And that made him angry.
'Why did you come back, Peter?'
'Why did I — ?' Richardson stared at him. 'With half Europe after me ... it seemed the sensible thing, David.'
'No.' There was no point in admitting his error. Rather, he must still pretend to have been clever. 'We trained you. And, with what you've been up to all these years, you must have known your luck would run out eventually. So you would have been well-prepared for the day when 'all was betrayed'.'
'I was well-prepared for it.' Richardson lifted his chin aggressively. 'That's why I'm here.'
'No.' He could hear distant kitchen sounds. And they confirmed his certainty. 'You'd have had a better bolt-hole than this, a lot further away. And, with half Europe after you, you'd never have risked Sophie — even if you did trust my word-of-honour still. So that won't do, Peter.'
'No?' Richardson returned to toying with his whisky. 'Well. . .
let's say I was curious — ' The look on Audley's face stopped him. 'No . . . and I don't suppose Queen and Country will do any better, eh?' He nodded. And then matched Audley's expression. 'I came back to help you, actually. Because that dummy1
was what I wanted to do.'
They were getting closer. 'And what else do you want?'
'Just that: to help you. And not to be tucked away in some damned safe-house in the back-of-beyond.' Quite suddenly Richardson's lips smiled unnaturally, with no support from his eyes. 'But I also want to be in at the kill, with you. That is what I want.'
Audley was conscious of the warmth of the fire on his face contrasting with what felt like a cold draught on his back.
What he had just got from the man was everything and nothing, simultaneously. 'Why?'
Mercifully, the lips lost the Borgia smile. 'Is your word-of-honour still good, David Audley? Will you take me with you?'
It might be safer to have a man who could smile like that under his own eye than anyone else's, the way things were.
But if those terms had been waiting for him ever since Capri, he also had something with which to bargain now. 'That's not going to be easy, Peter. There are rules.'
'Not for you, there aren't. Or there never used to be ... in the old days.' A ghost of the old Richardson-smile returned. 'And it's the old days that you want, isn't it?'
'I'm not in the killing business.' They were only haggling now. 'I never was.'
'No?' It was the old days that the man was remembering —
just as Charlie Renshaw had done when he had reiterated his final order. 'Very well. I'll settle for observer- status, to see dummy1
how things turn out. Okay?'
Buster began to bark somewhere beyond the door.
Richardson nodded. 'He's getting his dinner. So we haven't got long. And ... I don't want Sophie to know more than she already does.' He nodded again. 'You were quite right: I wouldn't have come back here, and risked her ... if it hadn't been necessary.'
'Necessary for what?'
'Necessary for me.' No sort of smile now, either twentieth-century English or sixteenth-century Italian. 'Your word, David?'
'All right. My word — if what you've got is worth it, Major Richardson.'
'Thank you. It's worth it. If it isn't ... I agree, Dr Audley.'
Now Audley could nod. But there was still one thing he wanted to know first. 'How long have you been aware of ...
whatever it is you are about to tell me? Why have you sat on it all these years?'
'I haven't sat on it. I haven't even thought about it... 'all these years', as you say.' Richardson's lips curled, 'But you've just reminded me of it, that's all, David.'
It had to be Lukianov. No matter that Prusakov had been the brains, or that he and Kulik between them had fixed their computers and set the whole plot in motion in the first place so recently. Because this was fifteen years ago, what Richardson was remembering. And fifteen years ago they dummy1
would have been back-room beginners somewhere in the bowels of their respective KGB and GRU headquarters.
Whereas a much-younger General Lukianov would have been in the field, at the sharp end.
'You've remembered Lukianov?'
'No. Or maybe.' Richardson shrugged the name off disappointingly. 'I don't know. I don't really know what's happening now, do I? To me, anyway.'
'So what do you know, then?'
Richardson stared at him for a moment again. 'You got quite a lot of it right. I was in trouble, when I got your message.
