The Old Vengeful

unforgiving mouth.

But then the face round the mouth turned towards her, and it was her turn for the next broadside.

For what we are about to receive—that was the way they waited for it in the old navy—

' Nikki. . .' Paul cut into the instant of silence before the crash of the coup-de-grace '. . . I've taken about as much of this nonsense as old acquaintance allows, for Hameau Ridge's sake. But now I'm getting close to pulling rank on you.'

'Rank?' The challenge turned her back to him. 'What rank, Paul?'

'Try me and find out.' Paul regarded her obstinately. 'If you're not going to tell us what's happening then arrest us or let us go. But no more questions.'

But this wouldn't do, decided Elizabeth: he had picked up her silent distress signal, but was hazarding his own safety in order to save her. And she wasn't going to be humiliated like that by either of them.

'It's all right, Paul.' Her confidence flooded back with the sound of her own voice: if Elizabeth Loftus could viva voce First Class Honours from the borderline against two hostile examiners, what could this French bitch do that could dummy3

frighten her? 'If Mademoiselle MacMahon wants to ask me anything, she's welcome. I don't have anything to hide.'

The green eyes came back to her, uncompromising but also at least no longer so dismissive. And that in itself pumped more adrenalin: it was better to be scared than to be nothing, she discovered to her surprise.

And get in first signalled the adrenalin—

'After all, it's my fault that Dr Mitchell and Mr Aske are here, Mademoiselle.' It was no different from sighting the enemy's quarter-deck in the v-notch of the carronade, and then pulling the lanyard.

'My father commanded Vengeful, and I asked Dr Mitchell to finish his book.'

It pleased her to drop the the from Vengeful, as Father always insisted, and she was the more rewarded by the very slightest suggestion of doubt in those green eyes.

'I wasn't going to ask you any questions, Miss Loftus, as a matter of fact... I thought it just possible that you might not know what was happening to you.' The doubt faded. 'But now I think I may have been wrong.'

Bluff. Or, if not bluff, what could they do to her?

'Wrong about what, Mademoiselle?'

Aske sat up suddenly, as though stung. ' Not your drivers, Miss MacMahon? Not your drivers?' He looked quickly at Paul, then back at the Frenchwoman. 'Whose drivers, then?'

'Good question, Humphrey!' said Paul. 'Whose drivers, if dummy3

not theirs? And the right question too, because it gives us our answer in one.'

'Answer to what?'

'All this. The VIP treatment!' Paul nodded. 'Mademoiselle MacMahon's newest masters don't give a stuff for the British, but they don't want any unscheduled trouble with their Russian friends at the moment, not with all the deals they've got going.'

'With the Russians?' Aske repeated the words incredulously.

'What the devil have the Russians got to do with what we've been doing?'

'I can't imagine. But if I had to guess ... I'd say that we're all the victims of ... a misunderstanding, shall we say?' Paul looked at Nikki MacMahon hopefully. 'How about that?'

'A misunderstanding?' She received his olive branch as though it had nettles entwined in it.

'That's right. Because . . . contrary to what you have assumed . . . Humphrey and I are on leave, and we're strictly devoted to 1812. And if you can prove anything else, you can lock us both up and throw away the key—and we'll come quietly, too.'

'But I don't have to prove anything—'

Paul lifted his hand. 'I haven't finished. You have a nasty suspicious mind, Nikki—or your bosses have . . . But if the roads behind us are crawling with KGB heavies I can't honestly blame you altogether.'

dummy3

'That's very generous of you, Paul.' She seemed to relent slightly. 'You're about to blame them, are you—for also having nastier and more suspicious minds?'

'Ah . . . now you're beginning to get my drift.' He smiled.

'But I don't altogether blame either of you, actually . . .

Because, you see, Nikki, before I started my leave I was engaged in an activity which surely interested them . . .

Nothing that had anything whatsoever to do with France, I assure you . . . but something they certainly could take exception to. Only, you appreciate that I can't tell you what.'

He shrugged disarmingly. 'But I suppose it is just possible they thought I was still hard at work—quite incorrectly, as it happens.'

Elizabeth became aware that her mouth had dropped open, and closed it quickly. It wasn't so much that he was craftily offering the French security service Peace With Honour, as that he had so quickly and ingeniously interwoven truth with lies, and fact with fiction.