"He'd finish both of you, yes—I see you understand the animal."
"I understand him perfectly, General."
Audley sounded calm and collected now, as though the hideous problem of saving his wife's life was an academic one divorced from reality.
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"That's all ruddy fine, David—understanding how the Bastard ticks. But he's still got Faith and you haven't got one damn thing to trade for her even if he was on the level."
"That's true, Peter."
"And you don't know where they've taken her, sir?"
"Regrettably—no." Montuori shook his head. "We have one witness who saw a woman answering to Signora Audley's description in a car with several men on the road from Ostia Antica to the autostrada to Rome. That is the last we have seen of any of them."
"Well, if Narva hasn't got the answers—and if Frau Hotzendorff hasn't either—what the devil are we going to do?"
"Peter, I never expected them to know. And even if they had, it wouldn't help Faith."
"Then why did you come here?"
"Simply to make sure that I had Hotzendorff figured out properly. Only Narva could tell me that."
"Okay!" Richardson's irritation splashed over. "So what are we going to do to save her?"
"We're not going to lose our heads—we're going to use them."
Audley's voice tightened. "How badly do you want the Bastard, General?"
"Badly. I've waited a long time for him."
"They wouldn't let you have him?"
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"The Party?" The General's lip curled. "Oh, they kicked him out, but they've kept him in view. Times have been known to change, Dr. Audley."
"But now—things may be different?"
"They may be. But that will not save your wife, Dr. Audley."
The General eyed Audley closely. "I assume that you have a plan of action?"
"It depends very much on your help."
The General nodded slowly. "I can afford to wait a little longer— perhaps."
Audley gave the General an appraising look, as though calculating the odds.
"No state security is involved," went on the General smoothly. "So go on, Dr. Audley—what do you propose to do?"
Audley looked at them both.
"Why, if you're going to help me—which I admit I'd hardly hoped for—we can go on with my original plan."
"Which was—?"
"So far I've only lied and bullied and cheated. Now it's time to start making dirty deals."
"With whom?"
For the first time, the very first time since they had met again, Audley smiled. But it was not a goodwill smile and the eyes behind the spectacles were not bright with anything dummy2
remotely like happiness. Richardson found himself hoping that nobody ever had cause to smile at him—or about him—
like this. If tigers smiled, as the poets alleged, then this was how they did it.
"Someone who'll know just how to find where Ruelle's gone to earth, General."
Montuori stared at him, stone-faced.
"You mean the Party?"
"They'd know his bolt-holes—you said yourself they've kept an eye on him."
"But I didn't say they'd give him up—not to me. They might not stand in my way any more, but they wouldn't help me, and they'd never let me lean on them. They wouldn't like the precedent."
"I'm sure they wouldn't. But I wasn't thinking of asking you to lean on anyone—and I'm not making the deal with them at all. After all, they don't really want anything that we've got—"
A dirty deal . . . and a dirty deal not with the Italian Communist Party: premonition was like a punch in the gut.
But would David really go so far?
"—but Moscow does."
David would.
"There's a man I know in the Kremlin—Nikolai Andrievich Panin. I think he might be persuaded to help us, if the price was right."
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Richardson managed to control his impatience until the door had closed on the Italians, but only just. "Will he come?"
"Panin?" The tiger's grin returned. " 'I can call spirits from the vasty deep'—that's always the million-dollar question, Peter—but will they come when I do call for them?"
"Well, will he?"
"Not in person. But of course he doesn't need to—and we don't need him to. Just a word from Comrade Professor Panin is what we want. A word from him would be quite enough to start things moving."
That was certainly true enough. Even a whisper from the very loftiest pinnacles of the Kremlin, which was where Panin now operated, would gather strength as it echoed downwards, like the small fatal sound on an avalanche slope.
The trick was to stay clear of the disaster area thus created.
"They'll get through to him, anyway. No one'll dare stop a call like that."
Richardson nodded. Again that was well calculated. By selecting someone so far up the official ladder, Audley had brushed away the danger that some officious bureaucrat would try to be awkward. Just as the name Montuori would clear the Italian lines, so would the name Panin clear the Russian. And night or day, the Kremlin switchboard would know where to put the call.
"So the answer is—yes, Peter, I think I can call this spirit dummy2
from the deep. I think he'll talk to me."
That was the final element in the chain of reasoning: not only did Audley know Panin personally, but he judged himself to be of sufficient interest for the Russian's curiosity to be aroused. And judged correctly, thought Richardson, wryly remembering the flurry in the department dovecote at his unscheduled disappearance. David Audley was too unpredictable to ignore!
Audley was looking at him rather apologetically, though, as though that thought was catching.
"I'm afraid I may have made trouble for you, young Peter."
Understatement of the year: what this private call to Moscow would do to Sir Frederick's blood pressure, never mind Fatso Latimer's mischief-making tendencies, only God Almighty could compute. Not to mention Peter Richardson's career. It would be back to the 39th Assault Engineers on Salisbury Plain most likely.
But there was Faith Audley to think of ... and maybe Peter Richardson had learnt a thing or two himself these twenty-four hours.
"Think nothing of it, David. My main brief was to bring you back in one piece. And they did tell me to be nice to your hosts, so maybe we can blame the General—"
Richardson stopped as a less charitable thought struck him.
There was in truth nothing he could do now, and Audley not only knew it, but had intended it to be that way from the dummy2
start. First he had tried to get free and then he had struck a bargain with the General. But from the moment Faith had been kidnapped he had had this private deal with Moscow in his mind as being the only way he could track down Bastard Ruelle.
"Yes . . ." Audley considered the lie with a professional's detachment, "we might confuse the issue that way, at the least."
"But what I don't see still is what you've got to trade with Panin, David. If the KGB got Little Bird then they must have got his contact, darn it—and as soon as Rat face has briefed the General he'll realise that too."
"If I know Raffaele Montuori that's just what he won't believe, Peter," Audley shook his head knowingly. "You're being gullible now—you're believing what doesn't make good sense."
"I'm believing the ruddy facts, man. That's all."
"The facts? But there aren't many of those—and that's a fact to start with."
"Little Bird's dead. That's one you can't argue with."
"Peter, it's the key fact. Everything else is powered by it.
Without it there's nothing—nothing at all."
"Sure—that's what convinced Narva, I take that point."
"But you're not taking it half far enough. Because why the devil should the KGB kill him and then fake it up as a heart attack—on their own patch? And if they picked up his dummy2
contact, since when have they changed their policy on spy trials? Come to that, why didn't they pick up his other contacts—our contacts?"