Gant hurried towards the door, across the corridor into the second bedroom.
Pressing against the wall, he peered round the window frame. Another figure was on one knee, weapon trained, two hundred yards away.
Three at least. They knew he was there. The house had been under surveillance and he'd failed to spot it. He'd walked right into the trap.
PART THREE
FAMILIAR MIDNIGHT
Rich rich the Emperor's desmesnes
And all the palaces, how resplendent
The imperial road emerging from the wood
The palace roofs all brandishing bright flags.
But our prime longing lay in the blue hills
And to keep the company of the white clouds…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Innocence and Experience Aubrey, Laxton and Pyott sat with their sherries near the great chimneypiece of coloured marbles in the Library of the Club. Three men of years, distinction and some renown who might have been taken by an observer to be comfortably at one with their surroundings. Intrinsic to the pageant of power, privilege and patronage in the high-ceilinged room; suitable additions to the lines of grand portraits or the murals of victories in foreign wars.
Yet to Aubrey's sharp, rather sour inner eye, they were simply three old men, two of whom were rendered ineffectual by lack of office and the third a political trimmer who had gone to the bad, dirtied his hands in a massive fraud.
A spy and a soldier pretending to the moral heights while their companion complacently walked the valley of the shadow of avarice… amusing, in another context. They were, perhaps, a frieze for the times.
"Your health, John," Aubrey proposed. Laxton smiled sleekly in response, with a glance at his watch suggestive of the preciousness of his own time.
Pyott sipped his sherry, frowning at the gesture.
"Kenneth," Laxton purred, looking around him, measuring the living against the portraits of the dead, against his own prestige. He seemed eager to exchange nods of familiarity, to give and receive deference.
"Very good of you to offer me lunch a light one, though, I think, in the circumstances." The smile appeared indelible, recently painted. As a politician, he had often seemed harassed on television or in the House. As a Commissioner, he was Olympian.
A present member of the Cabinet passed with a friendly nod. Laxton responded as eagerly as he might have done to a call-girl.
The trough is likely to be laden this evening, then, is it?" Pyott asked gruffly, as if the murals had suddenly reminded him of the sole relationship it was possible to have with Europe. Wellington on horseback, his army behind him, clashing with the French at Salamanca.
Laxton remained unperturbed.
"I heard your girl's not above accepting the Commissions hospitality, Giles," he murmured. Pyott's momentary scowl was as sharp as if Laxton's mention of Marian contained an open threat.
"Doubtless we shall all be treated to another seminar on the iniquities of Brussels, over the canapes."
"A hit, Giles," Aubrey soothed, smiling with a dazzling innocence.
"I suggest the sole, John, if you wish to preserve your appetite and I think a Corton Charlemagne to start. You can continue with the bottle while Giles, who so evidently feeds exclusively on red meat, will probably join me in sharing the claret." He leaned back in the deep, high-backed leather armchair, innocence becoming a look of limited intelligence and great complacency on his cherubic features.
Laxton sighed in anticipation.
"Do you know, Giles," Aubrey announced, "I found our old companion-in harness dear Gilbert, in rather liverish mood at the board meeting this morning."
"Liverish? That young wife of his hasn't upped and left, has she?"
Laxton's attention seemed satisfactorily drawn, as if Aubrey were opening a small leather moneybag which contained that most priceless of the metals of government, gossip. In this instance concerning a former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry.
"I think not. I merely enquired as to whether there had ever been any interest at the DTI, during his tenure, in Marian's suggestions of misplaced funds and dubious payments over this' — Laxton s features allowed a purplish suspicion to spread like a stain over his self-satisfaction 'urn, Millennium Regeneration Project, in the Midlands." The sherry at his lips seemed to tickle the back of Laxton's throat. Pyott glanced warningly at Aubrey, who persisted: "I just wanted to be clear whether there had been any form of internal enquiry into the rumours that were current in the House and the press—"
His eyes sharpened their glance the moment Laxton interrupted him.
"Surely that was just Private Eye — type nonsense, designed to embarrass?" he insisted, adding as he glanced at Pyott: "Just the sort of thing to get your daughter aerated!" His chuckle was thick with confidence.
"Exactly what Gilbert said, in much the same tone of voice — dismissive," Aubrey demurred. There you have it, you see. Anyone who so much as raises the subject is laughed at as a fool." He shook his head, as if reproving Pyott. The gesture deflected Laxton's suspicion.
"But surely the net was spread a little wider than Private Eye, John?"
A steward approached. Aubrey glanced at the lunch menu and the wine list on his lap, then closed the heavily leather bound volumes with a snap. Laxton stumbled his order to Aubrey.
'… and for General Pyott and myself, the smoked salmon to start, followed by the Beef Wellington. A Corton-Charlemagne and the '83 Chateau Palmer. Thank you, George." Aubrey rubbed his hands in anticipation.
"Splendid. Now, where were we—? Ah, yes. John's stout defence, echoing that of Gilbert, of the probity of the funding for the Millennium Regeneration Project—"
"What is your interest in this, Kenneth?" Laxton enquired, his eyes hooded, his sherry glass on the low table between them.
There curiosity?"
Aubrey shrugged expansively, smiling at a passing former Permanent
Secretary at the Foreign Office, a man affable by nature, seized with enmity in all his dealings with Aubrey and the intelligence services, until their mutual retirement. Apparently, a moral distaste for espionage and subterfuge — when not the private fiefdom of the diplomatic service had inspired his antagonism.
"Probably. You know how it is, the smell of the battle afar off, the old warhorse thing."
"You're wasting your time, Kenneth, you really are!" Laxton assured.
"As Gilbert affirmed."
"Seriously, Kenneth I am the Commissioner for Urban Development, after all. I would know!"
"Did you?" Pyott asked abruptly, exact in his timing. Laxton was disconcerted.
"DidlwhatT "Know."
There was nothing to know."
"When questions were asked? You did enquire?"
Laxton's features were blustery with suspicion.
The DTI felt that the press rumours ought to be confronted, and confounded. The then President of the Board of Trade—"
"Whose office is reputedly the largest in Whitehall!" Pyott barked.
'-contacted me. I was able to assure him that he could, with the utmost confidence, refute the allegations of—"