The Memory Trap

Which doesn't actually prove anything for sure . . . except that it looks like one of a PFLP batch, according to the Israelis.' She didn't quite look at Mitchell for confirmation. 'But. . . they grilled everyone who was there. Only that didn't produce anything. Because most of them were regulars. And the rest were cleared easily, Colonel Schneider said.'

'And the restaurant staff?'

'They were clear too. Except a new waiter, who was a Turk.'

She closed her eyes for an instant. 'They held him for questioning. Because . . . they thought maybe he'd caused a diversion, before the shooting started.'

'A diversion?'

'He didn't. He dropped his tray.' Her mouth twisted. 'But that was after the shooting, not before, I was able to tell them.

But. . . they're still holding him.'

'Why?'

'That was to do with their official statement. Because . . .

what they're putting out — at least for the time being, David dummy1

— is that it was a gangster shoot-out, involving Turks and drugs.' She gave him a clear-eyed look. 'The Germans were extremely helpful, David. But Colonel Schneider said he didn't think the statement would stick for long.'

'Extremely embarrassed, more like.' Mitchell sniffed derisively.

'Do be quiet, Mitchell.' Audley silenced Mitchell, and then nodded encouragingly at Elizabeth. (They were both right, of course: Schneider was a damn good man. So he would have been hugely embarrassed by such a monumental fuck-up on his patch.) 'How . . . 'helpful', Elizabeth?'

She studied him for a second. 'I talked to Colonel Schneider.

And then he contacted Jack in London. And they concocted a holding story between them, to which I agreed . . . after I'd talked to Jack — Sir Jack.' The look was now clear-eyed. 'Sir Jack told Colonel Schneider that I had been standing in for you, David. And . . . the Colonel knows you, doesn't he?'

That was an understatement. But it was none of anyone's business right now. 'What story?'

'It's chiefly to do with Ted Sinclair.' The mention of Sinclair hurt her. 'Officially, they haven't put out any names, as yet —

just that it was a criminal police matter, with no politics involved.' Elizabeth blinked. 'But Colonel Schneider has arranged for one of the Berlin papers to pick up a leak that an innocent foreigner was unfortunately killed in the cross-fire.

And they've put out that he was a British Council officer who'd just arrived in Berlin from Frankfurt, who was dummy1

lunching a ... a visitor, David.'

'A visitor?' Mitchell snapped the question. 'With three people dead, Lizzie — ? And the Berlin papers chasing everyone who was there?'

'The visitor was me.' Elizabeth threw Mitchell off. 'And I was representing the British Ladies' Hockey Federation, to arrange an exhibition match in the spring. And, if they check up on that, the BLHF will confirm they sent a committee member to Berlin, to examine the condition of the playing-fields.' She tossed her head. 'But that isn't important . . . even if they could trace me ... I am a BLHF committee member because I'm a Ladybird — '

'A what?' exclaimed Mitchell.

'For God's sake, Mitchell — ' Audley joined her. 'Yes, Elizabeth — ?'

'Yes.' Elizabeth dismissed Mitchell. 'The name Colonel Schneider did leak was for you, David: Ted Sinclair has become 'David Ordway'. And the British Council in Frankfurt has been told that their office and the BLHF were sending two people to Berlin. Do you see?'

'That won't hold for long.' Mitchell shook his head at Elizabeth. 'If we're lucky . . . maybe another day. But no more.'

But Audley saw. And, although Jack Butler hadn't quite told him everything, he saw even more clearly.

Because Butler and Schneider between them had conspired dummy1

to buy him time, as Mitchell had emphasized. But, as neither of them was certain that they'd done that in spite of all their best efforts, they were letting him decide how much those efforts might be worth: that, either if he failed to elicit this information ... or, even if he did, and he judged the risk too great, and played it accordingly '... then he would act accordingly anyway . . . with Elizabeth and Mitchell beside him, and the Italians breathing down his neck.

'Yes.' He was here now, in the Bay of Naples. So the bottom line was that Jack Butler was relying on him to make the right decision without any footling restriction, as from company commander to second-lieutenant. And the years which separated him from Peter Richardson, also separated Jack from that: even though he was now back in the field, and far from home, Butler expected him to weigh politics and diplomacy, as well as survival, and coming safe-home to Mrs Faith Audley and Miss Catherine Audley, into the bargain.

'So, in theory, you're not supposed to be here.' Mitchell, with his responsibility for that survival, went one better. 'Because, whoever put that kamikaze-Ay-rab into Berlin is supposed to be presuming that he took you out with his first shot, as per contract — eh?' But he sneered at his own hypothesis as he offered it. 'Is that what we're supposed to assume?' He rocked with the boat's motion: coming back to England — or, actually, to Wales — from Dun Laoghaire (which was worse than this: which was frequently sideways as well as up and down ... so he had his sea-legs now, from all those Anglo-dummy1

Irish crossings!). 'But you're not relying on that, are you?'