"The Anti-Death League" - читать интересную книгу автора (Amis Kingsley)

Leonard was bewildered. He felt dimly that Security was involved here in some way, but could not have said in what way. His manuals were silent on situations like this, if indeed there were any other situations like this. He could think of nothing to say.

No such difficulty beset Ross-Donaldson. "A little bit out of the usual run, isn't it?" he said. "Even so, as I told you on the R/T, it doesn't seem a very pressing issue. I doubt whether I'd have had you buzzed if it had been left to me, but fortunately I was relieved of the onus of thought by the existence of your standing order about always letting you know at once of anything with any conceivable Security connection. I've a feeling you should redraft that, by the way. I spent several minutes after I talked to you trying to think of something of which it could validly be said that a Security connection was beyond the power of the human mind to conceive, and failed to come up with a single one. I got pretty close after a bit when I started wondering how an orderly reporting sick with toothache could have a Security bearing, but then I realized he might have a microfilm in his mouth for the dentist to take out and send to Peking. That rather discouraged me, getting as warm as that and then ignominiously failing. Of course, empirical semantics teaches us what ‘conceivable' is intended to convey, but we should always strive for intensified precision. I won't ask you to work out a synonym now, however. Come in."

A corporal entered, saluted, and handed over two more copies of the notice.

"Where did you find these?"

"One in the OR's latrine, sir. The other pinned to a tree by the sleeping-huts."

"Right. Have you covered the whole area yet?"

"No, sir, we're still working on it."

"Do that. If one more of these comes to light after you've completed your search, I'll have you and all the other NCOs in the party up in front of the Colonel and I promise you I'll do my best to see you lose your stripes. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Off you go."

The corporal saluted and left with enough of a clatter to bring Leonard halfway out of his daze.

"You were a bit hard on him, weren't you?" he said. "Why all the flap? One copy of this thing is all we need."

Ross-Donaldson had spoken to the corporal in his customary level tone. Now he stood up, his plump face flushed.

"It may be all you need," he said very sharply. "As far as I as Adjutant of this unit am concerned, need doesn't come into it. If it's possible to catch this man, which I doubt, I'm going to do it. And I'll make sure he goes to military prison. You can talk to him there if you want to."

"There's no point in getting hot under the collar about it."

"There's every point. This is an abnormal happening and there's no knowing where it may lead. A secret project like ours has got to keep all parts of its environment under control at all times. We can't afford to have fanatics or lunatics or jokers round the place."

"I realize that, of course."

"I hope you do. It's our job to be pro-death, Leonard, and don't you forget it."

"Sixteen and nine, seventeen, seventeen and six, one pound. Thank you, sir."

"Thank you, my dear."

The man pocketed his change and went away with the drinks he had bought. Churchill, perched on a stool at the bar with a large gin and ginger beer before him, looked carefully at Catharine.

"Are you sure you'd rather do it like this?" he asked.

"Quite sure."

"All right, then. Why did he marry you?"

"I think it must just have been that he wanted to be married. All his friends were, you see, the people he'd been in the Army with and so on. He never liked the idea of looking different."

"When did you find that out?"

"I suppose I started realizing it after about two years. But it took a long time to dawn on me properly. I was very ignorant in those days. I was only nineteen, but I'd had so much sex already then that I thought I knew all about it. I thought I couldn't not know all about it. What I didn't know was what it was for. I was like someone who knows exactly how a railway engine's put together, and who can put his finger immediately on any part you care to name with his eyes shut, but who it's never occurred to that the point of the bloody thing is that it pulls trains. You do see what I mean, don't you? So I wasn't getting a great deal out of it at that stage, early on. That didn't worry me much, though. I thought that perhaps the people who said they got a lot out of it were natural exaggerators, or else that I was somebody it didn't happen to appeal to an awful lot. I thought that getting married and being with someone all the time would make it better. So you see I was to blame too for things going wrong."

She was speaking quietly and calmly, but Churchill felt she should not go too far with her story too fast. "Have a drink," he said. "You'll be wanting to wet your whistle with all this chattering you're doing."

"Very kind of you, sir, just a half of bitter if I may."

While she drew the beer, Churchill glanced round the bar. At this hour, shortly before closing-time in the middle of a week-day, the place was almost empty. Neither the red-faced man who had bought drinks a little earlier, nor his closely similar friend, nor the three younger men who might have been students on vacation, showed any interest in Catharine or himself. Eames, the landlord, had explained that it was a point of etiquette with many drinkers to leave a barmaid and her steady escort undisturbed as far as possible. "If she's on her own she's likely to be considered fair game," he had added, "which is where you may get trouble. So I'm most happy that Mrs. Casement should have taken a fancy to someone nice and quiet like yourself, Mr. Churchill."

At times like this, and even more when he was in bed with Catharine, it often seemed to Churchill that the whole thing would go on forever. He knew that, through no fault of either of them, it could not. But he was getting very good at paying no attention to this a lot of the time. He smiled at her when she stared at him as she drank.

"That'll be one and a penny."

"Oh, sorry. Wasn't it better at all when you got married?"

She rang up the money carefully.

"Oh yes. By the standards I had then it was marvelous. Not having to worry about it ending, and him not going away all the time. But after a bit it was no better than what had gone before. Especially sex. Sex was what you did in bed, and eating was what you did at table, and plays were what happened in theaters and so on. You know-'I think we've just got time for a quick one/ Now you could make that funny and lovely, darling. But you ought to have heard the wonderful statesmanlike calculatingness he used to say it with. I think… I think… if we're reasonably quick… His favorite moment for that was just before the evening drink or going out. He liked to get it out of the way, he said, so that he could look forward to settling down undisturbed to a good night's rest. So then I had a couple of lovers and he was very good about it. I don't know whether I'm saying that sarcastically or not. As long as I was happy, he said."

"What about kids?"

"He was rather the same about them. If I wanted them then it was all right by him. So I didn't have any."

"I don't quite see that."

"It's like sex, James. It's no good if one of you just has no particular objection. I reckon that sort of thing undermines at least as many women as sex not being all right. Anyway… then Casement turned up. Can I have a cigarette?"

He gave her one and lit it.

"Casement's line straight away was wanting me to let him take me away from all this. What there was of this, he meant. He was marvelous at first. My best before you. So then we got married. We were back in England by this time. I'd lived with him for about eight months and thought I knew him."

One of the students now came to the bar and ordered three halves of bitter. She served him before going on.

"The moment we got married he started being different. I don't like that, James, people being different all of a sudden. About three nights a week he'd get angry with me, usually when we'd had people to dinner or been out somewhere and he'd had some drinks. He'd wait until we were getting ready for bed, and then he'd bring up something I'd said or done during the evening which had made him angry. It didn't matter much what. If I'd said I liked one of his friends, it proved I was a bitch because it meant I wanted to go to bed with him. And if I hadn't liked one of his friends, then that made me a bitch too because I was fed up because the chap hadn't made a pass at me. And so on. The next stage was him hitting me. Mainly punches in the stomach and slaps in the face. He was very careful not to bruise me where it showed. Then I'd cry, of course, and then he'd cry too and start comforting me, and then he'd end up by fucking me. Then he'd be perfectly cordial and nice until the next time."

She had said this as quietly as ever, but faster, and with an occasional quick deep breath between sentences. Churchill watched her. He thought she had better tell him everything now she had started.

"I kept trying to leave him, but he kept coming and bringing me back. He was good at that. He was so charming that nobody believed what I told them about him. I could hardly believe it myself when it wasn't happening. And I tried lawyers, but cruelty's very difficult to prove, and he always let up as soon as anything like that was in the wind. He stopped altogether when I had my sister to stay, so she went off thinking I was a hysterical liar. Then something happened that showed me what it was all about. I could have realized before, if I'd taken it in properly, that he almost never fucked me except after he'd been hitting me."

Catharine's shoulders were hunched. She pushed her hand towards Churchill along the top of the counter. He took it and squeezed it.

"I had terrible toothache and the dentist couldn't see me straight away and I was lying on my bed groaning, and when I went out to go to the bathroom there was Casement on the landing playing with himself because I'd been groaning. So he hit me worse than he'd ever done before and sort of raped me on the landing. After that I stopped being able to deal with my life at all, any of it."

"Where is he now?" said Churchill quickly.

"Oh, he's off. He won't come near me now, not even near enough to have a divorce. Me going mad would be sure to come out and that would be very disgraceful. I think he's feeling a bit ashamed of himself, too. He's a very moral, respectable man."

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

She sighed very deeply, then smiled. "You see? It was very nearly all right, telling you that. Not even very depressing. It'll have gone altogether soon. But listen, I meant what I said about Casement being moral and everything. That was the whole trouble with him. If he'd said, ‘Look, ducks, here's this whip. I'm going to give you a bloody good belting with it if you don't mind, because that's what I like doing. No hard feelings, eh? Then we'll make love and I'll take you out somewhere nice for dinner,' if he'd said that, well, I'd have known where I was. I might even have co-operated. But that would never have done for Casement. That would have been immoral, you see. He had to have a reason. It took me about three months to work that out and when I had I started getting better straight away."

Churchill leaned over the bar and kissed her.

"You won't be different all of a sudden, will you?" she asked.

"Of course I won't."

"My God, what's the time? Last orders, gentlemen," she called. "Last orders, please."

"Was he religious?"

"Well, there was just a touch of that, I suppose. He didn't go to church, but he was always saying how grateful he was for his Nonconformist upbringing. He was very responsible in lots of ways. Good about money, paying bills as soon as they came in, not driving when he was drunk, saying he was bored by all the filth on the stage and in the cinema, all that kind of thing. Yes, sir, the same again?"

She started serving the last drinks. Churchill went round the lounge collecting the used glasses and ashtrays. Then he got a damp sponge from the sink behind the bar and cleaned up the tables. While he was drying the washed glasses Eames came in from the saloon.

"Everything shipshape here as usual? That's the way. Well, if you ever get sacked from the Army, Mr. Churchill, there's a job waiting for you here as potboy. I was just wondering if I could tempt you two to a little cold beef and pickles in my parlor before you go off. No? Well, in that case I won't keep you. See you this evening."

Churchill reflected momentarily on Eames and his offer as he stood outside in the sunshine and waited for Catharine to join him. The landlord was undoubtedly a nice enough man, but he could hardly be such a wonderful man as he, Churchill, had just caught himself supposing, and after only two large gins too, and gins blotted up in about twenty ham sandwiches at that. The same sort of thing had happened the previous evening when, without any gins inside him at all, he had suddenly been attacked by the wish that it was Brian Leonard's birthday so that he could give him a present. He jumped now to the conclusion that there must be less love than there ought to be in a world where so many people went on being nasty to and bored by one another. How many people had the good-nature to love everybody without loving somebody first?

Catharine came out of the pub. She looked so beautiful in her white dress and white shoes and white hair-band that Churchill had an instant of sincere puzzlement at the way the passers-by went on passing by, the farmer climbing into his estate wagon over the road failed to reverse the direction of his climb and come pounding across to cast himself at her feet, the man laying slates on the roof of the barber's shop managed to stay aloft. Churchill put his arms round Catharine and kissed her.

"Sorry," he said when he let her go.

"That's all right."

"I won't do it again."

"Oh yes you will. You are to."

The scene was roughly unchanged. A middle-aged woman wearing a hairnet had looked over her shoulder at them, and the farmer paused inquiringly in the act of switching on his ignition. Nothing else. They don't know what it is they're looking at, thought Churchill.

He and Catharine went round the corner into the yard and got into the jeep he had brought. It belonged to the dispatch-rider section, whose sergeant had turned out on investigation to be very fond of whisky and by nature inclined to return favors. The weather was so fine that Churchill had removed the overhead canopy and windshield. They took the road that led towards Lucy's house. The rush of air was cool to the skin. It reminded him of how Catharine's upper arm felt when he put his hand or cheek against it.

Soon after they reached the beginning of the wooded, hilly region he found a place where the jeep could be parked off the road. They climbed between the wires of a fence and descended a gentle slope where the turf was thin and in places broken by the roots of the trees that grew there. This made the ground awkward for someone wearing high heels, and he took Catharine's hand. On the farther side of the miniature valley the grass was thicker and the going easier, but he still kept hold of her hand. He watched how she moved her body as she walked, out of the corners of his eyes because if she knew she was being watched she did things just as beautifully but in a slightly different way. In a minute or two he would let her know he was looking and try her like that.

They reached the top of the short rise, where the trees grew closer together. He admired their olive-green polished trunks. It seemed that they did not drop dead wood at all freely and that this small upland was regularly scoured by the wind, because the ground was as clear of debris as if it had been swept that morning. Fifty yards ahead there was a false horixon. Churchill wondered what was beyond it. As they went in that direction, moving in and out of patches of shade between strides, they heard the sound of water.

In half a minute they were standing at the top of a cliff perhaps twenty feet high. At its base were irregular heaps of boulders and smaller stones, some of which had found their way to the banks and bed of a stream that might have been a couple of feet deep in wintertime, but was reduced now to inches. The rest of the view was made up of trees, younger ones near at hand, taller ones with spreading foliage farther off, the whole belt stretching for a mile or more. They walked along the edge of the cliff and soon found a way down, the rocky course of a dried-up tributary of the stream.

"This is going to be hard on your shoes," said Churchill. "I'd better carry you."

"But I'm so heavy. I'm heavier than I look. Or perhaps I look heavy. Anyway I am heavy."

"But I'm very strong, you see."

He picked her up and carried her the necessary twenty yards with little difficulty and no stumbling, setting her down on a patch of coarse grass beside the stream.

"My God, you are strong. That was big James all right."

"You enjoyed it, didn't you?"

"Mm, you bet. It gave me a sexual thrill."

"What doesn't nowadays?"

"You may well ask."

A jump that was little more than an extra long stride took them to the far bank. A faintly marked path led upstream and they took it. After a while it curved aside and led across a corner of the woods. Away from the water the sound of insects and the beating of birds' wings could be heard. Churchill took Catharine's hand as they walked and looked at her and past her together, so that girl, trees and stream formed a unity. She turned her head and looked at him. He knew for certain that in some way this moment had become inevitable ever since that other moment the afternoon he first saw her when he had looked at a patch of country similar to this one and thought of her. He felt his heart lift. This had never happened to him before, and he was surprised at how physical the sensation was. He was filled with joy.

"I could never love anyone else in the way I love you," he said, stopping and drawing her to a stop.

"Of course you couldn't."

"Even if you were to suddenly vanish altogether."

"I'm not going to, though. I haven't done any loving before worth talking about."

"Everything's all right now, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's exactly what's all right," she said. "Everything."

"I suppose I might get thumped on the head some day and lose my memory, or go completely senile, but that's the only kind of thing that would make me forget this afternoon."

"I'd remind you in any case."

They walked on. The path curved back towards the stream, then into the woods again deeper than before. The shadows under the trees were very strong. When they drew level with a grassy bank a few yards from the path in the opposite direction to the stream, Churchill halted again.

"This looks like a good place to sit down," he said.

"I don't want to presume, but do you mean sit down or lie down?"

"It's funny you should say that, because it was lying down I had in mind."

"In that case I think it would be easier for everybody if I took off my dress. Is that all right?"

"Yes."

When she had hung her dress on a bush and kicked off her shoes, he ran his hand up her bare arm, finding it faintly warm between wrist and elbow, cool above the elbow like the flow of air during their drive, fully warm at the shoulder.

"The grass feels marvelous under your bare feet."

"I dare say it does, but I can't really see there being any bare feet as far as I'm concerned. I'd have all that shoelace and sock business to contend with. We oughtn't really to take very long."

"Well, your jacket can come off, anyway."

"Yes. There's no point in your going on just wearing those, is there?"

"I suppose not."

"This is quite good grass," he said a moment later, stroking it, "but the earth underneath feels pretty solid. I'm afraid your shoulders and so on are going to go through it a bit."

"There's a way round that."

"Is there? Oh yes. Oh, yes."

They kept their eyes on each other. He watched the steady change in her expression as it grew wilder and at the same time more serene, more longing and more contented. At first he thought she was becoming less human, less the person who was Catharine, but then he saw that she was really more human, more Catharine than ever.

When they were lying side by side he slid his arm under her neck and round her shoulders and put his hand on her breast.

After a moment he said, "There's a lump here, I think. Yes. You feel."

"Oh yes. What do you think it is?"

"Well, it's only very small. It's probably just a little cyst. I used to get them in the lobes of my ears when I was at school."

"I suppose I'd better get it seen to."

"I think it might be as well, yes. As soon as you can."

They got dressed and prepared to move off.

"Let's go back now," said Churchill. "I'm going to get hold of a doctor and arrange for him to see you in the morning. We want to have that cyst cut out before it gets any bigger. I neglected the ones I had at school and they were a hell of a bore. I don't like making a fuss, but I'm the one who's looking after you now."

"I suppose you'll be going along, will you, Brian?" asked Colonel White. "Fellow might turn out to be this famous spy of yours, eh?"

"I doubt it, sir," said Leonard. "I think we're dealing with a lunatic."

"Of course. Of course we are. I went over that notice thing rather carefully and had a good think about it. Chap seems to regard himself as unique. As if he's the only one who's ever noticed that decent people sometimes come to sticky ends. Or that all ends are sticky if you look at it in one way. Necessary, though. Anyway, there's precious little that's crazier than imagining you're on a private line to the truth. What about you, Willie?"

"You mean am I going to turn up at this meeting affair, sir? Yes, I think I might as well."

"I think so, too. Rather comes into your field, doesn't it? Good deal of dissatisfaction with the grand design rolling about in our friend's noddle. Have to see if you can't straighten him out."

"Yes, there is that," said Ayscue.

"You surely do not seriously imagine that this man will appear?" asked Major Venables, slowly waving the spent match that had just lit his cigar. "Or, more likely, men. To me, this farce has every appearance of having been contrived over pints of small beer in the White Hart by a group of clowns suffering from underwork."

Hunter had been ordering drinks from a Mess waiter. He now said, "In that case, part of the joke would be to see how many people fell for it and who they were. He, or they, would have to be frightfully aesthetic about things to stay away. I'm going along, anyhow. I scent fun of some kind."

"You have curious notions of fun," said Venables. "And not you alone. At the last Mess night I witnessed five grown men, three of them of SI rating and thus bearing a certain load of responsibility, climbing about this room on the furniture in an attempt, so it was represented to me, to make a complete circuit without putting foot to ground. It was strenuous, it was ungraceful, it was noisy, it was distracting, it was pointless."

"No harm in that," said the Colonel. "In its being pointless. It's a tradition."

"And then last night I endured part of a sort of collective recitation, or chant, involving words of infantile near-obscenity delivered with great emphasis and killing slowness. Sister's… my sister's… up my sister's… pudding up my sister's… black pudding up my sister's… strong black pudding… And so on. The proceeding seemed to me to be indefensible."

Ayscue laughed. "That's rather heavy, isn't it? I'd have thought it was a very innocent way for young men to let off steam."

"The steam you refer to is accumulated largely in the process of becoming drunk," said Venables in his groaning way. "Which process has evidently become as much a part of unit routine as guard-mounting or vehicle maintenance. The whole situation in this place is beginning to disquiet me. Boredom is giving place to group hysteria."

"You're exaggerating," said Ayscue firmly. "The people here are working under a considerable strain. In the circumstances they like to forget themselves when they're off duty. I think everybody's bearing up wonderfully."

"Well spoken, Willie," said the Colonel.

With an emphatic, reinforcing nod at Venables, Ayscue picked up the glass of whisky that had just arrived for him. There was pink gin for the Colonel, sherry for Leonard, bitters and soda for Hunter. Venables picked up the remaining glass.

"Wait a moment," Hunter said to him, "didn't you ask for French vermouth?"

"I did. What of it?"

"Well, what you've got"-Hunter bent and sniffed-"is Italian vermouth. I'll tell-"

"Indeed? It will do very well, thank you."

"But they're utterly different drinks." Hunter sounded rather shocked.

"Without doubt. I take no note of such matters."

"Well, you ought to. Don't you agree, chaps? Oughtn't he to take note of such matters as the difference between French and Italian vermouth?"

Ayscue nodded again, hardly less emphatically than before.. Leonard looked blank. "Up to him," said the Colonel.

"Je n'en vois pas la nécessité," groaned Venables. "What, to resume, is this considerable strain you refer to? I feel myself under none, yet I bear the greater part of the responsibility for the success or failure of Operation Apollo in its entirety. The officers under instruction are each partly responsible for the success or failure of one-twelfth part of that Operation. Yet they, together with others who are not privy to anything of much importance, are held to be showing the effects of considerable strain. How can they be?"

"It was you who were saying a moment ago that we were all on the verge of mass hysteria," said Leonard.

"Hysteria of this sort need not be, and in the present case demonstrably is not, the result of strain. Unless, which you well may, you count as a strain the experience of depending on the conversational and other social resources of one's fellows when none has any to speak of, as here."

"How do you manage, then?" persisted Leonard.

Hunter and Ayscue exchanged a grin.

"I depend on nobody."

"Well, that clears that up," said the Colonel. "I think, chaps, if we're going to this do we'd better knock these back and be getting along. Did you arrange about dinner, Max?"

"Yes, sir, I've put it back to eight o'clock. That ought to allow time for a full-dress meeting with election of officials and proposals for additions to the library. The people who aren't coming will just have to put in an extra half-hour's drinking, I'm afraid."

"Right, then. I take it you won't be accompanying us, my dear fellow?" asked the Colonel, using his usual vocative for Venables, whose lack of Christian name, like other things about him, made standard Mess informality a little more difficult.

Venables removed and looked at his cigar before answering. "I will," he said. "I have just sufficient curiosity to satisfy myself that, in accordance with my prediction, the authors of this tomfoolery will not show themselves."

"Wouldn't you be prepared to take our word for that, if that's the conclusion we all come to?" asked Leonard.

"No."

Colonel White, Leonard and Venables left together. Hunter and Ayscue followed. Out in the evening sunshine they took the cinder path that led round and up towards the camp theater.

"How did your evening with young Pearce go?"

"Oh, it was very enjoyable in some ways."

"But not in the way that was intended to be the most important way?"

"Unfortunately not. However, the evening was far from wasted. We were served at dinner by the most charming and understanding waiter. I drove over and lunched there today under his auspices, and then he spent most of the afternoon under mine."

"Good show."

Hunter frowned and stroked his mustache. "I hardly like bringing this up, Willie, but why don't you disapprove of me?"

"Oh, good God, Max, surely you know me better than to have to ask that. I disapprove of as little as possible on principle. I want to encourage people to go in the direction I think is best for them, not tell them they're too disgusting to deserve to be able to make a start. So I can't oblige you with any disapproval. Why are you so keen to get it, anyway?"

"My dear, I don't think this line of talk suits you at all. Still, if you insist… Tell me, Major Ayscue, what makes you think I want to earn your disapproval?"

"The first chance you got you told me you were a practicing homo and went into quite a bit of detail. In the White Hart, with James and Moti. You remember."

"Just. Perhaps I did blab a bit, but I was pissed at the time."

"You were pissed all the time in those days. It didn't make you blab to the Colonel or Brian Leonard as far as I know. I got the impression you were trying to pick a fight with me, Max."

"I told you I was pissed. Look, what's all this about?"

"Admit you've got it in for the Church."

"Oh, I see, I see. You're probing about that bloody poem, aren't you?"

"Who told you about that?"

"Andy did."

Ayscue nodded. "Oh. Yes. You know, at one time I thought it was possible he'd written the poem."

"Did you?"

"I don't think so any more. But he did seem to have the strongest motive."

"How do you mean?"

"For heaven's sake, Max. Fawkes was Pearce's friend and Fawkes died."

"Oh yes, of course, sorry."

"Still, he seems to be pretty well back on an even keel now, don't you agree?"

"Mm. Steady as a rock."

"I'd like to think I've helped him a bit there by getting him interested in this Roughead sonata thing."

"Oh, you've got him interested in that, have you? Well done."

"We've had a few practices. For an amateur, you know, he's remarkably good technically. There's a lot of talent there, Max."

"Yes, I thought so, too."

They fell silent and entered the theater. This was no more than an oversized hut with a low stage at one end. The weekly cinema show took place in it, and it had also been used for a concert organized by the Sergeants' Mess, two thinly attended lectures arranged by Ays-cue, and a couple of morale-building harangues by the Colonel. No play had been presented here during the unit's tenancy of the camp, but for a moment Hunter wondered whether some ambitiously unextravagant production might not be impending, or even in progress. The blinds had not been rolled up after Sunday's film, and the screen was still in position. On and near the stage a number of uniformed figures, under strong illumination, were sauntering or standing about. As he and Hunter made their way up the aisle, Ayscue said,

"I've got a feeling we may be going to meet the author of that poem quite soon."

"Why should you feel that?"

"He's obviously the same as this Anti-Death League character."

"This is all rather too deep for me, I'm happy to say."

Ross-Donaldson held the stage. Plump but elegant, his face at least as expressionless as ever, his hands clasped behind his back, he strolled to and fro in a measured way, glancing every so often towards the door. Near the back wall there stood two members of the main camp guard in the at-ease position. Both men were armed, and both looked rather self-conscious. Venables, Leonard and Colonel White were grouped round a battered piano beside the stage, the first two staring into space in different directions, the Colonel in the act of settling himself in the only nearby chair with a large album of community songs which he had presumably found on the spot. He was quietly humming a tune.

In the audience, six or seven men were sitting in ones and twos. Hunter picked out Ayscue's batman, Evans, and then, in the front row, Naidu chatting to a sergeant.

"Fancy seeing you here, Moti."

"Good evening, gentlemen." Naidu got up and swept a mock bow. "And to what do we owe this pleasure?"

"Vulgar curiosity," said Hunter, nodding to the sergeant. "The best kind, in fact. That's on my part. Willie seems to think he may have a professional interest in this League business. Or at least the Colonel thinks so. Or said he thought so. But what about you, Moti? Your attendance at this sort of caper is far more extraordinary."

"Oh, no. I'm Orderly Officer today."

"And it's part of your rounds to look in at all meetings convened by anonymous fanatics. Quite so. Brian thinks of everything, doesn't he?"

"Max, you're incorrigible. The truth is far simpler. The Orderly Sergeant here and I have survived the grim rigors of guard-mounting, and we're now on our way to the next port of call in our laid-down duties. We decided to dodge in here and lie doggo for a while before having to endure being asked to give a ruling on the edibility or otherwise of the meat pies now being consumed in the canteen. So we're here for utilitarian reasons. But what of all these others?"

Hunter ran his eye over the small remainder of the audience. "I don't know anything special about any of these chaps," he said. "As regards the officers, it's mostly official interest, I suppose." He lowered his voice. "You know, if Alastair really wants to catch this anti-death merchant he's going a funny way about it. If I were he, the merchant I mean, I'd have been standing about outside for a good half-hour, reading the notices on the board and taking careful heed of anyone coming in here. I think the sight of the Adjutant arriving with a couple of armed men would discourage me from putting in an appearance myself. Alastair ought to have given him time to come on the scene first. We might as well go back to the Mess."

"Let's give it a few more minutes," said Ayscue.

"Actually," said Naidu, "I did notice a couple of guards outside, at a respectful distance from the entrance. No doubt they're keeping an eye on anybody who may be keeping an eye, as it were, on the place. Let me ask you," he went on without perceptible quickening of interest, "what you take the culprit's motive to be. What has he in mind, would you say?"

Naidu's inquiring glance embraced the Orderly Sergeant, who moved up and joined the group.

"Ah, you get your crackpots in any shower, sir," he said. "Pacifists and Communists and vegetarians and the rest of them. We had a brotherly-love king down the depot when I was there. Nasty piece of work he was. He never washed, either. Led us no end of a dance before we got him down-graded psychopathic and discharged him."

"Is this man who may still favor us with his presence a brotherly-love king?" asked Naidu in the same tone as before. "I'm merely asking for information, you understand."

"I think perhaps he is, in a tortuous and tortured sort of way," said Ayscue. "And that's what makes it so sad. There's a genuine sympathy and love for humanity working away there somewhere."

Hunter lit a cigarette. "How dull," he said.

"To me it's unmistakable."

"Ah, they're all the same, sir. Just calling attention to themselves. You know, like children. Showing off. Cutting a dash, like."

"Why are we all whispering as if we were in church?" asked Hunter. "Oh well, never mind. I see your batman is in attendance, Willie. Does that mean he's President of the League, do you think, or did you ask him along in case you needed a shoeshine all of a sudden?"

"You decide that for yourself, old boy. As far as I'm concerned it's about as likely that I told Evans to come while I was having a heroin bout as that he could be mixed up in any enterprise that involves reading and writing."

"A little harsh, I think. And he's reading now. That's a magazine he's got there."

"You know what I mean."

Naidu looked at his watch. Ross-Donaldson made the same movement, turned in his walk and came forward to the front of the stage.

"May I have your attention, please?" he said. "I'd like everybody up there who isn't present either on duty or as an official observer."

"What are we present as, Willie?"

"Shut up, Max, and sit still."

After some hesitation and shuffling of feet, five men moved up the aisle and formed into a rough line along the stage. The Colonel, Venables and Leonard moved in the other direction and took seats in the front row.

"Stand easy, everybody," said Ross-Donaldson, then continued in his flattest voice, "Are any of you men connected in any way with the Anti-Death League?"

There was silence, during which a lance-corporal at the end of the line consulted the others by eye. Finally he came to attention.

"No, sir," he said.

"Stand easy, corporal. I'd like to hear from each of you in turn."

Ross-Donaldson, hands behind back, walked up and down the line a couple of times and gazed at one man after another. Coming to a halt, he suddenly said,

"You."

"Sir."

"Are you connected with the Anti-Death League?"

"No, sir."

"Or with Human Beings Anonymous?"

"No, sir."

Pausing at every turn, Ross-Donaldson asked the others the same question. They all answered no. At the end of this there was another and longer pause, and at the end of that Ross-Donaldson, facing the lance-corporal, spoke suddenly again.

"What do you think about death?"

"Death, sir?"

"Yes, death. What do you think about it?"

"I never think about it, sir."

"Never?"

"No, sir."

"Right. Next. What do you think about death?"

"It's nothing to do with me, sir."

"In that case why are you here?"

"No reason in particular, sir. My mate and I thought there might be going to be some kind of show, so we turned up on the off-chance."

"I see. Next. What do you think about death?"

"It's something we've got to think about, sir. It's a big problem. I've got a few ideas on the subject, nothing very original, I'm afraid. I came along to see whether it was intended to hold some kind of debate on the topic, some sort of profitable exchange of views that might help to clear up the question."

"But you didn't put up those notices?"

"Oh no, sir. They didn't express my feelings about the matter at all."

"Right. Next. What do you think about death?"

"It's a terrible thing, sir. Terrible. A scourge, that's what it is. Millions of people every year. And nothing's being done about it. I thought perhaps somebody was starting to at last, sir, so naturally I decided to attend, to hear what the person had in mind. But it looks as if I'm wasting my time, doesn't it, sir?"

"Yes. Next. What do you think about death?"

The next and last man in the line was Evans. He rubbed the side of his face, grinning, before he answered.

"Well, sir," he said, "I don't want to strike the wrong note or offend anybody's susceptibilities, but on the whole I'm rather in favor of it, actually. It strikes me there's a lot of people about who could do with a dose of that kind of thing. A notoriously underrated way of solving the world's problems, to my mind. Because, after all, what does it mean? Mere cessation of consciousness, as I understand it. Which most of us could do with anyway. And then there'd be a better kind of life for the rest of us. If any. That was why I joined the Army, as a matter of fact. And they put me on polishing shoes and pressing trousers-no disrespect to you, Major Ayscue, I assure you. Whereas what I was after was killing people, you see."

Evans started laughing. The other men joined in and stood in more relaxed attitudes. Ross-Donaldson went on walking to and fro.

"Remarkable," said Naidu to Hunter in a low voice. "An extraordinary performance. I owe so much of what I am to your country that it ill becomes me even to seem to criticize. But this is a reversion to the primitive, my dear Max. Progress should at least bring it about that one manages not to fall back to the first notions. This amazing show. Thank you for having civilized us in the past; I must now take leave to say I don't understand you any more, however, much as I should like to. Are you ready, Sergeant?"

The Orderly Sergeant got to his feet. At the same moment Ross-Donaldson halted and said, more quietly than before,

"Thank you all very much for answering my questions. You may go now."

The scene broke up. The guards asked permission to smoke and were granted it. Hunter and Ayscue went forward onto the stage and joined Ross-Donaldson, who stood as if awaiting congratulations for his performance.,

"Great fun, Alastair," said Hunter. "In a rather limited way."

"Thank you. I'm satisfied now that we shall hear no more of this matter."

"Oh, don't say that, I should hate to think you were right."

Hunter turned to Leonard, who had just come over.

"What do you say, Brian? Has the League packed up, do you think?"

"I wish I did. This is very frightening. The whole situation has changed in the last fifteen minutes."

"What, because five yobs say they're nothing to do with it and are obviously telling the truth?"

"No. The sinister thing is the non-appearance of whoever put up those notices."

"I don't follow you."

"Can I talk to you about it for a moment? Will you excuse us?"

Ayscue and Ross-Donaldson said they would, and Leonard drew Hunter aside.

"Well?"

"Until just now there were two important alternatives as to what was in the mind of… X. Either the thing was some sort of joke, or there was something behind it. Now I remember you telling me once that there was no hard-and-fast division between jokes and being serious, but in a case like-"

"I was joking when I told you that, dear boy. You shouldn't have taken me seriously."

"Let's go into that another time, if you don't mind. I was going to say that it made sense to take these two alternatives about X in turn. All right, he's joking, or fooling or whatever you want to call it. He wants to cause a stir. Bother the authorities. Get me and Alastair and the Colonel worried. Well, I heard what you said to Venables earlier on about that. You were right and he was wrong. If it was any conceivable sort of joke X would show up to see how it went over, even if there were fifty armed guards round the place. A man who could turn out all those notices and post them round the camp without being discovered would have the wit to bluff his way through the sort of nothing-to-go-on questioning he'd come up against. But he doesn't turn up. So he isn't joking. Or, if you like, the posting of the notices was an end in itself. In other words they weren't really notices at all. They were copies of a manifesto."

Behind them, they heard Venables do his talking-without-words laugh. He and the Colonel were making for the door. He stopped laughing long enough to say to them,

"You see? A fiasco. The case of the absent pranksters."

Then he went on laughing and followed the Colonel. Ross-Donaldson and Ayscue were also on the move. Hunter and Leonard went back down the aisle. Leonard turned off the lights. Outdoors again, the two headed back towards the Mess.

"Well, you see where we've got to if I'm right," pursued Leonard. "X is making a protest. A protest about what? About the infliction of death on the innocent."

"I thought it was the infliction of death on anybody that was getting him into a state."

"All right, on anybody, then. And this is a military unit that exists for combatant purposes, i.e. the infliction of death."

"Not only that, Brian. The infliction of lots and lots of lovely death. The unusually efficient infliction thereof."

"You're not shaking me. I don't see why you or anyone else not in the secret shouldn't have got that far. Yes. Correct. So we're dealing with someone who knows what Operation Apollo's about and has become distressed enough at that knowledge to protest in a very eccentric way. Now can you see why I'm frightened?"

"You're wondering what he's going to do next."

"Wondering pretty hard, yes. If he runs loose with some of the equipment we've got here I can't foresee the consequences. Or rather I can."

"There's none missing, is there?"

"Not yet," said Leonard.

"But that wouldn't fit in, would it, if he's against death? He'd be more likely to try to destroy it."

"That's another danger. But we don't know what he'll do. We can't assume he'll stay logical. If he does, his classic course would be to let the enemy know what he knows. Which gives me the equivalent of two spies to take care of instead of one."

"Mm. I suppose X can't be your original spy. Calling attention to himself like this. He couldn't be sure you wouldn't trace the typewriter he did the notice on."

"Not quite." Leonard looked gloomy. "I've established three facts. It isn't any of the machines officially in the camp. There are scores of thousands of this particular kind in the country. And none was sold to a stranger by any of the shops in the town over the relevant period. X must have gone farther afield. I can't see myself ever finding out any more that way."

"Really?"

They walked into the cobbled hall of the Mess. The Colonel's voice was audible from the ante-room, calling for drink.

"Would you like to come up to my room for a bit?" said Leonard. "There's some time to go before dinner."

"Fine, yes."

Deering was in Leonard's room, standing by the window smoking. He glanced over his shoulder casually as the door opened, then came to what he seemed to think was attention at the sight of Hunter.

"Evening, sir."

"Good evening, Deering. I shan't be wanting you now."

"I just came along on the off-chance you might need me for something."

"Thank you, but, as I said, there isn't anything."

"Okay, then. Anybody turn up at that meeting?"

"Nobody to speak of, no."

"Bloody fool."

"Who are you talking about, Deering?"

"Fellow who wrote that perishing notice. Barmy. Off his rocker. Round the bend on a one-way ticket. By the way, nobody was talking about the business round the place. It took me all my time finding anyone who'd even heard about it."

"I see. That's all, Deering, thank you."

"Good night, sir."

Hunter had been examining Leonard's picture of the five antique Sailors. When the door was closing behind Deering he turned round and smiled.

"I rather like the look of these chaps. Where did you get hold of it?"

"They are quite fun, aren't they? Oh, I got to know a few of the Sailors at their Mess and they more or less insisted I borrow it."

"Nice of them to be so free with their regimental relics. I say, Brian, what a horrid little man that batman of yours is."

"I don't care for him much either, but he's very useful for letting me know about camp rumors and so on."

"How disagreeable. I hope there aren't any rumors about me."

"If I ever heard anything to your discredit it would go no further, and I should tell Deering that there was no truth in it."

"You do what you can, don't you, Brian?"

Hunter sat down in a chintz-covered armchair and Leonard on a leather hard chair.

"I was a bit puzzled," said Hunter, "at what you said about the typewriter business being a blind alley. Aren't you going to search the camp?"

"I shall have to eventually, but it won't do any good. X isn't the kind of man to leave evidence like that under his bed. The likeliest place, I would say, would be in a plastic bag under a bush somewhere. No fingerprints. There are lots of other things I shan't be able to avoid doing if the worst comes to the worst, like getting hold of every typewriter salesman within a hundred miles and putting the whole unit on an identity parade. That's a desperate measure, though."

"It sounds like it, certainly. Have you anything else to go on?"

"I'm still trying to sort it out in my mind. As I see it, the most disturbing thing is that X must be one of the S1 officers. Nobody in the mental condition we've been talking about is going to be fit to carry out his part in Operation Apollo."

"How damaging would that be?"

"I can't answer that, but it would be damaging. I'll have to start going over each of their files again to see if I can turn up some hint of instability. It's hardly possible I'll find anything after the screening they all went through in the first place. I'll have to watch them all, too, and hope to spot something that way. Do you think it could be Churchill?"

Hunter made a wincing sound. "Why him?"

"He was looking very odd when I ran into him this morning. Sort of jittery. I've always thought he was a sensitive sort of lad."

"I haven't seen him all day. Look, I know him pretty well. Would you like me to talk to him? I won't give anything away, I promise."

"I'd be glad if you would, Max. And if you notice anything that might be relevant to this X business do let me know. I need help, and I know I can rely on you. I'm very grateful to you for putting me on to Dr. Best."

"Think nothing of it. How's that going, by the way?"

"Slow but sure. I hope. I still need a piece of solid evidence, but I'm convinced he's my man. He's… I just know he is. He must have a contact in the camp somewhere, but for the time being I'm concentrating on him, Best. I'm expecting results in the next day or two."

"Good. Brian, going back a bit, why are you so sure that X wasn't in the reading room this evening?"

"Because the only S1 officer present was Venables, and he's lived with Operation Apollo longer than anybody. In a sense it was his idea. I can't see him changing his mind about it now."

"Or about anything. No, I see. There's one other point occurs to me, if you don't mind my…"

"Go ahead. This is good for me. I don't get enough constructive criticism."

"I only wondered. If Best has got a contact in the camp, as you say, wouldn't it have been possible for him to have written those notices and had them smuggled in and posted round the place?"

"No. That's to say he couldn't have written the notices."

"Why not?"

"He's not against death, you see. Shall we go down to dinner now?"

Lucy tapped quietly at the door of Catharine's bedroom.

Churchill's voice called, "Come in."

He was sitting up in bed reading a paperback novel. Catharine was asleep.

"James, are you all right?"

"Yes, of course. Why?"

"You looked sort of startled. James, your nice friend Max Hunter is here. He says he'd like to talk to you. He was terrifically emphatic that it was nothing urgent and could perfectly well keep till the morning, but since he was here he just thought he might as well pass the word."

Churchill got out of bed, put on a dressing-gown and slippers and followed Lucy out. She led him into her bedroom.

"Is she all right?" she asked.

"Yes. I made her take a sleeping-pill."

"Have you taken one?"

"No, I don't like them. Where can I find Max?"

"I'm afraid I've put him in the library. It's rather nasty in there, but there are two almost possible chairs, and at least you won't have my dentist friend and his friends breathing down your neck. They seem to be very thick on the ground tonight for some reason."

"Anybody I know, apart from Max?"

"There's your other nice friend, Captain Leonard. Brian, I mean. He won't go. He sort of keeps getting on the end of the queue again. Then I was half expecting Alastair, but it's getting a bit late for him now. Those are the only ones you know, I think. We may as well go down."

They left the bedroom and moved along the passage.

"In fact," Lucy went on, "there are two of them in the drawing-room I don't know myself. They're somebody's friends, I gather. It's funny how the hot weather seems to bring them out."

As they started descending the stairs, Churchill's eye was caught by the figure of the girl on the tapestry that hung there. There was something unnatural in its posture, a stiffness he had not noticed before. He saw too that parts of its dress were slightly discolored, presumably by damp.

"Oh well, I suppose I'd better get ready for Brian," said Lucy. "His turn seems to come round quicker and quicker. You know, I wish he wouldn't go on so. I mean talking. But you can't help liking him, can you?"

"No. Thanks, Lucy. May see you later."

"Now mind you don't sit up chatting all night."

Until this evening Churchill had only seen the library by day. Most of it was in semi-darkness now, so that the books filling its walls looked even more unreadable. They had been crammed on the shelves anyhow, some in horizontal piles, others with their spines facing inwards. Among their bindings an antiquated dull red was most prominent. They gave off a strong whiff of other people's boredom. Here and there, mostly on the floor, were busts of varying sizes. Churchill had looked them over one afternoon and had come to the conclusion that, whatever connection with literature any given one of the men represented might or might not have had, all of them were certainly dead.

An intense light, given as it proved by a bare bulb in a brass lamp, came from a shallow alcove in one corner of the room. Here Hunter was sitting by a bulky davenport in an attitude suggesting that he had that moment turned aside from some mighty creative task. Nothing else gave this impression. Apart from the lamp, the objects before him consisted only of a foot-high doll in tattered clothes that had a national or peasant air, a French sailor in molder-ing papier-mâche under a glass dome, most of an ormolu clock, and a glass of liquor. He waved Churchill to a dining chair with burst seat-padding like the one on which he sat.

"Make yourself at home if you can," he said. "This may help."

He handed over the glass, which contained a very strong whisky and water. Churchill drank a third of it in one.

"How long have you been sitting here?"

"Not more than twenty minutes. I haven't been idle, however. I've been pushing ahead with my smoking like billy-ho. Two Gauloises one after the other, just like that. Have one."

"Thank you. I'm sorry I kept you waiting."

"I expect Lucy did most of that. She's got a heavy backlog to work through tonight. So heavy I had to come out. A discussion on the shortcomings of Britain's youth seemed to be getting under way. Not that it's very nice in here, I must admit. Erudition in the raw."

"Has Lucy worked through you yet?"

"Oh yes, I'm no problem. But it seemed rather early to be off home, so I thought if you weren't asleep I might get hold of you for a few minutes' chatter."

Churchill drank again. "I'm glad you did. Well, what's the news?"

"Nothing out of the way. The Anti-Death League held its inaugural meeting and nobody turned up. At least, quite a few people turned up, but none of them seemed to want to join the League. And the founder, or X, or whatever one's supposed to call him, didn't surface either. What we got was a series of anti-climaxes, good in themselves but not at all encouraging. I felt very let down, I can tell you. Poor old Brian Leonard felt a good deal worse than that. He brought all his phylactological expertise to bear and came up with the conclusion that X isn't the spy he's been after all these weeks, but another chap altogether. I couldn't follow half of it. Still, I do remember him saying he thought X must be half off his rocker and might do anything at any time, which was awfully frightening, he thought. I didn't think so. It cheered me up no end, after the way the meeting flopped. Then it crossed Brian's mind that you might be X."

Churchill started violently. "Why me?"

"It was all complicated in the extreme, as I said. He was pretty well convinced, evidently, that X must be one of the S1 people. The way he saw it, X has been sent all dithery by the notion of having to knock off so many chaps in Operation Apollo, and this League business is his method of dithering about it in public, so to speak. A bit fanciful, perhaps, but you know these technical wizards. Nowadays they take the whole human mind and heart as their special field."

"I see why Brian thinks X is likely to be in S1, but not why he thinks it's me in particular. Why does he?"

"Well…" Hunter made a quick but awkward gesture with his hand. "Old Brian is a divine creature, but not greatly gifted in ordinary observation. He ran into you this morning, he said, and thought you looked odd in some way. Jittery was the word he used. I decided you must have had a hangover, but I didn't like to tell him that. He's such an idealist, isn't he?"

"Yes," said Churchill, finishing his whisky. "But whatever he is he wasn't far off the mark this time. I did feel jittery. I still do."

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Yes."

"You shall. But not without an essential preliminary. Give me that glass. No, on second thoughts there's a more intelligent way. I'll be back in a minute."

The moment he was alone, Churchill got up and walked up and down the floor of the library, looking about for some object on which to fasten his attention. He had not yet found one when Hunter reappeared, carrying with some ingenuity but some strain a nearly full bottle of whisky, a milk-jug containing water, a pudding-basin with ice-cubes and a soup-spoon in it, and an empty glass. He set these down on the davenport, wincing a little with effort and concentration, and swiftly mixed two drinks.

"There," he said. "The securing of supplies is the first object of the administrative services."

"Why are you drinking too?"

"I just fancied one. No, it's really that I've been getting less and less out of watching other people drinking. And quite right too. Voyeurism is damaging to self-respect. What's bothering you?"

"Is that why you wanted to talk to me, so that you could ask me that?"

"Oh, no. Not altogether by any means. I've had what for me has been an unusually successful and varied sexual day, and that sort of thing always tends to loosen my tongue. Plus the lack of anything approaching ordinary humanity in the drawing-room, apart from Brian, and I've had plenty of him this evening already."

"I see. Anyway, I'm glad you asked me. To start with, I'm not X."

"No."

"But I see his point so clearly that I might easily have been him if I'd thought of it. I used not to be particularly against death, especially not for people who were trying to kill me or who'd got to the point of being able to kill lots of my friends and fellow-countrymen unless they were stopped. So when I was picked for Operation Apollo originally I didn't object. Rather the opposite if anything, because in this case the people who were going to be stopped really needed very much to be stopped. Then, after we'd had the geographical and strategical picture filled in for us, we were told how it was proposed to stop these people. That part of it worried me a bit, and I started drinking more than I usually do. At that stage what I didn't like was this method they've been explaining to us and training us in for stopping the enemy. It isn't so much a new method as a new twist on an old one. The point of it is the way it kills people. I can't go into it, but you can take it from me that it's objectionable. I still wouldn't have backed out of Apollo, though, even if I'd been able to (which wouldn't have been particularly easy), because it somehow didn't matter much that I was going to do something I objected to, because I didn't matter much.

"Then I met Catharine and it started to matter very much what I did and what I didn't do. I started to matter. So it got harder to go on agreeing to take part in Apollo. It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd been able to discuss the whole business with some of the other chaps who're being trained. But it turned out that was no good. They all said of course they agreed it was a terrible thing we were being got ready to do, but it was necessary and it was orders. I thought at first they said that because they were stupid or unfeeling or both. Then I realized there was no way of knowing whether they meant what they said or not, because we were talking about death, you see. As soon as you get on to that, people stop coming clean about what they feel, even if they're the sort of people who wouldn't hesitate to tell you all you wanted to know about their sex life and so on. So there was no help that way.

"Then something else happened. Catharine has a lump in her left breast which may turn out to be cancer. I've been so frightened about that I've hardly known what to do. And I don't know how frightened she is because she doesn't say and I can't ask her. Until this came up I knew her better than anyone in the world. I knew everything she was thinking. Now I don't any more. Because death has come up. I've been thinking about this. It hasn't been as difficult as you might imagine. The alternative of thinking about it is to panic, and I can't do that.

"At first I just got angry at the way good things are vulnerable to bad things, but bad things aren't vulnerable to good. You know: all the way up from toothache being more powerful than an orgasm. But I soon moved beyond that. I decided I was slightly more frightened than I had reason to be, while there was still nothing definite about Catharine's condition. I felt as if I knew she was going to turn out to have cancer and would die of it. That didn't take long to disentangle, either. I'd had the dispatch-rider and Fawkes at the back of my mind. So I was being superstitious, and having worked that out I could go back to feeling very shocked and concerned and apprehensive instead of full of dread. But I didn't. I worked on that. You don't have to believe in God or fate or the hidden powers of the mind to believe that there are such things as runs of bad luck. Well, I found that bad luck didn't quite cover what I felt was happening, and not altogether because it's a rather pale sort of phrase for the occasion. Something out of the tactical mumbo-jumbo they keep throwing at us fitted the situation better, I thought. You've probably heard of these things they call lethal nodes. You don't have battles or fronts any more, you have small key areas it's death to enter. Well, we're in a lethal node now, only it's one that works in time instead of space. A bit of life it's death to enter. The beginning, the edge of the node was when that motorcycle thing happened. Fawkes was further in. This looks like being near the center. We'll know it's passing over when somebody else goes, somebody we know as little as we knew that dispatch-rider. That'll be the farther edge. I know all this sounds a bit mad. I'm sorry.

"The background to the whole business is Operation Apollo. That's like the theater of war in which this is one operation. Well, what am I going to do about it? Now that I know more about death than I used to, you'd think I'd have to make up my mind that it's something nobody could deserve, however it was administered. That would mean having to opt out of the Operation, and that would mean all sorts of stuff, up to and including court-martial and imprisonment and perhaps being quietly knocked off by Brian Leonard's friends for knowing too much to be allowed to turn pacifist. I think I could take most of that if I had to. But I don't suppose I'll bother to go that far. I'll probably just follow the line of least resistance. If Catharine's going to die it'll never matter again what I do."

"When will you know about her?"

"The day after tomorrow. They're doing a probe on her in the morning and then it'll take them twenty-four hours to run tests on what they find. It sounds as though time has become tremendously important. Especially since they told us yesterday that Apollo's been brought forward two weeks. You'd think that would really shake us all up, wouldn't you? It would have me, in any other conceivable similar situation. But it hasn't at all. In comparison. It's always the comparison that counts. Like, you know, unless you pay a debt by the end of the week you go to prison. Very bad. Only today your son had a road accident. You see, Max, I'd desert now if I could stay with her, but they wouldn't let me."

Hunter gave out cigarettes and refilled both glasses.

"I understand what you mean about lethal nodes," he said when he was sitting down again, "though I don't say I agree with it. Where I can't follow you is on this point about Apollo being the background to it. I don't think there's an analogy there. You may feel there's a connection, you may have had your attention drawn to death in the first place by way of Apollo, but that's different. What is obvious is that part of your feeling jittery comes from it. Not a very large part, perhaps, but at least you can do something about it straight away. The rest of it has got to wait for thirty-six hours or so."

"What do you suggest I do about Apollo?"

"It's nothing to do with Catharine or Fawkes or the dispatch-rider. It's detachable, so detach it. Tell me about it."

"Why? What good would that do?"

"There's no guarantee, of course, but I might be able to help you to feel better about some of it, less guilty and so on. It's worth a try."

"I can't do it. I promised not to tell anybody."

"Break your promise. If you can seriously go on about deserting and being court-martialed and the rest of it, you've got beyond that sort of promise. I shan't tell anybody else. You trust me, don't you?"

"Yes." Churchill swallowed whisky. "But supposing I told you and then found it didn't help?"

"Then you're no worse off, are you?"

"A lot of lives are involved."

"That makes it particularly important for me to keep my mouth shut, but I was going to do that anyway. You don't think I'm a spy, do you?"

"No."

"Then tell me."

Churchill told him.

By first light on the morning of Exercise Nabob a cordon of troops was in position along the perimeter of an area in the hills amounting to something over two square miles. Official signs diverting all civilian traffic had been set up on the relevant roads the previous evening. At 0800 hours a convoy of vehicles made its way out of the camp and headed for the cordoned area. It included two lorry-loads of infantry in full battle-order and two armored carriers containing machine-gun crews and their weapons. An RAF helicopter flew at fifty feet above the head of the column while another shuttled back and forth along the route. A sweep program had been arranged for the duration of the exercise to ensure continuous observation of the ground.

On arrival at the assembly point, the machine-guns were unloaded and set up on tripods so as to command the main approaches. The infantrymen took up defensive positions round the rim of the slight depression in which the exercise proper was to take place.

"I trust you've remembered to order the light cruiser squadron to prepare to receive cavalry, Brian," said Hunter.

"It's all very well for you to laugh," said Leonard, doing so himself. He was in unusually high spirits, as if feeling that this was his day. "I can assure you that none of this is unnecessary."

"Do you really think there's the slightest possibility of armed attack? Attack by whom, anyway? Perhaps war was declared while we were on our way up here."

"I'd know about it if it had been. No, any form of physical intervention is in the highest degree unlikely-as things are. This show of preparedness has done a good deal to make it so."

"You mean unless we'd rendered ourselves capable of delivering a million rounds a minute at any intruder we'd have had a Red Chinese parachute company on our necks? I think I see."

"Stranger things have happened."

"Very few. What precautions have you taken against high-altitude photography? It's a good day for it."

They looked up into the cloudless, deep blue sky. One of the helicopters was rattling along almost overhead with its curious not-quite-head-foremost aerial gait. The two men were standing at the comer of a rough square of level grass where the transport had been parked. Nearby, the main stores vehicle was being unloaded under the supervision of Ross-Donaldson and a sergeant-major. A number of long narrow wooden boxes, about five feet by nine inches by six inches, were being carefully handed down from the interior of the truck and piled side by side on the turf. Now and then Hunter glanced interestedly over at this proceeding.

Leonard was saying something about conditions actually being unfavorable to air observation of the secret material and activity about to be exposed. These were on too small a scale physically, he explained, to be meaningful if photographed at normal spy-plane height with even the most mature apparatus known to be available. To fly at the comparatively low altitude demanded, in the present absence of cloud-cover, would be to approach maximal risk-potential. The equations and curves prepared in advance at the direction of Leonard's masters, which seemed to have taken into account a meteorological spectrum ranging from the existing bright sunshine to unforeseen solar eclipse, gave the probability of unauthorized penetration of the air-space above Exercise Nabob as approximately two centicents, or 0.02 of 1 per cent. These two chances in ten thousand were being taken care of by a system of coastal watch and patrol which Leonard did not see fit to go into at the present time.

By the end of his exposition three more officers had approached. They were Major Venables and two taciturn captains called O'Neill and Isaacs who had arrived at the unit two days previously. The pair had spent most of the intervening period in the Exercise area accompanied by a large working-party.

"Are you happy, Leonard?" asked Venables. "I use the ridiculous but serviceable locution. Your emotional welfare is no concern of mine."

"I understand, sir. Yes, my preparations are complete. I suggest you conduct your preliminaries now and go ahead in your own time with final briefing."

"I can find no objection to that."

"How long will you need?"

Venables looked at O'Neill, who said, "Fifteen minutes should do it."

"See to it, then," said Venables.

O'Neill and his companion moved off towards the stores vehicle.

"Would anybody mind if I watched this part, Brian?" asked Hunter.

Leonard hesitated. "No," he said finally. "Mere acquaintance with externals isn't inappropriate for an officer of your Security rating… That's if you approve, sir."

"Who, I?" Venables seemed astonished. "I have no grounds for disapproval. Hunter may do as he pleases, short of inconveniencing me."

"Okay, then, Max. See you later."

The two captains had already begun their preliminaries when Hunter reached them. A party under a sergeant was carrying the boxes from their stack by the lorry over to a small but substantial earth and concrete bunker built during the past couple of days. It lay just short of the crest of a minor slope. From it, Hunter found he had an unimpeded view of half a mile or more across the floor of the valley. He caught a wink of metal up near the skyline as somebody in the defense detachment shifted his position. From near at hand he heard a fluctuating roar and a grinding of tracks from the small obsolete-looking tank that had come from a nearby armored training unit to join the convoy earlier that morning, incidentally imposing a twenty-minute delay in starting. Now the tank began to move slowly away round the inner edge of the depression.

With a certain amount of ceremony, the locking bolts on one of the boxes were pulled aside and the lid raised. Inside, resting between padded clips, lay an object roughly resembling an elongated golf-bag in webbing with brass studs. At this point Isaacs stepped forward, opened this container and drew out a rifle with an unusually extended barrel, a conical projection at the muzzle, a small bipod forward of the point of balance and a drum-type magazine to the right of the breech. He laid the weapon down on one of several piles of sacking arranged along the parapet of the bunker. Meanwhile another box had been opened under the direction of O'Neill, and within a couple of minutes five rifles of the type described were lying on the parapet.

"Ammunition," said O'Neill sharply.

Isaacs moved to a metal box with a double stripe of red and yellow round it. He tore off the Ministry of Defence seal on its fastening and opened it, revealing a row of elongated cartridges with red-painted cases. Inside the lid was printed in red, Danger- Atomics-Arm by pressing base and giving half-turn to right-Not to be distributed except on the orders of an officer. While O'Neill watched, Isaacs took five rounds out of the box and carefully laid one down beside each of the rifles.

Just then Hunter caught sight of Churchill standing with a couple of other officers by the line of vehicles. He walked over and Churchill came forward to meet him.

"Quite a show they've evidently got lined up for us," said Churchill. His eyes were half closed, as if the sunlight were too strong for them.

"I'm surprised they haven't brought Willie Ayscue along to bless the proceedings. Are you actually going to fire one of those things?"

"I may and I may not. We're going to sort of draw lots for it."

"Why isn't everybody taking a turn?"

"I don't know. It could easily be a benign growth, not cancer at all. I hope it is. I wish I hadn't let her talk me out of being with her this morning. I should have insisted." Churchill spoke flatly.

"Why did she talk you out of it?"

"I don't know. I think it's just part of the way everybody's tacitly agreed to behave as if there's nothing much at stake. But I don't know."

"I see. When will you hear what they've found?"

"Any moment now. Lucy's going to telephone to the Command Post and they'll get on to Brian over the radio link. He set up the whole thing."

"I see. I hope-"

"Assemble for briefing, please," said Venables's amplified voice on a loud-hailer. "All S1 officers to the firing-point for briefing."

"That's me," said Churchill. "Max, if the message comes through while I'm down there would you take it? I've arranged it with Brian. They'll say they're calling Blacksmith, which is my code-name, and then they'll just say ‘Good news' or ‘Bad news.' "

"I'll do that, of course."

"Thanks. I'd like you to be the one to tell me. But of course it might not come until they've finished briefing. I'll go over to Brian's car as soon as they have. See you."

Churchill went off after his companions. Colonel White got out of his car, where he had been sitting reading what looked like some learned journal ever since arriving at the assembly point, and limped off briskly in the same direction. Ross-Donaldson appeared and joined him. Hunter returned to where he had left Leonard, who at that moment ran the few yards to his car, got in and slammed the door. The window was open, however, and Hunter arrived in time to hear him say excitedly,

"Padlock here. Over."

"Man in civilian clothes sighted approaching southeast corner," said a voice over the loud-speaker. "I've got the glasses on him but I can't tell whether it's Optimus or not. Could be. He's coming slow and cautious, trying to keep concealed as much as possible. No doubt about it, he's seen us and reckons we haven't seen him. Over."

"You keep it that way," said Leonard, picking up a mapcase and a chinagraph pencil. "Give map-reference of his present location and estimate his general direction. Over."

Letters and figures followed. Leonard marked a cross in red on the talc over his map and an arrow pointing northwest. Then he studied the map for a moment and said,

"He seems to be making for that re-entrant or gully that runs into the ridge about eighty yards northeast of you. Do you agree? Over."

"Could be, sir. Yes, there's fairish cover for him most of the way there and the gully itself's pretty well wooded. Yes, he's moving that way now. Oh, and I'm pretty sure it is Optimus. Over."

"Good, splendid. Right, sergeant-major. Instruct your men on both sides of the gully to move away from it when the man approaches. Gradually, mind. Nothing obvious. Check back to me when you've done that. Over."

"Roger, Padlock. Out."

Leonard looked up, sweat glittering among the thin hair on the top of his head. "Looks as if we've got him," he said.

"Optimus equals Best." Hunter too seemed excited. "What a scholar you are, Brian. How do your fellows know what he looks like? Did you send them all on a tour of the hospital?"

"I had him photographed. Without his knowing it, of course."

"Marvelous. And what's in store for him now?"

"When he's through the cordon I shall let him find his way along here. The defense detachments have orders to show themselves as much as possible. Then, as soon as I find out what route he's taking, I'll get them to withdraw laterally, like the cordon just now, and presumably he'll arrive somewhere up there"-Leonard gestured at the skyline with his head-"and start taking photographs."

"And then you grab him."

"No, we want him to pass on the stuff so that we can grab the people on his line of communication as well. I'm putting him under continuous surveillance. He'll be allowed to leave the area in the same way as he entered it. With one of my men in close attendance."

Hunter shook his head admiringly. "Very neat. And frightfully energetic. All this show just put on for Best's benefit."

"It's not just for his benefit at all," said Leonard emphatically. "I don't know what gave you that idea. It's a vitally important piece of training."

"Oh, of course. I was really only thinking what an efficient spy-trap it is."

"Actually," and here Leonard's voice grew as confidential as it ever did, "it isn't really training in the strict sense. More of a demonstration. These fellows all know their business backwards. But it's felt that seeing this thing in action will be psychologically beneficial. It'll make them believe in it, give them confidence, stop them thinking exclusively in terms of theory."

"Good idea."

The loudspeaker came to life. "Hallo, Padlock. Are you receiving me? Over."

"Padlock listening. Over."

"Civilian now approaching mouth of gully. Definitely identifiable as Optimus. Men on both sides of gully moving off as ordered. Over."

Hunter did not wait to hear Leonard's reply. He strolled over towards the bunker, where the briefing was evidently about to begin. His expression was puzzled.

"This is Captain O'Neill," said Venables without preamble. "You may have met him. He will tell you what it is necessary for you to know about this device."

With that, Venables sat down on the grass. O'Neill came forward holding one of the rifles by the stock.

"This, gentlemen, is the NHW-17," he said. "Now I know you're all fully trained in the tactical handling of nuclear hand-weapons, their mode of operation, special problems of supply and so on. But you'll forgive me if I just run over a few salient points. The first thing to remember is that this is an ordinary rifle that uses extraordinary ammunition, and that even the ammunition's ordinary enough until it arrives at its target. You'll see that it resembles an ordinary rather old-fashioned Service rifle with a few luxuries thrown in: bipod for greater steadiness, lengthened barrel for increased accuracy, flash eliminator for concealment. Ordinary magazine and bolt action." He demonstrated this. "You'll get a chance to practice that later on, using dummy rounds. Now as to the serious ammunition, the punch is.085 T, which as you know is jargon for eighty-five thousandths of a metric ton of TNT, or simply eighty-five kilograms. Nothing very much, you may say. Certainly it's a mere teaspoonful compared with what some of the NTWs can deliver. The purpose of this weapon, though, involves not the size of the punch but the rapidity and selectivity with which it can be delivered. A platoon equipped with the NHW-17 combines the mobility and ground-covering capacity of an infantryman with the firepower of something like three field batteries of artillery. Ideal for a war of movement over difficult terrain.

"The other technical consideration is that of fall-out. This in my hand is a very clean bullet indeed, to a revolutionary degree, in fact. We'll be taking all precautions today, of course, but you can rest assured that residual radioactivity is negligible. If it weren't for the heat factor, which I'll go into in a minute, ground cleared by the NHW-17 could be occupied virtually at once. There are special circumstances, however, in which the use of an altogether different type of bullet will be advantageous. For obvious reasons we shan't be firing this type today, here in the middle of the English countryside. But consider the case of an enemy center of population within reach of airborne approach. You can see the implications there."

At this point, Hunter heard Leonard calling his name from where he had left him. He turned at once and hurried to the car.

"Blacksmith," said Leonard.

"Have they passed the message yet?"

"I'll tell them to now."

Leonard said into his hand-microphone, "Hullo, Control. Pass your message. Over."

"Hullo, Padlock," said a voice Hunter recognized as that of one of the regular Command Post operators. "Message begins. Bad news. I say again, bad news. Message ends. Over."

"Thank you, Control. Message received and understood. Out."

Beyond the frying noise from the loudspeaker Hunter could hear O'Neill going on with his briefing, but too far off for words to be distinguishable. Then the clatter of a helicopter passing above the firing-point cut out all other sound. Hunter and Leonard looked away from each other as they waited for it to recede. It had become a faint murmur before either spoke.

"What a terrible thing," said Leonard at last. "That poor girl. And James not able to be with her."

"I know. It's an unpleasant situation."

"Of course, there is a lot they can do these days. You've got quite a good chance if you catch it early on like this."

"Yes, there is that."

"When are you going to tell him?"

"I'll wait till I see a moment."

"I don't envy you, Max, having to do that. What on earth is there to say in this sort of situation? One feels so helpless."

"One does indeed."

"Hullo, Padlock," came from the loudspeaker. "Charlie here. Over."

"Padlock listening. Over."

"Optimus now inside cordon, still proceeding roughly northwest. He'll be out of sight in a minute or two. Any further instructions? Over."

"No, that's fine. Keep him under observation as long as you can. Report his position when you finally lose contact. You can give your men a breather now. You've all done extremely well. Over."

"Roger. Thank you, sir. Out."

"Hullo, Fox. Hullo, Fox. Have you understood Charlie's information? Over."

"Hullo, Padlock. Yes, Charlie's information received and understood. Over."

"Very good. Keep strict watch for approach of Optimus and report as soon as sighted. Over."

"Roger. Out."

During this, Hunter had been leaning against the doorpost of the vehicle drinking from his water-container, which did not contain only water. He picked out Churchill from the group of S1 officers sitting in a semicircle on the grass by the bunker, and stared at the back of his neck for some time. Then he settled down in a comfortable hollow in the ground a few yards away and took a paperback novel from his haversack. He had difficulty in finding his place in this and in remembering the main trend of the plot. Finally he started again at the beginning, but after a few minutes put the book aside and picked up his water-container. He sat in the hollow slowly drinking this down and smoking while O'Neill talked on and Leonard kept quiet in his car.

Eventually the briefing ended and Isaacs went through some weapon drill with one of the rifles. Hunter took some of this in, but soon began to feel drowsy. He had not time to fall asleep, however, when the group at the bunker began to break up. He got to his feet.

Churchill saw him at once and the two hurried towards each other.

"It's come, has it?"

"Yes," said Hunter. "Bad news."

Churchill's mouth opened a little and closed again. "I see."

"Would you like a drink?"

"Yes."

He took the container from Hunter and drank what was there.

"Thanks."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to see the Colonel and ask for a short pass on compassionate grounds. I told him a bit about this yesterday. Will you drive me to Lucy's?"

"Of course."

"I'll see you at your jeep in a few minutes."

As Hunter moved away, Leonard turned in the seat of his car and caught his eye.

"How's he taking it?"

"I don't know," said Hunter. "I can't tell."

"I'm sure he's a good brave lad. It'll bring out the best in him."

"I expect so. I hope it brings out the best in her too."

"Hullo, Padlock. Fox calling. No sign of Optimus. I say again, no sign of Optimus. Over."

"Hullo, Fox," said Leonard into his microphone. "Roger. Out."

He looked up, knuckling the sweat off his dark upper lip. His earlier animation had departed.

"I can't think where he's got to," he said accusingly. "Has he stopped for a kip or what? The defense detachment ought to have spotted him fifteen or twenty minutes ago."

"Don't worry, he'll turn up. I'll see you later."

"Hullo, George," Leonard was saying as Hunter left him.

"I'm sorry I've been so long, Max," said Churchill when he appeared. "I had to clear this with Venables as well. I've got until oh-nine-hundred hours tomorrow."

"Good."

Hunter reversed his jeep out of the line of vehicles and they moved slowly down the rough track up which the convoy had crawled a couple of hours earlier. At first the soil was covered only in thin grass, with outcroppings of grey rock here and there, but presently ferns and low bushes appeared, and by the time they had joined a metaled road, a single carriageway with passing places, they were in wooded country. The greens of the foliage were very brilliant and the undergrowth dense for England. At one point a small stream ran down among rocks. Churchill looked out of the window at it and said,

"I knew this was going to happen."

"No you didn't, James. You thought it might happen and now it has. It's nothing to do with anything else that's happened. The fact that you know about some things can't cause other things to happen. Don't make patterns out of coincidences. All pattern-making is bad."

"The other night you said you agreed with me. About the node."

"I said I saw what you meant. I didn't want to argue with you then. I don't now, either. I just think that reading significances into things makes them worse, not better."

"I'd sooner do that than concentrate on… And I'm not creating a pattern, I'm recognizing the pattern that's been there all along. The over-all pattern. It's an evil one. It's got death in it, you see."

"You mustn't talk like that. The whole thing is totally random. All chance. Nothing and nobody behind it or in it or anywhere at all."

"I know there's nobody there. But there are such things as patterns, even when we know nobody willed them. Runs of bad luck, as I said. And a system that runs itself is still a system. You don't have to believe in a weather god to find a climate unbearable."

"Your job is to find a way of making this bearable. Never mind about whether it ought to be bearable."

"Yes, I'm going to try. I don't want to talk any more now."

When they arrived, Lucy came out of the drawing-room and kissed them both. She had been crying.

"How is she?" asked Churchill.

"She's taking it very well. At least I think she is. She hasn't said anything. She's lying down at the moment."

"Right. Thanks for the lift, Max."

When Churchill had gone, Lucy said, "Come and have a drink."

"Thank you, I do rather fancy one."

They sat down side by side on a couch in the drawing-room. Hunter had never seen the place before when it was not littered with bottles of gin, bottles of tonic, bowls of melting ice and overflowing ashtrays. With the sunlight slanting in and the furniture in slightly unfamiliar positions, the room looked as if it had turned over a new leaf. In view of what had happened, perhaps this might turn out to be so.

"How bad is the news? Are there any details?"

"It's cancer." Lucy spoke more hoarsely than usual. "That's as much as they say they know. She's to go in tomorrow to be operated on and to have treatment."

"Good. They're getting on with it, then."

"Max, what causes these things?"

"Nobody knows. There are plenty of theories."

"Can it be caused by what happens to you? You know, the kind of life you have?"

"That's probably one of the theories."

"She told me last night she thought it might be, if she turned out to have it, perhaps it was because of her life before she met James, and he came along just too late. Wouldn't that be awful?"

Her eyes filled with tears. Hunter put his arm round her.

"No more awful than what we know has happened," he said.

"Why did it have to happen to her?"

"It happens to bad people too. It's pure luck of the draw, love."

"What sort of chance do you think she's got?"

"Oh, pretty good, I should say, where she's got it. They can…"

"Yes. Can you stay to lunch?"

"I'd like to, but I'll have to go back to this absurd exercise they're having. It'll be finished by this evening. I'll come over then if I can."

"Do try. Nobody else is coming."

They had another drink, in almost total silence, and then Hunter said he must go. With Lucy's permission he refilled most of his water-container from a nearby bottle and topped it up with a little water. He was going to turn down her offer of an unopened half-bottle in addition when he found that jettisoning his luncheon rations-sandwiches of smoked salmon and of chicken liver pâté- made just the right-shaped space in his haversack. On his way out he stopped at the foot of the stairs and listened. He could hear nothing.

When he was still three or four miles short of the assembly point on his way back, a monstrous vibrating clamor filled his ears and seemed to make his jeep tremble in sympathy. He looked out and up and saw that one of the helicopters was matching his speed and course at treetop height. After half a minute or so, its crew presumably satisfied by a close inspection of the white cross painted on the hood-an emblem common to all vehicles on the exercise- the machine sheered off.

A little later, Hunter caught up with a file of men in battle order trudging ill-naturedly along the side of the road. He pulled up alongside the NCO at their head.

"What's going on, Sergeant?"

"Don't know, sir. Sergeant-major got a message over the walkie-talkie… Okay, lads, take it easy a minute."

Muttering, the men sat down on the verge or leaned against the grassy bank beyond it. It was clear that they had done a lot of swearing up until the moment of Hunter's arrival, and would do more as soon as he was gone, at the latest.

"But what's it all about?"

"Don't know, sir. We've got a rendezvous fixed somewhere in this wood along here. The sergeant-major said something about carrying out a sweep of the area. Looks like it'll take us all day, sir."

"Whose orders are these?"

"Captain Leonard's, sir."

The muttering swelled. Phrases became distinguishable.

"I see. Well, I'll make sure there's a hot meal laid on for everybody as soon as they get back to camp."

"Thanks very much, sir."

As Hunter drove on, his eyes, which had become rather glazed over in the preceding hour or two, brightened again. When he had put a few bends between himself and the party on foot, he stopped again and drank from his water-container. At the junction with the track that led up to the assembly point he was waved down by a corporal standing on the verge.

"You'd better not go all the way up, sir. They're shooting one of those things off in a minute. Everybody who's not officially allowed in the bunker has got to keep this side of the ridge."

"Thank you, I'll manage."

Hunter took the jeep another couple of hundred yards until he reached a point where, by engaging four-wheel drive, he was able to move it off the track. He got out and clambered up between bushes to the lip of the depression in which the bunker lay. It was in fact almost immediately below him and quite near enough for him to make out Venables and Isaacs standing together at one end. The tank Hunter had noticed earlier was to be seen at the far end of the valley, presumably unoccupied.

In the bunker, matters seemed to be coming to a head. An officer stood on the fire-step in the aiming position. O'Neill appeared and took up a position beside him. Everybody became quite still. After some consideration, Hunter dropped down behind a hummock and peered over the top of it. A moment later he heard O'Neill's voice, high-pitched and clear.

"Fire."

There was the sharp knocking bang of an ordinary rifle cartridge, and then what might almost have been a small piece of the sun came into being across the valley where the tank was. During the instant it was there, everything in that direction went vague and overcast. A bolster of warmish air struck Hunter quite hard in the face. Finally a very low-pitched tearing noise, like a short extract from a peal of thunder, pressed against his ears, and a balloon of dark grey smoke expanded rapidly outwards and upwards from the target area.

Voices could be heard from the bunker. The officer who had fired ejected the spent round from the breech of his rifle. O'Neill started lecturing again. Hunter watched the smoke for a minute or two, during which time it grew only slightly thinner. Nothing of any substance seemed about to happen next. After his years of training, Hunter was able to recognize without difficulty the opening moments of one of those long delays, rendered absolutely featureless by the impossibility of forecasting how as well as when they will end, which make up so much of Service life. He waited until the smoke had cleared enough to give him a view of the blackish and reddish patch of earth where the tank had been, folded and furrowed as if an oversized plow with a very blunt colter had been briefly at it. Then he went back down the ridge and got into his jeep and drove it to the assembly point.

Here there was a scene of some animation. One party of men under a sergeant was arriving, another leaving. The morale of both parties seemed closely similar to that of the one Hunter had met on the road. Two walkie-talkie sets were in simultaneous operation; a third was being dismembered by a couple of signalers. A motorcyclist was trying to start his machine. Somebody was backing his jeep out of the line of transport, hooting at a group who stood in his path. A helicopter rose from behind the ridge, where it had presumably been sheltering while the shot was taken, and began to approach. Another appeared farther off.

At the center of all this was Leonard, sweating a great deal, talking to two NCOs in alternation, walking jerkily from one of the functioning walkie-talkies to the other, finally running to his car and shouting into his microphone.

When the helicopters had landed and things were a little calmer, Hunter went up to Ross-Donaldson, who looked interested but not involved.

"Whence all the panic?"

"It's an obvious case of group emotion and the force of the example of authority working in push-pull. The Services afford an almost uniquely favorable environment for this effect. Evidently, it's by no means confined to our own era. There's been a series on historic paraneurotic débâcles in the Military Quarterly, beginning with the failure of that Athenian night-operation on the heights above Syracuse."

Hunter lit a cigarette. "What went wrong this time?"

"Leonard was expecting this Best person to arrive in the vicinity for purposes of espionage, supposedly. I expect you know about that."

"I did hear something, yes."

"Everybody seems to have done. Well, Best hasn't arrived. According to Leonard he should have been spotted something like two hours ago. So he's got to be found, it appears. For which purpose men are being taken out of the cordon and the defense detachment and grouped for a sweep. A simple enough concept, you'd have thought, but unexpectedly intractable in practice."

"I see he's getting the whirlybirds on to it," said Hunter, nodding in the direction of Leonard, who was talking and gesticulating to the helicopter pilots.

"Quite useless. Over most of the exercise area the cover's good enough for even an inexperienced solitary man to hide from the air. The only exception is this valley-which incidentally looks like an infilled glacial lake, wouldn't you agree?-and its immediate approaches, and if he'd got so far he'd have been picked up by ground observation. Would you care for a hand of piquet?"

"Very much."

They went over to Ross-Donaldson's jeep, which proved to be carrying a number of supernumerary stores. Within a short time two folding chairs in moss-colored canvas and unvarnished wood, a small card-table and a green and white golfing umbrella with an extending shaft had been unloaded and erected. They took their seats. Ross-Donaldson brought out two new packs of cards from his haversack and unsealed them.

"This is nice," said Hunter.

"I'm glad you like it. Champagne?"

"Thank you."

At a nod from his master, Ross-Donaldson's batman went and fetched from the jeep a metal cylinder about the size of an eight-inch naval shell, and two silver tankards. The cylinder turned out to be a thermos container and to have in it a very well-chilled magnum of Krug 1955. This was opened and poured.

"Mm," said Ross-Donaldson, sipping. "Perhaps a little too cold."

"It seems just right to me."

"Well, the situation will improve if we merely replace the lid lightly on it instead of clamping it down. Shall we just play a short game and then see how matters stand? I shouldn't like to predict how long it'll take Leonard and his comitadji to carry out their evolutions. Cut."

"They've only got a bit over a mile to walk once they start, haven't they? It shouldn't take them all night. What do you think, a florin a point?"

"Right. It's rather broken country, though, and he hasn't really got enough men for the job, so he'll have to zig-zag them. Leaving one."

"If you ask me," said Hunter abstractedly, "Best has slipped back through the cordon. Or if he hasn't already, he won't have much trouble doing it now, with the cordon thinned down to give Leonard his sweep party. Point of five."

"Not good. My feeling exactly. Do you think this Best really is a spy? You know him better than anybody, I suppose."

"Tierce to a knave. I simply couldn't say. Brian certainly seems to think so."

"Not good. How much is that worth, in your view?"

Hunter hesitated. "Oh, quite a lot. He strikes me as pretty competent."

"I've known you to treat him as if you thought he was a bit of a joke."

"Only as a man. I don't expect a Security officer to make much of a score as regards ordinary intelligence and so on."

"Don't you? I see. What else have you got?"

"Sorry. Three knaves. But I don't know much about Security."

"Do you think most people around the place look on Leonard as pretty competent?"

"As far as I know, yes. What do you feel about him in that way?"

Another rifle-shot and summarized thunderclap made Hunter start violently, though without causing him to spill his drink. Ross-Donaldson remained unmoved.

"Have some more champagne," he said when Hunter had recovered himself. "Now where were we? Not good."

"Oh dear. And now I suppose I've got to lead."

At the end of the short game Hunter was just over four hundred points down.

"I don't believe you know the odds properly," said Ross-Donaldson. "And your memory, if I may say so, is appalling."

"A great advantage in most of the dealings of life, though not, admittedly, at piquet. Shall we go on?"

Ross-Donaldson took a Service notebook from his top jacket pocket. That makes just… three hundred and forty-eight pounds eleven shillings you owe me so far this month. I think I'll stroll over and see if anything's happening. Help yourself while I'm gone."

The sun, the champagne, and the contents of his water-container had made Hunter agreeably muzzy. The game had bored him, though not actively. He wished he had made it a hundred pounds a point instead of a florin. Even that, however, might not have sharpened his interest by anything like one hundred thousand per cent. Pouring more champagne, he decided that life was divided into wishing something was at stake when nothing was and wishing nothing was when something was.

A quarter of an hour went by in this sort of way. Then Ross-Donaldson came back.

"No result as yet," he said. "They've finished one sweep and have started another at right angles to the first. Two more helicopters have arrived. There's an argument raging over the air because the pilots won't go as low as Leonard wants them to."

"Where is he?"

"Out in the field at the head of his troops."

"You know," said Hunter thoughtfully, "if Best is hiding there'd be one very effective way of bringing him into the open."

"Going round firing off those rifles, you mean. That might blow him up instead."

"Not firing them. Brandishing them. Shaping up to fire them."

"There's something about that idea that doesn't feel right."

"What's wrong with it?"

"I don't know. It just doesn't feel right."

"It would have the merit of putting those bloody guns to some use."

Ross-Donaldson looked severe. "They've been put to use already," he said.

"Have they? Two practice shots? It's a funny sort of exercise, this."

"They're studying effect. There's nothing special to learn about the actual firing. What matters is what happens at the far end."

"That's where Venables comes in, I suppose."

"Shall we have another game? I think we've got time."

"All right. I mean he didn't come in at all at the briefing. Venables didn't."

"That was mere technics. He's a technologies man."

"Cut."

"Have some more champagne."

In the second game Hunter did much better, being taken down for only a trifle over fifteen pounds. By the time Ross-Donaldson had finished writing in his notebook a runner had arrived with the message that the exercise had been completed. He had no information about the success or failure of Leonard's search.

"But we'd have heard soon enough if he'd caught him."

"Agreed. I must go and supervise the loading. And there are warning notices to be posted round the target area."

"What for? I thought the stuff was supposed to be more or less non-radioactive."

"Regulations, Hunter. Thank you very much for the game. You really should set about training that memory of yours. It can be done, you know."

"I dare say it can. I'll take you on at backgammon later."

While the stores were being loaded, Leonard's car came bumping up the track and stopped near Hunter. Its owner got out slowly. There was a tear in his trousers large enough to show a knee smeared with dirt and a little dried blood, and his shirt was stained with dried sweat. He looked silently at Hunter.

"Don't worry, Brian. You've got enough on him now, haven't you?"

"Not for an arrest. Only to make him a red suspect."

"Well, that sounds pretty good."

"Not good enough. You don't happen to know if there's any sherry anywhere, do you?"

"Not for certain, but I very much doubt if there's any within reach. Try some of this."

Hunter offered his water-container.

"What is it?"

"Never mind what it is. It's very good for you and that's all you need to know."

"Mm. Thanks." Leonard drank. "My God, I hope it is good for me."

"What's happened to Best, do you think?"

"Don't ask me. He must have gone to ground somewhere and then got out somehow."

"I see. But he can't have walked all the way here from the asylum, can he? He must have driven part of the way. Why don't you put a watch on his car?"

"I would if I knew where it was. I've left a section out looking for it. I had a man detailed to follow him on a scooter, but the scooter had a flat tire. I shall get a rocket from my master for that."

"Make sure you accelerate it when you pass it on. Well, well. You don't strike it very lucky, do you, Brian?"

"Things are bound to turn my way soon. I just know they will."

Eventually the convoy was ready. After an unaccountable delay of unexpectedly short duration it moved off. Hunter was driving behind the second of the two lorries full of infantrymen that enclosed the stores vehicle. At his side was the quartermaster-sergeant who worked under him. They had reached the point where the track joined the road and traveled a few hundred yards more when the lorry in front stopped suddenly. Hunter pulled up. After a few moments he heard shouting somewhere ahead.

"More fun and games," said the QMS.

"Let's see what's up. Come on, Q."

The deep ditch on one side of the road and the bank on the other made it difficult to get round the lorry. When they managed it, they saw the stores vehicle leaning slightly over to one side with one front wheel overhanging the ditch and considerable flames coming out of its engine, the cover of which was raised. Half a dozen men ran about in the roadway calling to one another.

"Shut the bloody lid."

"Bugger's stuck."

"Where's that bloody fire-extinguisher?"

"Bugger's stuck."

"Get the major out before she goes up."

"Bugger won't move."

The QMS turned and hurried towards the lorry behind. Hunter went to the cab of the burning vehicle, where Venables was sitting in the passenger's seat reading a sheaf of typescript.

"I think I must advise you to vacate your seat, Major. This truck is on fire."

"So I see. But there are present a more than adequate number of persons well qualified to deal with the matter. Let them extinguish the flames."

"The windshield may shatter at any moment. You'd do better out here in the road."

"I am unable to leave. The door on this side is jammed against the hedge."

"Come out this way. Get a move on, Major."

"My name is Venables. Oh, very well."

By the time Hunter had got Venables out of the cab Leonard had appeared. Making his way to the scene must have cost him some effort. A button had come off his jacket and there was a fresh scratch on his cheek. He too had begun shouting.

"Get the stores off quick. Everybody on it. Unload the stores."

The lane was now jammed with soldiery, but some response to Leonard's order was soon made. Two men let down the tailboard and began shifting the arms and ammunition, much less gently than at the original unloading that morning. The fire itself, though now firmly established in the fore part of the vehicle, attracted less interest. Two rifles and a box of ammunition were in the roadway before the QMS could push his way through with a fire-extinguisher and start playing it on the flames. They died down reluctantly at first, then, when a driver ran up and applied a second extinguisher, were rapidly quenched. A murmur of relief arose. At that moment Hunter, who had been gazing into the thick woods bordering the road, grabbed Leonard's arm.

"Brian-look. There. Did you see him?"

"Who? Where?"

"Best. By that tree with the ivy on it. He turned and ran when he saw me looking at him. I'm almost sure it was him."

Leonard did not hesitate. He pulled a whistle from his pocket at the end of its lanyard and blew a great blast. Silence fell at once.

"Optimus is in this wood," he yelled. "I want him caught. Everybody on it. Move. At the double. I want the wood swept from end to end. Get going, everybody. And I mean everybody. Drivers, batmen, the lot. I said move."

When the first group of men, swearing unfeignedly, had jumped the ditch and begun pushing through the undergrowth, Leonard turned to the QMS.

"Well done, Q. Now I want you to go and take my car and drive up to the rest of the convoy and say what's happened. They're probably only a few hundred yards ahead. Report to the Adjutant. Quick about it."

"Right, sir."

The QMS departed. Leonard leaped the ditch and crashed and shouted his way out of sight. Hunter looked round for Venables, who proved to be sitting in the remains of the cab of the vehicle reading his typescript. He looked up uninterestedly as Hunter crossed in front of him and entered the wood in his turn.

After half an hour or so Hunter decided he had had enough of dirtying his uniform and being bitten by insects. His head was aching. He had seen no sign of Best, nor even of Leonard. The only people he had found in the wood were two infantrymen having a quiet smoke in the middle of a particularly dense thicket. These he pretended not to have seen. He took his time about returning to the road.

Within another half-hour Leonard and his men had returned empty-handed, the stores had been reloaded and a tow fixed up for the stores vehicle, and the convoy was on the move again.

Dr. Best watched it go.

Part Three

Operation Apollo

ABOUT nine hours later Churchill was lying awake in bed with one arm round Catharine's waist and the other behind her shoulders. Every minute or so he listened carefully to her breathing. It remained deep and steady, and she had not moved for what he thought was a long time, but he had no idea whether she was asleep or not. She had said she had taken a sleeping-pill. The bedside alarm-clock was set for seven-thirty, when the two of them would get up and dress, doing so together for the first time, and drive over to the hospital in the town. Here, after Catharine had been admitted, Churchill was to have an interview with the doctor in charge of her case, an arrangement made without reference to her. Then he would return to camp, arriving there an hour or more after his pass was due to expire. He felt this would not matter.

He turned his thoughts back to the previous evening, not because he hoped to establish anything about it, but because the unmistakable fact of its having taken place reassured him. Every so often, perhaps when he momentarily came closest to falling asleep, he was visited by the illusion that he and Catharine had moved off the track of ordinary existence into an autonomous, self-sealing pocket of fear and helplessness. Among the advancing and retreating blankets of color which his eyes imposed on the darkness he had several times seen, or imagined he had seen, a geometrical replica of the lethal node he had described to Hunter. It was in the form of a broad horizontal disc, vague and granular at the periphery, thickening towards the middle. Through the exact center a taut vertical thread ran both ways to mathematical infinity. You entered the node, or it moved across you, until you arrived at the thread. Thereafter, instead of moving or seeming to move on towards the farther edge of the disc, you could only move up or down the thread. Presumably if your motion across the disc were along a chord instead of along the diameter you could continue to travel laterally until you reached the far side of the circumference and emerged. Hunter, Ayscue, Naidu, Pearce, Lucy were traveling along chords at varying distances from the center. But Catharine had been on the diameter and had reached the center and the thread. And so he too, Churchill, Lieutenant James Churchill of the Blue Howards, was on the thread.

Hunter had arrived at the house just as Churchill, Catharine and Lucy were finishing, or abandoning, the meal of cold roast beef, pickles and potato salad that Mrs. Stoker had prepared for them. There had been some talk of the later phases of Exercise Nabob and speculation about the role of Dr. Best. Only when an account of the events in the lane came round for the second time in a quarter of an hour had it occurred to Churchill how drunk Hunter was. He was paler than Churchill had ever seen him before and was evidently unable to sit still, leaning forward in his chair and continually stroking and kneading the outsides of his thighs, jumping up from time to time and going over to tap without result at the bars of Sadie's cage. Nobody had taken up his suggestion of a round of whist and eventually he had fallen silent, except for an occasional muttered remark in praise of the drink he was drinking or of drink in general. But his presence had made the circle less totally withdrawn and chilly, less committed to, as it seemed, smoothing over some unforgivable lapse or sitting out an episode of supreme boredom.

Catharine had sat in a corner of the couch with her feet tucked up under her and her arms clasped round her knees, as if avoiding unnecessary movement. Her hair looked darker than usual. Every time she caught Churchill's eye, or Lucy's, she smiled briefly and drew her chin inwards. When she smiled, a part of the inner surface of her lower lip became visible in a way he thought he had not seen before, although he was not certain. She had refused drinks and cigarettes, but had eaten a fair amount of the beef and pickles.

"How are you feeling?" he had asked her.

"Oh, not too bad. Except it's a shame I've got to be such a misery. You know, having to be sat with like somebody's mother-in-law. There doesn't seem to be any way of organizing this part. It'll be different tomorrow. Everything'll be done for me then. Not for you, though. I expect you'll find yourself doing a lot of drinking. But try not to do too much of it on your own. Try to stick to Max."

"Yes. Would you like to go for a drive?"

"No thank you, darling. I think I'll do better here, where I can see you and the others. You have another drink now and keep Max company."

"Are you sure you won't?"

"I seem to have lost the taste for it in a funny way. Just as well when you come to think of it. But then it never has done much for me, drink. It's a man's thing really, I expect."

"I wish there were something I could get you."

"I know you'd get it for me if there were. Darling, if you don't mind terribly I think I'll go to bed now. I'm a bit tired."

"I'll come with you."

"You're off, are you?" Hunter had risen to his feet with remarkable agility. "Look after yourself, darling."

He had kissed Catharine. Lucy had come forward.

"I'll see you off in the morning."

"You're not to bother, love."

"Cathy, it's no bother."

"I'd sooner, honestly."

"Well, if you're sure…"

The two women had embraced and clung together for some moments.

"I'll be in to see you as soon as they'll let me."

"Good night, my dear boy. You know where to find me when you get back to camp."

"Good night, Max. Thanks for coming along this evening."

Catharine and Churchill had gone up by the front stairs, past the tapestry and along the corridor to her bedroom. A half-filled suitcase had been standing open on the chest of drawers. Only a brush and comb had been lying on the dressing-table. When she left him to go to the bathroom, he had stood at the window. A sky haze saw to it that there was almost nothing to see, and there was nothing to hear, whereas usually, at this time, hardly five minutes would have gone by without lights advancing or retreating along the drive, car engines being started or switched off, voices, footsteps on the gravel. He had wondered how long it would be before Lucy's visitors resumed their calls, and reflected that Ross-Donaldson would have known the answer to that; at least, would have had a firm answer ready, with reasons. How was he spending his evenings nowadays? Churchill had grinned briefly.

Two minutes later, he and Catharine had started undressing as hastily as they had ever done when impatient to make love, but this time they had not faced each other. He had been about to get into bed when she said his name. He had turned to her.

"Look at me," she had said. "You know, just in case."

He had gone over to her and they had kissed. She had trembled for a moment, and when she stopped she had still been stiff in his arms.

"I love you," he had said.

"I know. And I love you."

They had stood together a little longer. Then she had said, "Let's go to sleep now. You set the alarm."

In bed she had turned away from him at once and he had been grateful, because he would not have been able to make love to her and had been dreading her expectation of it. About a quarter of an hour later they had heard Hunter drive away from the front of the house. Just after that she had asked for the light to be turned out, saying she thought she would sleep better in the dark.

Every time he reached this point in his thoughts, Churchill found it harder to begin again at Hunter's arrival. The body lying against his seemed to call more and more urgently for action on his part, but he could conceive of none that would be relevant. Love had turned out to be action in a way that had gone on surprising him: he had always assumed it to be a process followed by a state. But now, the very thing that made action so necessary made it impossible. On the thread in the center of the node, nothing mattered but being on the thread, nothing else could be thought about except by a tiny, remote, artificially maintained corner of the mind. As soon as he had put matters to himself like this, that corner was overrun. What was in store for Catharine-not the hospital bed and the anaesthetics, not the trolley and the table and the surgeons, but the ultimate-became all that there was and was going to be.

He felt the bodily mechanism that controls respiration switch itself off like an electric light. It soon proved to be useless, indeed misleading, to go on trying to breathe according to that dimly remembered earlier rhythm. He took in air and exhaled it and let his lungs stay idle until they should need more. But after a long time they still seemed not to need any, and he thought he had better breathe in again. When he did, he found he had no idea when to stop. There was a kind of corner ahead beyond which he would be able to breathe out as when yawning or sighing. He had still not reached it when his lungs turned out to have no room for more air. When he had stayed like that for a while without any discomfort or particular impulse to breathe out, he voluntarily breathed out. He failed to recognize the point at which he usually stopped doing this. It was a slightly less warm night than of late, but he felt sweat break out on his chest. He tried vainly to keep still.

"Are you all right?" asked Catharine, speaking with an immediate clarity that showed him she had not been asleep.

Panting a little, he reached out of bed and switched on the light.

"We've got to talk," he said.

"Good. I was afraid we were never going to. Can I have a cigarette?"

The act of producing and lighting one for each of them cheered him a little.

"I've been wanting to say things to you," he said, "but then I didn't want to, I didn't see how I could, apart from stuff that didn't count about how are you getting on and don't worry too much, because I didn't want to frighten you. But of course I suppose that was silly. But I couldn't think of a way of really saying anything at all that wouldn't be to do with frightening things."

"You couldn't have thought of anything that would have made me more frightened than I have been or frightened in an extra way. I must have thought of more ways of being it than you have, because it's me it's happening to. There are ways I wouldn't know how to describe, not even to you. And that's saying something, isn't it? Really, I'd hardly have believed this, but I haven't been able to remember what they were, some of them, for whole parts of today. I've been sort of separating things out."

"You mean you're not so frightened as you were?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. I can't tell, you see. I mean you can't tell. One can't. It's impossible to tell how the next thing that comes along is going to seem. There's much less to go on than you might think. Even about dying. I don't feel I know anything at all about that. I feel I used to know more and it's as if I've forgotten. About what you're going to feel when it's starting to happen, I mean. For most people there probably isn't a moment like that, when they know it's starting to happen. But that's a tremendous way off, anyway, as far as I'm concerned. Lots of things have got to happen first. They may be very unpleasant things but they aren't it, they won't be it. And I've got a very good chance of getting away with it. Don't let's forget that. We ought to try not to, anyway. And nothing terrible can happen for the moment, while we're here. There's a lot of time yet."

She had been speaking rather in the way Churchill remembered from the time in the White Hart when she had told him her history, quickly but calmly, with every now and then a sharp intake of breath. For the most part she kept her eyes on her cigarette or somewhere about the foot of the bed, only glancing intermittently at him and away. Once she smoothed her hair back at the side of her head, exposing most of an ear. The sight of it seemed to concentrate his feelings of outrage. For an unimportant moment he thought of the Anti-Death League. He would have had a good reason for joining it now, if it had existed and if, had it existed, joining it would have had any meaning.

"I wish I could be with you all the time," he said.

"But you can't be. There isn't any way that could happen. And you're only going to be away on this thing for ten days."

"I can't not go. At least I could, but it wouldn't help. They'd keep me under lock and key at least as long, probably much longer."

"I know, you told me. Don't worry about it, darling. You'll be about for the next six days, well, five days now, and nothing can really happen in the ten days after that. I shan't like it but I'll be able to stand it. I don't think I shall be too frightened. Not for a bit, anyway. You know, this morning, I mean yesterday morning, I thought completely about dying, sort of looked straight at it and tried to be logical. And just for a minute it didn't seem so frightening. When I was frightened of Casement it was because he was going to hurt me, perhaps in some way I hadn't thought of before. And when I went mad I was frightened of everything, because I thought everything might hurt me. That was sensible in a kind of way, being frightened of nasty things happening, nasty experiences, even when I wasn't a bit clear on what they might be. But dying isn't an experience at all. It's an event as far as other people are concerned, but not as far as you are, one is. Of course, one can't go on being frightfully detached and sensible for long. You soon slip back. But I've sort of lost interest in the frightening part of it for the time being, if that doesn't sound too silly. Hating it is what I'm on now more. Hating having the chance of having to go off and leave everything. Well, I don't really mean everything, I just mean you."

She put out her cigarette and turned and faced him for the first time since she had begun to talk.

"Another thing I was thinking this morning," she went on, speaking less quickly now, "was that I could leave everything else like a shot if I could just keep you. I saw a play once where you spent all your time in a room with three other people and that was meant to be hell-you know, real hell, instead of flames. Well, if it was just you and me there I wouldn't mind it at all. Even if they arranged it so we couldn't make love. I wouldn't mind never going out and seeing the sun and the flowers and things, or reading a book or anything. That was what I thought, anyway. It was ridiculous really, I suppose. In a hundred years we'd run out of things to say."

"We wouldn't."

"Anyway, what I hate is the idea of having to go off and leave you. After we've been together for such a short time."

"That's the really damnable thing," said Churchill with difficulty.

"Perhaps it is. I'm not so sure. I just said about the short time thing without thinking. I think I'd mind the idea just as much if we'd been married for fifty years. I'd never get sick of you, would I?"

"I know. It's just death that's wrong."

"It can't be put right. Don't get all angry about it, darling. You'll only end up upset. That's all."

"Do you believe in God?"

"I'll have to think about that. I've never been able to understand what it means, you see. It's the most difficult idea I've ever heard about. And yet people seem to be able to get results by it all the time."

Churchill said animatedly, "Only people with no sense of right and wrong. No real sense of it. What would you have to be like to worship something that invented every bad thing we know or can imagine?" He looked away. "Death in particular. If there were no such thing as death the whole human race could be happy."

"Most of the bad things that happen are done by people. All the cruelty there is."

"Human evil is just an instrument," he went on in the same tone. "It's not much more than incidental. I think Dr. Best is probably about as bad as a man can get, but he didn't create his own material, did he? The wherewithal for him to be bad. Pain and madness were there already. And even more so, the first men found out that if you picked up a big rock and dropped it on somebody's head, then something very peculiar happened to him. And people had been using that effect on one another ever since, but it was all there waiting for them, before they found out about it. They didn't invent it. And if it had never existed, there'd be no point in treating people badly in other ways. The point of sending a man to prison is to shorten the part of his life he can be free in, to bring his death nearer. If you couldn't do that, he wouldn't mind going to prison and you wouldn't bother to send him. So if there were no such thing as death we wouldn't all just be happy. We'd all be innocent too."

There was a long and total silence. Catharine lit another cigarette and looked at Churchill's averted face.

"But we're not happy and we're not innocent," she said. "We might as well agree to start from there."

"But that's just giving up. There must be something one can do."

"What do you suggest?"

"If people could see what their real enemy was," he said, frowning, "they might start behaving differently. They might be nicer to one another. A lot nicer. There wouldn't be any religion to give them excuses for oppression and intolerance and pride and not helping."

"Is that what you really want?" asked Catharine after another pause. "Sort of brotherly love all round? It doesn't sound your style."

He turned to her, saw her hazel eyes with the dark flecks in them gazing back at him, her mouth as straight as ever, and spoke with much hatred.

"No, it isn't. When I look at you and think of what may be going to happen to you, I want to do something that'll show-"

A diffused yellowish glare showed through the thin curtains like an instant of daylight. Almost immediately afterwards the windows rattled sharply and some object in another room fell to the floor. Then, several seconds later, they heard a thick, tearing, thundering noise, not long in itself but followed by dozens of echoes.

Catharine had her hand in Churchill's. ‘What was that?" she asked.

"I don't know. Yes I do. You've heard it before too. This afternoon when we were having a cup of tea in the kitchen. It was one of those weapons they were firing on the exercise."

"Has the war started?"

"No. Let's think. It can't be a night scheme or I'd have heard about it. And even if it'd been a snap do Max would have had time to let me know. I suppose the technical chaps might have fixed up a night firing test. I can't think what they'd hope to establish, though."

He got out of bed and went to the window.

"Nothing to see. But there are probably too many hills in the way. I didn't think it sounded the same as this afternoon. Nearer this time. But these things can be deceptive at night."

"Come back to bed, darling. You can find out about it tomorrow."

"It's very strange."

"If there's no danger or anything, can't we forget about it for now?"

"I'm sorry. Of course."

He got in beside her again. She put her arms round him and drew him down onto the pillows.

"I want to ask you something. This thing you're going off on next week. I still don't know what it is and I know you wouldn't tell me anyway and that's all all right. But how dangerous is it? You can tell me that without giving anything away."

"It isn't dangerous at all," he lied.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. It's just a trip. There and back. But it's one of those things that would be absolutely no good if the opposition got to hear about it."

He and the other S1 officers had been told that they had something like a seventy-five per cent chance of surviving Operation Apollo. A Pakistani colleague with whom he had been chatting recently had suggested that this was a deliberate deception, and that the planners of the Operation would not dare allow any of those who had taken part to survive it. Churchill was half convinced of this. It seemed appropriate to the nature of their task. He told himself now, as often before, that he must go through with the Operation, that he ought to want to unreservedly, because the people it was designed to stop just had to be stopped.

'You won't leave me, will you?" asked Catharine.

"How could I ever do that?"

"I don't know. It's just a nasty fancy I've just had. You sounded so much off on your own just now."

"About that explosion? I was only-"

"No, I meant before that, when you were talking about people being happy and innocent. It was like you talking to yourself. As if you might forget about me one of these days. You won't, though. Will you? If I've got to lose you I'd rather do it by dying than any other way."

Churchill held her very tight and pushed his face against hers.

"I won't do anything like that, honestly."

"Promise? Promise faithfully you won't leave me?"

"I promise."

Brian Leonard parked his car in its space below the Mess and sat for some moments accumulating the will to get out. It was just on eleven o'clock in the morning and he had spent the preceding six and a half hours either on his feet or behind the wheel. He had had no breakfast and was unshaven. As on the afternoon before, a bloody knee showed through a rent in his trousers, but this was the other knee and a fresh pair of trousers. Now that he was stationary the heat of the day began to close round him and so drive him into the open, much as he would have preferred to stay out of sight.

What roused him finally was the sound of a heavy lorry moving up in low gear from the main gate. In it were some of the soldiers who, after traversing nine or ten miles apiece during the closing stages and aftermath of Exercise Nabob, had been turned out of their beds two and a half hours before reveille and transported back to the hills for yet another sweep on foot. All this was on Leonard's order and they knew it. Their debussing point would be in sight of the car park and he had no desire to run the gauntlet of their swearing, with perhaps, given the speed at which their feelings had mounted the last time he was near them, a few bursts of machine-pistol fire thrown in. He got quickly out of his car and hurried up to the Mess building.

An armed sentry outside the ante-room door came to attention as he passed. He saluted with less than his usual punctilio and made his way to the door of the Command Post, which opened to him after a short interval.

"At ease, please," he said uneasily to the sergeant-major and corporal who had risen to mark his entry. "Anything new?"

"No, sir," said the sergeant-major, "not since the ten o'clock report, the one we passed-"

"Which you passed to me over the air, quite so."

"He's due to check in again any minute, sir."

"Oddly enough, that's why I'm here."

"Find anything up there, sir?" asked the corporal.

"No. Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Who do you reckon did it, sir?" persisted the corporal. "This bloke you're having watched? Is he the same one as you were all looking for on the Exercise?"

"Yes. I shall know more very soon."

"But how could he have got hold of one of those things?" The corporal did not notice a silencing glare from the sergeant-major. "And what did he think he was playing at? That place isn't a military objective, is it?"

Before Leonard could order the sergeant-major to have the corporal put under close arrest and on punishment diet, the civilian telephone rang.

"Mr. Lock's house," said Leonard into it.

"Public library here."

"Go ahead. Lock speaking."

"I'm afraid there's still no sign of that book you wanted, sir. We've looked in just about all the usual places."

"Start looking in the unusual places, then, and quick about it."

"Yes, sir. The trouble is, there are one or two, uh, bookcases that we can't get into without a key."

"Get into them just the same. Remember it's a very large book. It shouldn't be at all difficult to find. Now what about the chief librarian? What's he been up to?"

"Just going round the shelves as before in his usual routine, sir. But he certainly looks under the weather. One of us asked him what the bandage was in aid of and he said he had a fall. No details."

"Mm. Any unusual visitors to the library?"

"No, sir."

"Well, you go off and find that book or I'll report you to the Town Clerk."

"Right, sir."

Leonard rang off, then picked up the receiver again, dialed the exchange and asked to be connected to the special tests engineer. While he waited, he stared at the other two men in turn until they picked up the magazines they had been reading when he arrived. He had not minded the way they looked at him as much as the way they looked at each other. Eventually a voice spoke into his ear.

"Special tests here."

"Lock speaking. The frequency of the day is five kilocycles. How's the equipment?"

"No faults have developed. We've had four more transmissions since you spoke to me earlier, three outgoing and one incoming, all of good quality."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. The incoming was from a doctor in the town, the outgoing were to the local golf club, a drug company and a wine merchant. We tested as usual after each transmission, and the quality was undoubtedly good. It's all here on tape; you can check for yourself if you want."

"Never mind. The moment you get a transmission with the slightest hint of bad quality I want to know about it at once, you understand?"

"Of course I understand. Is there anything else?"

"No. All right. Good-bye."

Ringing off finally, Leonard frowned. The first man he had talked to had sounded satisfied, if not pleased, with having no information to impart; the second had sounded casual, towards the end almost impatient. The latter was the more annoying. This mere technician, this electrical eavesdropper, seemed to imagine he was on a level with a qualified phylactologist like himself. Leonard thought he understood how, thirty years ago, a master farrier of the Sailors would have felt on being hobnobbed with by an armored-car mechanic in oil-stained dungarees. The image of the Sailors swelled in his mind. Even more than a bath and a shave and a change and a meal, he needed something that would uplift his spirits as never before: taking the salute, perhaps, at a march-past of the whole strength of the Sailors in full ceremonials, preceded by their trumpet-and-drum band and regimental mascot-a bull seal on a trolley drawn by a color-sergeant.

"I'll be in the ante-room if anyone wants me," he said, and went there.

Colonel White sat at a card-table in the middle of the room with Major Venables at his side, a telephone at one elbow and a bottle of sherry and a glass at the other, having decided that the location and amenities of the Mess made it a more suitable temporary headquarters than his office. Leonard came to attention before him and, at his nod, lowered himself rather slowly into a chair at the table.

"You look as if you could do with a drink, Brian, among other things," said the Colonel kindly.

"I'd love some of that sherry, sir."

"Press the bell, then, will you?"

"And what have you discovered, Leonard?" asked Venables.

"Nothing. The area from which the rifle might have been fired is a comparatively small one and it isn't there. We've beaten a broad path from that area back to the road and it isn't there. The sides of the road are being swept up to a depth of a hundred yards-they should be completing that any moment. But I'm convinced it isn't there. It's somewhere in that mental hospital or its grounds. I just know it is. The place is being searched as we sit here, but I've only been able to infiltrate three men into it and they may take an hour or two yet."

Venables gave a groaning cough. "Why do you not simply move your soldiery into this establishment and have them rend brick from brick until they find the missing weapon?"

"There are several objections to that, the chief of which is that it would almost certainly serve Best's turn. Whatever the exact reasoning behind this performance of his, attracting publicity to this unit and its activities as a means of embarrassing Operation Apollo must be a main consideration. So we've got to move as surreptitiously as possible. When the time comes for us to make an arrest we must attract the minimum of attention, so that we can release our own story about what's happened to him. I've a plan for that. As soon as the rifle's found and I receive my authority from my master, I shall act."

By now a glass had arrived for Leonard and he had emptied it one and a half times. He already felt much better, very nearly certain that the missing NHW-17 would be found as he had predicted.

"It was by almost unbelievable good fortune," said Venables, lighting one of his square-section cigars, "that Dr. Best was near at hand during the only period, and that a short one, when the rifles were unguarded, by almost unbelievable skill in woodcraft that he was able to approach and depart unseen, and by almost unbelievable coolness of head that he managed to conceive and execute the stratagem of removing the weapon from its wooden container and placing a number of stones there in its stead, thus preventing immediate discovery of the theft. I would go further. I would say that what is almost unbelievable in three such radical aspects is quite unbelievable in aggregate."

"There may be alternative suggestions about what happened in the lane, although I must confess I find it difficult to imagine one." Leonard was rather tickled to find himself paying Venables back in his own coin. "But the finding of the rifle where I expect it to be found will put an end to all speculation of that sort."

Venables made a noise that seemed to have snarl as well as groan in it, but said no more for the moment.

The Colonel had entered the time of Leonard's return and as much as he had had to report in a large Service notebook with the words Incident Brickbat written on its covers in red ink. He now passed Leonard a sheaf of large photographs.

"These came through just after you'd gone out for the second time, Brian."

They were views from various distances of perhaps half an acre of torn-up ground, with a crater in the middle and large fragments of newly exposed rock flung here and there. The longer views showed the affected area to lie on an almost flat but slightly tilted plateau.

'They're very good," said Leonard. "Who took them?"

"O'Neill. I shouldn't have credited him with the imagination you need for a good photographer. Never can tell, though. Fantastic business up there. Did you take a close look?"

"No, sir. They were still checking for radioactivity when I had to organize my men for the sweeps program."

"Clean as a whistle, apparently, according to O'Neill's report." The Colonel tapped a typewritten sheet clipped to a page of his notebook. "Still, you did quite right to keep your distance without protective clothing. Well. That was St. Jerome's Priory, that was. It seems"-he tapped a gazetteer lying open on the table-"there's not been a lot left of the place for about three hundred years. Nothing whatever left of it now. Not so much as a flake of iron or a scrap of stone. Fellow Isaacs was highly delighted. Seems they haven't got as much detail as they'd like on what these atomic airgun slugs will do to buildings. Help him to fill in one or two gaps. Nice to think the business has been some practical use to somebody."

"Because it can have been of very little to Dr. Best, assuming momentarily that he is the author of this affair." Venables turned his great head towards Leonard. "The man supposedly wishes to publicize this unit's activities. He does so by bringing about an atomic explosion in a remote corner of the hills, far from any human habitation, indeed topographically isolated from all but its immediate environs. Would not a strike at the village, with its attendant loss of life, have been more to his purpose? Better still, a strike at this very camp? The building in which we sit is an excellent target from several surrounding points, even for a flat-trajectory projectile."

Leonard drained his glass and filled it again. Venables's objection had already occurred to him. It shook him not at all, reasoning as he did that Best's action had been improvised, not carried out to order, and feeling that it fitted perfectly into the picture he had already formed of the man's psychological patterning. But before he could do more than start trying to explain this the telephone rang.

"White here. Thank you. Why don't you come over and join us? Expect you could do with a little something after all that exertion, eh? Good… That was Max Hunter. The rifle isn't in the camp. Don't suppose anybody thought it was, but you can't afford not to confirm negatives, as they say these days. I asked him-"

The door opened and Leonard turned in his chair, half expecting to see Hunter already arrived, but even when invited to take a little something he could hardly have been expected to cover the couple of hundred yards from his office in something under a quarter of a minute. The new arrival was Ross-Donaldson, who disconcerted Leonard by staring grimly at him for a moment or two before facing the Colonel.

"Yes, Alastair."

"Nothing else is missing from the stores, sir. One NHW-17 rifle, one round P-6 are gone, the rest is as it should be down to the last cleaning-brush."

"Good. Another negative confirmed. What are you drinking, Ala-stair?"

"I think a quarter of that rather uncompromising Bellinger, sir, if I may."

"Press the bell, will you?"

Ross-Donaldson did as he was told, but drink was driven quite out of his head a few seconds later by the high continuous mooing of the alarm hooters situated at selected points round the camp.

"Is this a practice?" asked the Colonel as he got to his feet.

"No, sir," said Ross-Donaldson, just beating Leonard to the door.

They clattered down the cobbled passage and were soon in the Command Post.

"Unidentified aircraft overhead, sir," said the sergeant-major.

Pausing only to snatch a miniature transceiver radio from its shelf, Leonard ran back down the passage after Ross-Donaldson and out into the noonday sunshine. A group of swearing men, fumbling with machine-pistols and equipment, was forming up on the main track to their right. Ahead and to their left, they could see the machine-gun crews standing to their weapons. The camp patrol was concentrating near the far end of Hut D4.

"I can't see him," said Leonard.

"Perhaps he's up in the sun."

The Colonel came up with them. "There he is," he said, pointing.

"A helicopter," said Ross-Donaldson. He sounded incredulous.

With parts of it appearing liquid or even gaseous in the strong light, the machine was beginning or continuing an arc that would bring it directly above their heads. It seemed rather higher in the air than would be normal for such aircraft and to be descending only slowly, if at all.

Leonard turned the switch of his radio.

"What are you going to do?" asked Ross-Donaldson.

"Call out the RAF."

"Don't be a fool, Leonard. You've done enough harm as it is. Who do you think is up in that thing, Dr. Best? Or a Chinese? Surely you can't seriously expect hostile action from a couple of chaps in the slowest and most conspicuous type of air vehicle under maximum visibility. You've got the imagination of a schoolboy. This is a training flight off course, or whoever should have given or taken official notice of it forgot to, or the local Group Captain is paying us a visit."

As he said this, the helicopter began to lose height quickly and almost vertically. It appeared to have standard civilian markings.

"If they try landing they'll have to be arrested," said Leonard. "This is Ministry property."

"Give me that box, will you?" Ross-Donaldson took the transceiver from Leonard. "Which is the PA channel?"

"This one. What are you going to-?"

Eoss-Donaldson pressed the stud indicated and blew experimentally into the microphone. A sound like a brontosaurus clearing its nostrils came from loudspeakers mounted on poles here and there.

"This is the Adjutant speaking," he said, and his voice rattled and echoed between the buildings. "Do not fire at this helicopter. I say again, do not fire. Take no action, I say again, no action, except at my personal order."

By now the helicopter was only a couple of hundred feet up and still descending. Ross-Donaldson handed the transceiver back to Leonard.

"They're coming down in the meadow. We may as well go and meet them."

Leonard, falling into step beside Ross-Donaldson and the Colonel, said aggrievedly, "You ought to have let me handle that, Alastair."

"Yes, I'm sorry. I was just keen to hear the sound of my own voice on the speakers."

"You might have waited till a less crucial moment."

"Who the devil are these people, anyway?" said the Colonel. "I agree with Rrian, it's a bit casual of them. Treating us like a public park. Good mind to let them cool their heels in the guardroom for a bit."

He had to shout the last sentence over the noise of the rotor, and no more was said until the machine had touched down on the thick grass of the meadow. As its blades whirred to a standstill the man next to the pilot, a tall fat civilian with red hair and a hooked nose, pushed his door aside and clumsily got out. The pilot, also in civilian attire, stayed where he was. The red-haired man came up to the three officers.

"Jagger's the name," he said in a provincial accent, seeming to think this the utmost that could be required of him.

"Who are you?" asked Leonard.

"I told you. Jagger." The man looked puzzled.

"This is a military establishment. What are you doing here?"

"Are you Leonard?"

"Yes, but-"

"Dear old official channels. All clogged to buggery again. So either you've lost your mind or somebody took their time letting you know I was coming. With luck you'll get the signal about midnight. Here."

He had effortfully taken from an inside pocket, and now handed to Leonard, a battered card bearing his photograph and the Home Secretary's signature. Between these were a few printed lines saying that the bearer was to be afforded full co-operation by all civilian, military and legal authorities. They did not say who employed Jagger or what his status was, and indeed Leonard never found out.

While he examined the card, he saw that Jagger was taking in the machine-gun crews and the nearby groups of armed men. He grinned, to Leonard's mind offensively, showing a mouthful of strong yellowish teeth.

"Nice little reception committee you've got laid on. Did you think I was coming down to bomb you all? Still, with me not expected you had some call to get the wind up. I took the old chopper on account of the trains are so bloody awful. Now you'll be Colonel White. Pleased to meet you, Colonel. And this is…?"

"Captain Ross-Donaldson, my adjutant."

"How do you do, Captain. Flaming hot, isn't it? I don't know what we've done to deserve all this good weather. I'll just get my bag out of the chopper, and then perhaps one of you'll be kind enough to show me where I can get a drink. It's thirsty work, you know, flying."

He turned back to the helicopter. Meanwhile Leonard spoke into his microphone.

"This is Captain Leonard. Stand down, everybody. Stand down. Some of you could have been a little quicker, but not badly done on the whole. Thank you."

Jagger rejoined them carrying a bulky suitcase in tartan cloth with sheets of transparent plastic on the larger surfaces.

"Now what about that drink?" he said as they moved off. "And then you can fill me in on what's been happening. AH I know is that Leonard here talked to our mutual friends in high places on the scrambler early this morning and said some genius had been skylarking about with an atomic rifle and what about some assistance. So here I am with the assistance, such as it is."

"I didn't ask for any assistance," said Leonard.

"You didn't? I'm sorry. I was clearly given to understand you did. Another little bit of official channeling, no doubt. Anyway, as I see it, there's some sense in you being lent a hand. You've got your regular job to do and that must be pretty taxing on its own, without this atomic carry-on to see to. I'm not here to give anybody orders, by the way. Just assistance, any assistance in my power."

"Thank you," said Leonard distantly. "I'll rejoin you in just a moment."

The effect of the sherry had not taken long to wear off. Its departure had been assisted, he felt, by Ross-Donaldson's inexplicable rudeness and, far more, the arrival of this Jagger. It was typical of authority to leave one alone at difficult times and then, when one's luck changed at last, send in a total stranger, inadequately briefed, of undefined standing and probably likely to try to steal some of the credit. And without so much as prior notice…

He left the others at the ante-room door and went yet again to the Command Post, where, after replacing the transceiver on its shelf, he was handed the transcript of a wireless message announcing Jaggers' arrival by helicopter at the exact moment when the machine could be heard taking off from the meadow. No further information was given. Leonard wasted a couple of minutes drafting a sarcastic reply, then gave it up, told the corporal to send an acknowledgment and returned to the ante-room as the Colonel was saying,

"And that's all we've got."

Jagger, sitting in the largest armchair with the reports and photo-graphs on his lap, nodded and sniffed.

"What's known of the mental condition of this fellow Best?" he asked.

Leonard hesitated. "Nothing for certain," he said.

"Surmised, then."

"Well, I think he's unbalanced."

"In what way?"

"He seems to me to suffer from delusions."

"What sort of delusions?"

"Well… he thinks I'm mad."

At this, the Colonel frowned, Venables groaned, Ross-Donaldson started to speak and stopped. Only Jagger showed no reaction.

He said, "Are you sure?"

"Yes, pretty sure. One of his colleagues said he thought so. That he thought Best thought I was mad, I mean."

"And what is it about you that makes him think you're mad?"

"Because I think there are spies about."

"About where?"

"Just about. In general. He seemed to think that anybody who thinks that there really are such things as spies must be mad."

"Persecution fantasies. I see. Ah."

A silver tray bearing a pint glass nearly full of not very pellucid beer had been brought to Jagger by a Mess waiter.

"Sorry it's been so long, sir."

"Better late than never."

"We had to send up to the other-ranks' canteen for it, you see, sir. We don't get much call for draught beer in the Mess."

"Well, my lad, I'm probably not going to be here very long, but while I am you're going to get a rare lot of call for it, so you just get hold of the biggest jug you can lay hands on and get it filled and bring it back here and pour me another pint, because I'll be ready for one by the time you've done that, and then find a nice bit of tile or stone to stand the jug on. Okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right, hop it… Mm. Not as bad as it looks, thank Christ. Now, Leonard. Just another point or two, old lad, if I may. You let Best know you were after spies, eh?"

"Well, yes."

"Quite right, those were your instructions. Tell me, what did you make of it when this colleague fellow said he agreed with you in thinking Best thought you were mad?"

"It increased my suspicions."

"Your suspicions that he was an enemy agent. Yes. Why?"

"Because it's an obvious defensive technique. If Best could talk another psycho doctor into signing a paper the two of them could have me put away, couldn't they?"

"He'd have his work cut out doing that, I reckon."

"Not necessarily." Leonard poured himself another glass of sherry. "This fellow Dr. Minshull I met when I lunched there seemed at least as cracked as Best himself."

"And at the same time he tipped you off that Best thought you were cracked. This is getting-"

"No, that was another man. Name of Mann."

"All right, I've got it now. Best cracked, Minshull cracked, Mann possibly sane. Back to Best just for a moment. This business of him thinking you're cracked and what we make of it. It suggests he's cracked himself, because presumably he has no reason to believe you are cracked. But it also suggests he's an agent, in which case he's only pretending to think you're cracked as a means of getting you out of the way, in which case he's not cracked, he's no worse than cunning. You see the difficulty?"

"I think it's more apparent than real."

"You do," said Jagger flatly, and drained his glass. "I wonder if that lad's back from the canteen yet. Would you be kind enough to give that bell a press, Captain?"

Ross-Donaldson, who had been following the duologue with close attention, did as he was asked.

"Thank you… Now, where were we? Oh yes. Best cracked and Best just dead cunning. You were saying it didn't make much odds which way on it was."

"Not that exactly. I meant that both could be true. He could genuinely think I was mad and still be trying to protect himself by getting me certified."

"Mm. I'll have to let that one soak in for a while."

The door opened and Hunter came in.

"Ah, here's somebody who can tell you a good deal about Best, and from personal contact too," said Leonard urgently. He had been made more and more uncomfortable by the forensic manner of Jag-ger's questioning, and until this moment had seen no way of diversion.

Introductions were made and Jagger's role described.

"To save Brian embarrassment," said Hunter, "let me explain that I got to know Dr. Best during the ten days I spent as an inmate of the alcoholics' ward at his hospital. Which reminds me to get myself a drink without delay. Sergeants and people kept me in my office arguing, or I'd have been here much sooner."

"A good man, that," said Leonard. "I've found him very helpful."

"He looks in bloody awful shape."

"Most of us have been up since four-thirty or five. He's been on his feet for God knows how long supervising the search of the camp."

"No picnic, I agree. Look, Leonard, this place'll be filling up soon, I take it, when the fellows finish their lectures, and it's all a bit grand for me anyhow. Is there a quiet pub round here where we can have a pint and a sandwich and a real chat?"

"The White Hart in the village does quite decent snacks. Shall we ask Max Hunter along? He can tell you about Best, and I need him for my plan for pulling Best in. I still haven't had my authority for that, by the way, but as soon as-"

"Don't you worry, I've brought that with me." Jagger patted his breast pocket. "It's conditional on the rifle being found in his possession."

"Of course, I wouldn't move until that happens."

"That's the way to talk. Well yes, by all means get Hunter to come, then. We'll have to watch our tongues, though, won't we? Ah, you were right about him being a good lad. He's bringing my pint over."

Half an hour later the three were at the counter of the saloon bar in the White Hart. Anne, the round-faced barmaid, was on duty.

"Isn't it shocking about poor Mrs. Casement?" she asked Hunter.

"Yes, terrible. I'll have one of those ham sandwiches, please."

"They're tongue, sir. It seems only yesterday she was in here behind the bar."

"That'll do. Well, she's in good hands. Have you any mustard?"

"And three pints of keg," said Jagger. "That's if neither of you have got any other ideas."

"I've got lots of other ideas," said Hunter, "but it'll be better for everybody if I keep them to myself. Incidentally I can recommend the pickled onions."

"Good idea. I'll have six, please, miss."

They settled themselves at a small oval table by the window. The sun was streaming in and Leonard drew the heavy linen curtain before getting down to the first of two Scotch eggs. The room was not crowded and seemed pleasantly dark and cool. When he had disposed of a large pork pie and asked Leonard a few questions, Jagger said,

"So the way you look at it, it's all over bar the shouting. Once we've nabbed him, then it's money for jam picking up his contact inside the camp. I hope you're right."

Leonard nearly finished a mouthful of Scotch egg, making disagreeing noises the while, and said, "Not money for jam. No. Substantially easier, though. A man of Best's personality make-up might easily tell us everything we want to know with a little pressure, or even without any at all."

"Mm. It's possible. You know, the more I think about that personality make-up of Best's the more interested I get." Jagger sat in a hunched position on the padded window-seat, blinking his pale greenish eyes and licking fragments of pie off his teeth. He spoke slowly. "If he's all we take him for, he's been given a highly specialized espionage job concerned with finding out and transmitting secrets. Just secrets. Then, on the spur of the moment and at great risk of immediate discovery, he pinches a rifle and goes straight off and shoots it at something. Whatever else that does, it advertises the fact that someone's got that rifle who shouldn't have. You see? The rifle's a secret. If a fellow gets hold of a secret, he ought to try to stop it leaking out that anybody's got hold of the secret, or the secret instantly becomes less valuable."

"I told you he was unbalanced," said Leonard. "He could have suffered a sudden outburst of paranoia. We'll probably get the answer to that when we question him. Anyway, I was going to say that, failing any sort of complete confession from him, the spy in the camp will be cut off from his line of communication and so neutralized for the time being. Then we can set it up so that as soon as the opposition start trying to provide him with another outlet, or he starts looking for one, we'll have him. So far I've been working from hand to mouth on this job, but with Best captured I'll be able to get all the men and resources I care to ask for."

"It's a pity in a way you've got to pull Best in," said Hunter, stubbing out a cigarette on the considerable remains of his tongue sandwich. "If you left him at liberty with a close watch on him, he might lead you to other people."

Jagger sniffed. "Can't be done, my lad," he said. "He can do a lot more harm with that thing in his possession. And we can hardly take it back off him and let him go on as usual. Even a fellow with his personality make-up would think there was something a bit fishy about that."

"But what harm can he do? He's got no more ammunition."

"No no, I mean he's got to get bits of the thing away somehow to be gone over by experts, plus photographs and so forth."

"Can't you stop him?"

"We daren't risk it, bugger it," said Jagger, suddenly irritated. "There's a sight too much at stake, my lad. At the moment we don't know who his courier is or how he gets to him or anything. We're still very much in the dark about all that end of it."

"I see. But there is just one thing I don't see."

"Well?"

"This is where Max has been so useful," put in Leonard. "Constructive criticism."

"I'm sure. Well, Hunter?"

"Now Best's got the rifle, what more does he want? What can his contact in the camp have to tell him? After he'd tipped him off about the Exercise, I should have thought his job was done."

"No no no. There's lots of other stuff Best needs. Technical details, stuff about tactics, strategic plans, all that."

"Perhaps he's already got it."

"Impossible." Leonard was emphatic. "I'd have known."

"But look. Don't you think he's behaving like somebody who's got all he needs?"

Leonard merely shook his head, but Jagger stiffened in his chair. Hunter looked at him for a moment, then ht another cigarette.

"Well, either way well have him in the bag soon," said Jagger.

There was an uneasy silence. It was still unbroken when Eames, who had appeared behind the counter a moment earlier, caught sight of Hunter, lifted the flap and came over to the group.

"Everything all right, gentlemen?"

"Yes, thank you, landlord," said Jagger. "Very nice bit of pie indeed."

"Thank you, sir." Eames turned to Hunter. "I don't suppose there'll be any recent news of Mrs. Casement, will there, Captain?"

"Only that she went into hospital this morning."

"Yes, I heard she was going. It'll be early days yet, then, to expect to hear anything. But what a shocking business. Out of a dear sky. Act of God, as you might say."

"Yes," said Hunter, "you might well say that."

"Just as she and Mr. Churchill had become so attached. How is he, by the way?"

"I saw him for a moment this morning. He seems to be bearing up fairly well."

"A fine young gentleman, that. Would you give him my very best wishes, Captain?"

"Indeed I will, Mr. Eames, and thank you very much."

"Well…" Eames seemed to want to say more, but ducked his head, said quickly, "Good afternoon, gentlemen," and left them.

"It's the most awful thing," said Leonard to Jagger. "This Casement girl has just developed cancer, very young, not much more than thirty, and she's, uh, involved with young Churchill, one of the-"

"Of course, lieutenant, Blue Howards, that's right. The youngest on the team, as I remember. Friend of yours, is he, Hunter?"

"Yes."

"Very sad. Tragic, in fact."

"You know, Max," said Leonard thoughtfully, "it strikes me as rather the sort of thing our Anti-Death League friend might have included in that notice of his if it had come up by then and he'd known about it."

"Exactly the sort of thing."

Leonard turned to Jagger again. "Some harmless nut put up a lot of notices round the camp calling for a meeting of what he called the Anti-Death League. Nobody turned up; it was a complete washout. There was a poem too which got sent to the padre and might have been by the same chap. Nothing in it really, as it's turned out, but it got me quite worried at the time, I don't mind telling you."

"You must let me have a look," said Jagger. "Especially the poem. I rather care for a bit of poetry, though I know it's not to everybody's taste." He laughed.

The alarm buzzer on Leonard's wrist sounded. The three jumped up and ran out of the building into the yard, where Leonard's car was parked. He flung the door open, releasing a waft of heat, got behind the wheel, switched the radio on and spoke enthusiastically into the microphone.

"Hullo, Control. Padlock here. Over."

A voice on the loudspeaker said, "Hullo, Padlock. Message from public library. Book has been found. I say again, book has been found. Representative will meet you as arranged. Over."

"Roger," said Leonard in a trembling voice. "Out."

He sat still for a moment, then turned in his seat and looked at them.

"Well, gentlemen," he said finally, "shall we go and get him?"

The other two climbed in and Leonard drove off down the village street, narrowly missing a parked lorry full of some root crop. As they went he outlined his plan, which was simple but to all appearance workable. After that nobody spoke until they reached a point some two hundred yards from the main gate of the hospital. Here Leonard drew into the side and stopped.

"This is where I'm meeting my man," he said, got out and urinated into the hedge, or pretended to.

There was silence apart from the feeble chirrup of a bird and the ticking of the engine as it lost heat. After a moment Jagger spoke suddenly and angrily from over Hunter's shoulder,

"Rifle, rifle, rifle," he said. "Rifle this, rifle that, rifle the other thing. Buggering rifle."

"It has been a nuisance, certainly."

"Bloody sight worse than that, old lad."

Leonard got back in again and they moved away.

"It's in that big hallstand affair outside his room," he said. "Bold as brass."

"What took the blind bastards so long to find it, then?" asked Jagger.

"He keeps a bag of golf-clubs there most of the time. They thought the rifle in its covering was another one, I gathered."

Jagger gave a groan of Venables pitch. "There's some heads'll roll when this little lot's over," he said.

"All right, Jagger," said Leonard. "Out of sight now."

With more groans, Jagger laboriously lowered himself to the floor behind the front seats, Leonard turned into the hospital drive and stopped again. Hunter, very pale, got out and hurried into the lodge. The thickset blue-suited man confronted him.

"What can I do for you, sir? Oh, it's Captain Hunter, isn't it?"

"Yes. I want to see Dr. Best rather urgently. Is he free?"

"I don't know about that, sir."

"But he always keeps this time open for people who want to talk to him."

"Well, he may have someone with him already, you see."

"I don't mind waiting. Could you telephone him and find out?"

"I could. Who's that in the car with you?"

"Just a friend who drove me over."

"Mm. Wait a minute."

Keeping his eyes on Hunter, the man went to a wall telephone and cranked its handle. After a minute he spoke.

"Johnson here, doctor, speaking from the lodge. I've got that Captain Hunter here, with a friend of his, he says. Wants to have a word with you… All right, doctor."

He rang off and turned to Hunter.

"You can go up," he said grudgingly.

Hunter left without a word, grateful for not having had to use an alternative part of the plan whereby, should Best have refused to see him, he was to have seized the telephone off Johnson, done a bit of-almost certainly ineffective-pleading, and pretended to Johnson that he had been granted an interview after all.

"Okay?" Leonard asked him when he was back in the car.

"No trouble. He'll see us."

Leonard nodded sharply once and let in the clutch. Viewed sidelong, his face looked tense and determined enough, with tightened mouth and the familiar trickle of sweat from under the khaki cap, but about the eye visible to Hunter there was something exultant, ardent, even awe-struck, such as might be seen (it occurred to Hunter) in a devout youth off to his first communion, or an elderly sexual deviate approaching the arena where every detail of his hitherto impracticable perversion had finally been marshaled. Hunter hoped that nothing would happen to spoil Leonard's imminent triumph.

At the edge of the car-park a man was on one knee doing something very trifling to a rose-bush. His posture was stylized, as if conservatively adapted from an illustration in a military textbook. As prearranged, it was his part to fetch the rifle from outside Best's room and get it into the car.

"You've got two minutes," muttered Leonard as he and Hunter went by. Jagger was to stay in the car-though he had been given permission to resume his seat, provided he kept out of sight-and act as a mobile reserve.

Crossing the hall of the staff block, Leonard kept his eyes straight in front of him, but Hunter could not resist a glance over at the hallstand where, almost hidden by raincoats and the bulky golf-bag in rust-colored canvas, the NHW-17 stood on end in its webbing cover.

Leonard knocked at a door.

"Come in, come in, come in," called a loud and hearty voice.

They entered and Dr. Best rose to greet them.

Hunter thought he had never seen the doctor in such good spirits. His blue eyes were wider and brighter than ever before, and his smile showed an unprecedented number of black-edged teeth. The bandage round his bald head was neat enough, and set sufficiently askew to seem raffish or exotic rather than a sign of physical injury. He shook hands warmly with Hunter, at the same time holding out his left hand towards Leonard in the manner of some celebrated or ambitious actor. After a moment's hesitation Leonard reached awkwardly across his body and shook the hand.

What Leonard, perhaps typically, had not foreseen, or at any rate had not mentioned to Hunter as a possibility to be reckoned with, was the presence of Dr. Minshull, who had also risen to his feet, if he had not been on them all along, and who now stood gazing over the heads of the new arrivals. He and Best were at either side of the dining-table, which was bare apart from a half-full decanter, two glasses, a brass hand-bell, and a printed document with handwritten insertions.

"Sit down, my dear fellows, sit down, sit down," cried Dr. Best. "I hope you'll join us for coffee and brandy."

In the absence of any lead from Leonard, Hunter did as he was told. He found himself in a very low armchair padded in yellow satin. Before he had done more than begin looking round the room, which he had passed through several times before now on his way to the adjacent consulting-room, Dr. Best rang his hand-bell.

"Actually I can offer you a very nice Oporto-bottled Constantino 1935 which came my way recently," he said, "though do please take brandy if you prefer it."

"I'd like some brandy, please," said Hunter mechanically. He realized without much precision that, however free of Best he might have felt over the last weeks, returning to Best's home ground re-awoke in him certain feelings of being trapped. They seemed reinforced by his present nearness to the floor. The smell of lilies was almost overpowering.

"Hine, Martell or Courvoisier?"

"Hine, please."

"Three Star, VSOP or Antique?"

"Antique, please."

"A lot or a little?"

"A lot, please."

He was given a lot. Not having heard the door behind him open, he was surprised a moment later to find at his shoulder a dark-haired girl wearing a single garment of white leather that stopped only at neck and wrists. She was carrying a silver tray and, from where he was, looked very tall.

"Black, sir?" she asked.

"Oh. Yes. Thank you."

She poured and handed him a cup of coffee and moved over to Leonard. A blonde girl in black leather took her place.

"Just sugar for you, sir?"

Hunter tried to dispel the disagreeable sense of unreality that had been growing on him since entering the room. "No, I'll change my mind if I may," he said. "I think there's room there for just the tiniest spot of milk… And the merest suspicion of sugar… No no, that's splendid, that's quite perfect… Many many thanks."

He was still trying to think of something useful to think to himself about the girls when the door shut behind them and Dr. Best said,

"Can I offer you a Romeo y Julieta?"

"A what?" said Leonard, speaking for the first time.

"Perhaps a Half Corona?"

"Oh. No thank you. Dr. Best, I'd like to have a word with-"

"Well, this is a great day, a great day, my dear Captain Leonard. Here you are at last, eh?"

"At last?" Leonard seemed mystified.

"Oh yes, we've been expecting you. Haven't we, Minshull?"

The man addressed gave a long, ascending whinny of laughter.

"Well, I have been meaning for some time to return that very pleasant lunch you gave me here," said Leonard bravely, "by asking you over to our Mess. So when my colleague here mentioned to me that he-"

Here both doctors laughed.

"Oh, Captain Leonard," said Dr. Best, shaking his bandaged head, "what a wag you are. So very droll after your own fashion. But let's be serious if we can. What is the real purpose of your visit here?"

"I was just going to explain that it was Captain Hunter who mentioned to me that he wanted to come and see you, and I simply-"

"Ah yes, of course, the liquor-loving Captain Hunter. How are you, sir?-but I can see how you are. In need of a further course of treatment. Well, it'll be a pleasure to furnish that. Your probation isn't up for another ten days or so, but we can easily advance matters."

"Dr. Best," said Hunter, "what's the matter with your head?"

"It was rather annoying. I went on a little expedition into the country yesterday, a short drive followed by a ramble on foot. Much as one enjoys the society of one's fellow-creatures, there do come times when one prefers to be… unencumbered. I'd noticed that one of the new gardeners here was taking a great interest in my activities, following me to the golf club and back and so on on his scooter, so before setting off yesterday morning I took the liberty of letting the air out of one of his tires. What's that called in your parlance, Captain Leonard?-'shaking a tail' would it be, or is it ‘losing a tag'?"

Leonard said nothing. He was sitting quite still.

"Anyway, after this short drive of mine I parked my car in an inconspicuous place and set off across country. I must have gone about a mile and a half, I suppose, and was getting the full benefit of the sun and the fresh air, when I fell into a hole. It was so well camouflaged with ferns and other greenery as to be virtually undetectable. I hit my head on a stone and was rendered unconscious for what must have been several hours. When I came to myself the shadows were lengthening, and I was full of chagrin at the time to think that my expedition was wasted, that its purpose was unfulfilled. But it wasn't, was it, Captain Leonard? It very clearly was not."

"I don't follow you."

"Oh yes you do, my dear fellow. I succeeded in my aim, didn't I? Because here you are to arrest me for espionage. But I'm glad to say that there's some real hope for you. The rapidity and decisiveness with which you've made your psychic shift is prognostically highly favorable. Your illness now stands revealed, naked in all its… majesty."

Leonard rose shakily to his feet.

"I am a Security officer," he said, "with credentials from the Ministry of Defence, and with authority from the same body to compel you to accompany me before a tribunal, against the composition of which you will be at liberty to appeal in due time. I must ask you to accompany me now."

"What are the charges against me, Captain Leonard?" asked Dr. Best interestedly.

"Specifically, the theft of property lying under the Official Secrets Act and the unauthorized use of it in a manner calculated further to prejudice the safety of the realm. No doubt there'll also be a civil charge relating to conduct likely to lead to physical injury or loss of life."

"That's not so good, is it, Minshull?" said Dr. Best, grinning as broadly as when they had entered the room. "I don't like that at all."

With a despairing glance at Hunter, Leonard said, "What do you mean, not so good?"

"What is this property and how am I supposed to have used it?"

"You know very well, Best," shouted Leonard. "You stole an atomic rifle and fired it off in the middle of the night."

"Oh? And where is this rifle now?"

"Outside in your hallstand. At least it was. I've repossessed it."

Both doctors laughed again.

"So it isn't there any more," said Dr. Best in childish tones. "What a pity. If it was still there we could all have had a jolly game with it."

"You're raving mad." Leonard was shouting again. "And let's have no more of this nonsense. You're coming with me."

"Oh no, Captain Leonard," said Dr. Best cordially. "I'm not mad. It's you who are mad. And I have a piece of paper to prove it. It's much more powerful than any piece of paper you can produce against me."

He picked up the document from the table and flourished it.

"I have here an order committing you to an asylum under the Mental Health Act, 1959," he went on. "This asylum. It's signed by two doctors-I'm sure you can guess who they are-and it provides for a course of treatment lasting one year in the first instance. Which means that I shall not be coming with you. It's you who'll be coming with me. Not very far, of course, but far enough."

Hunter too got up.

"We've a car outside," he said. "Either you go there voluntarily, or Leonard and I will take you."

"You really shouldn't have had that brandy, Captain Hunter. I fear it's been too much for you. Neither of your alternatives is acceptable."

Hunter and Leonard each took a step forward.

"Stay where you are, you lunatics. Nurse!"

Hunter turned and saw someone he recognized come through the doorway from the consulting room, a man of about thirty-five with an unusually small nose. He had discarded the white coat he usually wore and had on a white T shirt, under which his muscles were noticeable, and white drill trousers. In each hand he carried a large hypodermic syringe.

"Hullo, Marie dear," said the man. "Long time no see, eh?"

"You'd better take them one at a time, nurse," said Dr. Best. He indicated Leonard. "This man first, I think."

The nurse placed one of the hypodermics carefully on the sideboard between two decanters and advanced on Leonard, who took a small automatic pistol from his pocket.

"Keep away," he said more steadily than earlier, pointing the pistol at the nurse.

The nurse came on. "Don't be silly, my old nut," he said.

As soon as Leonard had snicked off his safety-catch Dr. Best caught hold of his gun-arm. Hunter jumped forward and, though hampered by the intervening corner of the table, hit Dr. Best hard enough on the cheekbone to send his glasses flying and perhaps make him loosen his hold. Anyway, Leonard shook it off, but was unable to turn before the nurse was on him. The two spun away, the left hand of each grasping the other's right wrist. At once Hunter was on Dr. Best again and bent him backwards over the table. While they were struggling, Hunter heard Minshull's laughter and then a clattering sound which he interpreted correctly as that of Leonard's pistol falling to the floor. A moment later Dr. Best got a hand to the decanter on the table and hit Hunter twice on the side of the head with it. This was not very painful, and quite soon Hunter had that wrist, so that when the stopper came jumping out of the decanter he was able to direct a stream of brandy into Dr. Best's face. While he was doing this, he heard more noise behind him, this time a crashing and smashing which turned out later to have been caused by Leonard being hurled against the loaded sideboard. The brandy quietened Dr. Best down a certain amount, so then it was not hard for Hunter to pull him upright by his lapels and give him a punch on the jaw that caused him to fall over immediately and decisively. Hunter now went for the nurse, who had transferred his hypodermic to his left hand and was repeatedly hitting Leonard with his right. He stopped this just for the instant required to bring his right elbow round and down into Hunter's stomach. Hunter dropped to hands and knees, from which position he was able clearly to see Jagger burst into the room and run up to the nurse, but not what it was which flung the nurse so hard against the oak-paneled wall that he slid quickly down it and finished up motionless.

"Dear oh dear," said Jagger. "Got yourselves into a right mess, didn't you? Good job I got bored with huddling up in that car and started wandering round outside here. Why didn't you yell when this lot got going?"

"We didn't think of it," said Hunter. "At first there was no need to, and then there was too much going on."

"I gave you strict orders to stay in that car, Jagger. Where are my spectacles?"

Leonard spoke indistinctly. He was dabbing with a handkerchief at the blood trickling from his nose and from a cut at the comer of his mouth.

"Here," said Jagger. The glasses were undamaged.

"A good thing for you he did disobey orders, or they'd have had you in a strait-jacket by now. Where's Minshull?"

"Eh?"

"There was another doctor in here. He must have slipped out. Didn't you see him?"

"Bugger him for a start; there's plenty here to keep us busy. What was that about a strait-jacket, Hunter? Are you serious?"

Hunter had poured himself another large glass of Dr. Best's Hine Antique. He now retrieved the committal order and handed it over.

"They had something lined up for me as well. This chap was going to inject both of us. There's my dose on the sideboard."

"Now do you believe he's mad?" asked Leonard, who was carefully going through what bottles remained unbroken. "Ah." He picked out a bottle of brown sherry, uncorked it, and drank from its neck.

"Mm." Jagger nodded and sniffed. "A bit wild, certainly. But is he a spy?"

"I can answer that question," said Dr. Best from the floor behind the dining-table.

He got up without apparent difficulty and came over to them. His eyes looked a size larger without his glasses. When he spoke it was in a clipped, brisk tone that Hunter had never heard him use before.

"There must have been a leak," he said. "A big leak. Twelve of our key men had been pulled in. Nearly all the others blown. Throughout the country our spy network was in ruins. The chief was in despair. The biggest job of all time had come up and he had nobody to send. Nobody? There was Best. But would Best agree to go? Best's last exploit had saved the world from destruction by death-rays. Best had been decorated by fifty governments. Best had been given a hundred million in gold and everything he wanted and no questions asked. Best was dining in his villa. Best was being served incomparable food and wines by his staff of Greek boys. Best's eye ran lazily over their naked forms. Best was called to the telephone. Best was humbly begged to come to the chief's office. Best tried to refuse. ‘Best,' said the chief, ‘the world is in danger of destruction by death-rays.' Best said it was none of his affair. ‘Best, you're the only one who can save us.' Best let himself be talked into it. Best went to see the chief. ‘Best, meet your assistant.' Best was introduced to the most marvelous twenty-year-old. Best's eye ran lazily over his naked form. Best was called to the telephone. ‘Best,' said the chief, ‘the world is in danger of destruction by death-rays.' Best knew he was the only one who could save them. Best…"

By this time the nurse had joined Best's audience and Jagger had gone into the consulting-room next door, where he could be heard telephoning. When he came back, Best was still talking.

"They're all barmy here, you know," said the nurse.

"He's no danger to us any more," said Jagger. "No use either."

"That's the end of that," said Leonard. "Now we can go after the man in the camp."

"It hasn't been as much fun as I thought it would be," said Hunter.

Best went on talking while Mann arrived and, with the zealous assistance of the nurse, took him away.

"Very good," said Ayscue, dropping his violin and bow on to his bed. "Only a few minor points, Mr. Townsend. In bars 24 to 27…"

The curly-haired young man seated at the Bechstein flipped back to the place indicated. As the village church organist and choirmaster he had worked so hard preparing for the Roughead concert that Ayscue had not been able to avoid asking him to be the pianist in the trio-sonata. In this role he had proved musicianly enough, though inclined to overdo his interpretation of the figured bass.

"Yes, Major," he said in his country voice.

"Where Andy and I are swapping those little phrases. I think unless you stick to a rigid four-in-a-bar there you may be in danger of…"

"Swamping you. Right, Major. Duly noted."

"Fine." Ayscue ran a handkerchief round his neck. "Now, Andy. Just after that, in bar 28, that first note. It ought to have a good strong accent on it, I think, from both Mr. Townsend and you."

Pearce put his flute to his lips and produced a note with a good strong accent on it.

"Yes. Not sudden, of course, just the natural top of the crescendo. Oh, I wanted to ask you both… Going back to bars 17 and 18: would it be a good idea if I did a rather different sort of staccato bowing for the middle two quavers in each of those bars? The trouble is, if you're hopping downstairs like that, you've got the volume but it's difficult to get the tone. Anyway…"

When Ayscue had tried over the two bars in question, Pearce said tentatively,

"I don't know, sir, it sounds a bit fancy that way, somehow."

"Well, it's not right for the period, is it?" said Townsend.

Ayscue pretended to consider. He had merely wanted Townsend to feel paid back in kind for being criticized on the figured-bass detail.

"No, it isn't. I see that now you mention it. I'll leave it, then. Well. That's all I've got, I think. Is there anything else?"

"Just the ending, sir," said Pearce. "Those last few bars-are we still supposed to be staccato there?"

"No, very much not. Four long accents to the bar, and as tight together as you can get them without actually phrasing them over."

"Right, sir."

There was a pause. Pearce played a short run rapidly, then slowly. Townsend looked up from the piano.

"Shall we run through it again, Major? I've got plenty of time myself."

"No, I don't think so. Let's leave something in hand for the performance. Thank you both for coming. Now what time shall we say on Sunday? Two-thirty at the church? Can I give you a lift to the village, Mr. Townsend? Sure? See you both on Sunday, then."

Conscious of having bundled them out rather, Ayscue began wandering slowly round his hut, hands in pockets. A final play-over of the Roughead piece would not in fact have been wasted, but he had decided against it to make certain that his interest stayed alive, that the trio-sonata remained untouched by the mingled anxiety and boredom that had infiltrated other concerns of his. He had abandoned his scheme of a unit magazine. The only contribution of substance had been the anonymous poem. This, when asked for it by Leonard earlier that afternoon, he had handed over without question, without any of the personal concern he had felt on first reading it. Determining its authorship and that of the poster about the Anti-Death League had begun to suffer the process, odiously familiar over the past few years, of ceasing to involve him and becoming something that merely nagged at him for a time, until he woke up one morning and added it to the list of his evasions. And when had he last thought about Pearce's situation? And then there was Churchill's news, reported by Hunter the previous evening. Ayscue knew he must work out some means of helping, but felt he had become unable to solve such problems. He was afraid that quite soon he would no longer be capable of any action.

There was a knock at the door. When it opened, Nancy rushed in as if she had spent the previous hour in a cage instead of running about the camp. She was followed by one Tighe, who had replaced Evans as Ayscue's batman at the first opportunity after the League meeting.

"All right, sir?" asked Tighe. "Or do you want me to take her round again?"

"No, they've gone now, thank you. Here."

Ayscue handed over five shillings.

"Have a drink with me, Tighe."

"Thank you, sir."

Was he really very much surprised and slightly puzzled, or only pretending to be? Ayscue gave it up. When Tighe had gone, he stooped down and took Nancy's head onto his knees.

"Would you like another little run?" he asked. "Say if you're too tired."

The telephone rang.

"Ayscue here."

"Call for you, sir… You're through to Major Ayscue."

"This is the museum," said Lucy's faintly hoarse voice. "Could you come over, do you think?"

"I'm afraid this evening isn't very convenient. I have to take the chair at a lecture here."

"A lecture?" She sounded puzzled, no doubt wondering if this was a code phrase she was expected to interpret on the spot.

"Yes, a lecture. By somebody called Caton. On American and South American armed forces and their public image. What you might call a very real lecture. An actual lecture, so to speak."

"Oh. Oh, I see. But I wasn't thinking of this evening. I meant straight away."

"Is it urgent? Is anything wrong?"

"I think it is rather. Urgent, I mean. It's… Mr. James?"

"What's the trouble?" asked Ayscue, trying not to sound frightened.

"Well… he won't get up. He's gone to bed and he won't get up."

"Is he ill?"

"Not exactly. He just won't get up."

"You mean because of…"

"Yes."

Ayscue hesitated. "I don't think I'd be any good to him," he said. "Whenever we've talked about this sort of situation in the past, more or less in general, all I've done is make him angry."

"Well, that would be better than nothing, honestly. Better than him being as he is. You don't know what he's like."

"All right. Ill come over at once. Of course I will."

When he had rung off, Ayscue sat for a time staring at the front page of the Roughead sonata. Then he got up, put on his jacket and cap, told Nancy she must stay where she was, and hurried across a corner of the meadow to a hut of the same pattern as his own.

Naidu was sitting on his bed in his shirt sleeves reading a lavishly illustrated work on Georgian furniture he had borrowed from the town library. He put it aside and stood up when Ayscue came in.

"Good afternoon, my dear Willie."

"Hullo, Moti. Can I ask you a favor?"

"By all means, of course. Would you care for a glass of fresh lemonade?"

"No thanks. Look, Moti, it's about James Churchill. I've just had Lucy Hazell on the telephone and he's at her place now and as far as I can make out he seems to be suffering from… well, having some sort of breakdown. I'm going to drive over there and I wondered whether I could persuade you to come along too. He'll probably pay more attention to you than to me."

"Oh, do you think so?" Naidu stood considering for a moment. "I give a conversation class at five P.M."

"That won't leave you any time. Can't you postpone it or something?"

"Naturally I can. I take your word for it it's necessary. Excuse me for two seconds while I telephone."

They were soon on their way in Ayscue's pick-up truck. As they passed near the place where St. Jerome's Priory had been, Naidu said,

"That proceeding last night carries an air of fantasy. What could anybody hope to gain from such a thing?"

"I don't know, Moti. And I don't really expect to. There's a lot going on in this part of the world that you and I have no idea of. Anyway, the Colonel told me before lunch that Brian Leonard expects to arrest that psychiatrist chap any moment."

"I can shed no tears over that, can you? A man all of whose feelings are malevolent. From what Max and Brian have to say of him it's easy to form a picture of a man very hostile to his fellow-creatures. He wages war on them to the utmost of his ability."

"Like a sort of super-Venables."

"Oh, there I think, Willie, you're being rather unjust to the gallant major. He views human beings with nothing more than a weariness and contempt for not being the vessels of perfect reason he'd like them to be. This makes him an excellent choice to supervise the training for this highly destructive project, whatever it is, that the unit exists to further. A person of the type of Best would be excessively involved with the destruction. Whereas Venables is detached. As is our good friend Alastair Ross-Donaldson, who is, if you like, at a further stage. Mankind as such makes no appeal to him one way or the other. In his eyes we're all just a lot of little points on a graph."

"Now who's being unfair? I've always found Alastair perfectly pleasant. He's certainly got very nice manners."

"Oh, of course he has. I don't want to be harsh to him, Willie. He's a very nice chap indeed. But his manners, admirable as they are, are purely and simply the product of his training. The finest kind of English training."

"Scottish, actually, I imagine. But I take your point. But I still think there's more to Alastair than just shows on the surface."

"Which no doubt would only be revealed in certain situations. Until these things come along, I agree there's a lot we don't know about people, including ourselves."

They said nothing for a time, each thinking of Churchill. Then, when they were nearing their destination, Naidu said,

"I've heard a good deal about Lady Hazell in the Mess, but some of it sounds wildly exaggerated. Is she as promiscuous as Alastair, for instance, gives one to understand? Whatever you say will of course go no further."

"I don't really know the answer, Moti. I've just met her a couple of times over this piece of music I found in her library. She seems pretty decent to me. She's certainly been very kind to poor Catharine Casement."

"Yes, a warm heart is known to accompany, what shall we say?– the free granting of sexual favors. I hope I didn't sound puritanical about that just now, by the way. At the least, Lady Hazell has helped several of the young men in our midst to remove their frustrations. Or would you feel bound to take a harsher view?"

"Good God, no, I've seen too much of life. There's nothing blessed about frustration."

"I know that all too well."

"Forgive me, Moti, believe me I'm not prying, it's just that I come across this a lot in my work, but how do you cope with that problem?"

"I just cope. Sometimes it gets very difficult, and then I think hard to myself about a lovely girl in Ujjain and a couple of young bairns, and it becomes not quite so difficult for a while."

"It must be different when you've got someone."

"You've never had a wife, have you, Willie?"

"Oh yes. Indeed I still have. It wasn't a success, though."

"What went wrong?"

"Oh, it was all my fault."

"I doubt that, knowing you. Is this the place? It looks rather grand, I must say. In what period was it built?"

"What you see dates from the eighteen-sixties, I'm told, though there are supposed to be some bits left over from Queen Anne or so. That's Lucy coming out now."

"A striking-looking woman."

"I agree."

When they had got out, Naidu saluted Lucy, then swept off his hat and kissed her hand.

"This is Captain Naidu, Lucy. Moti, you've heard me speak of Lady Hazell. Moti's a friend of James's too."

"How do you do, Moti. Let me take you up to James straight away, both of you. He won't get up, you know, Willie. He just lies there."

"What does he say about it?"

"He just says he can't. Get up. When he says anything at all."

They went into the house, where it seemed very dark in contrast to the sunlight.

"How long has he been here?" asked Ayscue.

"Three hours? I don't know. I went in and found him there. It scared the life out of me, honestly."

"Has he had lunch?"

"He didn't say. You know he took Catharine to the hospital this morning and had a talk with the doctor in charge of her? Anyway, I don't think it's anything the doctor said to him. Nothing in particular, that is. They can't know anything yet. I think it's just the whole thing… you know…"

"Yes," said Ayscue. "In here?"

"Yes. Do your best for him, won't you? I know you will. I'll be downstairs."

The two men entered the room formerly occupied by Catharine. Churchill was lying on his back in bed with the covers drawn up to his chin. His uniform jacket and trousers were neatly hung on the back of a chair and his shoes symmetrically arranged underneath it. He made no movement when they went and stood at the foot of the bed.

"Hullo, James. Moti and I thought we'd drop in and see you. How are you?"

Churchill went on looking at the ceiling, or into space.

"Tell us how you feel," said Naidu. "Describe it as exactly as you can. Then Willie and I will be able to help you."

After a minute of silence, Ayscue started to speak again, but Naidu checked him with a hand on his arm. Perhaps another minute had gone by when Churchill spoke, in a faint and monotonous voice, as if very tired.

"I didn't want to stay in camp," he said, "and go to lectures. I came over here. It was so quiet. I thought it would be better if I got into her bed. I thought that was a good idea. There was nowhere else I wanted to be. I couldn't think of anywhere else I could be. But it's just as bad. There isn't anywhere to be."

About this time they noticed tears beginning to flow steadily from his eyes. He himself seemed unaware that this was happening. His face did not become distorted in any way.

"It's worse," he went on. "It just shows me how much she isn't here. It isn't like the same bed or the same room. You can't remember it well enough. It wipes it all out. It stops it ever having happened. You're falling off a cliff and yesterday you saw something beautiful. Now you're falling off a cliff and so yesterday you didn't see something beautiful. She wasn't really here. Because she's gone."

They waited, but there was evidently no more for the moment. Ayscue sat down on the bed, took out his handkerchief and wiped Churchill's eyes.

'There are things we've got to settle, James/' he said hesitantly. "You'll have to get back to camp pretty soon or you'll be marked absent. And in a case like this, top secret and the rest of it, that's serious, James. If you don't look out you're going to get yourself arrested, and then you won't be able to see Catharine at all."

"I don't mind what happens," said Churchill almost at once.

"That's what you say now. You'll mind all right when you find they won't let you see Catharine."

"That's already happened."

"I mean at all. You told me yourself they'll put you away for God knows how long if you desert. Your only chance of going on seeing Catharine is to go on this Operation thing and then come back."

"Oh, I'm not going on the Operation," said Churchill, his tone betraying for the first time some slight emotion: surprise that Ayscue should need to be told anything so self-evident.

Ayscue was not speaking at all hesitantly now. "You've got to," he said. "You can't just lie there. Get up and I'll drive you back to camp."

"I'm not coming."

"You must! James, don't be a fool. There's no sense in this kind of behavior. It just makes everything worse. Surely you can see that? Or are you trying not to? From every point of view it's your duty to get out of that bed and get your clothes on."

"Don't tell me my duty," said Churchill slowly.

"I'm not talking about your duty as a soldier. Not altogether, anyhow. Mostly not. You've got a duty as a man as well. That's much more important."

"I don't want to hear about it. Not from you. Padre."

"Forget the padre."

"I can't forget. Or forgive. Go away. You love everything I hate. Go away. Leave me alone."

"I won't." Ayscue leaned across and took Churchill by the shoulders. "I know what you think. You think God's arranged all this. That's absurd. You must stop yourself thinking it. It's dangerous."

"God doesn't exist."

"I know that as well as you do. Better than you do. You're afraid he might exist. You've got to convince yourself absolutely that there's no such thing, if you don't want to go mad."

"But you're a parson."

"What about it?"

Churchill tried feebly to disengage himself from Ayscue's grip.

"This is worse. Pretending to agree with me. It won't work."

"Now you listen to me," said Ayscue loudly. "You're not quite as original as you think you are. To believe at all deeply in the Christian God, in any sort of benevolent deity, is a disgrace to human decency and intelligence. Of course it is. We can take that as read. I was so convinced of it when I was about your age that I saw the Church as the embodiment of the most effectively vicious lie ever told. I declared a personal war on it. That was why I joined-so as to be able to work against it more destructively from within. I used to have a lot of fun in those days with things like devising an order of service that would please God much more than merely groveling and begging for mercy or praising him for his cruelty in the past and looking forward to seeing more of the same in the future. Selected members of the congregation getting their arms chopped off and/or their eyes put out as a warm-up. Then a canticle about his loving-kindness. Then some whips and scorpions treatment on children under sixteen, followed by a spot of disemboweling and perhaps a beheading or two at the discretion of the officiating priest, with the choir singing an anthem about the beauty of holiness. Then an address explaining about God's will and so on. Then a few crucifixions, bringing out the real meaning of the Christian symbol. Finally a blessing for the survivors, plus a friendly warning that itll probably be their turn next. I used to think it was the Aztecs who came nearest to establishing the kingdom of God on earth. What was it they were notching up, a thousand human sacrifices a week? But then the Christians arrived and soon put them down. He's a jealous God."

When he began this speech, the tone of emotion in Ayscue's voice had been partly synthetic. Now it was all genuine. He was conscious of this and of the silence when he paused. He let go of Churchill, who lay there as before. A glance showed that Naidu had turned his back and was looking out of the window.

Ayscue said, in a hurried, apologetic way, "But I got converted. That's to say I realized that not wanting to see these things as they are, which most people don't, doesn't necessarily make them completely stupid or insensitive or not frightened of life and death. Christianity's just the thing for people like that. A conspiracy to pretend that God moves in such a mysterious way that asking questions about it is a waste of time and everything's all right really. I joined that conspiracy. As you know. The only awkward part is covering up one's sex activities and so on. One can't bring the cloth into disrepute because that would weaken the conspiracy. And then there are times like this."

He felt he was on the threshold of an important point, of something that would resolve the current situation, but could not grasp what it was. Churchill had not moved. Ayscue got up from the bed.

"I'm afraid I haven't been any help at all," he said.

"No," said Naidu, turning. "I'm afraid you haven't."

"I didn't expect to be. Will you see what you can do?"

"Of course."

Naidu walked briskly forward and sat down on the bed at a conversable distance from Churchill.

"My dear friend James," he said. "Let's please agree to omit God from our considerations. Your God, or indeed your no-God, or anybody's God. If you bother about such ideas, you'll have no time or attention to spare for how you should be behaving. If you make God responsible for situations, you're not responsible for how you should behave in them. But if you love even one other person you must be responsible for this. In your present state you're no use to Catharine at all. You're trying to be in her state. You're making an effort to take her place. Yes you are indeed. Now. However these events came, they're here and you must deal with them. And you can do this, because they're not unchangeable. Oh, nobody can work miracle cures, I don't mean any such thing. But you can modify these events, you can make them less bad. But to do that you must accept them first. You must forget hatred and all feelings of blame. Unless you do that you can do nothing."

"Nobody can do anything," said Churchill quite suddenly.

"Oh yes, my dear James, somebody can. You can. But not unless you want to. Now consider-consider with me, James, what we have. We have a chain of bad events. They're made much worse by your being afraid. And what you're afraid of is in the first place your own death. Not Catharine's."

"No," said Churchill. "At least, I am afraid, I can be afraid. But not now."

"Yes, now. And this is not intelligent of you. Death is not your enemy. Death's nobody's enemy. Your enemy's the same as everybody else's. Your enemy is fear, plus ill feelings, bad feelings of all descriptions. Such as selfishness, and not wanting to be deprived of what comforts you, and greed, and arrogance, and above all belief in your own uniqueness and your own importance. All these bad feelings come from considering yourself first. It's hard to say and I don't want to be a preacher, but if you could simply begin to love Me in everything there is, then your bad feelings would start to diminish. You must make up your mind to love Catharine with all your heart, so that your heart has no room for the fear that you'll be deprived of her. You must cast out that fear, and then you'll have begun to cast out all fear. At the moment you're so afraid that you're pretending to be dead. Please stop, James, and begin to try. We must all try to become men."

Five minutes later, Churchill said, "There's nothing to say, except about this thing. And there's nothing to say about that."

"What about cover?" asked Jagger.

Leonard fastened the flies of his scarlet dress trousers and examined their hang in his triple mirror. The disposal of Best had bred in him an unaccustomed kind of buoyant off-handedness.

"Everybody's used to comings and goings in this camp," he said when he felt ready to. "A special technical section can easily be posted in. The more unrnilitary they are the better. I hope I get sent some good people, by the way. Those blokes they gave me to keep an eye on Best were very sub-standard. Perhaps you could have a word with our masters about that when you get back. Are you traveling by helicopter again?"

"No, I'll probably get the early train in the morning. I'll see what I can do for you about the extra lot of fellows."

'With a small group under my personal orders," said Leonard, with a judicial look at his reflection as he buttoned the ultramarine jacket, "I think I can promise to nail our man within the week. The moment he moves we'll have him… Ah, here you are at last. What's been keeping you?"

Deering had shuffled his way in and now shuffled his heels nearly together as he handed his master a pair of white gloves.

"Sorry, sir, had to wait for a turn with the iron."

Jagger glanced over from where he lay full length on Leonard's bed.

"What in hell's name are those things?"

"Ceremonial gloves."

"Gloves? I'd like to see anything bigger than a whippet get its hand in there, old lad. Gloves!"

"You're not supposed to be able to get your hand in," said Leonard in a cold tone. "You just carry them. It's a tradition."

"Lot of that around here, isn't there? And the bloody place has only been going a few weeks. Springs up like weeds after rain."

"Any news, Deering?" asked Leonard, not expecting any much, but not wanting to have to defend Mess tradition to Jagger.

"Well, the blokes are bitching and binding like buggery about the way you've been messing them around," said Deering contentedly. "Up in the middle of the night, off into the wilds before they could-"

This evening, Leonard could have faced a mutiny single-handed. "I'm not interested," he said. "Anything else?"

The telephone rang.

"Leonard here."

"Have you any idea where I can reach Mr. Jagger, sir? There's an outside call for him."

"He's with me now… For you."

At the second attempt Jagger heaved himself off the bed and took the receiver.

"Jagger."

"Then this ragtime search," went on Deering. "Three hours of it and they come up with a couple of rusty shells that must have been around since the Boer War, a typewriter in a sack and a set of filthy pictures stowed away under one of the sleeping-huts. The padre's, I bet you what you like. Apparently they were really something. You know, people on the job. Who's got them now, do you know?"

"I do not. Is there anything else?"

"Yes, I want to apply for a transfer. I'm brassed off with this joint."

"Talk to me about it in the morning."

"All right, sir. Good night."

Deering left. Leonard turned to Jagger, who had replaced the receiver after a bare couple of assenting words and whose face was now thoughtful.

"Big news?" asked Leonard.

Jagger gave an instant impression of falsity. "No," he said. "No, nothing in particular. Nothing to do with this job, anyway."

"Oh. Are you ready to go down?"

"Christ, I've been lying about waiting."

In front of the glass again, Leonard scrutinized the image of his face, which was looking a bit meaty after what Dr. Best's nurse had done to it, then turned his attention to Jagger's reflected form, now peering indecisively at its original.

"Aren't you going to comb your hair?"

"All right, if it'll make you feel better. Have you got a comb to lend?"

"Well…"

"Look, me combing my hair was your idea. I'm not going all the way up to that attic they've put me in to fetch a bloody comb. If you want me to be a credit to you and the Service you've got to provide the wherewithal, right?"

"Oh, very well. Here you are."

The comb slipped and tore jerkily through Jagger's fiery thatch in a way that suggested this was something he did eveiy couple of years. His body was canted over to one side and he kept the operative elbow unhandily close to his chest. In the end most of his hair was horizontal, including some portions that would have done better to follow the curve of his skull.

"They'll have to take me as they find me," he said, plucking the greater part of a ragged tuft of red hairs from the comb and handing it back. "Now if there's any buggering protocol like kissing the Adjutant's bum or cheering whenever the Queen's mentioned you'd better fill me in right away."

"Just do as I do and you'll be all right. Come on, we're late already."

In the ante-room they were hailed by the Colonel.

"Ah, here are our spy-catchers," he said. "Magnificent job of work this afternoon, both of you. Congratulations. Settled that crazy fellow's hash in fine style. Great relief. Now, what are you drinking, Mr. Jagger? Spot of pink gin?"

"I'd as soon just stick to my beer, thank you, Colonel. I took the liberty of laying on a supply with one of your waiters."

"First-class idea. And sherry for you, eh, Brian? Ah, and Willie. You're looking a bit harassed, Willie. A drop of whisky will put you right."

"Thank you, sir. Is there any sign of my guest, do you know?"

Ayscue, who had just hurried into the room, did look harassed, also more gaunt than usual. He was rubbing his eyes as if they itched intolerably.

"Oh, the fellow who's going to lecture us on our Patagonian opposite numbers. No, not a trace. Don't you worry, he'll be along soon."

"I'm sure he will, yes. Could I have a word with you about Churchill, sir?"

"Of course, of course. I take it you've been over to see him. Tell me…"

The Colonel and Ayscue moved away. Hunter moved in from the other side.

"I wonder what's going to become of poor Dr. Best," he said.

"Well, he's not our pigeon any more," said Jagger. "No point in interrogating a lunatic, let alone bringing him to trial. If he ever recovers I suppose we might take an interest again."

"Will he, do you think?"

"How would I know? You heard what Mann said. The quicker it comes on the less likely it is to go away. He's Secret Agent Best forevermore, I'd say. Good luck to him."

"I wonder if that bang on the head he got had anything to do with it."

"I'd say not, but Mann's sending me a complete report as soon as he can. I'll let you have a copy. Just out of interest."

"Thanks. Anyway, you're satisfied you got the right man."

"Oh, completely. Aren't you?"

"Of course, for what my views are worth."

"… some time tomorrow at the latest," said the Colonel, coming back into aural range. "Otherwise I shall be forced to take a serious view. No joke when a fellow's missing vital training."

"I'll do everything I can, sir," said Ayscue.

An expression of horror appeared on Leonard's face.

"For Christ's sake," said Jagger, "what's the matter now?"

"My gloves," muttered Leonard. "I've left them in my room. I'll just slip up and get them."

"Is everybody off their head around here? What good will they do you, old lad? You told me yourself all you do is carry the buggers. What's it all for?"

"You wouldn't understand. I'll be back in a minute."

Leonard went out thoughtfully and rather sadly. What was saddening him was the realization that, with the end of his job here in sight, his service as a Sailor must also be drawing to its close. His next assignment, requiring him to impersonate a lounger in a Whitehall pub, perhaps, or a checker at a naval dockyard, would hardly allow him to appear in his present guise. Perhaps he could acquire some sort of honorary post in the regiment's Old Comrades' Association, keep up the connection that way.

He opened the door of his room and had scarcely taken in the fact that Deering was already there before the man had sprung at him. For the second time in four hours, Leonard found himself involved in a severe and painful physical struggle. A fist caught him on the ear and sent him reeling against the bed, where, he noticed, the suitcase containing his secret files lay open and a copy of his preliminary report on the Best affair, completed that afternoon, had been unfolded. He threw himself forward and got in what he thought was going to be a punishing head-butt in Deering's stomach. That stomach proved to be a good deal harder than it had ever looked, and Leonard lost the initiative further when the edge of Deering's hand came down on the back of his neck, though without enough force to knock him over. The two closed and for a time grappled indecisively, banging into chairs, slamming into walls and then sliding along them, but the end of this phase came when Deering got a good grip on Leonard's throat and pushed him back against the rosewood dressing-table. Very soon it turned out to be impossible to loosen Deering's hands with his own, so Leonard started feeling about on the dressing-table top for possible weapons. He identified by touch an unopened carton of toothpaste, an empty sponge-bag, a plastic bottle of scalp tonic, finally, when his chances of ever drawing another breath seemed remote, a clothes-brush with a heavy wooden back. Hitting Deering on the head with this hard and repeatedly made him take one hand away and grab at it, upon which Leonard was able to gain some sort of footing and kick him on the shin. He released his hold and Leonard followed up, but too slowly or feebly, because Deering grabbed him by the arm and swung him forcefully into his triple mirror, which collapsed and shattered under him. He hit his head on something.

He rested on the floor for a few moments, wondering whether he had spent any time unconscious. There was some blood on the back of his hand, although the skin there seemed to be whole, and a lot of broken glass all about. He got carefully to his knees and looked down at himself in one of the larger fragments of mirror. The light was good enough to show that he was more or less undamaged apart from a long but evidently shallow cut on his forehead, the source of the blood on his hand. Up again at last, he lurched over to his painting of the five Sailors, knocked askew during the fight, and straightened it. Then, still panting pretty hard, but otherwise his own man once more, he hurried to the telephone.

"Command Post, quick… Leonard here. General Alarm. Seal the gate. Private Deering is at large somewhere in the camp. He is an enemy agent. Arrest him. Get cracking. I'm coming along to you straight away."

Before he had finished speaking the hooters had set up their steady high-pitched clamor, as at the sighting of Jagger's helicopter that morning. Acting on a strong but vague impulse, Leonard snatched his raincoat from its hook behind the door and flung it over the mess of exposed secrets on his bed. That done, he ran out of the room and down the stairs.

The hall was full of colorfully attired officers shouting questions and speculations at one another. Leonard shouldered his way through and gained the Command Post. Jagger, Hunter and Ross-Donaldson followed him in.

"What happened?" everybody seemed to be asking him.

"It's Deering, my batman. I found him going through my files in my room. I fought him but he escaped. He's our man all right. He can't get away."

"Any idea where he is, sir?" asked the duty sergeant-major.

The rapid battering of a heavy-caliber automatic weapon started up from somewhere above them. All present turned reflexively to the television screens on the walls. One of them showed considerable chips of concrete flying off part of the wall of Hut D4. On another, a sentry, half doubled up, was just running out of shot.

'Well, we know where he is now, don't we?" said Ross-Donaldson. "He must have gone straight up to the roof. A good position for maximally destructive self-terminating improvisation."

Another burst sounded overhead, though without effect visible to those in the Command Post. Hunter started for the door.

"Where are you off to, old lad?" asked Jagger.

"Take a look out front. Can't see anything from here."

With Ross-Donaldson close behind, Hunter ran down the hall to the front door. Here a group that included the Colonel and Ayscue was in rapid internal movement, some of those still inside the threshold pushing outwards, those beyond it halted or stepping back as the machine-gun started firing again. Hunter and Ross-Donaldson squeezed past and moved along the outside wall until they were almost directly beneath Deering's position. A familiar voice, the tension in it sounding through the amplification, bawled out over the public-address system.

"Leonard speaking. Keep down, everybody. Camp patrol to concentrate at northern gable end of farmhouse. Take your time. Don't expose yourselves unnecessarily."

"That's sound enough, anyway," said Ross-Donaldson. "From the northern end they'll be able to move round and take him in the rear."

"I liked the bit about exposure, too."

Figures were moving among the huts beside the main track. A civilian vehicle of some sort was halted there, its windshield reflecting the evening sun. The gun opened up, sounding shockingly loud and near to the two under the wall, and the reflection seemed to vanish. The figures went to ground.

"Somebody'll get killed if this goes on," whispered Hunter when the gun had stopped. "No doubt there's a silly little man down there thirsting for a decoration. Deering'll murder them if they get much nearer. Let's see… Ah yes. Would you give me a hand up here?"

He indicated a nearby drainpipe, from the top of which a short crawl across sloping tiles would bring him to the machine-gun post.

"You'll get your head blown off," said Ross-Donaldson.

"I think not. He won't be able to depress that thing far enough to bring it to bear, and it'll take him much too long to get it off its mounting, even if he knows how to. Come on, Alastair."

Ross-Donaldson offered his shoulders and Hunter soon had his head above the level of the gutter. Deering was about fifteen feet above and to the right, blinking along the gun-barrel. A pair of boot-soles and an outflung arm presumably belonged to the man who had been on duty at the post. Hunter spread his hands on the gutter and set about heaving himself up. A part of the gutter gave with a creaking sound. Deering heard, looked and saw him. Without touching the machine-gun, the man reached behind him and picked up a machine-pistol, no doubt the property of the unconscious guard. Before he could swing its muzzle round, Hunter was below the level of the gutter. He hung there, listening carefully. When he heard the scrape of metal or shoe-leather on the tiles above he dropped straight to the ground, shouting to Ross-Donaldson to run.

They both ran. There was no burst of machine-pistol fire from behind them. Instead they heard a machine-gun, though not from Deering's position. Without any clear idea of how they got there, they found themselves behind the lee of a corner of Hut D4, where a solitary corporal lay full length.

"That was kind of him," shouted Hunter, indicating the machine-gun post aloft in the meadow. "Saved our bacon."

"What?" yelled Ross-Donaldson as the gun continued to fire.

Hunter flapped his hand and started crawling to the corner of the hut. As he did so the clamor of heavy-caliber ammunition suddenly doubled. For a few intolerable seconds the two machine-guns continued to shoot it out, then the one in the meadow fell silent. Smoke and sparks and chips of flying stuff could be seen around it. After a moment, while Deering fired on, somebody started descending the steel ladder that led down to the meadow. Hunter turned quickly and snatched up the corporal's machine-pistol from where it lay beside him. The man's mouth started moving largely. Hunter moved round the hut into full view of Deering and fired a burst at him from the shoulder. He missed, but there was immediate silence as Deering shifted his sights to the new target. Hunter fired again and saw brick dust rising from the farmhouse roof. A moment later he was startled by the tremendous noise through the air about him made by what Deering was shooting. A moment later still a hand seized his arm and pulled him back into cover. The machine-gun stopped at once.

"No need to overdo it," said Ross-Donaldson. "That chap's down the ladder now and away. I must say he might have opened up in the first place a little sooner than he did. And why didn't he stick it out where he was?"

"We'll discuss it later," said Hunter. "I must say Deering's quite useful with that popper, isn't he? Perhaps they put him through a course in Moscow or Hanoi or one of those places."

"There isn't very much to it, actually, at close range anyway. The impact on material is so tremendous that you can correct your aim by it. It takes a few seconds each time, of course, or you wouldn't be here now."

"No, I don't suppose I would. What a blessing… Would you reload your very handy gun for me, corporal? We might need it again soon."

As he grudgingly obeyed, the corporal said, "This wouldn't be one of that Captain Leonard's ideas, would it, sir?"

"Oh, I doubt it. The Ministry are very sticky about living-target practice shoots. They're still living in the nineteenth century in many ways. Ah, thank you."

"What have you in mind now?" asked Ross-Donaldson.

"Just a little look. I won't go far."

Hunter lay down and moved his face slowly round the corner. He instantly caught sight of Jagger's red hair shining in the late sun as its owner began to emerge from a window some twenty feet from Deering and on a level with him.

"Oh, Christ," said Hunter.

"What's up?"

"Jagger's getting out onto the roof."

"Good idea."

"Not from his point of view. He probably doesn't know Deering's got that machine-pistol with him. He can knock Jagger off in a second."

When Jagger was fully out of his window, Hunter took up his previous position and fired a burst at a chimney-pot fifteen feet away from Deering on the other side. The machine-gun started up after a couple of seconds. Hunter ran twenty yards, fired again, this time more or less into the sky, and ran on. The air in his path seemed to fill with invisible rushing metal, any piece of which, it occurred to him, would be fatal if it struck almost anywhere. He tried to make himself run straight on, could not, turned at a right angle, ran a few more paces, tripped over a tussock and fell. For a single second the sound of flying metal grew louder, then it and the sound of the gun ceased abruptly. The silence made him put his hands to his ears. When he looked up at the roof he saw Jagger's hand raised in a wave and at his feet a shape that must have been Deering.

The whole action, from when Deering fired his first round to when he fired his last, had taken six minutes. After another seven or eight, Hunter was lying in the best armchair in the ante-room drinking champagne out of a silver tankard. Discussion raged round him.

"First-class show, Max," said the Colonel.

"Thank you, sir."

"I'll see you get a gong for this."

"That's frightfully kind of you, sir."

"And of course it'll make all the difference to your career."

"I'm glad you think so, sir."

"No doubt about it… Yes, Alastair, what's the score?"

"Casualty report, sir. Two men superficially cut by flying splinters, otherwise nil. As regards this unit, that is. One civilian casualty."

"How on earth did that come about?"

Ross-Donaldson accepted champagne from a proffered tray. "The man concerned was to have lectured here tonight," he said. "Name of Caton, Dr. L. S. Caton. It seems he arrived by taxi just before the alarm sounded. The gate guard admitted him according to arrangement, and presumably he'd just started being driven up to the Mess when the firing began. The driver pulled up, they hung on for a bit and a stray round came through the windshield."

"Mm. He's dead, I take it?"

"Oh yes, sir. Full in the face. I'm afraid he won't be easy to identify. Ayscue's down there now, taking care of things."

"What about the taxi-driver?"

"Not a scratch. But he's naturally rather upset. His taxi's in a bit of a state. I had him taken to the Sergeants' Mess. I'll go over there and sort him out when I've drunk this. Oh, as regards the damage report, sir, will the morning be soon enough for that? There won't be much on it, apart from the second machine-gun."

"Of course, Alastair, of course," said the Colonel. "Thank you. Spot more champagne all round, I think, before we go in to dinner."

Hunter had more champagne. It made him feel tired, or he began to feel tired while he was drinking it. When the time came to move to the dining-room he excused himself, saying he thought he would finish his drink and take a sandwich up to his room. Left alone, he shut his eyes.

"Passing over," he muttered. "Somebody we don't know. The farther edge."

He opened his eyes when the door opened and Jagger's gaudy head appeared round it.

"Hullo, Hunter. All on your tod, eh? Mind if I join you? I couldn't face it in there. Too much buggering protocol. I thought of slipping out to the pub and having another go at those pork pies of theirs. Perhaps you might feel like coming along too."

"If you don't mind awfully I don't think I will. The notion of going to bed reasonably soon has begun to exercise a hypnotic spell over me."

"Sure, you've had a long day. Well, in that case well just have a quiet noggin together and I'll toddle down there by myself. Can I get you something?"

"I don't think so," said Hunter, indecisively. Then he added decisively, "If there's a bottle of champagne already opened I don't mind helping to clear it up."

"Okay, understood. Be back in a minute."

Hunter shut his eyes again. When he opened them Jagger was settling himself at his side with a tankard of champagne, a pint glass and a large bedroom ewer that proved to be full of beer.

"Now we shan't be disturbed," said Jagger, filling his glass. "There are just one or two points you might fill in for me if you will."

"Points about what?"

Jagger looked at Hunter for a few seconds without saying anything.

"I see." Hunter lit a cigarette. "What do you want to know?"

"The mechanics, first of all. How you managed to move in and out of here without notice being taken and the rest of it. There's a pretty tight guard on that gate."

"Nothing to it. I drove out of camp after dinner in the ordinary way. I came back in after midnight on foot, having put my car in a field on the other side of the main road. The guard had changed by then and they don't keep a record of how you leave and return, only when and what for. Then I had a quiet lie-down for a couple of hours, after which I went out again by way of the fence. Easy enough for anyone who knows the ground and the habits of the patrol. Next, a pleasant drive to the target area via the place where I'd hidden the rifle, the destruction of St. Jerome's Priory, and a much quicker run to the neighborhood of the mental hospital, where, again, escaping notice was no problem if you knew the place. Dodging Leonard's men in the grounds and round the staff block was terrifyingly easy. Finally, a swift belt back in this direction and participation in the general chaotic comings and goings which, as I reasoned correctly, everybody would be far too busy and bothered to keep a detailed check on."

"That was a risk, that last part. Anybody might have started looking for you at any time, to give you a job to do or whatnot."

"In which case I was somewhere else. In the Army, people are never where they're wanted. It's a condition of life. And the whole thing was a risk. I didn't mind. In fact that was almost the best part. Anyway, I had to go through with it. Things are going wrong for people all the time in such devious and complicated and unlikely ways that as soon as that lorry caught fire and the whole scheme occurred to me I was completely committed. Not to bet on things going unbelievably right for once would have been letting down everything I stand for. I don't know whether that makes any sense."

"Oh yes. Quite a bit of sense. Well, that clears that up nicely. Mm. Another thing that bothered me was the typewriter. I can't figure out how you let it be found. You were in charge of the search of the camp, after all. It would have been dead easy for you to decide to be the one who searched C Company shit-house or wherever you'd hidden the bloody thing."

"What put you on to that?"

"Plain as a pikestaff, old lad. I hadn't been here five minutes before I was quite clear in my own mind that the point of the priory being blown up was that it was a priory. Belonging to God the Father Almighty. So I was looking for somebody who didn't like God the Father Almighty. Then as soon as Leonard shows me that poster about the Anti-Death League and gets the poem off the parson and gives it to me I know I'm looking at more work by the same fellow. And I've narrowed the search down a lot, too. Here."

Screwing up his face and making faint trumpeting noises, Jagger searched his pockets. Finally he produced the piece of paper in question and vainly tried to flatten it out on his thigh.

"Quite a nice piece," he said, "in a rather unshaped colloquial vein. But the unshaped part's deliberate, of course. How long did you spend on it?"

"About twenty minutes."

"I'd have said longer. There's been pains taken, I can tell that. Still, what I'm on about is that, whereas there are a number of illiteracies in spelling, the punctuation is correct all through. Now that's odd, you see. For every twenty people who can spell there's hardly one who can punctuate. Pretty well everyone who can punctuate can spell as a matter of course. So our man isn't really semi-illiterate, he's just pretending to be. Why should he do that? To give the impression that any old potato-peeler or boot-polisher might have written the thing. Right. Now Leonard says he's certain the writer's one of the inner ring, the S1 Group, who's got a fit of the horrors about what he's got to do in Operation Apollo. From some points of view that's a fair enough deduction. But it just struck me that it isn't a necessary one. If you base your reasoning on your subject-matter, your mode of approach and suchlike, you don't quite see what you'd expect to see. You'd expect a fellow who was against the Apollo caper to be going on about men. Generals. Politicians. Scientists. People, that's to say, not the Father Almighty. A bit subtle, that, perhaps, but after all we are dealing with poetry. So I'm looking for an educated man who quite likely isn't in the S1 Group. Then I hear friend Deering telling Leonard that the camp search party turned up a typewriter, and I recall you, as officer in charge, reporting that nothing significant was found, and the typewriter's obviously significant, whatever it was significant of, and I've got you. Mind you, there was plenty of other stuff-you were about when the rifle was pinched, you put Leonard on to Best, you don't like Best, et cetera. But the typewriter was what clinched it for me. Which reminds me. You still haven't said how you let the bloody thing get found."

Hunter laughed silently. "That's very straightforward," he said. "I was pissed when I hid it and I'd already forgotten where by the time I got into bed. Like wiping a slate."

"Mm." Jagger topped up his glass. "The only other thing I'd like you to tell me, that's if you feel like it, is your motive. No. Not your motive. Scrub that. I know your motive. Your occasion. What started you off on your poem and your notes?"

There was a long and virtually total silence. Eventually Hunter said,

"I've never been particularly keen on having to think about things. And on things that make you think about things. You know, like music and all that. Love's another one. I joined the Army specially to get away from them. I will say it worked jolly well for a time. But then quite recently I suddenly found I'd fallen in love with somebody in a more completely disastrous fashion than ever before. At first sight, too. I got as drunk as I could to try to put it behind me. No good. Then the somebody's best friend went and died, and I decided I'd better cry out before I was hurt, when somebody else was hurt, in fact. Hence the poem. Then the iove thing nearly turned out my way, but it didn't at all when it came to it, because the somebody was thinking of the dead friend. That really got me down. Hence the Anti-Death League. Then a friend of mine fell in love and his girl got cancer, as you heard. That more or less finished me off. Hence the rifle and the priory. As a way of voicing some sort of objection. Plus a bit of revenge thrown in."

"It wasn't very practical," said Jagger. "Any of it."

"No, it wasn't. But sometimes you've got to be impractical and illogical and a bit useless, because the only alternative is to do nothing at all, and that would be simply offensive. You just can't let things like this go sliding past without any kind of remark, as if nobody noticed or cared. It won't do."

After another silence, Jagger said,

"How do you feel about it now?"

"A good question. It embarrasses me slightly, I think. It didn't altogether work the way I'd expected it to. On me, that is. I keep feeling I've gone too far in some way."

"Then you don't really see yourself rushing off some fine morning and dynamiting Westminster Abbey?"

"No, not really. Far too repetitive, for one thing."

"See you stick to that. If you get up to any more of your tricks you might land me in some bad trouble."

"Any…"

"Yes," said Jagger, nodding vigorously. "That's right. You've got it. I'm not going to do anything about it. On account of several considerations. Consideration one. You saved my life just now. I take very kindly to that type of thing. Consideration two. It just so happens I've got it in for God the Father Almighty a bit on my own account. He took my daughter off me the year before last. Thing called disseminated L.E. A disease of the connective tissue. There's not a lot to see, except a red rash on the face that gets worse in the light, so she couldn't go out in the sun. Twenty, she was. Engaged. All that. You know, Hunter, if you ever get round to properly setting up your League you could do worse than rope me in. You can always find me via the Ministry."

"Are you serious?"

"As serious as you."

"Yes. Are there any other considerations?"

"Yes, there's consideration three, which is much more important than the other two. The case is closed. It's better all round that it stays closed. Even if Best recovers we wouldn't bring any charge against him. He was mad at the time of what he's supposed to have done. The real thing, though, is that to have the whole business stirred up all over again might just conceivably interfere with the tremendous success we've had with Operation Apollo."

"Had?" said Hunter. "Aren't you being a bit previous?"

"Oh no. It's succeeded already, old lad. I got the news about an hour ago, just before old Deering started cutting up. I'm afraid I can't say any more. You may find out what I'm talking about in due course. Anyway, we're all highly delighted at the way things have gone. Well. What are you going to do with yourself when this place packs up? I'll tell you what I think you ought to do. Do you mind? I think you ought to get out of the buggering Army and find yourself a nice, decent, steady young somebody and settle down with the somebody. It's been done before now."

Hunter picked up the ewer and filled Jagger's glass.

"You know about style," he said. "But settle down? And throw away the marvelous career I've just opened up for myself? No. I'm going to decide on somewhere nasty, somewhere really very nasty indeed, and get myself sent there. It was being shot at like that that put the idea into my head. I didn't know what it was like before. I found it most interesting in some way I can't quite put my finger on for the moment."

"Sooner you than me. I didn't enjoy myself on that roof one bit, I don't mind telling you. Well…"

After a couple of abortive tries and a bit of shrieking Jagger heaved a loudly ticking watch out of his top pocket and looked at it, then glared at it. He urged himself to his feet.

"Christ," he muttered, "I'll have to run if I'm going to get fed."

"Off tonight, are you?"

"No, I've got a date up at that loony place. It's quite a way, isn't it?"

"Forgive my curiosity, but who's your date with?"

"If anyone wants to know, that fellow Mann, to ask after Best, but really those two pieces in leather who served you your coffee. I ran into them on their way out. I'm afraid I must have spent a bit of time chatting them up when I should have been finding out if you and Leonard needed a hand inside there. Sorry."

"That's all right. You should have an entertaining evening."

"You never know. I suppose you wouldn't fancy changing your mind and coming along to make up the number?"

"No thanks. The setting would be wrong, somehow."

"I see what you mean." Jagger's face became animated. "Here," he said, tapping Hunter on the shoulder, "imagine Leonard not telling us about those two when we were all discussing whether Best was mad or not. Any fellow who dresses women up in that rig-out must be off his trolley. Anyway, you'd think it worth a mention. But Leonard didn't, even though he told me later he had noticed them when he went up to the place for lunch the other day. I pressed him and got him to admit it did strike him at the time as a bit unusual."

"I'm afraid he's rather uninstructed in some ways."

"Now then, you let him be. He's one of the best, is Brian Leonard. He's got first-class stuff in him. The only trouble is, he doesn't seem to get much luck. And that reminds me, my old Max. In the next couple of days you've got the chance of being a real good pal to our Brian. He's going to need one."

"How much do you know about the psychology of the Chinese?" asked Ross-Donaldson.

Leonard hesitated. He was still in a state of unrelieved gloom and foreboding at the ever-present thought of the way he had allowed Deering to steal secrets from under his nose. Bewilderment had been added when he arrived in response to Ross-Donaldson's unexpected summons to find that the latter had had his outer office cleared and an armed guard placed on its door. Leonard's breakfast of eggs bonne femme felt as if it had not quite completed its journey to his stomach.

"Only what I learned in the basic training they give us," he said finally. "I've never done a course on it or anything."

"No. Well, at the risk of covering familiar ground, let me just place the relevant point, which is that they suffer from an unusually wide schemata-data divergence. In practical terms, and as regards their attitudes to the West, this means that their ideology teaches them to despise us and think us stupid, while empirically they're forced into continual ad hoc respect for our efficiency and cunning. Consequently, any project aimed at deceiving them must contain elements of apparent stupidity and elements of apparent cunning in highly critical proportions delicately balanced. Let's just examine those sets of elements in turn as they appear in the project you and I have been concerned with over the past weeks.

"First, the elements of apparent stupidity. At the outset, ostensibly in sole charge of Security arrangements for a uniquely secret Operation, we find you, an inexperienced officer working without assistants. When, later, assistants must obviously be furnished to watch Dr. Best, they're men of tested and proven incompetence. The Chinese agent, Deering, finds no difficulty whatever in becoming your servant, in which position he has at least putative access to your secret files. Your training for this project, by stressing the importance of supposed subtlety and encouraging you to keep those files in the most exposed place possible, ensured that that putative access had the best chance of becoming actual. To a Chinese mind, of course, and to lots of others as well, that supposed subtlety would appear as real stupidity. It was hardly expected that you yourself would train Deering in a highly unsophisticated method of getting at your files, but after some discussion it was agreed that this worked out substantially on the credit side. Finally, there was the almost unbelievable stroke of good fortune whereby you began to concentrate your efforts on Dr. Best, a dangerous man, certainly, but one totally unconnected with the business in hand.

"So far, so incorrigibly, predictably, imperialistically stupid. Now as to… You look tired, Leonard. Would you care for a cup of tea?"

Leonard thought of asking for sherry instead, then just nodded.

"Milk and sugar?"

"Milk. No sugar."

Left alone, Leonard sat there without moving, hardly thinking. Until Ross-Donaldson came back, he spent his time wanting to be with Lucy.

"What department do you belong to?" he asked without much curiosity.

"Its name would mean nothing to you. It was set in being for this project alone and will shortly be disbanded. I'd like to fill in the other side of the picture now if I may. I hope I'm not boring you."

"No."

"Right. We've covered satisfactorily the elements of apparent stupidity. Now as to the elements of apparent cunning. The prime concern here was lavishness, the unstinting expenditure of time, energy and money on the pretense that this unit was created as a training establishment and briefing center for the use in war of tactical atomic weapons of a reasonably mature sort in unprece-dentedly far-forward areas. Here, incidentally, we achieved a rather elegant bonus. It'll do the Chinese High Command quite a durable bit of good to believe, or at the lowest to wonder whether, the British Army can dispose of nuclear hand-guns at infantry-section level. In fact, of course, the so-called NHW-17, or rather its ammunition, is far too expensive and troublesome to produce for its warlike employment to be practicable.

"I was referring to lavishness in the expenditure of time, energy and money. Of these, money was probably the most important as, in the Eastern mind, a guarantee of genuineness. You perhaps recall from your training a famous World War I case in which Turkish Intelligence, having had certain fake Allied battle plans put in their way, became convinced of their authenticity largely on the grounds that a considerable sum in current notes had fallen into their hands under the same cover. The cost of the physical Security arrangements here was immense by Chinese standards, from the building of Hut D4 to the installing of closed-circuit television. So much outlay on a cover, on a deception, plus our apparent willingness to sacrifice, if need be, the secrecy of the NHW-17, must convince them that what lay behind the cover was genuine. The depth of our cunning was underwritten by the costliness of our deception."

Here the tea arrived, brought in by a corporal whom Leonard remembered as having done far more than his fair share of swearing on the day of Exercise Nabob. The man glanced at him several times with an incipient grin that told of vicarious triumph. Nobody outside could have known just what Leonard was going through, but anybody with more than a week's service would have known that he was going through something.

"Right," said Ross-Donaldson when the door of the outer office had shut. "All this means, in the simplest terms, that when the Chinese get the word from Deering that they stand to lose a million men in the third week of their invasion of the Indian sub-continent, and two and a half million in the fourth week, they're going to take him seriously. The peculiar horror of the weapon behind the cover, the weapon we were supposedly going to use on them as soon as they were over the Himalayas in substantial numbers, was an additional guarantee of authenticity: Western inhumanity, imperialist savagery and so forth. In fact, the horror was designed purely to horrify. Operation Apollo was impracticable from the start. Millions of non-combatants would have died in the sub-continent alone. But that was yet another guarantee of authenticity: capitalist indifference to Asian suffering.

"The aim of the project, as you must see by now, was to frighten them off. For which purpose, clearly, they had to know all about the weapon behind the cover. It was your job, Leonard, to be seen trying hard and in vain to prevent the escape of that information. You succeeded admirably. Twelve days ago sufficient details of the weapon behind the cover left England on their way to Peking. Earlier than we'd counted on. We were very pleased with ourselves. But recently a couple of snags developed."

Ross-Donaldson paused and looked at Leonard for some moments as if he very much wanted to see him clearly. For the first time since Leonard had known him he seemed at something of a loss. At length he said,

"I suppose this must be something of a shock to you, Leonard. I'm sorry. I think too that to some extent you've suffered at my hands. In the general interest of distracting you from looking in the wrong, that's to say the right, direction I had to introduce you to a red herring or so. And I'm afraid I amused myself at your expense a couple of times. Perhaps you didn't notice. It seems to me now that I fell unduly under the sway of Hunter."

"Max is a splendid officer."

"Sufficiently gallant, it appears, but not a healthy influence, unfortunately. Would you like another cup of tea?"

"No, thank you. Tell me the rest. What were these snags you mentioned?"

"Two. One concerned the onward transmission of the information. We couldn't watch it all along the line for fear of being caught watching. It got as far as Albania and promptly vanished. You know what the Albanians are. If it had stuck there we were in trouble. We were still looking for evidence of its arrival in China when snag number two developed. The rifle. That disturbed me a great deal, I'm afraid. There were two possible deductions. One was that our screening processes were at fault and Best was an agent after all, which would have meant that the vital information had indeed got stuck somewhere and Peking was still interested in the rifle. At this late date that would have been nothing short of disastrous. Jagger was inclined to that explanation at one stage. I tended to take the other view, the one that turned out to be correct, that Best was just a lunatic set on some paranoiac form of self-expression. But that was hardly more comforting. From the Chinese point of view the incident would look very suspicious. It didn't fit into any pattern. God knows what sort of pattern they might have made it fit into, and how long it would have taken them. I was disturbed so severely that I had to send for Jagger. I owe you an apology, Leonard, for being rather short with you yesterday morning. I held you responsible. Not that you weren't.

"At any rate, things could have been worse. You and the others got rid of Best in good smart style. And any residual suspicions about the affair, if the opposition ever get to hear of it, will be more than offset by the splendid performance last evening, complete with fatal casualty, which they'll certainly get to hear of. Not even a Chinese could doubt that that was authentic."

Ross-Donaldson leaned back in his chair, smoothed his paunch, and smiled. Then he turned authoritative.

"I can now inform you," he said, dropping his voice, "that the project has succeeded. The information went through after all. The invasion is canceled. They're early signs, I gather, but unmistakable. We've won, Leonard. No Operation Apollo. No war. Well? Aren't you pleased?"

"I'm sure I will be. I can't take it in at the moment."

"I understand. I felt like that too at first."

After a short pause, Leonard said, "What's going to happen to me?"

"Well, there I'm afraid we'll have to follow through rather. There'll be nothing too public. A court of inquiry that'll recommend your discharge with dishonor. Purely a formality, entirely for the benefit of the Chinese. Well, very largely for their benefit. We'll see it doesn't get to the Press or anything, so your chances in civilian life won't be affected. And… you've a reward to come. As soon as it's safe, perhaps in eighteen months' time, a fictitious relative of yours is going to die and leave you about two thousand pounds. Net. After death duties."

"That's quite generous, isn't it? Two thousand pounds for being the biggest bloody fool the Service could lay their hands on."

"I shouldn't look at it like that if I were you. As I told you, you were selected for your inexperience. You were also isolated. Somebody had to do it. When the project first took shape there was a school of thought favoring the officer in your role being fully informed of the true state of events and aims, but I was able to argue successfully that the continuous deception called for would be an intolerable strain. The alternative was somebody of your general type-conscientious, not excessively imaginative, predictable-to be kept in ignorance. You were chosen. You did what was expected of you. You've nothing to be ashamed of."

"I've everything to be ashamed of."

Sighing, Ross-Donaldson stood up and settled his clothing into position. Leonard also rose.

"I think, if I may say so, Leonard, you'll quite likely do better outside the Service. I doubt if you'd ever have become a top-flight Security officer. You're too interested in people."

"I don't know a thing about them," said Leonard.

He put on his hat, saluted-smartly and turned away. Ross-Donaldson shrugged his shoulders.

More than an hour went by befoie Leonard began to feel in the least degree better. On leaving Ross-Donaldson's office he decided that he needed sherry just as much as he needed Lucy, and sherry was nearer. But before entering the Mess doorway he stopped. It was only nine-fifty and he disliked the idea of being caught drinking at such an hour by a brother-officer, or indeed of being caught doing anything at any foreseeable hour by a brother-officer. After a moment's thought, he drove down to the village and bought a bottle of Murillo Hermanos' Manzanilla off Eames, who was just opening the White Hart. While he was waiting for it to be wrapped, Leonard got Anne to serve him with a glass of whatever was nearest. This proved to be a sweetish South African wine which vanished without trace before even getting as far as his breakfast had done.

His gloom persisted during his drive to Lucy's and changed direction slightly at the suspicious, even hostile, way she greeted him.

"What's the matter?" he asked as he stood in the portico. "What have I done?"

She glared at him. "What are you doing here? I told you not to come over."

"I thought that only meant the evenings. I've just come to see you. I've got some free time. I'll go away if you like."

Her glare lessened. "You're not after James?"

"James? Why should I be after him? Is he here?"

"You're a sort of policeman, aren't you? Yes, he's upstairs."

"What for? I don't understand."

He understood better within about ten minutes, by which time he and Lucy were sitting in the shade of an oak-tree on the unkempt lawn outside the drawing-room. As she talked, she sipped a weak gin and tonic. He had two glasses of sherry inside him, a third in his hand, and the bottle beside his deck-chair. For one reason or another, he had forgotten about being gloomy.

"I should have been informed, really, I suppose," he said at one point. "But it doesn't matter now."

"No, this whole business is much more important."

"And he hasn't eaten or drunk a thing?" he asked when Lucy had finished her account.

"He won't eat. He doesn't even want to smoke. Willie's got him to drink a glass or two of water."

"What about, you know, going to the lavatory?"

"Willie's taken him I think three times. The last time he had to more or less carry him. To the little lavatory, that is. He hasn't been to the big lavatory. He's sort of shutting down completely. Here's Willie."

Ayscue came over to them across the sunlit grass. He nodded unsmilingly to Leonard, refused a drink, sat down in a third chair and began rubbing his eyes slowly. He was pale and unshaven.

"Anything?" asked Lucy.

"No change. Except perhaps a little for the worse. It's getting harder to tell whether he's asleep or not."

"You ought to get some sleep yourself."

"I might as well. I'm not doing any good up there. You've come to take him back, I imagine," he added accusingly to Leonard.

"No. Brian just wanted to see me. I've been telling him about it all. You want to help, don't you, Brian?"

"I don't see what I can do if you two can't do anything."

"Brian," said Ayscue. His manner had become more friendly. "What will happen to him if you and I dress him and take him back? From the Security point of view, I mean."

Leonard knew that the canceling of Operation Apollo would not lead to any remission of the checks and restraints on those concerned in it, at any rate for some time. He guessed that his chiefs would not permit to be at large an individual in possession of such vital secrets who had clearly become unstable mentally.

"They'll lock him up," he said.

"That's what I thought. Brian, I want to ask you something important. I think James has got more on his mind than he says. Than he said he had when he was still talking. I think it's this Operation Apollo. I think he can't face it. I know all war is dreadful, but whatever this is must be quite unusually dreadful. I want you to tell me if I'm right. Just that and no more."

"Yes," said Leonard. "You're right."

"Yes. He's fallen into a state of hating God, you see, Brian. That's bad enough. But I think he's lost faith in everything else too. In the world. He's against it all."

"I think I understand. Will you excuse me? I'll be back later."

He went off towards the house. Before going inside he looked round at the other two, Ayscue in his rumpled khaki, leaning back now as if asleep, Lucy in her spotless white dress that shone in the sun, sitting forward with her arms clasped round her knees. Then he entered and hurried upstairs to the room where Churchill was lying with his eyes shut. Leonard went and knelt by the bed.

"James. This is Brian Leonard. I know you're worrying about Operation Apollo. Well, you needn't any more. It's off. It's been canceled. You haven't got to do it. You're free. It's all over. Operation Apollo has been canceled."

Churchill made no move. He hardly seemed to be breathing.

Leonard cleared his throat and said in a caricatured military tone, "Official message for Lieutenant James Churchill, Blue Howards. Top secret. Operation Apollo is hereby canceled, repeat canceled, effective forthwith. Acknowledge. Message ends."

This too had no effect. Leonard rose to his feet and stood thinking. After a short while he went out and downstairs, left the house by the front door, got into his car and drove away.

The two on the lawn heard him go. Ayscue stirred irritably.

"Where's he off to?" he said. "Gone to turn out the Brigade of Guards, I expect, or something equally helpful."

"That isn't very nice of you, Willie."

"I'm sorry. He's a very decent man, I agree. But a very foolish one. He's never asked himself a serious question in his life. He knows no more about the way things work than he did when he was fourteen."

"I don't think that's quite right either."

"Perhaps not. I'm not really on form today. I think I'll go and have a he-down on the sofa. Could you look in on James occasionally?"

"I'll sit by him, don't you worry."

Lucy took an illustrated magazine to Churchill's bedside, but she too was underslept, and in a few minutes she nodded off, half awakening from time to time and changing position in her chair. She awoke completely when two vehicles began to pull up below the window. The first, she saw when she looked, was Leonard's car, and Leonard was getting out of it. The second was an ambulance. The driver got out and went to the rear door. Very soon Catharine appeared, followed by a bespectacled young man in a dark suit who was glancing impatiently about. Lucy hurried downstairs.

"Darling," she said, embracing Catharine in the hall, "what's happened? Are you out or what?"

"Only for an hour or two. This is Dr. Galton, who's come to look after me."

The young man nodded briefly and turned at once to Leonard.

"You can have forty minutes," he said in a high-pitched but commanding voice, "after which I shall see to it that Mrs. Casement takes whatever suitable light refreshment is available here and then immediately returns to hospital."

"Thank you," said Leonard. "That's quite acceptable."

"It had better be. I hope you know what you're doing."

"So you said earlier, doctor. You can rest assured that I do."

"Can I see James?" asked Catharine.

"There isn't much time," said Leonard. "Seeing him may be more effective if you listen to what I have to tell you first. Let's go out on to the lawn. We can't be overheard there."

They went, leaving the doctor pacing the hall.

"How are you, Cathy?" asked Lucy. "How is everything?"

"Fine. No snags. Everything under control."

"How did he get you out? Brian, how did you get her out?"

"Never mind that for now. The important thing is James."

"He's not too bad, is he?" asked Catharine. "He's not really so awfully bad, is he?"

"He's sort of withdrawn into himself," said Leonard. "But I think you'll be able to get him out of it. I've got no experience of these things, but from what I gather from Lucy here and Willie Ayscue part of why James is like this is because of what's been happening to you, Mrs. Casement. I don't know how much-"

"Catharine."

"Catharine. Well, that's part of it. The other part comes from this thing called Operation Apollo he was getting ready to be sent on. I'm going to tell you about that now. It won't take long."

They reached the chairs under the oak-tree and sat down.

"This means I shall have to break the Official Secrets Act," he went on. "And if the information gets out there might be a war. So I want you both to promise me that you won't pass on what I'm going to tell you to a living soul."

The two women looked at each other.

"But aren't you terribly risking we'll break our promise?" asked Lucy.

"No. I want you to hear this so you can help Catharine, and I know you're all right. And James loves you, Catharine, so you're all right too. So there isn't any risk. Do you both promise?"

"Yes," they said.

He gave them a much edited account of his interview with Ross-Donaldson earlier that morning. At the end of it he studied Catharine, whom he had seen for the first time an hour before. He could find no trace of illness, pain or fear about her, only of tension under control. He admired the straightness of her mouth. Leaning forward in his chair, he said emphatically, but he hoped not too loudly,

"So the big point is, Catharine, that James would never have had to go and make all those people die. But he still thinks he's got to. So do the other officers in his position, just for the time being. We're supposed to wait for orders saying it's all right to tell them. But when the others are told, they'll listen, they'll understand. But James has taken the whole idea of Operation Apollo much harder than they have, because of you. I suppose it's as if he can't see anything but death anywhere. I think in that state any of us might get withdrawn. Anyway, the result is it's no use telling James the show's been canceled, because he won't listen. I've tried him. That's to say he won't listen to anybody ordinary. I think you're the only one he'll listen to, because he loves you. But if you're going to get through to him you've got to understand exactly what's in his mind, and that means you've got to hear exactly what he thinks he's going to have to do.

"Apollo was the Greek god of the sun, and of music, and of agriculture and other things. He was also the god of disease. The sender of plagues. I think calling the Operation after him was meant as some sort of twisted clue to the Chinese. What James and the others have been training to do was spreading a plague in the Chinese army, and probably in China too. Each man was going to be given a small party of local helpers and be stuck in a hideout near a Chinese line of communication. They were to wait until they could safely ambush just one Chinese soldier carrying mail, say, or a couple of chaps in a lorry, and knock them out with a gas that would keep them unconscious for three hours or so. Then they give them the plague and disappear. The Chinese blokes come to, feeling perfectly okay, and continue their journey to the fighting areas or back to their base. Nothing happens for about ten days, by which time scores of them have had the same treatment. Then they start their symptoms.

"It was decided that these symptoms ought to be as unpleasant as possible so as to have the maximum psychological effect. Ordinary plagues weren't good enough from that point of view. Fever, inflamed glands, delirium, difficulty in speaking and walking. Nothing much out of the way there. Our bacteriologists found they couldn't get as far as they wanted with just improving the existing plagues. But plagues are so handy, because they're so easily passed on. So they decided to start at the other end, with a more unpleasant disease that wasn't a plague that they'd tinker about with until it could be transmitted like a plague. Finally a scientist called Venables came up with something he'd managed to make just about as infectious as what's called pneumonic plague, and in the same way: in your breath, in droplets, like the common cold. They found this out two or three years ago, by the way, and kept it by them. It was all ready when they needed it.

"Well, what Venables had invented was a form of hydrophobia. That's what you get when a mad dog bites you. Only now you could get it off somebody's breath. Some people say it's the most extreme form of suffering. A man who's caught it starts off with feeling very depressed and frightened. There'd be plenty of that when you'd seen your friends die of it. Then the man gets very agitated and can't breathe properly. But the main point is that he gets very thirsty, only he chokes and has convulsions whenever he tries to drink. Or when he sees water, or hears it being poured, or thinks of it. Or when there's a draught or somebody touches him. Or a lot of other things. In between he breathes with a sort of barking sound and snaps his jaws. He has four or five days of that. Then he dies. It's an odd thing, but just before he dies he can breathe and drink and swallow perfectly well.

"Each detachment on Operation Apollo was to be issued with a number of small plastic tents just big enough for one person. The idea was that you put your unconscious Chinaman in there and sealed it up. Then you turned on a tank full of air which had water droplets in it, and the droplets had the hydrophobia virus in them. You gave the chap a couple of hours of it, took him out, stuck him back in the cab of his lorry, and moved off to another area. The chances of him developing hydrophobia were better than ninety per cent. Oh, there is an antidote thing, but they'd never have been able to get it made and distributed in time to make any difference.

"Anyway, that's what James thinks he's got to go and do."

Catharine sat on for a few moments, then rose to her feet.

"I think I'll go and see James now," she said, and went.

"I hope it works," said Leonard.

"Brian, you didn't tell the people at the hospital any of that, did you?"

"Of course not. I got by on bluff and luck. I talked about international crises and secret weapons and spies. The luck came when they telephoned Whitehall and my master was out. There was only a junior on the desk and I soon settled him. Even then I don't think I'd have managed it if the doctor hadn't made the mistake of admitting that there wasn't any likelihood of Catharine's health suffering by this trip. I'm afraid she was very bewildered until I got a couple of minutes alone with her. What a marvelous girl she is. She'll bring it off if anyone can."

"Brian, what will happen when your master finds out what you've been up to with the ambulance and everything?"

"He'll be so angry he won't be able to speak. For a minute or two. He'll speak then all right."

"Don't you mind?"

"Well, it had to be done, hadn't it? And I've got the sack anyway. Already."

Leonard picked up his sherry bottle and uncorked it.

"Brian."

"Yes?"

"If you've got the sack, can you stay the night?"

"Oh yes, please, Lucy."

By now Catharine was with Churchill. After some effort, she arranged things so that she was able to put her arms round him and take his head on her lap. Twice she raised him so that his face was near hers. Both times she looked into his face very longingly, though without managing to see in it more than she could have recognized at first glance. She felt not at all sure of being able to do what she had found she must do. When she spoke, she tried to use her mouth and lips so that they would put the words into exactly the right shape to penetrate the barrier of his hearing and reach him, reach the person she knew was there.

"Dearest James. I haven't got to tell you who this is, have I? Because all the most important part of you doesn't need to be told. It couldn't ever forget. Little James. We said it was all right to say that. You've always listened to everything I've ever said to you. You're to go on listening now.

"First there's me. I've had the operation. It all went off all right. Everybody's very pleased with me. I'm afraid there are bits of me missing now. But that's something you're not going to mind as much as all that. Not as much as you expected to. There's not everything gone from there. And they've promised me it isn't going to look horrible. I believe them, because they're very good. You don't know how good they are. Now they say I've got to have a lot of treatment which I shan't like at all. I'll have to keep going to hospital for a few weeks while I'm having it. But that's all right, because you'll be able to see me the rest of the time. Yes you will. You're going to. And they say I've got a good chance, because they took it so terrifically early. That's thanks to you, that they managed to do that. A good chance. You gave me a good chance.

"Now, darling. I know there's more to it than just me. And you're not to mind me knowing it and saying it. There are bound to be some things love doesn't reach as far as, however you look at it. It wouldn't be right any other way. There are things you can't ever do. Like giving people hydrophobia. I've just finished being told all about that. It was all right me hearing, because it's not going to happen. It never was going to. It was just a threat. I know exactly what you've been thinking, because I've been told. Sometimes you have to be told things. That man you were going to put into a little plastic bag and spray with stuff so that he couldn't swallow however thirsty he got. He's been let off. It's not going to be done to him. And that hasn't come about by chance. People have decided not to do it. They never even meant to.

"I remember you talking to me about God and how bad he was. I didn't feel as you did about it, but I saw what you meant. I can see how horrible it must be if you think that God's very cruel and then something comes up that makes you think people have started behaving like him. But when you told me that God had invented all the bad things, and so whenever anything bad happened it was really him who was doing it, you weren't talking to me. I thought you were going off on your own then and now you're trying to completely. You knew very well that it's up to people not to get on with the bad things God has invented for them. It's their job to show they're better than he is. Well, now here they are doing it.

"I know you think that bad things go together. All right, you had reason to. But this time it isn't going to happen like that. It isn't like you thought. There's just one bad thing on its own that you really mind about. What's been happening to me. And even that isn't a bad thing for certain. And if bad things can go together, so can good things. You and me ever meeting in the first place. Think what a good thing that was, and how unlikely. And then us falling in love and going to bed together and going on being in love. I'm not going to let you go mad. When I went mad I couldn't find any reason not to, and that was really why I did. You've got a reason not to. Me. And I know how hard it is not to go mad once you've sort of thought of it. But you're going to manage it, however hard it is even after what I've told you just now. You're going to dare to be sane, James, dearest James, little James. And big James. I love you."

Churchill stirred, opened his eyes, and fixed them on Catharine.

"I know," he said.

Ayscue stood at the lectern of the village church waiting for the end of the Thomas Roughead anthem, Lord, Protect Thou Thy Servants. He had agreed to deliver a short address from this position after the vicar had made it clear to him that, while the accommodation of visiting preachers in the pulpit was probably unavoidable in the course of a regular service, no such obligation existed when a house of worship was being made use of as a concert-hall. He was sitting now rather huddled up in a front corner pew staring at Ayscue, the expression of wondering outrage endemic to his face faintly intensified, it might be, by the memory of some of the verbal turns of phrase in Roughead's song, Airs and Graces, performed just before the anthem.

The concert was going at least as well as Ayscue had expected. Young Townsend had led off very creditably with the far from straightforward C major organ fantasia, and a slight raggedness among the choir altos, noticeable at the start of the first of two extracts from the masque, Hector and Andromache, had quite soon cleared up. Ayscue thought it unlikely that anybody in the audience would have noticed, except no doubt the music critic whom a widely read and respected provincial newspaper had sent to report on the occasion. And this man, from a couple of minutes' chat in the church porch before the concert, had not only seemed pleasant and easy-going, unlikely to attend overmuch to foreseeable shortcomings of this kind, but had professed himself a devotee of eighteenth-century English music. Ayscue thought that if Townsend, Pearce and he could manage the trio-sonata, set down to follow the address, with as much accuracy and decent stylishness as they had shown at their final rehearsal, Thomas Roughead might indeed be launched on the modest posthumous career he deserved.

A moment in the closing pages of the anthem, two bars of contrary motion in the bass and tenor voices, caught Ayscue's ear. He remembered noticing it when glancing through the score with Townsend the previous week. Then he had passed it by as unremarkable, the taking of an obvious opportunity; now he caught his breath and felt himself shiver imperceptibly all over. Considering what he was about to say, it was mildly ironical that at this moment music should once more have revealed itself to him as the true embodiment of the unaided and self-constituted human spirit, the final proof of the non-existence of God.

As the series of florid, rather Handelian amens swung to its close, he caught Churchill's eye and his sense of irony sharpened. But this was a faulty, outdated reflex. In the couple of days since his return to activity, Churchill seemed to have become quite at peace, no longer frowning or continually on the verge of protest or sarcasm. He gave a faint smile now and said something to Catharine at his side. Lucy Hazell leaned over to hear it too, but Brian Leonard next to her still stared to his front, his look of puzzlement unaltered since the first chord of the fantasia. Even so, it was heartening to see him there. Apart from a squad of nominated volunteers from among the men off duty, and a few of Pearce's mates, the attendance from the camp was not strikingly good. The Colonel, Ross-Donaldson and Venables (not that the latter had been seriously expected to turn up at the concert) were away at a conference in London, where Hunter had also gone, it appeared for some sort of interview. The village, however, led by Eames, had come along in force.

The last traces of the music vanished from loft, chancel, pews, roof, gallery. Ayscue began to speak in his public tone, the one he hated whenever he caught himself at it. On those occasions he would wish he could sound as if he meant what he was saying. But he knew that that made people uncomfortable. And it could hardly be argued that wanting one's words to be believed was the same as meaning them.

"This will take about three minutes flat," he said, not too bluffly, he hoped. "You came here to enjoy yourselves, and if anybody feels like muttering that he doesn't see why he should have to put up with a dose of uplift thrown in, well, I rather sympathize with him. Many of us are in the habit of keeping our pleasures and our more serious thinking in separate compartments, and we wouldn't be human if we didn't tend to resent having our habits disturbed. But just for a moment I'm going to try to disturb this one a little. We've been listening to some music by Thomas Roughead, very finely performed by Mr. Townsend and the members of the choir. Not much is known about Roughead's life, very little more than what you see in your program. But we can learn something of him through his music. Whether he was writing church anthems like the one we've just heard, or whether, as in that song immediately before the anthem, he was celebrating the earthly pleasures that are every human being's birthright"-this was said with a hard look at the vicar- "Roughead had his eye, his musical eye if you like, on the glory of God. You may think I say this because he was a church composer, because a large part of his music is obviously religious in character, in function. That's true, but I mean more than that. Every piece of music, every work of art, and in fact everything that human beings produce, doesn't come simply from them, from their human minds and hearts. God is with and within us all in everything we do, and never more than when we're doing the best things we're capable of. It's God's glory that we're celebrating at moments like that. It was God's glory that Roughead was celebrating in these compositions of his, God's glory that our musicians have been participating in as they played and sang them, God's glory that's been revealed to the rest of us as we sat here listening to them. This is what happens to us throughout life, even at moments that seem to have nothing of God in them.

"We're in his house this evening. It's only common courtesy to say a few words to him, I think you'll agree.

"Let us pray."

As he turned and knelt, Ayscue was troubled less by the content, at once hectoring and chummy, of his penultimate sentence-ideas like that seemed to come from nowhere-than by the triteness, obscurity and illogic of what had gone before. He thought to himself he must be getting old. Then, as always on these occasions, he prayed, because here at any rate one got the chance of saying what one meant, even if to nobody.

"Catharine. Don't do it to her. Let her get well and stay well. Please."

Whenever he had prayed before it had been like talking into an empty room, into a telephone with nobody at the other end. But this time it came upon him with certainty, if certainty could apply to an image, that the room had ceased to be empty, or that somebody was at the other end of the telephone, not saying anything, nowhere near that, but listening.

It frightened him rather. He felt he could believe that this was the first stage of a process, a chain, a series of which the last would be a joy so enormous that it justified everything, or at least an explanation so cogent that human beings would unhesitatingly forgive all the wrongs God had done them.

Without thinking about it he got to his feet, rather sooner than everybody had expected. Then he recollected himself and walked firmly back to the lectern.

"Now we are going to play you," he said, trying to breathe normally, "a work by Thomas Roughead that has probably not been heard for a hundred and fifty years. Trio-sonata in B minor for flute, violin and piano."

Townsend crossed from the stairs leading to the loft and sat down at the piano on Ayscue's right. Pearce came down the aisle, flute in hand, and took up his position behind the music-stand that had been set for him. Ayscue picked up his violin and bow from the top of the piano. With the minimum of delay they began. It was immediately clear that they would do well.

Outside, Ayscue's dog Nancy was secured by her lead to the railings by the gate. She was used to being in this situation, and when he prepared to leave his room to go to the concert she had responded so enthusiastically that he had not had the heart to leave her behind. But music had always had a bad effect on her, even at a distance, and the sounds now coming from the church seemed to strike her as especially intolerable. Squeaking, she tried as never before to slip her collar, and at last succeeded.

She had run through the gateway onto the sunlit pavement and was standing uncertainly there when an agriculture lorry came jolting down the village street. Although devotedly maintained, it was an old vehicle and its driver knew that it was nearing the end of its service. When Nancy, evidently too interested in something across the street to notice the lorry, moved cautiously into its path, he spun the wheel to avoid her. The steering failed to respond.

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24/09/2009

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