The Under-Secretary turned away suddenly and stared into an empty corner of the room. Inspector Crawford, sitting opposite Bond, went red and shuffled his feet.
'Mr Bond showed great courage and resource, sir,' he said loudly. 'I've never heard of anybody who could hope to subdue four able-bodied men single-handed and unarmed let alone being full of a drug that incapacitated him a few minutes later. If Mr Bond hadn't escaped, the enemy's plans would be going ahead _in toto__. As it is, they'll have to be modified, they may even be fatally damaged.'
'Possibly.' Sir Ranald beat the air with his hand. With another grimace of displeasure, he said to his Under-Secretary, 'Bushnell, get a window open, will you? The air in here isn't fit to breathe with three people chain-smoking.'
While the Under-Secretary hastened to obey, Bond was hiding a grin at the memory of having read somewhere that hatred of tobacco was a common psychopathic symptom, from which Hitler among others had been a notable sufferer.
Rubbing his hands briskly, as if he had won an important point, Sir Ranald hurried on. 'Now just one matter that's been bothering me. There doesn't seem to have been any guard or watch on Sir Miles's residence. Was that normal, or had somebody slipped up?'
'It was normal, sir,' said Tanner, who had started to redden in his turn. 'This is peacetime. What happened is unprecedented.'
'Indeed. You agree perhaps that it's the unprecedented that particularly needs to be guarded against?'
'Yes, sir.' Tanner's voice was quite colourless.
'Good. Now have we any idea of who's behind this business and what its purpose is? Let's have some educated guesses on that.'
'An enemy Secret Service is at any rate the obvious one. As regards purpose, I think we can rule out a straight ransom job, if only because they could have operated that from inside the country and so avoided the immense risk of getting out with Sir Miles, and presumably Mr Bond too if they'd managed to hold on to him. And why hold two people to ransom? The same sort of reasoning counts against the idea of interrogation or brainwashing or anything of that sort. No, it's something more... original than that, I'm certain.'
Sir Ranald sniffed again. 'Well? What sort of thing?'
'No bid, sir. There's nothing to go on.'
'Mm. And presumably we're in a similar state of non-information about where this scheme, whatever it is, whoever's running it, is going to be mounted. Any reports of unusual activity from any of your stations abroad?'
'No, sir. Of course, I've asked for a special watch to be kept.'
'Yes, yes. So we know nothing. It looks as if we have merely to wait until the other side makes a move. Thank you, all of you, for your help. I'm sure none of you could have done more than you have. I'm sorry if I may have seemed to suggest that you, Mr Bond, could have acted in any other way. I spoke without thinking. Your escape is the one redeeming feature of this whole affair.'
The Minister spoke with what sounded very much like simple sincerity. The thought had occurred to him - belatedly, but then he had always been prone to let his impatience with lower-echelon muddle run away with him - that although he was not in fairness accountable for the abduction of the head of the Secret Service, his Cabinet colleagues as a whole held the view of fairness common to politicians. In other words, this business could be turned into a most useful weapon in the hands of anybody who might want to get him pushed out. Envy, spite, ambition were everywhere around him. These people here might not be the most satisfactory or effective allies, but they were the only ones immediately available. He turned to Valiance, whom he had several times in the past dismissed as an over-dressed popinjay, and said in a humble tone, unconsciously smoothing the front of his own frilled azure evening shirt as he spoke, 'In the meantime, Assistant Commissioner, what about the Press? A "D" notice, do you suppose? I'm more than content to be guided by you.'
Valiance did not dare glance at Bond or Tanner. 'I think not a black-out, sir. The Admiral has plenty of connections and we don't want them turning inquisitive. I suggest a short tucked-away paragraph saying his indisposition continues and he's been advised to take a thorough rest.'
'Excellent. I'll leave that in your hands, then. Now - any more suggestions? However tentative. Anybody...?'
Crawford stirred. 'Well, sir, if I may just...'
'Go on, Inspector. Please go on.' Sir Ranald crinkled his eyelids. 'Most welcome.'
'It's this piece of paper with the names and numbers which we all had a look at earlier. We found it crumpled up in a corner of the man's wallet. I understand the cipher people are working on a copy of it still but are just about sure it's a waste of time, there being so little of it. I wondered whether we might perhaps take another look at it ourselves. Have we considered the possibility that these are telephone numbers?'
'I'm afraid there's nothing in that, Inspector,' said Tanner, rubbing his eyes wearily. ' "Christiana" looks like Christiania in Norway, of course, and "Vasso" might be Vassy in northeastern France, and we all know where Paris is, but it didn't take us ten minutes to establish that these numbers aren't possible for the exchanges at those three places, any more than, say, Whitehall 123 would be for London. If they are telephone numbers they're probably coded on some substitution system we've no means of cracking, so we're back where we were. Sorry to disappoint you.'
'Might they be map references?' put in the UnderSecretary.
Tanner shook his head. 'Wrong number of figures.'
'Actually, sir,' the Inspector went on with quiet persistence, 'I wasn't really meaning it quite like that. Take the one we haven't mentioned - Antigone. What does that suggest to people?'
'Greek play,' said Tanner. 'Sophocles, isn't it? Code word for God knows what.'
'That is possible, sir. But Antigone isn't only a Greek play, is it? It's also a Greek name. A woman's name. I don't know whether it's still in use there, but I do know a lot of these classical names are. Now Christiana. Doesn't that sound like a woman's name too, on the lines of Christine and Christina and so on? Christiana might be the Greek form. And Paris, of course, is another Greek name.'
Abruptly, Bill Tanner got to his feet and hurried to a telephone that stood on an ink-stained and cigarette-burned trestle table by the wall.
'As regards Vasso, I'm afraid I don't - '
'What are you leading up to, Inspector?' broke in Sir Ranald, with a return to his earlier manner.
'That our man was going to Greece and had got some telephone numbers off somebody so that he could fix himself up with some female company if he felt inclined. That these are telephone numbers on the same unstated exchange. A large one, presumably. Athens, as it might be. Or at least that that's what we were supposed to think, sir.'
Sir Ranald frowned. 'But Paris is a man's name. I hardly - '
'Quite so, sir, the abductor of Helen of Troy, the man who started the Trojan War. But if you'll just take another look...'
Crawford passed over the small creased sheet of cheap lined paper. The Minister, still frowning, hitched over his ears a pair of spectacles with heavy black frames and peered at the ballpoint scrawl. He sniffed. 'Well?'
'Immediately above "Paris" there, sir... It's not at all clear, but it looks to me like "If supplies fail" or "fall". If Antigone and the other two were away or he didn't like them or something then Paris was going to be able to fix him up.'