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The Russians were in no hurry to talk. 'They're still looking for Lukianov, I take it?'
'Yes.' She shrugged. 'It seems so. But Mr Aston and Mr Renshaw are both insistent that we don't do anything without consulting them.' She glanced at him meaningfully.
'Nothing must be done to disturb Gorbachev's visit to London after he's spoken to the UN in New York.'
Bloody politicians. And also, perhaps, bloody Henry Jaggard, too. 'Did Mr Jaggard let slip that I was close to finding Major Richardson, as I suggested?' He could see the river through the bushes, close to the road. But it was muddy and fast-flowing after the night's rain, not at all the sylvan Wye of his memory and the poet's imagination. 'Did he?'
'I don't know, Dr Audley.' Her lips tightened.
It wasn't like working for Jack Butler. Although even Jack might have had scruples about rocking the boat, the way things were. And that left only Jake Shapiro. But it wasn't going to be so easy to get through to Jake with Mary Franklin on his own back again.
'So what do you know?' He heard the snap in his voice. 'Is there nothing new on Lukianov? Or the others — what they were up to, between them?'
She relaxed slightly. 'We've heard from Washington . . . they believe Prusakov and Kulik sabotaged their respective computers, to remove information from them. And either dummy1
they, or maybe General Lukianov shredded certain files in their Central Records. But that's all —except there's been a joint KGB/GRU committee set up, to try and reconstruct what's missing. And that's been working round the clock — '
she frowned at him suddenly ' — but you said — ?'
That about wraps it up? Or does it? Damn Henry Jaggard!
The brake-lights of the Porsche glowed ahead, almost as though its driver had heard his uneasy thoughts. But other brake-lights were also winking on and off: they were approaching the junction of the Monmouth-Gloucester (and Cheltenham!) road, with the old bridge and the fast road to Hereford just ahead. And this early, in this weather, both the junction and the old bridge could be jammed with traffic.
'You said — ' The movement of the Porsche once more cut her off. Keeping up with Major Richardson was still part of her priorities, until she'd got him safe under SAS lock-and-key. Or, him and that other bastard, Audley, for an informed guess.
'Yes.' There was a jam of vehicles ahead of them. And one element of it, on the main road which they were trying to join, was a tail-back of military vehicles which was not giving way, complete with a goggled motor-cyclist who was holding back the traffic on the side road in his unit's favour.
'Castles, I was saying: how the "quadrilateral" group controls the road into England, to Hereford and Cheltenham — yes? Very interesting, they are, too. Skenfrith dummy1
and Grosmont are in the middle of villages. But White and Maerdy are in the middle of nowhere, pretty much.
Particularly Maerdy, up beyond Monmouth a few miles.'
'Dr Audley —' Mary Franklin's fingers drummed on the steering-wheel impatiently ' — you said —'
'To Hereford and Cheltenham, Miss Franklin — Mary. A few days' march, in the old days. But only half-an-hour's drive to Hereford now. And little more than an hour to GCHQ
Cheltenham, using the motorways. Right?'
'What?' The last of the military convoy was passing. And maybe ... it was at least just possible that he had done Henry Jaggard an injustice, at that. Or even that Henry Jaggard knew more than he'd let on, and was actually hedging his bets — ?
'What are you saying, Dr Audley?' She was torn down the middle by his sudden shift from ancient to disturbingly modern, and the crawl of the Porsche ahead.
He smiled at her. 'Up ahead, north beyond Monmouth, on the Maerdy road, Mary — that's where Major Richardson chanced upon that crashed van, with the Spetsnaz spade in it. So it was somewhere up there where they must have planted one of their arms dumps, back in the eary 1970s, it looks like.'
The Porsche was moving and they were moving with it, as though at the end of an invisible tow-rope.
'The old days, Miss Franklin.' He spoke into her ear. She had dummy1
a beautiful little shell-like ear, which didn't need an earring.
'You won't remember them. And they probably wouldn't have been your concern, anyway. Just as they weren't mine ... or Peter Richardson's as it happens. But everyone knew the theory of it, of course — it was a theoretical near-certainty that they had to be establishing such dumps, little by little.'
They were on the bridge now, although still moving only yard-by-yard with the town beyond shrouded in rain-mist.
So this would have been dangerous weather in the very old days, when the war-beacons, burning in the Black Mountains ahead to warn that the Welsh raiders were coming, would have been blotted out.
'Those were the Brezhnev days, Miss Franklin — post-Vietnam, early Brezhnev ... the deep Cold War days.' The days of Audley, he thought: the years of endurance! Not like now — eh, Audley? 'The targets were obvious. Like, the early warning stations. And the communications centres.
And, of course, SAS headquarters and GCHQ Cheltenham —
those were both prime targets, inevitably, for Spetsnaz assault groups. But their problem wasn't getting the men in, ahead of D-Day: there are a thousand ways of getting in good-looking fellows like General Lukianov — or Captain Lukianov, he would have been then . . . Lorry-drivers, tourists, mock-Irishmen to Milford Haven and Holyhead and Liverpool. . . sailors with a bit of shore-leave, with friendly passports.' He paused. 'The problem was their dummy1
weapons and equipment —machine-guns and mortars, rocket-launchers and the rest. And plenty of Semtex, naturally.'