with bottles on the table beside him.
Audley did not get up as they approached him.
"Well—hullo, Peter."
It was a low-key welcome, at least when coming from a man who had been plucked off the autostrada by the cops, no matter how well they had behaved or how comfortably they had bestowed him; there was more resignation in it than pleasure, and no surprise at all. But that was pretty much to be expected: Audley had had time since his arrest to compute most of the angles, with the arrival of someone from the department figuring in at least one of them. And being Audley he could be relied on at least not to play the guiltless innocent.
"Hullo, David."
He looked tired, though, thought Richardson. And also there was something else he had never before seen in the big man's face, an obstinate blankness like a safety door closed against him.
"This is Signor Boselli, of General Montuori's staff in Rome, David," he began cautiously.
"Signor Boselli," Audley nodded. He gestured towards the table. "You'll join me? The drinks here are on the house, it seems."
He turned up two fresh glasses and splashed wine into them, topping his own up afterwards. But the wine bottle had been hardly touched before, Richardson noted, while the aqua dummy2
minerale was almost empty.
David lounged back in his chair. "So you've come to bail me out, young Peter. I'm very grateful."
"We have to work our passage first, David."
"Indeed?" Audley murmured blandly. "Go on, Peter."
"After what happened at Ostia you're not the most popular Englishman in Italy, you know."
"At Ostia?" Audley glanced briefly at Boselli. "I'll tell you something for free, Peter: whatever may have happened at Ostia was none of my doing. I'm not responsible for homegrown Italian talent."
There was an element of truth in that, thought Richardson irritably, but it hardly accounted for Audley's lack of cooperation when it must be obvious enough to him that the Italians had the whip hand.
Boselli drained his wine and stood up self-consciously.
"Excuse me, signori," he mumbled. "There are things I must do—excuse me. I will return shortly."
Audley watched him off the terrace, then turned towards Richardson, one eyebrow raised ironically.
"Now you're not going to tell me he's gone for a quick pee, are you, Peter?"
"Not unless you twist my arm."
"Good. So you both agreed on how to handle me." He nodded to himself. "But just because he's got you frightened that dummy2
doesn't mean I have to get talkative."
"Him—? Got me frightened? Him?"
"You aren't? Well, don't be deceived by appearances, boy—
although I admit they certainly are deceptive." Audley stared reflectively in the direction Boselli had gone. "Unless I'm very much mistaken that little fellow is one of Montuori's top guns, specially imported for the occasion."
Richardson goggled at him, and then down the empty terrace wordlessly.
"I could be wrong, of course." Audley stood up. "He's a new one on me I admit. . . . But let's take a turn among those olive trees down there by the cliff. They didn't mind me walking there—there isn't anywhere you can get out, but it's a little more private."
Richardson followed him obediently down the white steps into the sparse little grove of olives until they came to a low stone wall. The roar of the traffic on the coast road far below rose to meet them. Away to the left Salerno spread out invitingly, and he remembered the last time he had been there, with a delectable Swedish girl he'd picked up at Amalfi
—
"I want you to get me out of here, Peter," said Audley in his ear urgently. "I don't care how you do it, but just get me out of here quickly."
Richardson faced him. "It can't be done, David. They've had a man killed, maybe two. Montuori phoned Sir Frederick, dummy2
person to person. He's out for blood. In fact they're both ruddy well out for blood—only it's yours Sir Frederick would like and Montuori isn't so choosy. I rather think it's someone else's he wants more than yours, anyway."
Audley studied his face for a moment, then shook his head.
"Nobody'll get anything unless you get me out of here.
Without me you haven't got a prayer of a chance. You just don't understand what's going on—neither does Fred."
Richardson looked at him in momentary surprise: this was the old Machiavellian Audley right enough—on the scaffold, but ready to bargain that what he had in his head was too valuable for anyone to dare cutting it off. It had worked well in the past, and it had been allowed to work, because in his own way Audley had always delivered the goods. But from the moment old Charlie Clark had pulled the trigger too much had happened, and too much was known, for it to work this time.
"You're dead wrong there, David." It was brutal, but it would be quicker this way. And anyway, he owed Audley something like honesty for old time's sake. "We know ruddy near the lot."
In spite of the noise from below there was a silence between them for a moment.
"The lot?" Audley measured the word.
" 'Near,' I said."
"How near?"
dummy2
"Ian Howard. Eugenio Narva. Neville Macready." Richardson paused. "And the Little Bird from East Berlin, of course—the Little Bird who sang in the wrong ear."
Not Joseph Hemingway or Peter Korbel or Bastard Ruelle—
not yet. They were the second wave of attackers, ready if the shock troops failed to break through. Old times' sake didn't go all the way.
"I see."
Audley turned away, staring out over the bay.
"So . . . Neville Macready," he murmured to himself as though that one name accounted for the rest. Disquietingly he seemed almost relieved by it but still unbowed: the shock troops were not through yet.
"David, you've got to come clean with us now. There's no other way."
"Come clean?" The sudden anger, cold and bitter, deepened Audley's voice. "Come clean? Of all the goddam bloody stupid meddling fornicating idiots— blundering, fourth-rate, sanctimonious twats—"
"David—" Richardson was shaken by the sudden loss of control. On occasion he had heard Audley swear before, and more foully, but it had always been for effect, never from despair.
"Not you, Peter—not you." Audley shook his head quickly.
"They couldn't trust me—just this once—and they've blown it because of that, blown it sky high."
dummy2
"It wasn't like that at all—" Richardson cut in desperately "—
nobody blew it for you. There was a leak in the department, in the Reading Room where you had that talk with Macready."
"A leak?" Audley said incredulously.
"The Librarian—Hemingway. We traced his contact just before I flew out—"
"The same old story—you've heard it all before." Cox had sounded bored. "He lived in Orpington—stock-broker belt—
and he wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Only the Joneses in Orpington were too rich for his blood, with his army pension and what he was paid by your lot. You're not exactly good payers, are you? But his neighbours thought he was a senior civil servant and he had to live up to what he'd let them think. He was easy meat, Captain Richardson. Easy for an old hand like Peter Korbel—"
"Peter Korbel? Good God—I thought we'd expelled him with Protopopov and the Moscow Narodny Bank man. Months ago!" Audley's surprise was unconcealed.
Richardson grimaced. Their reactions had been identical.
"Protopopov and Adashev went, but we let Korbel stay on for a bit." Over the phone Cox hadn't even the grace to sound apologetic. "He wasn't considered dangerous enough—one of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, Captain. Besides, dummy2
there's going to be a big clear-out in a couple of months' time if the Cabinet agrees. We'd got him on that list. We were rather hoping the Russians would save us the trouble, actually—he's long overdue for retirement. Must be all of sixty. . . ."