The Memory Trap

have been pure panic. But she had kept her head, nevertheless.

Good Girl!

Only she wouldn't thank him for saying as much. 'You went to Kulik — ?'

'He was in a bad way. I thought he was dead, actually. Or as good as.'

'Which he was.' Mitchell nodded. 'As good as.' He nodded again. '7.65 soft-nosed dum-dum: pro-gun, pro-bullet —

went diagonally through him, upwards and then in all directions, David.' Final nod. 'He damn-well should have been dead — like Ted Sinclair already was.'

Elizabeth was looking at Mitchell now. But she didn't seem to see him. 'Yes.'

Then she returned to Audley. 'He opened his eyes. And he looked at me.'

In surprise, it would have been. Whatever natural death might be like, unnatural and violent death always came as a dummy1

surprise, even in war, where it had been neither surprising nor unnatural, Audley remembered: even those who had claimed to be resigned to the inevitable the night before, regardless of Daddy Higgs's superstitious outrage, hadn't believed that it was actually happening to them.

'He said something in Russian.'

Yes. And, for choice, that would be 'Mother'. Even William Shakespeare, who was usually right about everything, had been wrong about that, in imagining that the dying thought about their wives and children, let alone their unpaid debts.

Although, to be strictly accurate about what he could recall, it was the younger ones who had remembered their mothers, while the older — or the relatively older, anyway — had used words which Elizabeth might not have known in English, never mind in Russian.

'Yes?' He realized that as he remembered Normandy he had been looking through her. And that had disconcerted her.

'Yes, Elizabeth?'

She still looked at him strangely, frowning.

'Yes, Miss Loftus?' He felt the wind on his face, and the boat rolling under him in the swell: they were far out into the bay now, and he felt time at his back with Capri looming ahead somewhere. But together they sharpened his voice, from a gentle question to an order.

Still she frowned at him. 'I said . . . 'You're going to be all right', David.'

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Good girl, again! (But perhaps it hadn't been him she'd really been looking at, by God!) 'Yes — ?' (But she was looking at him now.)

'He didn't seem to hear me.' But looking at him seemed to steel her. 'So I thought . . . first, I thought he was dead. But then he opened his eyes again — he'd closed them . . . But then he opened them again.'

Audley waited. This, after all, was the important bit. 'Yes — ?'

'I thought . . . no, I knew he was dying, then . . .' She trailed off, almost as though ashamed.

If he'd been there he would have been dead by then. But then, again, he might not have been. Because he would never have just sat there in the open, waiting for Kulik to make contact, just because Henry Jaggard had pronounced the occasion to be mere 'routine', with Kulik making all the running, when he knew nothing about either the man or what he was bringing out. Only, Elizabeth hadn't known any better — and Henry Jaggard and Jack Butler had made their respective errors of judgement. So now he was here — in the bloody-middle of the Bay of Naples, and without the faintest idea what he was doing, as a result. (Except that he did know slightly more about Peter Richardson than about Oleg Filipovitch Kulik . . . which was almost nothing. So now he was damn-well boxed in by that, and would have to let Richardson make the running this time, whatever the risk, damn it. Damn it!)

So now he was angry, because he was having to wait again.

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'Go on — ' He caught his anger in that instant as it jolted him with a sudden insight: this was Elizabeth Loftus, and she was one tough lady — a real 'shield-maiden', if ever there was one. So by then, in the midst of that Berlin chaos, she would have been angry too . . . with all the shame-of-failure and guilt-for-Ted-Sinclair still in the future. 'That was when he dropped my name . . . and Peter Richardson's, did he?'

The Loftus-jaw again. 'I shouted at him.' (Those Loftus-ancestors had hanged men on the yard-arm at the Nore, back in '98 — 1798!) 'And he said, 'Tell Audley', David.' (And the ones they hadn't hanged, they'd flogged.) 'Then he said, 'Tell him Piotr Richardson knows.' And he tried to say more, but then he haemorrhaged — he coughed up blood all over me . . . And then he died.'

Audley nodded. That was near enough what Butler had indicated: that Elizabeth Loftus would spell out what had actually happened.

'Famous last words,' murmured Mitchell. ''Tell Audley'! So what is it that you know, David? What's the little shared secret you have with our elusive Major?'

Audley shook his head irritably. 'What happened then, Elizabeth?'

'But that's the problem of course, Lizzie.' Mitchell nodded to himself. 'His problem — our problem . . . everyone's problem, eh? For once you don't know, do you David? Or you don't know what it is you're supposed to know, rather ... all those dummy1

years ago — uh-huh? Otherwise he wouldn't be here.'

'Shut up, Paul.' Elizabeth transferred her anger for an instant. 'What do you want to know, David?'

What did he want to know? 'What did the Germans do? Are they holding anyone? What sort of statement have they put out?'

'They haven't got any leads.' She paused for a moment, marshalling her answers. 'Only the Arab's passport.