‘But mayn’t they have been on the golf-course?’
‘As a matter of fact, they were. But not the way you think. Now go on listening. You must conceive these bearded men as simply having accepted a commission to liquidate Nauze within a certain time – before, that is, the coded document could be got to him. You see, if it was got to him, and his mind was in working order, he might take weeks to do the decoding or he might take no more than a few hours. That sort of thing can be, it seems, a highly intuitive business. Well, we regarded Nauze as at risk, of course, even although we didn’t realize that the Overcombe hide-out had been spotted. So he wasn’t altogether easy to get at. In fact, they didn’t get their chance until the eleventh hour – or well past that – and then it was largely a matter of luck. We were waiting for the helicopter to come in–’
‘The midnight helicopter that Beadon and Walcot spoke of?’
‘No doubt. Nauze had been drinking a bit – we had been instructed we mustn’t try to keep him off it altogether – and as a result–’
‘He took a gym-shoe to you.’
‘Don’t be silly. It took him as anxious to show his independence and cunning. He slipped away and went wandering through the grounds just before dawn. And that was the end of him. They pounced, and shot him dead. And it was I, as it happened, who had first tumbled to his making off. I came on the scene while his limbs were still jerking.’
‘Christ!’ Bobby looked at Susan aghast, and could find no other word to utter. For a moment he felt alarmingly sick – and then merely very cold. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘That was at Overcombe. We’ve got to get to Linger.’
‘Yes. They had to get to Linger. Or rather, that’s quite wrong. They just had to get somewhere. With the body, that is.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s routine, more or less. You dump your corpse at least a hundred miles from where you killed it, and there’s always a chance it may never be so much as identified. And you see what put a golf-course in their heads. They could dump the body of Nauze there in such a way that they could themselves make an undisturbed getaway after doing so, while at the same time making quite sure that it would be discovered fairly early in the morning. You remember the dead-line. It had to be discovered, if their employers were to be satisfied. No dead Nauze on time, no pay. Well, they had a van. They shoved the body in the back of it, and drove off. I travelled with them.’
‘What!’ Bobby stared at Susan dumbfounded. He realized that this girl was going to terrify him intermittently all his life. ‘You just went along?’
‘It was quite easy. I simply hopped in with the corpse. For one thing, it seemed essential to make sure that it was a corpse. Not that I know quite what I’d have done if the poor man had been faintly alive. And remember that this was a shattering defeat. Some sort of reply was essential. To go for the buggy ride was a reply of sorts. Besides, I was assisted by the marvels of modern science.’
‘Just what do you mean by that?’
‘I had my walkie-talkie. It’s something we’re never allowed to move without. As soon as the van got going, I could murmur into it quite safely. So I wasn’t exactly incommunicado. The real difficulty was in keeping track of where we were. But occasionally I managed to see a signpost in the headlights of another car. And within an hour we had been picked up and were being tailed.’
‘A car, a caravan, and two men!’
‘Just that – and one of the men rather high up. So I’d become just an attendant lord again. If you think the subsequent conduct of Her Britannic Majesty’s secret agents absurd, you can reflect that it wasn’t me who was giving the orders.’
‘I don’t know whether they were absurd, but I do suspect that I myself was treated a little hardly by them.’
‘Well, yes – that’s true. My own difficulty, of course, was getting out of the van without being spotted, but I managed it when our bearded friends halted to make a preliminary survey of the course. I had to do a bit of rather cautious walking after that, if I wasn’t to give myself away. But I didn’t need to hurry, since the control of the operation was now in other hands. And that’s how it was that I came on you just when I did. The killers of Nauze had been allowed to drive off – which no doubt seems very shocking to your lay mind. But there was, as you’ll gather, method of a sort in that particular piece of madness. My colleagues were just finishing up making an innocent business of an early-morning cup of tea by the roadside. And there, gaping at the bunker, was a perfectly gorgeous young man.’
‘True,’ Bobby said. ‘Continue.’
‘By what was obviously sheer coincidence this young oaf–’
‘Hey!’
‘This young Apollo showed signs of being in a position to identify the body. I doubted whether that would be a good idea. We’re taught, you see, to keep the outside world out. You understand? At least I had to invent delaying tactics. So I got you off to the club-house, and then beat it for the car. Susan Danbury – or 009 or somebody – reporting for orders. You know what happened then.’
‘The whole precious lot of you made off with the body, and even left that bunker nicely raked over. I’m damned if I can see why.’
‘It’s quite fair you should have a mild sense of grievance.’ Susan was amused. ‘But surely you can see why? Nauze duly killed, and body left in bunker on Linger golf-course. That’s what the engaging couple would report. But no body is ever found there – nor is Nauze, dead or alive. They may be making the whole thing up, just in the hope of getting their pay. Uncertainty and confusion are sown in the minds of the enemy, and so we have made the best of a very poor show. We’re often doing that.’ Susan sipped her coffee. ‘Are you beginning to come clear?’
‘If you call it clear.’ Bobby broke off. He might have been trying to find some small point of sanity in the middle of all this dangerous nonsense. ‘It must have been quite a shock to you,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘when I turned up at Overcombe. I must say you carried it off well in old Hartsilver’s hut. But you had to produce some shocking lies afterwards.’
‘It was a little awkward, I admit. And it was rather nice when I got orders this afternoon to let you in on it all.’
‘Just how did that happen?’
‘Something to do with your father.’
‘My father!’ Bobby didn’t sound at all pleased. ‘What had my father to with it?’
‘He seems to be somebody very important. And he tumbled, I imagine, to the kind of affair this is. The hush-hush aspect of it would tell him at once, if he happens to be clued up in these matters. And he seems to have guessed, perfectly correctly. that you were pushing in on the situation in a dangerous state of ignorance and innocence. So he made no bones about getting on the blower to M himself.’ Susan paused. ‘Or even,’ she added solemnly, ‘to M’s boss. No doubt he raised firm but gentle hell – the way top people know how to do.’
‘Would it have been with that dangerous uncle of yours?’
‘Might be. Anyway, the report was that you were well meaning, conscientious, reliable, and likely to be modestly competent in a rough house – and therefore to be recruited forthwith. Temporary appointment and no pay. Still, Bobby Appleby’s dream comes true. He’s 008.’
‘And now he’s going to ask for his bill.’ Bobby signed to the waiter. ‘Let’s hope no pay doesn’t mean no expenses.’
11
Outside, the night was very dark.
Bobby found this unexpected. He wondered why. He also found it rather menacing and sinister. He wondered about that too. But the feeling of unexpectedness was easily explained. He had a well-developed sense of times and seasons, and unconsciously he was prepared to step into moonlight. Those wild nocturnal events on Linger golf-course had transacted themselves just before the full of the moon. That had been in the small hours of Tuesday. It was late on Friday night now, and a splendid
moon – Solo Hoobin’s moon – must definitely be on duty. And so, of course, must be the punctual and untiring stars in their courses. But nothing was on view. Above the Three Feathers and its puny festal lights the heavens were overcast. Come, seeling night…
That the darkness felt far from benign was also explicable. Like hundreds, indeed thousands, of agreeably circumstanced young men around England that evening, he had been entertaining a girl to dinner in a country pub – differing from the majority, it might be said, only in that his intentions were strictly honourable. But this, of course, was to neglect the wider context of the occasion. The girl was a working girl, and she had elected to earn her keep within a small lurid world in which people got great chunks of their heads blown off… Bobby recalled reading a French roman policier with the engagingly simple title of Danger! (One can’t dwell with la nouvelle écriture all the time.) And danger was hovering all around now.
‘Do you know about danger?’ he heard himself ask.
‘Danger? Do you mean danger?’
‘Yes and no.’ They were now more or less groping their way to Bobby’s car. ‘When one was a lover within the medieval code of Courtly Love–’
‘L’amour courtois.’
‘Yes. I see you didn’t leave Somerville or wherever without the ghost of an education. When one was that sort of lover, one thought of oneself as within one’s lady’s danger. It was a relationship, really, between a vassal and his lord. Within the code, the lady’s the lord, of course, and the lover’s the vassal. The Lord (or mistress) can require the vassal (or lover) to do his stuff – to be modestly competent, for example, in that rough house.’
‘Yes?’
‘In requital, the vassal (or lover) is entitled to enjoy the favour of his lord (or mistress). And the reciprocal relationship between the two is called danger. See?’
‘Do see. Danger is definitely on.’
The head-swimming business assailed Bobby Appleby again. ‘Pray God,’ he said, ‘I’m not too madly drunk on you to drive this bloody car.’
Cars are best at night. Their engines seem to take on a new smoothness and power. One seems to be a better driver, too. The darkness parted before the speed of Bobby and Susan, and closed again behind them.
‘We’re going back to Overcombe,’ Bobby said. ‘Is that right?’
‘Yes, Quite right. I’ve had my holiday.’
‘Listen, Susan. What I don’t understand, really, is what might be called the continuing situation. Nauze is dead, and will solve no more conundrums about anti-ballistic missiles, or anything else. So just what’s going on?’
‘We’re lying low.’
‘Are those bearded chaps lying low?’
‘They puzzle me rather, I’m bound to say. I’ve told you they’re just low-class killers. And they killed Nauze, all right. They ought really to have their pay, too. Because of the leak.’
‘The leak?’
‘It seems we didn’t get away, after all, with the picture of Bobby Appleby as just imagining things in that bunker. There was a bit in a paper. And the other side – the bearded chap’s bosses, that is – were smart enough to winkle a confirmatory statement out of the local police. So these two chaps ought to have cleared out by now. Incidentally, Bobby, I’ve only your word for it that they haven’t cleared out. It was you who saw them when you were coming back from your prowl to the Great Smithy. It was you who saw one of them peering at us through that dining-room door.’
‘Bobby Appleby imagining things, after all?’
‘Well, no. But it’s a puzzle. Where can they be hanging out? We’ve had the whole countryside combed in vain for the slightest trace of them. And why should they be hanging out? Perhaps–’
‘That’s the one I want answered. Why should that fellow have peered in on us? What are they after still?’
‘They can’t have tumbled to Hartsilver. It’s just not possible.’ It was suddenly clear to Bobby that Susan was wrong. She was too close up to the thing. He himself had arrived from outside, with perhaps a certain power of fresh assessment. And what seemed not possible to Susan seemed not impossible to him.
‘This document,’ he said. ‘About missiles being taught to hit missiles that are being taught to hit missiles that are being taught to hit you. You know it’s absolute nonsense, don’t you?’
‘These things exist.’
‘But they’re just something other than human life. We mustn’t bother our heads with them – any more than with the fact that one day San Francisco is bound more or less to vanish in another earthquake.’
‘What utter rot! Earthquakes are God. Missiles are men. And likely to leave mere genocide standing.’
‘Well, yes. We will all go together when we go–’
‘Every Hottentot and every Eskimo. But that doesn’t mean–’ Susan broke off, and laughed softly in the darkness. Knowing the same song had pleased them. ‘Bobby, what on earth are we talking about?’
‘That missile document.’
‘Yes. Well, it’s in London, being worried at by a whole college of cryptographers. But I photographed it first.’
‘Off your own bat?’
‘Off my own bat.’
‘I like a girl to have a certain nerve. Would the photograph be an attractive proposition to the bearded characters and their employers?’
‘Not to their original employers. There’s obviously nothing in it that they don’t know. Their concern was to prevent our getting hold of the thing, or cracking its code once we had got it. But it’s beginning to seem possible to me’ – Susan was suddenly speaking rather slowly – ‘that your bearded characters may be thinking of changing employers. A lot of these affairs are three-cornered, you know.’
‘Three-cornered?’
‘Three Great Powers, each playing for its own hand. Or four, at times.’
‘So they might like your photograph – to sell to some other concern?’
‘Yes – but they’d like it much more if it was no longer in code, but already in clear.’
‘If some Nauze had done his stuff on it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Susan, you said something about Hartsilver – that he was trying to do what Nauze might have done. It’s he who has your photograph? He’s working on it – with everything Nauze taught him? And that’s your private gamble?’
‘We’re taught to take the initiative now and then.’
‘But it won’t be too good if this goes wrong?’
‘No, it won’t.’
Bobby drove in silence for the rest of the way back to Overcombe. He hadn’t drunk much, but he didn’t drive fast. This was less because of road-mindedness than because of quite a lot going on in his head. Susan must be – or must have been – incredibly good at this MI5 stuff or she wouldn’t, at her age, have got as far as she had with it. At the same time, it was an outrageous walk of life for any girl who was even approximately like Susan. He was entirely clear about that. Doing very, very dangerous things – yes. Tiptop rock-climbing, for instance. Flying solo round the world. Or sailing ditto. Or working way-out in hazardous research with lethal substances. All that. But this, no.
A certain grim fastidiousness hadn’t much impeded the career of Appleby Senior in the field of low life and criminal practice. Deep down, Bobby had inherited the same slant of mind. This did mean (he judged) that he wouldn’t be a terribly good authentic 008. But that was irrelevant. The point was that – at a crunch – Susan Danbury wouldn’t be all that good as 00 – and – whatever. She too had disabilities, although they might not be the same disabilities as those of Appleby Junior. This business of chancing her hand with old Hartsilver: it was imaginative and courageous, but it wasn’t, in the last analysis, the winning thing in a world in which cautious cunning was all. To clear this up and yank Susan out was the purpose for whi
ch the gods had conducted him to that bunker.
He could, of course, simply turn the car round and drive to some remote part of England. He had a rather horrified intuition that Susan would submit. But it would be as a girl submits to her ravisher. It would be a solution of the situation transacting itself in very deep and dark places indeed. Not on, he told himself. Definitely not on.
‘Do you know,’ he said cheerfully, as they turned into the school drive, ‘that I don’t know where or how Hartsilver lives? But, wherever it is, we’ll go and tuck him up now.’
‘Yes.’
Bobby slowed down yet further. He found this response uncommunicative. But at least – he noticed – it was conveyed in the word which Susan had now rather frequently availed herself of.
‘Speak up,’ he said. ‘You’ve set him to this task, and you’re convinced that nobody is thinking about him. But at least he ought to be under some sort of guard. Is he? Or is he a lonely old man, isolated in some remote cottage in the grounds? Over to you.’
‘Turn left.’
At rather short notice, Bobby turned left. He remembered that there had always been two or three lanes of this sort, running from the main drive to cottages inhabited by members of the staff at Overcombe But he didn’t remember this one, and supposed it must be more or less new. It was a winding green tunnel, and his headlights probed it cautiously.
‘Far down?’ he asked.
‘By the river. You’re right that it’s fairly remote. But he’s not alone. There’s one of our men keeping an eye on him. Not obtrusively, I hope. He’s supposed to be repairing the swimming-pool, and to have been given the spare bedroom in Hartsilver’s cottage. His name’s Leaver.’
‘Ominous. We’ll hope he hasn’t left him. Here we are.’
Hartsilver’s house seemed to be a small bungalow. But the sky was still entirely obscured, and it wasn’t possible to see much. The murmur of the little river bounding Overcombe on the west could just be heard, and above this – curiously sharp – the croaking of frogs. A faint complex scent hung in the air: honeysuckle, Bobby thought, and perhaps a nicotine-plant. There was a low light in a porch; and, to one side of this, more light filtered through a curtained window. They climbed from the car and walked towards the door.
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