At ten that evening, in his apartment overlooking the Thames, Sir Gerald Tarrant took a phonecall from Modesty Blaise. "Yes," he said quietly. "Fraser told me what he had done. I was very angry indeed, but then he gave me your ultimatum."

"No. Just my message telling you how I feel. It wasn't a threat to sever relations."

"Even so, after all I've put you through in the past I don't think I could bear to have you unable to forgive me for failing to tell you about Nash."

She said gently, "Well, that doesn't arise now. What are you going to do about Jack Fraser?"

"Nothing. I'm terrified of offending you."

He heard laughter in her voice. "I'm very glad about that, and now I need your help. There's a big old house in Cornwall called Poldeacon, perched on cliffs and quite a long way from the nearest village, which is called Mallowby. I'd be very glad if you could use your considerable resources to find out all you can about it, without letting it appear that inquiries are being made."

"That doesn't sound too onerous. When do you need this information?"

"Tomorrow morning would be very nice. I don't want to talk about it on the phone, but I'm not asking as a personal favour. It's to do with the hope I expressed to Fraser this morning, and which I'm sure he pa.s.sed on to you."

Tarrant said, "What? How can you possibly-?"

She broke in. "I know it's only a few hours since he told us, but we got lucky at that Prison Abolition function this evening. Can you come and see us tomorrow morning? Willie's here with me."

There was a brief silence, then Tarrant said, "Is there really a chance that you might save some Scandinavian bacon for me?"

"That's what we're hoping for. We'll expect you for breakfast."

"My dear... thank you."

Tarrant put down the phone and moved to gaze out of the window, torn between hope and fear. In time past he had used her ruthlessly, and knowing the extent of her abilities he felt a surge of hope that she might indeed save Hallenberg. But although he would never have confessed it, his affection for her now could not have been deeper if she had been his daughter, and it chilled his blood to think what might happen to her if she made the smallest mistake in going up against the men who had killed John Nash so horribly.

At halfpast eight next morning he sat down with Modesty and Willie to a cla.s.sic English breakfast served by her houseboy, Weng, and at nine moved with them into the big sittingroom overlooking Hyde Park. Modesty's hair was loose and tied back with a ribbon. Like Willie, she wore just a shirt and slacks, for they had been swimming in the pool below the penthouse block before Tarrant's arrival.

Now he said, "You're extremely civilised, banning all serious discussion during breakfast. I'm sure it enhances the digestion."

She gestured for him to take an armchair, and said, "I don't think as well as I might when I'm eating. That's probably because I enjoy it so much." She moved to another chair and picked up some embroidery on a tambourframe from a small table at her elbow, studying it for a moment with a frown before taking the threaded needle from where it had been lodged in the canvas.

Willie watched her start to work, seemed to understand some unspoken requirement, and sat down facing Tarrant. "Okay, Sir G., what've you got for us?"

Tarrant picked up the slim briefcase he had brought with him, opened it, and took out a photograph and a piece of paper, handing the photograph to Willie. "I had a man flown down to Cornwall last night. He had to get one or two people out of bed, but he managed to put together a good report on the situation. However, that picture and most of the background information were available from Ministry of Defence files."

Studying the photograph, Willie said, "This is Poldeacon?"

"And immediate surroundings. The picture isn't new, but the place hasn't changed in a century." Tarrant looked at the paper he held. "There's a wooded area that ends a couple of hundred yards from the front of the house. Cliffs drop down to a bay at the rear."

"Ideal place for 'em to be 'olding Hallenberg."

"Better than you can imagine, but we'll come to that in a moment. How did you and Modesty pinpoint this place?"

"Fraser told us Johnny Nash said the top man would be at that nutty do in Belgravia last night. He got us invitations and gave us the glove that was found with the body. It had the scent of a clerical gent called Bird, who was with another clerical gent called Mountjoy."

Tarrant stared. "Had the scent?"

"We've got an Aborigine friend with an ace hooter. He picked 'em out. We followed them, and they 'ad a good try at getting us crated like Johnny Nash. I don't know what the Church of England is coming to these days."

Tarrant said, "So you were blown?"

Willie nodded. "But they think we're crated and awaiting delivery to Poldeacon." He explained briefly what had happened at the empty hotel and how Tabby had been persuaded to tell what he knew. "So we reckon Poldeacon is where they've got Hallenberg, and the sooner we get 'im out the better. What does your report say about the place."

"A few years ago the Ministry of Defence were going to use it for one of their research laboratories. They built an outer wall round it and set up a radar alarm system. Then the idea fell through and the place became a white elephant," Tarrant looked up from the report, "until it was rented two months ago by a Mr Mountjoy. He has some ten men in residence there with him."

"Plus Hallenberg, that's for sure now. What's their cover, Sir G.?"

"Holy Orders. Mountjoy purports to have set the place up as a retreat for overworked clerics."

"Blimey. A whole team of the unG.o.dly playing at vicars?"

Tarrant shrugged. "Bizarre, I agree. But clever. And I've been saving the bad news, Willie. Poldeacon was built over the ruins of a medieval castle with the usual primitive sanitary facilities. In this case a vertical shaft drops down to a good way below sealevel, where there's an influx of sea through the workings of a tin mine that was abandoned in the last century. The effect is that anything dropped down the shaft is carried out to sea by an undertow." He put the piece of paper aside. "The shaft is capacious enough to accept a body, and is believed to have done so more than once in the past, so Hallenberg could be gone within a minute of their alarm system warning them of a raid. In these circ.u.mstances I don't see how we can get him out alive."

"You reckon they'll 'ave put all the radar circuits in working order?"

"Yes. Why else choose that place? They're very efficient people."

"And that's it? The lot?"

"It's all I can tell you."

"Ah, well." Willie got up and moved to stand gazing out of the great picture window. After a while Modesty sighed, held her embroidery out at arm's length to study it, and said, "I try. I really do try, but it looks awful. I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

Willie moved from the window, took the embroidery she held out for him, and examined it carefully. "It's the st.i.tches," he announced at last. "You do the st.i.tches wrong."

"Oh well, if that's all..."

She got up and moved to the window where Willie had been standing, holding her elbows as she looked absently out across the park. Tarrant drew breath to speak, caught Willie's warning shake of the head, and let the breath out quietly. A full minute pa.s.sed before she turned from the window, and now there was a sparkle in her eye. "Willie, can you get hold of the weird girl you were rubbing chests with at that gathering last night? The girl with the urgent glands?"

Tarrant saw sudden contentment in Willie as he put down the embroidery he had been wryly studying. "Sure, Princess. I've got 'er number."

Modesty said, "I think maybe she spoke to the vicars after we'd left, and blew us accidentally. But if she's got a black balloon she could be just what we want."

An hour before noon Willie was sitting with Lucy Fuller-Jones on a park bench and she was saying, "You do understand why I couldn't ask you to the flat, Willie?" She gazed sadly across the Thames. "I'm sure you're a very nice man, but it's with nice men that I don't quite trust myself."

Suppressing a powerful urge to take her by the ears and turn her head to face him, Willie said, "Sure. Fine. I love it 'ere in the park, Lucy. Love it. Okay? Now, did you listen to what I've just been telling you?"

Now she turned her head to regard him with large, doelike eyes. "Yes, of course I did, and it's a dreadful story, honestly, absolutely dreadful. How can people go around just killing other people like that? I mean, that poor Swedish man. I don't like to think about him."

Willie started to say, "Norwegian," then decided it didn't matter. Instead he said gently, "They 'aven't killed 'im yet, Lucy, and you don't have to think about 'im. Just help us get 'im out."

A touch of curiosity entered her gaze. "Are you a sort of policeman?"

"I'm sort of on their side."

She bit her lip, frowning in concentration. "Well... I know Daddy's frightfully keen on law and order, that's why he told me to go to that abolition thing to see what they were up to. I mean, he feels there are all sorts of people who ought to be hanged, and he's certainly been awfully sweet about buying me a new balloon, so I think I ought to."

"Ought to help?"

"Well yes, silly. It might be rather difficult but I'm sure we'll manage if you really can arrange transport and a launching team."

Willie offered up a silent prayer of thanks. "Anything you want, Lucy, including a military 'elicopter if need be. Anything."

She eyed him with anxiety. "But I won't be alone with you in the basket? Being up in a balloon is frightfully erotic, you know."

"We'll 'ave a chaperon. A girl. Honest."

She smiled brightly and stood up. "Well that's all right, then. I suppose we'd better hurry, hadn't we?"

He took her arm and began to walk briskly towards the park gate. "Yes. I expect Mr Hallenberg would like us to get a move on. He's due for the chop at dawn tomorrow."

She winced. "I'd rather not talk about him, Willie."

"All right. What do you do when you're not ballooning or meditating?"

"I go swimming a lot. Long distance swimming. It's much more lasting than cold showers."

Willie shook his head. "One day, Lucy," he said kindly, "I must 'ave a serious talk with you."

Two hours after sundown Tarrant stood in the narrow road that led through woods to Poldeacon. He was watching a jeep move slowly in reverse. A man holding a hand radio walked beside it with Fraser at his elbow. From a winch bolted to the floor behind the driver a thin wire cable ran out sideways from the jeep, rising at an angle of fortyfive degrees, vanishing into the moonlight above the woods.

The radio squawked. The man holding it spoke to the driver and the jeep stopped. The radio man spoke quietly into the instrument and a brief exchange with a female voice took place. When it was over, the radio man spoke to Fraser, who moved to join Tarrant by the car in which they had both travelled from the heliport at Plymouth. A great deal had been achieved in the last ten hours, and Tarrant was thankful that the government minister he answered to had used his authority forcefully during that time.

Fraser said, "Okay so far. They went up a thousand feet and the wind took them across the top of Poldeacon. They were winched back, but ended up a bit east of the place, so the jeep's just towed them west." He sniffed grudgingly. "I had that Fuller-Jones girl tabbed as a cardcarrying idiot, but she's been manoeuvring in three dimensions, fore and aft, laterally, up and down, and she's done a b.l.o.o.d.y good job. They're in position now and the wind's holding steady. Full moon, clear sky, and you can see a h.e.l.l of a way. I don't know whether that's good or bad."

A hundred feet above the roof of Poldeacon Modesty and watched with mingled surprise and respect as Lucy Fuller-Jones juggled with the burner and the hot air release valve. They were both in black combat rig: calflength boots, slacks, Willie with his shirt unb.u.t.toned for quick access to the twin knives sheathed in echelon on his chest, two small weighted wooden clubs clipped to his belt; Modesty with a tunic that fell to her thighs and covered the bolstered Colt .32, the kongo in a pocket, her hair tied back in a short club, a small haversack on one shoulder.

Lucy said, "Even if the wind doesn't veer, there's bound to be drift. I'll try to hold still, but you mustn't count on it, Willie."

"We know that, Lucy. No sweat."

Modesty said, "It would be nice if we could get Hallenberg out this way, Lucy, but if not we'll call in the cavalry."

"Oh, jolly good. What cavalry?"

"There's a squad of armed policemen standing by. Once we're in, and find Hallenberg, we should be able to keep him intact for ten minutes or so while they get here."

"Oh, I see. Jolly good."

In the glow of the burner Modesty saw Willie roll his eyes skyward. Lucy peered down, and the balloon sank gently towards the roof, which was partly gabled with flat areas between. At forty feet she said, "I don't think I can risk any lower."

Modesty dropped a light ropeladder over the edge of the basket. "That's fine, Lucy. You've done a great job." She swung a leg over and began to descend.

Lucy said thoughtfully, "Willie... have you known Modesty very long?"

"Quite a few years now."

"Oh. Well, I was just thinking, this sort of thing isn't very usual for a girl, is it? I mean, do you think this is her way of sort of sublimating her, you know, urges?"

Willie grinned and shook his head. "She doesn't believe in sublimating them, Lucy." He climbed over the edge of the basket and on to the ladder. At the bottom, ten feet above the roof, he hung by his hands and dropped beside Modesty, the balloon lifting as his weight was lost.

Above, Lucy adjusted a second time for the extra lift, then picked up the hand radio that hung from her neck. "This is me reporting," she said. "They've both landed safely."

On the roof, Modesty crouched by a door set in the stairs bulkhead that gave access from below. Willie watched as she probed gently in the keyhole with a lockpick. She shook her head, and he handed her a different probe from a set of six in a small leather wallet. Thirty seconds later the lock yielded, and when she eased the door open it made no sound.

She looked at Willie, saw him grimace in the moonlight, and could read his thoughts for they matched her own. Landing on the roof and getting into Poldeacon had been deemed that part of the operation which could most easily go wrong, yet it had all gone smoothly. From experience they both knew that when the hard parts went well it was likely that one of the easy parts would go sour on you. She shrugged, flickered an eyelid at him, and moved through the door.

For ten minutes they prowled silently through the dark top floor, using a pencil torch, seeking any indication of where Hallenberg might be held. They saw and heard nothing except distant music from below. Somebody was listening to a pop programme.

Three minutes later, on the floor below, they moved along a dark pa.s.sage illumined only by a light from the far end where it joined a wider pa.s.sage. At the corner Modesty took a small mirror on a thin metal arm from her haversack and edged it slowly out beyond the wall. Fifteen paces away a man in clerical wear sat in an easy chair facing a door with a light above it, reading a magazine.

She drew back, put her lips to Willie's ear and whispered, "One man guarding a room. Profile shot." He nodded, and took a sling from a thighpocket. Three slingshots were carried in a tube slotted into a narrow pocket down the seam of his slacks. Each was the size of a plum and was made of leadshot moulded in wax. Willie Garvin, ever fascinated by weaponry, had made a study of the sling and its usage from earliest times, and had discovered by long practice that it could be remarkably accurate.

He eased a shoulder and half his head round the corner, sighted the man in the chair, and started to spin the sling. After a moment or two, as expected, the whisper of noise or a glimpse of movement made the man turn his head. An instant later the shot took him squarely on the brow, just above the bridge of the nose, disintegrating as it struck home. Modesty was out in the wider pa.s.sage and running soundlessly, the kongo in her hand ready to follow up, but the man sagged back limply in his chair and lay still, the girlie magazine slipping from his hand.

As Willie came up she pulled the man into a half lying position and pushed an anaesthetic noseplug into one nostril. She was beginning to go through his pockets when Willie said softly, "The key's in the door, Princess. It's a red carpet caper so far."

She rolled her eyes, miming wariness at such good fortune, and moved to the door. It opened into a comfortable bedsitting room with a large alcove containing a bed. Curtains were drawn back on each side of the alcove. Opposite the door was a window set in a deep bay with a builtin cushioned windowseat. An iron grille covered the window and the outer shutters were closed. In one corner of the room was a small wardrobe, a chair beside it; in the centre a table with a tray bearing a meal of cold meats, cheese, tomatoes, bread rolls, and a pot of coffee.

At the table, pausing in the act of b.u.t.tering a roll, sat a tall greyhaired man with an air of quiet dignity who regarded his visitors with mild surprise.

Hallenberg. His photographs had been in every newspaper for the past few days. Willie closed the door, a p.r.i.c.kle of unease creeping up his spine. So they had found Hallenberg just like that. No snags, no setbacks. Very ominous.

Hallenberg said, "Yes?" and resumed b.u.t.tering his roll.

Modesty said, "Don't talk, please. Just come with us and try to move very quietly."

The man surveyed them both and clearly understood their presence but showed no sign of relief. He said, "Who are you?"

Willie thought, "Here it comes." This was the easy part going sour. He was much too experienced to offer any mental reproach to his second favourite female, Lady Luck. When she decided to torment you, you just had to smile at her whims. Resentment annoyed her deeply.

Modesty said, "Does it matter who prevents you from being murdered, Mr Hallenberg?"

He considered the question. Then, "Yes, I believe it does."

"You want credentials? Banker's references?"

Hallenberg put the roll on his sideplate and began to cut a piece of cheese. "Have you read any of my works, young woman?"

There was an edge to her voice as she said, "I'll start tomorrow. Will you stop eating and come with us now, please?"

He sighed regretfully. "If you had read my works, you would know that I deplore the ethos of opposing violence with violence. The men here have treated me with courtesy and respect. One of them guards that door. What have you done to him?"