Richardson was staring at him, but before he could concede the argument the door banged open again—
in his eagerness Masters had wholly forgotten his manners as well as his training.
'Three, sir!' Masters thrust the limp prints towards Audley. 'Three beauties—all side-face, but clear as a bell. There are several others, but these are the ones that count.'
Audley took the pictures carefully, studying each in silence before passing one to Richardson and another to Butler.
The face of the Red Queen was framed in unfocussed blurs —the objects through which Steele had aimed the camera— so that the effect was rather like a Victorian daguerreotype: a young-old face, plump and round still, acne-scarred, but the stubble and the curly hair was grey and the gold-framed spectacles added an old-fashioned schoolmasterish touch. A beautiful photograph—Audley was right about the Sergeant's special talent.
He looked up from the picture to Audley.
'I don't know him,' he said.
They both looked at Richardson.
'Search me.' Richardson's shoulders lifted. 'I don't know him either. It certainly isn't Adashev—he's a whole lot prettier.'
'So!' whispered Audley. 'So indeed!'
'So what?' Butler barked.
'So
'Oh, only indirectly.' He looked at them, the shadow of the smile still on his lips. 'But don't worry: you haven't lost your memories. It was out in the Middle East I knew him— knew of him, to be exact. We had a nasty little job up the Gulf, just about the time we were pulling out of Aden. The Chinese were all set to move into a place called Mina al Khasab, and we weren't in any state to do anything to stop them—
for reasons I won't go into.'
'But it didn't suit the Russians either, as it happened. Trouble they'd got elsewhere, with the Israelis on the Canal, the Egyptians screaming for missile units, without pulling us back. So—we gave it to them on a plate. And they organised what used to be called in the bad old NKVD days a 'Mobile Group'—crude, dummy2.htm
but efficient, because you can still get away with being crude on the Gulf. Or you could then, anyway.'
For a moment he was far away, and then suddenly both he and the smile came back simultaneously.
'What it means is that you and Richardson go on as scheduled. But I shall have to leave you for a time to do some checking of my own—quite unavoidable. All you have to do is to keep your ear to the ground. And make sure Daniel McLachlan doesn't go running out of your sight, too.'
'But who the hell is he?' Richardson waved his photograph despairingly.
'Alek?'
'Alek who?'
'All I knew was plain Alek. But Alek isn't a 'who'—he's a 'what'. He's what they used to call in the Mobile Groups a 'marksman'. With a rifle he's as sure as the wrath of God.'
XV
THE KNOT IN his regimental tie was far too small, Butler decided, checking his reflection in the big gilt-framed mirror in the hallway. Too small, too tight and too old-fashioned. It was a knot that pinned him in status and time as surely as did the tie itself, probably more surely since there wouldn't be many here at Castleshields who would recognise the magenta and yellow stripes of the 143rd.
He worried the knot with a few savage little tugs. It was no use, of course: the tie was old and this was the only way it permitted itself to be tied now. And in any case it didn't matter, for the face above it was equally old- fashioned and regimental. Only the eyes mocked and betrayed the face's brutality, reminding him of the sole virtues his old grandma had found in it: 'Ah'll say this f t' little lad—'is years be close to
'is 'ead an' 'e's got 'is mother's eyen . . .'
He abandoned the tie in disgust and continued towards the noise of the common room. This, it seemed, was the first convivial hour of the day, the beginning of a carefully graduated loosening of tongues and nerves designed to prepare these young mental athletes for record-breaking assaults on the summer's exam papers. Modern educationists would probably condemn it, but Gracey and Hobson were unashamedly old-fashioned, and they had this system of theirs all worked out and laid on, despite the superficial casualness of the place.
He paused beside the open window at the end of the passage, outside the common room door. The volume of noise coming through indicated that the tea was doing its job—and from the noise coming from the lawn outside the game of croquet there fulfilled much the same function.
dummy2.htm
It was a fiercely played game, judging by the powerful swing of the player directly in front of the window—more a golf stroke than a croquet tap; players and onlookers scattered and the striker shook the fair hair out of his eyes and waved his mallet in triumph.
McLachlan.
Instantly Butler craned his neck out of the window to take in the whole setting of the game.
The grey sky still had a wind-driven look about it, but in the protection of the great L-shaped house with the fir tree plantation on its third side the croquet lawn seemed to draw the last heat from the westering sun. Away to the south the land fell away for a mile or more and he could glimpse the smooth, dull expanse of the lake. Beyond and above lay the rolling skyline of the crags; here they were north of the wall, in the ancient no-man's-land of the Picts.
'It's all right, Colonel. I've got my eye on him,' a quiet voice murmured. For a moment a shadow blocked out the sun and then Richardson sauntered past along the terrace, a tea cup nursed to his chest.
