pressed the bell marked 'Caretaker' and waited till the door was opened by a muscular man in overalls. Somewhere about him, Craig knew, he carried a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver and a commando knife. The caretaker held his job because he could use them.
'You're expected, Mr. Craig,' he said. 'You're to go straight up.'
Craig climbed the stairs to the flat marked 'Lady Brett' and went inside. The caretaker watched him go in. Lady Brett's flat was Craig's office, and Craig had no business there when Loomis had summoned him at once, but the caretaker made no move to interfere. Craig might be slowing up and drinking a bit too much, but he had a judo black belt and an expert's knowledge of karate, and the caretaker had to practice unarmed combat with him once a month. He never antagonized Mr. Craig if he could help it.
The office was neat and tidy, the way his secretary Mrs. McNab always left it. And, anyway, there wasn't much work sent to him now. The place wasn't all that hard to keep in order. He looked through his 'In' tray, but nothing had been added since he left: there was no helpful memo from Mrs. McNab. Whatever Loomis had in store for him would come as a surprise. The fat man liked surprises, when he delivered them. Craig went along the corridor and tapped on the door that was of paneled mahogany, polished silken smooth. There was an indeterminate growl from behind it, and Craig went inside, into a perfect establishment setpiece with a superb stucco ceiling, sash windows, and overstuffed furniture covered in flowered chintz. Behind a Chippendale desk Loomis sat in a buttoned leather armchair that was the biggest piece of furniture Craig had ever seen, and yet it fitted the big man so exactly that a Savile Row tailor might have measured him for it. Loomis was vast, a figure of enormous power that had slopped over into fat, with pale, manic eyes, an arrogant nose, and white hair clipped close to his skull. When Craig first met Loomis the white hair had been dusted with red, but now the red had gone.
'Pour coffee,' said Loomis, 'and sit down.' For Loomis the invitation was cordial.
Craig poured coffee from a vacuum flask—it was black, bitter, scalding hot—then sat on the arm of one of the chairs. It was bad enough facing Loomis, even if he were in a good mood, without being three feet below him.
'I've been thinking about you,' said Loomis. 'Thinking a lot. I'm beginning to wonder if you still fit in here, son.' Craig waited; there was a lot more to come.
'You've done some nice jobs for us,' Loomis said, 'and I don't deny it. You kill people nice and tidy, and you got a few brains as well. But the last job spoiled you—or at least I think so. Do you still dream about it?'
'No,' said Craig, and it was true. The best and most expensive psychiatrist in the country had labored for weeks to stop those dreams.
'Think about it?'
'No,' Craig said again, and this time it was a lie. When you have been tortured by having electric shocks run through your penis there are times when you think about it, no matter how hard you try not to.
'I don't believe you,' said Loomis, 'but it doesn't matter. You finished that job and I'm grateful to you, but I don't think you're ready for another one.'
'Nor do I,' said Craig. He put his cup down quickly before his hand began to shake.
'You do nice paperwork, but I got too many fellers for that already.' He paused. 'Experts,' he said, making the word an insult. 'I'm beginning to wonder if I can use you at all.'
'You can hardly just let me go,' said Craig. 'No,' Loomis agreed. 'I can hardly do that. Nobody ever leaves my department—once they sign on.' Craig waited again.
'I been thinking of sending you to the school,' Loomis said. 'Training the young hopefuls. You're the kind of feller they'll be up against, once they get into the field—or you were. But I dunno. You're not exactly cut out to be a schoolmaster, are you? On the other hand, I got nothing else to offer. We better make it the school. I tell you what,' he said. 'I'll make you a sort of graduation exercise. Go down there tomorrow, have a look around, but don't let the students see you. Pascoe will pick out the ones who are ready, and you can set up test situations for them. See if they're any good. See if you're any good come to that. Like the idea?'
'No,' said Craig.
'I didn't think you would. You can go down there tomorrow. I'll tell Pascoe to expect you.'
The school was in Sussex, an isolated Elizabethan manor house in fifty acres of grounds enclosed by an eight-foot granite wall. There were always two men at the gates, and they were armed. Closed-circuit television warned them of every approaching car, and day and night Alsatians roamed the grounds. They were good dogs; Pascoe had trained them himself. The nearest village was seven miles away, and the villagers had kept well away from the manor house ever since the dogs had caught a poacher ten years ago. The villagers believed that the manor house was a nursing home for wealthy, dangerous maniacs, and
Pascoe did all he could to encourage that belief. Once he'd even faked an escape: a red-bearded schizoid armed with a crowbar, trapped in the snug of The Black Bull just before opening time; dogs and straitjackets and a tremendous smashing of glass. It had cost Pascoe fifty pounds in breakages, and the village had never forgotten.
His pupils were driven hard. They had to be: there was a great deal to learn. The school existed only for the benefit of Department K, and those who worked for Department K were specialists of the highest order. Their business was destruction—of plans, of aspirations, of life when the need arose. And those who wished to serve Department K had first to master many trades. In the school Pascoe had a language laboratory, a small-arms range, a unit dealing with arson and sabotage, a gymnasium, and a garage. There were daily sessions in unarmed combat, there were visiting lecturers who taught safe-breaking, the extraction of information, the use of the knife, the improvisation of weapons, the picking of pockets, on every conceivable subject from desert survival to everyday life in the Soviet Union. There was a course on how to resist methodically applied pain to the limits of physical and mental strength. At the end of each course— and courses were held only when there were a sufficient number of likely candidates—the school turned over to Loomis a handful of men and women who were afraid of nothing but their master's power. If they disobeyed, defected, or used their skills against anyone but the targets Loomis selected he could have them killed, and they knew it.
They had been deviously recruited, those who served Loomis: from the Intelligence Services some of them, or the Special Branch of CID; from the armed forces, the universities, the business desk, and the factory floor. Some, not many, from prison. One of Loomis's experts spent his whole working life reading photostated personnel files acquired via his cover as director for the Unit of Psychological and Statistical Research. Likely candidates were spotted, observed, tailed, unknowingly interviewed, and tested. Loomis's expert was good. Of the candidates he spotted, perhaps four per cent reached the school, and after that they belonged to Department K forever, whether they reached the standard of field operative or not. Loomis's security was absolute. No one who knew about the department ever left it alive.
Craig waited at the gate while one of the men on duty examined his pass. The other one wasn't in sight, but he'd be there, Craig knew, with a gun on him. The man he could see handed back the pass and said, 'Straight on up to the house, please, sir. And don't get out of the car till Mr. Pascoe comes to fetch you. There's dogs about.' He went back to the gatehouse, pressed a button, and the gates swung open. Craig drove the Lamborghini through and at once the gates were closed. As he drove slowly up the drive, the car whispering, Craig spotted the dogs. They used cover like leopards, and they followed him all the time. He reached the main doors of the house, switched off the engine, pulled up the hand brake, and waited. The six dogs settled in a great arc round the car, ears back, the hair on their necks bristling. If he left the car they would kill him, for all his slull, and Pascoe wasn't there to meet him; Pascoe was enjoying the fact that Craig was helpless in the face of something that he, Pascoe, had created.
He appeared at last, and whistled to the dogs. At once they moved off back into the grounds and their endless patrol. Craig got out of the Lamborghini and moved up the steps, not hurrying, to where Pascoe waited. Pascoe had been a colonel in military intelligence and a liaison officer with the maquis, and had survived three months in a Gestapo prison. He was tall, thin, whipcord hard, and proud of his school. The people he turned out were the best there were, except that Craig had been better than any of them. Craig was the only Department K operator who had never attended the school. Pascoe detested him.
'You do yourself well,' he said, and looked at the Lamborghini, its insolent scarlet blaring at a bed of soft Mayflowers. Craig walked past him into a hall that held a Shiraz rug, a Jacobean chest, an oil by Srubbs.
'You don't do too badly yourself,' he said. 'For a schoolmaster.'
Pascoe's hands clenched. Sooner or later they always did, when Craig appeared. He had never met the man who could beat him, until he met Craig. The thought was bitter to him. Then he remembered what Loomis had said
