Richardson remembered belatedly what Macready had concluded, which he had somehow forgotten: someone gave him the injormation, and then snuffed him out the moment he'd passed it on so he couldn't split on them. . . .
But—
"And you might ask how the KGB let his family get out too, Peter. I don't care how efficient Westphal is—they had the time to get her under surveillance first. And Westphal's men wouldn't have stirred a finger then—they'd smell an ambush a mile off, they're experts at it."
"But, David—Narva said—"
"Phooey to what Narva said. Narva was set up, just as Little Bird was set up."
"Set up for what, for God's sake? Why should they be set up?"
Richardson tried not to let his impatience show. "You're not going to tell me there's no oil in the North Sea, because there's a ruddy lake of the stuff."
"But has it ever occurred to you, my lad, why Narva never received that final report on it—the one that really counted?"
"Because the KGB got it first, of course."
"And then staged a false heart attack and let everyone else go home?" Audley shook his head. "That just doesn't wash, I tell you."
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"Then what does?"
Audley stared at him over his spectacles for a moment, like an Oxford professor with a hitherto bright pupil suddenly afflicted with culpable intellectual blindness.
"Do you recall the Garbo network during the last war, Peter?"
he said.
The professorial look was too much—after so much.
"A little before my time, that was."
"A pity." Audley chose to ignore the sarcasm. "Garbo was a Spaniard who worked for us—for the Twenty Committee.
Masterman called him the Bradman of the double-cross world. He was a perfect genius at inventing imaginary sources of information—imaginary agents—to deceive the Germans."
"So what?"
"So Little Bird's Russian contact, the one who passed on useless information from Western Siberia—he has the smell of Garbo about him."
"The smell—?" Richardson screwed up his memory, trying to pinpoint the moment of falseness in Little Bird's tale.
"Garbo—"
"I—I have read about him, actually," Richardson admitted, already regretting the sarcasm. "But I seem to recall he passed on false information. And this certainly wasn't false—
two hundred million tons of oil a year say it isn't."
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"I never said it was."
"Then what are you saying, for Christ's sake?"
"I'm saying there has to be a man somewhere in the Kremlin who wanted to slip the word about the North Sea—someone high up. Why—well, maybe Neville Macready could answer that for us, but it doesn't really matter now. What matters is he wasn't a traitor. He just wanted to make sure that we kept drilling."
"Why didn't he tell us then? Why did he tell Narva?"
"Because we would have wanted to know too much, and he didn't want to give away technological secrets. To convince us he'd have to put himself is our hands and he'd be at our mercy then. But if he could get Narva to switch his investment to the North Sea he reckoned he would tip the balance without betraying his country or risking his neck.
"But his problem was to sell the truth without the proof, and that's where Little Bird served a double purpose, poor little sod—"
A double purpose—
"—Alive he sold Narva the truth. And dead he proved it."
The best proof in the world!
Richardson saw the plot in the round at last: Little Bird had been manipulated into conning Narva with a mixture of truth and falsehood, only to be conned himself. And if that was how it was, then Comrade X was a true cold-hearted bastard, who deserved to be sold down the river in his turn.
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"The only thing that went wrong was—"
Audley stopped abruptly as a small figure burst through the French windows, skidded to a halt and stared at them in speechless surprise.
"Manfred! I told you not to run on the terrace—you will slip and then—"
The gently chiding voice tailed off as its owner appeared framed in the opening behind the little boy, to stare at them both with the same wide-spaced eyes.
Mother and son, as like as two flowers on the same stem, blue and rich honey and spun gold.
It couldn't be—and yet it ruddy well had to be, thought Richardson, seeing the evident look of recognition on the woman's face as the cornflower blue eyes settled on Audley.
Of course Richard von Hotzendorff had lost his first family in the war, and it was reasonable to expect him to have married a younger woman the second time round. But he had somehow expected a competent, muscular Hausfrau, and Narva's description of the man had reinforced the expectation. Yet the real somehow was wholly unexpected: somehow the grey Goebbels-figure had captured this gorgeous Rhinemaiden.
"Dr. Audley!"
"Frau von Hotzendorff—I—I—regret—"
Audley had the grace to sound genuinely regretful, at least.
And with good reason, since this whole KGB scare was a dummy2
thing of his own making to twist Narva's arm . . . except perhaps if Audley failed the Bastard Ruelle might indeed turn his attentions to the Rhinemaiden.
The door opened behind them.
"Sophie, my dear—" Narva went forward quickly and embraced the woman "—it is good to see you."
"Eugenio, I'm sorry I rushed away as we came in, but Manfred will go off to the ramparts—"
"Ah!" Narva swept Manfred into his arms, lifting him up high. The little boy's arms and legs wound round him affectionately. "So Manfred wishes to go on sentry duty on the ramparts!"
"Uncle, there should be cannon there. Why do you not have cannon to drive away the pirates?"
"Because cannon will not deal with pirates, my love—pirates do not attack castles, they are too cowardly. To deal with pirates you put your cannon in a tall ship and you hunt them and seek them out and blow them out of the water—that is what you do with pirates— you blow them to bits!"
"I know! I know! It is all in that book you gave me, the one with the big coloured pictures."
"Good—so you liked my book?" Narva set the boy down.
"Now there are many other books in your bedroom for you to see. Your brother and sister are there already, and there is a tall glass of fizzy orange for you, but if you don't hurry the fizz will have all fizzed away. So off you go and I will come dummy2
and see you tucked up in bed and we will discuss pirates—"
"—And how to blow them out of the water?"
"Exactly!" Narva watched Manfred scuttle away, his eyes warm. Nor did their warmth diminish as he raised them to Manfred's mother, Richardson noted. What had once been a debt of guilt and honour was something more than that now, evidently.
Sophie von Hotzendorff's glance shuttled uneasily between Audley and Narva. "There is trouble, Eugenio—for you to want me to bring the children—?"
Narva nodded. "But you will be safe here, Sophie."
"Safe?" She looked at Audley.
"It concerns your husband, Frau von Hotzendorff," said Audley. "It is to do with what he was doing when—before he died."
"But I do not—did not—know in detail what he was doing. He would never tell me, apart from his work for the business. I told you so when we met, Dr. Audley—and it was the truth."
"Yet you did not tell me everything that was the truth—there were things you didn't tell me."
The blue eyes turned in doubt to Narva.
"It's all right, Sophie my dear," Narva's voice was reassuring.
"He knows about Westphal."
"Then there is nothing else to know. I didn't lie to you, or to the man I saw in London, except in that."
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"Your husband told you what to say if . . . if he didn't come out?"
Sophie nodded. "Yes, Dr. Audley. If a man named Westphal—