peps you up. This is grub.'
'Do I need calming down?' Craig asked.
'Dunno. I do. I got a bit of news for you. Pucelli's on to the judo clubs. He's looking for Hakagawa.'
'Go on,' said Craig.
'We won't let him get far,' Loomis said. 'Don't worry. If he starts getting warm, we'll find something wrong with his passport and boot him off home. Unless-' he looked hard at Craig, 'you'd like to attend to him yourself?'
'No,' Craig said.
'Suit yourself.' Loomis sawed savagely at his beef. 'I take it you are going to do that other little job for us?'
'Yes,' said Craig. 'But just St. Briac. That's all.'
'Grierson says you had quite a chat with McLaren last night. Has he been preaching at you?'
'He preaches at everybody,' Craig said. 'He has to. He doesn't believe his own gospel.'
'Has he changed your mind?'
'No,' said Craig. 'He's a phony-like me. And he knows it. He couldn't have changed my mind, anyway. Now I've got Tessa into this, I have to do what you want. It's the only way she'll be safe.'
'You could leave her,' said Loomis.
'That's the one thing I couldn't do. Except go on like this. Once I've dealt with St. Briac, that's the lot.'
'St. Briac is all I want,' said Loomis. 'But the others may want you. These boys are fanatics. They don't know where to stop. That's why I say they're mad, but when it comes to organization, they're as sane as you or me and as clever as monkeys.
'They work in cells, like the Communists. They're not proud, they'll steal ideas from anybody. Now St. Briac's is the murder cell. Five men. The 2-I-C is called La Valere. A bit of a nit, but good with a pistol. Duclos and Pucelli- I'll come to them in a minute-for the rough work. They used to have Cadella to help them, until you ran into him. Then there are two or three men acting as bodyguards for his nibs, and that's the lot. A self-sufficient unit. And they believe in vengeance, son. Pucelh's a Corsican, and so was Duclos's mother. Hurt one of them and they'll all be on your neck. Hurt their chief, and you may not find it all that easy to retire. They're what you might call devoted to him. Or so I've heard anyway.'
'So I've heard too,' said Craig. 'I'll have to chance it.'
Loomis took alternate bites at apple pie and cheese.
'You seem to hear a hell of lot,' he said. 'Where do you get it all from?'
'Arabs,' Craig said. 'They've got their own network. Pretty good too. And they had to keep me alive at the time. They needed the stuff I was bringing.'
'Want to tell me about them?'
'No,' Craig said.
'Suit yourself.' Loomis pushed his plate away. Then, heedless of his own theories, he said loudly, 'God, that was awful.'
The elderly headwaiter, utterly deaf, said, 'Thank you, sir,' and Loomis led the way to the reading room, where three aged men slept noisily.
'They're deaf too,' he said. 'Still, we'd better not take any chances.'
He rang for a waiter, and ordered coffee in the writing room.
This was huge, deserted, and crammed with Edwardian writing desks with great wads of club stationery on them, as if the committee had yet to learn that Edison had made enough of a breakthrough for the club to buy a telephone. The waiter poured out coffee, and Loomis groaned aloud.
'Terrible, terrible,' he said.
'Why eat here?' asked Craig.
'I'm used to it and they're used to me,' said Loomis. 'When you get to my age, you get set. You aren't flexible any more. Not like you.'
'When do you want me to go?' Craig asked.
'That's what I mean,' Loomis grumbled. 'You're always in a hurry. Now I like a bit of small talk. I can't stand bashing straight into things. But you won't adapt yourself to me. You're too selfish, son.' He scowled. 'You'll go as soon as I can fix it. Grierson will go with you.'
'Don't you trust me?'
'How can I?' Loomis asked pettishly. 'Anyway, he can be very useful, Grierson can. And he seems to like you, God knows why. That's Grierson's trouble, getting fond of people.'
Craig lit a cigarette.
'You work hard at it-being nasty, I mean,' he said. Loomis, unasked, helped himself from Craig's packet.
'I'll tell you something,' he said. 'I'm down on the books as a civil servant-assistant principal in the Ministry of Dither and Footle. Everybody thinks I've been shelved because I'm so bloody rude. There aren't thirty people in the world know as much about me as you do -and they're all like you. They can't give me away.'
'They could be made to,' said Craig.
'Sooner or later one of them will,' Loomis said. 'When he does I'll know, and I'll be ready for it. Till then it's all jolly fun. Only remember this, son. I'm anonymous because I'm good at my job.'
'Having people killed?'
'Sometimes. Not often. Your bit of business happens to be one of the times, that's all. When there isn't any other way I use this one, if I think it's justified. That's what I'm for.'
'Does it bother you?'
'No,' said Loomis promptly. 'Not unless I fail, and I don't fail all that often. I'm certainly not going to fail this time. If St. Briac doesn't die, a lot of other people will. And they'll be nicer people than he is. Now tell me about him again.'
Craig repeated what Ben Bakr had told him, in the little restaurant near the Jardin du Pharo in Marseilles. It had been hot in the restaurant, he remembered, but the bouillabaisse had been good, and so had the Provencal wine. Mohammedan or not, Ben Bakr had drunk his litre. He needed something; twenty-four hours a day he was in danger. St. Briac hadn't yet found out who he was, but Ben Bakr had got on to Pucelli, and from him at last he had discovered the existence of St. Briac's cell and the character of its leader. St. Briac, inevitably, had been to St-Cyr, he had won the Croix de Guerre in Indochina for displaying exceptional courage where courage was a commonplace. He had been an Intelligence officer in the Atlas Department of Algeria, and had been removed for being too cruel, though in Algeria at that time cruelty was a commonplace too. And yet, Ben Bakr had insisted, he was not a sadist, like some of the men who worked for him. He was simply using cruelty because it was efficient. It produced the results he needed so urgently. St. Briac was determined, utterly determined, that Algeria should remain part of France, that the country and the army he adored should suffer no more defeats, no more humiliations. Measured against this tremendous aim, no human life, including his own, had any importance.
Slowly, patiently, at incredible risk, Ben Bakr had built up a dossier: modus operandi; personnel; financial aid; and some of this he had told to Craig. In the end St. Briac had caught him, but Ben Bakr had died too quickly, and for another year Craig was safe…
Loomis asked, 'Did you see him after they finished with him?'
Craig shook his head. 'I heard,' he said. 'He was a mess.'
'You scared?'
'Of course,' Craig said. 'I wanted to get out as soon as I heard, but I couldn't. You were right about me. Partly right anyway. I don't enjoy killing people, whatever you may think, but I couldn't live without danger. I was an addict. I didn't enjoy it, you understand. I had to have it.'
'Had to? You mean you don't need it any more?'
'I want the girl,' Craig said. 'So you don't have to worry, do you? If I don't do this job, we'll never find any peace.'
'That's all right then,' Loomis said. 'I'll get you off in a couple of days. After that, you've got four days to do the job, and that's all. He could be off to Aden in a week. He's got plans for Aden. Big plans. Or so I'm told. Strikes, riots, massacres. We'll have to move in troops and kill a hell of a lot of Arabs, and even then the thing might spread, and if it does we'll have the Russians on our backs. He'd better not go to Aden. It's your business to see that he doesn't. If possible, I'd like you to get some more information about what he's up to. But that isn't important. The
