The Memory Trap

'How d'you know his name?'

'I know all three names. But only one of them matters now.'

Audley held his tongue without difficulty. No more questions!

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Jake held up three fingers. 'Kulik is dead in Berlin.' One finger went down. 'That was very careless of you — what my old boss would have called 'unnecessary carelessness'. But perhaps understandable at that stage.'

Audley concentrated on the remaining two fingers —blunt, serviceable fingers, rising from a work-calloused hand. In retirement, Jake had become a working farmer. But soft fruit looked like hard work, judging by those hands.

'And now Prusakov is also dead, as of two days since.' The second finger went down. 'But your people cannot be blamed for that.'

Something out in the furthest corner of Audley's peripheral vision diverted him from the last finger: the shape of Sir Matthew Fattorini's Rolls flicked through trees on the inner side of Abercrombie Gardens. But the Rolls didn't matter now: Who-the-hell-was 'Prusakov' ?

'So that leaves Lukianov at large.' The third finger seemed to get larger as Audley stared at it. 'The luckiest — or the cleverest. . . yes?'

So there had been three runners. And although he dearly wanted to know who Prusakov was — and where and how and why Prusakov had run out of luck and cleverness 'two days since', that would have to wait. 'At large where, Jake?

Lukianov?'

Jake shrugged. 'That, I don't know. And neither do the Russians, evidently.' The shrug became a shake. 'They are dummy1

tearing their hair — but that is also common knowledge . . .

What was it Cohen used to say, in the Saracen? 'Screaming blue murder, like Auntie Vi did when she caught her tits in the mangle'?' The shake stopped and the bushy eyebrows lifted. 'All the way from Finland to the Black Sea — how many perfectly innocent criminals have been caught? And honest smugglers, who reckoned they'd bribed the border-guards sufficiently, too — ?' The eyebrows came down. 'The first plus-side is that the KGB is pushing all its contacts so hard that we are picking up people we never suspected, who are sticking out their necks. But the minus is that we're also losing valued middle-men who never knew who they were working for.' Quite terrifyingly, Jake began to become incredulous at his own revelations. 'If they were moving their tank divisions and dispersing their SS-20s as well, then we'd be battening-down for the Third World War — just as you are, David!' But then the incredulity steadied itself. 'Only you've gone off half-cock. Because they haven't shifted a mobile army-cookhouse.' The shake came back, but more disbelievingly. 'Just all their bloody spies . . . and their sleepers . . . and even some of their Spetsnaz sleepers —

which is even more outrageous . . . the handful that we know, here in England — ' Jake Shapiro actually bit his lip, under his moustache, on that ' — and that's strictly between you and me, as of now, David: if you want more on Spetsnaz, then you've got to trade at the very highest level — not you, but Jack Butler and his Minister. And it will involve a public pronouncement on your Government's attitude to the PLO.'

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He nodded. 'This is big business now, David.'

Audley felt almost as disembodied as he had also so recently felt on Capri when the screaming had started, half-aware that his features must have become as wooden as Jake Shapiro's suddenly were. Because Jake knew what he was saying: it had all been agreed — and bloody-quickly agreed, too — at his own very highest-level, in the few minutes which had elapsed between his 'Mr Lee' call to the Saracen's Head and their joint-arrival under General Abercrombie's statue. Or (what was more likely, actually — and what was certainly worse, therefore) it had been agreed before? Which meant that the Israelis were so worried that they were desperate to co-operate at any price, in spite of Jake's pretended arrogance.

'I can't promise that, Jake.' Suddenly he felt greedy: having got so much so easily, he wanted more. And, anyway, however interesting that Spetsnaz information sounded —

and in exchange only for some half-arsed ministerial statement, which could be made to sound like something- and-nothing — it was just a sprat to catch a mackerel. 'I'm not even supposed to be talking to you now.'

'I can remedy that.' Jake gave him a bleak look. 'If you hadn't called me this morning, I would have called you this afternoon. Because I am empowered to do business with you, old friend.'

'With me?'

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'With you to start with. And to show good faith I will give you Prusakov: they took him in Italy, in a house outside Rome.

But, unfortunately he swallowed a pill, so that is the end of him. However, they also took the Arab who was with him.

And they will have squeezed him for sure. But that has not given them Lukianov. And he is the most dangerous of the three, we believe. Because he was the one who approached the various terrorist organizations in the first place, seeking the highest bidder for his merchandise — we know that.'

'What merchandise, Jake?'

Shapiro shook his head. 'That we do not know.' He looked at Audley sidelong. 'And you do not know — ?'

He must give the Israeli something. 'You've heard about Capri?'

'Capri — ?' Jake frowned.

Audley unfolded his Telegraph and offered the right page.

He had to allow that the stage might have lost a great actor when Jake's parents had illegally emigrated. But his surprise looked genuine.