'Ah . . . well, as to that, I can't say.' Jake grinned at him. 'But maybe with us it's like the old music-hall jokes: the old ones are still the best ones?'
'Uh-huh?' Matthew's Rolls-Royce was cruising out there somewhere, like a stop-watch ticking silently. 'Unfortunately, I haven't time for jokes, Jake. Why are you here — in London?'
'Because this is where the action is. Isn't it?' The Israeli stepped delicately around a nameless mess on the path. 'I was back home. And you were in Washington, and you were not in Berlin. But now you are here, where the action is? So now we are both here — ?'
The Israelis didn't know about Capri. Or, if they did, Jake wasn't ready to admit it yet. But if they didn't . . . then they might not know about Richardson. But what they did know had to be substantial indeed, to force the new generation of Mossad to swallow its pride and re-enlist Jake Shapiro? Yes!
'You're here because of me?' The Israelis had been very dummy1
helpful in Berlin, of course. But Jake's presence in London now put a different gloss on that, taken with the present terrorist alert. So whatever they knew must be frightening them. 'Because of our old "special relationship", would that be?' There was no time for finesse. 'You need a friend at court?'
'"The Court of Queen Margaret"?' Jake slowed down as they approached the end of the trees. 'Ah . . . well, we never did have many friends here, even in the old days. Your Foreign Office was full of Arab-lovers — unrequited lovers, of course.'
He smiled at Audley. 'Sure — okay! Well . . . you, at least, were pragmatic, David. You were willing to do business in the old Yorkshire manner: "Owt for nowt" — ?'
'What do you want, Jake?' He could see the very young man standing on guard at the far end of the gardens, apparently engrossed in his Guardian.
Jake gestured to turn them round into the trees again. 'I thought it was you who wanted something, David?'
Audley glimpsed a large car through the trees. But it couldn't be the Rolls yet. 'I just want to know what the Russians are doing.'
'Only that? Where do you want me to begin?'
'Don't piss me around.' In the old days Jake had usually got what he wanted by indirect means, he recalled: for Jake, an Audley question was as good as an answer. 'I've been minding my own business in Washington, working up our dummy1
submission on the new Secrets Bill for Jack Butler. As I'm sure you know.'
'Yes.' The Israeli nodded. 'The worthy Sir Jack has heretical views on Freedom of Information and the Public Interest —
he believes in them! That I know — yes! The worthy Sir Jack!
Yes?'
And the not-so-clever Jake Shapiro, thought Audley. But then half Jack's strength was that no one really believed in his sincerity. 'Yes. But now I want some information — in my interest, Colonel Shapiro.'
'Yes?' Jake peered into the trees on his left, pretending to be nervous.
'What's the matter.' Suddenly Audley actually became nervous.
'Don't worry. We are well-protected, old friend.' The reassurance came quickly. 'You lost someone in Berlin, didn't you?'
'Tell me something I don't know.' He decided not to hide his fear. 'Answer the question. My time is running out. And maybe in more ways than one, old friend.'
The Israeli faced him. 'Correction. You lost two people in Berlin: you lost a man named Kulik also.'
'How d'you know his name?'
'I know all three names. But only one of them matters now.'
Audley held his tongue without difficulty. No more questions!
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Jake held up three fingers. 'Kulik is dead in Berlin.' One finger went down. 'That was very careless of you —what my old boss would have called "unnecessary carelessness". But perhaps understandable at that stage.'
Audley concentrated on the remaining two fingers —blunt, serviceable fingers, rising from a work-calloused hand. In retirement, Jake had become a working farmer. But soft fruit looked like hard work, judging by those hands.
'And now Prusakov is also dead, as of two days since.' The second finger went down. 'But your people cannot be blamed for that.'
Something out in the furthest corner of Audley's peripheral vision diverted him from the last finger: the shape of Sir Matthew Fattorini's Rolls flicked through trees on the inner side of Abercrombie Gardens. But the Rolls didn't matter now: Who-the-hell-was "Prusakov" ?
'So that leaves Lukianov at large.' The third finger seemed to get larger as Audley stared at it. 'The luckiest — or the cleverest. . . yes?'
So there had been three runners. And although he dearly wanted to know who Prusakov was — and where and how and why Prusakov had run out of luck and cleverness "two days since", that would have to wait. 'At large where, Jake?
Lukianov?'
Jake shrugged. 'That, I don't know. And neither do the Russians, evidently.' The shrug became a shake. 'They are dummy1
tearing their hair — but that is also common knowledge . . .
What was it Cohen used to say, in the Saracen? "Screaming blue murder, like Auntie Vi did when she caught her tits in the mangle"?' The shake stopped and the bushy eyebrows lifted. 'All the way from Finland to the Black Sea — how many perfectly innocent criminals have been caught? And honest smugglers, who reckoned they'd bribed the border-guards sufficiently, too — ?' The eyebrows came down. 'The first plus-side is that the KGB is pushing all its contacts so hard that we are picking up people we never suspected, who are sticking out their necks. But the minus is that we're also losing valued middle-men who never knew who they were working for.' Quite terrifyingly, Jake began to become incredulous at his own revelations. 'If they were moving their tank divisions and dispersing their SS-20s as well, then we'd be battening-down for the Third World War — just as you are, David!' But then the incredulity steadied itself. 'Only you've gone off half-cock. Because they haven't shifted a mobile army-cookhouse.' The shake came back, but more disbelievingly. 'Just all their bloody spies . . . and their sleepers . . . and even some of their Spetsnaz sleepers —
which is even more outrageous . . . the handful that we know, here in England — ' Jake Shapiro actually bit his lip, under his moustache, on that ' — and that's strictly between you and me, as of now, David: if you want more on Spetsnaz, then you've got to trade at the very highest level — not you, but Jack Butler and his Minister. And it will involve a public pronouncement on your Government's attitude to the PLO.'
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He nodded. 'This is big business now, David.'
Audley felt almost as disembodied as he had also so recently felt on Capri when the screaming had started, half-aware that his features must have become as wooden as Jake Shapiro's suddenly were. Because Jake knew what he was saying: it had all been agreed — and bloody-quickly agreed, too — at his own very highest-level, in the few minutes which had elapsed between his "Mr Lee" call to the Saracen's Head and their joint-arrival under General Abercrombie's statue. Or (what was more likely, actually — and what was certainly worse, therefore) it had been agreed before? Which meant that the Israelis were so worried that they were desperate to co-operate at any price, in spite of Jake's pretended arrogance.
'I can't promise that, Jake.' Suddenly he felt greedy: having got so much so easily, he wanted more. And, anyway, however interesting that Spetsnaz information sounded —
and in exchange only for some half-arsed ministerial statement, which could be made to sound like something-and-nothing — it was just a sprat to catch a mackerel. 'I'm not even supposed to be talking to you now.'