'Leave it there.'
'I need the kettle for the others.'
Outside the night was still dark enough to see the stars. I sighed and went down the iron stairs to the bathroom. There was no electricity, a fact I confirmed by clicking the light switch half a dozen times. Mason knocked at the door again. 'Coming,' I said, 'coming.' A dog began to howl from the courtyard.
The light from the glazed slit window was just sufficient for me to see a white rectangle on the floor near the door. I picked it up. Mason rapped again and I put the folded sheet of paper on the washstand while I unlocked the door.
'Locked doors?' said Mason. His manner conveyed all the condescension of a man who had been working while others slept. 'Who are you frightened of?'
'The fairies,' I said.
'Where do you want it?' Mason said, but before I could decide he'd poured the hot water into the washbasin.
'Thanks.'
'If you want more, you'll have to come down to the kitchen. The cold's working.' He turned the tap to show me what cold water was, and then closed it off again. Mason was like that.
He looked around the room to see how untidy it was. Toliver had put shaving kit, pyjamas and shirts and underwear in the chest, but now these items were distributed around the bathroom. Mason sniffed. He looked for a moment at the folded sheet of paper, too, but he made no remark.
When he'd gone, I again locked the door. I unfolded the sheet of paper. It had been torn from a school exercise book by the look of it. The message had been typewritten on a machine that badly needed a new ribbon. Some of the characters were little more than indentations:
You're making our newly arrived friend very uneasy. I don't have to tell you he's Remoziva's A.D.C., but he insists that everyone be coy about it. Hence the charades this evening. Did you meet him? It sounds as if it was some time when you worked for us — late 'fifties? — a conference he thinks.
Someone should tell the old man about this. I don't think he'll like it. I can't go, and using the phone here would be too risky. But if you took your usual long walk and got a bit lost you could get as far as the phone box at Croma village. Just tell them about Erikson and say that saracen confirms it. If they give you instructions for me, wait till we're all together and then ask Toliver or Mason where you ran buy some French cigarettes. I will then offer you a packet with three cigarettes in it, so you'll know who I am. You might think this is all going a bit far, but I know these boys and I'm staying covert — even to you.
They're all touchy now while Erikson is here, so leave by the kitchen garden and the paddock and keep to the south side of the big rocks. Skip breakfast, I've left some sandwiches for you in the old greenhouse. You could always say you made them last night. Keep to the south of the peninsula, there's a footbridge on that side of Angel Gap. It looks rickety but it will hold you. Head for the cottage with the collapsed roof, you can see the bridge from there. The road is four miles beyond (running north/south). The post office is on that road. Turn right on the load and it's the first house you come to. The box is on the far side — take coins with you. Keep moving, I can't guarantee these boy scouts won't follow.
And if you think they would hesitate to knock you off to make their plan work, think again. They are dangerous. Burn this light away. I'll be around if you run into problems getting away this morning.
I didn't remember the Russian skinhead. But if he was from Russian Naval Staff (Security Directorate) he could have been at any one of a dozen Joint Security conferences I'd attended in the 'fifties. If he was from the G.R.U., the chances we'd met were considerably greater. It was all getting too rich for my blood, and I wasn't any longer on salary for this kind of action. If Soviet General Staff Directorate were joining Toliver's troop, they'd put his boy scouts into long trousers and tell them about girls. And I didn't want to be around when it happened.
I read the note again, very carefully, and then tore it into small pieces. In a remote country house like this flushing it down the toilet was not good enough — it needs only one man-hole cover lifted between here and the septic tank.
I burned the paper in the sink when I'd finished washing and shaving but it left scorch marks that I could not completely erase with soap. I started to shave while the water was still warm. To say I didn't like it was an understatement. If they were going to get rid of me, a secret note — that I must destroy — advising me to take a chance on a rickety footbridge in a snowstorm… that might be the perfect way to arrange it.
But doctors can't pass a street accident, nor dips an open handbag, coppers can't pass a door with a broken lock, Jesuits can't pass sin in the making, everyone falls prey to their training. The idea of Erikson coming off a submarine weighed heavily upon me. And it would stay that way until I contacted Dawlish's office via the local engineers, as he'd so thoughtfully explained the latest system. I knew that even if I spent all morning thinking about it I would eventually try to find that damned post office phone, but I couldn't help thinking that: if Toliver had failed to bring that line of communication under his control or surveillance he was a darn sight less efficient than he'd so far shown himself to be.
Perhaps I should have passed up the post office, and the sandwiches too, and evolved a completely different plan of action, but 1 couldn't think of anything better.
I went down into the hall. It was a gloomy place with amputated pieces of game adorning the walls: lions, tigers, leopards and cheetahs joined in a concerted yawn. An elephant's foot was artfully adapted to hold walking- sticks and umbrellas. There were fishing-rods and gun cases, too. I was tempted to go armed but it would slow me down. I contented myself with borrowing a donkey jacket and a scarf and went through the servants' corridor into the pantry. There was a smell of wet dogs and the sound of them barking. I could hear the others at breakfast. I recognized the voices of Toliver, Wheeler and Mason and I waited to hear the voice of Erikson before moving on.
I welcomed the blizzard. The wind roared against the back of the house, and made the windows kaleidoscopes of scurrying' white patterns. It would take me two hours, perhaps more, to Angel Gap. I buttoned up tight.
The south of the peninsula was the high side. It was the best route if I did not stumble over the cliff edge in the snow storm. The other coastline was a ragged edge of deep gullies, inlets and bog that would provide endless detours for someone like me who didn't know the geography, and no problems for pursuers who did.
I didn't go directly into the kitchen garden, for I would have been in full view of anyone at the stove. I went down the corridor into the laundry room and from there across the yard to the barn. Using that as cover, I made my way along the garden path behind the raspberry canes and along the high wall of the kitchen garden. I stopped behind the shed to have a look round. The wind was blowing at gale force and already the house was only a grey shape in the flying snow.
The greenhouse was not one of those shiny aluminium and polished-glass affairs you see outside the garden shops on the by-pass. This was an ancient, wooden-framed monster nearly fifty feet long. Its glass was dark grey with greasy dirt and it was difficult to see into it. I pushed the door open. It creaked, and I saw my sandwiches on the potting bench, conspicuously near the door. It was a shambles inside: old and broken flower pots, dead plants and a false ceiling of spiders' webs entrapping a thousand dead flies. Outside, the wind howled and thumped the loose panes, while whirling snow pressed little white noses, against the glass. I didn't reach for the sandwiches, I froze, suddenly aware that: I was not alone. There was someone in the greenhouse, someone standing unnaturally still.
'Mr Armstrong!' It was a mocking voice.
A figure in a dirty white riding mac stepped out from behind a stack of old wooden boxes. My eyes went to the shotgun carried casually under arm, and only then up to the eyes of Sara Shaw.
'Miss Shaw.'
'Life is full of surprises, darling. Have you come for your sandwiches?' Her coat shoulders were quite dry, she'd been waiting a long time for me.
'Yes,' I said.
'Last night's pork, and one round of cheese.'
'I didn't know you were here, even;'
'That building worker's coat suits you, you know.' The smile froze on her face, and I turned to sec someone coming from the kitchen door. 'Mason, the little bastard must have seen me,' she said.
It was Mason. He was bent into the wind, hurrying after us as fast as his little legs could carry him. She had
