“I’ll remember that,” said Bohler.

  “Throughout your stay here I shall be available to you both whenever you feel it necessary,” offered Muller. “Quite obviously no part of the establishment is out of bounds to you, but as a courtesy gesture I would appreciate your asking Dr. Bloor or any other leader for permission to enter their work areas.…” He smiled. “As I’m sure you’ve discovered before, there are ways in which scientists sometimes resemble orchestral conductors in temperament.”

  Bohler and Gerda smiled with the old man. “Of course,” said Gerda. “As my colleague said earlier, we don’t want to do anything that will inconvenience any of your work here.”

  “How many projects do you have under development?” said Bohler. He spoke as if concentrating upon his coffee cup, a man temporarily eluded by a fact he already knew.

  “Only Dr. Bloor’s is anywhere near completion,” said Muller, perpetrating the error of pride. “But there are four other rocket proposals in various stages of development.”

  “So the success of the current program will act as an advertisement and you will be partially prepared should there be heavy interest as a result of it.”

  “Exactly,” smiled Muller. “The consortium decided there was a positive advantage in forward planning.”

  “A wise decision,” said Bohler.

  Muller shifted and Bohler anticipated the move. “We’ve occupied enough of your time,” said the American. “I’m sure we’re keeping you from something more important.”

  Muller grimaced at the exaggeration. “I regard your visit as important,” he said. “But there are certain routines which have evolved, even at night.”

  They hesitated in the corridor outside. Bohler realized there would be an advantage in having Gerda with him, to provide some warning if there were an unexpected approach while he was making a transmission.

  “My room,” he said, moving towards it before she could make any protest. He stopped after several steps, turning back to where she stood. “Please,” he said.

  Doubtfully, she caught up with him and they walked side by side towards the male section of the complex.

  “That was astonishing,” she said, digesting what they had learned.

  “He was very proud,” agreed Bohler.

  “Thank God.”

  “Can he really be ignorant of the killings?”

  “I believed him,” said the girl.

  “It would make sense,” said Bohler, with growing conviction. “It would be unthinkable for any private organization, certainly with the respectability of those involved here. But from an army unit, it would almost be a natural reaction.”

  “I was surprised at Muller’s openness,” said Gerda. “And by the fact that he doesn’t appear to control the security.”

  “It surprised me too.”

  “Let’s hope the openness remains.”

  “And that Hannah Bloor is equally forthcoming.”

  With so much information to transmit, Bohler made notes and then checked them with Gerda, to ensure that he’d remembered everything. With Gerda attentive at the door, he made his recording, played it back for sound level and clarity and then sent the speeded transmission. It took forty-five seconds. Even if there were any listening devices, Bohler was confident he would have evaded detection.

  He relaxed back in his chair, smiling across the room at her.

  “In three hours we discovered more than they had managed in more than three weeks,” he said, proudly.

  She smiled back, at his attitude. “It went well,” she agreed.

  “You don’t have to stay by the door any more,” said Bohler. He readjusted the radio for its more usual function and selected some music. Hesitantly, Gerda came further into the room. He indicated the chair opposite his and she sat down.

  “What’s your room like?” he asked.

  “Duplicate of this,” she said. She sat on the very edge of the seat.

  “Why do you wear your hair like that?”

  Automatically she raised her hand to the bun and he smiled as she blushed.

  “I’d better get back to my own room,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got some things to do.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “What’s ridiculous?”

  “This play acting.”

  “We’re here for a purpose … a job to do,” he mocked.

  “We are,” she insisted. “Let’s not forget it.”

  “I’m not forgetting it,” said Bohler. “I’ve just finished a very good day’s work.”

  She smiled again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not being very good company am I?”

  “I’m still nervous, too,” he said.

  “But concealing it far better than I am.”

  “You did well enough with Muller.”

  “I didn’t find it easy.”

  He stretched across for her hand. She didn’t try to move it.

  “We’re going to do it!” he said, encouraged by their initial success and trying to instill some confidence. “We’re going to do it, fly away from here in glory and everything else they’ve planned will be unnecessary.”

  “I don’t really think you believe that,” she said, serious again.

  “Most of it,” he insisted.

  “Thank you for trying to be kind,” she said.

  Without consciously making the decision to do so, he stood, leaned across the narrow gap and kissed her. She didn’t attempt to avoid him but neither did she respond, remaining with her hands along the armrests, her body tense.

  He felt embarrassed, moving away from her. Women weren’t usually so unresponsive to him.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said. Yet she didn’t appear offended.

  “It’s impossible to become pregnant that way,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

  “It’s an unnecessary complication.”

  “It needn’t be.”

  “That is ridiculous.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I forgot you were in charge.”

  “You mustn’t mock me.”

  “Play acting,” he reminded her.

  She stood, a determined movement. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He rose, walking with her to the door. As she was about to leave, Bohler said, “You didn’t quite manage it.”

  She paused, turning back. “Manage what?”

  “To stay absolutely frigid,” he grinned. “You closed your eyes.”

  Peterson was uneasy aboard the warship — claustrophobic, almost. But he recognized that the uncertainty was not caused by the constriction of space; it was because he was trapped aboard a vessel in the middle of a sea, hopefully in control of the operation but with no way of monitoring what was happening back in Washington. And a lot would be happening, with Herbert Flood’s guidance. How lucky would Jones be trying to find some compromising aspect of the man’s past? There would be no way he could find out aboard ship — cause for further uncertainty.

  Peterson did not think the officers had noticed the attitude. The Captain, a fresh-faced, eager-to-prove-himself capable New Englander named Tom Riley, was obviously very flattered to have the CIA Director on his ship and the feeling had spread through the command. Soon after being airlifted aboard by helicopter from the American airbase in the Azores, Peterson had noticed the respect and instinctively capitalized upon it. There hadn’t been the suspicion that Peterson had feared over the sealed orders from Washington informing Riley that there was to be direct communication with a Soviet installation at Odessa; rather it seemed to have impressed the man even more.

  Peterson had been allocated the quarters of the Executive Officer, David Hilgare. The man had moved his uniforms and working clothes from the cabin but left his personal belongings and Peterson felt intrusive. On top of a small bureau there was a photograph of a shining-faced, blond woman with a bubble-haired child cupped in her arms. Peterson wondered how she would cope, with her husband away at sea for so long. Did she keep vodka in a kitchen cabinet? Would Hilgare have to search for a neglected child in a few years’ time?

  Peterson turned at a movement in the curtained doorway and saw Riley.

  “I think you’d better come,” said the Captain. “There’s been a message.”

  Peterson hurried from the cabin behind the other man, reaching out for the support bars. They seemed greasy to the touch; since he’d been aboard, Peterson had never felt properly clean.

  For the size of the ship, it was a surprisingly large communications room, because it formed part of America’s nuclear capability. When Peterson entered, Hilgate was standing beside two operators, as if guarding against any attempt to decode the message. The transcription machine had been brought aboard in Peterson’s helicopter and assembled on a work-bench near the ship’s computer.

  Hilgare indicated a wire spool. “Arrived about ten minutes ago,” he said. “Nobody’s touched it.”

  “Thank you,” said Peterson. “I’d like it fitted for replay and then the room cleared for a few moments.”

  One of the operators fixed the spool and then followed the other three men from the room. Peterson ran Bohler’s message through to a duplicate tape that would play at an ordinary speed and then sat back, listening to the first day’s account from inside the complex. He listened twice, to assimilate the information completely, then snapped the machine off, feeling the depression lift at the thought of what had been achieved in such a short time. It was premature to make such plans, but Peterson decided to have Bohler personally thanked by the President when it was all over. The man had performed magnificently.

  Peterson had always regarded the murders as the biggest mystery: he now sat tapping a pencil against his teeth, accepting Bohler’s assessment of the simple answer. He smiled, as another thought came to him. The Libyans might have been effective against a single, unarmed operative, but they’d provide little opposition for the groups led by Bradley and Sharakov, if the need arose for an incursion. The CIA Director felt another stir of satisfaction. Having been so difficult for so long, it appeared possible that the operation might be resolved far more easily than he had anticipated.

  Peterson found the radio operators on the bridge, with Riley and Hilgare. The Executive Officer stayed where he was and the Captain and the two other men followed him back into the radio shack. Peterson decoded what was applicable about the perimeter protection and identity of the security controllers for transmission into the field, to Bradley and Sharakov, then composed a larger message for Washington, containing everything that Bohler had sent and adding his own interpretations and assessment. Finally he had Bohler’s message sent in its entirety to Petrov in Odessa. Peterson waited until everything had been cleared, so it was almost three hours before he left the radio room; he felt tired and hot as he followed Riley back to his cabin.

  “Successful?” queried Riley.

  “Incredibly so,” said Peterson. “Far better than I could ever have hoped.”

  “I’m glad,” said the Captain. “Pity these ships are dry.”

  “Too early yet for any celebrations,” said Peterson, cautiously.

  Two and a half thousand miles away, near the Georgian port of Odessa, Petrov sat studying what had arrived from the American warship, nodding as the American had done a few hours earlier at the completeness of the report.

  Petrov decided to send the American message intact, confident that immediately after it arrived, Litvinov would attempt to smear it in front of the Politburo. There was a meeting scheduled within two days, which allowed just the right amount of time for the man to commit himself. And then Petrov would send the duplicate account he had monitored from the telemetry satellite which, unknown to the Americans, he had had positioned over the complex to intercept all transmissions between Bohler and the American destroyer. This proved that the CIA Director had adhered strictly to their agreement and withheld nothing.

  Petrov began moving from the communications room towards the sun-washed verandah. With unconscious irony he decided it was comforting to know that he could trust Peterson.

  22

  They had changed the cassocks in N’Djamena, but Makovsky appeared just as uncomfortable in the priest’s collar, and constantly straightened and twisted his neck, running his fingers around the inner edge as if it were too tight. The collars were hot, Blakey conceded — but necessary, if the Africans were to recognize what they were supposed to be and spread the word through the villages and hut clusters through which they were jarring and jolting, in a perpetual mist of dust, on the Massakori bus.

  But was his function necessary? It had been easy in Washington and Vienna to give the assurances that had been demanded by the CIA Director. But cramped on a wooden seat, with animals and children scuffling at his feet and shyly smiling Africans using the shuddering movement of the vehicle as an excuse to touch him, the doubts crowded in on him. It was largely the effect of the defoliation, Blakey decided. They had come upon the first swathe just outside the capital and another section that had obliterated a maize and cotton field near the last town they had passed. It was still too early for the chemical to have acted on everything, so the affected areas drooped with decay. Another week, Blakey knew, and it would be utterly lifeless.

  Until now, Blakey had never had to confront a moral conflict so openly. He had been on station in London and Rome and then, during the civil war, in Beirut, and had never been required to do more than gather and communicate intelligence. There had been a certain cowardice in his refusal to face reality but he’d never thought of what he was doing as having any physical effect on another human being. But now he would have to hurt people. He had to explain away the pestilence which had apparently fallen from an empty sky and then — as if that were not enough — he had personally to do things that would disable and even kill … to destroy their crops and their livestock … to cause starvation … the baby clutching at this foot would never grow up to laugh and play as Samantha laughed and played in the well-fed safety of their Washington apartment. It might have been easier if he could have regarded them as enemies or opponents — people who would have injured him, if they’d got the chance. But they were innocent. The child groping at his foot, the tribally scarred woman sitting opposite or the wizened, crinkle-faced old man at his side hadn’t had any responsibility for allowing a rocket manufacturing complex into their country. But they had to suffer for it; they had to be maimed and crippled on the orders of men in air-conditioned offices thousands of miles away, men who would have sneered at the Africans around him and called them savages for grunting chants to bring rain or a good harvest or a boy child instead of a girl. They talked of balances of power. And global responsibility. Who, wondered Blakey, were the greater savages?

  It was late afternoon when they got to Massakori. The jeep had been arranged for them in advance by the American embassy in N’Djamena and hired in the name of the Catholic mission they were supposed to be representing. They loaded their stuff aboard and checked the additional fuel cans to ensure they had not been tampered with.

  “Hope this will be more comfortable than the bus,” said Makovsky. The public vehicle had had adjustable slats instead of windows and they were both coated with a fine red dust.

  “It will have achieved its purpose, spreading the news of our arrival,” said Blakey. Savagely he added, “Just as the defoliant seems to have achieved its purpose.”

  The Russian looked at him curiously. “You knew it was going to happen,” he said.

  “Being told in a luxury house in Vienna and then seeing it here on the ground are two very different things,” said the American.

  “Don’t let it be,” warned Makovsky.

  They set off with Blakey driving, going back along the route for about a mile and then striking off northwestwards towards Lake Chad. They reached their destination — a hamlet about ten miles away from Massakori — an hour before darkness. The heat had gone out of the sun and the cicadas were chattering from the brush all around. The cooking fires were alight, trailing their white smoke into the darkening sky. It was very peaceful. The hamlet was small, hardly more than three streets, all radiating from a central market area. It was here that they parked. The elders were grouped in a half-circle beneath a baobab tree which had been stripped of its scales for about fifteen feet from the base.

  “You are the priests?”

  In the greyness which precedes the complete blackness of the African night, Blakey had difficulty in seeing who had spoken; at least French meant there would be no communication difficulties.

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ve come from N’Djamena.”

  “We heard of your travelling.”

  Blakey identified the spokesman. He had an upright, almost aristocratic demeanor. The looseness of the white body cloth hung around him, making it difficult to decide whether he was fat or thin, tall or short.

  “I am Ndala,” said the man.

  A Muslim, guessed Blakey, noting the name and the clothes.

  “We seek rest in your town,” said Blakey, formally.

  “Why do you come?”

  “To spread the word of God,” said Blakey. Heaven forgive me for the hypocrisy, he thought.

  Blakey had expected a question about their denomination, but instead the African said: “You are welcome.”

  How much he had wanted this unknown man to reject them; he wanted something — anything — to delay them.

  “We are grateful.”

  It was Makovsky who spoke and the American half turned, surprised at the Russian’s accent: it was better than his.

  “This is a humble place,” apologized Ndala, in advance.

  “We are humble people who would be grateful for your kindness,” said Makovsky.

  “And we would make few demands,” said Blakey, indicating their supply-laden jeep. “We have food.”

  “You are welcome,” repeated the African, “both to the village and to my food.”

  “Thank you,” said Blakey.