that a precaution against . . . visitors?'

'Good God, no! This sort of thing's never happened to me before. I simply slept in here one night, out of curiosity. I never thought I'd have to take refuge here.'

'Who are they, David–those men outside?'

'I haven't the faintest idea, Faith. This is out of my experience, I'm afraid. But after what happened this afternoon–after what may have happened, I mean–I didn't fancy staying to find out. I know that's not very heroic–but I'm just not heroic . . .'

She put a hand on his arm. 'But very sensible. And far too good-natured to remind me that you had me hanging round your neck anyway!'

She was certainly an understanding wench, thought Audley. And more than that!

'If I'm not heroic, then you make up for it,' he said.,'Not many young women I can think of would sit here as cool as you are with three Russ—' He stopped too late.

'Russians?' She completed the word for him. 'Is that really what dummy4

you think they are?'

He shook his head uneasily.

'It doesn't add up, Faith. It just doesn't add up. Morrison–and now this. And all for a heap of museum loot–I don't care how valuable you say it is.'

She sighed. 'You still don't understand, do you, David? If it was some silly plan for some silly rocket, or the details of a secret treaty, you'd believe it at once. But with something that is truly worthwhile you just can't believe your eyes. Well, perhaps your high-up Russian doesn't have such schoolboy values. Perhaps he thinks this is more important –and naturally he doesn't trust you!

'But we've been all through that, haven't we! And as for being cool

— I'm absolutely frozen! How long do we have to stay in this arctic hole? Your old priests must have been made of stern stuff.'

He stood up stiffly. Another hour might be enough, but in the meantime he ought to try to make her comfortable.

'Here–you stretch out on the mattress, and I'll wrap the blanket around you,' he said.

'What are you going to do?'

He wrapped the loose ends of the rug round her legs. 'You try and snatch some sleep. I'll be quite all right sitting against the wall.'

Actually he was not all right. The unevenness of the wall gouged into his back and the cold stones spread their chill through him. He hunched his shoulders and wrapped his arms tightly across his body.

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'David?'

He grunted.

'What's the pick for?'

The pick?' He tried to think. 'Just insurance. If the door jammed we'd have a job getting out.'

'Couldn't we shout through the air holes?'

'The air holes have got a double right angle in them. It might be days before anyone heard anything.'

She shivered, and he relapsed into unhappy silence. The door jamming had been his special nightmare in the past. That it had worked at all had always rather surprised him. If it failed now, forcing him to hack his way out–that would be the ultimate humiliation. Was it Murphy's Law or Finagle's Law that recognised the malevolence of inanimate objects towards human beings?

'David?'

He grunted again, miserably–what could the woman want?

'Your teeth are chattering.'

He gritted his teeth. 'Sorry.'

There was a pause.

'You can come in with me if you like, under the blanket.'

Audley sat bolt upright, unable for a moment to believe his ears.

But there was no mistaking the invitation: she was holding up the edge of the blanket. The flame of the candle flickered and her shadow danced on the wall behind her.

At length he shook his head.

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'I'm cold and I'm tired and I feel a hundred years old, my girl. But I'm still flesh and blood. And when I crawl under a blanket with a woman it'll never be to stop my teeth chattering. You just try and go to sleep.'

She raised herself on one elbow, looking at him.

'I'm cold and tired too, David. And I'm frightened and I've mixed myself up in I don't know what. And I think my father stole something so big it makes me sick just to think of it ... And–and I'm flesh and blood too.'

She tossed back her pale blonde hair and he saw with surprise that same curiously haughty stare which he remembered from the churchyard. Yet the offer of comfort in exchange for comfort could hardly have been more explicit. Bafflement, rather than any last ditch shred of conscience or caution, held him back.

She wasn't wearing her glasses!

The contradiction which had plagued him since she had knocked on his door the previous night dissolved: it wasn't haughtiness–she simply couldn't see him clearly!

Without stopping to analyse the curious mixture of relief and lust and protective affection, he reached out for her, and she met him halfway, and more than halfway.

'You silly, silly man,' she whispered in his ear.

He pressed her gently backwards, feeling the old, long-lost excitement: the softness and firmness of her small breasts, the length of her, the smell of her hair mingling with the faint perfume he had sensed in her room.

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She was shrugging herself out of her dressing gown, out of her nightdress–as it came over her head, loosing the pale hair, he felt the skin move over her ribs, skin that impossibly combined warmth with coolness.

The candle was extinguished suddenly–knocked over, snuffed out, it no longer mattered. And the tiny secret room was no longer cold: it was no longer tiny and no longer a room. It was a velvety nothingness moving in its own time and space, starless and endless, with nothing outside it or beyond it, spiralling into infinity.

And then she was holding him tightly and he felt the rough blanket on his shoulders and the sweat prickle on his chest, and he lay holding her until the darkness stopped revolving around them.

She moved into the crook of his arm and he reached across her to feel for the candle.

The matches spilt as he fumbled for them, one-handed, and he struck one against the stone wall. She lay unmoving beside him with the blanket drawn down, unmoving, strands of hair lying damp across her forehead.

'It can't happen often like that, can it?' she said slowly, without looking at him. 'It can't be so good?'

'I don't know. Never before for me.'

'Nor for me.'

Maybe it was only once in a lifetime, he thought. Maybe only when the need and the desire and the fear are united in exactly those proportions. And the person?

He looked down at her again, and then drew the blanket over that dummy4

little schoolgirl's bosom, so different from his old imagined ideal.

My God, he thought: what have I done? I've laid John Steerforth's daughter–maybe got him a grandchild!

She turned towards him, with a small, satisfied smile which faded directly into seriousness as she saw his expression.

'Was I a disappointment then?' she said.

'You know very well you weren't! But that doesn't make it—' he searched for the word '—right.'

It was the wrong word, and she laughed.

'Dear out-of-date David! If it's like that it has to be right. That's what it's all about!'

'It's not right to mix business and pleasure.'

'Business and pleasure ought to be mixed–why on earth shouldn't they be? And it was my fault, anyway. You only did what you had to, in the line of duty.'

She was mocking him, and she was wholly irresistible now. He kissed her softly on the mouth, then on the breast, and took her in his arms again and lay still beside her.

'That wasn't in the line of duty, David,' she said very quietly.

'No, Faith. That was just for me.'

'Then I think I'll go to sleep, David, because nothing nicer can possibly happen to me now . . . and I couldn't possibly be safer anywhere than here, could I?'

She snuggled against him.

'You don't think those old priests would mind, do you? Mind our dummy4

doing this–here?' she said drowsily after a while.

Audley considered the possibility. They had been men of the world, although they had renounced all the good things for the dangers. They must have understood human fears and needs better than those who had no need of such refuges. This sin, of all sins, they could absolve and forgive: the sin of love.

'They'd understand,' he said soothingly. 'Go to sleep.'

VIII

In the end he had drifted off into an exhausted sleep, no longer cold but wedged uncomfortably with one shoulder against the wall to ensure her comfort. And when he came slowly back to wakefulness he found that he was neither able to reach the torch–

the candle had guttered out–nor see his watch, which was on the wrist of the arm she was using as a pillow.

There were nagging aches in his shoulder, back and legs, and a larger uneasiness in his mind about the day ahead. But with this girl in his arms he could not feel unhappy any more, and he delayed moving until he was sure of the faint reflected glimmer in the pigeon hole in the outer wall–that was as close as the room ever came to daylight.

Even then, when he had woken her, he managed to get her dressing gown over her shoulders and into his own before switching on the torch: no harm in salvaging a little dignity on such a morning after.

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When he was sure she was fully awake he explained his plan of action.

She nodded. 'What you're saying is that it comes down to burglary, booby-traps or–what do you call them -bugs?'

'Most probably bugs. At least on the phones. They've invented some extraordinary little devices–and I wouldn't know where to look for them. We shall have to get the experts in to search the place. As soon as I've dressed I'll walk down the road to the phone box and get some help.'

He felt his way gingerly down the narrow stairway and carefully drew back the long iron bolt. The door-wall swung open easily, with only that same subdued rumble.

The house was perfectly silent, with the morning sunlight streaming in through the windows to dispel the memory of the night's events like a dream. Nothing was disturbed, nothing out of place. He had to tell himself that the three shadows on the lawn had not been imagination. And then the distant raucous screams of the geese reminded him: now he felt an absurd gratitude to those ridiculous, bad-tempered creatures.

There was a reassuring matter-of-factness about the department's duty man, to whom he explained matters ten minutes later. It might have been an everyday occurrence–perhaps it was, for all he knew!

He didn't question Audley's going to earth in his own house, either.

Which was just as well: that was one secret he intended to keep, now it had proved its value.

'Forty minutes – we'll have a team with you then, Dr Audley. Er–

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yours is an old house, isn't it?'

He said it was, wondering how they knew and why it was important.

'No cover story's going to be very convincing on a Sunday morning, but we'll do the best we can. We'll send you a team of woodworm, dry rot and damp-proofing specialists,' said the duty man, answering his unasked questions. 'At least they'll make a nice change from electricians and gas men. They'll be with you on the dot!'

He found Faith hunched over the kitchen table, still in her much-crumpled dressing gown, nursing a mug of tea. She looked somewhat battered, with dark rings under her eyes and hair unbrushed, a far cry from yesterday's cool, self-confident self.

She gave him a bleary version of the now familiar shortsighted-haughty stare, which forced him to smile inwardly.

'I took a risk and plugged the kettle in,' she said hoarsely. 'Without a cup of tea I'd have died anyway, so it was a necessary risk.'

Unaccountably Audley felt on top of the world now, better than he had felt for days. But it would be too cruel of him to admit it at that moment.

'I don't feel very spritely myself, to tell the truth,' he lied.

She raised her eyes from the mug.

'To tell the truth, I feel thoroughly—'

She stopped in mid-sentence, realising too late the implication of dummy4

what she was saying, but making things much worse by leaving the sentence in the air.

He couldn't stop himself from laughing as the colour spread across her cheeks. She buried her face in her hands, and for a cold moment he thought she was weeping. Then he realised her shoulders were shaking with laughter, not tears.

Evidently laughter was the therapy she needed, and it was reassuring to discover that she could laugh against herself. It seemed perfectly natural to take her in his arms, without passion or urgency. She melted against him momentarily, and then held him away from her, shaking her head.

'I'm not grumbling!' she said. 'It was a unique experience! But next time I'd prefer a more conventional setting, I think . . .'

She put her hand to her mouth suddenly and glanced about the kitchen. Audley realised he had forgotten the possibility of bugs himself, and beckoned her out into the garden.

'They'll be here in half an hour, then!' she said in panic when he told her his news. 'God–and I must look a sight!'

And it was, indeed, exactly thirty minutes later that a smart red Bedford van squealed to a halt on the cobbles. KILL-AND-CURE

it promised in bold letters emblazoned on a board fastened to its side panel–'Instant death to wood-borers–relief from rising damp.'

A plump, ginger-haired man in an ill-fitting suit climbed out of the van, accompanied by a younger assistant with trailing hair and a Ringo Starr moustache. They surveyed the house with professional disinterest.

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The ginger man rapped sharply on the kitchen door.

'Kill-and-Cure, sir,' he announced loudly. 'About your request for estimates for our woodworm treatment and electro-osmotic damp-courses. I have your letter here, sir–Dr Audley, it is, isn't it–and my authorisation to make a Sunday call. "Sunday stipulated" it says here.'

He held open a red folder for Audley to see. It did certainly contain an authorisation, complete with identification. But no mention was made in it of Sunday or woodworm or electro-osmosis, whatever that was.

The ginger man inclined his head slightly towards the van, and Audley followed him outside.

'I'm Maitland, Dr Audley. That's Jenkins with all the hair. Three men, you said. And they had plenty of time in the house.'

Audley nodded.

'But you think it possible they may not know that you observed them.'

'It's possible. I can't be sure.'

'Well, we won't spoil their fun, just in case. Mr Roskill's coming to take you to London, but we'll check the cars first just in case you want to use them. And the cars'll tell us just how good they are.'

He nodded to Jenkins and gestured towards the cars in the barn.

The hairy young man pulled a bag of tools out of the van and trotted off obediently, whistling tunelessly.

'The cars?'

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'No one can resist cars these days, Dr Audley. If they really don't like you they'll have done a little surgery on the steering or the brakes. But that's not very likely–much too chancy. A "Bo Peep", though–so they can follow you at a safe distance–that's as near a certainty as dammit is to swearing.'

Jenkins had disappeared into Faith's Mini.

'He won't be long,' said Maitland happily. 'There aren't many places in a Mini. Not many clever places, anyway.'

They made their way back into the house.

'Now, sir,' said Maitland loudly again, 'if you don't mind giving us the run of the house while you're out we'll measure up for the damp-course, internal walls included, and let you have our estimate within three days. But if you could spare time to show me round once before you go—'

As they toured the house Maitland treated him to a continuous, detailed and persuasive catalogue of Kill-and-Cure's techniques, services and previous triumphs. Only the fact that at the same time he virtually ignored the tell-tale holes in the beams and rising damp stains on the walls spoilt the illusion; instead he gently poked and pried into drapes and under furniture.

At length, he led Audley back outside.

'Well, if you've been bugged it's been done by experts,' he said.

'There's nothing obvious to be seen.'

Audley experienced a sinking feeling. Nothing could be more humiliating than a false alarm–if his visitors turned out to be innocent locals looking for unconsidered trifles. And it would also dummy4

make a sad comedy of what had passed in the hole . . .

'Maybe Jenkins has struck oil,' continued Maitland.

Audley followed him unwillingly towards the barn. Jenkins had evidently finished with the Mini, which was in itself a bad sign.