I'll probably just follow the line of least resistance. If Catharine's going to die it'll never matter again what I do.'
'When will you know about her?'
'The day after tomorrow. They're doing a probe on her in the morning and then it'll take them twenty-four hours to run tests on what they find. It sounds as though time has become tremendously important. Especially since they told us yesterday that Apollo's been brought forward two weeks. You'd think that would really shake us all up, wouldn't you? It would have me, in any other conceivable similar situation. But it hasn't at all. In comparison. It's always the comparison that counts. Like, you know, unless you pay a debt by the end of the week you go to prison. Very bad. Only today your son had a road accident. You see, Max, I'd desert now if I could stay with her, but they wouldn't let me.'
Hunter gave out cigarettes and refilled both glasses.
'I understand what you mean about lethal nodes,' he said when he was sitting down again, 'though I don't say I agree with it. Where I can't follow you is on this point about Apollo being the background to it. I don't think there's an analogy there. You may feel there's a connection, you may have had your attention drawn to death in the first place by way of Apollo, but that's different. What is obvious is that part of your feeling jittery comes from it. Not a very large part, perhaps, but at least you can do something about it straight away. The rest of it has got to wait for thirty-six hours or so.'
'What do you suggest I do about Apollo?'
'It's nothing to do with Catharine or Fawkes or the dispatch-rider. It's detachable, so detach it. Tell me about it.'
'Why? What good would that do?'
'There's no guarantee, of course, but I might be able to help you to feel better about some of it, less guilty and so on. It's worth a try.'
'I can't do it. I promised not to tell anybody.'
'Break your promise. If you can seriously go on about deserting and being court-martialed and the rest of it, you've got beyond that sort of promise. I shan't tell anybody else. You trust me, don't you?'
'Yes.' Churchill swallowed whisky. 'But supposing I told you and then found it didn't help?'
'Then you're no worse off, are you?'
'A lot of lives are involved.'
'That makes it particularly important for me to keep my mouth shut, but I was going to do that anyway. You don't think I'm a spy, do you?'
'No.'
'Then tell me.'
Churchill told him.
By first light on the morning of Exercise Nabob a cordon of troops was in position along the perimeter of an area in the hills amounting to something over two square miles. Official signs diverting all civilian traffic had been set up on the relevant roads the previous evening. At 0800 hours a convoy of vehicles made its way out of the camp and headed for the cordoned area. It included two lorry-loads of infantry in full battle-order and two armored carriers containing machine-gun crews and their weapons. An RAF helicopter flew at fifty feet above the head of the column while another shuttled back and forth along the route. A sweep program had been arranged for the duration of the exercise to ensure continuous observation of the ground.
On arrival at the assembly point, the machine-guns were unloaded and set up on tripods so as to command the main approaches. The infantrymen took up defensive positions round the rim of the slight depression in which the exercise proper was to take place.
'I trust you've remembered to order the light cruiser squadron to prepare to receive cavalry, Brian,' said Hunter.
'It's all very well for you to laugh,' said Leonard, doing so himself. He was in unusually high spirits, as if feeling that this was his day. 'I can assure you that none of this is unnecessary.'
'Do you really think there's the slightest possibility of armed attack? Attack by whom, anyway? Perhaps war was declared while we were on our way up here.'
'I'd know about it if it had been. No, any form of physical intervention is in the highest degree unlikely-as things are. This show of preparedness has done a good deal to make it so.'
'You mean unless we'd rendered ourselves capable of delivering a million rounds a minute at any intruder we'd have had a Red Chinese parachute company on our necks? I think I see.'
'Stranger things have happened.'
'Very few. What precautions have you taken against high-altitude photography? It's a good day for it.'
They looked up into the cloudless, deep blue sky. One of the helicopters was rattling along almost overhead with its curious not-quite-head-foremost aerial gait. The two men were standing at the comer of a rough square of level grass where the transport had been parked. Nearby, the main stores vehicle was being unloaded under the supervision of Ross-Donaldson and a sergeant-major. A number of long narrow wooden boxes, about five feet by nine inches by six inches, were being carefully handed down from the interior of the truck and piled side by side on the turf. Now and then Hunter glanced interestedly over at this proceeding.
Leonard was saying something about conditions actually being unfavorable to air observation of the secret material and activity about to be exposed. These were on too small a scale physically, he explained, to be meaningful if photographed at normal spy-plane height with even the most mature apparatus known to be available. To fly at the comparatively low altitude demanded, in the present absence of cloud-cover, would be to approach
