'So what did you give him, the BBs?'
'BBs?' said Wilt. 'You mean airguns?'
'Binary bombs.'
'Never heard of them.'
'Safest nerve-gas bombs in the world,' said Glaushof proudly. 'We could kill every living fucking thing from Moscow to Peking with BBs and they wouldn't even know a thing.'
'Really?' said Wilt. 'I must say I find your definition of safe peculiar. What are the dangerous ones capable of?'
'Shit,' said Glaushof, wishing he was somewhere under-developed like El Salvador and could use more forceful methods. 'You don't talk you're going to regret you ever met me.'
Wilt studied the Major critically. With each unfulfilled threat he was gaining more confidence but it still seemed inadvisable to point out that he already regretted meeting the bloody man. Best to keep things cool. 'I'm only telling you what you want to know,' he said.
'And you didn't give them any other information?'
'I don't know any. Ask the students in my class. They'll tell you I wouldn't know a bomb from a banana.'
'So you say,' muttered Glaushof. He'd already questioned the students and, in the case of Mrs Ofrey, had learnt more about her opinion of him than about Wilt. And Captain Clodiak hadn't been helpful either. The only evidence she'd been able to produce that Wilt was a communist had been his insistence that the National Health Service was a good thing. And so by degrees of inconsequentiality they had come full circle back to this KGB man Radek whom Wilt had claimed was his contact and now said was a Czech writer and dead at that. And with each hour Glaushof's chances of promoting himself were slipping away. There had to be some way of getting the information he needed. He was just wondering if there wasn't some truth drug he could use when he caught sight of the scrotal guard on his desk. 'How come you were wearing this?' he asked.
Wilt looked at the cricket box bitterly. The events of the previous evening seemed strangely distant in these new and more frightening circumstances but there had been a moment when he had supposed the box to be in some way responsible for his predicament. If it hadn't come undone, he wouldn't have been in the loo and...
'I was having trouble with a hernia,' he said. It seemed a safe explanation.
It wasn't. Glaushof's mind had turned grossly to sex.
Eva's was already there. Ever since she had left Flint she had been obsessed with it. Henry, her Henry, had left her for another woman and an American airbase slut at that. And there could be no doubt about it. Inspector Flint hadn't told her in any nasty way. He'd simply said that Henry had been out to Baconheath. He didn't have to say any more. Henry had been going out every Friday night telling her he was going to the prison and all the time...No, she wasn't going to give way. With a sense of terrible purpose Eva drove to Canton Street. Mavis had been right after all and Mavis had known how to deal with Patrick's infidelities. Best of all, as secretary of Mothers Against The Bomb she hated the Americans at Baconheath. Mavis would know what to do.
Mavis did. But first she had to have her gloat. 'You wouldn't listen to me, Eva,' she said. 'I've always said there was something seedy and deceitful about Henry but you would have it that he was a good, faithful husband. Though after what he tried to do to me the other morning I don't see how...'
'I'm sorry,' said Eva, 'but I thought that was my fault for going to Dr Kores and giving him that...Oh dear, you don't think that's what's made him do this?'
'No, I don't,' said Mavis, 'not for one moment. If he's been deceiving you for six months with this woman, Dr Kores' herbal mixture had nothing to do with it. Of course he'll try to use that as an excuse when it comes to the divorce.'
'But I don't want a divorce,' said Eva, 'I just want to lay my hands on that woman.'
