'Peter, I never expected them to know. And even if they had, it wouldn't help Faith.'
'Then why did you come here?'
'Simply to make sure that I had Hotzendorff figured out properly. Only Narva could tell me that.'
'Okay!' Richardson's irritation splashed over. 'So what are we going to do to save her?'
'We're not going to lose our heads—we're going to use them.'
Audley's voice tightened. 'How badly do you want the Bastard, General?'
'Badly. I've waited a long time for him.'
'They wouldn't let you have him?'
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'The Party?' The General's lip curled. 'Oh, they kicked him out, but they've kept him in view. Times have been known to change, Dr. Audley.'
'But now—things may be different?'
'They may be. But that will not save your wife, Dr. Audley.'
The General eyed Audley closely. 'I assume that you have a plan of action?'
'It depends very much on your help.'
The General nodded slowly. 'I can afford to wait a little longer— perhaps.'
Audley gave the General an appraising look, as though calculating the odds.
'No state security is involved,' went on the General smoothly. 'So go on, Dr. Audley—what do you propose to do?'
Audley looked at them both.
'Why, if you're going to help me—which I admit I'd hardly hoped for—we can go on with my original plan.'
'Which was—?'
'So far I've only lied and bullied and cheated. Now it's time to start making dirty deals.'
'With whom?'
For the first time, the very first time since they had met again, Audley smiled. But it was not a goodwill smile and the eyes behind the spectacles were not bright with anything dummy2
remotely like happiness. Richardson found himself hoping that nobody ever had cause to smile at him—or about him—
like this. If tigers smiled, as the poets alleged, then this was how they did it.
'Someone who'll know just how to find where Ruelle's gone to earth, General.'
Montuori stared at him, stone-faced.
'You mean the Party?'
'They'd know his bolt-holes—you said yourself they've kept an eye on him.'
'But I didn't say they'd give him up—not to me. They might not stand in my way any more, but they wouldn't help me, and they'd never let me lean on them. They wouldn't like the precedent.'
'I'm sure they wouldn't. But I wasn't thinking of asking you to lean on anyone—and I'm not making the deal with them at all. After all, they don't really want anything that we've got—'
A dirty deal . . . and a dirty deal not with the Italian Communist Party: premonition was like a punch in the gut.
But would David really go so far?
'—but Moscow does.'
David would.
'There's a man I know in the Kremlin—Nikolai Andrievich Panin. I think he might be persuaded to help us, if the price was right.'
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Richardson managed to control his impatience until the door had closed on the Italians, but only just. 'Will he come?'
'Panin?' The tiger's grin returned. ' 'I can call spirits from the vasty deep'—that's always the million-dollar question, Peter—but will they come when I do call for them?'
'Well, will he?'
'Not in person. But of course he doesn't need to—and we don't need him to. Just a word from Comrade Professor Panin is what we want. A word from him would be quite enough to start things moving.'
That was certainly true enough. Even a whisper from the very loftiest pinnacles of the Kremlin, which was where Panin now operated, would gather strength as it echoed downwards, like the small fatal sound on an avalanche slope.
The trick was to stay clear of the disaster area thus created.
'They'll get through to him, anyway. No one'll dare stop a call like that.'
Richardson nodded. Again that was well calculated. By selecting someone so far up the official ladder, Audley had brushed away the danger that some officious bureaucrat would try to be awkward. Just as the name Montuori
