Spy Story

Schlegel nodded but gave no sign of the promised surprise. I suspected that he'd acquired a thorough understanding of Dawlish's brakes on the way up here. 'I thought it would be you, Pat.'

It was typically Dawlish. He would have died had anyone accused him of showmanship, but given a chance like this he came on like Montgomery. 'Are you chaps brewing up, by any chance?' he asked the soldiers.

'They send a van, sir. Eleven thirty, they said.'

Dawlish said, 'I think we'll make some tea now: hot sweet tea is just the ticket for a chap in a state of shock.'

I knew he was trying to provoke the very reaction I made, but I made it just the same. 'I've lost a lot of blood,' I said.

'Not lost it exactly,' said Dawlish, as if noticing my arm for the first time. 'It's soaking into your coat.'

'How silly of me,' I said.

'Corporal,' said Dawlish. 'Would you see if you can get your medical orderly up here. Tell him to bring some sticking plaster and all that kind of thing.' He turned to me, 'We'll go into the caravan. It's awfully useful for this kind of business.'

He got out of the car, and ushered me and Schlegel into the cramped sitting-room of the caravan. All it needed was Snow White: it was filled with little plastic candelabra, chintz cushion-covers and an early Queen Anne cocktail cabinet. I knew that Dawlish had hired the most hideously furnished one available, and was energetically pretending that he'd hand-picked every item. He was a sadist, but Schlegel had it coming to him.

'Useful for what kind of business?' I said.

Schlegel smiled a greeting but didn't speak. He sat down on the sofa at the rear, and began smoking one of his favourite little cheroots. Dawlish went to his gas ring and lit it. He held up a tiny camper's kettle and demonstrated the hinged handle. 'A folding kettle! Who would have believed they had such gadgets?'

'That's very common,' said Schlegel.

Dawlish waggled a finger, 'In America, yes,' he said. He started the kettle and then he turned to me, 'This business. Useful for this business. We watched you on our little Doppler radar set. Couldn't be sure it was you, of course, but I guessed.'

'There's a submarine out there in the Sound,' I said. I sniffed at Schlegel's cigar smoke enviously but I was now counting my abstinence in months.

Dawlish tutted. 'It's naughty, isn't it? We've just come down from watching him on the A.S.W. screen at H.M.S. Viking. He's moved south now. Picked up someone, did he?'

I didn't answer.

Dawlish continued, 'We are going in there, but very gently. The story is that we've lost a ballistic missile with a dummy head. Sounds all right to you, does it?'

'Yes,' I said.

Dawlish said to Schlegel, 'Well if he can't fault it, it must be all right. I thought that was rather good myself.'

There's only a broken-down footbridge,' I warned. 'You'll lose some soldiers.'

'Not at all,' said Dawlish.

'How?' I said.

'Centurion bridge layer will span the gap in one hundred seconds, the R.E. officer told me. The Land Rovers will follow.'

'And the tea van,' said Schlegel, not without sarcasm.

'Yes, and the naafi,' said Dawlish.

Takes the glitter off your story about looking for a lost missile warhead,' I said.

'I don't like Russians; landing from submarines,' said Dawlish. 'I'm not that concerned to keep our voices down.' I knew that anything concerning submarines made Dawlish light up and say tilt. The best part of Russian effort, and most of their espionage successes over a decade, had been concerned with underwater weaponry.

'You're damned right,' said Schlegel. I realized — as I was supposed to realize — that Schlegel was from some transatlantic security branch.

'Who are these people that Toliver has over there?' I asked. 'Is that some kind of official set-up?'

Schlegel and Dawlish both made noises of distress and I knew I'd touched a nerve.

Dawlish said, 'A Member of Parliament can buttonhole the Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary, slap them on the back and have a drink with them while I'm still waiting for an appointment that is a week overdue. Toliver has beguiled the old man with this Remoziva business, and no one will listen to my words of warning.'

The kettle boiled and he made the tea. Dawlish must have slipped since I worked under him, for in those days he ate M.P.s for breakfast, and as for M.P.s with cloak and dagger ambitions — they didn't last beyond the monthly conference.

'They said the man who came ashore was Remoziva's A.D.C.,' I said.

'But?'

'Could have been a very good friend of Liberace,forall lean tell: I don't know any of Remoziva's associates.'

'But Russian?' asked Schlegel. The sun came through the window. Backlit, his cigar smoke became a great silver cloud in which his smiling face floated like an alien planet.

'Tall, thin, cropped-head, blond, steel spectacles. He traded a few bits of phrase-book Polish with a character who calls himself Wheeler. But if I was going to stake money, I'd put it on one of the Baltic states.'

'Doesn't mean anything to me,' said Dawlish.

'Not a thing,' said Schlegel.

'Says he knows me, according to your Mason — Saracen — over there. I had to thump him by the way, I'm sorry but there was no other way.'

'Poor old Mason,' said Dawlish, with no emotion whatsoever. He looked me directly in the eye and made no apology for the lies he'd told me about Mason being charged with selling secrets. He poured out five cups of tea, topping them with a second lot of hot water. He gave me and Schlegel one each, and then tapped the window, called the soldiers over and gave a cup each to them. 'Well let's assume he is Remoziva's A.D.C,' said Dawlish. 'What now? Did they tell you?'

'You think it's all really on?' I said, with some surprise.

'I've known stranger things happen.'

'Through some tin-pot little organization like that?'

'He's not altogether unaided,' said Dawlish. Schlegel was watching him with close interest.

'I should think not,' I said with some exasperation. They are talking about diverting a nuclear submarine to pick him up in the Barents. Not altogether unaided is the understatement of the century.'

Dawlish sipped his tea. He looked at me and said, 'You think we should just sit on Toliver? You wouldn't advocate sending a submarine to their rendezvous point?'

'A nuclear submarine costs a lot of money,' I said.

'And you think they might sink it Surely that's not on? They could find nuclear subs easily enough, and sink them, too, if that's their ambition.'

'The Arctic is a quiet place,' I said.

'And they could find nuclear subs in other quiet places,' said Dawlish.

'And we could find theirs,' said Schlegel belligerently. 'And don't let's forget it.'

'Exactly,' said Dawlish calmly. 'It's what they call war, isn't it? No, they are not going to all this trouble just to start a war.'

'You've made a firm contact with this Admiral?' I asked.

'Toliver. Toliver got the contact — a delegation in Leningrad, apparently — we've kept completely clear by top-level instructions.'

I nodded. I could believe that. If it all went wrong they'd keep Toliver separate, all right: they'd feed him to the Russians in bite-sized pieces, sprinkled with tenderizer.

'So what do you think?' It was Schlegel asking the question this time.

I looked at him for a long time without replying. I said, 'They talked as though it's all been arranged already: British submarine, they said. Toliver talks about the R.N. like it's available for charter, and he's the man doing the