She sat among the cups and saucers and the chattering coachloads of trippers from Oxford Street. She was drinking coffee and had lost count of how many cigarettes she had smoked.

He stopped opposite her table: a large young man, shiny and well-scrubbed, with a high complexion that looked as though he had never shaved in his life.

In his big pale hand he held an incongruous bowler hat.

'Sims,' he said. 'Miss Jenkinson? May I?' He sat down, placing the bowler on the table between them: 'You've already ordered? I'll have tea. Coffee makes me nervous.' He had a squeaky, sing-song voice that was out of tune. He looked at Judith and smiled: a genteel smile, yet sly and suggestive. She noticed that he was overweight and that his head seemed too small for his body.

'You know what this is all about?' she asked, to break the silence between them.

'Oh yes. Yes indeed I do.' He smiled again and sat waiting for his tea. 'What line of business are you in, Mr Sims?'

'Oh this and that. Public relations, mostly.' His tea arrived and he poured it with the care of an experienced woman.

'So you represent the firm of Metternich, Dettweiler?' She spoke with increasing impatience.

'In a manner of speaking.' He sat blowing on his tea. 'You want to purchase a certain item, I understand?'

She nodded. 'I a.s.sume you've been told the details? A certain aerial survey print-out which you were commissioned to have computerized in June.'

'And the area surveyed?'

'Mr Dettweiler and I have already discussed that.'

Sims looks at her blankly. 'I'm instructed to make an outright sale. Ten thousand pounds. COD.'

She stared past him, above the women's hats, at the appalling decor - all plastic 'leather' with bronzed gilt, in the style of up-dated twenties. She had known all along that this was the most likely 'rub', and that there was no way round it. Even if she sold the house - and even if her husband agreed - there'd hardly be enough left over after paying the mortgage. Of course, he'd talked about that money in Switzerland, but he had to go there first to touch it, and from what he'd said, by then it might be too late. Sims didn't look the type who would take a promissory note on a secret Swiss bank account, even if he could be trusted, which she doubted.

From her call to Computers Weekly, she'd learnt enough about Metternich, Dettweiler not to expect an easy deal: their interest in computers was only peripheral to their main activities, as middle-men for the French aviation industry, particularly on the military side - which, in less polite parlance, meant that they were arms-brokers. That explained their demand for a straight cash-deal across the table, with no messing about.

She suddenly felt very tired. She'd smoked too much, drunk too much at lunch, and now this odious flushed young man was trying to screw her for money which she couldn't possibly raise.

'You're putting me in a very difficult position, Mr Sims.' She lit another cigarette, 'As I thought I'd already explained, and as Mr Dettweiler appeared to understand, my clients cannot contract to purchase this material unseen. As it is, there are likely to be only a few areas of the survey which will be of interest to them - in connection with winning an urgent mining contract, you understand?'

Sims tasted his tea, and added a spoonful of sugar. 'Which areas would those be exactly?' he asked, in his high, precise voice.

She hesitated: wondered just how much he knew, how much he would guess, how readily Metternich, Dettweiler would pa.s.s the information back to whoever was controlling her husband's destiny, and blow whatever fragile 'cover' he * 267 had constructed for himself. The full danger of what she was doing had only just dawned on her: and if she hadn't been acting on Charles' urgent instructions, she would have fled from that tea-room, and from her oafish pink companion, then and there. Sims was sipping his tea with exasperating slowness. 'Of course, Miss Jenkinson, we might possibly be able to come to an arrangement.'

'Go on.'

'I always find that there are ways, and ways, of doing business.'

'Come to the point, please.'

'I was about to say,' he said, fingering the rim of his bowler hat, 'that if your clients are only interested in certain specific items of information' - he paused, with sinister emphasis - 'specific items, then perhaps I might be able to help you on - how shall we put it? - a strictly personal basis.' He drank the rest of his tea and leaned forward; he smelt of soap. 'My terms would be quite reasonable, under the circ.u.mstances.'

'Do you have access to the full print-out?'

He licked his lips and smiled: a horrid obsequious smile that was at the same time triumphant. 'Miss Jenkinson, may I be frank with you?'

'Please do.'

'Just let's say, I happen to know that this isn't an aerial mining-survey.

It's more in way of a flight-plan.'

'How do you know?'

'My employees specialize in aeronautics, not mining. So you will not think me impertinent if I make a guess? Your clients are interested in knowing the beginning and end of this flight-plan?'

'The end will be enough. The destination.'

*'The destination. Quite.' He was turning the edges of his bowler hat round in both hands now. 'I think that could be arranged without too much trouble. For two hundred pounds? Cash, of course. By this evening.'

'Very well.' It would mean drawing all the petty cash from Charles' shop; and if that wasn't enough, she could probably cash a cheque at a restaurant.

'Where do I meet you?'

'You know South Kensington? There's a bookshop on the side going up to the Exhibition Road. It's called Oppenheim's - it's open till seven on Wednesday evenings.

I'll meet you there at ten-to.'

She stood up. 'Thank you, Mr Sims, for the coffee.'

Judith Rawcliff had always been an observant girl, with a quick eye for detail, and an even quicker one for spotting the unusual or unexpected. She had first seen the blue Volvo outside the Hilton when she had left at lunchtime to walk to the Carlton Tower Hotel. There was just one man, who looked like a chauffeur waiting for someone.

She had seen it again afterwards, when she had hailed a taxi in Sloane Street.

It had kept behind them, at a leisurely distance, until she had reached the pub in Mount Street where she often had lunch, then it had disappeared.

Nothing very surprising so far, perhaps: Mayfair is a tight community, like awell-heeled village, where businessmen sometimes have their chauffeurs drive around during their employers' extended luncheons in order to bypa.s.s the parking restrictions.

But now here it was again, waiting at the lights on the Edgware Road, as she drove out of the side street where she had left her car during her visit to the c.u.mberland Hotel. The same man was at the wheel, as far as she could see.

She kept 'behind him, drawing into the outside lane; and as the next set of lights went - green, she executed a neat illegal U-turn. She raced back into the perilous scrum round Marble Arch, and was sworn at foully by a taxi-driver and two boys in a van, as she swept round into the Bayswater Road. She had an insight now into the magnetic attraction that poor Charles felt for this kind of thing. No wonder he was prepared to do it for fifty thousand pounds!

She turned up right at Lancaster Gate, round the hotel and crossed back over Bayswater Road into the park. Pa.s.sing the Serpentine her mirror showed clear behind. Then she ran into a sluggish line of traffic leading up to Prince's Gate.

. 269 At her next glance in the, mirror she saw the Volvo four car; behind.

This time she felt a slow dumb terror. What was she going to do.? More important, what was the man in the car behind going to do? If she went to the police, what would she tell them? She had no definite proof, beyond her own certainty Then she thought of the awful 'Sims and her appointment with him at 6.50. She guessed that once the man in the car saw them meet for the second time - she was now convinced that he must have seen them together at the c.u.mberland Hotel - he would know that she was in possession of incriminating material.

She had just entered the top end of Exhibition Road, when she had a crash - or, to be more exact, she b.u.mped into a taxi in front of her. The driver was a young c.o.c.kney, obviously fresh to the job; he was no match for Judith's coolly concealed frenzy. Both had pulled over to the side, and she had managed to get her little car into a s.p.a.ce against the kerb. The traffic moved round them, and among it was the blue Volvo.

The taxi driver stood inspecting his scarred paintwork, complaining that he had to pay the first fifty pounds himself plus loss of earnings while the damage was repaired. It was the tired ritual argument, during which the police did not appear. Meanwhile, the blue Volvo had gone.

Judith had a sudden change of heart. She offered to pay him fifty pounds, spot cash, if he drove her to Charles's wine-merchants' shop.

He relented and agreed.

There was no sign of the Volvo all the way to Fulham. Toby Hyde-Smith broke off in the middle of trying to sell a couple of Iranian students some over-priced Beaujolais. He hailed her with a superfluous gesture: 'Madame!

While the boss is away, the mice will play. What can I do for you, Mrs Rawcliff?'

He had only 89 cash in the till. She took it all and told him he'd have to shut up shop: he was going to have to give her a lift - urgent business, on her husband's behalf.

It was just gone 5.30. She decided on Chelsea Rare Books, at the corner of the Kings Road and Beaufort Street, where her husband had a long-standing account. Hyde-Smith got rid of the Persian's, and together they made it through the evening rush-hour, with just three minutes to spare before the shop closed at six. The proprietor, who dealt mostly in cheques, had only 47 in cash. Judith had 23 of her own. Toby Hyde-Smith, with enormous relish, advanced her the remaining fifty, boasting with bogus nonchalance that he had 'cleaned up' at the Clermont last night.

With no difficulty she persuaded him to run her back to South Kensington, where she spent the extra 9 on groceries and household goods in the supermarket under the station arcade. A woman walking with shopping bags never attracts attention, she persuaded herself; but she was still keeping a keen lookout for the blue Volvo. The thought had occurred to her that whoever her pursuer was might have changed cars, or that there might even be several, operating in relays: but she was now too tired to care anymore.

She reached the bookshop several minutes early. It had SALE pasted across the windows and most of the stuff was at half-price: big colour volumes on the history of steam-engines and tanks in World War Two and Soviet air-power in pictures. She found a book on animals for Tom, and began to fret that she was going to be late for the baby-minder. Nor was she going to have much time to get Tom to bed, before her husband telephoned again, at eight o'clock.

'Miss Jenkinson.' He loomed beside her, his vivid pink face staring down at her. He had not bothered to remove his bowler. 'You have the money?'

'Yes. Yes, I have.' He'd caught her off balance and she fumbled for a moment with her bag. The cash was in a confusion of five and ten pound notes, with a few singles thrown in; she had not thought of arranging them in their correct denominations. 'It's all here - two hundred, as we agreed.' At the same time she felt every browsing eye turned to watch them.

He took the bundle of money, without even attempting to check the amount. A man b.u.mped into them both, carrying a book on vintage cars. 'I should count it if I were you,' she said defiantly.

He stuffed the notes inside his jacket. 'It looks all right to me.'

'And the information?'

He took a plain vellum envelope from his side pocket.

She tore it open. On a sheet of bank-paper, folded double, were typed the words: Sa'al, Kaur El Audhilla, People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.

He tipped his bowler. 'I hope that is satisfactory? I went to some trouble to get it.'

'I'm sure you did. Thank you, Mr Sims.'

She paid for Tom's animal book and left, just as they were closing the shop.

Five minutes later she reached her car, where she had left it up Exhibition Road, and drove back to Battersea, collecting Tom from the baby minder on the way.

She had already decided what she would do. During their first months of marriage she and Charles had mixed with the motley and not always desirable social residue of his bachelor days. One of the more spectacular reprobates, for whom she had always retained a sneaking affection, was one Frank Smollett, a Fleet Street lag of indefatigable resource and experience who had survivedemployment by almost all the national newspapers. He had the manners of a hog and the nose of a ferret; and there were few tremors on the official grapevine that Smollett somehow, somewhere, didn't hear about. But he was redeemed by one surprising virtue - he was discreet, when he had to be. 'Protecting his sources', was how he put it. This time Judith intended to use him as a source.

The names which she had bought for 200 from Sims meant nothing to her: but then she'd been more or less expecting that. Computers, with their arid world of printouts and feedbacks and interfaces, were her domain. International affairs, and their unseen tentacles, belonged to Frank Smollett and his kind.

Otherwise, all she could do was sit and wait for that d.a.m.n husband of hers to ring at eight o'clock. It had gone 7.30 now. He'd better not be late.

She remembered the Volvo that afternoon, and shivered. She ought to turn the central heating up. It was cold and very lonely in the house, with only Tom upstairs.

Suchard had had a trying day. Not that the work had been arduous: on the contrary, there had been an embarra.s.sing lack of it, except to keep tabs, through Addison, on the Special Branch's surveillance of Mrs Charles Rawcliff.

The rest had been left to the private machinations of the Head of Department.

All day Suchard had been aware of secret meetings, usually with only two or three senior personnel present. What was known in the Department as the 'Magic Circle'. Officials and their confidential secretaries had hurried between the inner sanctums - those preferred few who were in the know maintaining a prudent privacy, while those excluded, to disguise their ignorance, aped an air of furtive conspiracy.

Suchard was among the latter. In times like these he was discreetly but cruelly reminded of his true place - among the odds and sods, the other ranks.

They had allowed him to cover up two murders, b.u.g.g.e.r the Yard about, let the whole ugly business hatch under their very noses - his in particular before they had brought down the shutters and put on the muzzle, padlock and all.

Suchard knew that it was useless to protest. Already, over the past twenty-four hours, he had watched the regular cables arriving on his desk - particularly from Western Europe and the Middle East - becoming noticeably fewer, and sc.r.a.ppier and more ambiguous in content, until he felt sure they were being doctored before reaching him. Codes had also been changed, without explanation; and files removed or marked for the eyes of Head of Department and the Cabinet Office only. But at least he did not have to endure his ignorance in solitude. Plenty of others seemed to be in the same leaky boat.

By afternoon, of that long wintry Wednesday, he had begun receiving pained calls from his opposite numbers in the Foreign Office, complaining that their own cables were going astray, and even accusing him of being responsible.

Meanwhile, the annexe in Grosvenor Square appeared to have shut up shop since noon; and the French were being even more sulky and b.l.o.o.d.y-minded than usual.

Brussels, of course, knew nothing and probably didn't even care.

But what worried Suchard most was that he had lost all contact with the Minister. Even his most urgent calls were now being stalled by some unknown secretary: leaving him. as the lights came on, to ponder the Minister's warning, over the map of Eritrea: that if the whole thing blew up, and the archangels got egg all over their faces, it would be Suchard's fastidious head that would roll. And all because he had carried on regardless, in the line of blind unquestioning duty. His one real task that day had been performed on the personal instructions of the Head. It was one in which Suchard was the acknowledged master: that of the official leak. Though in this case, no more than a dribble. Lunch at one of his favourite restaurants in Charlotte Street, where he entertained a tame Fleet Street editor, with a whisper over the cheese. Nothing confirmed, mind - probably no more than a loose tongue wagging out of the War House. If anyone brought it up at Prime Minister's Question Time, it would be denied. Just a whiff of rumour, and the official 'denial' would be regurgitated on to several million British breakfast tables - but not before the damage had been done.

Suchard was now convinced that something very big and unusual was going on, or they wouldn't go to the lengths of planting such an explosive cover-story. It was to satisfy certain people in the field, so they said. And it was implied that at the last moment the front-line troops might baulk at their orders, unless they were given reasons. Though G.o.d knows, it was a high price to pay - threatening to inflame an international crisis over a remote desert country 'of which we know nothing'.

Suchard could already see the sub-editors sharpening their pencils: SOVIET NUCLEAR THREAT TO RED SEA. . . RUMOURED PLUTONIUM PLANT IN DESERT HIDEAWAY. .

RECKLESS MOVE.. .COME OFF IT, IVAN! WHAT IS BRITAIN GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?.

Pluto, the evil guru, the lamp-lighter of perverted science. Hints of contaminated waste; the stench of another, greater Three Mile Island; the earth's atmosphere poisoned for a thousand years.

All grist to the mill. A divided tribal state, Marxist dictatorship, Soviet infiltration, political a.s.sa.s.sinations - one recently in London, within spitting distance of Hyde Park -violent, unstable, 'not one of us.' And it was further reported that they were using East German scientists. The ideal bogeymen in the English psyche. It would take more than a Government statement to make this one lie down in a hurry!

But by early evening - well before the first editions went to press - the rumours had already started. Suchard himself heard a wild whisper that it was all a plot by the French, a final broadside to sink Britain with the EEC. Even the soundest minds seemed to be growing soft in the fever of speculation.

w.i.l.l.y Skate, for instance - who could usually be counted on to know most things - had quite lost his scholarly Detachment and a.s.sured Suchard, solemnly over the open phone, that it was all something being got up by the Zionists.

America reneging in the Middle East, a new Palestinian threat in the wake of Afghanistan and Iran, with a ma.s.sive back-up from the Soviet Union.

And now this shock-horror rubbish about Yemen. Somebody was playing pretty fast and loose with all of them, and Suchard did not like it one bit. He wrote, in his flowery hand: Acquiesce: to agree tacitly:-not object: to accept. To pa.s.s by on the other side, hear no evil, speak no evil. . . G.o.d help us! Or perhaps it should be Insha allah - Allah akbar! G.o.d be willing, for G.o.d is great!

Suchard was not a sentimentalist, and he had never been impeded by ideals, which he saw as a vain luxury. He preferred to think of himself as an intellectual pragmatist, an enlightened cynic, if only because 'intellectual'

and 'cynic' were held to be pejoratif by the Anglo-Saxon races, among whom Suchard did not count himself one. His job was dirty and demanding, and above all flexible. Unlike the sewageworker and the dustman, he had to be able to know, by a wink and a nod, which pile of faeces was to be removed, which left to fester in the national interest. At six o'clock he locked up his papers and went home. Tonight he was going to get quietly, deeply drunk.

Four.

The room was small and bare, chilly with air-conditioning. [Through the double-glazed windows rows of civil aircraft, (belonging to most of the Arab national airlines, were drawn limp like slim silver fish seen through water.

'You mad b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Ryderbeit said, sinking his hooked face on to his arms.

'You know what you've just done, don't you? These crowds out there are pilgrims going to the Hadj -the pilgrimage to Mecca. Buzzing them is like c.r.a.pping on the steps of Buckingham Palace on Coronation Day.'