The Memory Trap

never been unfriendly to me, have they? Because of the old times.' He still wasn't helping himself much. 'How did you know?'

Butler looked up from the print-out. 'What did he tell you?'

It must have been because he'd passed up the chance of meeting Jake with official blessing. 'He thinks Prusakov is dead, like Kulik. Something seems to have happened in Rome. Either the Russians spotted him, and he bit on his dummy1

happy pill. Or maybe his Arab minder made sure he wasn't taken prisoner — Jake wasn't too sure.'

'How did the Russians get on to Richardson? Did he know that?'

'He didn't know about Richardson. I don't know, Jack. The Russians may not know what it is that Lukianov is offering the Arabs, but they must know more than we do, for God's sake. Because we know fuck-all, it seems to me.'

'Fuck-all' closed Butler's face up again in momentary distaste, but then he came to terms with the truth of it. 'What else?'

'Nothing else, much. We were just sounding each other out, really. He'll give Jaggard enough to keep him busy. And then I'll see him again, pretty soon.' He wanted to get Butler off his back too, he realized. 'But we'd better get our skates on, Jack. Because the Israelis are scared.'

'Even though they don't know what Lukianov is up to?'

'They're scared because the Russians are scared — like us.

And for the same reason, too: knowing . . . not knowing anything isn't to their taste, much.' His best bet was to frighten Jack a bit too. 'If what Lukianov is offering is worth enough for Abu Nidal or whoever to lend him manpower —

two hit-squads, Jack — to slow us up ... I don't know . . . but it could be that he's afraid his former masters may even be preparing to make a deal with us, to pool what they may know with whatever it is Richardson and I know, between us.

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And then we'd be able to preempt his game, maybe. So he had to try to take us out, and he was ready to sacrifice Kulik and Prusakov to do it . . . It's possible that he didn't take them into his confidence about that, is the way it rather looks . . . But, I really don't know, Jack. So that's why 'Mr Dalingridge' is my priority, anyway.' And, of course, he had one card Butler couldn't trump. 'And those are my orders now, in any case.'

Butler looked at the clock on the wall over the door. 'Mitchell will be back this afternoon. You can have him.'

What Butler was doing was assessing the risk now. 'I'll be leaving after lunch, Jack. He can catch me up — I'll phone in, don't worry!'

'Where are you going?'

'Oh ... I think I'll take a drive in the Cotswolds —'

The vote was against danger, by an easy majority. Because, after Berlin and Capri (and with Colonel Zimin loose and on his track), Lukianov and his Arabs wouldn't know where he was. And by now they must have other more important fish to fry, anyway.

And he knew Peter Richardson better than they did. And better even than what was on file and record: the bald facts of that damnable computer memory on which they all depended, and which Henry Jaggard shared at the touch of a few beastly little keys. Henry had access to everything that dummy1

was known to the computer as of right, with a Master Word probably possessed only by himself and God (or maybe not God), on which lesser breeds could only draw by arrangement and agreement, with every withdrawal recorded for posterity; so that now (for all the good it would do her!) the enchanting Mary Franklin was probably studying the same useless stuff he himself had dutifully skimmed through an hour ago —what a waste!

Where is he?

With the Chiltern Hills behind him and the featureless Oxfordshire plain sliding past all round he was able to think of Peter Richardson again, and the old times of fifteen years back, flexing his memory to double-check his reasoning —

Really, Peter wasn't the old times — the good old, bad old times of the Clinton heyday of the late fifties and swinging sixties, when the trick had been to try and hold things together when everything was coming apart at the seams, and the truth of Fred's two-hundred-year Rise and Fall of the British Empire thesis had been evident. No . . . Peter had been very much towards the end of that period, anyway . . .

when Fred had been beginning to lose his grip and flying more and more by the seat of his pants. In fact, in retrospect and with hindsight, Peter himself had been a sure sign of the Decline and Fall of Fred's own empire: a clever young barbarian foederatus who had grown up in those locust years and worshipped different gods from those of Fred, who had dummy1

recruited him in a vain attempt to keep up with the times —

was that it?

It was. But —

(Was there anything behind him? But then, if there was, it would be well behind, and quite out of his view; and anyway, having thought about it, he really didn't much care after all — )

It probably was right, that interpretation of Richardson's recruitment. But even if it wasn't. . . and though in the end Fred's seat-of-the-pants had turned out quite wrong, undeniably . . . the young man had still been quite something, in his way —

'Richardson, David — Peter Richardson. Hobson of King's put me on to him. You'll like him.' (That morning in Fred's office, it had been) 'Oh aye? Fresh from university, you mean?' (In peacetime, as Sir Frederick was often wont to complain, recruitment was a sore trial.)