The Old Vengeful

'Oh yes.' He surfaced from his thoughts. 'But I've got a much more curious tale for you now. And one that'll interest you much more, too . . . Number Thirteen, you might say.'

'Number—Thirteen? But there wasn't a thirteenth Vengeful

—'

'Not a British one. But there is a Russian one.' He studied her, no longer smiling, as though the thoughts from which he had surfaced had sobered him.

'A Russian ship, Paul?' For a moment the jolly boat's crew became insignificant.

'No, not exactly. Not a ship, that is.' He stopped, and Elizabeth sensed an unwillingness in him which hadn't been there before.

'Not a ship? What's the matter, Paul?'

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'Nothing.' He shook his head. 'If David wants you to know, then I must assume it's all right. . . But it's a big secret, Elizabeth. And big secrets are heavy burdens to carry—and dangerous too.'

'But not here, you said.' The change in him made her feel uneasy.

'No—not here—of course!' He smiled suddenly, shrugging off his own doubts. ' Not a ship . . . more like an idea. The Russians have these ideas, you know—bright ideas or nasty ideas, according to taste, and it's our job to see them off...

like in that verse of the National Anthem that we never sing:

'Frustrate their knavish tricks—Confound their po-li-tics'.'

'The Russians, you mean?'

'The Russians among others. But them at this moment, for you and me, trying to do us down.' The last of the momentary cloud had lifted from him. 'It's too easy, really—

we're too easy—there are a million ways of taking us to the cleaners . . . even you can think of examples, Elizabeth—from Klaus Fuchs and the Burgess and Maclean lot—all the bad boys and poor fools from Cambridge . . . before my time, naturally . . . right down to the professionals of today, with all their gadgets—and the Judas goats leading what they call 'the useful fools' up the garden path to the knackers' yard—the brave sons of Ireland in the IRA and the honest pacifists in CND . . . Christ! I sometimes wish I was working for the KGB

—we make it so easy for them . . . But no matter! The point is that their knavish tricks don't happen by accident and dummy3

haphazardly—obviously. They're planned, you see.

Obviously.'

'Paul—'

'But bear with me, Elizabeth, because there's a point behind that point. . . Which is how they're planned—and I don't mean the routine stuff, like updating the NATO order- of-battle and so on, which has to go on all the time, but the really clever stuff—I mean the one-off high-grade operations.' He paused. 'Because they have these experts—

dozens of them—who make a special study of us, and receive all the intelligence digests appropriate to their specialisations. And they're expected to come up with ideas for development, most of which get turned down, but some of which go on to the expert-experts—top brass with brains and field experience. And they pick and choose from the short list, and run feasibility studies on their preferences.

And if an idea comes up alpha-plus in their book it gets what they call 'Project Status', and then it goes on up to the real top brass—the KGB politicals, who reckon to know which way the wind is blowing in the Kremlin as well as in the West. And they put a tick or a cross beside each project. . .

and the crosses are sent back down the line marked 'Must do better', or something . . . But the ticked ones— they cease to be projects and become operations. And once a project is given 'Operational Status' it gets a code- name and goes off to the operational planners—and finally to the poor bastards who have to do the work, like our friend Novikov. Are you dummy3

still with me so far, Elizabeth?'

'Yes.'

'It isn't difficult, I agree. And I suppose we do much the same thing, only on a much smaller scale due to our poverty.'

She frowned at him. 'And this is what you do?'

'Lord, no! I'm in Crime Prevention, not Burglary—I'm in the Knavish Tricks Frustration Department, Elizabeth. It's their projects which are my operations.'

Elizabeth realised that she had once more been slow on the uptake, like any tiro, and Paul Mitchell was treating her more gently than she deserved. 'Yes . . . I'm sorry, Paul. . . And now what you're going to tell me is that there's a Russian operation which is codenamed 'Vengeful'—is that it?'

His face was a picture. 'No . . . no, that's not quite it. Because if that was the case we wouldn't be interested in any Vengeful, from Number One to infinity—and you'd be sitting safe at home in front of the telly now, Elizabeth.'

She had been slow again somehow—slow to the point of stupidity, although she couldn't see where this time. And he was smiling at her again too; but not his insincere smile, which always revealed a hint of teeth between his lips, but a genuine closed-mouth smile which creased his cheeks.

'This one's the pay-off, Elizabeth—the difference between Project Status and Operational Status . . . All you