Our man in Camelot

Audley raised a hand. 'Just look at the pictures, Mrs Sheldon. We'll get to the captions in due time.'

Another picture. This time Mosby was ready for anything, but the black face staring over his shoulder was totally new to him.

There followed more black faces, snapped at a variety of angles, and judging from the background detail Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

with a telescopic lens. By the time they reached Calvin Merriwether's portrayal of sullen emptiness the fact was pretty well established that to Captain and Mrs Mosby Sheldon, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, all coloured men looked alike; which the British could hardly quarrel with, since they obviously had had the same difficulty.

The hopeful sign about all the pictures—and about Harry's too—was that they were taken from life, unlike the Pennebaker shot. But the deduction from that was that the British were on to the pair of them, even if they hadn't yet established any connection with their captives.

Audley offered him another picture. 'Another nasty one.'

It was of another dead face—not so horrible as that of the airman, but with the same lifeless stare… yet quite unlike anything he had so far been shown: the wrinkled features of old age beneath an untidy halo of white hair—

Oh, God! Mosby thought with sickening certainty, recalling Merriwether's admiration. ' He's a great old guy' .

James Barkham, old-fashioned bookseller.

'I'm sure I never met him,' said Shirley firmly.

Mosby shook his head. 'He's new to me too.'

Audley nodded. 'Only two more.'

The permutations of what he had said earlier raced through Mosby's brain. Four killed—they had seen four dead men already. Maybe seven—but they had already seen two possibles, and another two would make eight. So it didn't add up.

He gazed into the face of Tall and Thin. Sickeningly, it bore the same smile as it had done in its last minute of life in St Swithun's Churchyard a few hours earlier.

'No,' he said.

Shirley looked. 'Same here—no.'

And then Thickset, his own victim.

He was calm now. The stakes were altogether too high for panic.

'No. Never seen him before either. Sorry.' He watched Audley as he passed the photo to Shirley. 'I guess we've not helped very much.'

'I didn't expect miracles.'

'Were they all—have they all been killed?'

Audley shook his head. 'Not all. You've seen four dead men—you'll have worked out which they were, of course. Plus two missing and two killers.'

'Killers?' Mosby set his teeth. 'Murderers?'

'The presumption is overwhelming, yes.'

Mosby pointed to the picture in Shirley's hand. 'You mean —that guy and the other one?'

'No. Those are two of our men who haven't reported in. The killers are your comrade Captain Finsterwald and his coloured associate, whom we haven't yet identified.'

Mosby gaped at him. 'Harry Finsterwald? You can't be serious!'

'Why not, Captain Sheldon?' asked Frances Fitzgibbon.

Mosby stared at her. 'Harry Finsterwald? Hell—he's in Base Public Relations, not Murder Incorporated.

He's just a dumb son-of-a-bitch with an expensive smile.'

'That's right.' Shirley nodded. 'He maybe fancies himself as a lady-killer—at the Cobra Squadron Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Fourth of July party I had to fight him off in the parking lot—'

'You never told me that,' said Mosby hotly.

'Honey, I don't tell you every time someone gets fresh with me. You'd only get your teeth knocked in.'

'Harry Finsterwald—' Audley broke in '—is not Harry Finsterwald.'

'Huh?' Mosby and Shirley turned towards him simultaneously.

'His name is Harry Feiner,' said Frances Fitzgibbon. 'And he's a veteran CIA operative—Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, all the way down to Singapore. Counter-insurgency expert, Special Operations Unit commander, counter- intelligence strongarm man—you name it, he's been it. We know him from Singapore, no mistake.'

'Though we didn't know he was here in Britain until yesterday, apparently,' said Audley, looking at Roskill.

'Well, he's not on the embassy list, for heaven's sake,' said Roskill defensively. 'And they've got nearly ninety on it already, it's one of the biggest single overseas posts. We just can't keep track of all the extras they've brought in outside London, we just don't have the manpower—at least, not to watch our own bloody allies.'