Palfrey struck a match and had difficulty bringing the flame to his cigarette. "Things are hotting up," he murmured. "Burr's getting a bit warm. I warned them, but they wouldn't listen. Time to take the gloves off."
"You warned them, Harry?" Goodhew said, mystified as ever by the complexity of Palfrey's systems of betrayal. "Warned whom? Not Darker? You don't mean you warned Darker, do you?"
"Got to play both sides of the net, old boy," said Palfrey, wrinkling his nose and casting another nervous glance around the bar. "Only way to survive. Got to keep up your credibility. Both ends." A frantic smile. "Tapping my phone," he explained, pointing at his ear.
"Who is?"
"Geoffrey. Geoffrey's people. Mariners. Flagship people."
"How do you know?"
"Oh, you don't. Can't tell. No one can. Not these days. Not unless it's sort of Third World. Or the police doing it with their feet. No way." He drank, shaking his head. "It's hitting the fan, Rex. Getting a bit big." He drank again, quick sips. He muttered "Cheers," forgetting he had said Cheers already. "They tip me the word. Secretaries. Old buddies from Legal Department. They don't say it, you see. Don't have to. Not, 'Excuse me, Harry, my boss is tapping your phone.' It's hints." Two men in motorcycle leathers had begun a game of shove-halfpenny. "I say, would you mind if we went somewhere else?"
There was an empty trattoria opposite the cinema. The time was six-thirty. The Italian waiter despised them.
"The boys have done over my flat too," Palfrey said, sniggering as if he were relating a smutty joke. "Didn't pinch anything. My landlord told me. Two chums of mine. Said I'd given them the key."
"Had you?"
"No."
"Have you given a key to anyone else?"
"Well, you know. Girls and things. Most of 'em give 'em back."
"So they have been threatening you; I was right." Goodhew ordered spaghetti and a bottle of Chianti. The waiter pulled a sour face and yelled through the kitchen door. Palfrey's fear was all over him. It was like a breeze, plucking at his knees and taking his breath away before he spoke.
"Bit hard to unlock oneself, actually, Rex," Palfrey explained apologetically. "Habits of a lifetime, I suppose. Can't get the toothpaste back in the tube once you've sat on it. Problem." He ducked his mouth to the brim of his glass to catch the wine before it spilled. "Need a helping hand, as it were. Sorry about that."
As so often with Palfrey, Goodhew felt he was listening to a faulty broadcast of which the meaning came only in garbled bursts. "I can't promise you anything, Harry. You know that. There are no free dispensations in life. Everything has to be earned. I believe that. I think you do too."
"Yes, but you've got the guts," Palfrey objected.
"And you've got the knowledge," said Goodhew.
Palfrey's eyes popped wide in amazement. "That's what Darker said! Bang on! Too much knowledge. Dangerous knowledge. My bad luck! You're a marvel, Rex. Bloody clairvoyant."
"So you've been talking to Geoffrey Darker. What about?"
"Well, him to me, really. I just listened."
"When?"
"Yesterday. No, Friday. Came and saw me in my room. Ten to one. Just putting on my mac. 'What are you doing for lunch?' Thought he was going to invite me. 'Well, just a vague date at my club,' I said. 'Nothing I can't cancel.' So he said, 'Good. Cancel it.' So I cancelled. Then we talked. In the lunch hour. In my office. Nobody around. Not even a glass of Perrier or a dry biscuit. Good tradecraft, though. Geoffrey always had good tradecraft."
He grinned again.
"And he said?" Goodhew prompted.
"He said" ― Palfrey took a huge breath, like somebody about to do a length under water ― "he said it was time for good men to come to the aid of the party. Said the Cousins wanted a clear run on the Limpet thing. They could take care of their Enforcement people all right, but they counted on us to take care of ours. Wanted to be sure I was aboard."
"And you said?"
"I was. Hundred percent. Well, I am. Aren't I?" He bridled. "You're not suggesting I should have told him to stuff it, are you? Christ!"
"Of course I'm not, Harry. You must do what is best for you. I understand that. So you said you were aboard. What did he say then?"
Palfrey relapsed into an aggressive sullenness. "He wanted a legal reading of the River House's demarcation deal with the Burr agency by Wednesday five p. m. The deal I drafted for you. I undertook to provide it."
"And?"
"That's all there is. Wednesday five p. m. is my deadline. The Flagship team will be holding a meeting the next morning. He'll need time to study my report first. I said, No problem."
The abrupt halt, on a high note, accompanied by a lifting of the brows, gave Goodhew pause. When his son made the same gesture, it meant that he was concealing something. Goodhew had a similar suspicion about Palfrey.
"Is that all?"
"Why shouldn't it be?"
"Was Darker pleased with you?"
"Very, as a matter of fact."
"Why? You'd only agreed to obey orders, Harry. Why should he be pleased with you? Did you agree to do something else for him?" Goodhew had the strange sense that Palfrey was urging him to press harder. "Did you tell him something perhaps?" he suggested, smiling in order to make confession more attractive.
Palfrey gave an anguished grin.
"But, Harry ― what could you possibly have told Darker that he didn't know already?"
Palfrey was really trying. It was as if he was taking repeated runs at the same hurdle, determined to clear it sooner or later.
"Did you tell him about me?" Goodhew suggested. "You couldn't have done. It would have been suicide. Did you?"
Palfrey was shaking his head. "Never," he whispered. "Scout's honour, Rex. Wouldn't cross my mind."
"Then what?"
"Just a theory, Rex. Presumption, that's all. Hypothesis. Law of probabilities. Not secrets, nothing bad. Theories. Idle theories. Chitchat. Pass the time of day. Chap standing in my room. Lunchtime. Staring at me. Got to tell him something."
"Theories based on what?"
"The submission I prepared for you. About the sort of criminal case against Roper that would stick under English law. I worked on it in your office. You remember."
"Of course I remember. What was your theory?"
"There was this American secret annex that got it all going, prepared by their Enforcement people in Miami. The summary of evidence to date. Strelski, that the chap? Roper's original pitch to the cartels, the broad elements of the deal, all very shrouded, very top secret. Yours and Burr's eyes only."
"And your eyes too, of course," Goodhew suggested, pulling back from him in a presentiment of disgust.
"I played this game, you see. The one you can't help playing when you read a report like that. Well, we all do, don't we? Can't help it. Natural curiosity. Can't stop your mind going... spot the snitch. These long passages with only three chaps in the room. Two sometimes. Wherever they were, there was always this reliable source peaching on them. Well, I know modern technology is the cat's whiskers, but this was ridiculous."
"So you spotted the snitch."
Palfrey looked really proud, like a man who has finally put his courage together and done his duty for the day.
"And you told Darker whom you'd spotted," Goodhew suggested.
"The Greek chap. Hand in glove with the cartels and ratting on them to Enforcement as soon as their backs were turned. Apostoll. Lawyer, just like me."
* * *
Informed by Goodhew that same night of Palfrey's indiscretion, Burr faced the dilemma every agent-runner dreads most.