The Labyrinth Makers

But Faith was frowning at him.

'David, I think I'm having a bad effect on you. You're acting out of character–you're sticking your neck out. And they'll chop it off for sure, and I'll have an unemployed husband. Don't you think you ought to stay to meet Panin?'

It was a new experience for Audley to have someone actually worrying about him, a rather confusing experience. He looked at her tenderly. She was without doubt rather flat-chested, and with her hair in confusion and her glasses perched on her shiny nose she no longer looked the sort of girl to drive a man to reckless action.

He smiled affectionately. 'If you are having an effect, it's long overdue, Faith love. For years I've been sitting in my tower thinking what an important person I was just because they treated me politely. But actually I think I was just a sort of cheap computer substitute–as soon as I started giving inconvenient answers they booted me into the first vacant job somewhere else. So just this once I'm going to programme myself, and if they don't like it–well, we'll see if they do like it first. Maybe they'll promote me!'

Before she could reply–he could see she was still unconvinced–he jerked the covers back.

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'Hey!' she cried, scrabbling for the sheets.

'Too late for modesty now, love. And too late for inquests too–I'm like old Sir Jacob Astley before Edgehill.'

'Sir Jacob who?'

'"O Lord! Thou knowest how busy I must be this day",' he quoted at her. Damn them alclass="underline" she was the one who really mattered. ' "If I forget thee, do not thou forget me"!'

XIV

Jake Shapiro set his beer down carefully on the mat on the faded plush tablecloth, wiped his moustache carefully and grinned a broad, gold-filled smile at Audley.

'Surprise, surprise! I didn't expect to see you again so soon.

Comrade Professor Panin running you ragged?'

'For me not a surprise, but a pleasure, Colonel Shapiro.'

Audley looked curiously round the publican's snug, which was furnished as though time had frozen it in late Edwardian times. The only concessions to modernity, a garish TV set and a glossy telephone, were banished to a dark alcove in one corner.

'Cosy, eh? And the best beer south of the river, take my word for it, David, old friend. Have some with me.'

'I've got a long haul ahead of me, Jake. It's too early for me to go on the beer.'

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'Your loss. But I do understand your predicament. "Vodka and beer–no fear". You must keep a clear head for the Professor.'

The word was out, with a vengeance, evidently.

'You know about Panin, then?'

'There's been a lot of talk, certainly,' admitted Jake generously.

'Mystery Man's got a public relations man all of a sudden. I don't know what effect it has on you, but it'd scare the life out of me.'

'That's the point, Jake. What I want to know is—'

Shapiro raised a large hand.

'Me first, David.' He drank deeply, set the glass down carefully again and wiped his moustache once more. 'My turn, after all. The Portland trials of the Nord Aviation AS15–much better than the AS12, I hear. But I'm sure you heard better.'

Jake was presenting his bill, and Audley thought not for the first time that Jake's grapevine must be very good indeed. If the AS12

was the answer to Egypt's Russian missile boats, the AS15 was the answer with knobs on.

'Much better.'

'Range?'

'Five miles.'

'Cost?'

'Since devaluation? Maybe £2,400 a time.'

'Cheap at the price. But the bastards are still overcharging us. What about that Swedish one?'

'Let the other side buy that.'

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'I thought so. And I thought you'd be in the know. Now, just one more thing.'

Audley scowled at him. 'No more things, Jake. I've given you classified information. All you've given me is what's common knowledge in the bazaar, it seems.'

Jake guffawed. 'That's nothing more than the truth, my friend. I have to admit it: I've done you down.'

Then he stopped quite suddenly, and became almost serious. He wagged his finger at Audley.

'But you knew it was common knowledge and you still paid up, you perfidious Englishman. You knew I'd have to make amends.'

He waved his hands and squinted down his nose. This was his special Jewish character role, which hadn't changed since he'd hammed Shylock in a monstrous college production years before.

'I acknowledge the debt. Take your pound of flesh!'

'Stop fooling, Jake. How do you know it's common knowledge?'

'Joe Bamm called me from Berlin. He hadn't got me anything more, but his thumbs were twitching. He said he'd just got that little G Tower story from another source of his. He said that once could be luck, but twice was more than coincidence. Then he came back with Panin's Tuesday booking to London. I tried to phone you then, but you were off on some dirty weekend with your secretary.'

Audley winced. So the G Tower story was planted too. He remembered now how Stocker had spoken about G Tower as though he had heard about it independently of Audley's source.

They'd all been so pleased about it they hadn't bothered to question dummy4

it. A lovely, succulent carrot for the donkeys!

'The trouble is that's the lot, David. I haven't got one damn thing to add to your little store of knowledge. I haven't got a clue about what dear old Panin's up to, not a clue.'

'Is there anything cooking in Russia at the moment?'

'Search me! Except that there's always something cooking there.

Hawks and doves, old Marxist-Leninists and new thugs, Red Army and the KGB, Stalinists, Maoists — not many of them now–

Slavophiles, liberals, peasants. Davey boy, they can play their little games in more ways than I can make love. And they call it the Soviet Union! I tell you, Barry Goldwater's got more in common with Sammy Davis than some of those characters have with each other.'

He paused for breath. 'Why don't you ask your own Kremlinologists? Latimer's a sharp lad, they tell me. Or are you off on a do-it-yourself spree?'

Audley felt his early morning courage slipping. It all came down to a matter of time, and time was what he hadn't got. Panin had seen to that.

'Tell you what I'll do, David, seeing that I owe you something.

There's a real nice American I know–Howard Morris–do you know him?'

Audley nodded. Howard was a refugee from Nixon's America, a bright hope in the days of the much-maligned Lyndon Johnson who now held a nebulous post at Grosvenor Square.

'Of course you do! I forgot you were persona gratissima there since dummy4

the Seven Days. Well, Howard owes me a fat favour and I'm sure he won't mind me passing it on to you. He probably trusts you more than he trusts me, anyway. You're both part of the world-wide Anglo-Saxon conspiracy against the lesser breeds like me and Nasser.'

Shapiro consulted a little dog-eared address book, and then dialled a number on the shiny telephone.

He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

'You know Howard's only real claim to fame? Hullo there–could I have a word with Howard Morris . . . ? He isn't? No matter. I'll try again later.'

He replaced the receiver, consulted the little address book again and dialled another number.

'When he was in Korea he was one of the select band of brothers who accidentally bombed the main Russian base outside Vladivostock. Hullo! Is Howard Morris being overcharged at your bar . . . ? Yes, it's me . . . He is? Well tell him I've come to collect on my last loan. Thanks . . . Where was I? Yes, they bombed the living daylights out of it –thought they were still over North Korea.

And the Russkis never said a word. They thought it was deliberate.'

Jake's thesaurus of cautionary scandal was unsurpassed on either side of the Atlantic.