The Memory Trap

But. . . they're still holding him.'

'Why?'

'That was to do with their official statement. Because . . .

what they're putting out — at least for the time being, David dummy1

— is that it was a gangster shoot-out, involving Turks and drugs.' She gave him a clear-eyed look. 'The Germans were extremely helpful, David. But Colonel Schneider said he didn't think the statement would stick for long.'

'Extremely embarrassed, more like.' Mitchell sniffed derisively.

'Do be quiet, Mitchell.' Audley silenced Mitchell, and then nodded encouragingly at Elizabeth. (They were both right, of course: Schneider was a damn good man. So he would have been hugely embarrassed by such a monumental fuck-up on his patch.) 'How . . . "helpful", Elizabeth?'

She studied him for a second. 'I talked to Colonel Schneider.

And then he contacted Jack in London. And they concocted a holding story between them, to which I agreed . . . after I'd talked to Jack — Sir Jack.' The look was now clear-eyed. 'Sir Jack told Colonel Schneider that I had been standing in for you, David. And . . . the Colonel knows you, doesn't he?'

That was an understatement. But it was none of anyone's business right now. 'What story?'

'It's chiefly to do with Ted Sinclair.' The mention of Sinclair hurt her. 'Officially, they haven't put out any names, as yet —

just that it was a criminal police matter, with no politics involved.' Elizabeth blinked. 'But Colonel Schneider has arranged for one of the Berlin papers to pick up a leak that an innocent foreigner was unfortunately killed in the cross-fire.

And they've put out that he was a British Council officer who'd just arrived in Berlin from Frankfurt, who was dummy1

lunching a ... a visitor, David.'

'A visitor?' Mitchell snapped the question. 'With three people dead, Lizzie — ? And the Berlin papers chasing everyone who was there?'

'The visitor was me.' Elizabeth threw Mitchell off. 'And I was representing the British Ladies' Hockey Federation, to arrange an exhibition match in the spring. And, if they check up on that, the BLHF will confirm they sent a committee member to Berlin, to examine the condition of the playing-fields.' She tossed her head. 'But that isn't important . . . even if they could trace me ... I am a BLHF committee member because I'm a Ladybird — '

'A what?' exclaimed Mitchell.

'For God's sake, Mitchell — ' Audley joined her. 'Yes, Elizabeth — ?'

'Yes.' Elizabeth dismissed Mitchell. 'The name Colonel Schneider did leak was for you, David: Ted Sinclair has become "David Ordway". And the British Council in Frankfurt has been told that their office and the BLHF were sending two people to Berlin. Do you see?'

'That won't hold for long.' Mitchell shook his head at Elizabeth. 'If we're lucky . . . maybe another day. But no more.'

But Audley saw. And, although Jack Butler hadn't quite told him everything, he saw even more clearly.

Because Butler and Schneider between them had conspired dummy1

to buy him time, as Mitchell had emphasized. But, as neither of them was certain that they'd done that in spite of all their best efforts, they were letting him decide how much those efforts might be worth: that, either if he failed to elicit this information ... or, even if he did, and he judged the risk too great, and played it accordingly "... then he would act accordingly anyway . . . with Elizabeth and Mitchell beside him, and the Italians breathing down his neck.

'Yes.' He was here now, in the Bay of Naples. So the bottom line was that Jack Butler was relying on him to make the right decision without any footling restriction, as from company commander to second-lieutenant. And the years which separated him from Peter Richardson, also separated Jack from that: even though he was now back in the field, and far from home, Butler expected him to weigh politics and diplomacy, as well as survival, and coming safe-home to Mrs Faith Audley and Miss Catherine Audley, into the bargain.

'So, in theory, you're not supposed to be here.' Mitchell, with his responsibility for that survival, went one better. 'Because, whoever put that kamikaze-Ay-rab into Berlin is supposed to be presuming that he took you out with his first shot, as per contract — eh?' But he sneered at his own hypothesis as he offered it. 'Is that what we're supposed to assume?' He rocked with the boat's motion: coming back to England — or, actually, to Wales — from Dun Laoghaire (which was worse than this: which was frequently sideways as well as up and down ... so he had his sea-legs now, from all those Anglo-dummy1

Irish crossings!). 'But you're not relying on that, are you?'

Audley held on to the stanchion which Mitchell had abandoned in moving out of his reach. What neither Butler nor Mitchell could imagine was that coming back to the sharp end was more interesting: that, however uncomfortable, it also reassured him that he was still alive, and not yet too geriatric for those duties to which he nowadays helped sentence others, for whom no scheduled flights were held, and who were not delivered to (or taken off) those flights as though they were such Very Important Persons that they didn't have to worry (or, couldn't waste time worrying?), because they were Too Important. So that now (no matter how frightened he could be if he let himself think about it) ... at least he wasn't so bored with life anyway!

'Very well! So Kulik was waiting for me. But so was the Arab.

And he took out Ted Sinclair, believing he was me. So why Kulik, then — ? If he was just bait?'

Mitchell shrugged. 'So maybe they double-crossed him.'

Another shrug. 'The mouse springs the trap — who cares about the cheese? Not the Russians!'

'No.' Elizabeth shifted uneasily. 'It doesn't fit.'

Mitchell looked at her in surprise. 'What doesn't fit, Lizzie?'

'It doesn't fit the Russians, Dr Mitchell.'

'No? Everything's sweetness and light now, is it? Glasnost and Perestroika, and all that jazz?' He cocked his head at her. 'And nice Mr Gorbachev off to New York to announce dummy1

missile cuts — and army cuts, too? Is that what you've been working on, Lizzie: doing Jack Butler's sums for him? Don't kid yourself, Miss Loftus —'

'I'm not kidding myself.' Elizabeth allowed herself to be provoked at last. 'You've been too long in Ireland, Paul.'

That was probably true, thought Audley critically. (And, typically for Research and Development, they each had a shrewd idea of what the other had been doing. So much for departmental security!)

'That may very well be, my dear Elizabeth.' Mitchell rolled loosely for a moment as he took her measure. 'And . . . you may have a point with nice Mr Gorbachev, even . . . seeing how he hasn't really any choice, the way the wind's blowing.'

He nodded again. 'But not everyone in the Kremlin has got the message yet — let alone in Dzerzhinsky Street and Arbatskaya Ploshchad.' This time he grinned. 'Apart from which, if Comrade Kulik could still have had something to sell . . . And he was on the level . . . even nice Mr Gorbachev wouldn't think twice about putting him down, for the good of Glasnost— eh?'

'With a hired assassin?'

'Why not?'

'An incompetent assassin?'

They were both volleying at the net now —

'He wasn't all that incompetent, Lizzie — '

'He didn't recognize David.' She looked at Audley: she'd had dummy1

enough of this exchange. But he wasn't yet ready to intervene.

'So he had a contract for one large male Caucasian, maybe.'

Suddenly it was Mitchell who was uneasy. 'Or maybe he panicked when it looked like Kulik was being picked up, and simply decided to settle for poor old Ted. It happens, Lizzie.

If you panic.'

'In Ulster maybe it happens.' She came back to Audley again.