'How can we be sure the police are not the ones arranging it?'
'In your country, you can't,' I said.
Stok's mouth moved as if he was about to argue but he thought better of it. He decided to smile instead but it wasn't a heart-warming smile. He unbuttoned his overcoat to find a handkerchief to wipe his nose. His suit was a well-cut Western one. With it he wore a white shirt and silver tie. The nervous hands and piercing eyes completed the Godfather look. 'Five minutes, and we will be gone,' he said.
From the next room there was a quick exchange in Russian too fast for me to understand even vaguely. 'The medical bag?' said Stok to me. 'What are you doing with a medical bag?'
'Marjorie's,' I said. 'The girl; she's a doctor.'
Stok told them to carry on the search. 'If the girl proves not to be a doctor we might have to return.'
'If the girl proves not to be a doctor I might be dead,' I said.
'You are not hurt,' said Stok. He walked close to me and looked at the tiny mark left by the welt of the boot. 'It is nothing,' he said.
'By your standards nothing more than a good evening.'
Stok shrugged. 'You are under surveillance,' he said. 'I warn you.'
'The more the merrier,' I said. 'Tap the phone too if it will make you feel good.'
'It's not a joke.'
'Oh! It's not. Well, I'm glad you told me that, before I split my sides laughing.'
From the next room I could hear Stok's two friends tapping' and hammering, in pursuit of secret compartments. One of them brought him the file in which I keep
'There's nothing,' I said. 'You're wasting your time.'
'Probably,' agreed Stok.
'Ready,' called the voice from the next room.
'Wait a minute,' I said as I realized what they were going to do. 'I can explain about that — this flat belonged to a bookie. There's nothing in there now. Nothing at all.'
I pushed Stok aside to get to the next room. His two friends had fixed our Birmingham carpet upon the wall. It covered the wall safe upon which they had affixed six small charges. They triggered them as I got to the doorway. The carpet billowed into a great spinnaker before I heard the muffled bang. There was a rush of hot cordite-smelling air that hammered me backwards.
'Empty,' said the bearded one; already he was throwing his odds and ends back into the metal case.
Stok looked at me and blew his nose. The other two hurried out through the front door but Stok delayed a moment. He raised a hand as if he was about to offer an apology or an explanation. 'But words failed him; he let the hand drop to his side, turned, and hurried out after his friends.
There was the sound of a scuffle as Frazer met the Russians on the stairs. But Frazer was no more of a match for them than I had been, and he came through the door dabbing at his nose with a blood-spotted handkerchief. There was a Special Branch man with him: a new kid who insisted upon showing me his card before photographing the damage.
Well, it had to be the Russians, I thought. There was something inimitable in it. Just like the business of forcing us off the road and then waiting in The Bonnet to show us' who they were. Just like the intelligence trawlers that followed nato ships, and the big Soviet Fleets that harassed us at sea. It was all part of the demonstration of their resources and their knowledge, an attempt to bully opponents into ill-considered action.
It was typical too that the security Colonel had arrived separately, taking no chances of being in the same car with the house-breaking tools and explosives. And that half-hearted gesture of regret — tough bastards, and I didn't like it. I mean, you go for a dip in the municipal baths, and you don't expect to catch sight of a shark fin.
They had all gone by the time Marjorie returned. At first she didn't look through the bedroom door, to where the previous tenant's safe had its door dangling and its lock shredded into wire wool. Or at paper wrappings from the explosive charges or the twists of wire and dry batteries. And she didn't see the thick layer of old plaster that covered the bed and my suit and her dressing table. Or the carpet with its circular burn in the middle.
She just saw me picking up the fragments of the china tea service her mother had given her and Jack for their wedding anniversary.
'I told you about the old man with the twisted hip,' said Marjorie.
'What!' I said.
'Doing exercises. You'll do the same. You see! You'll be in the Emergency Ward with him: you're too old for press-ups.'
I tossed the pieces of china on to the tray with the broken teapot.
'Well, if it wasn't exercises,' said Marjorie, 'what's happened?'
'A Colonel from the Russian embassy, and an explosives man, and a driver with gold teeth and a beard. And then there was the Navy and Special Branch taking photos.'
She stared at me trying to see if I was joking. 'Doing what?' she asked guardedly. She sniffed the burnt air and looked around the room.
'With a cast like that,' I said, 'who needs a plot?'
Chapter Eight
Line reject: to miss a move. Wargamers must remember that fuel, fatigue and all logistic support will continue to be expended during such a move. Continuous instructions {air patrols etc.) will be continued and naval units will continue on course unless halted by separate and specific instruction. Therefore, think twice before rejecting.
There's a large piece of plush Campden Hill landscape trapped on the wrong side of Holland Park Avenue. That's where the Foxwells live. Past the police station there's a street of crumbling Victorian villas that West Indian tenants have painted pistachio green, cherry red and raspberry pink. See it in daylight and it's a gargantuan banana split, with a side-order of dented cars.
'On the corner there's a mews pub: topless dancers Friday, Irish riots Saturday, on Sunday morning, advertising men and a sports car club. Alongside the pub there is the mews. At the mews's far end a gate opens onto the entirely unexpected house and garden that Foxwells have owned for three generations.
It was hard to believe that this was central London. The trees were bare, and sapless roses hung their shrunken heads. A hundred yards up the drive there was a large house just visible in the winter gloom. In front of it, well clear of the London planes, the gardener was burning the last of the fallen leaves. He raked the fire with great apprehension, as a man might goad a small dragon. A billow of smoke emerged and fierce embers crackled and glowed red.
'Evening, sir.'
'Evening, Tom. Will it rain?' I went round and opened the car door for Marjorie. She knew how to operate it for herself, but when she had her hair up she liked to be treated like an elderly invalid.
'There's snow up there,' said Tom. 'Make sure your anti-freeze is in.'
'I forgot to drain it out last year,' I said. Feeling neglected, Marjorie put her hands in her pockets and shivered.
'That's cruel,' said Tom. 'She'll rust.'
Ferdy's house sits on two acres of prime London building land. It makes the apples he grows in the orchard an expensive delicacy, but Ferdy is like that.
There were cars already there: Ferdy's Renault, a Bentley and an amazing vintage job: bright yellow, perhaps too ostentatious for Al Capone but certainly big enough. I parked my Mini Clubman next to it.
