October Men

would clear the Italian lines, so would the name Panin clear the Russian. And night or day, the Kremlin switchboard would know where to put the call.

'So the answer is—yes, Peter, I think I can call this spirit dummy2

from the deep. I think he'll talk to me.'

That was the final element in the chain of reasoning: not only did Audley know Panin personally, but he judged himself to be of sufficient interest for the Russian's curiosity to be aroused. And judged correctly, thought Richardson, wryly remembering the flurry in the department dovecote at his unscheduled disappearance. David Audley was too unpredictable to ignore!

Audley was looking at him rather apologetically, though, as though that thought was catching.

'I'm afraid I may have made trouble for you, young Peter.'

Understatement of the year: what this private call to Moscow would do to Sir Frederick's blood pressure, never mind Fatso Latimer's mischief-making tendencies, only God Almighty could compute. Not to mention Peter Richardson's career. It would be back to the 39th Assault Engineers on Salisbury Plain most likely.

But there was Faith Audley to think of ... and maybe Peter Richardson had learnt a thing or two himself these twenty-four hours.

'Think nothing of it, David. My main brief was to bring you back in one piece. And they did tell me to be nice to your hosts, so maybe we can blame the General—'

Richardson stopped as a less charitable thought struck him.

There was in truth nothing he could do now, and Audley not only knew it, but had intended it to be that way from the dummy2

start. First he had tried to get free and then he had struck a bargain with the General. But from the moment Faith had been kidnapped he had had this private deal with Moscow in his mind as being the only way he could track down Bastard Ruelle.

'Yes . . .' Audley considered the lie with a professional's detachment, 'we might confuse the issue that way, at the least.'

'But what I don't see still is what you've got to trade with Panin, David. If the KGB got Little Bird then they must have got his contact, darn it—and as soon as Rat face has briefed the General he'll realise that too.'

'If I know Raffaele Montuori that's just what he won't believe, Peter,' Audley shook his head knowingly. 'You're being gullible now—you're believing what doesn't make good sense.'

'I'm believing the ruddy facts, man. That's all.'

'The facts? But there aren't many of those—and that's a fact to start with.'

'Little Bird's dead. That's one you can't argue with.'

'Peter, it's the key fact. Everything else is powered by it.

Without it there's nothing—nothing at all.'

'Sure—that's what convinced Narva, I take that point.'

'But you're not taking it half far enough. Because why the devil should the KGB kill him and then fake it up as a heart attack—on their own patch? And if they picked up his dummy2

contact, since when have they changed their policy on spy trials? Come to that, why didn't they pick up his other contacts—our contacts?'

Richardson remembered belatedly what Macready had concluded, which he had somehow forgotten: someone gave him the injormation, and then snuffed him out the moment he'd passed it on so he couldn't split on them. . . .

But—

'And you might ask how the KGB let his family get out too, Peter. I don't care how efficient Westphal is—they had the time to get her under surveillance first. And Westphal's men wouldn't have stirred a finger then—they'd smell an ambush a mile off, they're experts at it.'

'But, David—Narva said—'

'Phooey to what Narva said. Narva was set up, just as Little Bird was set up.'

'Set up for what, for God's sake? Why should they be set up?'

Richardson tried not to let his impatience show. 'You're not going to tell me there's no oil in the North Sea, because there's a ruddy lake of the stuff.'

'But has it ever occurred to you, my lad, why Narva never received that final report on it—the one that really counted?'

'Because the KGB got it first, of course.'

'And then staged a false heart attack and let everyone else go home?' Audley shook his head. 'That just doesn't wash, I tell you.'

dummy2

'Then what does?'

Audley stared at him over his spectacles for a moment, like an Oxford professor with a hitherto bright pupil suddenly afflicted with culpable intellectual blindness.

'Do you recall the Garbo network during the last war, Peter?'

he said.

The professorial look was too much—after so much.