'I thought so. And I thought you'd be in the know. Now, just one more thing.'
Audley scowled at him. 'No more things, Jake. I've given you classified information. All you've given me is what's common knowledge in the bazaar, it seems.'
Jake guffawed. 'That's nothing more than the truth, my friend. I have to admit it: I've done you down.'
Then he stopped quite suddenly, and became almost serious. He wagged his finger at Audley.
'But you knew it was common knowledge and you still paid up, you perfidious Englishman. You knew I'd have to make amends.'
He waved his hands and squinted down his nose. This was his special Jewish character role, which hadn't changed since he'd hammed Shylock in a monstrous college production years before.
'I acknowledge the debt. Take your pound of flesh!'
'Stop fooling, Jake. How do you know it's common knowledge?'
'Joe Bamm called me from Berlin. He hadn't got me anything more, but his thumbs were twitching. He said he'd just got that little G Tower story from another source of his. He said that once could be luck, but twice was more than coincidence. Then he came back with Panin's Tuesday booking to London. I tried to phone you then, but you were off on some dirty weekend with your secretary.'
Audley winced. So the G Tower story was planted too. He remembered now how Stocker had spoken about G Tower as though he had heard about it independently of Audley's source.
They'd all been so pleased about it they hadn't bothered to question dummy4
it. A lovely, succulent carrot for the donkeys!
'The trouble is that's the lot, David. I haven't got one damn thing to add to your little store of knowledge. I haven't got a clue about what dear old Panin's up to, not a clue.'
'Is there anything cooking in Russia at the moment?'
'Search me! Except that there's always something cooking there.
Hawks and doves, old Marxist-Leninists and new thugs, Red Army and the KGB, Stalinists, Maoists — not many of them now–
Slavophiles, liberals, peasants. Davey boy, they can play their little games in more ways than I can make love. And they call it the Soviet Union! I tell you, Barry Goldwater's got more in common with Sammy Davis than some of those characters have with each other.'
He paused for breath. 'Why don't you ask your own Kremlinologists? Latimer's a sharp lad, they tell me. Or are you off on a do-it-yourself spree?'
Audley felt his early morning courage slipping. It all came down to a matter of time, and time was what he hadn't got. Panin had seen to that.
'Tell you what I'll do, David, seeing that I owe you something.
There's a real nice American I know–Howard Morris–do you know him?'
Audley nodded. Howard was a refugee from Nixon's America, a bright hope in the days of the much-maligned Lyndon Johnson who now held a nebulous post at Grosvenor Square.
'Of course you do! I forgot you were persona gratissima there since dummy4
the Seven Days. Well, Howard owes me a fat favour and I'm sure he won't mind me passing it on to you. He probably trusts you more than he trusts me, anyway. You're both part of the world-wide Anglo-Saxon conspiracy against the lesser breeds like me and Nasser.'
Shapiro consulted a little dog-eared address book, and then dialled a number on the shiny telephone.
He put his hand over the mouthpiece.
'You know Howard's only real claim to fame? Hullo there–could I have a word with Howard Morris . . . ? He isn't? No matter. I'll try again later.'
He replaced the receiver, consulted the little address book again and dialled another number.
'When he was in Korea he was one of the select band of brothers who accidentally bombed the main Russian base outside Vladivostock. Hullo! Is Howard Morris being overcharged at your bar . . . ? Yes, it's me . . . He is? Well tell him I've come to collect on my last loan. Thanks . . . Where was I? Yes, they bombed the living daylights out of it –thought they were still over North Korea.
And the Russkis never said a word. They thought it was deliberate.'
Jake's thesaurus of cautionary scandal was unsurpassed on either side of the Atlantic.
'And the moral of the story–or one of the morals–is that the burglar is in a poor position to complain about burglary. I commend that thought to you, David–Hullo, Howard, old friend . . . You are . . . ?
So am I! Look, Howard, I have our mutual friend, David Audley, dummy4
with me. I know you're busy Kremlin-watching these days. I'd count it a favour if you'd lend an ear to him for a minute or two–a real favour . . . You will–splendid!'
He passed the beery receiver to Audley. 'He's all yours. Make the most of him.'
'Hullo, Howard.' Audley was uneasily conscious that he was too ignorant even to ask the right questions, never mind understand the answers.
'Hi, David. I know your job forces you to consort with that horse-thief Shapiro, but don't tell me you're both moving into my territory.'
