'Well, Brian,' he said, when the Mess waiter had brought the drinks and retired, 'how does the great work?'
'Oh, not too-'
'I must say I wouldn't care to be up to what you're up to, would you, Willie?'
'It must be rather like my line of country, only more taxing.'
'Not being able to relax for a moment. On duty twenty-four hours a day. Your head the one that rolls if the opposition get on to anything. Tell me, Brian, are you any nearer your man yet?'
'Yes, I think so. One works by elimination, of course. I was able to rule out the S1 people more or less from the start.'
Leonard referred to those in Security Grade 1, the six British, four Indian and two Pakistani officers undergoing training for Operation Apollo and their two Instructors, both British. Nobody else in the unit, apart from Leonard himself, was permitted full knowledge of the nature of the Operation. Grade 2, or S2, consisted only of the Briefing Group, two British officers and one Indian-Naidu-whose duties were to provide certain ancillary information. S3 comprised the Colonel, the Adjutant, the Medical Officer, Hunter and Ayscue.
The Colonel laughed, knuckling his mustache. 'That brings us pretty near home, Brian. Leaves you with what? Half a dozen people?'
'Eight, as regards officers. I've been working on them pretty hard over the last ten days. They're down to four now.'
'Is it,' asked the Colonel, 'is it in order for me to inquire whether I am one of the possibly guilty four or one of the innocent four?'
'Oh yes, sir. You're clear. So are Hunter and the MO and Captain Naidu.'
'Then I'm not clear,' said Ayscue.
'Now you're not to take this sort of thing in the wrong way, Willie,' said the Colonel; 'Brian's simply doing his job. And one of the ways we can help him is by forcing ourselves to put up with things we might think it was wrong to put up with in other circumstances. You're not accusing anybody, are you, Brian?'
Ayscue nodded. 'Oh, fair enough. But what interests me isn't so much the fact that tomorrow morning I may find myself arrested for passing secrets to the enemy-though it's an interesting enough fact in its way. Just for the moment I'm looking at it from Brian's point of view and wondering how he manages to stay alive at all without any human relationships. Not many people could stand being driven back inside their own mind the whole time.'
'You're diving a bit deep for me there, Willie,' said the Colonel.
'No, I see what he means, sir-he's quite right. You start living in a sort of dream world. You get worse at judging evidence, not better. When I started in this game I wondered why they gave us such long leaves. Well, it's only the last half of the time that's really like leave. You spend the first half gradually pushing yourself out of your shell.'
The Colonel was not certain what Ayscue's mild stare at Leonard meant. He said briskly, 'But of course one couldn't afford to rule out people outside the Mess, or even outside the unit, am I right, Brian? I must admit I've got a bit of a soft spot for the idea of a beautiful spy setting up shop in the village and trying to lure innocent young officers into her web, you know, the old Mata Hari touch. It'd brighten life up like anything.'
'That's unlikely, sir,' said Leonard carefully. 'Possible, but unlikely. The one bit of luck we've had does point pretty well unmistakably to the fellow we're after being somewhere in this camp. He could be-well, one of the sergeants, say, or even a guard, but that's rather unlikely too. I can't see any of the S1 officers giving things away in that sort of direction. And the precautions you've taken, sir, have made it quite impossible for anyone to get at the secret stuff physically. No, I'm going to stick to my four candidates until I'm proved wrong.'
'I wish you'd tell us what this bit of luck of yours was,' said the Colonel. 'Why you think your man's someone inside this unit. How you can be so certain we're up against a spy at all, come to that. Can't do any harm to let it out, can it?'
Leonard made a decision. It would be useful to see whether, or how soon and in what form, this information would come back to him via Deering. 'The other week our people made an arrest in London. One of the things they picked up was a message reporting progress on penetrating Operation Apollo-nil, I'm glad to say. Well, there was something about that message, not its actual text, which established that it came from somebody serving in the Forces.'
'Kind of paper or something,' muttered the Colonel.
'And we learned something else, too. A man who leaves his tracks uncovered in that kind of way isn't a regular spy. He's what we call in the profession a neo-ideologue-an amateur, if you prefer it. That's a two-edged thing from our point of view. On the one hand it makes him more likely to give himself away through inexperience; on the other, he'll have had no previous contacts or history of any kind and there won't be a file on him. In that sense he might be anybody.'
What Leonard had been saying was full of interest for the Colonel, but it was time to draw Ayscue back into the conversation. 'Well, I'm sure we all hope you find him soon and we can breathe more easily. Are you a literary man, Brian?'
'I don't seem to get much time for reading.'
'No, I suppose not. Pity. I'm at it all the time myself. Of course, it's easy for me-I got my little machine in motion within twenty-four hours of arriving here, set up the guards and so forth, and now it's just a question of the odd time-table check. The rest of the time, when I'm not down here making sure you all get enough to eat and drink I'm ploughing through these French existentialist fellows. Bit arid, they strike me, but never mind. Anyway, I was just going to say that Willie here is thinking of starting some sort of magazine. I didn't give you a chance to tell me much about it, did I, Willie? What kind of thing have you in mind? Will you get enough contributions?'
'Well,' said Ayscue, rather unwillingly, 'there are twenty-three officers and a hundred and sixty-three other ranks inside this fence. Half the lads spend half their time hanging about waiting to go on guard duty in one form or another, and day passes are restricted to ten per cent of them. Quite a few of the others haven't a lot to do-the drivers and DRs, for instance. I've asked around a bit, and my impression is that some of them might be
