'Jean-Luc's on pentathol from time to time,' Wetherly said. 'He likes it.'
'It makes me tell the truth,' said Calvet. 'That's what I like.'
'By the way, he's always Calvet now. Jean-Luc Calvet. Jean-Luc to his friends. There isn't any Dovzhenko.'
'Dovzhenko's dead,' said Calvet, and the pencil tapped on in the same broken rhythm.
'Morse code,' said Wetherly. 'Listen.'
The pencil said 'F-R-E-E' over and over.
'That's how I feel all the time,' said Calvet, then his glance moved to Craig, and he snapped the pencil in two, stood up, and walked over to him. Craig moved slightly, his feet apart, weight evenly balanced, hands open by his sides. It was the beginning of the karate ritual. He should bow then, and utter the apologetic words that were also a warning: 'I come to you with empty hands.' He did neither.
'You killed Dovzhenko,' Jean-Luc said.
Loomis growled: 'Look, son,' and Wetherly touched his arm. He was smiling.
'I'm very glad you did,' said Calvet. 'You set Calvet free.' He slapped Craig on the shoulder and turned to the table.
'Come on,' he said. 'We've got work to do.'
They sat round the table: four men who might be meditating the possibility of a little slam in spades.
'He knows about James Soong,' said Loomis. It was like hauling the keystone out of a dam. Jean-Luc foamed words, and the others listened, as Craig took notes.
Soong had once belonged to Chinese Internal
Security, starting with the Tiger Beaters, the men and women who specialized in the detection of de- viationists and bourgeois. From there he had been transferred, because of his exceptional promise, to the group called Wrong Thoughts Corrected, a counterintelligence unit that specialized in the surveillance of Russia. He had been one of the last students there before the split, and had arranged the death of S. I. Lemkov, Russia's leading expert on Chinese affairs. From Russia he had gone to Tunisia, then to Morocco, where he had become aware of Russian efforts to find him. (The KGB's Executive Division had put Soong's death, preferably after interrogation, as a matter of top priority. It had been an agent of Calvet-Dovzhenko's who had found him in Tangier.) He disappeared from Morocco, and another KGB man, doing what amounted to a regulation checkup of Calder Hall, had spotted him in Keswick. The need for interrogation had passed by then; the Executive Division had therefore killed him.
'The Russians do not like their opposition to get away with murder,' said Calvet. 'Personally I find this unrealistic.'
'What was Soong doing in Keswick?' Loomis asked.
'Waiting,' said Calvet, then frowned. 'I was coming to that. Just listen and I'll explain everything. There is no need to interrupt.'
Loomis muttered and was still, like a volcano not ready to erupt, and Calvet talked on, oblivious.
Wrong Thoughts Corrected had recently made a deal with another anti-Russian group, this time working from Europe. Its headquarters was in
London, but they had thriving agencies in Paris, West Berlin, and Warsaw. This group was known as BC, which stood for Bourgeois-Capitalist. The KGB as yet had no knowledge of its chief members, but they did know three things: one, that it had access to a great deal of information that made Russia look foolish or hateful to the outside world; two, that it had interfered, by murder or sabotage, in projects that Russia valued highly as influencing foreign opinion; and three, that it banked in Tangier.
Craig said: 'Two questions.'
Calvet turned red at once, and began to yell about paying attention.
'I killed Dovzhenko for you,' said Craig. 'The least you can do is listen.'
Calvet said: 'Of course. I'm sorry,' and smiled. When he smiled he looked innocent and young.
'What sort of projects did they sabotage?' asked Craig.
'Space shots,' said Calvet. 'Two Russian men have died in space. They think the BC had a hand in it.'
Loomis sighed, a vast rumble of anger and dismay.
'Why bank in Morocco?' asked Craig. 'It's hard to get the money out.'
'Not for them,' answered Calvet. 'They have friends in Morocco. Powerful friends.'
He went on talking. The bank was the Credit Labonne in Tangier. There was something about British newspapers, but he didn't know what. The trouble was that the KGB had only captured one BC operator, and he'd had a weak heart. He'd died before they could find out the names they needed. The Russians were always in too great a hurry, their methods lacked refinement.
'They don't understand,' Calvet said. 'To be really thorough, one must be gentle.'
He smiled at Wetherly, the young, innocent smile, and Wetherly beamed back. Suddenly the smile faded, and Calvet began to talk in Russian. Then the words too faded, and he burst into tears. Wetherly bustled to him like a tubby ward sister, and Calvet clung to him and sobbed.
'Out,' said Wetherly. 'You've got the lot.'
In the room labeled 'Matron' Loomis and Craig sat and waited for Sir Matthew Chinn. Loomis looked at Craig, big, wary, and patient as ever, but oblivious to anything that didn't threaten him. When Calvet looked nasty, Craig was ready; when he wept, Craig ignored him.
'Credit Labonne. That's a bad one. I used to have an account there,' said Craig.
'I know,' said Loomis.
'Who's going to help me?'
'Later,' said Loomis. 'You've got to see Matt Chinn now, and I want to think about newspapers.'
'Calvet said he didn't know—'
'Then I'll have to think. I hate thinking,' said Loomis. 'Makes me hungry.'
Sir Matthew Chinn was a small Napoleonic man with a head that projected from his shoulders like an acquisitive bird's—a herring gull, say, or a jackdaw. He looked like a man who couldn't remember when he had last been wrong. Craig spent three hours with him, and at the end of it they went to the room where Grierson lay, eyes looking straight ahead, fingers busy with his piece of string. Chinn studied him intently, as if he were a fascinating but quite hopeless problem in chess, then Craig looked at him too, politely, because Chinn expected it. Grierson gave no sign that he knew they were there.
'He's quite helpless,' Sir Matthew said. 'Can't even control his bowels sometimes.' Craig said nothing.
Sir Matthew permitted himself a small flash of temper.
'Sooner stink than remember, I suppose,' he said.
Craig said: 'I'd better be off.'
'Just a minute,' said Sir Matthew. 'I want you to tell me what happened just before he got like that.'
'You know.'
'I want you to tell me.'
'We had to kill a man,' said Craig. 'He had a bodyguard—we had to kill them as well. To get at him. It wasn't easy. I needed a gun that would scare them. I got a twenty-gauge riot gun. That's a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel. The Yanks use riot guns, but not twenty-gauge ones.'
'Why not?'
'You have to get close,' said Craig. 'When you do—if I fired one at you now it would just about cut you in half.' He looked at Grierson, still fumbling his string, and said: 'I made a mistake in giving him that.'
'You did?'
'He wasn't up to it,' said Craig. 'He killed two
blokes with it, and wounded another—he lost his arm. But then Grierson went funny. I should have used that riot gun myself.'
8
'Killing's just a job to him,' said Sir Matthew. 'Like digging ditches.'
Loomis lay back in his chintz-covered chair, watching an early bee bump among a vase of roses.
'Where d'you leave him?' he asked.
'He's waiting in the car.'
'He nearly crashed today,' said Loomis.
'I know. He told me. Your nervousness amused him. He likes risks.'
