The Labyrinth Makers

have taxied past here often enough.'

'That's just it, Hugh–only he knew better than most, because he used to walk down this way to collect things he'd had dumped in a hut just down there. Tierney said he had an excuse for coming. I think that just might have been an innocent interest in archaeology.'

'By God, but he was damned lucky in his timing,' grunted Butler.

The loot–and then the hole just at the right moment!'

But which really came first? Audley wondered. Was the idea of hiding the treasure in the trench the sudden flash of inspiration he had originally imagined? Or was the existence of that trench the fatal knowledge which tempted Steerforth into doing what would otherwise have been impossible?

'Lucky?' Roskill shook his head in admiration. 'Maybe he had serendipity too. But I think he was a very smart operator.

Whichever way you look at it, it was a bloody marvellous bit of improvisation–no wonder old Ellis thought the world of him!'

dummy4

Like Audley, Roskill was halfway towards giving in to John Steerforth, though perhaps for a different reason. Where Roskill was drawn to the man's audacity, possibly as a kindred spirit, Audley warmed to the knowledge that Steerforth had enjoyed the irony of it: the greatest archaeological loot in history, twice plundered already, planted in another archaeologist's hole in the ground! He need never be ashamed of his future father-in-law . . .

'He was a clever blighter, no doubt about that,' conceded Butler.

'But he'd have done better to have left well alone in the end. He just made work for us.'

He peeled off his donkey-jacket. 'And we're just giving it all back to the Russians, more's the pity.'

'. . . Who are even now coming to collect,' Roskill added, staring past Audley.

Audley swung round to follow his gaze. Panin had said that his official car would be down early, and here it was, creeping directly across the airfield like a black beetle, the sound of its engine drowned by the more distant, but noiser tractor. He hadn't wasted much time.

Butler bent down and picked up one of the spades.

'Come on, then, Hugh,' he said grimly. 'Let's not keep our masters waiting.'

The black car halted alongside the Land-Rover and a stocky man who had been sitting beside the driver got out and hurried deferentially to open the rear door. Panin eased himself out and to Audley's consternation Faith followed him. That had not been in dummy4

the plan, but there was no helping it now.

'Good morning, Dr Audley.' Panin's voice was as flat and featureless as the airfield. 'I am sorry to have missed you earlier; I did not know that you were going to start so early. This is Mr Sheremetev from our embassy.'

The chunky man, who must have been dragged from his bed even earlier than Audley, nodded his head sharply and twisted his lips in a brief diplomatic smile.

'And I took the liberty of bringing Miss Steerforth with me.'

'I'm sorry, David,' Faith broke in. 'I know you said that there probably wouldn't be any action until this afternoon, but I couldn't bear to hang around the hotel by myself. And Professor Panin was coming up here.'

There was a muffled thump as Butler drove his spade into a square of grass which Roskill had roughly shaved with a small sickle. He lifted a segment of turf and placed it neatly to one side.

'And it seems that we were both wise not to delay, Miss Steerforth,'

observed Panin. 'Is this the place, Dr Audley?'

'Our detecting device has picked up something just here, Professor.

We were lucky to pick it up so quickly.'

Sheremetev gestured around him. 'Is it not rather a–a public place for such a purpose?'

'There were archaeologists excavating here at the time, Mr Sheremetev. They were just filling in a trench at this place.'

He met Panin's stare, only to be disconcerted by its lack of expression. Or was it unvarying intensity about those eyes which dummy4

was disconcerting? His first impression had been one of anticlimax the night before. But the man's personality wasn't negative–

it was simply shuttered.

And now Panin was nodding in agreement with him.

'Public, but not obvious–that is good reasoning, Dr Audley. And it was good reasoning in the first instance, too: the classic doctrine of the hiding place.' He considered Faith reflectively. 'Young airmen in my experience were not so devious, but this man we underrated.'

He walked over to where Roskill and Butler were digging behind a small rampart of turves. Neither of them took any notice of him, and he eventually continued past them up the slope of the nearest mound. Sheremetev followed obediently, as though linked to him by some invisible towline.

'I think he's rather a sweetie, really,' whispered Faith. 'He's got beautiful manners and he was charming last evening.'

After that awkward moment of encounter, the man had been courteous enough in a solemn way. The charm, however, was an illusion created by her own nervousness and a mixture of gin and claret drunk too quickly.

'As a matter of fact he's rather like you, David.' Faith grinned wickedly at the discomposure he wasn't quick