The Memory Trap

a glass on top of it, and handed both to Audley. 'We passed a local off-licence and they offered me a local brew. And it isn't half-bad, I tell you.'

'We' added itself to the emptiness of the crate. 'You're not by yourself then, Jake?'

'Lord, no!' Jake replenished his own glass. 'I'm much too old to be let out on my own in these dangerous times.' He glanced at Audley almost casually over the froth. 'What about you?'

'Just me.' He felt thirsty suddenly. 'So far as I know.'

Jake raised his glass in salute. 'Not to worry.' He drank deeply and appreciatively. 'My custodes will let me know who are custodieting you, old friend.' He smiled at Audley. 'Your Mr Jaggard said you were working for him. And ... I suspect he trusts you even less than I do.'

So Jake had been well-briefed, then. Or had drawn the right conclusions, anyway. 'You've met my Mr Jaggard, then?'

'I have indeed.' Another drink. Then another smile. 'A very cautious gentleman.' The smile was a smile-of- many-colours.

'And I have told him everything I know. Or ... some of everything I know, anyway. And he is very grateful. And . . . I am to see him again later tonight. Or, failing that, early tomorrow morning. And then he will be very grateful again.'

But no smile now. 'You look rather pleased with yourself, David. And that worries me.'

'I am pleased with myself.' He wasn't such an expert on dummy1

English beer as Jake had once been. But it tasted good because he was thirsty.

'I see.' Jake nodded over his glass. 'So that will be because you are hoping to meet your old colleague Major Richardson? For whom you people are all looking — as well as for General Lukianov?'

Everybody knew about everyone everybody was looking for now, evidently. 'I might be, Jake.' With everybody looking, that was hardly surprising: Jake had merely chosen the more likely of the two.

'But Mr Jaggard doesn't know this yet?'

Jake was another one like Paul Mitchell: he was too clever for his own good. 'What have you got for me that you haven't given Henry Jaggard? On Prusakov and Kulik, as well as Lukianov, Jake?' He looked at his watch ostentatiously, and then at the remaining daylight outside.

'You're in a hurry?'

'Not particularly — if you've got a lot to tell.'

'You ought to be in a hurry. And ... I do not have a great deal.

But what I have is good.' Jake paused. 'It is also sensitive, David.'

'Sensitive?'

Jake hid behind his glass for a moment. 'I must ask that it goes no further, from you, for the time being. It will surely come from other sources eventually.'

It was the source, not the information itself, which was dummy1

sensitive. 'Don't insult me, Jake. When have I ever blabbed?'

But he saw at once that injured reliability was not enough.

'Very well. You have my word.'

'Fine. Your word I will take.' Jake nodded. 'We have a Kremlin source, David. But we do not want it put at the slightest risk, you understand. Even for something which worries us as much as this.' He made a face suddenly.

'Also . . . there are those on my side who are not so convinced that we should be frank with you. They believe that terrorist operations always weaken the credibility of the PLO itself.

And that suits them — whatever the cost to others.'

Jake had always been a moderate. 'I understand.'

'Good. Well . . . Prusakov was the brains. Kulik was a useful idiot — a very necessary idiot. It is even possible that he thought he was about to make a genuine deal with you in Berlin, when actually he was setting you up. And himself, of course. At least, that is what the Russians believe now, anyway.'

'But Kulik was a computer expert. He can't have been that stupid.'

'He can. But . . . they were both computer scientists, he and Prusakov. And they were both in severe personal difficulties.

Sex and money in Kulik's case. Money and politics in Prusakov's. With Lukianov ... he is more complex.' Jake cocked an eye at him. 'You know about computers, David?'

'Not a lot.' Audley was only too-well-aware of his Luddite dummy1

tendencies where computers were concerned. But it wasn't just that they so easily could out-perform him in his own special field (though not, as it happened, in the case of Peter Richardson, by God!). It was that computers had passwords which could be broken, and no words-of-honour, he told himself. 'Try me.'

'Computer viruses? How about them?'

'No.' It was no good pretending, even though he rather liked the idea of computers catching the common cold. 'Make it simple, Jake.'

The Israeli nodded. 'What it looks like is that Prusakov found out about Kulik's problems. And that gave him an