The Memory Trap

There was a moment's silence. 'Oh — all right! But 'e won't like it.'

Audley waited. It had been a very small child, his memory corrected him. But it had also been a long time ago — the old days indeed!

'Saracen.' Dad's tone bore out the ex-small child's warning.

'Ullo.'

'I'd like a word with Mr Lee.' Audley crossed his fingers.

'Oo wants 'im?'

So far, so good. 'A friend of his.'

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'Oh yus? Well, 'e 'ain't 'ere.'

Audley relaxed. It was like fitting a key into the rusty old lock of a long-disused room and finding that it still turned easily, as though newly-oiled. 'Mr Lee owes me three favours, for services rendered.' Over the years, those numbers had gradually decreased, as those Anglo-Israeli debts had been called in one by one. Although, of course, it wouldn't be Jake himself, now. So it all depended on how well his successors had been briefed. 'I want to speak to him, nevertheless.'

'Oh yus?' The landlord, of the Saracen's Head might also be struggling with his memories of long-disused procedures, as between 'Mr Lee' and his 'friend'. But when you worked for the Israelis once, you worked for them always, was the rule.

'An' this would be an emergency, like — as per usual?' The phlegm rattled in the man's throat as he chuckled. 'Naow —

don't tell me! Face-to-face — or you got a number?'

Audley estimated Butler's orders against his own need. With the trouble he was already in — the new Russian trouble as well as the Berlin-Capri trouble — he was already in for a penny, in for a pound; and he could easily and (probably safely) encode Matthew's number with the very private and unforgettable formula which he and Jake had decided so long ago, after they had agreed that the one set of figures which no soldier ever forgot was his old army number. But he had always hated the telephone, and the hothouse temperature of Matt's flat was stifling him. 'Face-to-face.'

Everything came together as he spoke: perhaps because he dummy1

felt suddenly starved he imagined he could smell Marie-Louise's bacon, and her coffee too — and this side of Heaven there would be nothing to equal a thoroughly-Anglicized Frenchwoman's coffee-and-bacon. And also he must allow

'Mr Lee' time to make a rendezvous. So the lines on the map converged as he drew breath: ten minutes from here, in Sir Matthew Fattorini's Rolls-Royce, plus five for him from there to Jack Butler's fastness on the Embankment . . . plus fifteen to demolish the bacon and the coffee before that . . . finally offering 'Mr Lee' maybe twenty minutes — ? 'Fifty minutes.

By the statue of General Abercrombie, in Abercrombie Gardens. One hour, maximum. Then I'll be gone. Have you got that?'

'Yuss.' The phone clicked and died. Time — seconds, rather than minutes — was always of the essence on the phone, when you didn't know you were on a safe line, they would have taught him.

He looked at his watch. Fifty minutes from now.

'And how is that beautiful daughter of yours, David? I am told that she takes after her mother — yes?'

His mouth was full of bacon. And the bacon carried with it a hint — the merest paradisal hint — of kidney-fat, did it — ?

'Cathy?'

'She must be working for her examinations, surely — ?

Always, now, they are in the midst of examinations!'

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A major anti-terrorist alert? (Matthew, still only half-dressed, had been silenced by his wife: 'Let the poor man eat his breakfast, cheri! Is the car ready? Do something useful!')

'She has exams, yes.' Not co-operation — more like cause-and-effect: but what cause could produce this effect? The irony was that he needed to know the answer to that much more urgently than Matthew himself, who only had his stocks and shares at risk. 'But now she wants to go to India, before university. So Faith's worried sick.'

'Ah! India — yes!' Marie-Louise nodded sympathetically. 'She is too young for India. The women there are wonderful —

they hold the country together. But the men . . . they are not to be trusted with young unmarried girls.' Then she brightened. 'But India . . . that will be Christian India, yes?

To do mission work — that is what the young people do now . . . That could be worse, you know.'

'Worse?' The more he thought about Cathy in India, the worse it genuinely became.

'It is not political. One of my nieces wished to go to Nicaragua, from where the dreadful coffee comes, to help the revolution. Matthew had to arrange a more suitable enterprise for her — where was it, cheri? Perhaps you could do the same for David's Catherine — ?'

India, damn it!

'Round again, sir?' The voice of Matthew's driver sounded dummy1

cool and distant over the intercom of the Rolls as they turned into Abercrombie Gardens once more, past the statue of the old general who was one of Jack Butler's special idols.

Audley looked at his watch. The Israelis were almost out of time now, and his bright idea was beginning to look