Colonel Butler's Wolf

The KGB agents in the States reported back that it was hopeless to try anything with them. It seems the activists were either too darned intelligent or too active to toe their sort of line.'

'We know this for a fact?'

'For a fact we know it. The CIA had a priority instruction to watch for it, and the moment they spotted the KGB's men on the campuses they went to work in a big way—right the way back to their own Kremlin cell. And the result was a big zero—the right wing in the CIA would have liked to have found just the opposite, but they didn't. You see, what the KGB found was loads of trouble for the American establishment, but it wasn't trouble they could either direct or control. And what's more, it frightened them.'

'It frightened them?'

'I have that straight from the horse's mouth—from my old buddy Howard Morris, in the State Department security. What Sukhanov, the KGB top man over there, told Andropov was that it was a damn dangerous disease, and the sooner the Yanks stamped on it the better for everyone.'

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Butler stared at the big man, and then past him at the wall of baled hay at his back. He had seen the symptoms of this dreadful disease, which apparently struck down healthy little communists and coddled capitalist toddlers alike, scrawled on the ancient stones of Oxford: Beat the system— Smile and Make love, not war. For all his ambition, clever Dan McLachlan had it—and maybe the man who called himself Smith had died for it. And back in his Reigate terrace home there were three little girls incubating it for sure.

And the name of the disease was Youth.

If the societies of the West were still fundamentally healthy, they wouldn't die of it; they would slowly change and grow stronger because of it. Maybe they would even grow up!

But Sukhanov's society, which relied on such quack remedies as tanks and cattle trucks and censorship, would die of it sooner or later, if only the West could hold on.

Except—the disquiet twisted inside Butler—except if the KGB had failed in Britain as it had failed in the States, what was he doing here with Audley?

He focussed on Audley again.

'So what's happened here to change the pattern?' he growled. 'Is Sir Geoffrey Hobson really on to something after all?'

Audley shook his head and spread his big hands in a gesture of near despair. 'Up until a few days ago I'd have said almost certainly not. There are a few suspicious cases, but not enough to add up to a conspiracy. What we've found this year adds up substantially to what the Americans found —and much the same goes for the French too apparently: from the KGB's point of view the whole thing's been a flop

— and it never was more than a reconnaissance . . .'

'But now?'

'But now—I don't know, Butler. I really don't know. Because we've got a whole houseful of the best young brains from King's and Cumbria up at Castleshields and there's something damned odd cooking up there.'

XIV

'... THE DEVIL OF it is, Jack, that just when we need it most we haven't got anyone of our own in the house at student level. Peter's not really in with them—he's been off on his own too much. And when it comes to it they don't really trust me, of course.'

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That might be the truth of it. Or it might be that Audley was still not quite desperate enough to compromise either himself or Richardson. There was no way of telling.

'You've no idea at all what they might be up to?'

Audley spread his hands. 'If it's a demo of some kind there are only two places up here—there's the satellite tracking station at Pike Edge and the missile range on the coast. But they'd need to hire transport to get to them. They haven't got enough of their own.'

'Are those the sort of places they'd be likely to demonstrate at?'

'Not this bright lot, I shouldn't have thought. The Americans have been helping us at Pike Edge, it's true, so we've had the usual crop of rumours. But it isn't like Fylingdales, and these boys would know it.'

'And the missile range?'

'Only very short range stuff—anti-aircraft and antisubmarine. It's the better bet of the two though.'

'Why?'

'Well, it's a long shot, but there has been a rumour or two that the South Africans are interested in some of the weaponry there.'

'I like the sound of that.'

'It isn't true, that's the trouble. And the Russians know it, which is more to the point.'

'Damn the Russians! If they want to compromise these lads it doesn't matter whether it's claptrap or not

—it might be better if it was, but it doesn't matter either way. South Africa's the one thing all the young idiots can be led by the nose on.'

Audley blinked and frowned. 'It still doesn't fit. These boys aren't fools to be led by rumours.' He paused. 'But the real objection isn't that at all, to my mind.'

'What is, then?'

Audley sighed and shook his head. 'It's simply that I agree with you. This thing of Hobson's—it's a bloody intelligent project, but it just isn't the sort of ploy that would appeal to the Russians. Industrial sabotage, or trade union infiltration, yes. But there's evidence there, and until Smith phoned up Hobson there wasn't a shred of real evidence we'd picked up at Cumbria. Yet now there seems to be, and there's something that smells all wrong somewhere.'

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