I said, 'I went into his room and spoke with him just before the explosion. He said I was to come back in fifteen minutes. Right after that the damned thing exploded.'

'Let me get this straight. You spoke with Johnson in his room a few minutes before he died?'

'He called from the bathroom.'

Brody said, 'The bathroom door was closed? You didn't see him?' He tugged his nose as if in deep thought.

'That's right.' I began to understand what was going on in Brody's mind. He waited a long time. I suppose he was deciding how much to tell me.

Eventually Brody said, 'When that voice told you to come back in fifteen minutes there were two men in the bathroom. Johnson was probably just about to be murdered.'

'I see,' I said.

'I don't think you see at all,' said Brody.

'Who was Thurkettle working for?'

'He's a renegade. He's been a KGB hit man for two years. We've lost at least four men to him but this is the first time he's come so close to home. Johnson and Thurkettle knew each other well. They'd worked together back in the old days.'

'That's rough,' I said.

Brody couldn't keep still. He suddenly stood up and tucked his shirt back in to his trousers. 'Damn right it is. I'll get that bastard if it's the last thing I do.'

'So he didn't die as the result of the explosion?'

'You worked that out did you?' said Brody sarcastically. He went over to the sink and turned to look at me, leaning his back against the draining board.

'Thurkettle murdered Johnson and after that blew his head off with explosive. Why? To destroy evidence? Or was Johnson too smart to go for the razor bomb? Was Thurkettle caught switching razors? Did he kill Johnson then use the bomb with a timing device?' Brody still staring at me gave a contemptuous little smile. That way he wouldn't get spattered with brains and blood.'

Posh Harry had regained his customary composure by this time. Still holding his glass of fizzy water he went over to where Joe Brody was lounging against the kitchen unit and said, 'You'd better level with him, Joe.'

Brody looked at me but said nothing.

Harry said, 'If you want the Brits to help they have to know the way it really happened.'

Brody, speaking very slowly and deliberately, said, 'We think Thurkettle killed Johnson and then blew his head off to destroy evidence. But the guy who told you he was Johnson was really Thurkettle.'

'The hell it was!' I said softly as the implications hit me.

Brody enjoying my consternation added, The dead body you saw in the bathroom was the man who spoke with you on the terrace.'

'I see.'

'You don't see much, Samson old buddy,' said Brody. I'd earned that rebuke: I should have looked more closely at the dead body on the floor.

Posh Harry said, Thurkettle changed identity with his victim on a previous occasion. It had us real puzzled for ages.'

'So what are you going to do about it, Bernard?' said Brody.

'I'll stick with the soap and water shaves,' I said. Brody scowled. I got to my feet to show them that I wanted to leave. He turned away and leaned across the sink to prise open the slatted blind and look out of the window. There was a minuscule yard and a white-washed wall and large flower-pots in which some leafless stalks struggled for survival. From the front of the house, through the double-glazing, came the traffic noise: worse now that the end of the working day was so close.

'Don't forget the Kalashnikov,' said Posh Harry.

Joe Brody was still looking at the yard. He seemed not to have heard.

I went upstairs to get my parcel. Harry came with me and added a few snippets to what I knew about Thurkettle. Other US government departments, resentful at the way the CIA had got Thurkettle released from prison and provided with false documentation, had proved singularly uncooperative now that he had in Harry's words 'run amok'. The CIA had sought a secret indictment from a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia and had it thrown out of court on the grounds of lack of identification. An application to the Justice Department had also failed and so had the attempt to have Thurkettle's citizenship revoked. Harry explained that there was now a desperate need to link Thurkettle with a crime. Everyone – by which I suppose he meant Brody – had been hoping that my evidence would supply the needed link. Until it was obtained Thurkettle was thumbing his nose at them and walking free.

'I still don't get it,' I said. 'If you find out why Thurkettle blew Johnson away things might become clearer.'

'We know why,' said Posh Harry smoothly. 'Johnson had the goods on him.'

'On Thurkettle?'

'That was Johnson's assignment. They were buddies. Joe Brody told Johnson to find him and get pally. Last week Johnson phoned Brody and confirmed that Thurkettle was peddling narcotics. He couldn't say much on the phone but he said he had enough evidence to put Thurkettle in front of a grand jury.'

'But Thurkettle was a jump ahead of all concerned.'

'Joe Brody blames himself.'

'Narcotics.'

'The prevailing theory in Grosvenor Square,' said Harry, 'is that Thurkettle blew poor old Kleindorf away too.'

'Why would he do that?'

'I was hoping you'd tell me. We think Thurkettle is doing business with London Central.' He laughed in a way that said it might be a joke. I decided not to get angry: I was too old to get angry twice in one day.

I nodded and thanked him for lunch and felt pleased that I hadn't mentioned Tessa's new friend with his rim beard and no moustache. They would have been all over George and Tessa. Anyway by now he might have shaved it off.

We talked for a few minutes more and then I said goodbye to Posh Harry, and went home. I hadn't brought the car into town that day, I was using the train. Standing all the way in the shabby compartment I had a chance to reflect on what had happened. Had I been set up, I wondered? Brody's fury had been all too convincing and Posh Harry's reaction to it could not have been entirely feigned. But had the powerful Martinis, and the big lunch with lots to drink, been a way of getting me softened up for Brody's grilling? And to what extent had Dicky guessed what I was walking into?

15

I'd known 'Uncle' Silas all my life. He'd been my father's boss from a time before I was born. I remembered him in Berlin when I was a child. He was young Billy's godfather and distantly related to my mother-in-law.

He had long since retired from the Department and he now lived at his farm in the Cotswold hills. He was old and becoming more exasperating every time I saw him but I knew there had been times when I'd exasperated him more than he ever had me. To look truth right in the eye I suppose I'd only kept my job this long because my father had made good friends; and Uncle Silas was one of them.

So when I had a phone call from an agitated Mrs Porter, his housekeeper, and was told that Silas Gaunt was seriously ill and asking for me, I went to him. I didn't ask for permission, or tell Dicky I needed a day off, or even send a message to the office. I went to him.

The day began with unabating heavy rain and the wet roads persuaded me to drive cautiously. It was a long drive and so I had plenty of time to reflect upon this precipitate action during the journey. As I got to the Cotswolds the hills were lost in grey silken skeins of mist, and the trees on the estate were entangled in it. 'Whitelands' consisted of about six hundred acres of fine agricultural land and an incongruous clutter of small buildings. There was a magnificent tithe barn, large enough to hold the parson's tribute of corn, and stabling for six horses. The tan-coloured stone farmhouse itself had suffered a couple of hundred years of depredations by philistine occupiers, so that there was a neo-Gothic tower and an incongruous wing that housed the large billiards room.