Colonel Butler's Wolf

'Three.'

'I think his real name's Ryleiev. Peter Ryleiev.'

'Four.'

'He's a Russian?'

'Aye. An agent of their KGB.'

'Five.'

'But I thought—spies—were older.'

'He's a new junior sort, Miss Epton. Specially trained for one job.'

'Six.'

'What job?'

'To join our Civil Service, I'd guess. Foreign Office most likely. He's very bright.'

'But why?'

'Seven.'

'Everybody likes to have an agent in the heart of the enemy camp, Miss Epton. The trouble is you have to find a traitor. Someone like Burgess or MacLean, or Penkovsky.'

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'What's wrong with them?'

'They're flawed men, my dear. They do good work, but it's as though they wear out more easily than patriots. The head-shrinkers could probably explain it better than I can, but it's almost as though they want to get caught in the end.'

'EIGHT!'

There was a touch of panic there, and the girl snapped it up like a spider on a fly.

'You can count until you're ruddy well blue in the face, Peter whatever-it-is. I'm not going.'

'You bitch!'

'You see, Miss Epton, what all intelligence directors dream of is getting one of their own men—not a traitor but a patriot —into the other camp. But it's almost impossible to do, because the outsiders and latecomers are always screened so carefully. And even if they pass they're never really trusted.'

'So even the ordinary candidates from the universities are screened thoroughly now. A lot more thoroughly than Peter Ryleiev's masters expected.'

He stared at Ryleiev coldly. It wasn't true, of course. But it would be true in future—the swine had seen to that!

'They thought if they could slip one of their men in between school and university. Someone they'd specially groomed for the job, someone who looked younger than he was. To take the place of the boy they'd short- listed.'

There was a pause.

'You mean he's the real Dan McLachlan's double?'

Butler met Ryleiev's eyes through the drizzle.

'No. I'd guess the resemblance was only a general one. Because no one over here had seen the boy for years, and he had no relatives here.'

'But his father?'

'A drunken blackguard in Rhodesia? They chose the McLachlans almost as much for the father as the son, Miss Epton. They needed someone they could lean on.'

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'But the real Dan, what did they do with him?'

The voice out of the mist faltered as the only likely answer hung between them in the damp air: six-foot of Rhodesian dirt somewhere in the bush, with stones piled on it to stop the hyenas from digging.

Nineteen years old. From Eden Hall to a backwoods farm in Mashonaland and a backwoods school in the Orange Free State. And then a grave in the bush.

'And now tell her about Paul Zoshchenko.'

Ryleiev grinned at him.

'You should have taken my offer, Polly. Now you have to take it on the chin about poor dear Neil—

have you forgotten about him, Polly?'

'What about Neil?'

'Miss Epton—' Butler began, tensing.

'The other half of the team, Polly, Neil was. Just another dirty little spy. My other half.' The shotgun came up an inch. 'Don't try it, Colonel!'

Butler clenched his fists impotently.

'You nearly bought it that time, Colonel. . . You see, he wasn't quite honest with us back at the cottage, Polly, the Colonel wasn't. He didn't come up here to avenge Neil. He came up here to finish the job.'