October Men

'Not you, Peter—not you.' Audley shook his head quickly.

'They couldn't trust me—just this once—and they've blown it because of that, blown it sky high.'

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'It wasn't like that at all—' Richardson cut in desperately '—

nobody blew it for you. There was a leak in the department, in the Reading Room where you had that talk with Macready.'

'A leak?' Audley said incredulously.

'The Librarian—Hemingway. We traced his contact just before I flew out—'

'The same old story—you've heard it all before.' Cox had sounded bored. 'He lived in Orpington—stock-broker belt—

and he wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Only the Joneses in Orpington were too rich for his blood, with his army pension and what he was paid by your lot. You're not exactly good payers, are you? But his neighbours thought he was a senior civil servant and he had to live up to what he'd let them think. He was easy meat, Captain Richardson. Easy for an old hand like Peter Korbel—'

'Peter Korbel? Good God—I thought we'd expelled him with Protopopov and the Moscow Narodny Bank man. Months ago!' Audley's surprise was unconcealed.

Richardson grimaced. Their reactions had been identical.

'Protopopov and Adashev went, but we let Korbel stay on for a bit.' Over the phone Cox hadn't even the grace to sound apologetic. 'He wasn't considered dangerous enough—one of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, Captain. Besides, dummy2

there's going to be a big clear-out in a couple of months' time if the Cabinet agrees. We'd got him on that list. We were rather hoping the Russians would save us the trouble, actually—he's long overdue for retirement. Must be all of sixty. . . .'

'Retirement is right!' Audley snarled. 'But you've picked him up now—and Hemingway, I take it?'

'Hemingway's dead.' Richardson decided that it was not the time to elaborate on the circumstances of the Librarian's death. Audley had quite enough to worry about as it was.

'And Korbel?'

'Gone—vanished.'

Richardson waited for Audley to swear again, but the big man only stared at him in silence for a few seconds and then turned away once more, his self-discipline clamped back tight again.

'But listen, David—' Richardson felt aggrieved that Audley had still managed to ask all the questions instead of answering them—and that he still seemed set on playing both ends against the middle '—there's still a damn good chance the Russians haven't been able to put two and two together.

Maybe Hemingway didn't hear everything. After Ostia. . . .'

The affray in Ostia was the awkward piece in the pattern, the very example of bloody public scandal which men on both sides risked their skins to avoid. It could only have happened dummy2

because the Italian PS men and the Communist agents who were dogging Audley's footsteps had collided head-on and had panicked—that was Boselli's explanation, and if Korbel had been unable to warn his Italian opposite number about Hemingway's death it was an explanation that made sense.

But, even more significantly, the presence of those incompetent Reds surely meant that the opposition didn't yet know what Audley was up to.

That thought roused another one, much closer to home: the opposition weren't the only ones in the dark about Audley's actions there—

'Just what the hell were you doing in Ostia this morning?'

Audley didn't reply. He didn't even appear to hear the question, but seemed totally abstracted in the great sweep of land and sea.

'For Christ's sake, David!' Richardson's sorely-tried cool finally slipped. Only a few hours ago he'd fixed a date with little Bernadette O'Connell of the Dublin Provisional to meet in Mooney's bar next day and eat at Donovan's place in Balbriggan and end the evening strictly non-politically in her flat off Clanbrassil Street. She'd be waiting for him now, her passionate Anglo-Italian boyfriend with his sales list of Belgian sniperscopes and American rocket launchers that would never see the soft light of Irish day.

'David—there have been some of your bloody stupid fornicating meddling idiots who've stuck out their bloody stupid fornicating necks for you this last twelve hours, dummy2

including me for one. If you clam up now the Italians'll turn nasty, and then we've really had it.'

Audley met the appeal stone-faced. 'If I don't get out of here smartly, Peter, I agree with you: we've all had it. So just get me out.'

'Man—you're crazy!' Richardson stared at Audley in bewilderment at his obtuseness. 'I tell you for the last time, it's impossible—not after Ostia. And I tell you this too, David: I damn well wouldn't do it now if it was. Either you work with me and little Ratface or you rot here until Montuori decides what to do with you. It's shit or bust this time.'

Audley blinked. One corner of his mouth dropped and twitched, though whether in anger or despair Richardson could not tell. He had never before seen quite this look on this face.

'I'm sorry, David. But that's the way it is.'

'Sorry?' Anger and despair, and bitterness too. 'Yes, Peter, I think you very well may be.'

Richardson accepted the bitterness with bitterness of his own at Audley's lack of understanding that he was