in touch with you if '
'You won't, honey,' said the Countess patting his ashen cheek, 'from now on in the ball's in your court.'
'Well, really!' said Mrs Clyde-Browne, 'She didn't even touch her tea.'
'Bugger tea. Take that murderous bastard upstairs and bleach his hair back to normal.'
'But we haven't any peroxide and '
'Use whatever you pour down the lavatory. Even if his hair falls out it'll be better than nothing.' And he hurried down the passage to the study and phoned his brother.
The Countess drove steadily towards London. She didn't want to be stopped by a patrol car and she had to get back into the sprawl of the metropolis and anonymity in case Mr Clyde-Browne's brother refused to cooperate.
'I've booked you a room at Heathrow,' she said.
'But I don't want to go to Brazil,' said Glodstone.
'So you're not going. You flew in on a Dan-Air Flight from Zimbabwe, arrival time 6 a.m., name of Harrison. And you're not to be disturbed. It's all arranged. I'll pick you up around noon for the funeral.'
'Funeral? What funeral?'
'Yours, sweetheart. Mr Glodstone's going to die. Officially. And don't take on so. You'll get used to the after-life.'
Glodstone doubted it.
Slymne didn't. Given the choice he'd have willingly died. Once again he was being interrogated. This time by three American agents from Frankfurt who were under the impression that he had spent time in Libya. In another room Major Fetherington was getting the same treatment. Unfortunately, he had.
'In the war,' he moaned, 'in the bloody war.'
'Yom Kippur or the Seven Days?'
'In the Eighth Army. A Desert Rat, for God's sake.'
'You can say that again, bud. You and Gaddafi both.'
'I'm talking about the war, the real war. The one against the Afrika Korps.'
'The who?' said one of the men who'd obviously never heard of any war before Vietnam.
'The Germans. You must know about Rommel.'
'You tell us. He train you or something?'
'Damned near killed me,' said the Major, rather wishing he had.
'So you were threatened into this, is that what you're saying?'
'No, I'm not. I'm not in this, whatever it is. I was sent down here by the Headmaster to try to find Clyde-Browne...'
'Tell us something new. We've been through that routine before.'
'But there's nothing else to tell. And what are you doing with that fucking hypodermic?'
In the passage outside Commissaire Roudhon and the man from the Quai d'Orsay listened with interest.
'The space shuttle and truth drugs and not an inkling of history,' said Monsieur Laponce. 'So much for the special relationship. The President will be pleased.'
'Monsieur?' said the Commissaire, who hadn't a clue what the Foreign Office man was talking about.
'Between London and Washington. We are standing at the end of an era.'
Commissaire Roudhon looked up and down the passage. 'If you say so, monsieur,' he said. Eras meant nothing to him.
'From now on Britain will be what she should always have been, a dependency of France,' continued Monsieur Laponce, indulging his taste for rhetoric. 'The idiots in Whitehall have played into our hands.'
'You really think the British government sent these men?'
