right?" Another look, and then the profile again. And with that face and the self-assurance which went with it there would be equally good-looking and assured girl-friends in tow, if not an elegant wife close-grappled, so it was no use making silly pictures just because he was being gentle with her. She was merely business, and his gentleness was common-sense.
"Not quite." To stifle that foolish ache she tried to dummy3
concentrate on that business. "You left out Number Seven, of course."
"But you are going to tell me about her, Elizabeth—don't you remember?"
Elizabeth stared at the road ahead, on which the home-going traffic from the coast was thickening. She wished she was going home with them, even to another lonely evening.
"I remember that we started this conversation yesterday."
"So we did. But yesterday you weren't exactly brimming with ideas. Quite understandably, in the circumstances, of course."
"Yes . . . quite understandably . . . since I was brimming with alcohol—administered to loosen my tongue, presumably, rather than my brains?"
That earned her a longer look, a little rueful, mostly apologetic, but with a suggestion of respect which she found gratifying.
"Yes . . . I'm sorry about that. But it seemed a good idea at the time." He smiled disarmingly. "Anyway, I'm hoping you can do better on reflection."
Respect was better than nothing, thought Elizabeth as she hardened her heart against the smile: if she couldn't have anything else from him, at least she could win that.
"But now that you've read Father's chapter you really know as much as I do. And you are the trained historian, not me."
dummy3
"But you are the expert on this, Elizabeth—not me."
"No. I was only the typist. I keep telling you."
For a minute or two he drove in silence. Then he shook his head slowly at the two small children who were waving at him out of the rear window of the car in front. "No ... I don't think 'only the typist' could ever be a description of you, Elizabeth. You're always going to be a lot more than 'only the typist'. And that's not just my opinion . . . although it is my opinion."
Elizabeth was half surprised, half shocked. "You've canvassed other . . . opinions?"
"Of course! We don't go entirely blind into something like this, we know a lot about you. But it's Number Seven we want to know about now."
Elizabeth was still grappling with the news that she had been . . . "investigated" was the only word for it... by—by whom? "Who are you, Paul? What are you?"
"But you know who I am, Elizabeth. You checked up on me—
and quite efficiently, too—the moment you left the fête yesterday."
She stared at him. "You were in that car—in St Helen's Street
— when I visited Margaret's bookshop?"
"No. I wasn't in that car." Suddenly his expression was intent. "You spotted that car?"
"I didn't exactly 'spot' it—I mean, I just saw it ... I didn't really take any notice of it until I saw it again behind me, dummy3
when I reached home." His interest made her uneasy.
"But it could have been any car. Why did you notice it?"
"Well . . ." she floundered under his intensity "... I thought it might be you, as a matter of fact."
"Why should I follow you?"
This was becoming awkward. "Well—I don't know—I didn't know ... I suppose I was a bit suspicious of you, that's all."
"Christ!" He drew a deep breath, and then relaxed slowly.
"Phew!"
"It wasn't you?" She shied away from the proper question.
"No. I was round the corner, in another car." He shook his head, but more to himself than at her.
The proper question wouldn't go away, it had to be asked.
"Who was in the car I saw, Paul?"
For a moment she thought he hadn't heard, as he raised his hand to wave back at the children. Then she thought it was more likely that he simply wasn't going to answer the question.
"It was a man who goes by the name of Fergusson." He waved again. "A freelance journalist from Canada."
"A journalist?" Elizabeth was deeply suspicious of all journalists, both on principle and for their obstinate refusal to spell her name correctly in hockey reports and prize-lists.
"Actually, he isn't a journalist, and he wasn't born in Canada in 1942—it was 1942, but it was in a makeshift hospital dummy3
alongside the Krasnyi Oktiabr tank factory in a place they called Stalingrad in those days. And he certainly wasn't christened Winston Fergusson. His real name is Novikov."
Novikov! The name came back to her clearly once she heard it pronounced for the second time, even though it had first come to her only indistinctly through the babel of her own thoughts beside the sitting room door— Novikov—
If I hadn't spotted Novikov—
"Josef Ivanovitch Novikov."
The Russians, remembered Elizabeth—and this seemed the moment for them at last. "A Russian?"
"A Russian." He nodded. "You know what the KGB is, do you, Elizabeth?"
That made it all fit, thought Elizabeth numbly, not so much without surprise as with an absence of feelings which was beyond surprise: it didn't make sense—the people . . . not just the terrible snake-man, but Paul himself, and little Humphrey Aske, and David Audley, with his kind-brutal face . . . and the violence, which was beyond experience. It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to make sense, it merely had to fit into its own ugly pattern, like some do-it-yourself kit for a science-fiction monster.
"Novikov is a KGB professional." He took it for granted that her silence was a complete answer. "Like, you might say, PhD, Dzershinsky Street University, Moscow. First Class Honours in Intelligence, Counter-intelligence, Subversion, dummy3
Manipulation, Disinformation, Corruption and Violence, cum laude and so on."
That PhD identified him as a Cambridge man—the very irrelevance of the thought steadied her. "Are you trying to frighten me?"
"No. But if I am succeeding, that's fine. Because the bastard certainly puts the fear of God up me, I tell you!"
He spoke lightly, but Elizabeth stole another look, and saw the fighter-pilot's grin—the sub-lieutenant's deliberate false confidence which Father had written of, when the German Z-class destroyers had heavier armament and their E-boats were faster.
Just as deliberately, she turned herself against her own feelings. "And what's your . . . PhD in, Dr Mitchell?"
"Ah! Good question!" He snuffled at the thought, as though it amused him. "History, for a start— The Breaking of the Hindenburg Line was a thesis before it was a book, to be exact . . . But after that, you could say that I'm a Secret Policeman—with the emphasis on policeman . . . Or, as David would say, I'm a submarine, and Josef Ivanovitch Novikov is a U-boat—would that be an acceptable distinction for Commander Loftus's daughter?"
"Father hated all submarines, indiscriminately."
"Hmm . . . destroyer captain's prejudice . . . Then you'd better think of me as an anti-submarine frigate."
He was mocking her. And, at the same time, he was steering dummy3
her back towards the seventh Vengeful. But that wouldn't do any more, not after Josef Ivanovitch Novikov.
"Those men, at the house . . . were they—?"
"KGB? I wish to hell that I knew! They certainly didn't behave like KGB—they were too bloody careless by half, thank God! Ugh!" He shivered at the memory. "But then Josef Ivanovitch was careless, too—he wasn't lucky like me!"