Tomorrow's ghost

started, for a guess a sharp young man serving out his free year before Oxford, earning enough on the pumps for that Honda of his dreams?). And, most of all, a young man who would remember her now, right down to the Warren Barclaycard, if anyone came to unlock his memory. Sod it!

'Ullo there?'

It was a different voice, but only marginally different, and not what she had expected even though she had never expected Colonel Shapiro himself.

'Mr Lee?'

'Naow, 'e ain't 'ere. I'm a friend of 'is. Do I know you, darlin'?'

'No - ' Frances floundered for a moment as she watched the young man filling the tank. When he had done that, if he was the young man she took him to be, he would look under the bonnet on the pretext of checking the oil. 'No. I'm a friend of a friend of his.

'Oh ah?'

The young man replaced the hose in the pump, taking a sidelong glance at the phone box as he did so. Then he walked round to the driver's window and leaned inside to release the bonnet catch.

'You still there, darlin'?'

'Yes.'

Sod it! He was lifting the bonnet now. She had never made stupid little mistakes like this before, never taken big risks like this before ... never disobeyed direct orders like this before, or almost never. And it was making mistakes, taking risks and disobeying orders which killed people, and more often than not other people too. That had been what David himself had said; and, in a very creepy way, that had been also what Professor Crowe had told Paul Mitchell - you shouldn't have told that story. And the queer thing was that she had always known there was something malevolent about Grandmother's fairy story, even before she'd told it to Robbie that last time, by the fireside, on his last leave.

'Come on, darlin' - spit it out, get it off yer chest.'

Superstition, sod it! 'Is this line secure?'

'You arskin'? It was until I 'eard your voice, ducks!'

Superstition: if she pointed her finger at the young man with his head under the bonnet of her car, then that would solve one of her problems. But that would be too cruel...

'My friend said ... if I ever needed to get a message to him, Mr Lee would do it. And Mr Lee owes him six favours, he said. But is this line secure?'

'Hah-hargh! If you ain't blabbed - if my pools comes up this Saturday ... an' if my old auntie 'ad two of 'em she'd be half-way to being my uncle - if you 'ain't blabbed, then you pays yer money an' you takes yer choice, darlin'. And I ain't promisin' nothin', mind you. But if you was to give me a message then I might pass it on to Mr Lee if I sees 'im.

'An then it'ud be up to 'im, like - wouldn't it, if 'e owes yer friend like you say 'e does.

Right?' The young man closed the bonnet, pressing it down to engage the lock and carefully wiping his paw- marks from the cellulose with a rag from his back pocket.

Beyond him, on the edge of the forecourt, there was an old break-down truck, looking rather broken-down itself, like a sick doctor waiting for emergency calls he couldn't attend; and beyond the truck a line of dead elms with the bark peeling from their diseased trunks; and beyond the elms a great bank of rainclouds from whose advance-guards above her the first spots of rain spattered on the dirty window, as she stared out of it, blurring the scene.

He was flannelling her, of course: he was Mr Lee, because there was always a Mr Lee in the Saracen's Head during opening hours, David had said - one Mr Lee or another, it didn't matter who - to take messages for Colonel Shapiro, that was Mr Lee's job.

And she, equally, was flannelling herself, still pretending up to the very last moment and beyond it that maybe she would, and maybe she wouldn't give Mr Lee her message.

'Right, darlin' - ' He knew it too ' - speak up, then.'

'All right. This message is for Mr Lee. He must contact our mutual friend, the one to whom he owes six favours -' Frances launched herself into space; time would tell if there were rocks far below, or too little water '- who is at present in our Washington Embassy.

The contact must be indirect, but soonest.'

''Indirect, but soonest,' I got that. And whose embassy would that be, now?'

'Mr Lee will know. The message then is 'Return to U.K. immediately. I will contact you through Mr Lee'. Have you got that?'

'Ah, I got it. But I ain't makin' no promises. If -

'If nothing. Do it now. Or find another pub.' She hung up before he could contest the threat, which was empty and childish and self-defeating, but the best she could manage in mid-air at short notice.

She reached up and swept the remains of her small change into her purse. One thing was for sure, anyway: she had burnt her boats with a vengeance. If Mossad's line into the Saracen's Head public house wasn't secure - David had thought it was okay, but David wasn't infallible; and the Israelis were damn good, but they weren't infallible either - then even if the eavesdroppers didn't manage to trace the call back to this forecourt (and they'd had enough time, it had lasted far too long for safety) there'd be enough on that tape to identify her, and David too, once the right people got round to listening to it.

The plus factor was that that would take time, because it would be a plain different section evaluating the tape, who certainly wouldn't be able to place her or her embassy straightaway, the more so as their heads would be full of their own Arab-Israeli hassles; it would have to travel through the proper channels, and because money and manpower were short some of those channels were so choked with material that it might take days