"Is that what your Russian spy said?"
"You said yourself 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. What was 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.
"Bon groupement, monsieur."
It was very good grouping. The three holes in Farthing's chest could have been covered by the palm of a small hand.
Maxim handed over his revolver, automatically swinging out the cylinder and emptying the chambers so that it couldn't fire by accident.
"Both dead on arrival at the hospital," George said heavily. "We rather forgot about Farthing. Farthing the grenade, Farthing the shotgun, we should have guessed at Farthing the pistol. I suppose he must have read the letter before sending it on to Jackaman."
"He was carrying it around for a month or two," Agnes said. "And it doesn't sound as if he could afford much else to read. Perhaps after a time he started to blame Tyler for Etheridge's death. Fellow Yorkshireman and all that."
George stood up, stretched, and walked slowly to the window. A military band was rehearsing on the Horse Guards and a thin strain of music worked its way in through the heavy glass. "Did you find out what had happened to Farthing in court?"
"He got a fine for the grenade and a suspended sentence for the shotgun."
"We should have had him shot," George snapped.
"In the end, we did." She stood beside him staring blankly down to the trees at the bottom of Number 10's garden, now showing a faint dusting of new green. "And Tyler too. I suppose."
"Harry kept him alive long enough. I think we've got an agreement with the French, they were the ones who mattered, of course, and now if anybody comes up with some silly story about Tyler having eaten somebody back in the war – that's just defaming the dead, who can't answer back. Typically crude Soviet propaganda. Not really too unhappy an ending."
"And what about our Harry?" She said it without any trace of fake Cockney.
"The embassy bailed him, and if Luxembourg brings any charges there is going to be one almighty coolness about their security standards. First the bomb and then… the only trouble seems to be some local cop claiming that Farthing had already surrendered when Harry shot him. Bloody fool."
"I always said he'd kill somebody. I just didn't expect to be glad. Poor Harry."
"You aren't getting sentimental about him in your old age, are you?" George asked politely.
"Me? No, duckie, not me." She began to laugh quietly, to herself, and then in the middle of it, to cry.
The morning session at Senningen had none of the cheerful babble of the day before. They sat down very quietly, all wearing black armbands and the French delegation with identical black silk ties.
"In honourable memory of our late colleague," the French delegate said, "I suggest that we speak English today." There was a murmur of agreement. It was also a tactful move, since Tyler's replacement – a middle-aged semi-scholar from the International Institute of Strategic Studies – spoke French rather badly.
"Thank you," he said in a clogged voice, then coughed his throat clear. "I will speak from Professor Tyler's notes… He says – he believes that we can no longer rely upon an American Armageddon…"
Sitting behind him, alongside the British First Secretary who was nominally his warder, Maxim began to pray silently. Oh God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.