"What do you mean?" he said.

"TQS I82I3I, James R. Huntingdon, Colder Greens and Beirut, currently and wrongly known as Joseph Rank Smith is who I mean."

I guess I'm the irresponsible idiot you mean," Smithy said. "It would be nice to have introductions all round."

"Dr. Marlowe," I said. He kept the same carefully expressionless face.

"Four years and four months ago when we took you from your nice cosy job as Chief Officer in that broken-down Lebanese tanker we thought you had a future with us. A bright one. Even four months ago we thought the same thing. But here, now, I'm very far from sure."

Smithy smiled but his heart wasn't in it. "You can't very well fire me on Bear Island."

I can fire you in Timbuctoo if I want to," I said matter-of-factly. "Well, come on.

"You might have made yourself known to me." Smithy sounded aggrieved and I supposed I would have been also in his position. I was beginning to guess. I didn't know there was anyone else aboard apart from Me.

"You weren't supposed to know. You weren't supposed to guess. You were supposed to do exactly what you were told. Just that and no more. You remember the last line in your written instructions? They were underlined. A quotation from Milton. I underlined it."

"'They also serve who only stand and wait,"" Smithy said. "Corny, I thought it at the time."

"I've had a limited education," I said. "Point is, did you stand and wait?

Did you hell. Your orders were as simple and explicit as orders could ever be. Remain constantly aboard the Morning Rose until contacted. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the vessel even to step ashore. Do not, repeat not, attempt to conduct any investigations upon your own, do not seek to discover anything, at all times behave like a stereotype merchant navy officer. This you failed to do. I wanted you aboard that ship, Smithy.

I needed you aboard-now. And where are you-stuck in a Godforsaken hut on Bear Island. Why in God's name couldn't you follow out simple instructions?"

"OK. My fault. But I thought I was alone. Circumstances alter cases, don't they? With four men mysteriously dead and four others pretty close to death-well, damn it all, am I supposed to stand by and do nothing?

Am I supposed to have no initiative, not to think for myself even once?"

"Not till you're told to. And now look where you've left me-one hand behind my back. The Morning Rose was my other hand and now you've deprived me of it. I wanted it on call and close to hand every hour of the day and night. I might need it at any time-and now I haven't got it. Is there anybody aboard that blasted trawler who could maintain position just offshore in the darkest night or bring her up the Sor-Hamna in a full blizzard? You know damn well there's not. Captain Imrie couldn't bring her up the Clyde on a midsummer's afternoon."

"You have a radio with you then? To communicate with the trawler?"

"Of course. Built into my medical case-no more than a police job, but range enough."

"Be rather difficult to communicate with the Morning Rose's transceiver lying in bits and pieces."

"How very true," I said. "And why is it in bits and pieces? Because on the bridge you started talking freely and at length about shouting for help over that selfsame radio and whistling up the NATO Atlantic forces if need be, while all the time some clever-cuts was taking his case out on the bridge wing drinking in every word you said. I know, there were fresh tracks in the snow-well, my tracks, but re-used, if you follow me. So, of course, our clever-cuts hies himself off. and gets himself a heavy hammer."

I could have been more circumspect at that, I suppose. You can have my apologies if you want them but I don't see them being all that useful at this stage."

"I'm hardly in line myself for a citation for distinguished services, so we'll leave the apologies be. Now that you're here-well, I won't have to watch my back so closely."

"So they're on to you-whoever they are?"

"Whoever they are are unquestionably on to me." I told him briefly all I knew, not all I thought I knew or suspected I knew, for I saw no point in making Smithy as confused as myself. I went on: "Just so we don't act at cross-purposes, let me initiate any action that I-or we-may think may have to be taken. I need hardly say that that doesn't deprive you of initiative if and when you find yourself or think you find yourself physically threatened. In that event, you have my advance permission to flatten anybody."

"That's nice to know." Smithy smiled briefly for the first time. "It would be even nicer to know who it is that I'm likely to have to flatten. It would be even nicer still to know what you who are, I gather, a fairly senior Treasury official, and I, whom I know to be a junior one, are doing on this goddamned island anyway."

"The Treasury's basic concern is money, always money, in one shape or other and that's why we're here. Not our money, not British money, but what we call international dirty money and all the members of the Central Banks co-operate very closely on this issue."

"When you're as poor as I am, " Smithy said, "there's no such thing as dirty money."

"Even an underpaid civil servant like yourself wouldn't touch this lot.

This is all ill-gotten gains, illegal loot from the days of World War II.

This money has all been earned in blood and what has been recovered of it-and that's only a fraction of the total-has almost invariably been recovered in blood. Even as late as the spring of I945 Germany was still a land of priceless treasures: by the summer of that year the cupboard was almost entirely bare. Both the victors and the vanquished laid their sticky fingers on every imaginable object of value they could clap eyes on-gold, precious stones, old masters, securities-German bank securities issued forty years ago are still perfectly valid-and took off. in every conceivable direction. I need hardly say that none of those involved saw fit to declare their latest acquisitions to the proper authorities." I looked at my watch. `Your worried friends are scouring Bear Island for you-or a very small part of it, anyway. A half-hour search. I'll have to bring in your unconscious form in about fifteen minutes."

"It all sounds pretty dull to me," Smith said. "All this loot, I mean. Was there much of it?"

"It all depends what you call much. It's estimated that the Allies-and hen I say "Allies" I mean Britain and America as well as the much maligned Russians-managed to get hold of about two-thirds of the total.

That left the Nazis and their sympathisers with about a paltry one-third and the conservative estimate of that one-third-conservative, Smithy is that it amounts to approximately њ350,000,000. Pounds sterling, you understand."

"A thousand million all told?"

"Give or take a hundred million."

"That childish remark about this being a dull subject. Strike it off. The record."

"Granted. Now this loot has found its way into some very odd places indeed. Some of it, inevitably, lies in secret numbered bank accounts. Some of it-there is no question about this-lies in the form of specie in some of the very deepest Austrian alpine lakes and has so far proved irrecoverable. I know of two Raphaels in the cellar gallery of a Buenos Aires millionaire, a Michelangelo in Rio, several Hals and Rubens in the same illegal collection in New York and a Rembrandt in London. Their owners are either people who have been in, were in or are closely connected to the governments or armed forces of the countries concerned: there's nothing the governments concerned can do about it and there are no signs that they're particularly keen to do anything about it anyway, they themselves might be the ultimate beneficiaries. As lately as the end of I970 an international cartel went on the market with њ30,000,000 worth of perfectly valid German securities issued in the "30s, approaching in turn the London, New York, and Zurich markets but the Federal Bank of Germany refused to cash those until proper owner identification was established: the point is that it's an open secret that those securities were taken from the vaults of the Reichsbank in I945 by a special Red Army unit who were constituted as the only legalised military burglars in history.