‘Damn,’ I said, with feeling, putting down the receiver.
Stephen’s brown eyes were full of troubled thought. ‘We could slip you into the University,’ he said. ‘But my bed’s so narrow.’
‘Lend me the floor.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Mm.’
‘Well... all right.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s too late to get you in through the proper channels, so to speak. They’ll have knocked off for the day... We’ll have to work the three card trick.’
He took his student pass out of his pocket and gave it to me.
‘Show it to the dragon when you go in, and keep on going, straight up the stairs. They don’t know all the students by sight, and she won’t know you aren’t me. Just go on up to my room. OK.?’
I took the pass and stowed it in a pocket in my jacket. ‘How will you get in, though?’ I said.
‘I’ll ring a friend who has a room in the block,’ he said. ‘He’ll collect my pass from you, and bring it out to me, when Gudrun and I get back.’
He held my jacket for me to put on, and then picked up the sheets of telex and folded them back into the envelope. I put the envelope in my jacket and thought about black cars.
‘I’d awfully like to make sure I’m not followed,’ I said.
Stephen raised his eyes to heaven. ‘All in the service,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
What we did, in the event, was for me to travel in one taxi to the University Prospect, the tourist stopping place for the view down over the stadium to the city, and for him and Gudrun to follow in another. We all got out of the cars there in the thickly falling snow and exchanged vehicles.
‘I’ll swear nothing followed you,’ Stephen said. ‘If anyone did, they used about six different cars, in relays.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Any time.’
He told the taxi driver where to take me, and disappeared with Gudrun into the night.
13
The dragon on the door was arguing with someone else when I went in. I shoved Stephen’s pass under her nose closely enough for her to see that it was a pass, and kept it moving. Her eyes hardly slid my way as her tongue lashed into some unfortunate offender, and I went on up the stairs as if I lived there.
Stephen’s cell-like room felt a proper sanctuary. I struggled out of my jacket and one sweater and collapsed gratefully on to his bed.
For quite a long time I simply lay there, waiting for what one might call the life force to flow back. What with illnesses and the inevitable knocks of life on the land, not to mention the crunches involved in jump racing, I was fairly experienced in the way one’s body dealt with misfortunes. I was accustomed to the lassitude that damped it down while it put itself to rights, and to the way that this would eventually lift it into a new feeling of vigour. I knew that the fierce soreness of my fingers would get worse for at least another twelve hours, and would then get better. I’d been concussed enough times to know that the sponginess in my mind would go away slowly, like fog clearing, leaving only an externally tender area of bruised scalp.
All that, in fact, would be the way of it if I gave it rest and time: but rest and time were two commodities I was likely to lack. Better to make the most of what I had. Better, I dared say, to sleep: but one factor I was not used to, and had never had to deal with before, was keeping me thoroughly awake. The sharp threat of death.
There wouldn’t be any more lucky escapes. The fourth close encounter would be the last. For if my attackers had learned one thing conclusively during the past two days, it must have been that it was necessary to kill at once, and fast. No fooling around with horse boxes, kidnappings, or icy rivers. Next time... if there was a next time... I should be dead before I realised what had happened. It was enough, I thought, to send one scurrying to the airport... to leave the battle to be fought by someone else.
After a while I sat up and took the long telex out of my pocket.
Read again the pages about Hans Kramer.
Eight schools. Doctors, hospitals, and clinics. Ill-health, like mine. And, like me, success on ponies, and on horses. Like me, a spot of foreign travel to equestrian events: I to the awesome Pardubice in Czechoslovakia and the Maryland Hunt Cup over fixed timber fences in America, and he to top-rank horse trials around Europe: Italy, France, Holland and England.
Died at Burghley in September of a heart attack, aged thirty-six. Body shipped home, and cremated.
End of story.
I took off my glasses and tiredly rubbed my eyes. If there was anything useful to be gleaned from all the unasked detail it was totally invisible to my current mental sight.
I tried to clear my mind by shaking it, which was about as useful as stirring old port with a teaspoon. Bits of sediment clogged my thoughts and little green spots slid around behind my eyes.
I read the rest of the telex twice and by the end had taken in hardly a word.
Start again.
YURI IVANOVICH CHULITSKY, ARCHITECT. PHONE NUMBER SUPPLIED EARLIER BUT NOW REPEATED... ONE OF THE RUSSIAN OBSERVERS IN ENGLAND DURING AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER LAST. FORMERLY WENT TO OLYMPICS AT MONTREAL. ADVISER ON BUILDINGS NECESSARY FOR EQUESTRIAN GAMES AT MOSCOW.
Yes, I knew all that.
IGOR NAUMOVICH TELYATIN, COORDINATOR OF BROADCASTING. NO TELEPHONE NUMBER AVAILABLE. RUSSIAN OBSERVER, IN ENGLAND DURING AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER. HIS BRIEF; TO LEARN THE BEST GENERAL POSITIONING FOR TV COVERAGE; TO SEE WHAT OTHER FACILITIES WERE ESSENTIAL AND WHICH MERELY DESIRABLE; TO SEE HOW BEST TO GIVE THE WORLD A GOOD VIEW OF SOVIET SHOWMANSHIP AND EFFICIENCY.
SERGEI ANDREEVICH GORSHKOV. NO TELEPHONE NUMBER AVAILABLE. RUSSIAN OBSERVER, STATED TO BE STUDYING CROWD CONTROL AT BIG EQUESTRIAN EVENTS, WHERE THE MOBILITY OF SPECTATORS WAS A PROBLEM. RELIABLY REPORTED TO BE A FULL COLONEL OF K.G.B., AN EXTREME HARD-LINER, WITH A DEEP CONTEMPT FOR WESTERN STANDARDS. SINCE HIS VISIT, INFORMATION HAS COME TO HAND THAT HE HAS IN THE PAST ATTEMPTED TO COMPROMISE MEMBERS OF THE EMBASSY STAFF, AND THEIR VISITORS, FAMILY, AND FRIENDS. STRONGLY ADVISE AGAINST CONTACT.
I put the sheets down. Hughes-Beckett, if it was indeed he who had sent the telex, which was unsigned and had no indication of origin, was up to his old tricks of seeming to help while encouraging failure. Flooding me with useless-looking information while warning me away from the one who really might pose a threat to Johnny Farringford.
Hughes-Beckett, I thought a shade irritably, had not the slightest idea of what was actually going on.
To be fair to him, how could he know if I didn’t tell him?
The mechanics of telling him were not that easy. Anything sent from the Embassy via the telex ran the gauntlet of Malcolm Herrick’s inside informer: and since Malcolm had learned of Oliver telling me to send a message directly from Kutuzovsky Prospect, he had probably made his arrangements there as well. The one place I did not want my adventures turning up was on the front page of The Watch.
There was the telephone, to which someone at either end might listen. There was the mail, which was slow, and might be intercepted.
There was Ian, who, if I read it right, probably had his own secure hot-line to the ears back home, but might not have the authority to lend it to any odd private citizen who applied.
In the back of my mind, also, there hovered an undefined question mark about the soundness of Ian as an ally.
Stephen’s friend duly came to collect Stephen’s pass, at shortly after eleven: and Stephen and Gudrun returned, full of bonhomie and onions.
‘Onions!’ Gudrun said. ‘Back in the shops today after four months without them. No eggs, of course. It’s always something.’