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Panin nodded. 'I understand that. But this is a matter which does not concern your country, Dr Audley. It is an internal matter concerning my country alone. If there is any . . . irregularity in my position it arises simply from a crime committed many years ago by one of your officers. But I do not wish to make an issue of that.
And it would only bring pain and discredit on innocent people now–people like the young woman back there.'
Audley faced the Russian. 'You know as well as I do, Professor Panin, that I can't simply take your word in this matter, anymore than you would take mine. Miss Steerforth must take her chance, I'm afraid. And we must be the judges of what concerns us.'
'I think you are exceeding your instructions, Dr Audley,' Panin sighed. 'But fortunately it is of no real consequence. We will take the box now, and without further argument. That is how it must be.'
He turned on his heel with an uncharacteristically quick movement.
'Guriev!'
The gnome-like driver did not look round, but with a smooth, unhurried movement produced an automatic pistol from inside his coat.
'All hands in view, please,' he said in a surprising bass voice. 'No sudden movements, I beg you.'
'Sheremetev!'
The embassy man, with his inevitable return to Russia as a persona non grata written mournfully on his face, began to check Butler and Roskill for any hidden weapons.
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'We are not armed, Professor Panin,' Audley spoke with deliberate bitterness. 'We aren't gangsters.'
Sheremetev folded the donkey-jacket neatly on top of the tweed jacket and shook his head.
'I regret this action most sincerely,' said Panin. 'We are not gangsters either, Dr Audley. But we have wider obligations, too, as you have. You have my assurance that your country's security is not involved. And now you have my apology.'
He gestured to Roskill and Butler. 'If you two gentlemen will be so good as to place the box in the boot of the car . . .'
'No!' Guriev's deep voice cut off the end of Panin's words.
The pistol remained unmoving in his hand, pointing at nobody in particular. But now it pointed at everyone.
'The box remains here,' said Guriev. 'Sheremetev–you will empty the contents from it on the grass there. Then you will take a match from a box which I shall give you, and you will burn them. Then you will grind the ashes under your heel.'
His eyes flicked to Panin. 'And then, Comrade Panin, if you wish to recover the Schliemann Collection, I have no objection.'
Panin's face was stony, with the lines in it cut like canyons. He spoke quickly and quietly in Russian to Guriev, his voice deep and urgent with authority. Audley strained his ears, but could not catch the sense of it, beyond the words 'Central Committee' and the familiar initials of the KGB, coming over as 'Kah Gay Beh' in the vernacular.
Guriev cut him off short again.
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'Nyet,' he said with harsh finality. Then in English: 'Everyone stays still. Open the box, Sheremetev!'
Sheremetev gave Panin an agonised look.
'A hole can be a grave, Sheremetev,' Guriev growled. 'If you wish it to be. There is no help for you–we are all alone here.'
'Actually, you're just going to have visitors,' said Roskill conversationally. 'So be a good fellow and don't do anything hasty.'
He pointed across the airfield.
The noise of the tractor engines was much louder already. In fact there were two of them, one towing a grass cutter with an extraordinary raised chute like the head of some prehistoric monster, from the mouth of which wisps of grass were falling; and the other a trailer with tall netting sides bulging with fresh-cut grass. They were coming obliquely across the field, almost exactly in the tracks of Panin's car, straight towards the Roman camp.
'Everyone still,' said Guriev, moving sideways so that the Land-Rover masked him from the tractors. 'There is only one pistol here, and I shall shortly put it inside my coat. Comrade Panin and Dr Audley will join Sheremetev beside the box. You will talk to each other and you will let the farm workers pass you without trying to speak to them . . . Tell them that I mean what I say, Comrade Panin!'
'Dr Audley,' Panin said coldly, 'this traitor is prepared to commit suicide, so I must warn you that he is unlikely to stop short of murder. It would be better if you left him to me.
'Move, then–but slowly,' ordered Guriev. 'And do not mask one dummy4
another.'
Audley followed Panin to stand on one side of the box, watching the deafening approach of the tractors.
Panin spoke to him above the noise: 'Please do not do anything brave, Dr Audley–and don't let your associates do anything. The man there is all the more dangerous for being alone. I don't wish to add bloodshed to my own stupidity.'
'Don't worry, Professor,' Audley shouted back. 'We're not heroes.'
The ungainly cavalcade was very close now. Audley could see Keith Warren sitting easily in the seat of the leading tractor, a battered deerstalker jammed hard down on his head. Warren swung the wheel of the tractor to bring it parallel with the line of mounds, waved gaily to Audley, and accelerated away in a cloud of diesel fumes and flying grass.
Behind him the second tractor thundered up, halting with a shudder just abreast of the group. The driver shouted unintelligibly against the roar of his own engine and pointed to the hole.
Audley shook his head and spread his hands.
The tractor driver turned off his engine and reached down out of sight, mumbling to himself. Then he straightened up and the Sterling sub-machine gun in his hands was pointed directly at Guriev.
Richardson rose from the pile of grass in the trailer, also cradling a Sterling.
'Easy there, everybody,' he said loudly. 'These things are bloody dangerous. Once you pull the trigger you can't stop 'em.'
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Jenkins, the long-haired woodworm hunter, carefully got down from the tractor. He jerked his Sterling at Guriev, who stood frozen with his hands open and his fingers slightly crooked, like an old time gunfighter.
'Hands behind your neck, comrade–slow and easy like the man said. If you'd take his gun, Major Butler, I'd feel much happier.
Richardson's quite right. These Sterlings are nasty things.'
He paused beside DECCO. 'You can relax now, Maitland,' he told the machine. 'All the silage is gathered in safely.'
Panin looked from DECCO to Audley.
Audley nodded. 'They've been listening in, Professor Panin. Like you, I had to be ready if the worst came to the worst. And like you, I rather thought it must.'
Panin shook his head. 'I am too old for this sort of thing–too rusty.
Perhaps I should have known better.'
'Major Butler. You and Hugh open that box and have a look at what's inside.'
'Dr Audley,' Panin began, 'I must—'
'Dr Audley,' Guriev broke in, 'you will—'
Audley turned his back on Guriev. Panin might not be the sweetie Faith thought him, but he had the better manners. Besides, he had no orders covering Guriev.
Faith! He had almost forgotten her. She stood at the edge of the group, white-faced: the young lady of Riga!
There was only time to smile at her, and he tried not to make it a dummy4
tigerish smile. Then he took Panin's arm, much as the Russian had taken his a few minutes earlier, and walked him back towards the corner mound.
Delicately, he must put it delicately.
'Professor Panin, if I can satisfy you I will. But you must satisfy me first.'
Panin had regained his composure. Or rather, he had reassumed his mask of indifference. He nodded.
'You've been leaking information to us from the start, Professor–
about G Tower, for instance. Just for our benefit. But why?'
The mask slipped and a look of incredulity passed across the man's face. Then it faded and for the first time Panin actually smiled.