Colonel Butler's Wolf

'But the boy doesn't know who's behind it—fascists or communists. He simply thinks Smith found out more than was healthy.'

The knocking was repeated, more insistently.

'WAIT!' Audley commanded. 'So what did you tell him to do?'

'He'll pretend he's willing to take part in any mischief that's brewing. If there is, then he'll let me know at once.'

'Good. We'll let that ride then.' Audley stood up abruptly. 'All right, Masters! Come in!'

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The door banged open and the young Signals officer entered the harness room apologetically.

'Sir—I'm sorry to disturb you, but we're cutting it a bit fine if we're to get the—ah—' he looked at Butler '— ah— Colonel to Caw Gap for the exchange.'

Audley regarded the subaltern distantly. 'I've been watching the time, and we're still inside it. Is everything all right?'

'On the crag, sir? Oh, yes!' Masters began eagerly. 'Lion Two met Unicorn at Lodham Slack, and Tweedledum observed them from the rocks above—it's marked 'Green Slack' there on my map, and the ground's nicely broken, so he didn't have much trouble.'

'And he got through to Tweedledee?'

'Straight away, and he sounded jolly excited. And then Tweedledee called up Red Queen.'

'Ah! Now that's what I wanted to hear. Have you got Red Queen pinpointed now?'

'Yes, sir. He was just about where we'd estimated him, on the reverse slope. He's driving a dark green Morris 1800 Mark II S, registration SOU 8436, which means he can outrun anything we've got here. But Sergeant Steele says he hasn't tumbled to us yet—'

'Has he got the pictures?'

'We're processing the first lot now, sir. Steele reckoned there were perhaps four really good ones—'

'Don't stand there, man!' Audley cut him short. 'Go and put some ginger into 'em. I want Colonel—I want Lion One to see 'em. Go on—and then you can run him to Caw Gap. Go on with you!'

He shooshed Masters out like a governess driving a small boy, then turned back to face them with a smile of triumph on his face.

'If Steele says they're good, then they damn well are good,' he said, rubbing his hands. 'I saw a set he got in the Shankhill Road in Belfast last year—a couple of top IRA Provisionals from Dublin—taken in far worse conditions than today. Peter, you must remind me after this is over to see if we can't get Sergeant Steele for ourselves. He's wasted in the army.'

'Who are you expecting?' Butler asked.

'I'm not expecting anyone in particular. There had to be a third man somewhere at hand, I knew that—

Korbel is too low in the apparat and Protopopov hasn't been here long enough to know his way around.'

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'Adashev?'

'It could be. Logically perhaps it ought to be, because we're not supposed to know about him.'

Butler watched Audley gloomily. It was pathetic to see the fellow so happy over so little: Audley, whose reputation was founded on the popular superstition that he always knew better than anyone else what was really happening, even though he rarely bothered to tell anyone what he knew until it was all over.

Butler had always disliked him for that, more than for anything else. Now he found he disliked him somewhat less, but the discovery was not in the least reassuring: the staked goat in the clearing ought to be able to hope that the tiger-hunter in the tree above him knew what he was going to do.

'I don't like it, whoever it is,' Butler growled. 'I don't like the way they're acting—it doesn't have the right feel about it.'

'What do you mean, the feel of it?' Richardson asked. 'You are the bait, and they've swallowed you. So maybe they're a bit thick this time—'

'And maybe they're not so thick—let's suppose that for a change, for God's sake! We've laid all this on for them.' He gestured towards the door. 'Wireless trucks and mobile dark rooms, and—and bloody lions and unicorns! But how much have they laid on for us?'

'That's the whole point, surely,' Richardson persisted equably. 'They've laid something on right enough.

What they're trying to do is to make sure we don't mess it up for them. So that means they have to take a risk—you were right about that, and I was maybe a bit simple. But the object of bringing you into the act was to make them react—and now you're grumbling because that's what they've done.'

The boy was right, however galling it might be, Butler told himself. It was a familiar enough situation in all conscience: each side knew its own intentions, but was in the dark about its enemy's plans to frustrate them. So as usual they were groping in that darkness for each other.

And to that groping Richardson brought all the confidence of his youth and quickness, while he himself was weighed down by the knowledge of his own mortality and by his girls in Reigate, his immortality.

They were too often in his mind when he was working nowadays, those girls. There had been a time when he could forget them quite easily from dawn to dusk, in the knowledge that there was a stack of bright postcards ready written which were unfailingly dispatched to them at intervals from different parts of the British Isles when he was away from home. Sunny postcards and rainy postcards—this time it would be the turn of the cold, windy ones from Edinburgh. And this time on his way home he would buy them each a box of Edinburgh rock to give substance to the deceit.

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