"But how do you know this?" Korbel's voice was hoarse.
"I've talked to Narva, and to the woman—and the thing had the smell of a trick. Only I thought there was a Russian behind it somewhere." Audley shook his head slowly. "And then I talked to—a contact of mine who'd checked the man's death again. ... I never could understand why it had been made to look like a heart attack, I couldn't accept that it really was that until he told me about the pills and the hill.
And then I knew it wasn't a killing made to look like a natural death, but exactly the opposite—a self-induced natural death that no one would believe was natural."
The pills and the hill. Boselli had heard of them on the telephone tape, and they hadn't registered. And now he saw them in an altogether different sequence of events on the very margin of credibility, yet somehow more credible than anything he had heard before.
He could see incredulity in their faces, and then the dawning of bitter realisation.
And he knew instinctively why they understood, as the Englishman had gambled they would: Little Bird was getting old and he had nothing to show for it. And neither had they!
"The Russians haven't made a single big offshore strike since
'67," said Audley. "I tell you—we've been had, the lot of us."
They had grasped their opportunity just like the German, only with violence and without understanding. And above all dummy2
without sacrifice.
And for nothing!
"But I've managed to make a deal for you." Audley pointed suddenly towards Boselli. "This is Signor Pietro Boselli—he represents the Ministry of Justice." He snapped his fingers.
"The documents—"
Boselli reached hurriedly towards his pocket, and then froze as the gun came round towards him.
"Go on, Boselli—put it on the table!"
Carefully Boselli extracted the long envelope with his thumb and forefinger.
"A policeman was killed at Ostia, but his killer died too, so to save more bloodshed they're going to call that square—for forty-eight hours."
Korbel split open the flap of the envelope and emptied its contents on the table.
"Two passports," said Audley. "The pictures are from their files, but the names are blank. Work permits for Switzerland and Germany. Swiss francs and Deutschmarks—not many, but enough to keep you for a few weeks. And a letter from the Minister putting your forty-eight hours in black and white."
Korbel stared at the table wordlessly, but Ruelle's glare was still fixed on Audley.
Life and death was balanced on Ruelle—they had known that from the start. And now Ruelle was balanced on the edge of despair.
dummy2
"And one more thing," said Audley casually. "There's a letter."
He added a pale blue envelope to the other debris.
Korbel reached for the envelope.
"It's addressed—to you."
"Read it," said Ruelle.
Bastard—
He wouldn't read the superscription, Boselli hoped, remembering the General's face.
"In exchange for the lives of the woman and the bearers of this letter you will go free. I am required to give you my word of honour to this effect and I hereby do so. You owe me nothing for this, since it is against my advice—the lives of my men, —whom you betrayed, cannot be exchanged. It is my greatest wish that you will find these terms unacceptable—"
XVIII
"AND SO YOU were there when it happened?"
Richardson stared out over the treetops. The rain had damped down the exhaust fumes, bringing out the damp leafy smell of the Park. England—even London—was so much greener than midsummer Italy, which now seemed such a world away. But no greener than Peter Richardson.
"Hardly that. . . ."
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He recognised the signs. Sir Frederick was in the mood for all the ghoulish details, like an old rugby club buff sniffing the tale of an away win, and he would have to be satisfied one way or another.
". . . We'd pissed around a bit. It was maybe twenty minutes later that we caught up with where it happened. ..."
Montuori had been laying down the ruddy law. Christ—he'd been working on the Bastard's epitaph, and the ink hardly dry on his word of honour—
"Which he kept, Peter—don't forget that. Not one finger did he lift against them!"
Richardson realised that he'd spoken his thoughts aloud. He must be losing his little grip at last, then.
"He didn't need to, did he?"
"Ah, but that was the whole point of it. He understood that."
The whole point.
Sir Frederick smiled. "Montuori is a soldier, but he's also very much a political animal, and David knew that. . . . He's been itching to get Ruelle for years, only the man was a partisan hero, and a communist one too. If he'd done it himself there would have been awkward questions. So he couldn't resist the deal."
"And Ruelle?"
"Ruelle was the danger—" Sir Frederick paused judicially, "—
because he was much less predictable. But if you remind a dummy2
man like that how much he hates someone else, you do give him a reason for surviving. And that word of honour was a nice touch: Ruelle despised it, but he naturally trusted it nevertheless. I assume that was David's idea?"
Richardson nodded, poker-faced.
Sir Frederick nodded back. "Yes—David wanted his woman back, and he didn't much care how he did it. But he had to offer each of them something they couldn't resist in exchange. So of course he offered them each other."
Clever David. No word of honour for him; he played dirty just like Little Bird, and for the same driving personal reason. But that had been where Ruelle had underestimated his man: he'd reckoned David would do anything to get his woman back, but he'd miscalculated the vengeful limits of David's anything.
"David had a deal for everyone, in fact."
"But he also took the risk for everyone if it went wrong—and he was careful to cut you out of that, Peter."
Perhaps that had been part of the deal too, thought Richardson perversely: maybe David had calculated that what Sir Frederick himself couldn't resist was that ultimate acceptance of responsibility. Or was it more simply that he couldn't face surviving anything less than success this time?
Was that courage—or cowardice?
"And yet he took Montuori's man with him—instead of me?"
"That was to make it easier for Montuori if things went dummy2
wrong, Peter. It would have looked bad if Ruelle had started shooting and there hadn't been an Italian casualty. . . . But you still haven't told me what actually happened on the road
—"
On the road . . .
The mountain road had been hot and bumpy, and the dust from the Police jeep ahead had blown in through the window.
And he had still not really understood, and hadn't wanted to travel with the General, only David had made it plain that he wanted to be alone with his wife. . . .
"A crude fellow, but fortunately rather stupid," murmured the General at length.
He made it sound like an epitaph, thought Richardson.
"Now the man Hotzendorff, your Little Bird, he was not a crude fellow—to make a killing by dying to order! In fact for a German he was a man of quite remarkable imagination and I'm sorry not to have known him. . . . But then the prospect of extinction is said to have a sharpening effect on the mind, although that doesn't seem to have sharpened the Bastard's wits, I must say!"
The Police jeep was slowing down: there was a confusion of cars on the bend ahead.
"I thought you'd pulled off the roadblocks, Pietro?"
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Boselli peered ahead distractedly. "I gave the orders, General."
"Well, kindly go and see they are carried out. I have an appointment in Rome this evening."