I did not really expect him to throw in his hand; he had too much at stake for that, but it was worth a try. The more defensive he was forced to become the better.
He responded shakily at first. ‘I agree that you have cause for complaint, Mr Firman, but no damage has yet been done. Has it?’
‘No damage? I don’t understand. To me, the whole situation now seems completely compromised.’
He rallied. ‘Why? Thanks to your own caution, security has been completely preserved. As for good faith, Dr Henson has admitted that she erred and satisfactorily explained the dilemma that led her to do so. You have the apparatus given her by Professor Langridge. What has been lost?’
‘Trust, Professor.’ In Brussels I had used Mat’s phrase about trusting on Krom. I had also used it several times on myself. I used it again now. ‘So far I have done an awful lot of trusting. In return I have been rewarded with deception and equivocation. As things stand at this moment, it seems to me that I have less to lose by telling you the deal is off and that you can do what you like with your researches to date, than by continuing to accept bland assurances that your side of the bargain will be kept because you are honest folk, and that it is only I and my associates here who are villains.’
He showed his teeth. ‘Oh no, you don’t, Mr Firman. Who is deceiving or attempting to equivocate now? We on one side have been completely open and frank. Stop overstating your case.’
I laughed shortly. ‘You’re bluffing, Professor. Shall I ask Dr Henson or will you? When she took that apparatus and agreed to use it, what did she intend? With whom did she mean to keep faith when she brought it here? Professor Langridge and his masters or you and me?’
Connell said, ‘Oops!’
Krom thought it through, then glowered at Henson.
From her came a shrug and an exasperated spreading of the hands. ‘Several answers,’ she said, ‘all of them muddled. My first thought was simply to leave the camera and other stuff behind in England, but then I realized that leaving it would create complications.’ Another spread of hands. ‘Where was I to leave it? In my flat where it could be found by the friend with whom I share the place? She works for Langridge and adores him. Ought I to have tried explaining the whole situation to her? And how could I be certain, that even though I’d promised to co-operate with these people, they wouldn’t send someone to watch me anyway? All things considered, it seemed sensible to go through the motions of co-operating by taking the box of tricks with me. Does anyone mind if I smoke?’
She started fumbling in her satchel, but Melanie was there so promptly with cigarette box and lighter that any respite Dr Henson may have been hoping for was brief. When she saw that we were all just waiting for the more crucial parts of her explanation and that no one felt disposed, at that stage, to assist her by making any sort of comment, she continued.
‘In Amsterdam the only place I could have left it safely was in the airport consigne. But if I was being watched, and I still don’t know whether I was or not, that would have given the game away completely. How could I have returned with my lie about having failed to use the camera through lack of opportunity, when they knew that I’d ditched it at Schipol Airport? So I put off doing anything about it and waited to see where we were going. It was after Turin when I first began to wonder if perhaps I had been making a mistake, if perhaps I’d allowed my personal dislike of Langridge and his Secret Service nonsense to cloud my judgement, or distort it sufficiently for me to reject any and every argument that he put up without even pausing to consider it. However, it turned out that whether I liked it or not, one of his arguments, along with some of the phrases he used to advance it, had stuck in my mind.’
Connell said, ‘Aha!’ an exclamation she ignored.
‘Professor Langridge said‘ — and she ran her fingers through her hair again in the way I had seen from the terrace — ‘he said that this conference as I had described it, seemed to have more to do with journalism than with scholarship. And not even investigative journalism of the socially useful kind. It sounded to him more like one of those exercises in sensationalism currently favoured by the popular press and the seamier television channels. A news or TV feature is manufactured out of interviewing at a secret rendezvous some notorious terrorist or other wanted criminal.’
She began now to stride about, slicing the air with the edges of her hands as she spoke. It was obvious that she had begun to reproduce Professor Langridge’s physical mannerisms along with his rhetoric.
‘And what is the object of these journalistic antics?’ she demanded at the ceiling. ‘I will tell you. For the new media which indulge in them the object is readier access to the eyes and ears of audiences of cretins. For the crooks and thugs who are the star performers the reward is a big jar of the most marvellous cosmetic ointment of all — free publicity. Smeared with that stuff even the most odious of men and the most detestable of causes can enlist a measure of popular sympathy and support. Many distinguished politicians as well as eminent divines have become involved in such tawdry enterprises, so why not an ageing Dutch professor of sociology?’
She avoided locking at Krom, who seemed to be more amused than annoyed by what she was now saying, and continued to talk at, or to, me. ‘The team-leader gathers the brainwashed and compliant subordinates before setting off into the wide, baby-blue yonder. What is different about this adventure? Two things. Journalists working for the established media are to some extent privileged. Unless the casework upon which we are engaged happens to confer on us quasi-medical standing we most certainly are not. And neither are your collaborators. The only way you could refuse information about these criminal contacts you propose to make, should you be challenged on the subject by a lawful authority, would be by a pretence of ignorance.’
She paused, and then, with a grimace of disgust at the whole recollection, became herself again. ‘His other point made more sense. Reporters on secret-interview assignments are invariably, and for their employers’ as well as their own legal benefit and safety, accompanied by a cameraman, an assistant to fetch and carry and somebody to operate a tape recorder. Even if the person to be interviewed elects to wear a hood or mask, a camera is still there to authenticate the fact that he has done so, and if he chooses to make a voice-track analysis difficult by speaking into a water glass, the tape-recorder will take note of that too. Why is this Mr X so shy? Is it because, and only because, he wishes to preserve his total anonymity and all the cover identities with which it is ringed, or is the truth rather more drab? Could it be that Mr X is just another professional incompetent after all, and that, far from being unknown to police anywhere, he is very well known indeed to those forces with access to Interpol files? Only photographs and/ or fingerprints on the subject could establish the truth.’
‘We have a specimen like that who sits on our Board of Regents,’ said Connell. ‘He’s known as The Syllogist.’
‘The conclusion I came to,’ Dr Henson continued firmly, ‘was that I didn’t yet know nearly enough to make even a preliminary judgement. When I heard what Mr X had to say, and formed an opinion of him, then I would review the position. Meanwhile, I would attempt to conceal the camera and ninhydrin spray.’