Maxim saw the German delegate wince, then become impassive and attentive again.
"Moscow might well not believe we could destroy Russia, but Warsaw would certainly believe we could destroy Poland… Above all things, we are looking for a targetting policy that will be believed… then we have deterrence…"
Tyler stopped as the captain from the Sûretétiptoed into the room, pointing at Maxim and making telephone gestures at his own ear.
"You'd better go, Major," Tyler grunted. He was 'Major' once more.
Maxim had expected George; he got a slightly accented voice.
"Major Maxim?"
"Yes?"
"I wonder if you would take a beer with me. When we last met, we did not seem to have the time."
"Is that Mr Komoscsin?"
"Of course." The voice sounded pleased. "There is a caféat the bottom of the hill, the one on the right. A beer, yes?"
"Yes."
Maxim put down the phone and stepped back from the transparent space-helmet fixed to the wall.
The captain, who had politely turned his back, swung around.
"It is all right r "I'm going down to the village," Maxim said, "to meet a Russian spy."
The captain just looked at him.
The beer was waiting for him. The caféwas a single dark room with a floor of tiny mosaic tiles, and its shelves and bar jammed with fancy beer-steins, green-stemmed glasses, calendars, a model of a Luxair Boeing 737 and fleshy rubber plants. At the back of the room a large lady was ironing blouses on one of the tables. At a closer one, a square grainy face with a widow's peak smiled up at Maxim. He sat down and took a sip.
"There was no Guinness," Komocsin/Azarov said.
"It isn't my favourite."
"You looked me up, then."
"The least I could do." Komocsin waited, perhaps to see if Maxim said anything about Azarov, but he didn't.
"How is the meeting going?"
"It marches. And how is your leg?"
"Much better, thank you."
Maxim almost said that he was glad or something just as daft.
"This time," Komocsin/Azarov said, "you do not need a knife."
He was looking at Maxim's left armpit – why did they call it ashoulder holster? – perhaps because of the way Maxim held his arm, or maybe the leather creaked, or most likely because Komocsin was part of the one per cent.
"But you may need something. There are terrorists from Germany, your Germany, in Luxembourg."
Maxim sipped and nodded. A big refrigerator in the corner began to hum loudly, and the woman left her ironing and slapped it a blow that would have left Maxim spinning. It went on humming, and she went back to her ironing.
The blouses hung over the chair backs.
"Do you have any idea who they are after?"
"No. Your professor is the most famous. Him or the German."
"Is that all?"
"That, and the beer, yes, it was all."
"Thank you. I'll buy it next time."
"I hope so." The voice seemed suddenly tired.
Maxim left his beer half finished and walked out, trying not to hurry.
At the château gate half a dozen demonstrators had gathered, holding placards with anti-nuclear symbols and mushroom clouds on them. They booed Maxim as he showed his pass at the gate and strode out along the curving drive.
The session had broken up. The French delegation was already climbing into its black Citroens as he reached the little crowd in front of the building.
He found the Sûretécaptain at the edge of the crowd. "I've been told there are terrorists from Germany here-"
"Is that what your Russian spy said?"
"You saidyourself that was the real risk."
"How can you be sure he really is a Russian spy?"
"Our intelligence people have got him on file…" He saw the captain wasn't believing anything he said. The French had gone, the Germans were gliding away, their own hired Mercedes were backing up to the little pavement.
"It went like a dream," Quinton enthused. "You missed the best of it, of course. Whatwas that all about? I really do think we may get an agreement. Our man was outstanding, quite first-class."
Maxim was listening, but only to the distance. Nobody had done anything to the French, nobody anything to the Germans. And probably nobody would do anything to Professor Tyler.
"Is there any other route we can take?" he asked the captain.
"We have to go up to the big road. The village is a no-end." He looked at Maxim with bland eyes.
"Harry-" Tyler called, and he slid into the back seat beside him, and the car purred away.
"There's a terrorist threat," he said.
"What can we do about it?" Tyler asked cheerfully. He was basking in the morning's glory.
"I don't know, but…" From his seat beside the driver, the captain looked at him sourly. The car leant over as they swung out of the gateway and the crowd of demonstrators waved their placards and shouted something Maxim didn't understand.
The lane led up through steep hairpin bends to the autoroute above, going through clumps of pines where a Boy Scout could have set an ambush. But if it came to that, a Boy Scout could have cut a hole anywhere in Senningen's mesh fence and thrown a grenade through the conference window. He might not have got out alive, but a terrorist who doesn't care about that – and there were plenty – is virtually unstoppable.
Then he saw it.
A small stream came trickling down the hillside so that, at some time, they had wrapped it up to pass quietly under the road instead of flooding it. A simple length of concrete drainage pipe, perhaps eighteen inches diameter. Quite standard.
"Schnell! "he shouted."Vite, vite! Go for Christ's sake GO-" and he dragged Tyler down off the seat as the startled driver rammed down his foot, the automatic gearbox thumped and then wailed and the car shot around the next bend.
Behind them, the road blasted open. Something slammed into their backside, sending the Mercedes staggering across the road with the rear window crazed over. Then they were accelerating uphill, never mind anything coming down, and rocking crazily out into the hooting traffic on the main road.
"That's it," Maxim said. "Slow down. Moins de vitesse."He helped Tyler back onto the seat. The car slowed but began to weave as the driver's shakes caught up with him.
The captain said something sharp, and they straightened out.
"What about the other car?" Tyler looked back at the blind rear window.
"They can't have done worse than run into a hole. Keep going."
"Major," the captain said respectfully, "how did you know?"
"The culvert. Under the road. A standard place for terrorists. They've used it a dozen times in Ireland, and over here… Also, I could have been wrong."
"I am glad, Harry, that you took that risk," Tyler said.
By the time they reached the hotel, there was already a small and over-excited group of police around the doorway. Maxim and the captain hustled Tyler into the scrum of uniforms and they charged through the lobby to a waiting lift.
Once inside, everybody seemed to let go a sigh of relief at the same time.
"Who's got the key?" Maxim asked.
Nobody had the key. Everybody thought that somebody else had it.
"Christ!"
"You wait," the captain said as they got out. "I will get it. If the terrorists were there, they will not be here."
They stood around the lift doors as he rode down again. A man came round the far end of the corridor, and everybody turned to meet him, but he was elderly and shambling. In the dim light Maxim didn't recognise him until he said – "Professor Tyler?" then lifted a heavy pistol and fired twice.
Tyler gasped and collapsed against Maxim, knocking him off balance as he snatched for his own gun.
Charles Farthing said. "I will tell you just why-"
Maxim shot him three times. Drawing his own pistol far too late, one of the police went forward and laid a hand against Farthing's neck. He looked back at Maxim with suspicious awe.