The Labyrinth Makers

His legs protruded from beneath the Cambridge. Beside them a transistor radio blared insanely.

The ginger-haired man casually kicked one of the legs.

'You down there! Any joy?'

Jenkins eased himself from under the car. He had certainly struck oil, which he proceeded to rub off with a filthy rag, without much success.

'That Mini'll never pass its MoT test next time,' he observed cheerfully. 'Shocking state underneath! Never buy an old Mini. Old Minis are like—'

He stopped talking and stared past them.

Audley swung round to find Faith standing in the barn doorway.

But it was a very different Faith from the morning-after one he had last seen–and different, too, from the earlier Faiths, funereal, tweedy and jeaned.

He had asked her to dress for action, and that was exactly what she had done: the sage-green medium mini dress in what looked like suede combined expensive simplicity and provocation. The pale hair was pinned up at the back in a vertical roll — was that what Liz had once described 'as a French pleat? And the blue-tinted glasses completed the tantalising don't-touch look.

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Certainly the final product had a dynamic effect on Jenkins, who couldn't be expected to know that the line of those breasts now owed more to art than nature.

'And what's wrong with my car?' she inquired sharply, glasses tilted arrogantly.

Jenkins looked questioningly at Audley.

'Miss Jones is aware of the general situation,' said Audley.

Jenkins relaxed. 'Well, in that case,' he said in dulcet public school tones, 'she'd better not go visiting anyone important.'

He held out his open hand to reveal what looked like a dirty Oxo cube with a silver drawing pin stuck in it.

This, presumably, was what a 'Bo Peep' looked like.

Maitland lifted it gently out of Jenkins's palm and held it close to his eye.

'Little beauty, isn't it?' Jenkins spoke admiringly. 'Nicest little navigational aid I've seen in months, nestling in its little bed of mud and rust! If it had acquired a bit of genuine mud I just might not have spotted it, not straight away at least. But they had to make do with some home-made mud of their own, which was rather careless of them.'

Maitland cut through his enthusiasm: 'And the Cambridge?'

'I haven't found it yet–but it's there somewhere. They've got more options in a bigger car.'

Maitland turned to Audley. 'That settles it, then. They wouldn't send three men just to fix the cars. One on the cars, one in the dummy4

house and one to keep watch. You can take it from me they mean business, Dr Audley.'

'Have you taken the–whatever it is out of my car?' said Faith uneasily. 'Is it safe to drive?'

Jenkins grinned. 'Safe, but so dull, Miss Jones! It'd be much better fun to put it back again. I mean, now we know about it we can take them on a tour of Britain any time –it's the only chance some of their chaps get to see the beauties of the countryside. Saving your presence, of course!'

She regarded him disdainfully. 'Do you think you could turn down your radio,' she said coldly. 'It's getting on my nerves.'

His grin widened. 'Sorry, lady,' he replied in his Kill-and-Cure persona's accents. Then he switched back: 'I don't enjoy it any more than you do, actually. But I haven't checked this barn yet.

Pop's marvellous for blotting out conversation in the meantime.'

With his hair cut he would be an uncommonly presentable young man, thought Audley enviously. And more her age.

He moved to cut off the conversation: 'Is the–device–a Russian one?' He couldn't bring himself to use the colloquial term they had used, all too aware that his knowledge of gadgetry was minimal.

Jenkins shook his head. 'Now there you have me. I'd assume it was–

it's a first-rate job. You've no reason to think the Americans are interested in you, have you?'

'Why the Americans?' asked Audley, shaking his head in turn.

'Then we'd be in real trouble: the Americans are streets ahead of the Russians. They don't just miniaturise things now–they make dummy4

them look like something else! I'd have to start unscrewing nuts and bolts to find out if they really were just nuts and bolts.'

Audley remembered that he had initialled a report on the latest developments in such equipment a few days before, without reading it. It had not been in his field then: he wished it wasn't in it now.

But he was saved from further embarrassment by Roskill's appearance at the wheel of a gleaming Triumph which made his own Austin seem depressingly dowdy. Roskill was also more Faith's age, he thought gloomily. And more her style, too. He made Audley feel as shabby as the Austin.

But that was an undignified and unprofitable line of thought. What had happened during the night certainly didn't give him special rights over the girl. Young women set less store on physical relationships these days; it wasn't even as though he had been Faith's first lover. He couldn't even decide whether he was glad or sorry about that, but it was an unarguable fact.

Maitland was talking to him though.

'We'll give the house a thorough going-over, Dr Audley. And when we've finished we'll set someone to keep his eye on the place, and he'll let you have a copy of my report. We'll give you two clear rooms–your study and the kitchen, but we'll leave the rest in place.

That may keep them happy for a time. After all–well, these bugs have a limited life span, and they'll know soon enough that we've tumbled to them, likely as not.'

That was to be expected. Even in his own limited sphere Audley dummy4

knew that advantages were ephemeral. Better to assume the worst quickly.

'And don't trust the telephone any more,' added Maitland. 'I can't guarantee that at all.'

It was the sort of nightmare Audley had never expected to find himself in, but it had to be borne with equanimity. He thanked the man–it was obviously a more high-powered team than he had first thought–and turned to introduce Faith to Roskill.

But he saw at once that he was already too late; they were in deep conversation.

Faith turned to him. 'I took the liberty of introducing myself to Mr Roskill, Dr Audley,' she said with a malicious deadpan formality. 'I told him that I was one of your team now, but I think he still wants a reassurance from you.'

Roskill looked down at his feet, and Audley thought the better of him for it. The use of amateurs in his profession, no matter how attractive, was quite properly anathema to him. It was not that they were stupid, but rather that their ignorance of the basic rules of procedure made them at once dangerous and vulnerable.

'Miss Jones has one unique advantage over us, Hugh,' he explained. 'She's her father's daughter–and that may prove very useful to us. And I'll be with her all the time, in any case.'

Roskill conceded the matter with a graceful nod in Faith's direction. 'Nothing personal, Miss Jones. It's simply that I've also got some concrete information to contribute now, even if I haven't had such an exciting night as you have.'

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Audley was glad that she had chosen to wear tinted glasses, only to find that it was he whom Roskill was observing speculatively.

He started guiltily.

'The post-mortem on Morrison?'

'My report's in the car. But I'd rather you read it on the way. We've got quite a way to go, and not a lot of time.'

The inside of the Triumph was like a pilot's cockpit. Evidently Roskill was a car enthusiast–and he was beyond doubt a skilled driver, for no unskilful one could drive so consistently fast and stay alive. Audley tore his eyes from the roadside which was flashing by so terrifyingly, and started to unzip the plastic folder Roskill had handed to him. Then he stopped; it was always better to hear a verbal report if possible–reports could not answer questions. And it would serve to bring home the realities of the situation to Faith, if that was still necessary. It might slow down this hair-raising drive, too!

'Did he fall, or was he pushed?' he inquired.

'Neither,' replied Roskill, slowing down not in the least. 'He was dead when he was slung down those stairs.'

He changed gears with casual skill, and drifted the car coolly round a badly-cambered bend with an ease Audley envied bitterly. How was it that some people could bring machines alive, and then achieve a symbiosis with them?

'But you were right, Dr Audley,' Roskill continued. 'It was an accident, most likely. He actually died of heart failure –he had a heart condition that only needed the right shock to set off.'

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'And that shock was—?'

'Somebody slapped him around a bit. Not hard, but hard enough.

Made his nose bleed. We frightened him, but we weren't in any hurry. Someone else was, apparently.'

'They'd have hit him to make him tell them something?' asked Faith.

'That's right, Miss Jones. He'd just spoken to us, and he knew we were OHMS. He'd know that his next visitors weren't official–but he also knew that we were coming back soon. So he might have tried to stall them and that was very unwise of him.'

'Unwise?'

Roskill was silent for a moment. Then he spoke more seriously:

'Miss Jones, most people think that types like me are just like–the men on the other side. They think we're just tools, like a gun or a fighter; same basic object, just a different make. But it isn't quite true, you know.'

'You're good and they're bad?'

Audley wriggled uncomfortably. The old argument was rearing its head.

But Roskill avoided it.

'I'm bound by laws, very strict laws, and they aren't. In this country, anyway.'

'But you'd stretch those laws.'

'Stretch–maybe. But break–never! With a free press and civil liberties I wouldn't even if I wanted to. Which I don't, oddly dummy4

enough.'

Audley intervened. 'Hugh means that if Morrison had refused to talk to us there isn't a thing we could have done about it. And there aren't many places in the world where that's the case. That's why you're coming up to Knaresborough with us, as I told you: because I've a feeling that Tierney won't be panicked like Morrison.'

Roskill nodded.

'True–but that isn't really what I meant to say, Miss Jones.

'I meant to say that if ever you should be in Morrison's situation, don't try to be brave or clever. Just tell 'em what they want to know. Sing like a canary.'

'I'll remember your advice, Mr Roskill.'

'It was just a thought. And please call me Hugh–everyone else does.'

'Well, then, Hugh–what was it they wanted to find out from that poor man? David didn't seem to think that he had much of value to tell–except that he knew my father brought the treasure in.'

The speed of the Triumph dropped all of three m.p.h., only to rise sharply. Audley remembered from the Dassault interview that Roskill had flown fighters: he drove exactly as one would expect a fighter pilot to drive.

'Treasure?' said Roskill innocently.

Audley told him briefly about the Schliemann Collection, and was exceedingly gratified to find that his information was received with the same caution as he had accorded it. This not only vindicated his attitude, he reflected, despising the jealousy he was unable to stifle; dummy4

it relegated Hugh to his own level in Faith's eyes.

'All this trouble for a load of museum exhibits!' The prospect seemed to amuse Roskill, and although Audley refrained from turning to look at Faith he could sense her bristling on the back seat.

'All what trouble?' she asked.

Roskill gave Audley a quick sidelong glance.

'That's the thing that's been disturbing me more than somewhat, Dr Audley: the priority service we've been getting. I'm used to being told to get on with it, and mind the expenses. But ever since that JIG fellow set eyes on me it's been all "Ask and ye shall receive"–

and I don't like it!'

'The Schliemann treasure—' began Faith.

'The Schliemann treasure may be the biggest thing since Tutankhamen, Miss Jones. I'm sure it's enough to set all the thieves in Europe drooling—'

Roskill stopped for several seconds, conscious at once that he had dropped a brick. Then he plunged on.

'—But it isn't the sort of thing that gets me out of bed. And certainly not Dr Audley here. And never the other lot–them least of all.'

Faith opened her mouth to speak and then closed it suddenly. She had evidently realised that she had let slip the treasure ahead of schedule, although Audley had given her no instructions about it.

But like the admirable young woman she was, she had caught herself in time before mentioning Panin.

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She glanced at him and he smiled at her. Not so much out of gratitude at finding a woman who could hold her tongue–it was high time that Hugh was introduced to Panin, anyway–as because she had heightened his regard for her. It was a new thing for him to desire and admire a woman at the same time.

'There's one man who might be interested,' he began. Strictly speaking he ought to get Stocker's clearance before telling Hugh about Panin. But the cat would be out of the bag on Tuesday in any case.

Hugh listened, nodding at intervals.

'Well, that's a bit more like it!' he said at length. 'But I still don't quite understand why he's so worked up about it. Is there a chance he's going to defect?'

That possibility had already passed very fleetingly through Audley's mind, only to be rejected utterly. It was not so much unlikely as plain ridiculous. Defection was for the system's victims–for intellectuals like Kuznetsov and poor devils in the field like Khokhlov and Gouzenko. It wasn't for the men who made the system work, the coming men.

'Not a chance,' he replied flatly.

'I only asked,' said Roskill unrepentantly. 'The word is that with the Czechs and the Rumanians and the Chinese –and the Americans in Space–they're all at sixes and sevens over there. If I was one of

'em, I'd be looking for a cosy billet.'

But not Panin, thought Audley. The Russians were in an unhappy situation not unknown in the West: they had fallen into the hands dummy4

of a junta of second-raters, all jockeying for power. It might be a mere historical accident, or it might be a basic built-in defect of the one-party system, which admitted another Stalin as the only alternative. Either way the prospect was quietly terrifying.

But Panin was not a second-rater. More like a first-rate Father Joseph looking for his Richelieu. Or maybe a potential Richelieu himself. . .

'But you wanted to know what Morrison knew that might have been valuable, Miss Jones,' said Roskill, sensibly changing the subject. 'They might have wanted to know how far we'd got, of course. But more likely they wanted the addresses of the other crew members–Tierney the second pilot and Maclean the navigator. Right, Dr Audley?'

'Do you think they got them?'

'Probably not, Miss Jones. I think Morrison's heart gave out on them inopportunely–which is perhaps one reason why you had visitors last night!'

Faith digested the sequence of events which had brought her to the priest's hole. Audley could almost hear her mind working, although the dark glasses gave away nothing. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't so; that it was fear and the need for an anodyne, not death, which had thrown them together. But there was nothing he could say.

Finally she spoke: 'Then logically, if they are at all efficient, they should be following us now.'

Audley thought it highly unlikely that anyone was capable of dummy4

following Hugh Roskill's Triumph.

'That's all taken care of,' said Roskill. 'It isn't likely, but we'll be swapping cars on the M1 in due course. And we've got chaps watching over Tierney and Maclean already–we're efficient too, you know, when no one's pulling the purse-strings tight!'

He whistled contentedly through his teeth.

'You know,' he said conversationally to Faith, 'I used to think that with enough manpower to cover all the contingencies, and someone like Dr Audley to do my thinking for me, this job would be easy. Not this job, I mean, but things in general. But now I've got 'em I'm more at sea than ever . . .'

Audley retreated into the plastic folder. He envied Roskill's ability to make easy conversation, interesting yet self-mocking, as much as his driving skill. He knew he was incapable of diverting her with tales of his own modest triumphs and humiliations. He recalled the last bitter session of recriminations with Liz, when she had piled his dullness on top of his seriousness and his inability to talk to her. 'Like a bloody pedantic German professor, with no room for me except in bed and in the kitchen' had been her parting shot, all the more wounding for its element of truth.

He remembered guiltily that he ought to have phoned Theodore now that he knew the answer to the problem which he had set. But it might be better to let him come up with the answer independently. He could be suitably grateful–he could take the old man out to one of those heavy lunches he loved so much, talking the whole afternoon away. Theodore was alone among his contacts in wanting nothing but companionship in return for knowledge.

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He blocked out the chatter around him–Faith was laughing at something Roskill had said–and plunged into the report. The man's casualness concealed an incisive efficiency, which was why he had been seduced from a peacetime air force into this work. All too often the service recruits were those who would never have risen in their original professions. That was the bane of peace-time intelligence. But both Roskill and Butler were exceptions to this rule, conditioned to take orders but with their curiosity and initiative unblunted.

Roskill had evidently charmed the police and the police surgeon; they had worked hard and had given him everything they had found. He had set up precautions, had got through to Butler and had planned today's moves with absolute precision, elaborating on Audley's half-formulated instructions at some points and even anticipating them at others. His style was economical, but occasionally enlivened by asides which give dimension to the bald facts. Audley was used to reading between the lines of such documents, but they seldom gave him such satisfaction.

He zipped up the folder and stared out of the car window at the kaleidoscopic scene. Unlike ordinary roads, which were as much part of any community as the houses and people, motorways were intruders, foreign territory belonging not to the countryside through which they ran, but only to their termini miles away.

He dozed uneasily, conscious that he had lost sleep to make up.

And then he remembered how he had lost the sleep, drifting into a delicious half-dream of recollected passion.

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It was the change in the steady engine note that roused him in the end. The Triumph was leaving the fast lane, slowing and sliding into a slip road, towards an ugly motel sprawl. It drew up alongside a Rover in the nearly empty parking lot, and Audley recognised Butler's rufous bullet-head.

Butler didn't stir, but his driver was out of the car before the Triumph had stopped.

'We're swapping cars here just in case,' said Roskill, without turning the engine off.

Audley climbed stiffly out and followed Faith and Roskill into the Rover. The Triumph rolled away from them with its new driver, towards the petrol pumps, and Roskill accelerated past it without a sideways glance. The whole manoeuvre had been accomplished with the suspicious smoothness Audley associated with bank robberies.

He sighed. This was the aspect of his work which he had hitherto managed to avoid–and rightly, or it was as boring and superficially childish as he had always imagined it to be, undignified by the undertone of danger.

Butler passed him a file, the identical twin superficially of that Roskill had passed him earlier.

'Georges Leopold Bloch,' he explained brusquely. 'The late Georges Leopold Bloch.'

This time Audley did not begin to open the folder, but merely waited for Butler to elaborate.

'Late and unlamented for the last quarter of a century. Fished out of dummy4

an Antwerp dock ten days after we chucked him out of England.

Knocked about first, then knocked out and dumped over the side.

No clues, police not interested. Case closed.'

There was no need to ask why the Belgian police had not been interested. Before he had strayed briefly and fatally into private investigation Bloch had been a policeman, and he had been a little too helpful to the German occupation authorities. Not helpful enough to be prosecuted, but enough to be sacked. There'd be some scores to settle there and his former comrades would not be unduly disturbed that someone had settled them. Bloch would have been an inconvenient memory conveniently erased.

'I talked to his widow,' said Butler. 'Re-married and not pleased to be reminded about him. Stupid little man, she said he was. Backed the wrong horse, and nobody would employ him.'

But somebody had employed him in the end.

'Then one night he got a phone call. Spoke in German and cheered up no end. Told her he'd got friends and things were going to be better. Went to England–came back scared stiff. Four days later, went out and didn't come back. Good riddance–she didn't actually say it, but she said he was a loser, with the mark on him.'

It fitted well enough. The cargo had to be received by someone. If the hijackers were German they'd not have been able to get into England very easily just then. A Belgian would do well, particularly a Belgian who had been tied in with them. It might even be that Bloch's helpfulness to the Germans had been more incriminating than his colleagues had suspected. In which case his new employers would have a useful guarantee of his loyalty.

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But why had the price of failure been so severe? It certainly hadn't been Bloch's fault that he had failed to make contact. Nor would failure under such circumstances frighten him.

It could only mean that Panin had been back-tracking to catch up with the hijackers, and that Bloch had guessed he'd caught a tiger.

Audley shivered. The hands which had slapped Morrison yesterday had been controlled by the same agency, motivated by the same aims, as those which had beaten up Bloch in Antwerp all those years ago. Steerforth had raised the devil again.

IX

The chill remained with him as he walked beside Faith through the Sunday morning streets of Knaresborough. If Steerforth had raised the devil, they were also in some sense on the devil's work, with their own load of trouble and mischief.

With a start he realised they were actually passing Tierney's electrical shop. It seemed quite substantial, with one window loaded with television sets garnished with offers of allegedly amazing terms. Tierney had done better in life than Morrison–

which wouldn't do at all. Except that the rich were often greedier than the poor . . .

Roskill's man was waiting for them in his hotel room across the street, from which he had been able to keep a comfortable view of the shop.

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'Richardson–Miss Jones–Dr Audley, I've been looking forward to meeting you!'

Richardson had a long brown face made longer by a jutting chin, but redeemed by good-humoured dark eyes, and Audley couldn't imagine why he had been looking forward to the encounter.

'I saw you play for the old Saracens, Dr Audley,' explained Richardson.

'That was a long time ago,' said Audley. He felt pleasantly flattered, despite the implication of hoary old age in the young man's memory of him. He searched for something suitable to add.

'You've got the build of a wing three-quarter.'

'Scrum-half, actually. And it wasn't so long ago that you played either–I was always afraid I might meet you on the receiving end!'

Faith laughed. 'He was brutal, was he?'

'Sheer murder, Miss Jones. It must have been like being run over by a locomotive! Do you know the game?'

'I've got two young step-brothers who are besotted with it.'

They were suddenly like children sharing a joke, and Audley felt he had to call them to order. Their sudden pleasure didn't fit his mood.

'Is Tierney in?' he asked sharply.

'He is,' said Richardson, unabashed. 'By the grace of God he lives in a flat above the shop, with no rear entrance. The flat entrance is just to the left there. So I've had it easy!'

'Give me a run down on him.'

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Richardson flipped open a notebook.

'Arthur Lawrence Tierney, born Leeds 1922—'

'Not a biography, man. Tell me about him here and now. I know what he was. But what do people think of him here? What's his credit like? Don't read it out. Tell me.'

Richardson looked uncertainly at his notebook.

'There's one thing I should have told you first, sir. They want you to phone the department, extension 28–as soon as you can. Sorry about not telling you right away.'

Audley sat unmoving. Richardson's jumbled impressions would be all the better if he wasn't given time to rearrange and edit them.

The department could wait.

'Tell me about Tierney.'

The young man took a breath, stuffing his memory into his pocket.

'A nasty character, for my money. Tricky, certainly. He's a sharp enough businessman–he's respected for that. Always got an eye on the main chance, and not too finicky about what sort of chance it is too. I talked to a detective sergeant –he didn't say so in so many words, but I think he'd like to get his hands on him, and he thinks he will one of these days.'

'What sort of thing has he been up to?'

'Nothing proved–but otherwise, you name it and he's done it.'

'Name it.'

'Receiving mostly. But the sergeant reckoned he'd squeezed out of a nasty dangerous driving charge. And he's beaten the breathalyser.

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And they think there was something very smelly about his divorce.

He's had a convenient fire in small warehouses he rented, too–an electrical fire. I tell you, sir, they don't like him at all.'

Tierney hadn't changed; the 'receiving stolen goods' was a shaft in the gold.

'And his credit?'

'That's rather hard to say. The business seems sound enough. But in a small way, and he's a big spender–runs an "E" registration Jaguar, drinks a fair bit. Girl friend in Harrogate, and an expensive one, according to rumour. The same source says that's why the business hasn't expanded: never enough loose money in the kitty.'

Audley felt better now, so much so that he began to regret pushing Richardson. Tierney's nerves would be in middling shape, his sense of public responsibility non-existent and his greed unlimited. That had been the original assessment of him, and it was always reassuring to find leopards with all their original spots in place.

He smiled at them both, wondering as he did so what Faith made of her father's choice of a right-hand man.

'That's well done,' he said. 'You must have sunk a few beers to get that lot.'

Richardson grimaced. 'They all drink whisky in Tierney's circles. It was touch and go at the end whether they were going to tell me about him or I was going to tell them about me! And it's cost the nation a fortune.'

A few minutes later Audley added to that cost with a reversed call to the department. Mercifully the hotel's public telephone was dummy4

located in an enclosed sentry box of dark varnished wood, with additional privacy provided by a giant plant which flourished aggressively beside it.

Extension 28 eventually brought him Stocker, as he had expected.

For the time being, and perhaps permanently, Fred was no more than a friend at court. And at this time of a Sunday morning he would be only just leaving the church he so dutifully attended.

But Stocker beamed insincerely at him down the phone.

'David!'–So he had ceased to be Audley at some point in the last twenty-four hours–'I'm glad you were able to get through to me so soon'–was there a reprimand there?–'I gather you know all about G

Tower?'

At least he wasn't prevaricating.

'I do–yes.'

'You must tell me about your private network some time. It appears to have the virtue of efficiency.'

Audley grunted non-commitally. That would be the day.

'And I gather you have also heard about the missing Trojan antiquities.'

It was a statement, not a question. Audley gloated briefly over the vision of Sir Kenneth Allen's reaction at being disturbed twice in one evening to answer the same question.

'You consider it likely that that was Steerforth's cargo?'

'I'm reasonably certain it was.'

'You have corroborative evidence? From the daughter?'

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Roskill was reporting back everything to Stocker, for no one else had known about Faith until that morning. But it was only to be expected. If he was dealing with someone as awkward as himself he would have done no less.

'Yes.'

'Good. And you consider her involvement in the next stage necessary?'

'I think it may be essential.' Fred had become resigned to monosyllabic answers until he was ready with a full report, but it would be too much to expect the same of Stocker, Audley warned himself. He was already forgetting the tactical errors which had got him into this mess in the first place.

'I don't think Roskill and Butler will get anything out of Tierney,'

he elaborated. 'Not unless we let them lean on him hard, and probably not even then. So I'm going to try a different approach and Miss Jones will be my–my passport.'

'Proof of your mala fides! I see! And is she a chip off the old block?'

Audley found the suggestion that Faith had inherited anything from her father except that physical resemblance oddly distasteful.

'Not in the least. But she's an intelligent young woman, and she wants to help.'

'Very well–I leave her to your discretion. Now about last night's business. Your three visitors.'

'They put–devices in the cars and they may have bugged the house.'

'They did bug the house. I received an interim report half an hour dummy4

ago. They're still looking.'

Audley loathed asking questions of his nominal superiors. Apart from their reluctance to give straight answers, which provided him only with negative intelligence, it suggested incompetence on his own part. But he had been pitchforked into this puzzle at such short notice that it would be folly to pretend that he understood what he was about.

'I don't understand why they did it,' he admitted. 'I can't see why it's so important. And I can't see why a man like Panin has involved himself personally in it. I take it we've offered him full co-operation?'

'We have–yes.'

'In that case there must be something I don't know about.'

'I give you my word, David–for what it's worth–that we know no more than you do. Probably less, on your past form. Panin is a man with very little past, a big present and an even bigger future. We'd like to know more about him, and this is a great opportunity. We don't want to offend him if we can help it, either!'

Nothing had changed since yesterday.

'I think you should at least admit the possibility, Dr Audley, that he simply wants to recover the Trojan antiquities. He's an archaeologist. He lost them in the first place –and that probably rankles. He's on holiday, too. On his own time, as it were. Taking precautions could be second nature with him. All we can do is to find those boxes for him, show him the sights and send him home happy.'

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Audley felt his irritability returning as he retraced his way to Richardson's room. Stocker must know something else, but he wasn't going to divulge it, even in answer to a direct appeal. It must therefore be a matter of high policy, something relating to the official attitude to Panin, rather than to the Steerforth aspect. All he could do was to obey orders without fully understanding them–

which might suit the field operatives, but didn't suit him at all.

Roskill's large feet propped on the end of Richardson's bed were the first thing he saw. Richardson himself was still stationed by the window; Faith sat in the only comfortable chair and Butler was perched on a stool next to the wash-stand. The overall effect almost restored his spirits: crammed suspiciously into this little room they generated an atmosphere of conspiracy strong enough to set all the bank alarms in sleepy Knaresborough ringing.

He caught Roskill's eye and saw disconcertingly that his thoughts were being read and shared. And there was a slow smile spreading across Faith's face. In another second this council of war would slip into farce while he was still searching for the right words to bring it to order.

Butler saved him: 'You were right about Tierney, Dr Audley. You said we'd get nothing from him, and nothing is exactly what we got.'

Roskill swung upright on the bed.

'Master Tierney's memory is very poor. He remembers exactly what's in his little blue log book–which he still has, incidentally.

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No more, no less. Twenty-four years is a great healer for him. All his harrowing experiences have faded into nothing. He wishes he could help us, but he can't.'

'I prodded him on Steerforth,' Butler took up the narrative again.

'Said we had reason to believe that he was bringing in contraband goods and warned him about certain non-existent regulations. He didn't quite laugh at me, but he obviously knows we can't touch him.'

'Major Butler put on his sergeant-major act,' said Roskill. Then he went to get the car and I told Tierney what a rude bastard Butler was, and how nasty he could get, and how I could smooth things over if he'd just give us a little help. He didn't laugh at me either–

but he wanted to.'

'I expect he recognised the technique,' said Richardson. 'He's been through the mill more than once up here. He's a Fifth Amendment man.'

'I don't think I'd buy my TV set from him, certainly,' said Roskill.

'He's not a man who inspires my confidence.'

Butler snorted. 'The set would be all right. It would be the small print of the maintenance agreement you'd have to read carefully.'

Somewhere in the hotel a clock began to chime. It was midday and Audley was abominably hungry already as a result of a sketchy breakfast and a barbarously early start to the day. But there was still work to be done and he nerved himself to organise everyone.

'What does Tierney do for his Sunday lunch?' he asked Richardson.

'Drinks it at a flashy pub down the road.'

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'Right. Miss Jones and I will approach him there. Then we'll take Maclean.' He glanced down at the list from Roskill's file. 'I see there are only two of the ground crew short-listed. Where are the other two?'

'One died in '54–natural causes. The other emigrated in '50–

Australia.'

'You and Butler can split the others then. I'll see you both tomorrow at 9. I'll be at the Bull, Newton Chester.'

'And the Pole, Wojek?'

'Monday evening for him–if we have time. I'd like to see Wojek myself. One of you can phone him and make an appointment–say I'm writing a history of Polish aircrew in the RAF.'

Richardson broke in suddenly, beckoning him to the window.

'He's coming out.'

Audley moved beside him, following his gaze. Time had accentuated that distinctive ferrety face. The slope of the forehead and the receding chin had not been so apparent in the photograph; buck teeth for gnawing, long nose for sniffing, separated by the same slightly ridiculous toothbrush moustache. The nose was sniffing now as Tierney stood in his doorway quartering the view nervously with the abrupt little movements of the head of an animal in a hostile environment.

It would be awkward if Tierney didn't follow his Sunday routine now. But for all his coolness with Roskill and Butler he'd probably need the reassurance of the pub more than usual.

'Come on Faith,' he said quickly. 'Time for us now!' In a final dummy4

flurry of decision-making he took the Rover's keys and location from Butler and adjured Richardson to continue covering Tierney.

By taking the car he was leaving them a transport problem, but that was their headache.

By the time they reached the street Tierney was a small figure in the distance. But the need for speed was all to the good: Faith had not shown the least sign of nerves so far. She had evidently repaired her make-up while he had been phoning Stocker, and still presented a cool, almost cold, front to the world–the tinted glasses lent her face something of the haughtiness it had without them. The less time she had to think, the less chance there was that the mask would slip.

Tierney's pub was a perfect example of the tarted-up olde worlde style beloved of the breweries, all beams and padded red plastic and bar ablaze with light. The Sunday morning rush had not yet started and Tierney was alone at one end of the bar drinking whisky greedily.

Audley ordered gin for Faith, filled up his own small whisky to the top with water and instructed the barman to fill up Tierney's glass.

Tierney looked up sharply as the barman muttered to him. He had looked them over as they had entered, dismissing Audley but lingering over Faith. But now he was trying to place them both.

He hesitated for a moment, sipping the drink as though to establish its genuineness. Then he sauntered over to their corner.

'I don't think I've had the pleasure?'

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His eyes shifted from Faith to Audley, and back to Faith as he spoke. Neither of them replied, but Faith carefully removed her glasses and stared up at him for a long moment.

'Are you quite sure of that?' she said.

A lot depended on Tierney's memory for faces, and it would still require a remarkable leap of the mind, even after this morning's reminder of things long past. But to Audley, knowing the answer, the resemblance was plainer than ever: she had somehow caught the tilt of the head which had been characteristic of her father's pictures.

It was enough to shake Tierney, but he still failed to make the connection.

'Steerforth is my name. Faith Steerforth. You haven't forgotten John Steerforth, have you?'

'My God!' said Tierney.

'Sit down, Mr Tierney,' said Audley. 'My name's Audley. We'd like to talk to you about old times.'

Tierney tore his glance away from Faith. 'Old times?' He sat down, raised his glass to his lips and then abruptly set it down untasted.

His alarm bells were ringing loud and clear.

'Johnnie Steerforth's daughter! Damn me, but I can see it now.

Margery Steerforth's baby!'

'Margaret,' said Faith levelly.

'Margaret–of course! How well I remember her!'

Faith took a photograph from her handbag.

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'Then you'll recognise her now. And of course you will recognise me with her, won't you!'

Tierney studied the photograph.

'That's good enough then,' cut in Audley. 'We can get on to those old times.'

Tierney looked at him innocently. 'Funny you should be so keen on the old times. I had a couple of chaps asking me about them only this morning.'

Audley leaned forward. 'Don't mess around with me, Tierney,' he said conversationally. 'I'm not Special Branch and I'm not playing old comrades in this crummy little town for fun. I'm here on business and if you're very lucky you'll be able to help me.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.' Tierney picked up his drink and started to get up.

Audley reached forward and put his hand casually on the man's leg just above the knee, squeezing powerfully with his thumb and forefinger. Tierney gave a little snort of pain and sat down again as the leg gave way, slopping some of his drink on to the table.

Tierney looked from one to the other in a mixture of surprise and outrage. Possibly no one had ever done anything like that to him before, certainly not in a public place. Faith had put her glasses on again, and her face was closed behind them.

Audley turned the relaxing squeeze into a gentle pat. Now he had to turn the outrage into fear.

'That's better,' he said quietly. 'I wouldn't wish you to misunderstand me, like your little friend Morrison.'

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'Morrison?'

'Sergeant Morrison that was. Your look-out man. He didn't help us at all. So now he's not going to help anybody.'

'Who the bloody hell are you?'

It was not such an anguished cry as Morrison's had been. There was still a hint of fight about it. But this man lacked poor Morrison's years of blameless citizenship: he had no one to turn to.

'I've told you my name. You don't know who I am, but I know very well who you are. You brought it here, but your share in it has lapsed. Miss Steerforth has her father's share and I have the rest.

And I might throw you a bone or two.'

Tierney drained his glass slowly, trying to charge his confidence at the same time. There was a sly look about him now, a compound of caution and greed brought to the surface by the prospect of profit.

'I don't even know what it is–or was.'

That could quite easily be true, thought Audley. Morrison hadn't known either. There was no real evidence that Steerforth intended to double-cross his own associates, but whether he did or not it would be a sensible precaution to keep them in the dark about the nature of the cargo.

'We don't need you to tell us that. And if you did know it wouldn't matter. You haven't got the form to dispose of it, not in a million years.'

Tierney smiled obsequiously and gestured to the glasses on the table. It was dawning on him that he might actually be in a dummy4

bargaining position, and that thought was giving him confidence.

'My round, I think!'

Audley put the palm of his hand over Tierney's empty glass. Now was the precise time to demolish Tierney.

'Nobody's round. I see that I still haven't made myself plain.

Morrison's dead, Tierney. He stuck out his silly neck and it got broken. He was the victim of a tragic accident–I believe he fell down a flight of stairs. I wouldn't like to think that you were accident-prone too.'

Tierney sat very still, his slyness wiped from his face and his confidence draining away, leaving only a thick sediment of fear. If he knew anything about the jungle in which he was a petty scavenger, then he would also know thg,t there were fiercer predators in it, man-eaters some of them.

'Who was your contact over here–the man you were going to cheat?'

'My contact–our contact?' Tierney stared at him. 'I–I don't remember. And that was Johnnie's job.'

In Steerforth's place Audley would have used Tierney to make the contact, first to report that the cargo lift had been delayed and second to report that it had been lost at sea. Dirty work for Tierney.

'His name was Bloch, wasn't it?'

'It might have been. I don't remember–honestly. It was the hell of a long time ago.'

'It was Bloch, Tierney. And he was a poor swimmer.'

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Tierney frowned, uneasily perplexed.

'Which is a pity,' continued Audley, 'because he's been for a long swim. That was a little test for you–and you failed it miserably.

You ought to remember Morrison and Bloch. They were both stupid, and they're both dead.'

Two mini-skirted girls settled noisily at the table next to them, but Tierney was oblivious to the disturbance. Audley felt a warm sense of power; with Morrison he had been repelled by his own success, but with this hollow man it was different. He was almost enjoying himself. In fact he was enjoying himself.

'Let's try again. How did you unload it at Newton Chester?'

The ferrety man breathed out, as though relieved that he had a simple answer to give. 'We used the Hump.'

'Tell me about the Hump.'

'It's on the runway, when you're taxiing in. It isn't a hump really–

it's a sort of dip in the land. But it looks like a hump when you're taxiing in. You can't see the control tower when you're in it, it's down the far end, quite near the perimeter.'

He licked his lips anxiously.

'Johnnie spotted it. I mean, if you can't see the control tower from there, they can't see you. We used to just slow down an' drop things there, an' then go on in bold as brass.'

'And what happened to the things then?'

'One of the ground crew was there to pick 'em up. There's a little hut just not far from the runway. There's a firing range further on, just near the old castle–we didn't use it, but when it was a bomber dummy4

field they kept the range ammunition there I think.'

'In the hut?'

'Yes. It was empty and locked up. Johnnie broke the lock off an'

put one of his own on it just like it. He called it his safe deposit–no one worries about a hut if it's properly locked up. And then he came by and picked the things up later–he had some excuse for walking up that way.'

'And that's what you did the last time.'

Tierney nodded. 'We had to stop so Morrison an' me could lower the boxes out–Mac wouldn't help. He wouldn't have anything to do with it.'

Maclean was the odd man out in the crew, the honest one.

Morrison was probably basically honest too, but willing and scared–too scared to admit that he had even handled the cargo years afterwards.

'It was a two-man job?'

'It was a two-man job to lower the boxes out of the Dak–some of those boxes were bloody heavy. But Ellis'd got a little trolley from somewhere.'

Audley warmed to the memory of John Steerforth. The minor smuggling was nothing, the artificial crime created by avaricious governments and economics beyond the grasp of ordinary men.

The major crime was equally forgivable–a plundering of the plunderers doubly absolved by daring, ingenious last-minute improvisation and attention to detail. Faith's father had deserved his good luck, not his misfortune.

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And for him Ellis was a bonus: he was one of the accessible survivors of the ground crew whose address had been traced.

But Tierney was still talking.

'. . . five minutes, but it seemed like hours. We'd never brought anything so big in before. Johnnie said it was worth it because it was the last time.'

The last time. It had been that all right: the very last time.

'So Ellis put it in the safe deposit. And when did you go and check up on it?'

'Check up on it?' A shadow crossed the man's face, as the resurrected memory of wealth won and lost took hold of him. 'I never did–at least not till much later. Johnnie said it was put away safely, an' we'd have to wait and be careful for a long while.' He stopped and gave Faith an oddly pathetic glance. Like Jones, he'd never quite believed in the death of the clever, indestructible John Steerforth. 'And I trusted him,' he said simply.

'I told that man–the Frenchman–that we couldn't bring it in the first time, and Johnnie was like a cat with two tails.'

'When was it that he told you it was put away safely?'

'It was next day–at the afternoon briefing, just before I went to see the Frenchman. At the Bull I saw him.'

'And you finally checked the hut–how long after?'

'Three weeks–more–I don't remember. I broke my sodding ankle baling out. There was a thunderstorm and we'd lost a lot of height–

we were too low.' Tierney was no longer looking at Audley; he was dummy4

looking through him and far away, back into the thunderstorm.

'Far too low. I thought we were going to come down in the sea. But Johnnie nursed her along–he said the old bitch knew what he wanted, she just hadn't understood her orders properly and he wasn't going to let her spoil everything.'

There was a squeal of laughter from the next table. One of the youths who had joined the mini-skirts had spilt beer down his shirt.

Tierney's eyes focused on Audley again.

'But the old bitch got him, didn't she! She bloody well got him! I never thought I'd see her picture again!'

'And how much of this did you tell Bloch and his colleagues?'

'Colleagues? I never saw any colleagues. Only Bloch. He got into the hospital a couple of days after I was taken there. I didn't even know Johnnie was missing — they didn't tell me. So I told him what we'd agreed on: that Johnnie wouldn't dare crashland with the stuff on board and we'd lost the lot.'

'Did Johnnie have a car?'

'A car–no. He didn't even have a licence. I remember he said it was silly, being able to fly a plane and not being trusted with a car.'

That was another bonus, and a wholly unexpected one.

The possibility of handy transport, even in those austerity days, had been the one insuperable danger. It had never remotely occurred to him that Steerforth could not drive. Rather, he'd taken it for granted that he could.

'It's still there, isn't it!' Tierney was looking at him with a look of total incredulity. 'Of course it's still there. It has to be still there, dummy4

and it was staring me in the face.'

Tierney had really been remarkably slow to follow the drift of the questions. Or slow at least to recover after being shocked into co-operating. Either way he would give nothing more which could be relied on. Audley took out his wallet and extracted five £10 notes from it.

'Fifty?' Tierney's assessment of his value was inflating rapidly with the birth of understanding. 'What I've given you's worth more than fifty!'

Audley was tempted to put the money back in his pocket. But it was more a gift to the blind goddess than to Tierney.

'What you've given me is worth nothing,' he said brutally. 'Nothing to you, anyway. You had your chance long ago, but because you were stupid–and because you didn't trust John Steerforth enough in the end–you missed it.'

'I could still queer your pitch–I could go to the authorities. I could report you! Both of you—'

The threat was empty and Audley was weary of the charade anyway. He reached into his pocket for his identification folder.

'We are the authorities, Tierney. You've been had, I'm afraid.'

Tierney squinted at the folder, then at Audley and finally at Faith.

And longest at Faith.

'I could have sworn—' he began.

'Johnnie's daughter?' It was the first time she had spoken since showing him the photograph. 'You weren't had there, Mr Tierney.

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I'm Johnnie's daughter. But you'd have done better not to have trusted me.' She spoke sadly.

'And Morrison–and the other man?' Now Tierney was really empty, with not even fear left.

'You weren't altogether had there either,' said Audley. The least he could do was to warn the man off–and make Richardson's job simpler. 'You're just lucky that we reached you first. There are other people around who wouldn't bluff you. You'd best take yourself and your fifty pounds on holiday–a week would do.'

Tierney reached forward and scooped the five notes off the table, where they lay in a little puddle of spilt whisky.

Audley got up.

'A short holiday, Tierney–and we'll be keeping an eye on you, for your sake more than ours. And don't try to be clever. Don't go poking around Newton Chester trying to make up for lost time. I might see you there, and then I'd have you out of the way before your feet touched the ground again. Is that clear?'

He bent down, close to Tierney's ear.

'And go today, Tierney–go this afternoon.'

X

Richardson was just across the street outside the pub, peering morosely into the window of an antique shop. 'Tierney's going for a trip somewhere,' Audley told him. 'Just see him on his way. If he dummy4

isn't off by four, go and remind him. Are you still mobile?'

The long face split in a grin.

'Hugh Roskill didn't fancy my old heap–he whistled up that souped-up racing car of his.'

'Phone Newton Chester and book us a couple of rooms at the Bull.

We'll meet you there with the others tomorrow morning.'

'Make that a double room,' said Faith casually.

'Yes, ma'am.' Richardson's eyes flicked between them. He was no longer grinning; it occurred to Audley that he was not only not grinning, but had apparently been struck by some facial paralysis which had stranded his features in between emotions. Certainly no one could accuse him of grinning.

Audley wasn't sure that he approved the way she was setting the pace of their relationship, even if it was one of the logical outcomes of emancipation. But he knew equally well that with a pace maker one either keeps up or drops out of the race altogether.

'With a double bed,' he added in what he hoped sounded an equally casual tone. If Richardson too was required to report back on his progress, then he might as well have something to enliven his report.

It wasn't until they were settled into the Rover that Faith spoke again.

'I suppose I was out of line there?' she said, with a suggestion of truculence rather than apology in the question. 'Not in front of the help? You didn't like it much?'

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Audley could think of no suitable reply, short of admitting that he was old-fashioned, but she didn't wait for one anyway.

'Well, I didn't like what happened in that bar very much either,' she continued. 'I didn't like you very much. I didn't even like myself.'

He tried to concentrate on his driving; the Rover's transmission was automatic and his unoccupied left foot seemed unnaturally large.

'Actually I thought you were hamming it a bit at first. I expected him to laugh in your face any minute. Or sock you, even though you were twice as big. But then you started to gloat–and it wasn't funny then. It was nasty!'

Audley's left foot shrank back to its normal size as he saw the truth of it, and the chasm. He was not suited to this kind of work; not because he was too soft-hearted, as he had cretinously believed, but because with a little practice he could grow to like it too much.

He'd been lucky with Morrison and Tierney–forgetting Jones and the police inspector. But when he'd learnt more he wouldn't need such luck . . .

'I just don't know what sort of man you are! I've seen a gentle side–

Mrs Clark's side. And a diffident side. And Daddy said you were very clever. And that nice man Roskill thinks the world of you–and so does Richardson, and he'd never even met you! But I think there could be a dark side I wouldn't like.'

Damn her, thought Audley. She was fogging the issue when there were things, other things, he ought to be worrying about. Except that in the long run they might be less important things.

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'You still asked for a double room,' he said cruelly.

She shook her head.

'That wasn't just for you, David. It was for the Bull.'

'For the Bull?'

'That's not quite fair on you–it's only a hotel to you. You can't know about it.'

'You've been there?'

'Been there?' She sighed. 'No, I've never been there, not in the flesh. But it's part of my family history–I've heard them all talk of it. Grandmother used to tell me how they all met there. It was the squadron pub–"See you at the Bull" was their good luck saying! It was his special place–Johnnie Steerforth's pub. He met Mother there before I was born; I think he met her there the very first time.

And Daddy met her there afterwards, my step-father, I mean. It was the only place . . .'

She left the sentence unfinished and Audley writhed inwardly. He couldn't have known, and she was honest and had conceded it. But he could hardly have been more hamhanded in his egotistical misconstruction. Among all those ghosts of the living and the dead she didn't wish to be alone. Again it had been the need rather than the man, he told himself sadly.

'I'm sorry. I've been rather thick, haven't I?' he confessed heavily.

'We can go somewhere else. Or you can. In fact you could easily go home–you've done your part better than I deserve.'

'Do you want me to go home?'

'It's not for me to say. You've earned the right to decide that for dummy4

yourself, I think.'

She laughed. 'I'm not just a camp-follower any more then?'

'Faith, you know damn well you were never just a camp-follower.'

Audley nerved himself to abase his pride. 'If you want me to say whether I want you to go to the Bull to share a double bed with me in a double room, the answer is "yes", as you know very well. For me it would be a pleasure–and a privilege.

'And as to that dark side of mine — the answer is "yes" to that too.

I think there's a KGB man inside me trying to get out. And maybe that's another reason why you should stick around: we can both try to keep him in check now we've spotted him. At least until I can get back to my old job where he doesn't have any chances!'

She put her hand softly on his arm.

'Poor David! Things are complicated enough for you without a KGB girl of your own to watch your KGB man! I haven't even been straight with you, either. I do want to go to the Bull with you very much. I think I'd like to get the Bull out of my system and you into it. And I want to find Schliemann's treasure!'

'Steerforth's treasure now. It'll always be his treasure as well now, whether we find it or not.'

'But David — do you really think you can find it?'

He shrugged. 'The Russians think we can, Faith. And we're the first people to look for it, after all. So given time maybe we can.

Tierney's given us a good start, anyway –better than I expected.'

'He has? Honestly, I couldn't quite see what you were driving at. I mean, it doesn't matter where it was put at first. It's where it ended dummy4

up, and that could be — just anywhere.'

'Oh, no, it couldn't. Your daddy was an extremely resourceful character, but he wasn't a miracle worker.'

'I still don't see—'

'Time, love! Time and trust and opportunity. I haven't been trying to find the treasure so far–I've been trying to find what the limiting factors were.

'He didn't trust Tierney, and if he didn't trust Tierney he didn't trust anyone. So he shifted the treasure from the safe deposit hut by himself. And he did it that same night–he told Tierney it was put away safely next day. But he couldn't drive, so there's a physical limit to where he could manhandle it.

'There was the trolley.'

'Even with the trolley it can't be very far away from the hut. There has to be a place of some sort–he'd never leave it just lying about.'

'He'd get the place ready in advance then.'

Audley shook his head.

'I'm betting he didn't know in advance he was going to hijack the cargo. So it had to be a ready-made hiding place, and at the same time somewhere it could stay safely for a long time–twenty-four years, in fact.'

Faith frowned. 'I think you're assuming a lot, David. He could have had a place ready for what's-his-name, the Belgian, to collect the stuff–a hole in the ground would do perfectly.'

'Fortunately holes in the ground are the one thing we don't have to dummy4

worry about. If I thought it was under the ground I wouldn't bother to look — we'd need a regiment of Royal Engineers, mine detectors and God knows what else before we could think of tackling holes in the ground!'

'Well, it's the traditional place for buried treasure, and I still think it's the most obvious place,' said Faith, somewhat nettled. 'I don't see why you're so sure of yourself.'

Audley checked himself from another scornful reply, aware suddenly that he was close to selling the lion's skin before he had killed it.

'It's traditional, Faith,' he conceded seriously. 'But England isn't a desert island. People have an inconvenient habit of noticing large, convenient holes dug in the ground, as quite a few murderers have discovered to their cost. They notice them after they've been filled in, too. In fact there's only one place where a hole isn't suspicious, and that's in a churchyard!'

She turned towards him eagerly, but he cut her off with a shake of the head.

'Unfortunately Newton Chester churchyard is all of three miles from the airfield, on the other side of the village. Too far away to trundle a trolley two or three times without being seen or heard.

And frankly I can't see your father settling down with pick and shovel either, not to that extent: it would have to be a big, deep hole, a grave-sized one. And that takes quite a lot of digging, even if he had time–which I still don't think he had.'

Faith nodded thoughtfully. 'You've made your point, David. But if dummy4

it's not under ground, it's above ground. And that seems even more unlikely–unless it's in that castle Tierney mentioned.'

'That's a possibility, certainly. But I don't think there's much point in discussing possibilities until we see the place. As I said, I've been after the limiting factors. In any case, we've got one more job before Newton Chester. We've still got to see Maclean.'

'Maclean? He was–the navigator, wasn't he?'

'He was the navigator, yes.'

'But we're not going to do another tough act for him, I hope–I don't think I've got the stamina!'

Audley smiled. 'I don't think it would be very wise to attempt that act on a respectable citizen like Mr Maclean.'

Faith sighed with relief. 'Thank Christ there was one respectable member of the crew! I was beginning to get a jaundiced view of the air force. But then I suppose if anyone has to be steady and reliable it would be the navigator. Sort of father figure, like Captain Cook!'

Like most women she was prone to subjective judgments, reflected Audley: her step-father had been a navigator. But it was reassuring to find such a mundane flaw in her character; in some other respects she was formidable enough to be Jones's true daughter.

'I don't think your father's crew was very unusual–or unusually bad, come to that, Faith. Morrison was the weakling and Tierney was a potential crook, but they did their jobs perfectly well. They helped to win the war so people like me could come and hound them in peace years afterwards. Their generation did something big dummy4

— which is more than mine has done.'

'And my father?'

'Same thing, love–only more so! Don't go drooping through life thinking he was just a villain. In some ways he was quite a man.

He won his DFC fair and square.'

'Don't I know it! It was Grandmother's favourite bed-time story. So he was a war-hero. It's just that now I don't think he would have been a peace-hero.'

'Maybe not. But there were plenty like him—'

"A daring pilot in extremity ...

But for a calm unfit."

You shouldn't be sad, then. You've been damned lucky!'

'Lucky?' Faith sounded bitter.

'Every one of you! You got a good step-father out of the deal. And your mother has a good husband.'

'And my father and his crew–were they lucky?'

'They were luckier still. Your father went out quickly just when he thought he was home and dry and the others saved their skins.'

'And lost their treasure!'

'But that was the luckiest thing of all–for them. You don't think they'd really have got away with it, do you? More likely it would have been their death sentence.'

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'But you said — you've implied, anyway — that it was a marvellous plan?'

'So it was. But it had one terrible flaw they didn't know about–the flaw you've forgotten about and I still don't understand. They'd got Panin after them!'

'Panin–ugh!' Faith shivered. 'Every time you mention him it gives me the shakes–is he some kind of bogeyman?'

Audley shrugged. 'I wish I knew. But I know the Russians never gave up looking for that Dakota, so the odds are they'd have been on your father the moment he tried to dispose of his loot. And judging by what they did to Bloch they wouldn't have been gentle.'

She stared down at her feet miserably, and Audley cursed his runaway tongue, so proud of itself. He had set out to cheer her up and he had only reminded her of the real reason for this ridiculous treasure hunt. For a time he had almost forgotten it himself.

It was his turn to put a reassuring hand on her arm now.

'Never mind, Faith love. You don't have to meet the bogeyman on Tuesday. And you should get on splendidly with Maclean.'

She turned to him in surprise. 'Panin's coming here–to England?'

'You don't have to meet him.'

'Don't have to? I want to! The only way to deal with nightmares is to get them out into daylight–and I don't believe he can really be so awful, not if he thinks the treasure's worth his precious time.'

She was an innocent really, as so many of her kind were innocents.

Always trying to transpose their safe, cosy world with that other, very different one: brave old Uncle Joe, puffing his pipe; cuddly dummy4

Mr Kruschev, dandling his grandchildren on his knee; mild, worried-looking Mr Kosygin, playing the dove to Brezhnev's hawk. But he had to accept her jibe–it would only frighten her to point out that the worst nightmares were those which refused to dissolve in the morning sun.

'Besides, if he's such a big wheel it would be an experience to meet him. I've never met anyone really important!'

Audley felt another surge of affection for her: she was quite a girl.

And it could do no harm, provided she held her tongue. It might even be an advantage, for equally Nikolai Andrievitch Panin would probably never have met anyone like her. She might put him off his stroke, if only just a little.

'Very well, then, Faith. You shall meet him. But I still think you'll find Maclean more congenial.'

'Just because he's honest? I don't even see why you're interested in him. Tierney said he had no part in anything.'

'That doesn't mean he was blind or deaf. He was still one of the crew, and because he wasn't interested in making his fortune that way, your father just might have been more talkative with him.

Besides, he was with him for one whole day between the trips–he went to London with him and Wojek on the Thursday. That was the day your book on Troy was bought, I've no doubt.'

'How on earth do you know so much about what they did?'

'It's all in the original investigation file. Our people were trying to find out what your father had done that made his plane so interesting to the Russians. They didn't find out, of course, but they dummy4

managed a pretty detailed breakdown of his movements. And some shrewd character assessments, too.'

Butler had originally described the file as an assembly of non-information. And so it was, to the extent that it had failed to provide any conclusive answers. But like an old but painstaking geological survey it contained a wealth of information which became useful in the light of further knowledge.

'And as for Maclean being up your street–does Wadham Hill Comprehensive School mean anything to you?'

Faith raised her eyebrows. 'Wadham Hill? Isn't that the one that got the spectacular Oxbridge results?'

Audley nodded. 'I thought it might ring a bell with you. There was an article on it in one of the colour supplements, and it made the popular press too. One in the eye for the grammar schools. And all thanks to James W. Maclean–or "Big Jim" as he's known to his pupils. The papers liked that fine!'

'And that's our Maclean?'

'The same. Headmaster of Wadham Hill and sometime Flying Officer of 3112 Squadron. If we're nice to him perhaps he'll offer you a job sometime.'

'To Steerforth's daughter? I should doubt that–unless he's got a special remedial class for budding criminal scientists! I think I'll be plain Miss Jones to him.'

'You'll never be plain Miss Jones. But never mind–it's his memories we're after, not his professional approval. Always supposing he's available; it occurs to me that it may be his half-dummy4

term too.'

XI

But James Maclean was available. He received them readily and courteously in the immaculate study of his home which overlooked the equally immaculate glass and concrete campus of Wadham Hill. It had been his boast, Audley remembered now, that as a headmaster he was ready to meet anybody at any time–the colour supplement had made much of that.

But the 'Big Jim' nickname was puzzling. Clearly it didn't stem from size, either literally or by schoolboy mversion; Maclean was a neat, compact, average-looking man. Or perhaps it was a case of inversion, with the rough-hewn name contrasting with the man's intellectual precision–a compliment to the personality lurking beneath the neutral surface. There must certainly have been a measure of respect between him and Steerforth for him to have stood aloof from the hijacking without arousing ill-will.

Maclean came round his desk to meet them. 'Dr Audley–Miss Jones–your card says "Ministry of Defence", and I must admit that I'm curious to learn what your Ministry wants with me on a Sunday. I thought at first it might concern the Combined Cadet Force, but neither of you has the Cadet look!'

Maclean smiled as his eyes came to rest on Faith, but when she failed to return the smile the twinkle of good humour was replaced dummy4

by a more speculative look.

'It's good of you to spare us the time, headmaster,' said Audley, reaching into his pocket for his identification. Maclean studied the little folder carefully, nodded and returned it without comment.

'We're hoping you may be able to help us with information about something which happened rather a long time ago. It concerns Flight Lieutenant John Steerforth–you were his navigator during the war.'

Maclean stared at Audley steadily, with a slight crease of surprise wrinkling his forehead.

'John Steerforth!' he said, repeating the name and savouring it as though it had a special taste. 'It's a very long time since I've heard that name. But I remember him, of course. As you say, I was his navigator. What do you want to know about him? He's been dead twenty years or more–he was killed just after the war. We had engine failure flying back from Berlin. We baled out, but Steerforth stayed with the plane until too late–that was the presumption, anyway.'

'You remember him well?'

'Do I remember him well? I knew him very well once, certainly.

John Steerforth! It wasn't John, actually–it was always Johnnie–

Johnnie Steerforth! As a matter of fact I've been reminded of him off and on down the years a number of times.'

'How was that?'

'By boys who were like him. Not the same–no one's the same. But the same type, the Steerforth type. And oddly enough I don't mean dummy4

the Johnnie Steerforth type, either; I mean the original "J.

Steerforth"–David Copperfield's Steerforth. It's a curious coincidence. The Steerforths of this world can be useful in the right settings and dangerous in the wrong ones. Good in war, because they enjoy taking risks. The trouble starts when there aren't any risks to be taken.'

' "A daring pilot in extremity",' murmured Faith.

Maclean regarded her with interest.

'I see you know your Dryden, Miss Jones. Very apposite –it sums up Steerforth very well, that whole passage.'

He turned back to Audley. 'As I remember now there were a lot of questions about that last flight of ours at the time. They never found the plane, or Johnnie for that matter. I never understood why they made such a mystery of it; it was just pure bad luck.'

Maclean had evidently missed the newspaper reports of the Dakota's reappearance. And naturally he hadn't been privy to the ditching plan.

'We're not interested in that last flight, headmaster. We're only interested in the previous one from Berlin to Newton Chester.'

'The previous one?' Maclean frowned. 'But that was just—' His voice tailed off slightly, then rallied unconvincingly '—just routine.'

Maclean remembered well enough, or at least had just remembered well enough. But Audley judged that with him frankness might pay a bigger dividend.

'Headmaster, we know all about Steerforth's cargo. We know what it was, where it came from and how it was taken off the plane. We dummy4

also know that you had nothing to do with it. We're not trying to cause trouble for anyone. All we want to do is to find out where Steerforth put it.'

Maclean looked at him incredulously, and then on through him back into the past.

'Do you mean to say that Johnnie's precious boxes are still where he put them–after all this time?' he said at length.

'Do you know where he put them?'

'Good heavens–no! You'd do better to ask his second pilot — his name was Tierney. Or Morrison, the radio operator. I'm afraid I'm the person least likely to know.'

'But do you remember the boxes?'

'I remember the circumstances,' Maclean admitted ruefully. 'Now that you've reminded me I remember them all too well.'

He paused. 'I really didn't want to be involved. I wanted to finish my service with a clear conscience–I even used to congratulate myself with the thought that we hadn't actually killed anyone–

except accidentally, when we hit them with cannisters of supplies: Johnnie had the instincts of a bomber pilot, you know. It sounds rather naive, and quite false from a moral standpoint. But it kept me out of Johnnie's little rackets.'

'The boxes?' Audley tried to prod him gently.

'He was always offering to cut me in. To save me having to spend the rest of my life teaching Shakespeare to small boys! But I remember that on that penultimate flight he varied the offer: he said if I'd set my heart on teaching I could buy a school of my own dummy4

with my share.'

'And what did you say to that?'

'I don't remember what I said. But I recall that it scared me considerably. I thought that if one share in Johnnie's boxes was sufficient to buy a school–you don't make that scale of profit from American cigarettes and nylons! I was afraid desire might have outrun performance with Johnnie. And evidently I was right!'

The man's casualness had to be a sham, though not a guilty sham: no intelligent person could fail to be consumed with curiosity about the boxes' contents, least of all someone who had been involved with Steerforth, however innocently. Unless, of course, he already knew; but that didn't ring true of him, Audley judged.

'I'm sure I can rely on your discretion, headmaster, if I tell you that those boxes contained priceless objects from a German museum.

You were very wise to avoid the temptation.'

'Johnnie looted a museum?'

'Not quite. Say rather he looted the looters.'

Maclean smiled. 'That sounds more like him. In fact it would rather have appealed to him.'

He hadn't approved of Steerforth, or helped him, but he still had a soft spot for him–much as David Copperfield had for the other Steerforth. It vaguely irritated Audley that he had failed to see the Dickens analogy, even though it was as irrelevant as it now was obvious.

'The point is we suspect the boxes are still somewhere on or near the old airfield at Newton Chester, sir. Do you have any dummy4

suggestions as to where they might be, even if only in a general sense?'

Maclean pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then shook his head. 'I don't think I have, really. It's a very long time ago, after all–half a lifetime. My memories are rather fragmentary. I wouldn't know where to begin to look: Newton Chester wasn't a big station, as I recall it, but it covered quite a large area. There were — let me see

— about half a dozen boxes, and fair-sized boxes too–but it would still be like looking for a needle in a haystack. What makes you think they're still there?'

'Steerforth didn't have the time or opportunity to move them far.

We've covered his movements between the flights fairly well. He was duty officer on the Wednesday and he went to London with you and Flight Lieutenant Wojek on Thursday. Did he say anything about them then?'

Maclean was staring at Faith, who was absent-mindedly polishing her glasses. He turned slowly back towards Audley.

'I beg your pardon? We went to London? If we did I can't think why! It was a beastly journey there, and even worse coming back.

A day trip was hardly worth it.'

He spoke absently, and Audley could sense his interest slipping. Or rather, not slipping, but shifting to Faith.

'Miss–Jones–I can accept irrational coincidences, but I have a good memory for faces, and I don't see how you can be a coincidence.'

Faith started to put on her glasses, and then stopped, returning Maclean's curiosity coldly.

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'Steerforth had a baby daughter,' continued Maclean. 'She'd be just about your age now . . . You have your father's eyes and forehead, Miss Jones, and some of his disdain too, I think. A stronger chin and mouth, but the resemblance is quite striking nevertheless.'

'It's been remarked on before — you're memory is very accurate.'

Maclean gave her a satisfied nod, smiling at her.

'I was at your christening, Miss Jones–Miss Steerforth. As a matter of fact I was a proxy godfather. I remember the occasion quite well.'

'It's a pity you can't remember what my father did with his stolen treasure,' said Faith icily. 'It's a pity you weren't able to keep him on the narrow path with you in the first place. It would have saved a great deal of heartache.'

Maclean's face clouded. 'You think I was the Pharisee who passed by on the other side? That's not quite fair, my dear. You ought to know that young people don't interfere with their friends' private affairs–only the old and the middle-aged do that. And I was worried about your father; I said to him . . .'

He stopped, and then swung to Audley again, nodding in delayed agreement.

'You're quite right: we did go to London. My sister had tickets for a Myra Hess concert. Johnnie and Jan Wojek were going up on their own, and I just tagged along for the journey. We met up again to get the last train from King's Cross.'

He tailed off, but Audley didn't dare to prompt him for fear of breaking the chain of remembrance.

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'I'd been sitting there thinking about your father, Miss Steerforth, and thinking about his boxes. And when he got in I asked him if he'd got rid of them all right.'

He paused. 'He said "Forget you ever saw those boxes of mine, old boy. You've had your chance"–or something like that. And he laughed and said that the German would be turning in his grave. I said "What German? You haven't been fraternising, have you?"–

because we weren't supposed to have anything to do with the Germans then. He nearly fell off his seat laughing at that–and he said his private German had been dead for ages. "The joke is it would take someone like him to find it now" he said.'

He gazed at them both rather sadly. 'Perhaps that means more to you than it does to me. It was a private joke to him, but that's more or less what he said. And whatever you may think, Miss Steerforth, I did care. But your father went his own way — we even had some more of his boxes on that last flight, as a matter of fact.'

'He was with Wojek when he came to join you on the train, was he?'

'He was, yes–but I doubt that Jan Wojek will remember anything.

They'd both had rather a lot to drink, but Jan was in the worse condition . . .'

In the end Maclean had become rather fed up with his inebriated comrades, the Englishman full of excitement and misplaced elation, the Pole full of sadness, still fighting the well-founded suspicion that he had won his war and lost his country. So Maclean had settled back in his corner seat listening to his sensible conscience, which told him it was high time to stop flying and start dummy4

his real career. To him, unlike the other two, the war had never been the great adventure, and now it was over anyway.

Audley crunched away down the well-tended drive beside Faith, once more in a gloomy world of his own. He was aware that they had been less than gracious to Maclean at the conclusion of the interview. Faith had rebuffed the man's conventional questions about her mother with short answers; his own equally conventional gratitude had been short and insincere. And each was merely projecting personal feelings.

With typically feminine unfairness, Faith obviously blamed Maclean for everything. He could have been the cohesive force in the crew, tipping the balance against temptation. Instead he had left well alone, saving his strength for himself, so it must seem to her.

But human relations were never as simple as that in reality.

His own disappointment was better founded, for that feat of memory which Faith's disapproval had stirred had thrown the whole question of the boxes' whereabouts into confusion again. If that private joke of Steerforth's had been recalled with any accuracy the boxes were below ground again, where Schliemann had found their contents in the first place. And that would make their rediscovery appallingly difficult, even impossible.

He was tempted to throw in his hand–to insist that the whole idea of tracking down long-lost treasure was a nonsense for which he had neither the aptitude nor the experience. His bouts of confidence seemed in retrospect as misplaced as Stocker's dummy4

confidence in him — if Stocker ever really had such confidence.

But even if Stocker's confidence was assumed, there was still the reality of Panin. The Russian's coming was the one sure proof that the treasure existed and could be found. Yet it made no sense–or it meant that he'd been approaching the problem from entirely the wrong direction. In that case what was needed was–what was it the Arabs called it?–a tafsir il aam: the calculated throwing away of the old rule book which stopped one winning the game.

But to do that would mean returning to London, and then to an unwelcoming home full of electronic eavesdroppers. And it would also lose him the chance of getting into a real bed with Faith.

That was the one worthwhile product of the whole operation, and he wasn't going to ruin it now. As he climbed into the car he could see that she looked as gloomy as he felt, but that smartly-pinned hair would look better spread on a pillow. So the idea of quitting and the tafsir il aam could both damn well wait, and he would go on as planned.

They drove off in silence. The last sight he had of Maclean was of the compact man still standing where they had said goodbye to him, deep in his memories. Audley hoped the lifejacket of his clear conscience would keep him afloat. Then a gleaming wing of Wadham Hill cut him off from view.

They continued without speaking, and for once he concentrated on his driving; Butler's Rover was a car which rewarded effort, very different from his undemanding Austin. But in the end he had to break the silence.

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'You didn't enjoy that either?'

'Enjoy it? In a way it was worse than Tierney. You should have been nicer to Tierney and nastier to him–my proxy godfather!'

'And then I would have got nothing out of either of them. But he wasn't so bad; you've just got a prejudice against headmasters.'

'Against that one, anyway. He could have stopped my father dead in his tracks if he'd really wanted to. And I think he knew it, too, whatever he said, the sanctimonious bastard.'

She sighed. 'But then my dear father would have got up to some other murky little scheme, I suppose–gun-running, or something like that. You're right, of course: this way's no worse than any other–and at least I've met you this way, David!'

She reached over and put a slender hand on his, and then leant across and planted a light kiss on his cheek.

'"Meet you at the Bull",' she whispered in his ear. 'This way I'm following the family tradition as well!'

XII

If there had ever been any ghosts in the Bull, old ghosts or shadows in RAF blue, they were gone now, thought Audley. The central heating would have been too much for them.

He sat on his luxurious bed and watched Faith double up on hers in helpless laughter. There might be a suggestion of hysterics in it, but it seemed genuine enough even if he was not disposed to share dummy4

it: the Bull had proved a more daunting experience than he had expected. Worse still, the management evidently took them for honeymooners, if not elopers, and this was its special bridal suite.

It might have been the way Richardson had booked them in. It might even have been the awkward way Audley had claimed their room. It might very well have been their arrival without a single item of luggage, an oversight which had struck him much too late.

But he suspected that it had been their actual reaction to the Bull itself which had finally convinced the staff of their romantic status.

No hardened adulterers or casual fornicators would have behaved so eccentrically.

Faith had spent the last half-hour of the journey describing the decaying establishment which had been the rendezvous for the Newton Chester air crews, their families and hangers-on.

Not that the old Bull had been prepared for its sudden wartime prosperity. It had in fact been left high and dry by time until Hitler's rise and renewed friendship with France had caused the migration of the RAF bomber squadrons from their old haunts in the south midlands to a new generation of bases which spread across East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Newton Chester had been the last and the least of these airfields, a temporary intruder which had never managed to attract the biggest bombers.

But if the creaking beds and antique plumbing of the old pub had been strained to the uttermost, so too had the stamina of the wives and girl friends who descended on it. Its draughtiness and arctic conditions beyond the two cheerless bars had been a byword; it dummy4

was a folk legend that the rear upper gunner of a Hampden, who should certainly have been inured to cold, had frozen to death during the winter of 1940 in one of the bedrooms. Circumstantial evidence for this was that his girl had forsaken him for a pilot in the next room–one of the advantages of the place was that it encouraged passionate night-long embraces simply as a means of keeping warm.

It was famous also–or infamous–for running out of beer, for the landlord's habit of despatching patrons to borrow fresh supplies from a pub in the neighbouring village and for his unblushing overcharging of the Samaritans who had helped him. And his whisky, on the rare occasions when it was available, was so heavily watered that flies falling into it were able to swim to safety and take off at once, cold sober.

The meals were more reliable; except so far as Jewish aircrew were concerned, for the menu was always a Hobson's choice based on illicit pigs which the landlord fattened on the choicest scraps bribed out of the sergeants' mess at the airfield . . .

One way or another, from the reminiscences of her grandmother, mother and step-father, Faith knew the Bull inside out, from the decrepit creaking floorboards at the head of the stairs to the notice in the unlockable upstairs lavatory appealing to the users not to pull the chain after midnight because of the noises which then racked the water pipes. She was an expert in every legend, tradition and horror which 3112 Squadron had inherited from its long-suffering predecessors.

The Bull she raised in Audley's imagination was built of nostalgic dummy4

wartime gaiety and stark discomfort–'The Way to the Stars' staged in Dotheboys Hall. But as the discomfort was more likely to have survived than the gaiety he began to have the gravest doubts about the night ahead of them. It promised to be even less comfortable than the previous one.

His doubts were strengthened by the rambling pub's unchanged appearance. It was as beautifully Old English as she had said: what had survived by luck, accident and sheer lack of prosperity since Jacobean times was now its greatest attraction. The lattice of timbers, the uneven plaster and the tiny, irregular leaded windows would be preserved as, long as chemicals and crafty restoration could hold them together.

But 3112 Squadron's Bull vanished like a dream in warm air, expensive continental cooking smells and deep carpeting the moment they stooped through the low oak doorway. Before Audley had got his bearings, while he was still looking for one of Faith's landmarks, a darkly handsome waiter in a white coat and tight maroon trousers materialised at his elbow.

Audley unwillingly admitted that he was the Dr Audley who had booked a double room.

The waiter was joined by an even smoother and swarthier grey-suited manager who expressed his gladness at their arrival and his desolation at their lack of a double bed. Faith, at his other elbow, gave an odd, muffled snort.

Nevertheless, the manager assured him, there could be no doubt about their comfort, as the beds in every room were of the latest American design, identical with those supplied to the London dummy4

Hilton. The measurements of these beds—

Audley hastened to assure him back that what was good enough for the Hilton was good enough for him.

And the luggage? Well, there had been a silly misunderstanding about their luggage. It had been left behind and a friend was bringing it down later in the evening. Understanding smiles spread from face to face like treacle. A tragedy –but all would be well, assuredly. If Mrs Audley was inconvenienced in any way, the hotel would spring to her assistance.

They followed the white coat up the staircase–not the narrow alpine climb on which the drunken wing commander had broken a leg in the winter of '44, but a gentle, generous stairway which neither sagged nor creaked–and along the soft-carpeted, well-lit passage.

Was there anything else the Doctor required?

The Doctor had already had more than enough. Except for one thing: 'Which way from here to the airfield?' Audley inquired.

The man looked at him, mystified. Then he grinned like a small boy who has come up with the answer to an unfair adult question.

'Nottingham,' he said happily.

Audley shook his head. 'The old airfield here–at Newton Chester.'

The black curls shook back at him. There was no airfield here. The airfield was near Nottingham.

As the door closed on the man Faith flopped back on her Hilton-standard bed.

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'Mrs Audley is inconvenienced,' she murmured. 'No double bed, no toothbrush–no Bull.' She began to laugh. 'And no airfield!'

Audley watched her slowly give in to the laughter. What spoilt the joke for him was that she could well have added 'no treasure'. But stretched out on the bed, and a generous bed it was–she did take his mind off that unhopeful prospect. She herself was, after all, the only attainable treasure of the operation now. He eyed her long legs speculatively; and an end attainable there and then, for the asking.

But the compulsion to see the airfield while the light held was still stronger than sex, rather to his regret. He told himself savagely that it was common sense rather than incipient middle age which took business before pleasure.

'Come on, wench,' he said hoarsely. 'Put on a new face! We've got one more call to make.'

Faith groaned. 'You're a slave-driver, David! God, there's no romance about your job, is there?'

'Doesn't staying in a strange hotel with a strange man count as romance?'

'Camp-followers' duty–I'm just following the family calling. That's not romantic, only patriotic. And which grotty bit of my family history are you about to dredge up this time?'

'This is merely a courtesy call. RAF Newton Cnester is plain Castle Farm now. We're going to call on Farmer Warren to ask him to let us look round.'

'Is he expecting us?'

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'If the First Class mail can be relied on he won't be too surprised by my appearance. What he'll make of you I shudder to think!'

She had loosened the French pleat, and to attempt to pass her off as a Ministry of Defence secretary on Sunday overtime would seriously impair the public image of Civil Service morals.

She tossed back the pale mane of hair. 'What the devil am I supposed to be, then?'

'I think you'd better go on being the first Mrs Audley –keeping an eye on her hard-working husband. I doubt if Farmer Warren will believe it, but it will just have to do.'

She smoothed down the mini-dress over her hips. 'And what exactly is my hard-working husband doing?'

'He's leading a survey team examining the condition of abandoned air strips. And don't laugh, my girl, because your taxes have been spent on far less likely things than that. We're just the advance guard, and you've come along for the ride.'

Faith wrinkled her nose. 'Old Farmer Warren'll have to be a turnip to swallow that. He'll put me down as a shameless hussy–but since that's just about what I am, I suppose I'll have to bear his displeasure.'

But if Farmer Warren did not swallow the story, equally he did not view Faith with displeasure: Farmer Warren was in his thirties, or mid-thirties, and if he wasn't exactly handsome he was engagingly good-humoured, with white teeth flashing like a toothpaste advertisement in his weather-browned face.

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'Got your letter, sure enough–and it rather put the fear of God up me. You're not thinking of moving back here, by any chance, are you? My family moved off once, and fair enough with the Germans over there. But I don't reckon to be shifted again,' he said frankly, with the hint of steel in his smile.

Audley reassured him. 'The runways would never do for jets anyway, Mr Warren,' he lied comfortingly. He hadn't the faintest idea what sort of runways were suitable for jets. 'We just want to see how the temporary wartime strips have weathered in different parts of the country. We won't do any harm.'

'They've weathered too darn well, if you ask me–wasted a lot of good land. But help yourself. Just don't frighten my silly sheep too much and don't tramp down too much of my rye grass. We're taking the first cut for silage next week. Come and go as you please–you'll have to come through this side because the old airfield entrance is all wired up. There's not much left there anyway.'

Audley was about to thank him when a diminutive, pretty auburn-haired girl in a mini-skirt far briefer than Faith's joined them.

'Don't be boorish, Keith! Take them round yourself. You can show them your wonderful Longwools at the same time!'

'They don't want to see my Longwools,' Warren growled back at her proudly. 'Even if they are worth seeing–better than dead concrete and tarmac. But of course I'll show you round–I should've thought of that. At least show you the lie of the land, that's the least I can do.'

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He swept aside Audley's protests. 'We'll take the Land-Rover–first bit's too bumpy for that nice car of yours. It's your coming on Sunday that's put me off. Never expected a Civil Servant to work on Sunday like me . . .'

He prattled on gaily as they shuddered down a rutted track through a belt of young trees. The hedges on either side were thick and overgrown, brushing against the side of the vehicle.

'I ought to cut 'em back,' shouted Warren. 'Pull 'em out. That's the way with hedges now. But where'd the birds and such like go? And you'll see in a moment why I like a bit of undergrowth.'

Magically the bumping ceased and the Land-Rover shot forward on a smooth road surface which began without warning.

'Perimeter!' shouted Warren, and they roared out of the enclosing hedgerows into the open. 'Airfield!'

A prairie was what it was: an immense unnatural meadow, treeless into the distance where the first blue haze of evening was gathering.

But it was a prairie with aimless highways on it, highways on to which the grass overlapped and pushed from every crack and cranny.

'No sheep this end,' said Warren, bringing the Land-Rover in a great careless sweep leftwards, totally disorientating Audley. 'This is one of the main runways. You can really let her go here–just the place for those go-karts. We'll have a couple when my son grows up.'

Ahead Audley saw a black water tower, with two ugly Nissen huts nearby. Beyond them a series of grassy banks rose unnaturally–

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blast pens? Sheep pens now, though, with their entrances blocked by straw bales and hurdles.

Warren brought the Land-Rover to a standstill, but without turning the engine off.

'This was where the main buildings were. Nissen huts mostly.

Wooden control tower. Only the concrete bases left now, except for a couple I use as food stores. When the bombers were here they kept the bombs over the other side.' He pointed vaguely across the prairie.

'You lived round here then?'

'Born and bred here. Father farmed what was left during the war. I was only little, but I remember them–Hampdens, Beauforts, Bostons and Dakotas. Bostons were my favourites.'

Audley climbed awkwardly out of the cabin and walked a few paces across the tarmac. A slight breeze had risen–or perhaps there was always a breath of wind across this open land; it stirred the young spring grass, rippling over it in waves. He could smell sheep, and everywhere the runway was marked with their droppings. There was a pervasive loneliness about the place. Not the loneliness of the open downland, which had never been truly disturbed. Men had been very busy here once amid the roar of engines, with all the purposefulness of war. Where the downlands were eerie, this was only sad, as though time had not yet been able to wash away the human emotions which had been expended here.

The airfield was not quite dead yet, not quite one with all the other debris of old wars.

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He got back into the Land-Rover.

'Queer old place, isn't it!' said Warren. 'I've sat here of an evening, and I could almost hear the planes. And I've waited for one of 'em to come up from nowhere on the runway down there, like they used to do!'

Audley exchanged a quick glance with Faith. Her face had a curiously frozen look, as though talking of the past could conjure it up again.

'That would be down there, towards the old castle?'

'That's right.'

'Can we go down that way?'

Warren nodded, and started the engine. 'Nothing easier!'

'Do you mind if we get off the runway, though. There should be a taxiing lane to the left somewhere. I'd like to see what that's like.'

Warren slowed down and turned on to a narrower roadway which curved away from the junction of the runways. As far as Audley could see, the airfield stretched ahead of him, dead level. He twisted himself in his seat to look backwards; the control tower had gone and he would have to use the water tower as his point of reference.

'If you want to see the old castle, you're going to be disappointed,'

shouted Warren. ' 'Tisn't a castle at all. It's just a few hillocks on the ground–a Roman camp it was. Not a proper one, either. The archaelogists said it was what they call a practice camp probably.

You wouldn't know what it was just to look at it.'

Audley listened with one ear, both eyes on the receding water dummy4

tower. The Nissen huts dwindled as the taxiing lane unrolled smoothly behind them.

Then slowly the tower began to sink from view. He looked round at the featureless meadow. Sure enough there was a gradual, almost imperceptible slope to it now, a gentle undulation. The Hump!

Steerforth's safe deposit hut must now be somewhere to the left, what was left of it. To the right was the line of the runway, and there'd be no buildings on that side. He looked backwards: the water tower had disappeared completely. On either side the empty airfield stretched, with not a thing in sight.

'Slow down a bit,' he commanded Warren. 'I seem to remember there were one or two odd huts down here, weren't there?'

'Nothing much down here. The old shooting range's over to the left, ahead, near the Roman camp. There was a hut hereabouts, and another down the bottom there for the flare path gear, I think.'

'Where was the hut here?'

Warren braked and coasted to a stop. 'Just over there. There's a bit of concrete still in the grass–it's a damn nuisance every time we're haymaking. I've never got round to grubbing it up — some of those concrete bases are a foot thick and more.'

Audley could just distinguish a break in the waving grass. So there it was: the last known resting place of the golden treasures of Troy.

A few square yards of wartime concrete, annoying an English sheep-farmer! And that was where the real search had to begin tomorrow. It would be easy enough to find the spot again, anyway.

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'Hey! Come to think of it, there's an old map of my father's which has the old buildings and the runways marked on it–at least, I seem to remember them marked on it,' said Warren with a flash of inspiration. 'I'm sure it's in the attic somewhere with his papers. I could look it out for you if you're interested.'

'That would be very civil of you–it would be a great help,' replied Audley. Actually, wherever the boxes were, they were certainly not going to turn up on the site of any demolished airfield structure. But an accurate map of the area was essential: it had been the one thing which had not been included in the Steerforth file among either the old or the newer papers, understandably, since the airfield itself had been of no significance.

Warren let in the clutch. 'Right, then! We'll be getting back, if you don't mind. I won't be able to find your map straight away–wife's uncle'll be here any moment. I'm making silage for him this year–

but when he's gone I'll get up into the attic and have a look round.

Are you staying round here?'

'We're at the Bull.'

'Phew! Then you'd better have your cheque book at the ready.

Won't let you bend down to pick up your handkerchief at the Bull now, but they don't forget to charge you for it afterwards! Food's good, too–if you can afford it. But it's only the taxpayer's money you're spending, isn't it?'

Warren's combination of self-confidence and casual familiarity grated on Audley's nerves. But the man's grin took the sting out of the jibe. He was being perfectly natural, treating them as he probably treated everybody, and it was impossible to be stuffy with dummy4

such open good humour. And not just impossible–ridiculous too.

Audley suddenly felt tired and very sorry for himself. Somewhere along the way over the last few years he seemed to have lost both his sense of proportion and his sense of humour. Their arrival at the Bull had been a case in point: Faith had seen the joke and he hadn't. And now this.

Then there had been Fred's original warning about the sheltered existence which had divorced him from reality: it had been a delusion of intellectual grandeur which had got him into this business.

Except that Fred wasn't reality either. Nor was Panin. Warren and Faith and Mrs Clark were reality.

Or perhaps he was simply in the eye of the hurricane, in a moment of sanity surrounded by trouble. Tomorrow, certainly, he would have to face up to the fact that he didn't really know where to begin to look for the treasure, or even why he was looking for it. But in the meantime he could enjoy himself.

XIII

The atmosphere of sanity created by Keith Warren saw Audley a long way. It saw him back to the heated comfort of the Bull –Faith even remembered to borrow two suitcases from a sympathetic Mrs Warren. What explanation she gave he never knew, but he suspected it was more for his sake than her own that she added this dummy4

touch of respectability.

It saw him through dinner, which was not quite as good as Warren had forecast, but good enough to cancel- out the sly looks presumably reserved for newly-married guests.

But it didn't quite see him to bed.

Audley sat in his shirtsleeves watching Faith strip down to an absurdly inadequate matching set of multi-coloured underclothes, reflecting that schoolmistresses had never been like that in the old days. Or maybe they had. But she was not so much shameless as quite without shame, and his mingled lust and embarrassment was outweighed by a tenderness which confused him. He had never felt like this about Liz, who had been so much more spectacular.

He shook his head. 'What am I going to do with you?' he said, half to himself.

'I should have thought that was obvious.'

'I don't mean now, you over-sexed wench! What are we going to do with each other when this is over . . . This isn't what I do normally.'

'I should hope not!'

'Be serious, Faith–just for a moment. You know what I mean.

What you call a game–I shall go on playing it if they'll let me. I think it's important and I'm not going to give it up. But you hate it, don't you?'

She frowned, and then came over and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers.

'Dear David, you're not a very masterful lover, are you? You want dummy4

to be approved of as well as loved, and the two don't necessarily go together these days, you know!'

'Then I'm old-fashioned. And that's because I'm too old for you. So it wouldn't work, would it!'

'It's up to us to make it work. And that's a lot of balls about your being too old. I'm not a schoolgirl exactly, you know. It's no good telling me I'm too young–and I'm the one who decides whether you're too old. And I think you're just pretending to be old: it's a bad habit of yours I'm going to have to break when we're married.'

She was so matter-of-fact that he almost didn't believe what he'd heard.

'I know you haven't even asked me yet–I know! But if you're really so old-fashioned you'll have to get round to it sooner or later. It's called "making an honest woman of me". And I shall accept because I can't possibly have you glowering around the way you did when we arrived here!'

Audley groped for the right thing to say. He had known her for three days and he had never known anyone like her. He had argued with her and lost his temper with her. He had used her as a pawn in his game and he had used her body as much to comfort his fears as to alleviate hers. He could not begin to explain to himself why she had somehow become dear to him; she was not in the least his type of girl. Yet the thought of losing her now was not to be borne.

Yet she was Steerforth's daughter.

Slowly she withdrew her hands from his.

'Me and my big mouth!' she said lightly. 'It's all a joke really, dummy4

David–forget it. Don't let it spoil the fun we can have tonight, anyway.'

She began to fumble with the hooks behind her back.

'Here! Do you really think it's fair to describe me as "flat-chested"

— those hulking step-brothers of mine used to, you know!'

Audley reached forward and grabbed her arms clumsily, pulling them forward and sliding his hands down to imprison hers. But somehow he became entangled in a strap, and only succeeded in helping her prove that she would never be a rival to Raquel Welch.

'For God's sake, Faith!' he said thickly.

It wasn't the idea he shied away from, but the sheer indignity of the situation. A man simply didn't propose clad only in his shirtsleeves to a half-naked girl in an overheated hotel room in the middle of an incomprehensible job. Not a man like himself, at least, who liked to calculate the odds and hated to be wrong-footed.

Not a man like himself!

What a pompous, stupid bastard I've become, thought Audley in a flash of clarity which completed the earlier moment in the Land-Rover. Dignity and reputation were like the Emperor's Clothes–a mere self confidence trick. If he surrendered to this delightful beanpole of a girl he would never be able to wear them again, but in any case they would never again fit him comfortably if he let her escape. He needed her much more than she needed him.

'My dearest Faith–if you and Mrs Clark both agree, who am I to question your decision? Will you make an honest man of me?

She nodded, wide-eyed. 'David—'

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'The job still goes with the man, remember.'

'The job still goes with the man.'

He raised her hands to his lips. It was a marvellous thing for once to have no reservations about a decisive decision.

'And the man, my dear, is going forthwith to his Hilton-standard bed. We've got a lot to do tomorrow.'

He started to raise his hand to forestall what he guessed she was going to say, only to find that his thumb was still entangled by the strap of the ridiculous rainbow brassiere.

'I know–I know! We've got a lot to do tonight, too! Come on, then, Mrs Audley . . .'

It was only much later, on the threshold of sleep and lulled by that soft snore to which he must henceforth accustom himself, that he thought again of Steerforth.

Somewhere out in the darkness, under the grass and the sheep not far away, lay the treasures of Troy. Priam's gold, Schliemann's gold and Steerforth's gold. And if, by some unlikely miracle, it came to the light again, it would be Nikolai Panin's gold.

And there was the unresolved puzzle, plaguing him still. The motives of the owner, the discoverer and the plunderer were crystal, but Panin's were opaque—

The Gold I gather

A King covets

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For an ill use.

That was among the runes on Welland's sword—

It is not given

For goods or gear

But for The Thing.

As a child he had never grasped what Kipling had meant by 'The Thing', and now another Thing eluded him . . .

There was an insistent buzzing in his ear which he couldn't place. It refused to stop, and Faith's hair was tickling his face and Faith herself was stirring in his arms.

It was morning and the buzzing came from beyond Faith, from the pale green space age telephone beside the bed. As he reached over her she wound her arms round him sleepily. He knocked the receiver off its stand, fumbled for it and dragged it towards him by its coiled cable.

He groaned into it.

'Dr Audley–London call for you–putting you through now!'

Audley squinted at his watch. Seven-thirty and trouble: only trouble telephoned before nine o'clock.

'David? Are you there, Dr Audley?'

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Audley admitted that he was, unwillingly.

'Stocker here, David. Sorry to rouse you early again. Have you got any closer to those boxes?'

Whatever made Stocker telephone him it wasn't to inquire after the progress of the treasure hunt. Not this early, anyway. He rubbed his chin, reminding himself unhappily that he'd have to get a razor from somewhere.

'To hell with the boxes! What's happened?'

Stocker laughed. His ability to exude good humour at this time of the morning was irritating. In fact there was a lot about Stocker that was potentially irritating, most of all that he probably knew better than Audley what was going on, and not least that he had probably never really expected the boxes to turn up.

'You're not even close to them, are you?'

'Not within a mile.'

'Well, you'd better pack things in and come on back to London.

Our friend Panin has put his schedule forward a day — he's flying in this morning instead of tomorrow.'

Somehow it didn't come as a surprise. He had been driven by events from the start and every time he had started to settle down to work Panin had popped up inconveniently to put him off balance. He had stopped his dig in Colchis to begin the whole mystery. Then he'd appeared in East Berlin. Then he'd announced his intention to come to England. And now he'd set them all by the ears by putting forward his arrival. If he'd deliberately set out to dislocate things he couldn't have phased his movements better.

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Audley lowered the phone on to his chest in a moment of perfect stillness, blotting out the insistent voice at the other end. What a donkey he'd been! What a complete donkey –hobbled and blinkered, led and driven, with an occasional carrot to keep him happy and the odd smack across the rump to keep him moving!

If Panin had deliberately set out to dislocate things, he couldn't have phased his movements better! The plain fact was that they'd known too much about Panin from the start, not too little.

He looked down at the angry phone in his hand, fresh and untested implications crowding into his mind.

Time now for his tafsir il aam. Time now to spoil the pattern, to cut the puppet's strings, to set the cat among the pigeons!

He lifted up the phone again: 'I can't possibly come to London today.'

'What? Where have you been?'

'I was disturbed. I said I can't possibly come to London today.'

'You're due to meet Panin at London Airport at 11. You've got to come!'

'You meet him. Send him on down here–he knows the way.'

'And what exactly will you be doing?'

'Well, for one thing I'll be busy finding Schliemann's treasure.

That's the whole object of this operation, after all, isn't it?'

'But you said you weren't even close to it,' Stocker sounded a little testy now.

'Not within a mile of it–but maybe within two miles. Maybe only a dummy4

mile and a half! Don't you worry, Stocker. I'll find your boxes. It's just a matter of a little time and trouble now.'

Stocker didn't answer this time.

'And for another thing—' Audley looked down at Faith, who was now wide awake and regarding him with proprietorial satisfaction

'—I've just got engaged to be married, and I've got a bit of private life to attend to.'

There was another short silence. Richardson hadn't reported the double bed, obviously.

'Well–congratulations, David,' Stocker finally rallied gamely. 'That does rather alter the situation. But I'm afraid your fiancee will have to take herself off when Panin arrives in Newton Chester–I'm sure he'll want to come and watch operations.'

'Oh, I don't think it will be necessary for her to disappear,' said Audley casually. This was the rabbit punch. 'The whole thing's going to be rather a family affair: it's Miss Steerforth I'm going to marry.'

He grinned down at Faith and savoured the renewed silence at the other end of the line.

'You're a bit of a dark horse, aren't you, David!' Stocker took his punishment like a man in the end. 'But no one can grumble if you deliver the goods, I suppose. I take it you'll need some help to conjure up the treasure?'

'I can lay that on–I take it I've still special priority?'

Stocker reassured him with a better grace than he expected. It could be that he'd made another important enemy in the last five dummy4

minutes. But the hell with it–he'd been kicked around enough.

He put down the receiver and turned to Faith.

'"Sock it to 'em",' she murmured. 'You certainly socked it to him, whoever he was! Was that the effect of a good night's sleep–or me?'

He swung his bare legs out of bed.

'Come on, now,' persisted Faith. 'One minute you were on the ropes, and the next minute you were beating the daylights out of him! And–my God–you talked as though you could just about put your finger on my father's loot! Do you really know where it is?'

'My dear Faith, I haven't the faintest notion where it is, and I don't know where to begin to look. But I do know one thing now, and that is that I've been humbugged.'

'Humbugged?'

Audley pulled on his trousers and sat on the unoccupied bed.

'There are a lot of things I've missed because I've been too busy hunting your father's treasure and sleeping with his daughter. Now I think I was meant to miss them.'

'Such as?'

'Such as how we learnt so quickly that Panin was still interested in your father.'

'Couldn't that be just a piece of luck?'

'We've never been lucky before with Panin. Every bit of information on him has been out of date by the time it reached us.

But ever since your father's Dakota turned up we've been fed with information about him.'

dummy4

'Maybe someone was efficient.'

'That's just it! But it's Panin who is the efficient one.'

'So what does that prove, David? I'm sorry to be a devil's advocate, but Panin wants his treasure and he doesn't trust you. You've known that all along.'

'All along I've been stupid–I know that. My sin's pride: everyone behaved as though I could find what was lost, so I really took it for granted that I could. But now I don't think anyone expected me to find it–not Stocker, and not Panin. And I clean forgot what every half-wit knows–that treasure-hunters never find treasure, not once in a thousand times. The only way treasure turns up is by pure accident!'

'But the treasure does exist?'

'I'm damn certain it exists–that's the one thing we have established.

And I'm sure Panin knows it, too. But I don't think it really matters to him any more. What matters is that I should be kept busy looking, with the minimum chance of success.'

'But, David, for heaven's sake–why?'

Audley recalled Jake Shapiro's reference to 'that goddamned Byzantine set-up', and shook his head sadly.

'That's where I'm stuck. It could be so many things. If it wasn't for what happened to Morrison–and what happened to us–I'd think the whole thing was a cover for something quite different. But all I know is that it doesn't smell right.'

'Well, what are you going to do? You practically promised to find the treasure!'

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Audley brightened. If there was no comfort in the long-term prospects, there was short-term enjoyment to DC had from mischief-making.

He rubbed his hands. 'Everyone's been pushing me about. Now I'm going to do the pushing. And the only way I can think of doing that is—'

'Is to make them think you're just about to do the impossible.'

Faith sat up sharply in bed.

'Just so. And I'd like to see Panin's face when poor old Stocker gives him the good news at London Airport. If I'm right he'll be down here like lightning.'

'But what will that achieve, David?'

'I shall enjoy it, for one thing. And it may baffle Panin somewhat.

He's not infallible, after all. In fact he's already lost us for a whole day, thanks to the incompetence of his agents–he doesn't know what we've been up to, and that may put him off a bit. Come to that, it may be the reason why he's arriving today instead of tomorrow.'

'So that was what the phone call was about! We're staying here to meet him?'

'That we aren't! We're going to London.'

Faith looked at him in surprise. 'But you said—'

'That was for Stocker's benefit. We're going to London because I've got some checking to do. I can leave instructions for Roskill and Butler to reconnoitre the area outside the airfield for suspicious dummy4

bumps and so on–that'll keep them happy.'

He moved over to their rumpled bed and stared down at her.

'And you, young woman, have got a trousseau to buy –and a toothbrush. Then we'll have lunch at Feyzi's and a quiet drive back to the Bull for a reunion dinner. Panin should be nicely on the boil by then!'

But Faith was frowning at him.

'David, I think I'm having a bad effect on you. You're acting out of character–you're sticking your neck out. And they'll chop it off for sure, and I'll have an unemployed husband. Don't you think you ought to stay to meet Panin?'

It was a new experience for Audley to have someone actually worrying about him, a rather confusing experience. He looked at her tenderly. She was without doubt rather flat-chested, and with her hair in confusion and her glasses perched on her shiny nose she no longer looked the sort of girl to drive a man to reckless action.

He smiled affectionately. 'If you are having an effect, it's long overdue, Faith love. For years I've been sitting in my tower thinking what an important person I was just because they treated me politely. But actually I think I was just a sort of cheap computer substitute–as soon as I started giving inconvenient answers they booted me into the first vacant job somewhere else. So just this once I'm going to programme myself, and if they don't like it–well, we'll see if they do like it first. Maybe they'll promote me!'

Before she could reply–he could see she was still unconvinced–he jerked the covers back.

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'Hey!' she cried, scrabbling for the sheets.

'Too late for modesty now, love. And too late for inquests too–I'm like old Sir Jacob Astley before Edgehill.'

'Sir Jacob who?'

'"O Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day",' he quoted at her. Damn them all: she was the one who really mattered. ' "If I forget thee, do not thou forget me"!'

XIV

Jake Shapiro set his beer down carefully on the mat on the faded plush tablecloth, wiped his moustache carefully and grinned a broad, gold-filled smile at Audley.

'Surprise, surprise! I didn't expect to see you again so soon.

Comrade Professor Panin running you ragged?'

'For me not a surprise, but a pleasure, Colonel Shapiro.'

Audley looked curiously round the publican's snug, which was furnished as though time had frozen it in late Edwardian times. The only concessions to modernity, a garish TV set and a glossy telephone, were banished to a dark alcove in one corner.

'Cosy, eh? And the best beer south of the river, take my word for it, David, old friend. Have some with me.'

'I've got a long haul ahead of me, Jake. It's too early for me to go on the beer.'

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'Your loss. But I do understand your predicament. "Vodka and beer–no fear". You must keep a clear head for the Professor.'

The word was out, with a vengeance, evidently.

'You know about Panin, then?'

'There's been a lot of talk, certainly,' admitted Jake generously.

'Mystery Man's got a public relations man all of a sudden. I don't know what effect it has on you, but it'd scare the life out of me.'

'That's the point, Jake. What I want to know is—'

Shapiro raised a large hand.

'Me first, David.' He drank deeply, set the glass down carefully again and wiped his moustache once more. 'My turn, after all. The Portland trials of the Nord Aviation AS15–much better than the AS12, I hear. But I'm sure you heard better.'

Jake was presenting his bill, and Audley thought not for the first time that Jake's grapevine must be very good indeed. If the AS12

was the answer to Egypt's Russian missile boats, the AS15 was the answer with knobs on.

'Much better.'

'Range?'

'Five miles.'

'Cost?'

'Since devaluation? Maybe £2,400 a time.'

'Cheap at the price. But the bastards are still overcharging us. What about that Swedish one?'

'Let the other side buy that.'

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'I thought so. And I thought you'd be in the know. Now, just one more thing.'

Audley scowled at him. 'No more things, Jake. I've given you classified information. All you've given me is what's common knowledge in the bazaar, it seems.'

Jake guffawed. 'That's nothing more than the truth, my friend. I have to admit it: I've done you down.'

Then he stopped quite suddenly, and became almost serious. He wagged his finger at Audley.

'But you knew it was common knowledge and you still paid up, you perfidious Englishman. You knew I'd have to make amends.'

He waved his hands and squinted down his nose. This was his special Jewish character role, which hadn't changed since he'd hammed Shylock in a monstrous college production years before.

'I acknowledge the debt. Take your pound of flesh!'

'Stop fooling, Jake. How do you know it's common knowledge?'

'Joe Bamm called me from Berlin. He hadn't got me anything more, but his thumbs were twitching. He said he'd just got that little G Tower story from another source of his. He said that once could be luck, but twice was more than coincidence. Then he came back with Panin's Tuesday booking to London. I tried to phone you then, but you were off on some dirty weekend with your secretary.'

Audley winced. So the G Tower story was planted too. He remembered now how Stocker had spoken about G Tower as though he had heard about it independently of Audley's source.

They'd all been so pleased about it they hadn't bothered to question dummy4

it. A lovely, succulent carrot for the donkeys!

'The trouble is that's the lot, David. I haven't got one damn thing to add to your little store of knowledge. I haven't got a clue about what dear old Panin's up to, not a clue.'

'Is there anything cooking in Russia at the moment?'

'Search me! Except that there's always something cooking there.

Hawks and doves, old Marxist-Leninists and new thugs, Red Army and the KGB, Stalinists, Maoists — not many of them now–

Slavophiles, liberals, peasants. Davey boy, they can play their little games in more ways than I can make love. And they call it the Soviet Union! I tell you, Barry Goldwater's got more in common with Sammy Davis than some of those characters have with each other.'

He paused for breath. 'Why don't you ask your own Kremlinologists? Latimer's a sharp lad, they tell me. Or are you off on a do-it-yourself spree?'

Audley felt his early morning courage slipping. It all came down to a matter of time, and time was what he hadn't got. Panin had seen to that.

'Tell you what I'll do, David, seeing that I owe you something.

There's a real nice American I know–Howard Morris–do you know him?'

Audley nodded. Howard was a refugee from Nixon's America, a bright hope in the days of the much-maligned Lyndon Johnson who now held a nebulous post at Grosvenor Square.

'Of course you do! I forgot you were persona gratissima there since dummy4

the Seven Days. Well, Howard owes me a fat favour and I'm sure he won't mind me passing it on to you. He probably trusts you more than he trusts me, anyway. You're both part of the world-wide Anglo-Saxon conspiracy against the lesser breeds like me and Nasser.'

Shapiro consulted a little dog-eared address book, and then dialled a number on the shiny telephone.

He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

'You know Howard's only real claim to fame? Hullo there–could I have a word with Howard Morris . . . ? He isn't? No matter. I'll try again later.'

He replaced the receiver, consulted the little address book again and dialled another number.

'When he was in Korea he was one of the select band of brothers who accidentally bombed the main Russian base outside Vladivostock. Hullo! Is Howard Morris being overcharged at your bar . . . ? Yes, it's me . . . He is? Well tell him I've come to collect on my last loan. Thanks . . . Where was I? Yes, they bombed the living daylights out of it –thought they were still over North Korea.

And the Russkis never said a word. They thought it was deliberate.'

Jake's thesaurus of cautionary scandal was unsurpassed on either side of the Atlantic.

'And the moral of the story–or one of the morals–is that the burglar is in a poor position to complain about burglary. I commend that thought to you, David–Hullo, Howard, old friend . . . You are . . . ?

So am I! Look, Howard, I have our mutual friend, David Audley, dummy4

with me. I know you're busy Kremlin-watching these days. I'd count it a favour if you'd lend an ear to him for a minute or two–a real favour . . . You will–splendid!'

He passed the beery receiver to Audley. 'He's all yours. Make the most of him.'

'Hullo, Howard.' Audley was uneasily conscious that he was too ignorant even to ask the right questions, never mind understand the answers.

'Hi, David. I know your job forces you to consort with that horse-thief Shapiro, but don't tell me you're both moving into my territory.'

'Just me, Howard. And only temporarily, I hope. But I need someone to fill me in on the current situation over there. Is there a big row on, or anything like that?'

'What's wrong with your boys Latimer and Ridley? No, those were the Oxford Martyrs, weren't they! That's a Freudian slip if ever there was one. Latimer and Rogers?'

'You come well recommended.'

Jake grinned hugely, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger with one hand while giving the thumbs-up sign with the other. The effect was obscene.

'I do?' There was a mixture of resignation and uneasiness in the American's voice, and Audley knew exactly how he felt. Jake always took twenty shillings in the pound.

'Well, there's nothing special–except Round Sixteen in the Conservatives-Progressive fight. At the moment the Progressives dummy4

are on the canvas, because that bastard Shelepin's got the Army on his side as well as the Young Communist League. And of course the KGB is playing its own game. But the Army's been acting up ever since Czechoslovakia showed how efficient they were–they don't think they're getting the appropriation they need. Or the respect they deserve. And they'd like to bomb the hell out of China, too.'

He paused for a moment. 'European liberals get worried about our generals. If they had one good look at some of the Soviet top brass they'd head for the hills, I reckon! You stick to the Middle East, David: you'll sleep sounder than I do.'

'Which corner is Nikolai Panin behind?'

Howard did not reply, even interrogatively. If Jake knew about Panin's visit, then it was certain that the American did. And Panin would be very much his concern, which meant that Audley himself might soon have something of potential value to contribute to the Anglo-Saxon conspiracy.

'I might be able to help you concerning Panin, Howard –always providing you can help me.'

Howard took a deep breath. 'Panin's behind all four corners as far as I can see. He's the sort of character who has subscriptions to Ogonyek and Novy Mir, and leaves 'em both lying around for everyone to see. The day you tell me which side he's on I'll get you a Congressional reception. What in the name of heaven and hell is he coming to England for, David?'

'You tell me, Howard. You've got a nice fat file on him, I've no dummy4

doubt.'

'You must be joking. I've just been reading it; we've got a few pages of hearsay and Kremlin scuttlebut, but we've hardly got one solid thing on him since '45.'

'Nineteen-forty-five?' Gently now. 'He was just a line captain in

'45.'

'He was a major when we met him. We'd picked up some Forschungsamt files–Research Office stuff–in an AA Barracks in Stefanskirchen. Perfectly innocent stuff. But he wanted to see it and we let him have a look. We didn't get another make on him until after Stalin's death. I tell you, David, if you want a line on Panin I'm not your man, and I don't know who is. I wish I did!'

Audley wondered what the Forschungsamt was. He had never heard of it, so it could be highly secret or, more probably, highly unimportant. Jake's Berlin man, Bamm, would certainly know, but that would mean more favours, and Jake was too interested already. Besides, there wasn't time.

But Theodore Freisler would know, of course–it was exactly the sort of thing he would know. He had been meaning to phone the old man for twenty-four hours without taking the trouble to do it.

Now he had an adequate selfish reason for doing the right thing.

He thanked Howard Morris as sincerely as he was able to with the grinning Shapiro at his elbow, carefully deprecating his association with the Israeli. Apart from being a pleasant fellow, the American would be a useful contact in the future; the sort of man with whom the nuances between the lines of indigestible Soviet journals could dummy4

be enjoyably discussed. He thought nostalgically of his old, quiet life, which had ended a thousand years before, just last Thursday.

Sincerity was not required for his farewell to Jake. That was the one real virtue of their relationship–it was founded on naked and unashamed self-interest on both sides, needing no false protestations of friendship. He was going to miss Jake.

He was tempted to phone Theodore from the first call box as he had done before, but his guilt drove him to search out the grimy house behind the vast complex of the British Museum and to climb the interminable and even grimier stairs.

The huge, brutal face at once creased into a happy smile which hinted at the nature concealed behind it. One of the things that kept Audley from visiting more often was the undeserved welcome he always received. Theodore would stop whatever he was doing, no matter how important, and give him hours of his time.

'David, you arrive most opportunely! I have just made myself some of this excellent new tinned coffee. A big tin of it I bought at a specially reduced price last Friday, and already I have nearly finished it! And you and Professor Tolkien are to blame.'

'Professor Tolkien, Theodore? Who's he?'

Theodore heaped spoonfuls of evil-looking brown powder into a large mug and stirred it vigorously.

'He is the author of The Lord of the Rings and I'm most surprised you haven't heard of him.' Theodore tapped three substantial volumes with a heavy finger. 'A writer of fairy stories for grown-dummy4

ups. My friends have been telling me to read him for years, and I was too stupid to take their advice. Now I have done nothing but read him for three whole days–except to wrestle with your puzzle.'

'I have heard of him, actually, Theodore. But fairy stories really aren't my line.'

'Your puzzle is a fairy story, my dear David. I have thought and I have telephoned friends of mine in Berlin, and I tell you there is nothing, nothing, that fits your puzzle. Time cancels out the value of things: what would be valuable to a thief then would not be valuable to them now. Not worth their trouble.'

'We had a tip that it might be the Schliemann collection from the Staatliche Museum.'

'The Trojan treasures? No, David, the psychology is wrong. Worth stealing–yes. After all, the Russians stole it and it was stolen from them, I know the story. But it was not theirs in the first place, so they would not pursue it. If it had been the amber from the Winter Palace, that would be different. That was theirs. But that was never brought beyond East Prussia.'

'Never mind, Theodore. It was good of you to take time from Tolkien to try.'

Audley sipped his coffee. It was surprisingly drinkable.

The old man was shaking his head. 'No, I have failed you. But even if your thief had catholic tastes and took a thing here and a thing there I find it hard to imagine a collection of objects which would tempt them now.'

'Tell me about the Forschungsamt instead, then.'

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The great bullet-head stopped shaking. 'What do you wish to know about the Forschungsamt, Dr Audley?'

'Anything, Theodore. I don't know the first thing about it.'

Freisler pondered the question for a time.

'The most interesting thing, of course, is that it illustrates the relationship of the old German bureaucracy to the Nazi Party. If you have time to read the relevant chapter in my book on the civil service between the wars I think that will become apparent to you.'

Before he could get up Audley managed to restrain him.

'I haven't really got the time. Just tell me what it was.'

Freisler looked at him pityingly. 'What it was? Why, it was the office that grew out of the old Chiffre und Horchleitstelle, Cypher and Monitoring. What I believe you would call "passive intelligence". I knew a number of people who worked in it–good Germans, too, not Nazis. That was the remarkable thing about the Research Office: the Nazis were always trying to take it over, but they never really managed to do so.'

He smiled. 'I think it was partly because they all wanted it that they failed. Goering was nominally in charge, but all he knew was that he wasn't going to give it up. Let me see –Himmler tried, and Kaltenbrunner tried. And Diels.' He counted them off on his fingers. 'The only one who got close was Heydrich. He managed to move some of his prewar Sicherheitsdienst files into its headquarters on the Schillerstrasse. But then he was killed by the Czechs in '42, and the office was bombed out by your air force in

'43. After that nobody really knew what was happening. The dummy4

records were spread all over the place, and many of them were destroyed in the end to stop the Russians getting them.'

He looked up at Audley. 'But your clever thief wouldn't have wanted any of them. They had no great value then, and they'd have less than none today, except to the historians. As I recollect, the Forschungsamt officials were considered so innocent that they weren't even called to the de-nazification trials!'

He rose and picked his way between piles of journals and manuscripts to his bookcase.

Audley rose too, but in alarm. Once Theodore gave him the book he would be honour bound to wade through it, or he would never be able to face the old German again.

'Theodore, I really ought to be going.' He looked at his watch. 'I'm lunching with my fiancee and I mustn't be late.'

But Theodore was already thumbing through a thick volume, as unstoppable and incapable of changing direction as a rhinoceros.

'Schimpf–Schimpf was the first director. He committed suicide.

Then came Prince Christophe of Hesse. He was killed on the Italian front. Then Schnapper, I think . . . Ah! Here we have it! The office went to Klettersdorf after the 1943 air raid. Then back to Berlin when the Russians were approaching. And then to the four winds!'

He tapped the book with his finger, staring owlishly at Audley, who had reached the door.

'Some of the documents I saw in England in 1957, at Whaddon Hall. But there was nothing of interest to you in them. They would dummy4

have been from the section captured at, let me think now–at Glucksberg, of course.'

Audley made his way slowly down the staircase. Once Theodore had mentioned passive intelligence he had known that any further research into the Forschungsamt was likely to be a journey up a blind alley. It had been a wasted trip. But as he reached the street doorway he heard Theodore bellowing unintelligibly from above.

He stopped guiltily and waited impatiently as the heavy footsteps thumped after him from landing to landing.

The old German was breathing heavily when he finally appeared.

'David, forgive me! My mind was not listening to you properly. A fiancee, you said–and for a fiancee there must be a gift!'

Audley's heart sank as he saw the square, untidy parcel, a battered carrier bag lashed down with scotch tape. The famous two-decker history of the German civil service, through all the convulsions of the Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, had cornered him at last.

'Theodore, it isn't necessary.'

The great hands thrust the parcel into his and waved his protest aside. It was necessary. It was a small token of deep esteem. It humbly marked a great occasion.

It was also coals of fire on Audley's head, coals which glowed as Theodore beamed and shook his hand and became increasingly guttural, as he always did on the rare occasions when his emotions outran his vocabulary. Audley had fled in cavalier fashion from an unselfish and undemanding friend. His punishment was just and dummy4

appropriate.

As he drove away to meet Faith he resolved to invite Theodore down into the country for a week. Faith would approve of Theodore; not only because of his grave courtesy, but also because they could meet on the common ground of their own high sense of moral responsibility.

XV

But in the event Audley did not so easily extinguish the coals of fire. They glowed again even more brightly some hours later when Faith was excitedly unpacking her mountain of shopping in the bridal suite at the Bull.

'David, what on earth is this extraordinary parcel?'

She held up the carrier bag.

'It's our first present, from a very good and honourable man, my love.' He hoped desperately that she wouldn't laugh at it, and he couldn't bear to watch her undo it.

She ripped away the covering.

'How lovely! But I've read it, of course. Still, it's something you can read again and again.'

Audley looked in the mirror at his astonished face, half of it covered with shaving soap.

'It has written in it " Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, Das kommt mir dummy4

nicht aus dem Sinn - but may you never be sad". What does that mean?'

It would be from Heine, Theodore's idol. He turned round: Faith was sitting with the three volumes of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings on her lap–Theodore's own copies.

But before he could reply there was a light tap at the door.

Hugh Roskill entered gingerly, as though his feet hurt. Possibly his feet did hurt, if he had spent the whole day exploring the environs of the old airfield. But Audley somehow felt that it was because he had half expected to find some sort of orgy in progress. He seemed quite relieved to see Faith clothed and Audley engaged in the unexceptionable act of shaving.

But then poor Roskill had had rather a trying day, it transpired. It had been windy and cold, a return to the weather of Friday's funeral–odd, that, for it had seemed pleasant, if not exactly sunny, to Audley.

They had passed a tiring morning marking pimples and pock-marks on a large-scale ordnance survey map which Butler had brought with him. Roskill had given himself a shock on one of Farmer Warren's electric sheep fences and Butler had slipped into a ditch which was no longer wet, but still muddy.

In the afternoon Richardson returned from his assignment in Cambridge with the latest equipment for detecting buried metallic objects, the archaeological department's newest toy.

'DECCO,' explained Roskill, 'which Richardson claims is short for Decay of Eddy Currents in Conductive Objects. But it just looked dummy4

like a souped-up mine detector to me.'

Unfortunately, either Richardson had failed to master DECCO's intricacies or DECCO had developed some minor fault. Having lugged the device two miles or more across country to the most promising pimple they had had to carry it all the way back unused.

Richardson had returned with it to Cambridge and neither had been seen since.

Shortly after he had retired from the field Stocker had arrived with Panin, and Stocker had not been noticeably pleased to find that Audley was not present (though it could be simply indigestion, since the timing of his arrival suggested that he had not been able to linger over his lunch).

'I rather got the impression,' said Roskill, 'that he expected to find us at work with pick and shovel, with you standing over us with a rope's end. I'm afraid Butler was a bit short with him. We told him you'd been on the job continuously . . .' He paused fractionally as the other implications of that statement flashed through his mind, but recovered splendidly '. . . since Friday. I said you were probably chasing the Pole, anyway, and he cooled down a bit.'

It must have been a trying day for Stocker as well. After the early morning Panin call, the hitherto subservient Audley had turned awkward. Then Panin had rushed him out of London at uncomfortable speed, only to find two disgruntled but unintimidated operatives doing nothing in particular.

'Not to worry, though,' Roskill reassured him, mistaking his silence. 'Butler showed him his map, all covered with meaningless red and blue crosses and lines and circles–Jack could snow the dummy4

recording angel if he set his mind to it. He went back to London happy enough, I think.'

'What about Panin?'

'Our Russian colleague?' Roskill cocked his head. 'The Professor–

that's how Stocker refers to him, by the way–is still very much with us. As a matter of fact he's sinking beer with Butler in the bar at this moment. But I don't think Butler snowed him: I've got a feeling he's a downier bird altogether. He doesn't say much, but Butler's talking cricket to him at the moment, so he hasn't had much opportunity yet anyway–when I left them Jack was just launching into his favourite story, about the time Bill Farrimond played for England and Lancashire Second.'

'Is he alone?'

'Oddly enough he is. Or he appears to be. But Butler and I are going to have a scout round after dinner. If he's alone then he's top brass, isn't he?'

'Panin's top brass, Hugh. No doubt about that. But tell me how you got on yesterday.'

'Wash-out, I'm afraid, sir.' Roskill shook his head sadly. 'We couldn't track one of 'em at all. And the other one shut up tighter than a clam.'

Then he smiled. 'Actually, I rather liked the old boy Ellis. He was regular RAF. Joined as a boy when there were still Bristol Fighters around and his last station was supersonic. He'd seen it all!'

'He wouldn't talk about Steerforth?'

'Oh, he talked. But he didn't give anything away. I think Ellis knew dummy4

every racket that'd ever been thought of. But he liked Steerforth–

said he was a gentleman, which means that Steerforth always paid the rate for the job in advance. And he practically told me I warn't a gentleman for checking on another pilot!'

'Then Butler appealed to his patriotism and he just laughed at us.'

Roskill's eyes flashed. 'He said that he knew his pilots, and patriotism was one thing and a bit of smuggling on the side was another. He said he's been on an air-sea rescue station where the Warwicks ran a regular service from Iceland with the lifeboats under their bellies full of nylons and whisky and ham. That'd stopped when they had to drop a boat to a ditched crew, and the chaps were picked up roaring drunk, but if Steerforth had put one over on us, so much the better. He was a splendid old boy!'

So there was no help there. Panin was waiting and his bluff was in danger of being called. When Roskill had gone he stood silent, staring at the dried shaving soap on his face.

Faith put her hand on his shoulder. 'No good, David?'

He shrugged. 'We're simply running out of time, Faith love. We never had much in the beginning. But instead of playing for it I've just speeded it up. I'm rather wondering now if it was the right thing to do.'

Faith held up Theodore's gift. 'Well, don't give up yet. The Fellowship of the Ring did just the same in The Lord of the Rings -

they forced the Dark Lord to attack before he was ready, and he came unstuck. Maybe Panin will come unstuck too.'

Audley smiled at her. Woman-like, she had committed herself with dummy4

her affections. Panin was the enemy now, the Dark Lord, whoever he was. And the least he could do in return for such loyalty was to play the game out.

He watched her in the mirror as he shaved, and Panin faded into immateriality. Not just Panin either–Stocker, Fred and all the rest as well. At some stage since Saturday night they had all changed places in importance with this girl. The longer he was with her, the closer he came to reality. And whatever happened, the real world was Faith struggling with her zip-fastener.

She turned towards him at last.

'Will I do, then?'

The long white dress, slashed in front from the ankle to the knee, was classically severe, but the heavy golden earrings and elaborate necklace were barbaric–no, not so much barbaric as pre-Hellenic.

'Take your glasses off.'

'But David, I don't see so well without them. Don't you like me in glasses?'

'I like you better in them. But not tonight.'

She slipped them off and stared vaguely at him: Steerforth's daughter to the life now, almost as her father might have dressed her. Except that the costume jewellery was from Bond Street, not Troy.

'Now you'll do very well. Very well indeed!'

'I hope so! But I've got butterflies in the tummy, David. Don't ask me to play the femme fatale ever again–this is positively the last time.'

dummy4

Audley shared the same stomach-turning mixture of excitement and fear as he followed her down the passage. He had nothing with which to face Panin except pure bluff. Yet Panin didn't know it was bluff. And this was the home ground, for all its soft carpets and heated air: 3112 Squadron's home ground, where the Russian had been beaten once before. The ghosts were on Audley's side here.

A subdued murmur lead them towards the bar. The swarthy waiter smiled unselfconscious admiration at Faith and honest envy at Audley before sweeping open the door for them.

They had their entrance, anyway.

For Nikolai Andrievich Panin.

But he had his back to them, engrossed in watching Butler cut an imaginary cricket ball down past gully and third slip for four easy runs. Roskill stood politely at his elbow in the act of raising a tankard to his lips.

Then the tankard stopped, the imaginary bat was lowered and Panin slowly turned towards them.

Audley had known what to expect; that face was in a dozen pictures in the file. Yet it was a sickening anti-climax nevertheless: Faith's Dark Lord was a very ordinary little man, totally without any aura of power or menace. The sheep-face with its bent nose was greyish and deeply-lined like an eroded desert landscape. It was the file brought to life, giving away nothing–not even a raised eyebrow for Steerforth's Trojan daughter.

Audley put out his hand.

'Professor Panin.'

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'Dr Audley.'

There was hardly a trace of an accent. Indeed, the foreign-ness of the voice lay in its complete neutrality.

'This is Miss Steerforth.'

Panin regarded Faith without curiosity.

'Miss Steerforth,' he repeated unemotionally.

Faith took the smooth, dry hand he offered her. 'Professor Panin, I'm afraid my father once caused you a great deal of trouble,' she said in a voice equally devoid of emotion. 'But I think it's rather late for an apology.'

The Russian considered her for a moment.

'Miss Steerforth, we are not responsible for our fathers. Mine was a sergeant in the Semenovsky Guards–the Tsar's guards, Miss Steerforth. And after that in the White army. But that was not my business, for I was a babe in arms. So you have nothing for which to apologise.'

He turned back to Audley.

'Major Butler has been instructing me in the finer points of cricket.

I know the theory of the game, but the fascination of a game lies in the finer points, would you not agree?'

'For the spectator, certainly. For the player it's winning that counts.'

'But you played rugby, I believe–and that is a game of brute force played by gentlemen. At least, so I have heard it described.'

'Whoever described it for you obviously never played in Wales, Professor Panin. I might just as well describe yours as a dirty dummy4

hobby for scholars.'

'A dirty hobby?' A note of puzzlement crept into the voice. He hadn't expected to be insulted.

'Archaeology, Professor.' It was comical to see Butler relax.

'Archaeologists at work are indistinguishable from navvies.'

'But an innocent hobby, Dr Audley. Archaeologists are safely sealed off from modern history. Historians are too often tempted to stray from their chosen field, are they not?'

Parry.

'Very true. And also there's always the danger that they'll make inconvenient discoveries.'

Thrust.

Panin nodded. 'And then they discover that the truth is not as indivisible as they thought. Not a clear glass, but a mirror sometimes.'

It was time to stop playing, thought Audley. 'But we're not concerned with history or archaeology, are we! Only indirectly, anyway. I take it as confirmed that you want me to find the Schliemann Collection for you?'

Panin inclined his head. 'I gathered from Brigadier Stocker that our small secret was out. Yes, Dr Audley, my government would be most grateful if you could do that. Then we will jointly restore it to the German Democratic Republic.'

Just like that, as though it was a mislaid umbrella!

'Well, I think we have a fair chance of finding it tomorrow, given a dummy4

little luck.'

Try that for size, Professor.

Panin was unmoved. 'So soon? But I am gratified to hear it. I had feared that it might prove a needle in a hay stack.'

'It certainly might have been easier if you had confided in us from the start–and I mean from the very start.'

The lines deepened around Panin's mouth.

'There was a certain . . . embarrassment about the loss of the collection in the first place, Dr Audley.'

Sir Kenneth Allen had hinted as much. To abstract the collection from G Tower had been the prerogative of the conquerors; to have lost it then so quickly reduced the conquerors to bungling plunderers.

'And then we formed the opinion that it was irretrievably lost,'

Panin continued. 'We believed that there was nothing anyone could do. It was only when I heard of the recovery of the aircraft that I revised my opinion.'

There was a great deal left unsaid there: the whole Russian obsession down the years with ditched Dakotas. A little honest curiosity would not be out of order.

'Professor Panin, we all know of your reputation as an archaeologist,' said Audley slowly, 'but I must admit I find your interest in the collection–and your government's interest–a little curious. Couldn't you have left it to the East Germans? After all, it's not a political matter.'

'There you have put your finger on the truth, Dr Audley. It is not a dummy4

political matter. For me it is a very personal matter. It was I who lost the Schliemann Collection. I lost it in Berlin, and I lost it again here in England.'

He stared lugubriously at the many-stranded necklace which rested on the false swell of Faith's chest.

'There is a German scholar,' he went on, 'a Dr Berve, who argues that there was never a siege of Troy–that Homer's Troy was a village overthrown by an earthquake. But I have handled Schliemann's treasures, and I have never forgotten them. In fact, as I have grown older I have thought of them more often.'

There was neither conviction nor passion in his voice. He was simply stating facts for Audley to accept or dismiss as he chose. Sir Kenneth might have used the same words. Faith had said it outright and Stocker had suggested it.

And now even Audley found himself wanting to believe it too.

Treasure–above all, treasure of gold–had always driven men to irrational acts. Cortes and Pizarro and all the victims of the search for the Seven Cities and the Gilded Man. Schliemann's treasure had been enough to tempt Steerforth to risk five lives and lose his own.

It had killed Bloch quickly and Morrison after half a lifetime.

But was it enough to haunt a man like Panin?

He realised with a start that he was staring direetly at Roskill, and staring that young man out of countenance. And there was something else—

It was the hotel manager, standing at his elbow, now beautifully dinner-jacketed and still sleekly out of place against the dark oak dummy4

beams.

'Excuse me, Dr Audley.'

And marvellously out of place in Newton Chester too, thought Audley. The sleepy place could have seen nothing so Mediterranean since the Roman legion from Lincoln had come marching by to build its practice camp down the road.

'Excuse me for interrupting you, Dr Audley, but Mistaire Warren, of Castle Farm–he was looking for you this afternoon here. He left a package for you which I have.'

The man took each aspirate like a show-jumper on a tricky course of fences, landing triumphantly on the final full stop for a clear round.

Butler already had an airfield map, but Audley suddenly wanted to get away from them all–to consider Panin for a moment by himself and to collect his thoughts again. This was a sufficient excuse.

He followed the manager out into the hall, where the fellow darted into his office and reappeared flourishing a large envelope so exuberantly that Audley thought for a second that he was going to spin it across the hallway.

But the flourish was converted into an elegant little bow, and Audley felt honour-bound to open it there and then as though it was a document of the highest importance.

There was a note pinned to the folded map, biro-scrawled in a childishly copperplate hand.

'Dear Dr Audley–I enclose my father's map, as promised. I'm sorry it isn't quite what I thought. The runways are marked in pencil dummy4

though, but none of the buildings. My father was very interested in

—'

The next word stopped Audley dead in mid-sentence.

Carefully he unfolded the creased section of the large-scale ordnance survey map. It wasn't luck really, he told himself. He would have come to it himself in the end, sooner or later. Indeed, he could see the signposts pointing to it along the way, which he had left behind only half-read.

And there it was, of course: Steerforth's treasure neatly and precisely marked for him. Marked as exactly as if it had been Steerforth, and not Keith Warren's father, who had recorded it.

As for luck, though–if any man had had good luck, and then equally undeserved and final bad luck, it had been John Steerforth.

XVI

For the second time Audley watched the water tower sink slowly into the tarmac skyline behind him. He did up another button on his raincoat. Roskill was driving with his window down, and the Land-Rover was draughty; it was another unseasonable morning, clear enough, but grey and unfriendly. One of those mornings when spring hadn't even tried to break through, even falsely.

Morning had purged the old airfield altogether of the atmosphere it had possessed on Sunday evening: it was no longer melancholy and forlorn, but merely bleak.

dummy4

But it was a good morning for digging–that had been Butler's only comment as he dumped the spades in the back. And Butler, in navy-blue donkey-jacket and baggy gardening trousers, had undeniably come prepared to dig.

Roskill's confidence was not so complete; or perhaps it was simply that his equally ancient tweeds still retained a lingering elegance.

As he had explained unapologetically the night before, he had no garden of his own, and consequently no gardening clothes.

Audley superimposed the ribbon of runway and the waving sea of grass on the map which was now etched on his memory. At about this point, on the left, there should be the break in the grass which marked the concrete base of the safe deposit hut.

'Stop here for a moment.'

He climbed out of the cabin and took in the whole circuit of the surrounding landscape. Ahead of him the taxiing strip stretched away, narrowing until it merged with the trees in the distance.

Behind him the slow incline of the Hump obscured the old built-up area of the field. On each side the prairie lay wide and open. It was still a lonely and naked place, with only the distant racket of a tractor out of sight to the right: Farmer Warren was busy cutting his Italian rye grass for his wife's uncle's silage.

Audley climbed back into the cabin, pointing out to Roskill the low, irregular line of hillocks ahead and off the tarmac strip to the left, insignificant in themselves, but perfectly discernible in their level surroundings.

His confidence was almost absolute, and he recognised it as that dummy4

same inner serenity which he had known sometimes before examinations, when he was sure that he could translate preparation into action. It was attended by the same uncontrollable physical symptoms, too–the dry mouth, the tight chest and the fast pulse.

He signalled Roskill to stop as they approached the nearest mound, little more than 300 yards from the edge of the taxiing strip, and walked to the top of it while the others unloaded the equipment.

From the runway it had seemed to be no more than one of a haphazard group, but now he could see clearly that it marked the exact corner of the old Roman Practice Camp, the meeting point of two lines of hillocks and low banks now related to one another as the time-eroded remains of the earth ramparts.

He turned back to speak to the men behind him and saw with surprise that the water tower was once more in view. The changes in the land were extraordinarily deceptive, its rise and fall so gentle here that they tricked the eye. Yet it was perfectly logical: no Roman military engineer would ever have marked out a camp in a hollow, not even a practice camp, but would have used the rising ground to advantage.

And it even added a touch of perfection to Steerforth's opportunism.

He stepped down to where Roskill and Butler stood amid a small pile of equipment.

'Where to now?' The resignation in Roskill's voice suggested that although DECCO was a far cry from the old mine detectors it was heavier than it looked.

Right or wrong, Audley knew this was his moment and he couldn't dummy4

resist underplaying it.

'Where you're standing, near enough.'

Butler looked around him disbelievingly.

'Here? But, damn it–we're still well inside the perimeter! Why, you can see this patch from miles away. No one could dig a hole here without its being spotted, not when the airfield was in use!'

'Let's try here all the same,' said Audley patiently. 'Let's see what the machine has to say.'

Roskill began to fiddle with DECCO, and with a shrug Butler emptied half a dozen reels of white tape from a canvas haversack.

'We'll lay down the start lines first, then. How long do you want for the base line, Dr Audley?'

'Ten yards, say.'

' Ten yards?' The scorn was stronger now than the disbelief in Butler's voice. 'I've got a hundred yards in each of these reels! You must be joking!'

'Jesus Christ!' whispered Roskill. 'I've got a reading!'

Butler swung round towards him.

'I've got a reading,' said Roskill. 'It's right here under my feet!'

Butler set the tape down and strode over to him, peering over his shoulder.

'It's a strong one, too. Left a bit ... a bit more . . . steady–that's it!'

They both looked up at Audley.

'Well, there's something down there right enough, and it's fairly substantial,' said Roskill. 'Richardson said this thing was so dummy4

sensitive it would pick up the studs in an old boot. But we've got a lot more than an old boot here.'

Butler looked accusingly at Audley.

'And that wasn't luck, Dr Audley. You knew damn well it was there–you knew to the inch!'

Roskill set DECCO down carefully to one side.

'After what we went through yesterday,' he said gently, 'I do think you owe us some explanation for this sudden fit of–what's the word–serendipity . . . Just tell us, Dr Audley –is this the real thing?'

Audley breathed out heavily, conscious suddenly that he had been holding his breath.

'I rather think it must be,' he managed to say. 'But I give you my word I didn't know until last night. I hadn't a clue up to then. Or rather, I couldn't make sense of the clues we had.'

'Never mind the clues,' cut in Butler. 'Just tell us how the hell Steerforth dug a hole in full view of everyone for miles around without anyone noticing.'

'The answer is that he didn't dig it, Major Butler. It was already dug for him. You see, there was an archaeological dig going on here all that summer, off and on. They filled the trench up just at this point on August 28, and that's the day after he landed his boxes in the hollow just down there.'

Roskill whistled to himself softly.

'They'd known about this Roman camp for ages, of course. But it wasn't a very promising site, and it was only because the farmer dummy4

who owned the land was interested in archaeology that they decided to excavate it. That was in 1938, actually. But then the RAF got in first and they had to wait until 1945–and then they only obtained permission on condition that they dug one trench at a time and filled it in before they started on the next one.

'It's all neatly marked on a map the farmer's son lent me, and when I saw the date on this trench I was pretty sure that it was here if it was anywhere. It fitted in with something the navigator told me.'

'And Steerforth was bound to know about it,' Roskill murmured, looking back towards the airfield. 'He must have taxied past here often enough.'

'That's just it, Hugh–only he knew better than most, because he used to walk down this way to collect things he'd had dumped in a hut just down there. Tierney said he had an excuse for coming. I think that just might have been an innocent interest in archaeology.'

'By God, but he was damned lucky in his timing,' grunted Butler.

The loot–and then the hole just at the right moment!'

But which really came first? Audley wondered. Was the idea of hiding the treasure in the trench the sudden flash of inspiration he had originally imagined? Or was the existence of that trench the fatal knowledge which tempted Steerforth into doing what would otherwise have been impossible?

'Lucky?' Roskill shook his head in admiration. 'Maybe he had serendipity too. But I think he was a very smart operator.

Whichever way you look at it, it was a bloody marvellous bit of improvisation–no wonder old Ellis thought the world of him!'

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Like Audley, Roskill was halfway towards giving in to John Steerforth, though perhaps for a different reason. Where Roskill was drawn to the man's audacity, possibly as a kindred spirit, Audley warmed to the knowledge that Steerforth had enjoyed the irony of it: the greatest archaeological loot in history, twice plundered already, planted in another archaeologist's hole in the ground! He need never be ashamed of his future father-in-law . . .

'He was a clever blighter, no doubt about that,' conceded Butler.

'But he'd have done better to have left well alone in the end. He just made work for us.'

He peeled off his donkey-jacket. 'And we're just giving it all back to the Russians, more's the pity.'

'. . . Who are even now coming to collect,' Roskill added, staring past Audley.

Audley swung round to follow his gaze. Panin had said that his official car would be down early, and here it was, creeping directly across the airfield like a black beetle, the sound of its engine drowned by the more distant, but noiser tractor. He hadn't wasted much time.

Butler bent down and picked up one of the spades.

'Come on, then, Hugh,' he said grimly. 'Let's not keep our masters waiting.'

The black car halted alongside the Land-Rover and a stocky man who had been sitting beside the driver got out and hurried deferentially to open the rear door. Panin eased himself out and to Audley's consternation Faith followed him. That had not been in dummy4

the plan, but there was no helping it now.

'Good morning, Dr Audley.' Panin's voice was as flat and featureless as the airfield. 'I am sorry to have missed you earlier; I did not know that you were going to start so early. This is Mr Sheremetev from our embassy.'

The chunky man, who must have been dragged from his bed even earlier than Audley, nodded his head sharply and twisted his lips in a brief diplomatic smile.

'And I took the liberty of bringing Miss Steerforth with me.'

'I'm sorry, David,' Faith broke in. 'I know you said that there probably wouldn't be any action until this afternoon, but I couldn't bear to hang around the hotel by myself. And Professor Panin was coming up here.'

There was a muffled thump as Butler drove his spade into a square of grass which Roskill had roughly shaved with a small sickle. He lifted a segment of turf and placed it neatly to one side.

'And it seems that we were both wise not to delay, Miss Steerforth,'

observed Panin. 'Is this the place, Dr Audley?'

'Our detecting device has picked up something just here, Professor.

We were lucky to pick it up so quickly.'

Sheremetev gestured around him. 'Is it not rather a–a public place for such a purpose?'

'There were archaeologists excavating here at the time, Mr Sheremetev. They were just filling in a trench at this place.'

He met Panin's stare, only to be disconcerted by its lack of expression. Or was it unvarying intensity about those eyes which dummy4

was disconcerting? His first impression had been one of anticlimax the night before. But the man's personality wasn't negative–

it was simply shuttered.

And now Panin was nodding in agreement with him.

'Public, but not obvious–that is good reasoning, Dr Audley. And it was good reasoning in the first instance, too: the classic doctrine of the hiding place.' He considered Faith reflectively. 'Young airmen in my experience were not so devious, but this man we underrated.'

He walked over to where Roskill and Butler were digging behind a small rampart of turves. Neither of them took any notice of him, and he eventually continued past them up the slope of the nearest mound. Sheremetev followed obediently, as though linked to him by some invisible towline.

'I think he's rather a sweetie, really,' whispered Faith. 'He's got beautiful manners and he was charming last evening.'

After that awkward moment of encounter, the man had been courteous enough in a solemn way. The charm, however, was an illusion created by her own nervousness and a mixture of gin and claret drunk too quickly.

'As a matter of fact he's rather like you, David.' Faith grinned wickedly at the discomposure he wasn't quick enough to hide.

He shut his face against her innocence.

'You would do well to remember the fate of the young lady of Riga, my girl,' he said, watching Panin quarter the landscape as he had done ten minutes earlier.

'The one who had an affair with a tiger?'

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'That's the dirty version. In the nursery version she merely went for a ride with him—

"They returned from the ride

With the lady inside,

And a smile on the face of the tiger".'

'You've got a suspicious nature, David.'

He was only half listening to her now.

'Suspicious? I'm afraid it's an occupational disease, suspicion. But it's rarely fatal. Credulity is the disease that kills more often.'

After a time Panin came down off the mound, and again stood for a while silently watching the diggers.

'A Roman camp, you say?'

Audley nodded. 'The theory is that it was a practice camp built by new recruits from Lincoln. The latest coins they found were of Nero, nothing after that. Apparently they were rather hoping it might have been refortified in the fourth century, but it wasn't.

They found very little, as a matter of fact.'

'That period interests you?'

'The Roman occupation? Not really–I'm more of a mediaevalist.'

'That I know. I have read your essays on the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Dr Audley. They are most interesting.'

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It wasn't really a surprise. Panin was a man who did his homework quickly. He had known about Jake Shapiro's interest in Masada in just the same way.

'You don't think Israel will go the same way as the Crusaders, Dr Audley? In the end?'

'The comparison's false, Professor. Israel is a middle eastern nation–or would be eventually if your country learnt to mind its own business,' replied Audley mildly. It comforted him to hope that Panin might be nervous enough to make conversation. 'Not that I don't appreciate how necessary it may be to stop the rot at home by asserting oneself abroad.'

'It is fortunate for the world, then, that your country is too weak to try that remedy!'

'I couldn't agree more. It's fortunate for us, too, you know. Your people just don't seem to have grasped that the returns aren't worth the effort in the Middle East–and I'm sure ours wouldn't either if they had the power to make any difference.'

Panin shrugged. 'You must find your work a frustrating occupation then, Dr Audley.'

There was a grating sound of metal on metal, followed by an exasperated grunt.

Roskill, waist deep now in the trench, shook his wrist in pain.

'Jarred my bloody wrist,' he explained. Then he bent down and fumbled in the loose earth at his feet.

'Here's what gave us our reading, anyway,' he said. 'Genuine Roman wheels — or maybe Trojan!'

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He wrenched a pair of rusty wheels, still joined together on their axle, from the bottom of the trench, gazed at them ruefully, and then threw them out on to the grass.

Everyone stared wordlessly at the wheels. They were even joined by Panin's driver, a wizened gnome who had been pacing up and down beside the car as though he was afraid someone planned to steal it.

Then Audley realised that they were all looking at him. There was sympathy in Faith's eyes, disappointment in Butler's gaze and amusement in Sheremetev's. Only Panin retained his inscrutability.

Or perhaps only Panin understood that the rusty wheels represented not failure, but final success.

'Don't just stand there, Hugh–get digging!' said Audley. 'The trolley went into the trench after the last box, no point in leaving it around. You're nearly there now.'

It seemed to Audley then that the world shrank to the circle round the trench. Even the distant noise of the tractor seemed to fade, as though their collective eagerness filtered out everything except the thud and scrape of the spades in the earth.

Neither the diggers nor the watchers uttered a word as the first of John Steerforth's boxes came to the light again and was raised from the earth.

They all stood looking at it for a long minute: a very ordinary box, damp-darkened, with its lid already splintered where the first fierce spade stroke which had discovered it had smashed into the wood.

Then Sheremetev knelt beside it and levered up a splintered dummy4

segment of the lid with the edge of a spade. Beneath the broken wood was the top of what seemed to be another box, made of metal.

Sheremetev looked up at Panin, and nodded.

'This is the box,' he said.

Panin touched Audley's arm gently.

'If I might have a minute in private with you, Dr Audley,' he said courteously.

They drew aside from the group, to the foot of the corner mound of the old camp.

'I know that your instructions are quite clear, Dr Audley. I am to have what you find — Brigadier Stocker has made that plain, and there can be no misunderstanding about it. You have done brilliantly, and my government will not be ungrateful.'

Audley listened to the sound of the tractor, which now came loud and clear across the airfield.

'The Schliemann Collection is here, Dr Audley,' Panin continued,

'and we shall restore it to its owners as promised. But this first box I will have now–I will take it now, Dr Audley. Without fuss, without argument. It is necessary that I do this.'

So Steerforth's loot had truly been a Trojan cargo–what it seemed, but also more than it seemed. That had been the only logical explanation.

'I'm not sure that I can agree to that, Professor,' said Audley slowly.

'My instructions cover the Schliemann Collection. But I'm also bound by the Defence of the Realm Act, which gives me a wider obligation.'

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Panin nodded. 'I understand that. But this is a matter which does not concern your country, Dr Audley. It is an internal matter concerning my country alone. If there is any . . . irregularity in my position it arises simply from a crime committed many years ago by one of your officers. But I do not wish to make an issue of that.

And it would only bring pain and discredit on innocent people now–people like the young woman back there.'

Audley faced the Russian. 'You know as well as I do, Professor Panin, that I can't simply take your word in this matter, anymore than you would take mine. Miss Steerforth must take her chance, I'm afraid. And we must be the judges of what concerns us.'

'I think you are exceeding your instructions, Dr Audley,' Panin sighed. 'But fortunately it is of no real consequence. We will take the box now, and without further argument. That is how it must be.'

He turned on his heel with an uncharacteristically quick movement.

'Guriev!'

The gnome-like driver did not look round, but with a smooth, unhurried movement produced an automatic pistol from inside his coat.

'All hands in view, please,' he said in a surprising bass voice. 'No sudden movements, I beg you.'

'Sheremetev!'

The embassy man, with his inevitable return to Russia as a persona non grata written mournfully on his face, began to check Butler and Roskill for any hidden weapons.

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'We are not armed, Professor Panin,' Audley spoke with deliberate bitterness. 'We aren't gangsters.'

Sheremetev folded the donkey-jacket neatly on top of the tweed jacket and shook his head.

'I regret this action most sincerely,' said Panin. 'We are not gangsters either, Dr Audley. But we have wider obligations, too, as you have. You have my assurance that your country's security is not involved. And now you have my apology.'

He gestured to Roskill and Butler. 'If you two gentlemen will be so good as to place the box in the boot of the car . . .'

'No!' Guriev's deep voice cut off the end of Panin's words.

The pistol remained unmoving in his hand, pointing at nobody in particular. But now it pointed at everyone.

'The box remains here,' said Guriev. 'Sheremetev–you will empty the contents from it on the grass there. Then you will take a match from a box which I shall give you, and you will burn them. Then you will grind the ashes under your heel.'

His eyes flicked to Panin. 'And then, Comrade Panin, if you wish to recover the Schliemann Collection, I have no objection.'

Panin's face was stony, with the lines in it cut like canyons. He spoke quickly and quietly in Russian to Guriev, his voice deep and urgent with authority. Audley strained his ears, but could not catch the sense of it, beyond the words 'Central Committee' and the familiar initials of the KGB, coming over as 'Kah Gay Beh' in the vernacular.

Guriev cut him off short again.

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'Nyet,' he said with harsh finality. Then in English: 'Everyone stays still. Open the box, Sheremetev!'

Sheremetev gave Panin an agonised look.

'A hole can be a grave, Sheremetev,' Guriev growled. 'If you wish it to be. There is no help for you–we are all alone here.'

'Actually, you're just going to have visitors,' said Roskill conversationally. 'So be a good fellow and don't do anything hasty.'

He pointed across the airfield.

The noise of the tractor engines was much louder already. In fact there were two of them, one towing a grass cutter with an extraordinary raised chute like the head of some prehistoric monster, from the mouth of which wisps of grass were falling; and the other a trailer with tall netting sides bulging with fresh-cut grass. They were coming obliquely across the field, almost exactly in the tracks of Panin's car, straight towards the Roman camp.

'Everyone still,' said Guriev, moving sideways so that the Land-Rover masked him from the tractors. 'There is only one pistol here, and I shall shortly put it inside my coat. Comrade Panin and Dr Audley will join Sheremetev beside the box. You will talk to each other and you will let the farm workers pass you without trying to speak to them . . . Tell them that I mean what I say, Comrade Panin!'

'Dr Audley,' Panin said coldly, 'this traitor is prepared to commit suicide, so I must warn you that he is unlikely to stop short of murder. It would be better if you left him to me.

'Move, then–but slowly,' ordered Guriev. 'And do not mask one dummy4

another.'

Audley followed Panin to stand on one side of the box, watching the deafening approach of the tractors.

Panin spoke to him above the noise: 'Please do not do anything brave, Dr Audley–and don't let your associates do anything. The man there is all the more dangerous for being alone. I don't wish to add bloodshed to my own stupidity.'

'Don't worry, Professor,' Audley shouted back. 'We're not heroes.'

The ungainly cavalcade was very close now. Audley could see Keith Warren sitting easily in the seat of the leading tractor, a battered deerstalker jammed hard down on his head. Warren swung the wheel of the tractor to bring it parallel with the line of mounds, waved gaily to Audley, and accelerated away in a cloud of diesel fumes and flying grass.

Behind him the second tractor thundered up, halting with a shudder just abreast of the group. The driver shouted unintelligibly against the roar of his own engine and pointed to the hole.

Audley shook his head and spread his hands.

The tractor driver turned off his engine and reached down out of sight, mumbling to himself. Then he straightened up and the Sterling sub-machine gun in his hands was pointed directly at Guriev.

Richardson rose from the pile of grass in the trailer, also cradling a Sterling.

'Easy there, everybody,' he said loudly. 'These things are bloody dangerous. Once you pull the trigger you can't stop 'em.'

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Jenkins, the long-haired woodworm hunter, carefully got down from the tractor. He jerked his Sterling at Guriev, who stood frozen with his hands open and his fingers slightly crooked, like an old time gunfighter.

'Hands behind your neck, comrade–slow and easy like the man said. If you'd take his gun, Major Butler, I'd feel much happier.

Richardson's quite right. These Sterlings are nasty things.'

He paused beside DECCO. 'You can relax now, Maitland,' he told the machine. 'All the silage is gathered in safely.'

Panin looked from DECCO to Audley.

Audley nodded. 'They've been listening in, Professor Panin. Like you, I had to be ready if the worst came to the worst. And like you, I rather thought it must.'

Panin shook his head. 'I am too old for this sort of thing–too rusty.

Perhaps I should have known better.'

'Major Butler. You and Hugh open that box and have a look at what's inside.'

'Dr Audley,' Panin began, 'I must—'

'Dr Audley,' Guriev broke in, 'you will—'

Audley turned his back on Guriev. Panin might not be the sweetie Faith thought him, but he had the better manners. Besides, he had no orders covering Guriev.

Faith! He had almost forgotten her. She stood at the edge of the group, white-faced: the young lady of Riga!

There was only time to smile at her, and he tried not to make it a dummy4

tigerish smile. Then he took Panin's arm, much as the Russian had taken his a few minutes earlier, and walked him back towards the corner mound.

Delicately, he must put it delicately.

'Professor Panin, if I can satisfy you I will. But you must satisfy me first.'

Panin had regained his composure. Or rather, he had reassumed his mask of indifference. He nodded.

'You've been leaking information to us from the start, Professor–

about G Tower, for instance. Just for our benefit. But why?'

The mask slipped and a look of incredulity passed across the man's face. Then it faded and for the first time Panin actually smiled.

'For your benefit?' The smile was bitter. 'No, not for your benefit, Dr Audley.'

Audley felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

'Not for your benefit,' Panin repeated.

'For whose, then?'

'Guriev's masters.'

Guriev's masters? It flashed across Audley's mind with horrible certainy that he had been too clever by half, yet not half clever enough. Panin hadn't been playing to him at all, but to someone else. Which meant–which meant he'd been right about Steerforth, but for utterly false reasons. And wrong about Panin . . .

Panin looked at him. 'You did well, Dr Audley,' he said, almost soothingly. 'In fact you did too well. It is ironical, is it not, that dummy4

when I wanted the boxes to be found I could not find them. But when I did not need them, you found them at once.'

'You didn't need them?'

'I never believed they could be found. I wasn't even sure they'd reached England. It was enough that Guriev's people should believe I had found them, and I made all the preparations for that.'

Panin paused. 'It seems that I prepared for everything except what actually happened.'

All for Guriev's people! So Panin also had been too clever: it had not occurred to him that Audley would act on the same stimulus.

Irony indeed! Whatever this elaborate scheme of Panin's was, it had failed because there was a self-destructive factor built into it–

he had convinced Audley that the boxes existed and could be found.

So Audley had found them, by following his own incorrect reasoning.

There was a sharp cracking of wood behind them. Butler was methodically splintering open the metal box's outer wooden cocoon.

Panin watched Butler sombrely for a moment, and then turned towards Audley again.

'How long have you known that there was an extra box, Dr Audley? When all the others just accepted it as part of the collection?'

'You were hunting Forschungsamt files back in '45, and I never could quite convince myself that Schliemann was enough to bring you all this way today. The–the psychology was wrong.' Thank dummy4

you for that, Theodore Freisler; for tipping the balance. 'So there had to be more to it. There had to be something else.'

'But you never knew what it was?'

It would never do to admit just how much he'd been in the dark, and no use denying how much in the dark he still was. But there was still something to play for.

'I never knew, no. But that doesn't matter now.'

Panin shrugged.

'You're missing the point, Professor Panin,' Audley said gently. 'I'm sure all the answers aren't in the box, but you can put that right.'

The Russian regarded him woodenly.

'To threaten me, Dr Audley, is mere stupidity. What can you do to me? You cannot hold me. You are not big enough. You can merely inconvenience me by withholding the box from me for a short time.'

'I wouldn't threaten you, Professor–I'd leave that to Guriev.' Audley smiled. 'I think I'm just big enough to hold you for an hour or two.

And small enough to let Guriev loose right now. Then it would be no business of mine what mischief he could organise in a couple of hours. On the other hand, if I knew what I was doing I could very easily sit on Guriev for a day or two and obey my instructions to the letter.'

It was a crude bluff, but it was the best Audley could manage. Its strength lay in the fact that Panin had not dealt with the British for years and might still believe in their traditional perfidy. Or if there was an element of doubt there, at least, there could be no doubt about the ruthlessness of Guriev's masters, whoever they were.

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'Tukhachevsky,' said Panin. 'Marshal Tukhachevsky.'

Marshal Tukhachevsky?

'I would have thought that name would not be unknown to you,'

Panin continued. 'But possibly not–it was before your time, and there are many of your generation even in Russia who have never heard of him.'

That made it a matter of honour, and Audley flogged his memory.

Marshal Tukhachevsky: the trial of Marshal Tukhachevsky.

'The Great Purge of the thirties–the "Yezhovshchina".'

Panin nodded. ' "The Yezhovshchina", that is right.'

Millions had been exiled or imprisoned, and untold thousands had died, among them nearly all the old Bolsheviks–Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov. And the great Marshal Tukhachevsky, the hero of 1920. Russia had seen nothing like it since the days of Ivan the Terrrible.

'The Army trials,' said Audley. 'He was one of the marshals Stalin liquidated. Yezhov framed him for spying for the Germans. And it was the Nazis who actually supplied the forged evidence.'

'Very good, Dr Audley–a very fair summary. Except that Tukhachevsky was not merely one of the marshals–he was the greatest Russian soldier of his time. And he didn't die alone, either: he took four hundred senior officers with him, the cream of the Red Army. One cannot blame the Nazis for helping to frame them; they were winning their first battle against us without firing a shot.

But tell me, Dr Audley –why would Stalin want his best soldiers branded as traitors?'

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'Tukhachevsky was too popular, I suppose. He was just another rival. It used to be pretty standard Soviet practice, didn't it? From Trotsky onwards.'

Panin should know that well enough.

'Discredit, then eliminate.' Panin spoke as though he hadn't heard Audley.

The forgeries. Heydrich would have been the Nazi boss to organise them, and Heydrich had mixed some of his old Sicherheitsdienst files among the Forschungsamt records –that brought Tukhachevsky and Panin together.

But if that was in the box the old objection still held: even back in

'45 the full details of this scandal would have been a mere embarrassment to Stalin. And today they were utterly valueless.

Stalin was dead and discredited; the Party itself could not err; and the ancestors of the KGB had neither honour nor credit to lose.

'But the Tukhachevsky forgeries don't matter now, Professor.

They're just dirty water down the drain.'

'And the truth behind the forgeries?'

The truth?'

'Stalin was a butcher, but he was not a stupid butcher, as the West likes to think. He knew the risk when he ruined his own army.'

'Professor, you can't tell me that Tukhachevsky and four hundred generals and colonels were all in league with Hitler. It won't wash.'

'Not in league with Hitler. But in league against Stalin and the Party, Dr Audley.'

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Panin gestured abruptly as though tired of arguing and being forced to explain simple facts–and tired above all of pretending that the real Panin was a grey nonenity on a derelict English airfield.

'In 1937 there really was an army plot against the Party.

Tukhachevsky had no direct part in it–he was like Rommel in 1944. But it was a genuine plot and a very dangerous one. The soldiers planned to reverse the whole collectivisation policy–the Party's cornerstone.'

He spoke harshly.

'Stalin had a nose for such things–it is a talent some Georgians have–and he moved first. He knew it was so, but we never uncovered the proof, the full details. It didn't matter then, for it was better that they should be destroyed as traitors than mere party enemies.

'And then it was discovered that the details did exist. One of the plotters escaped to East Prussia–an air force colonel. He took with him a list of names and details of the take-over plans. The Nazis sent him back, and they sent back some of the details. But they kept the documents.'

The Russian faced Audley squarely.

'That's what is in the extra box, Dr Audley: the details of the 1937

Army Plot which everyone believes was just a figment of Stalin's suspicious mind. Everyone except those in the Party and the Army who know the truth beneath the legend. You see, I wasn't the only one looking for those documents back in 1945–which is why I sent dummy4

them to Moscow with the Schliemann Collection. There were generals then who knew what that box could do–to the Army. It can still do as much, and I've made sure that there are generals who know about it.'

The Army! Discredit, then eliminate!

So that was what was at the centre of Panin's labyrinth: the means to discredit the over-mighty Red Army as a political ally.

Elimination then wouldn't even be necessary.

It didn't matter that it was ancient history. An army which could turn against the Party once could do so again: even the breath of such a scandal would open a credibility gap a mile wide between the politicians and the generals in the delicate balance of Kremlin politics. Not even the most ambitious civilians would dare to cross that gap.

'You'd discredit your own army?'

'Discredit?' Panin shook his head. 'It would never have come to that. The generals would have taken the hint, just as they took the bait. This way there would have been retirements, but no disgrace.

And no more nonsense about preventive wars in the east.'