nice an' warm, to take the chill off your fingers — or your toes.' As he spoke, Buller turned back to Jenny. 'But it 'ud do a bit more than that. Because it's bloody boiling, scalding hot, is what it is — one dip, and you're cooked to the bone.
And no saying "Ouch! I won't do it again!" and "Next time I'll know better", and "Now I want to go home".' He flicked a glance at Tully. 'If it's Dr David Audley you're after, then it's in for a penny, in for a pound — no half-measures, Lady.'
For a moment no one wanted to break the silence which followed this latest gypsy's warning, the truth of which Ian knew that he alone shared with Reg Buller. And, when he thought about it, the only truly curious aspect of it was that, if it was true, Buller himself had turned up at the rendezvous this morning, in spite of his own well-developed sense of self-preservation. But then, when he took the thought further, there were a lot of contradictory aspects in Buller's character and curriculum vitae.
Then Jenny filled her glass again. 'Ian — ?' She glanced quickly at John Tully's glass, knowing that it would still be half-full, before returning to Buller. 'Are you trying to frighten me, Reg?'
Buller held out his empty glass. 'Would I do that, Miss Fielding?'
'Champagne, Reg? On top of beer?' But she poured, nevertheless. ' Yes — if you thought it would do any good.'
'Any port in a storm, madam — even fizzy rubbish.' The bulbous nose wrinkled again. 'And therefore ... no ... because dummy2
I know you've already made up your mind.' He took another gulp, and spluttered. 'But you have been paying for a
"reconnaissance", and that's what I have given you.'
The emphasis on Buller's first person singular — and no one, not even John Tully, and not even Jenny herself, was a more singular first person — gave Ian his opening. 'Are you saying that we're already blown, Reg?'
'What?' John Tully was bristling, before he spoke. 'You said ... we were "already" in for a pound . . . having spent some of our pennies, Reg.' He drew Buller's attention, overriding Tully. 'Does that mean someone is on to us —
already?'
Buller concealed any gratitude he might have behind another gulp, and another hiccup. 'Well . . . maybe you've been up to something I don't know about, Mr Robinson — like having some young lady in your bedroom, and a jealous husband . . .
like it would have been in the old days.' He grinned, and then nodded at the typescript on the table. 'But with the book you're writing ... I don't see the National Union of Teachers
— or the Department of Education, and that Mr Baker —
hiring anyone to watch this place, to see who comes in, an'
goes out, of a wet Sunday morning, anyway.' He carried on the nod towards the window, out of which only well-bred, or well-heeled, or otherwise upwardly-mobile local Hampstead residents might be observed at such times, down Holly Row.
'But someone is watching you, and that's a fact.'
To their credit, nobody moved to verify this information; at dummy2
least, neither Jenny nor John Tully moved — and then Ian realized that, since he ought to be less professional as well as equally shattered by this news, he ought to move —
' Ian — ! ' Jenny admonished him sharply. ' Don't look!'
Ian halted, fixing her first, almost accusingly; and then John Tully, almost angrily; and finally Reg himself, with a mixture of emotions which he couldn't control, but which only Reg himself could guess at.
'There's one at the back, too.' Buller agreed with all the confusion cheerfully. 'They've got you nicely bracketed . . .
unless you've got another exit, up over the roof, an' down through someone else's back garden — have you?'
'John — ?' Jenny cut through Buller's cackle decisively. 'You said no one was on to us — ?'
Tully stared at her, and then clear through her, as he computed the possibilities, one after another, trying to pin a probability among them. But then he frowned. 'I don't understand it, Miss Fielding. Because ... I do know a little —
a very little — about Audley. So I was damned careful with him: only the people I can really trust, I asked — ' His face closed up tight round his mouth ' — only the people who owe me.'
'Well, it wasn't me.' Buller knew he'd be next. 'Unless anyone who appears anywhere near Masson sparks 'em off — that's maybe it. But I was careful, too. And they didn't follow me here, either — you can depend on that: they were here dummy2
already: I spotted them, they didn't spot me — you can depend on that, too.'
But that was a hard one, thought Ian — estimating the known Buller against the unknown Audley. Because his confidence was only one step away from pride. And pride was always inches away from a fall, remembering Beirut —
'It might have been me.' Jenny's total honesty was one of her greatest strengths. 'I've asked one or two questions, just recently. And I can't vouch for everyone whom I've asked — '
She embraced Tully with that admission, binding him to her even more securely with it ' — and then they'd come to Ian, of course ... So it might be me, I'm afraid.'
'Well, it doesn't matter who it was, Miss Fielding.' Delivered from all responsibility for failure, Tully became loyal again, as an employee. 'The question is ... who is on to us?' He looked at Buller. 'Not Fleet Street — ?'
'Sod Fleet Street.' Buller almost looked sad. 'I remember a chap on the old Star . . . and one or two more, on the heavyweights . . . who'd have had us by now, the way we've blundered around . . . But they're all into management, and new technology, and colour supplements — the good ones.
Or the little magazines . . . and writing books — ' The blood-orange eyes took in Ian for half a second ' — sod Fleet Street!'
'So that would make it official — ?' Tully wasn't quite certain.
'Even after Spycatcher — Peter Wright?' Neither was Jenny certain.
dummy2
Buller's mouth twisted. 'There's still a few reporters I rate.'
He held out his glass. 'If one of them was loose, then I'd be worrying. But I'd also be happy, too.' He pushed at the neck of the bottle as Jenny poured, until the champagne frothed over the top of the glass and the bottle emptied into it. 'But I ain't seen one of 'em on this lark yet.'
'So it's official?' Tully persisted, patiently.
'Oh yes.' Buller sniffed disparagingly. 'What we've got, out there in the wet, is civil servants. The only question is . . . are they ours ... or are they someone else's, who can park their cars, an' claim "diplomatic immunity", and not worry about paying the fine — eh?'
That was combining the frightening with the more frightening, rather than the absurd with the ridiculous, thought Ian: whatever heated up the water in his Yellowstone pond it was already on the boil.
'But . . . we're not safe in any case — any more.' Jenny overtook him, as she always did; and, as it always did, the degree of difficulty and danger only encouraged her, setting her on to go further. 'Is that what you mean, Reg?'
'Yes. That is just about what I mean, I suppose.' Duller gave Ian a belated guilty look. 'Except . . . you could do a book, between you, about something else — like about Colonel Rabuka, and the Fiji Islands, maybe? And Mr Tully and I could go out there . . . and you could call it The Imperial Legacy — ? And we could maybe take in the French nuclear programme as well, that you've always wanted to do, which dummy2
no one else has done properly — right from the Sahara trials, in the old days, when they had those Germans working for them on the rockets . . . the ones they wouldn't talk about?'