First he made his plans for a discreet survey of the offshore islands around Skye. He put in a couple of calls to Glasgow to enrol some assistants whose co-operation for adequate reward had been tested on some previous matters.
Then he moved to Portree. There he hired a powerful little launch on the pretext of photographing seabirds. The well-paid owner did not question Kaufman's statement that he specialised in taking flashlight photos by night of their roosting habits. Bird watchers were all queer - but profitable.
The lonely peace of Preen's island pushed time into the background. Fleming mentally noted the fact that it took two days for Andre's hands to start building new flesh; on the third there was no need for bandages.
Life by then had settled down into a rather pointless round of waking, preparing scratch meals from Preen's store of canned and dehydrated food laid down in quantities literally to outlast a war, arguing over a game of chess, and gently helping Andre's memory to re-discover the threads of life.
There was little opportunity to go out even to check the fish nets Preen had laid down in rock inlets, but one still, misty day Andromeda went down alone to the small beach and when she came back to the croft she was looking puzzled.
'The mist is going back into the sea,' she said in her slow, vacant way.
Fleming did not believe her and she never had an opportunity of proving it, for the weather changed again to an interminable frenzy of storm and gale. There seemed to be no end to the restlessness of the sky and sea. When they listened in on Preen's transistor the forecast invariably included gale warnings, and the weather was so wild throughout the northern hemisphere that it was usually mentioned in the news bulletins. Andre continued to look vacant and confused and began to grow a little clumsy.
But there was a sense of impregnable security within the cottage while the wind howled and battered outside. The tension which Fleming had left at first whenever the door rattled violently or something banged outside had eased to a pleasant fatalistic calm.
Consequently he was quite unprepared one night when, as he was quietly playing chess with Preen and Andre was half-lying on the sofa staring at nothing, the door cracked loudly and immediately burst open. He sprang to his feet, knocking over the chessboard. Three men were grouped in the doorway.
They were thickset, brutal and wild-looking. The water streamed from their oilskins and their tousled heads.
The tallest of them took a step inside, jerking his head to the other two to back him up. He never took his eyes off Fleming, so that he did not see Preen open the chest, grabbing his automatic rifle from inside it.
'Get out! Get out of here!' Preen bleated, prancing from side to side. His anger at this new invasion of his isolation made him oblivious of danger.
Fleming had moved back to protect Andre. She clung close to him, watching wide-eyed. 'Better do what the gentleman says,' Fleming advised the intruders.
The leading man stepped backwards, bumping into the two behind him. They half-stumbled as they hit the doorposts.
Suddenly the leader dug into his oilskin pocket. In a flash he was pointing the snout of a Luger at Preen.
'Look out!' yelled Fleming.
Without taking aim, Preen fired a burst. Five or six explosions of high velocity bullets reverberated round the room.
Glass from the window tinkled on the floor. The man with the gun collapsed without a sound, his mouth agape, his eyes still fixed straight ahead. One of the others screamed like a child and staggered drunkenly into the darkness, collapsing outside. The third simply fled, his footsteps crashing along the stony track to the sea.
Preen had dropped the gun at the force of the recoil. But he started to charge after the third intruder, his mouth working in frenzy of anger. 'Hold it, Preen,' Fleming yelled. 'Don't go outside. There may be more.'
Preen did not seem to hear. He was still in the light from the open door when a gun barked from the darkness. Preen stopped dead in his tracks, spun round, and fell to his knees, groaning.
'Take ths,' said Fleming, picking up the rifle and thrusting it into Andre's hands. 'If you see anyone, point it at him and pull this.' He crooked her finger round the trigger.
Then, crouching low, he ran outside and sprawled beside Preen. He waited for a moment for bullets to come spurting out of the dark at him, but nothing happened. All he could hear was Preen's agonised breathing. 'All right,' he said, 'you're not dead. I'll get you inside and patch you up.'
He started dragging him towards the door. He paused while he heaved the body on the path out of the way. The man was quite dead, like the one outside the cottage. He motioned Andre to put down the gun and she helped him to get Preen on to the couch.
Fleming dragged the other body out over the step and then shut the door. The bolt was useless but the catch still held. He paused to get his breath before he examined Preen.
Blood was spreading through his sweater below the armpit.
Fleming cut the material away and pulled the shirt aside.
The blood was not spurting. But there was a neat hole at the side of the chest and another more ragged one below the shoulder blade where the bullet had come out.
No blood was coming from Preen's mouth, so Fleming felt sure that the lung had not been pierced; the worst was a chipped or broken rib.
'You're not badly hurt, Adrian,' he said. 'I'll put on a pad to staunch the bleeding; and then we'll use the old magic treatment. Just leave it to your old Professor.'
He made Preen as comfortable as possible, talking optimistically about the enzyme. His optimism seemed to convince the watching, worried Andre, though he himself did not really believe in it. The little which was left after Andre's treatment would doubtless tackle sepsis and re-create the surface skin. It could not deal with splintered or broken bone, nor with any internal injury.
He resigned himself to the fact that in the morning he would have to go over to Skye and get a doctor. And he would have to let the police know that a couple of corpses were lying around.
Meantime there was the puzzle of who the thugs were.
When Preen fell asleep and Andre was dozing in the easy chair he cautiously crept outside and looked over the dead men with the aid of a flashlight. They looked even uglier in death than they had in life. Both carried wallets, but the contents were money only; no driving licence, no envelopes or letters. The absence of identifying items was in itself suspicious. His mind went back to the time he and Bridger had been shot at when they had taken a day off from building the computer. Bridger had clearly known what the attack was all about, and badgered by Fleming he had impatiently snapped out the word 'Intel', regretting it as if he had said too much.
It had seemed ridiculous at the time to link a secretive but perfectly legitimate world-wide trading cartel with gunmen lurking on a Scottish moor. But after Bridger's murder the word had always had a sinister flavour in Fleming's mind.
That a commercial enterprise should use strong-arm tactics to obtain secrets of the kind Thorness could provide did not really, surprise Fleming once he had accepted the situation. It was in accord with his conception of the rat race of individuals and nations to amass wealth and exert power. That was why he did not find it difficult to accept a theory that Intel was behind this abortive attack, though the motive remained a mystery. If the information they had obtained from Bridger had been even superficially right the brains behind Intel must be aware that the individuals counted for nothing without the machine they served. Not even Andre could provide saleable information.
Not even Andre - Fleming very rarely displayed fear, but like any intelligent man he often felt it. He felt it now, and Andre was the reason. One of the assailants had got away. He would no doubt be back sometime with reinforcements, and they would come prepared for a shooting battle.