The Memory Trap

And that made him angry.

'Why did you come back, Peter?'

'Why did I — ?' Richardson stared at him. 'With half Europe after me ... it seemed the sensible thing, David.'

'No.' There was no point in admitting his error. Rather, he must still pretend to have been clever. 'We trained you. And, with what you've been up to all these years, you must have known your luck would run out eventually. So you would have been well-prepared for the day when "all was betrayed".'

'I was well-prepared for it.' Richardson lifted his chin aggressively. 'That's why I'm here.'

'No.' He could hear distant kitchen sounds. And they confirmed his certainty. 'You'd have had a better bolt-hole than this, a lot further away. And, with half Europe after you, you'd never have risked Sophie — even if you did trust my word-of-honour still. So that won't do, Peter.'

'No?' Richardson returned to toying with his whisky. 'Well. . .

let's say I was curious — ' The look on Audley's face stopped him. 'No . . . and I don't suppose Queen and Country will do any better, eh?' He nodded. And then matched Audley's expression. 'I came back to help you, actually. Because that dummy1

was what I wanted to do.'

They were getting closer. 'And what else do you want?'

'Just that: to help you. And not to be tucked away in some damned safe-house in the back-of-beyond.' Quite suddenly Richardson's lips smiled unnaturally, with no support from his eyes. 'But I also want to be in at the kill, with you. That is what I want.'

Audley was conscious of the warmth of the fire on his face contrasting with what felt like a cold draught on his back.

What he had just got from the man was everything and nothing, simultaneously. 'Why?'

Mercifully, the lips lost the Borgia smile. 'Is your word-of-honour still good, David Audley? Will you take me with you?'

It might be safer to have a man who could smile like that under his own eye than anyone else's, the way things were.

But if those terms had been waiting for him ever since Capri, he also had something with which to bargain now. 'That's not going to be easy, Peter. There are rules.'

'Not for you, there aren't. Or there never used to be ... in the old days.' A ghost of the old Richardson-smile returned. 'And it's the old days that you want, isn't it?'

'I'm not in the killing business.' They were only haggling now. 'I never was.'

'No?' It was the old days that the man was remembering —

just as Charlie Renshaw had done when he had reiterated his final order. 'Very well. I'll settle for observer-status, to see dummy1

how things turn out. Okay?'

Buster began to bark somewhere beyond the door.

Richardson nodded. 'He's getting his dinner. So we haven't got long. And ... I don't want Sophie to know more than she already does.' He nodded again. 'You were quite right: I wouldn't have come back here, and risked her ... if it hadn't been necessary.'

'Necessary for what?'

'Necessary for me.' No sort of smile now, either twentieth-century English or sixteenth-century Italian. 'Your word, David?'

'All right. My word — if what you've got is worth it, Major Richardson.'

'Thank you. It's worth it. If it isn't ... I agree, Dr Audley.'

Now Audley could nod. But there was still one thing he wanted to know first. 'How long have you been aware of ...

whatever it is you are about to tell me? Why have you sat on it all these years?'

'I haven't sat on it. I haven't even thought about it... "all these years", as you say.' Richardson's lips curled, 'But you've just reminded me of it, that's all, David.'

It had to be Lukianov. No matter that Prusakov had been the brains, or that he and Kulik between them had fixed their computers and set the whole plot in motion in the first place so recently. Because this was fifteen years ago, what Richardson was remembering. And fifteen years ago they dummy1

would have been back-room beginners somewhere in the bowels of their respective KGB and GRU headquarters.

Whereas a much-younger General Lukianov would have been in the field, at the sharp end.

'You've remembered Lukianov?'

'No. Or maybe.' Richardson shrugged the name off disappointingly. 'I don't know. I don't really know what's happening now, do I? To me, anyway.'

'So what do you know, then?'

Richardson stared at him for a moment again. 'You got quite a lot of it right. I was in trouble, when I got your message.

I'd ... had a long run. And I should have quit long ago, I suppose. But there it is — I didn't ... It gets to be a habit, you know.'

'Making money? Taking risks? Having two separate lives, very different from each other? But that didn't matter right now. The Mafia was after you.'

'And the Guardia di Finanze ... I was about to take a trip, anyway . . . when these people turned up, asking for me. Not the Guardia — and not the Mafia either, my people thought.

Only, when they didn't find me they left a message, with something they knew I couldn't resist in it. But then . . .

fortunately — very fortunately — I got your message.' The stare became bleak. 'And I don't believe in coincidences, David. Not when they involve you.'

'So what did you do?'

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'I thought I'd put matters to the test. I have a good friend on Capri, with a house just near the Villa Jovis. So I invited you both up there, to see how coincidental you were.'

God Almighty! 'I see. And we weren't.' Audley cut his losses.

'What was this thing you couldn't resist, Peter?'

'Does it matter? I decided you were my best bet. So I'm here

— and you're here. And we've made a deal. Isn't that enough?'

'No.' He could never rest easy with that Borgia smile at his back.

'It's personal. It doesn't concern you. And you wouldn't understand, anyway. You of all people.'

Given time he might be able to extrapolate from that insulting clue to the truth. But with Buster out there wolfing his dinner, time was what he didn't have. "There's no such thing as "personal" — you should know that from the old days. "Personal" is what causes avoidable accidents —'

'Accidents?' Richardson cut him off, then stopped. And there was something about his mid-winter expression which warned Audley not to push into the man's silence, but to let it work itself out.

'I had an accident once.' Richardson was as unmoving as a statue, and as cold. 'Remember?'

'Yes. But it was after . . .' Suddenly, it was like being on a high place, from which he could see everything but had been looking in the wrong direction '. . .it was after you left us.'

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'I was in a hospital bed, chatting up the nurses, when I got the telegram telling me my mother was dead.' The statue swallowed, but still didn't come to life. 'I discharged myself.'

Another swallow, almost painful. 'She took an overdose. By accident, they pretended. They were . . . very understanding, you might say. Did you know that?'

Audley waited until the ensuing silence forced him to answer.

'Not at the time, no.' But he could see that wasn't enough.

'Not in that detail, I mean.'

'Yes. Of course.' Something flickered in Richardson's eyes. 'I had left you by then, of course. So it was only personal.'

Audley realized why he, of all people, was not expected to understand any of this painful litany. Richardson had adored his legendary Principessa-mother, who had returned to her sunny palazzo after her husband's death — that was common knowledge. Whereas he himself had no memory of his mother, only of a succession of his father's colourful woman-friends. And, presumably, that bit of personal information had reached Peter Richardson somehow, never to be forgotten, like every other uncon-sidered trifle.

But the hell with that! 'Peter —'

'They calculated it exactly right, the Russians did: nobody was going to ask any questions, after that — not even me.