"Of course. Isn't it always?" Paul started to shrug, then turned the shrug into a little bow. "And you have pointed us in a promising direction, Professor. We are indebted to dummy3
you . . . But we mustn't take any more of your time."
"Yes." Aske stood up in turn, taking his cue from Paul.
"Elizabeth," commanded Paul.
"Yes." She stood up obediently, but she was conscious that something had happened which she had missed, only she had no idea what it was.
Belperron stood up behind his desk, unnaturally tall. For a moment he seemed undecided as to what to say. Then he returned the bow. "I will be interested to hear from you, Dr Mitchell. We must keep in touch," he said stiffly.
"Absolutely right—we must keep in touch!" Paul's enthusiasm was as false as the Professor's height. "Please don't bother—we'll see our way out—"
Aske was already opening the door. Elizabeth found herself sidling through it almost crab-wise.
"Most grateful, Professor—" she heard Paul say as she collided with one of the chairs in the second ante-room.
Paul closed the door behind him. "Is there a back-entrance, Aske?"
"Christ! I don't know!" said Aske.
"What's happening?" said Elizabeth.
Paul went to the window. "There's something not right about this."
Aske nodded. "I agree. Definitely not right."
"I don't understand—" Elizabeth heard her own voice crack.
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"What—?"
"Can you see anything?" said Aske. And then, when Paul merely shook his head, he turned to Elizabeth. "He didn't ask enough questions—he gave us too much, much too easily—he was scared, if you ask me—" he switched to Paul "—right?"
"And he's not the only one, by God!" murmured Paul, still craning his neck at the window.
"Scared?" Whatever they'd seen, she hadn't caught the slightest glimpse of it. But now she was joining the club to which they both belonged.
"There has to be a back-entrance," said Aske decisively.
"Let's get out while we can, Mitchell . . . I'll go first—that's what I'm bloody-well paid for—"
He took two steps towards the door, but it opened before he could grasp the handle, and he skipped back as though it had tried to sting him.
Elizabeth was simultaneously aware of Aske jumping back, and Paul turning from the window towards the open door, and of her own frozen immobility.
And of what was in the doorway.
"Nikki!" exclaimed Paul. "What a delightful surprise!"
XIII
EMERALD GREEN—emerald green was by any reckoning a dangerous colour for a woman to attempt.
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But this woman could get away with it, with her pale complexion and the flaming red hair—except that it wasn't red, thought Elizabeth enviously, but that painter's colour which stopped the man who'd been talking to you in mid-sentence and made him lose the thread of what he was saying.
" Nikki!" The second time Paul managed to substitute pleasure for surprise. "How delightful!"
The woman in the doorway gave him a cold smile.
"Captain . . . Mitchell, is it?" The eyes took in Aske, and dismissed him; and then took in Elizabeth, and lingered on her for just half a second longer— the eyes were green too, damn it!—and then dropped her, coming back to Paul. "It's been a long time, Captain—six years?"
"Seven, more like—since Hameau Ridge, Nikki—far too long!" He wasn't pretending his regret: even the best liar couldn't electrify his lie so well. "We should have contrived a Hameau Ridge Old Comrades' Reunion ages ago."
Mid-thirties, decided Elizabeth critically. But still almost flawless, and seven years ago didn't bear thinking about.
"But what brings you here?" This time there was a slight loss of conviction in Paul's voice.
"You do—as you well know."
" I do?" He frowned. "But why? What am I supposed to have done now?" The frown deepened. "You're not going to tell me that this is . . . official?"
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"Official—what?" said Aske. "What's going on?"
"What indeed!" Paul gestured helplessly. "I'm sorry, Humphrey—and Elizabeth . . . but this, apparently, is Mademoiselle Nicole MacMahon, of the French security service—which bit of it I'm not quite sure." His voice tightened as he spoke. "But if this is official business then I don't need to introduce my friends to you, Nikki, because you'll already know who they are . . . Only, as for what's going on—I'd like to know that, too."
Mademoiselle MacMahon looked at each of them in turn again. "Captain Mitchell—"
"No. Not 'captain'. That was strictly acting and temporary—
and unpaid, as it happens. If you want to be formal, Nikki, it's 'Doctor Mitchell' now—PhD, Cantab." He shook his head suddenly, as though to dispel unreality. "Only I just don't see why it has to be formal."
She looked at him, almost sadly so it seemed to Elizabeth.
"Very well—Paul."
"That's better!"
"It isn't better. I had hoped you would not be tiresome, Paul.
That is why they sent me—because we know each other, and you wouldn't try to play the innocent."
"I'm not going to be tiresome, Nikki. But this is one time when I can't avoid being innocent. Because that's what I am—
what we all are."
Nikki MacMahon sighed, and then indicated the table. "Sit dummy3
down, please."
They sat down facing her, examinees again.
"So you are innocent, Paul. Which means that you are not in France in a professional capacity, concerned with any matter of security?"
"No, I didn't say that." Paul's face was expressionless. "I am in France professionally. And I am concerned with a security matter."
"What?" The delicately-pencilled eyebrows rose.
"A matter of the greatest importance to my country, in fact...
in 1812, that is."
Nikki MacMahon's lips compressed into a tight line.
"In 1812, Nikki . . . if what Professor Belperron back there says is even half right—" Paul jerked his thumb over his shoulder "—your little Corsican Tyrant was planning to do our dear old Farmer George a terrible mischief. That's the security matter we're interested in— and I'm interested in it as a professional historian. And that's the beginning and the end of it—ask anybody—ask Miss Loftus here . . . It's her father's book I'm commissioned to finish, you see."
"I know about the book, Paul." Nikki MacMahon had recovered from that brief moment of irritation when she'd been outmanoeuvred. "I know about your escaped sailors at Coucy—I know about Colonel Suchet—I know about all that."
"Well, then—" Paul spread his hands "—if you know about all that, then what the hell are you doing here?" Then he dummy3
frowned again. "You must have talked to my friend Bertrand Bourienne? Yes . . . well, I hope you didn't frighten the life out of him, that's all! But if you talked to him . . . and I suppose you were listening in the back there to what was said in Professor Belperron's study—of course you were!" He shook his head at her. "I thought there was something funny about that—it just never occurred to me what it was . . . But—
okay—I hope you enjoyed what you heard! So ask poor old Bertrand, and ask Professpr Belperron anything you like too.
But I'm afraid they'll only be able to tell you the truth, plain and simple, Nikki."
Whatever the truth was, it wasn't plain and simple, thought Elizabeth. And yet it was also the truth, that was the twisted strand of irony in Paul's display of injured innocence—the truth which he himself could make no sense of.
"I see." Nikki MacMahon's smile was halfway into a sneer.