'Exactly, sir. That's why I'm asking for an immediate de-escalation of the security directive intelligence-wise. I also want this man Wilt handed over to my authority for proper questioning.'
General Belmonte considered the request almost rationally. 'If he isn't Moscow-based, what is he?'
'That's what Central Intelligence intend to find out,' said the Colonel.
Ten minutes later Colonel Urwin left the Airbase Control Centre well satisfied. The General had ordered a security stand-down and Glaushof had been relieved of his custody right to the prisoner.
Theoretically.
In practice getting Wilt out of the Glaushof's house proved rather more awkward. Having visited the Security building and learnt that Wilt had been taken off, still apparently unharmed, to be interrogated at Glaushof's house, the Colonel had driven there with two Sergeants only to realize that 'unharmed' no longer applied. Ghastly noises were emanating from upstairs.
'Sounds like someone's having themselves a whole heap of fun,' said one of the Sergeants as Mrs Glaushof threatened to castrate some horny bastard just as soon as she stopped bleeding to death and why didn't some other cocksucker open the fucking door so she could get out. In the background Glaushof could be heard telling her plaintively to keep her cool, he'd get the door undone, she didn't have to shoot the lock off and would she stop loading that fucking revolver.
Mrs Glaushof replied she didn't intend shooting the fucking lock off, she had other fucking objects in fucking mind, like him and that fucking commie agent who'd bit her and they weren't going to live to tell the tale, not once she'd got that magazine fucking loaded and why didn't shells go in the way they were fucking supposed to? For an instant Wilt's face appeared at the window, only to vanish as a bedside lamp complete with a huge lampshade smashed through the glass and hung upside-down from its cord.
Colonel Urwin studied the thing with horror. Mrs Glaushof's language was foul enough but the shade, covered with a collage of sado-masochistic images cut from magazines, pictures of kittens in baskets and puppy dogs, not to mention several crimson hearts and flowers, was aesthetically so disgusting that it almost unnerved him.
The action had the opposite effect on Glaushof. Less concerned about the likelihood of his drunken wife murdering a Russian spy with a .38 she had been trying to load with what he hoped was 9 mm. ammunition than with the prospect of having his entire house torn apart and its peculiar contents revealed to the neighbours he left the comparative safety of the bathroom and charged the bedroom door. His timing was bad. Having foiled any hope Wilt might have held of escaping by the window Mrs Glaushof had finally loaded the revolver and pulled the trigger. The shot passed through the door, Glaushof's shoulder, and one of the tubes in the hamster's complicated plastic burrow on the staircase wall before embedding in the tufted carpet.
'Jesus Christ,' screamed Glaushof, 'you meant it! You really meant it.'
'What's that?' said Mrs Glaushof, almost as surprised by the consequences of simply pulling the trigger, though definitely less concerned. 'What you say?'
'Oh God,' moaned Glaushof, now slumped to the floor.
'You think I can't shoot the fucking lock off?' Mrs Glaushof enquired. 'You think that? You think I can't?'
'No,' yelled Glaushof. 'No, I don't think that. Jesus, I'm dying.'
'Hypochondriac,' Mrs Glaushof shouted back, evidently paying off an old domestic score. 'Stand back, I'm coming out.'
'For fuck's sake,' squealed Glaushof, eyeing the hole she'd already made in the door near one of the hinges, 'don't aim at the lock.'
'Why not?' Mrs Glaushof demanded.
It wasn't a question Glaushof was prepared to answer. In one final attempt to escape the consequences of her next fusillade he rolled sideways and hit the stairs. By the time he'd crashed to the bottom even Mrs Glaushof was concerned.
'Are you OK, Glausie?' she asked and simultaneously pulled the trigger. As the second shot punched a hole in a Liberace-style bean bag, Wilt acted. In the knowledge that her next shot might possibly do to him what it had already done to Glaushof and the bag, he picked up a pink furbelowed stool and slammed it down on her head.
'Macho man,' grunted Mrs Glaushof, inappropriate to the end, and slid to the floor. For a moment Wilt hesitated. If Glaushof were still alive, and by the sound of breaking glass downstairs it seemed as though he was, there was no point in trying to break the door down. Wilt crossed to the window.
'Freeze!' shouted a man down below. Wilt froze. He was staring down at five uniformed men crouched behind handguns. And this time there was no question what they were aiming at.
Chapter 21
'Logic dictates,' said Mr Gosdyke, 'that we should look at this problem rationally. Now I know that's difficult but until we have definite proof that your husband is being held at Baconheath against his will there really isn't any legal action we can take. You do see that?'
Eva gazed into the solicitor's face and saw only that she was wasting time. It had been Mavis' idea that she should consult Mr Gosdyke before she did anything hasty. Eva knew what 'hasty' meant. It meant being afraid of taking real risks and doing something effective.
'After all,' Mavis had said, as they drove back, 'you may be able to apply for a court order or habeas corpus or something. It's best to find out.'
But she didn't need to find out. She'd known all along that Mr Gosdyke wouldn't believe her and would talk about proof and logic. As if life was logical. Eva didn't even know what the word meant, except that it always produced in her mind the image of a railway line with a train running along it with no way of getting off it and going across fields and open countryside like a horse. And anyway when you did reach a station you still had to walk to wherever you really wanted to go. That wasn't the way life worked or people behaved when things were really desperate. It wasn't even the way the Law worked with people being sent to prison when they were old and absent-minded like Mrs Reeman who had walked out of the supermarket without paying for a jar of pickled onions and she never ate pickles. Eva knew that because she'd helped with Meals on Wheels and the old lady had said she never touched vinegar. No, the real reason had been that she'd had a pekinese called Pickles and he'd died a month before. But the Law hadn't seen that, any more than Mr Gosdyke could understand that she already had the proof that Henry was in the airbase because he hadn't been there when the officer's manner had changed so suddenly.
'So there's nothing you can do?' she said and got up.
'Not unless we can obtain proof that your husband really is being held against...' But Eva was already through the door and had cut out the sounds of those ineffectual words. She went down the stairs and out into the street and found Mavis waiting for her in the Mombasa Coffee House.
'Well, did he have any advice?' asked Mavis.
'No,' said Eva, 'he just said there was nothing he could do without proof.'
'Perhaps Henry'll telephone you tonight. Now that he knows you've been out there and they must have told him...'
Eva shook her head. 'Why should they have told him?'
'Look, Eva, I've been thinking,' said Mavis, 'Henry's been deceiving you for six months. Now I know what you're going to say but you can't get away from it.'
'He hasn't been deceiving me the way you mean,' said Eva. 'I know that.'
Mavis sighed. It was so difficult to make Eva understand that men were all the same, even a sexually subnormal one like Wilt. 'He's been going out to Baconheath every Friday evening and all that time he's been telling you he's got this prison job. You've got to admit that, haven't you?'