The Memory Trap

and Dieter, who had not been far behind him, came in for their orders. Otto, he remembered, had been providing the Arab with his third cup of coffee. But, not being a dumb Turk, he wouldn't have noticed anything, of course.

Into the sunlight again, with everything as busily normal as before, with the pigs all at their troughs, feeding their faces dummy1

as though their lives depended on it (all except the Pole, who was still sweating, and the Arab, who was still not really reading his newspaper), and the sail-boats on the lake behind. And, inevitably, the head-waiter gesticulating at him.

He began to weave through the tables —

The money-man buyer was still there, studying his menu. So he hadn't seen anything (but Genghis had to hand it to the cops there, the clever swine: there wasn't a uniform inside or a suspicious car outside to be seen, they knew their business all too well, the drugs squad, evidently!) —

Then he swore under his breath as the big Englishman got up, pushing back his chair and blocking his chosen route, so that he had to swing to his left . . . only to find that avenue blocked by the head-waiter himself. And, of course, he wouldn't give ground to make things easier, any more than the damned Englishman: no one ever cared for waiters.

He re-routed himself automatically, pirouetting on paper-thin leather through which he could feel the unevenness of the terrace flagstones. But now the woman was also moving, damn her — not getting up, but pushing her chair back in order to keep her eye on her partner: with a face like that perhaps she was used to him straying.

He coughed politely, and began to squeeze past. But as he did so the Englishman came into sight again —

What! He was heading for the Pole — ? And —

He saw the Arab get up. And, simultaneously, the dummy1

Englishwoman began to move, pushing him — almost unbalancing him — what!

Suddenly the Englishwoman went mad — and his ankle caught on something, so that the tray began to escape from his control: he had only a fraction of a second to catch up with it, or else — what!

Nothing mattered but the tray — the Englishwoman was either mad or drunk, what she was doing, and glass and crockery was crashing, and the Englishman tripping up, and someone was shouting —

But it was the tray that mattered!

No one saw Genghis's amazing recovery: his gravity-defying swoop, down and up, and the triumph of speed over impetus which caught up with and corrected the unbalance of his burden so triumphantly against all the odds, above Table Five. Or, if anyone did, the next moment obliterated the image, as the Verfassungsschutz marksman opened fire.

Because then Genghis did finally drop the tray.

PART ONE

A Walk in the Sun

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They were waiting for him at Heathrow: they took him off the plane ahead of everyone else, like a king or a criminal.

'Dr Audley? Would you come this way please, sir.'

'Mmmm.' He hated being stared at like this. But there was no help for it. All he could do was to come quietly. The uniformed man even took his hand luggage from him. And then the civilian took it from the uniformed man.

It had been obvious, of course, ever since the Return Immediately message had been delivered so apologetically by his CIA guard-dog/guide dog, that the shit was in the fan back home; that they had held the flight for ten minutes just so that he could be on it merely confirmed the obvious. But after that the old drug had worked on him as it always did, as it always had done over so many years, so that now he was neither flattered nor apprehensive, but only impatient.

'Oops!' The man in the suit had stopped suddenly, so that he had almost cannoned into him. 'What — ?'

'Hold on a moment, sir.' The man didn't need to explain further, since the reason for their halt was blocking the passage ahead. 'Could I have your identification, please?'

'Mmm.' Audley watched as the young soldier, green-beretted, camouflage-jacketed and armed-to-the-teeth, scrutinized his passport.

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The civilian handed the passport back to him, unsmiling.

'Nothing to worry about, Dr Audley. There's an airport security exercise in progress, that's all. And we're in a restricted zone here.'

'Yes?' He hadn't the faintest idea where he was, actually. But within all major airports there were gim-crack labyrinths like this. In fact, the Devil himself had probably re-designed Hell in the light of the information he had gained from observing airport layouts.

'We're almost there.' Misreading Audley's expression of distaste as transatlantic weariness, the man nodded reassuringly. 'Not far now.'