The Liar

Adrian pondered this.

'What's hurting me then?'

'You lost some blood. I should imagine your stomach will be a little sore for a while. The plaster from your dressing will be pulling at your skin.'

'I'm quite hungry.'

'Rudi will bring you something.'

'Good-o,' said Adrian and fell asleep again.

Two days later Adrian sat at the piano in the Franz-Josef Suite and picked his way through Beethoven's Minuet in G. There was a plate of sandwiches and a glass of beer in front of him. His suitcases were assembled in the middle of the room ready to be taken down to reception. He had felt fully fit enough to bear Donald company for the long drive home in the Wolseley but Trefusis had insisted he go by air.

Adrian's stomach was healing very well, the raw little eruptions where the embedded wadding had been picked out with tweezers were capped with fresh scar tissue and he could now touch the long soft tongue of burn-tissue on his left side without wincing.

He closed the piano lid and straightened himself. It was a companionable kind of pain, clean and sharp as Pilsner; a better pain than the crushing leaden ache of guilt he had carried around with him for as long as he could remember.

There was a hearty knock at the door and Simon Hesketh-Harvey came in, followed by a beaming Dickon.

'Gru? Gott,' said Adrian.

'And how's the lad?'

'The lad's fine thank you, Dickon,' said Adrian. 'And looking forward to going home.'

'That's the ticket,' said Simon.

'No,' said Adrian, pulling a travel wallet from his jacket pocket, 'this is.'

A long table had been prepared in the upstairs room of the Shoulder of Lamb. Nigel the barman was serving soup under the vigilant eye of Bob, the landlord. Trefusis sat at one end, with Adrian at his left hand side and Lady Helen Biffen on his right. Martin and Stefan Szabo, Humphrey Biffen, Dickon Lister, Istvan Moltaj and Simon and Nancy Hesketh-Harvey were all present, chattering and laughing with the hysterical bonhomie of businessmen at a Christmas party. There was one empty chair halfway down the table on Lady Helen's side.

'But why did you have to go to such lengths?' Adrian was asking Trefusis. 'I mean why couldn't you just tell me what was going on?'

'It was very necessary, I am afraid, that you acted in complete ignorance of the whole affair. David Pearce was paying you to spy on me after all. You believed you were acting in the interests of his department. That was how it had to remain. We knew he wanted Mendax for himself, not for his country but for his own enrichment. It was expedient that you should be unaware of this.'

'What about Lister? Is he really Golka?'

'Lister used to work as a junior official at the British Council in Bonn. Simon found out that Pearce had inexplicably seconded him to the Consulate in Salzburg. This puzzled Simon.

He picked Lister up and questioned him with some force. Lister is indeed Golka - between ourselves,' said Trefusis, lowering his voice, 'not a very pleasant man, I'm afraid. It became apparent that Sir David was quite prepared to kill for Mendax.

This was wholly unacceptable to us. We made Lister an offer.

He was to keep us informed of Pearce's plans, much as you were keeping Pearce informed of ours, and we would arrange that he need only pretend to kill Moltaj and Martin.'

'As long as I witnessed these killings?'

'Oh yes, that was very necessary. Your description of them to your Uncle David would be of the utmost importance. It had to seem to him that, although he had just failed to get hold of the Mendax papers, he had at least succeeded in getting hold of one half of the device itself. When he knew that I had the rest he would come out into the open and reveal his true motives.'

'There's one thing,' said Adrian. 'When you attached Mendax to me I heard nothing through those headphones but white sound. I felt no compulsion to do anything but fall asleep. All that guff I came out with, it was just a put on. I made it up.'

'Of course!' said Trefusis. 'Haven't you understood it yet?

Mendax doesn't exist.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's a nonsensical notion, absolutely nonsensical. But we had to make Pearce believe it could really work.'

'But you hooked me up to it!'

'That's right.'

'I might have blown the whistle. Simply announced that it wasn't doing anything for me, just hissing in my ear. How could you know that I wouldn't?'

'I relied on the fact that you are a chronic liar. Once you were attached to a device that was supposed to make you tell the truth but didn't work, you would naturally do the dishonest thing and pretend that it did. It was mixture of suggestion on my part and appalling dishonesty on yours. Not that it mattered whether you went through that charming and absurd act or not.

Pearee had shown his hand by this time. I am only sorry that you decided to behave in such a peculiar fashion