Gunner Kelly

Which is just down the road from Bradford, you see.”

“Where Michael Kelly drove his taxi?”

“Just so. And altogether too coincidental.” Audley sighed. “At least, it is now—in retrospect .... At the time, the bomb brought in the Special Branch, and they brought in our people . . . who in turned picked up enough evidence in the cottage to identify the strawberry jam as Aloysius Kelly. And what made him so very interesting was not simply that he’d been on our wanted list for years, but that more recently we’d had word that he was on their wanted list as well. In fact, it was a toss-up who wanted him more

—them or us.”

“Them being the KGB?”

“Them being Spetsburo One—the strawberry jam makers.” Audley showed his teeth. “So now you’re going to ask me why he ran?

And the short and humiliating answer to that is—we don’t know.”

Benedikt frowned. “You mean ... he was not defecting?”

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“From them he was. But not to us, and not to the Americans either.

He went to ground, and he never surfaced—and he had time to pick and choose, too. The way it seems to have been . . . then the troubles began again the Russians sent him back to Ireland—to Dublin—to stir the pot maybe, certainly to watch out for their interests. But then something went sour.” The big man shrugged.

“What went sour—we don’t know . . . He’d been away a long time ... it was the same old enemy, but not the same old country as it was in Frank Ryan’s day . . . and he was older, so maybe he was wiser—or maybe he was just older and very tired. Only God knows now, anyway.” He looked at Benedikt. “All we know is that he ran. Because one day we wanted him—to get what he knew—

and the next day they were after him to make sure we didn’t get it.”

“But the KGB found him first.”

“Yes.” Audley grimaced. “And on our home ground too . . .

Though they had advantages we lacked, to be fair.”

“Such as?”

“He was one of theirs from way back, all nicely filed. So they knew what they were looking for. We never did.” Audley shook his head. “We never even had a decent photo of him—just one smudgy face in an International Brigade group picture that might have been him in his teens. But no real face, let alone prints or distinguishing marks. He was always a man for the shadows, not the sunlight. . . Shit!”

The uncharacteristic obscenity surprised Benedikt, and he looked questioningly at Audley.

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“I was just thinking . . . They were damn good: they let us pick up their sighs of relief after he was dead—that Kelly, Aloysius could be filed as deceased, and the matter was closed. But they must already have had a Kelly, Michael file. And we didn’t even know of his existence, let alone the connection between them. So they’ve been hunting Michael while we’ve been sitting on our arses and twiddling our thumbs—hunting him in our territory.”

Benedikt forgave the lapse, sensing more than wounded pride behind it. “So Aloysius must have passed on information to Michael.”

Audley gestured helplessly. “What other interpretation is there? He ran—and they’re after him, damn it! Damn it!”

Now there was only one thing he needed. And although Kommissar at Wiesbaden could give it to him in no more than the time it took to key the question he wanted it now. “About the Debreczen meeting?”

Audley was studying the Tiger critically as though he was seeing it for the first time, his eye running along the barrel of the deadly 8.8cm gun to the massive armoured shield which fronted its turret.

“What happened at Debreczen?” asked Benedikt.

“What happened at Debreczen?” Audley turned a critical eye towards him. “It was before your time—just about literally before your time, Captain Schneider . . . Damn it! It was before even my time, professionally speaking.”

Early to mid-1950s, that would make it, estimated Benedikt. At least, if one discounted the unconfirmed report that a very young dummy1

Lieutenant Audley had not been a simple tank commander in the last months of the war . . .

“Debreczen is out of the deeps of time—it’s still part rumour and part legend ... we didn’t even get a whiff of it until years afterwards, from the Gorbatov de-briefing, and Gorbatov’s been dead ... for a long time—” Audley smiled suddenly, reminiscently

“—of cirrhosis, I should add. In a piece of Canada which most resembled his native land ... At least the rat- catchers never caught up with him! Just the booze.”

Debreczen? Benedikt wanted to say. But he said nothing.

“It wasn’t actually in Debreczen . . . There was this old Hapsburg castle in the woods. Or ... it was more like a Ruritanian hunting lodge, though God only knows what they hunted there . . . But the Germans had added some huts, and there was perimeter wire—all mod. cons., Nazi-style . . . And, for some reason—perhaps it was accessibility, with no questions asked—for some reason the Russians liked it for what they had in mind.”

Hapsburg castles Benedikt knew, and hunting lodges and huts and perimeter wire too. But he had never visited Debreczen . . . and where was Ruritania?

“First, it was like a seminar centre for experts—not only the GB