both on the same side. 'Come on, Reg — you've been trying to frighten us out of our wits all along. . . even with the boiling water in Yellowstone National Park! So don't bullshit us now.' She brushed back the tangle of inadequately- combed hair. 'According to my source he presided over an absolute bloodbath, somewhere down in the West Country, a couple of years ago — ' She shifted to Tully ' — right, John?'
'Possibly.' Not for the first time as Ian looked at John Tully he was reminded of Clive Ponting, whose face was also designed for very dry sherry as well as distasteful revelations.
'But nothing in 1978 — or 1977. And he was in Washington almost the whole of '78, into 1979.' Buller looked to Tully for support. 'He's got a lot of friends in the CIA ... so I am reliably informed — eh?' Then he registered Tully's expression. 'And that wasn't because I was 'exceeding-my-bloody-brief' — I got that for free, as it happens.'
' All right!' Jenny called them all to order. 'So, then . . . I will take him right now, and see how the land lies at the moment.'
She embraced both Tully and Buller together, but chiefly dummy2
Tully. 'John ... I think I'd like to know who is out there, getting wet at the moment, if possible.' She came to Ian.
'And, as you are the historian among us, darling . . . and as Audley wasn't doing anything naughty then ... do you think you could dig up 1978 for us, Ian — ? And, if you like, you can take Mr Buller with you, for protection.'
2
The possibility that he was being followed aroused in Ian what he assumed to be the classic symptoms of paranoia: a feeling of unaccustomed importance, verging on pride ('Better put a tail on Robinson: he needs watching!'), moderated by a much less comfortable disquiet, which might easily develop into a persecution complex.
Of course, he'd been followed before, almost certainly. But that had been in Beirut, which hardly counted, because everyone who was anyone was followed there, by someone or other, and it would have been an insult not to be followed; in fact, he'd probably been followed by the Syrians, who had been protecting them both, who had been shadowing other and nastier followers, like the lesser fleas on the bigger fleas on the proverbial dog, and so ad infinitum.
Only, he hadn't much liked the possibility then, and he liked it no better now, with Reg Buller's final patronizing and belittling words of wisdom echoing in his ear —
dummy2
'No good looking for 'em, because you won't see 'em — not if they know their job. So no good tryin' to be clever, peerin'
into shop windows. An' whatever you do, don't try an' lose
'em — that's Rule Number One. 'Cause, when you do need to slip 'em, it's gotta seem like by accident, an' all nice an' slow.
An' I'll stage-manage that, there's a taxi-driver I know who'll fix it. . . An' anyway, your job today is to draw 'em off to let me get off. So you just walk round to the Lady's flat for your Sunday lunch like always. An' phone me tonight at seven — from a public pay-box. Okay?'
Not okay. Because now, with the Sunday streets emptied by rain, and the Sunday pubs filled, the temptation to look over his shoulder at every corner was like an itch in his brain. And all the little antique shops, the contents of whose windows had never much interested him before, seemed full of intriguing objects . . . which he mustn't stop and look at, just in case someone might think he was trying to be clever. And as there probably wasn't anyone, that made him feel like a right prick.
But then ... if Reg Buller was right . . .
He decided to concentrate on it, partly to help him to forget that itch and its accompanying incipient paranoia, and partly because Reg Buller usually was right, when it came to such mundane matters. Which cleared the way in turn for the consideration of the more important matters with which Jenny would hit him during her version of Sunday lunch —
yuk!
dummy2
Because Jenny, too, had been right this time — and not in any mundane matter, either: her little shell-like ears (sensitive appendages, always attuned to items of scandal and indiscretion, as sharp as the diamonds which customarily adorned each of them) had picked up a winner this time, like a blip on a high- tech radar screen which registered not so much 'Friend or Foe?' as 'Profit or Loss?'
unfailingly —
'What about Masson, then?'
'A turn-up for the book, you mean?'
'Not a turn-up. I never did believe that story. It was too neat.'
'Which story? The official one — ? Or . . . ?'
'Neither of them. But I tell you one thing: David Audley won't like it.'
'David Audley? You don't mean — ?'
'I don't mean anything. Except . . . people who don't suit his book have a way of being safely written out of it. And Masson was a front runner then . . . remember?'
'Yes . . . But, surely, you don't think — ?'
