October Men

'You mean David had the necessary information to spark him off?'

'More than that—he had enough to guess he'd been taken for a ride by someone.'

There was no need to expand on that: it would bug David Audley to hell and back to find out that—it would light his blue touchpaper as nothing else would.

Richardson turned back to Sir Frederick. 'So Little Bird sold us out to Narva—he went private on us?'

'That's not important.' Macready swung back again, the excitement rising in his voice. 'It isn't the first time something like that's happened. A little bit on the side for a rainy day, put away somewhere nice and safe abroad— it's dummy2

much safer than defecting, and Italy's a darned sight more comfortable than anywhere behind the Curtain, especially when it's your old age you're thinking of. ... And he was getting on, Hotzendorff was—this wasn't his September Song, he was well into October. . . .' Macready trailed off, head cocked on one side, half smiling to himself as though suddenly taken with that thought, his excitement of a moment earlier apparently quite forgotten. 'Where do flies go in the wintertime? Nobody knows. They just disappear—

once they're gone nobody cares where they go. Same with spies. But if they survive they've got to live somehow, just like the flies.'

Well into October, and Little Bird had been a small, unimportant creature, thought Richardson. A delivery agent for second-class mail, a pedlar of secondhand facts. Useful, but a foreigner and not irreplaceable, as his very code names seemed to suggest.

And yet a human being, with a wife and a family—maybe more of a human being than the superbright, egocentric Macready—and with human plans for his old age that didn't include risking his neck on second-class mail.

No wonder it wasn't the first time!

'What is important, Neville?' said Sir Frederick coolly recalling Macready to reality.

'Yes!' Macready snapped awake again, looking around him with a curiously distracted expression. 'You'd do better to ask David, of course.'

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'If he was here I'd do just that,' said Sir Frederick with a touch of asperity. 'As it is I must make do with you, Neville.'

Macready looked at him sharply. He was still not in the least overawed, but it seemed to Richardson that he was already regretting the brief flare of excitement which he could not now leave unexplained.

Then he shrugged. 'I can only guess, naturally.'

'Guess then.'

Macready bowed to the word of command. 'So long as you realise it is a guess—the Russians are no damn business of mine, any more than oil is David's.'

He stopped.

'Get to the point.'

'That is the point. Oil isn't David's speciality. He wouldn't understand all the angles.'

'You underrate him.'

'Oh, I know he's well informed. But technology isn't his thing. And the Russians are.'

He stopped again. He was wrapping something up, thought Richardson; but wrapping up what— The North Sea, Narva, Little Bird—the Russians?

Forecasting where the oil lay was impossible, or a ruddy miracle. But the Russians seemed to have done it.

And for Little Bird to lay his hands on a piece of knowledge as hot as that was a miracle too—but he seemed to have done dummy2

it. (It didn't matter what he had done with it afterwards—that was no miracle, certainly.)

So—two miracles.

The light dawned like a flash of morning sun through a wind-blown curtain revealing bright day outside.

'They gave it to him,' said Richardson. 'He couldn't have got it on his own, Little Bird couldn't. So the Russians gave it to him—on a plate.'

Macready raised an eyebrow in surprise. ' Someone gave it to him anyway. But that's only the half of it.'

'What's the other half?'

'I'm still only guessing—'

'For Christ's sake—' Richardson exploded.

'Okay, okay! I mean I'm trying to see it through David's eyes, that's all!' Macready sounded quite alarmed at encountering consumer hostility. 'It's there in the file—Hotzendorff never complained of any heart trouble. I know people do go out like a light sometimes, but there's usually a couple of warnings.

So it looks to me as though someone gave him the information and then snuffed him out the moment he'd passed it on so he couldn't split on them—'

'Which means—' Sir Frederick paused, '—if that is it, then it was an unofficial leak, because they'd never have needed him for an official one.'