said.
Toliver smiled at me and patted my shoulder. 'I think Armstrong would agree that the Rear-Admiral would be a strategic asset for us,' he said.
'He's not here then?' I said.
'Not yet,' said Toliver. 'But very, very soon.'
Wheeler said, 'The simple fact is, if the Admiral doesn't get a kidney transplant: within, the next: eighteen months, he'll be dead a year after.'
'And he can't get that in the Soviet Union?' I asked.
'The Admiral is an able statistician,' said Toliver. 'They started a kidney unit in Leningrad a year ago last July. They are capable of it, yes. But in London we've done thousands of such operations. Ask yourself what you'd prefer.'
'And he'd defect?'
'To live?' said Wheeler. 'A man will go to great lengths to live, Mr Armstrong.'
I suppose I sniffed, or grunted, or made some other noise that fell short of the enthusiasm that Toliver expected. 'Tell me why not,' said Commander Wheeler.
'It's possible,' I agreed. 'But peasant family to Soviet nobility in one generation is quite a jump. They've plenty to be grateful for. One brother is planning a new town near Kiev, the elder sister chairing the Copenhagen talks, and getting more publicity than. Vanessa Redgrave…'
'The Admiral is not yet fifty,' said Wheeler. 'He has a lot of life ahead of him if he's wise.'
'We were also sceptical at first,' said Toliver. 'If the emphasis hadn't been placed upon proving death…' He stopped and looked apologetically at Wheeler. 'But I'm getting too far ahead.'
Wheeler said, 'We divided the problem into three separate tasks. The safest place for the transfer was obvious from the start. There's only one place where we can guarantee security. He can fly a helicopter. We will rendezvous with him at a prearranged place on the pack-ice of the Barents Sea and bring him back by submarine.'
'British submarine,' said Mason.
'A Royal Navy nuclear submarine,' said Toliver. 'If the Yanks got wind of it they'd spirit him away to America and that's the last we'd see of him.'
'Next,' said Wheeler, 'there is the problem of holding him for debriefing…'
'And you thought of the War Studies Centre,' I said.
'Well, it's bloody marvellous, isn't it?' said Wheeler. 'War-game his debriefing, and put nato resources against him.'
'And programme the computer to his reactions,' said Toliver.
'Dangerous,' I said.
'Not as a war plan — just into the data bank,' said Toliver.
'And what about Schlegel?' I asked.
Wheeler frowned. 'That's set us back a month or more — but he'll be posted elsewhere. It was finally fixed today.'
'And the Rear-Admiral will become Pat Armstrong?' I said.
'Sorry about that,' said Toliver, 'but you are about the right build and you'd just vacated the flat. We never guessed for a moment that you might go back there.'
'It's quite good,' I admitted.
'Only for a few weeks.,' said Mason. The tenancy of the flat and all the necessary personal documentation.is in your name. There will be no trace of a new person at the Studies Centre. We've gone to a lot of trouble. Getting that damned kidney machine up those stairs and into the flat next door to your old one… I damned near got a hernia. And then when they told us you'd gone back there, and you still had your old key. We got chewed out for that, I'll tell you.'
'And what happens to me?' I asked. 'Do I go back and take over Northern Fleet?'
'I say,' said Wheeler, pretending to take it seriously, 'that would really be a coup, wouldn't it?' They all laughed.
'We should have told you right at the beginning,' said Toliver. 'But our rule is to check out security before information is passed. Foxwell swore on a stack of bibles that you were a sound proposition. But a rule is a rule. Am I right?'
'And the restaurant and the girl — Miss Shaw — how does that fit in? I thought you were holding the Rear- Admiral there at one time.'
'We know you did,' said Wheeler. 'You're quite a bloodhound.'
'Miss Shaw is the daughter of one of my oldest friends,' said Toliver, 'and she's turned out first class. It's been beastly for her…'
Mason said, 'We needed a body — a dead body — to leave at the rendezvous, to make the helicopter crash look right.'
Toliver said, 'And it has to be a body with a diseased kidney. It gave us problems, I can tell you.'
'Hence the cold room at The Terrine,' I said. I didn't tell him that Marjorie had recognized him at the mortuary.
'And damned tricky,' said Mason. 'Must be in a sitting position so that we can leave it in the wrecked helicopter.'
'Ever tried to dress and undress a stiff?' One of the others said.
'You try and get a pair of trousers on a sitting corpse,' said Wheeler, 'And you might agree that it's the next most difficult thing to doing it standing up in a hammock.' They smiled.
Toliver said, 'Sara stitched every bit of that uniform together on the frozen body. She's quite a girl.'
'And where is the body now?' I asked. There was only a moment of hesitation then Toliver said, 'It's here, frozen. We have to be careful of what the post-mortem johnnies call adipocere. That's what the flesh becomes when immersed in water. It's got to look right for the Russkies when they find it.'
'What about the hand stitching?' I said.
'A calculated risk,' said Toliver.
'And the uniform will be burned in the crash,' said Mason.
I looked from Wheeler to Toliver and then at Mason. They appeared to be serious. You didn't have; to be living with a beautiful doctor to know that post-death discoloration was going to reveal to those same Russkies the fact that the body died full-length in a hospital bed, but I said nothing.
Toliver came round with the gin bottle. He topped up their glasses with Plymouth and put a dash of bitters into each one. Pink gins made with Plymouth. That was the common denominator, or the nearest thing they had to one: they were all ex-Royal Navy, or adopting wardroom manners with careful enthusiasm.
A message came late that night. I was told that Schlegel did not want me back in London. I was to remain with. Toliver's people on Blackstone until I was ordered to the submarine base for the Arctic trip.
I didn't believe the message. Schlegel was not the sort of man who sent vague verbal messages via men not known to both of us. But I took great care to show no sign of my disbelief. I reacted only by attempting to establish my love of the great outdoors. If I was going to get out of this place against their wishes I'd need the few hours start that only a habit of long country walks could provide.
So I hiked alone across the moorland, feeling the springy turf underfoot. I found grouse, and startled hares, and I tried the tail of Great Crag that was no more than a steep slope. I went past the pines and climbed through the hazel and birch and then bare rock, all the way up to the summit. A couple of hours of such walking gave even a vertigo-prone stumbler like me a chance to look down through the holes in the cloud, I saw the black terraces and crevices of the rock face, and beyond the gully to the loch: shining like freshly tempered blue steel. And I could see where the valley was an amphitheatre upholstered in yellow deer grass and curtained with remnants of white sea mist. I took cheese and Marmite sandwiches up with me, and found a mossy ledge amongst the ice ridges. There I could shelter and blow on my hands, and pretend I'd got there by way of the chimney and three pinnacles;i of which the others spoke so proudly.
I polished the salt spray from my spectacles and looked seaward. It was one of the wildest and most desolate landscapes that Britain offers. A stiff wind was striking the snow-clad peak, and snow crystals came from the summit, like white smoke from a chimney.
