Boselli slid out of the car and marched self-consciously towards the roadblock.
The General sat back. "Yes, a man of remarkable imagination. . . . You know, I wasn't going to tell Narva about him, but on reflection I think I shall. It will wound his pride, but that woman of Hotzendorff's is much too fine to waste—
she has good hips—and I think he's inhibited by his conscience, poor fool. Once he knows the truth there'll be no holding him. Besides—I rather like the idea of completing your Little Bird's work for him."
The General in the role of Cupid was an arresting thought which sustained Richardson until Boselli returned.
He looked oddly flustered.
"Well?"
"General—it is not a roadblock. There has been an accident."
"Indeed?"
"A car has gone over the edge, into the gorge. A car with four men in it—a pale green car—"
"A road accident," said the General dismissively. "Then there's no reason for us to be delayed. Get back there and tell them to clear the way."
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"But there is a peasant who says there was a lorry—" Boselli stopped as he saw the General's expression, swallowing the words quickly. "Yes, General."
For one elongated moment of realisation Richardson stared after him. Then he looked at the General accusingly.
"You gave them your word."
"I did," said the General.
"And now they're dead?"
"Very likely. But not at my hands, Captain—I gave my word."
The General was entirely relaxed, the very model of a cleanhanded, conscience-clear General. Yet one who had somehow contrived to pay all his debts in full, damn it!
"But you ruddy well knew what was going to happen?"
"I was confident that the Russians would do my work for me, Captain—if that's what you mean." The General regarded Richardson with fatherly tolerance. "They have never found private enterprise—forgivable."
The Russians.
Not the General, not Audley—and not the Pubblica Sicurezza or one of Sir Frederick's tame psychopaths. Nothing so messy as that: just the KGB settling everyone's account.
It was so obvious that it hurt—and so obvious why the General was smugly relaxed about it. In fact, all along he had been relaxed about it, ever since David—
"Kidnappers," murmured the General. "Kidnappers and dummy2
murderers and troublemakers—they don't need anyone's tears shed for them. And we couldn't have saved them in any case, not from their own side."
Not after David Audley had carefully and deliberately told the Russians everything, right down to the moment when the troublemakers would be set free in exchange for Faith; he had fingered them as accurately as any Murder Incorporated contract, signed and sealed.
And the General had understood perfectly that the offer was being made to him as well as to the Russians. All he had to do was to flush the target into the open for the KGB to hit, with no awkward questions to ask before or excuses to supply afterwards.
Nor explanations either. The beauty of the two-way deal David had made—if beauty was the right word for it—was that its true substance wasn't even written in the small print at the bottom, but between the lines where only those who were meant to read it would do so. Probably the General was only talking now because he didn't want the son of an old flame to get the wrong idea about the durability of his word of honour.
"Listen, my boy—" the General gave Richardson's arm a confiding squeeze, "—don't think I didn't want to take him, because I've wanted George Ruelle to myself since before you were even born. But what I'd like and what I want are two different things—one must never confuse desires with objectives. ... I wanted the Bastard dead, and he is dead at dummy2
last. When you are my age you will learn to be content with such compromises."
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