'Do you think most people around the place look on Leonard as pretty competent?'
'As far as I know, yes. What do you feel about him in that way?'
Another rifle-shot and summarized thunderclap made Hunter start violently, though without causing him to spill his drink. Ross-Donaldson remained unmoved.
'Have some more champagne,' he said when Hunter had recovered himself. 'Now where were we? Not good.'
'Oh dear. And now I suppose I've got to lead.'
At the end of the short game Hunter was just over four hundred points down.
'I don't believe you know the odds properly,' said Ross-Donaldson. 'And your memory, if I may say so, is appalling.'
'A great advantage in most of the dealings of life, though not, admittedly, at piquet. Shall we go on?'
Ross-Donaldson took a Service notebook from his top jacket pocket. That makes just… three hundred and forty-eight pounds eleven shillings you owe me so far this month. I think I'll stroll over and see if anything's happening. Help yourself while I'm gone.'
The sun, the champagne, and the contents of his water-container had made Hunter agreeably muzzy. The game had bored him, though not actively. He wished he had made it a hundred pounds a point instead of a florin. Even that, however, might not have sharpened his interest by anything like one hundred thousand per cent. Pouring more champagne, he decided that life was divided into wishing something was at stake when nothing was and wishing nothing was when something was.
A quarter of an hour went by in this sort of way. Then Ross-Donaldson came back.
'No result as yet,' he said. 'They've finished one sweep and have started another at right angles to the first. Two more helicopters have arrived. There's an argument raging over the air because the pilots won't go as low as Leonard wants them to.'
'Where is he?'
'Out in the field at the head of his troops.'
'You know,' said Hunter thoughtfully, 'if Best is hiding there'd be one very effective way of bringing him into the open.'
'Going round firing off those rifles, you mean. That might blow him up instead.'
'Not firing them. Brandishing them. Shaping up to fire them.'
'There's something about that idea that doesn't feel right.'
'What's wrong with it?'
'I don't know. It just doesn't feel right.'
'It would have the merit of putting those bloody guns to some use.'
Ross-Donaldson looked severe. 'They've been put to use already,' he said.
'Have they? Two practice shots? It's a funny sort of exercise, this.'
'They're studying effect. There's nothing special to learn about the actual firing. What matters is what happens at the far end.'
'That's where Venables comes in, I suppose.'
'Shall we have another game? I think we've got time.'
'All right. I mean he didn't come in at all at the briefing. Venables didn't.'
'That was mere technics. He's a technologies man.'
'Cut.'
'Have some more champagne.'
In the second game Hunter did much better, being taken down for only a trifle over fifteen pounds. By the time Ross-Donaldson had finished writing in his notebook a runner had arrived with the message that the exercise had been completed. He had no information about the success or failure of Leonard's search.
'But we'd have heard soon enough if he'd caught him.'
'Agreed. I must go and supervise the loading. And there are warning notices to be posted round the target area.'
'What for? I thought the stuff was supposed to be more or less non-radioactive.'
'Regulations, Hunter. Thank you very much for the game. You really should set about training that memory of yours. It can be done, you know.'
'I dare say it can. I'll take you on at backgammon later.'
While the stores were being loaded, Leonard's car came bumping up the track and stopped near Hunter. Its owner got out slowly. There was a tear in his trousers large enough to show a knee smeared with dirt and a little dried blood, and his shirt was stained with dried sweat. He looked silently at Hunter.
'Don't worry, Brian. You've got enough on him now, haven't you?'
'Not for an arrest. Only to make him a red suspect.'
