Here Be Monsters

morning at that salon of yours - ?'

They both knew that she had ostentatiously placed a distinctively-labelled Rochard Freres bag in the car, so he couldn't deny her cover-story. 'I snatched a sandwich.' But, on second thoughts, that casual reference to Paul might be a hint that he guessed - or, being David, somehow knew - where she'd been. 'I hope you had something, David - I'm sorry, if I kept you hanging around, waiting for me. That was thoughtless of me.'

'Not at all! I like your style, young woman.' Audley chuckled. 'Putting the Defence of the Realm second to Jimmy Rochard's summer frocks is like old Macmillan sitting on the Front Bench when he was Prime Minister, ostentatiously reading letters from his gamekeeper before his official bumpf.' Another chuckle. 'Same with your Paul - or our Paul, if you prefer… First thing every morning, he should be reading his overnight SGs. And what does he do?' He gave her a knowing look as though wishing to share an answer known to them both; which reminded her oddly of the object of their journey, since in Latin he could have actually worded the question to convey their shared certainty.

'What does he do?' She was certain that he did know about Paul and herself now, but she decided to play hard to get. 'I'm sure I don't

know - ?'

'Why, he reads his morning post from all those 1914-18 veterans with whom he zealously corresponds, before they finally fade away.' He cocked his head, half-smiling, half-frowning. 'What is he into at the moment - the Battle of Loos, is it?'

Elizabeth shrugged. 'I've really no idea.' But Paul was right: once a Sopwith Camel pilot pulls his stick, no one knows where the Camel is going! 'But I do remember your Mr Andropov. He wasn't very nice to the Hungarians, was he?'

'Correct.' A minute, and slightly more than a mile, passed while Audley consulted his own memories. 'So you can appreciate why General Okolovich was scared in '56, having given the egregious Andropov demonstrably incorrect information about the state of the dummy2

Hungarian nation before the rising. Because when the dust had settled, and they'd buried the 30,000 dead - including all the good Russian soldiers who'd turned their tanks over to the Hungarians, and offered to fight for them… when they had been shot too, if they were lucky - Comrade Ambassador Andropov was after blood. So Okolovich was very scared indeed. And while Okolovich was scared, poor old Gorbatov was comprehensively terrified. Because he hadn't got anyone worth a damn to shop. So he knew he was for Siberia, if he was very lucky - or the chop, if he wasn't. And he knew enough to know which was more likely.' Audley waved a huge hand across the windscreen. 'Actually, if he had reckoned on Siberia he wouldn't have minded, because he was born there - his parents had been shunted off there in the twenties, because his grandfather had a Tsarist commission, but hadn't annoyed his other ranks sufficiently to be lynched out of hand when the Red Revolution reached his regiment - he liked Siberia, did Andrei Afanaseevich Gorbatov.' Audley nodded at the windscreen. 'But then he remembered this colleague of his - or nodding KGB acquaintance - who'd done a tour in Canada during the war, and gone off to the North-West Territory of Canada, to tell the Canadians what a splendid fellow Uncle Joe Stalin was. And this fellow had told him about all the endless trees and snow, just like Siberia, but with the birds and the booze, and no questions asked afterwards. And Gorbatov then conceived the idea that if he followed the yellow-brick road to the West there was a land over the rainbow - with trees and snow, and women and drink, and no questions asked, like home only better.' He nodded again. 'So when he came over to our side he offered all he had in exchange for the North-West Territory. He thought he might be safe there, too, as well as happy.'

The police car had fallen away, out of sight if not quite out of mind, baulked of its prey.

But she wasn't sure, now that there was nothing behind her, whether they hadn't passed the word on. So she would just have to keep her eye on the rear-view mirror.

'So our people said 'Maybe'. Only at first they were disappointed, because he gave them the usual chicken- feed about Hungary. Which they knew already, because of all the Hungarians who had come over - not just the ex- Communist patriots, but the AVRM secret police types, who were afraid of both sides… But then he gave them Debrecen, and that was something new.'

Elizabeth steadied her foot on 70. It was a curious international idiosyncrasy that the Americans, who worshipped the individual, supplied cars which were equipped to adhere to speed limits, while the regimented Europeans let their drivers take their choice, and pay accordingly.

'Something new.' Audley agreed with himself. 'That's what concentrated their minds: they'd never had a smell of it before - and, according to Gorbatov, it had been functioning for at least three years, before he nerved himself to run. Which was when Okolovich took possession of his records, so the warnings he'd sent could be doctored out - then he knew he was being measured for a necktie.'

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Elizabeth nodded at the road ahead. That was a fairly ordinary scenario for defection, anyway. In the West it was often much more complicated, because life itself was more complex, with all its secret guilts and its multiple moral choices. But KGB colonels were not the type to experience sudden blinding lights accompanied by divine voices telling them to change course: with them it was usually naked self-preservation which dictated action.

'He was quite frank about it. Although our Wise Men didn't altogether believe him. They were inclined to think that he wasn't so clever as he pretended to be - that he might well have given Okolovich dud information, and was about to get his just deserts. And he had a fairly sizeable drink problem, which he said had been caused by worry… But they reckoned it might have been the chicken which laid his egg for him - the drink problem.

And what also made 'em think he wasn't too bright was that he didn't rate what he had about Debrecen as being the jewel in his crown. Because he hadn't had anything directly to do with it, it was way above his clearance as well as being outside his jurisdiction. It just happened to be something he knew the bare minimum about in general, but two specific things about by pure accident. He actually thought we knew about it already - took it for granted, even. Huh!'

Now, at last, they were getting to the lean meat of the official record, which had dismissed Colonel Andrei Afanaseevich Gorbatov in one short paragraph. 'What did he say about it… Debrecen?'

'In general? Huh!' Audley sniffed. ''That place where they process the foreigners - you know.' Which they didn't. So they left it for a few days, and then worked back to it one evening when his vodka gauge was into the red. Only to discover that that was all he did know - not his directorate, big-time stuff for First Fifteen players while he had to scrum-down with the Hungarians.' Audley paused. 'But there were these two times when someone was off sick, and he had to sub for them. It was just on the transport arrangements - picking people up from an airfield, who'd come in by light plane cleared from somewhere in the west, or south-west - picking 'em up and delivering 'em, secret VIP