A Prospect of Vengeance

least, neither Jenny nor John Tully moved — and then Ian realized that, since he ought to be less professional as well as equally shattered by this news, he ought to move —

' Ian — ! ' Jenny admonished him sharply. ' Don't look!'

Ian halted, fixing her first, almost accusingly; and then John Tully, almost angrily; and finally Reg himself, with a mixture of emotions which he couldn't control, but which only Reg himself could guess at.

'There's one at the back, too.' Buller agreed with all the confusion cheerfully. 'They've got you nicely bracketed . . .

unless you've got another exit, up over the roof, an' down through someone else's back garden — have you?'

'John — ?' Jenny cut through Buller's cackle decisively. 'You said no one was on to us — ?'

Tully stared at her, and then clear through her, as he computed the possibilities, one after another, trying to pin a probability among them. But then he frowned. 'I don't understand it, Miss Fielding. Because ... I do know a little —

a very little — about Audley. So I was damned careful with him: only the people I can really trust, I asked — ' His face closed up tight round his mouth ' — only the people who owe me.'

'Well, it wasn't me.' Buller knew he'd be next. 'Unless anyone who appears anywhere near Masson sparks 'em off — that's maybe it. But I was careful, too. And they didn't follow me here, either — you can depend on that: they were here dummy2

already: I spotted them, they didn't spot me — you can depend on that, too.'

But that was a hard one, thought Ian — estimating the known Buller against the unknown Audley. Because his confidence was only one step away from pride. And pride was always inches away from a fall, remembering Beirut —

'It might have been me.' Jenny's total honesty was one of her greatest strengths. 'I've asked one or two questions, just recently. And I can't vouch for everyone whom I've asked — '

She embraced Tully with that admission, binding him to her even more securely with it ' — and then they'd come to Ian, of course ... So it might be me, I'm afraid.'

'Well, it doesn't matter who it was, Miss Fielding.' Delivered from all responsibility for failure, Tully became loyal again, as an employee. 'The question is ... who is on to us?' He looked at Buller. 'Not Fleet Street — ?'

'Sod Fleet Street.' Buller almost looked sad. 'I remember a chap on the old Star . . . and one or two more, on the heavyweights . . . who'd have had us by now, the way we've blundered around . . . But they're all into management, and new technology, and colour supplements — the good ones.

Or the little magazines . . . and writing books — ' The blood-orange eyes took in Ian for half a second ' — sod Fleet Street!'

'So that would make it official — ?' Tully wasn't quite certain.

'Even after Spycatcher — Peter Wright?' Neither was Jenny certain.

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Buller's mouth twisted. 'There's still a few reporters I rate.'

He held out his glass. 'If one of them was loose, then I'd be worrying. But I'd also be happy, too.' He pushed at the neck of the bottle as Jenny poured, until the champagne frothed over the top of the glass and the bottle emptied into it. 'But I ain't seen one of 'em on this lark yet.'

'So it's official?' Tully persisted, patiently.

'Oh yes.' Buller sniffed disparagingly. 'What we've got, out there in the wet, is civil servants. The only question is . . . are they ours ... or are they someone else's, who can park their cars, an' claim 'diplomatic immunity', and not worry about paying the fine — eh?'

That was combining the frightening with the more frightening, rather than the absurd with the ridiculous, thought Ian: whatever heated up the water in his Yellowstone pond it was already on the boil.

'But . . . we're not safe in any case — any more.' Jenny overtook him, as she always did; and, as it always did, the degree of difficulty and danger only encouraged her, setting her on to go further. 'Is that what you mean, Reg?'

'Yes. That is just about what I mean, I suppose.' Duller gave Ian a belated guilty look. 'Except . . . you could do a book, between you, about something else — like about Colonel Rabuka, and the Fiji Islands, maybe? And Mr Tully and I could go out there . . . and you could call it The Imperial Legacy — ? And we could maybe take in the French nuclear programme as well, that you've always wanted to do, which dummy2

no one else has done properly — right from the Sahara trials, in the old days, when they had those Germans working for them on the rockets . . . the ones they wouldn't talk about?'

Buller tossed his head. 'Either road, we'd be a bloody long way from here for a few months, anyway, Miss Fielding. An'

out of the rain, too.'

Jenny had long waited to do that. But Ian had always been against it because he was scared of the French; and, after the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, they had both been right and wrong; and Buller knew it too. But he also knew more than that, unfortunately — both about Jenny and about David Audley, so it seemed.

'Yes. That would certainly be agreeable, Reg — you're right.'