Circus

Alistair Maclean

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1975 then in paperback by Fontana 1977

Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 1975

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020 Cover photograph © Stephen Mulcahey

Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins eBooks.

Source ISBN: 9780006167358

EPub Edition © January 2009 ISBN: 9780007289233

Version: 2020-07-23

Dedication

To Juan Ignacio

Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten About the Author By Alistair MacLean About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

‘If you were a genuine army colonel,’ Pilgrim said, ‘instead of one of the most bogus and unconvincing frauds I’ve ever seen, you’d rate three stars for this. Excellently done, my dear Fawcett, excellently done.’

Pilgrim was the great-grandson of an English peer of the realm and it showed. Both in dress and in speech he was slightly foppish and distinctly Edwardian: subconsciously, almost, one looked for the missing monocle, the Old Etonian tie. His exquisitely cut suits came from Savile Row, his shirts from Turnbull and Asser and his pair of matched shotguns, which at 4000 dollars he regarded as being cheap at the price, came, inevitably, from Purdeys of the West End. The shoes, regrettably, were hand-made in Rome. To have him auditioned for the screen part of Sherlock Holmes would have been superfluous.

Fawcett did not react to the criticism, the praise or the understated sartorial splendour. His facial muscles seldom reacted to anything – which may have been due to the fact that his unlined face was so plump it was almost moon-shaped. His bucolic expression verged upon the bemused: large numbers of people languishing behind federal bars had been heard to testify, frequently and with understandable bitterness, that the impression Fawcett conveyed was deceptive to the point of downright immorality.

Half-hooded eyes deep-sunk in the puffy flesh, Fawcett’s gaze traversed the leather-lined library and came to rest on the sparking pine fire. His voice wistful, he said, ‘One would wish that promotion were so spectacular and rapid in the CIA.’

‘Dead men’s shoes, my boy.’ Pilgrim was at least five years younger than Fawcett. ‘Dead men’s shoes.’ He regarded his own Roman foot briefly and with some satisfaction, then transferred his attention to the splendid collection of ribbons on Fawcett’s chest. ‘I see you have awarded yourself the Congressional Medal of Honour.’

‘I felt it was in keeping with my character.’

‘Quite. This paragon you have unearthed. Bruno. How did you come across him?’

‘I didn’t. Smithers did, when I was in Europe. Smithers is a great circus fan.’

‘Quite.’ Pilgrim seemed fond of the word. ‘Bruno. One would assume that he has another name.’

‘Wildermann. But he never uses it – professionally or privately.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never met him. Presumably Smithers never asked him either. Would you ask Pele or Callas or Liberace what their other names are?’

‘You class his name with those?’

‘It’s my understanding that the circus world would hesitate to class those names with his.’

Pilgrim picked up some sheets of paper. ‘Speaks the language like a native.’

‘He is a native.’

‘Billed as the world’s greatest aerialist.’ Pilgrim was a hard man to knock off his stride. ‘Daring young man on the flying trapeze? That sort of thing?’

‘That, too. But he’s primarily a high-wire specialist.’

‘The best in the world?’

‘His fellow professionals are in no doubt about it.’

‘If our information about Crau is correct, he’d better be. I see he claims to be an expert in karate and judo.’

‘He has never claimed anything of the kind. I claim it for him – rather, Smithers does, and as you know Smithers is very much an expert in those matters. He watched Bruno having a work-out down-town this morning in the Samurai club. The instructor there is a black belt – they don’t come any higher in judo. By the time Bruno had finished with him – well, I understand the instructor disappeared with the general air of a man about to write out his resignation on the spot. Smithers said he hadn’t seen Bruno chopping people around in karate: he has the feeling he wouldn’t like to, either.’

‘And this dossier claims that he is a mentalist.’ Pilgrim steepled his fingers in the best Holmes fashion. ‘Well, good for Bruno. What the devil is a mentalist?’

‘Chap that does mental things.’

Pilgrim exercised a massive restraint. ‘You have to be an intellectual to be an aerialist?’

‘I don’t even know whether you have to be an intellectual – or even intelligent – in order to be an aerialist. It’s beside the point. Practically every circus performer doubles up and does one, sometimes even two jobs in addition to his speciality in the actual arena. Some act as labourers – they have mountains of equipment to move around. Some are entertainers. Bruno doubles as an entertainer. Just outside the circus proper they have a showground, fairground, call it what you will, which is used to separate the arriving customers from their spare cash. Bruno performs in a small theatre, just a collapsible plywood job. He reads minds, tells you the first name of your great-grandfather, the numbers of the dollar bills in your pockets, what’s written or drawn inside any sealed envelope. Things like that.’

‘It’s been done. Audience plants and the hocus-pocus of any skilled stage magician.’

‘Possibly, although the word is that he can do things for which there is no rational accounting and which professional conjurers have failed to reproduce. But what interests us most is that he has a totally photographic memory. Give him an opened double-spread of, say, Time magazine. He’ll look at it for a couple of seconds, hand it back, then offer to identify the word in any location you select. You say to him that you’d like to know what the third word in the third line in the third column on the right-hand page is and if he says it’s, say, “Congress” then you can lay your life it is “Congress”. And he can do this in any language – he doesn’t have to understand it.’

‘This I have to see. A propos, if he’s such a genius, why doesn’t he concentrate exclusively on stage work? Surely he could make a fortune out of that, much more than by risking his life turning somersaults up there in the low cloud?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. According to Smithers, he’s not exactly paid in pennies. He’s the outstanding star in the outstanding circus on earth. But that wouldn’t be his real reason. He’s the lead member of a trio of aerialists called “The Blind Eagles”, and without him they’d be lost. I gather they are not mentalists.’

‘I wonder. We can’t afford excessive sentiment and loyalty in our business.’

‘Sentiment, no. Loyalty – to us – yes. To others, yes also. If they are your two younger brothers.’

‘A family trio?’

‘I thought you knew.’

Pilgrim shook his head. ‘You called them The Blind Eagles?’

‘No undue hyperbole, Smithers tells me. Not when you’ve seen their act. They may not quite be up in the wild blue yonder or hanging about, as you suggest, in the low cloud, but they’re not exactly earthbound either. On the upswing of the trapeze they’re eighty feet above terra firma. Whether you fall from eighty feet or eight hundred, the chances of breaking your neck – not to mention most of the two hundred-odd bones in your body – are roughly the same. Especially if you’re blindfolded and can’t tell up from down, while your body can’t tell you exactly where up is and most certainly can’t locate down.’

‘You’re trying to tell me – ’

‘They wear those black silk cotton gloves when they take off from one trapeze to another. People think there may be some advanced electronic quirk in those gloves, like negative poles attracting positive poles, but there isn’t. Just for better adhesion, that’s all. They have no guidance system at all. Their hoods are entirely opaque but they never miss – well, obviously they never miss or they would be one Blind Eagle short by this time. Some form of extra-sensory perception, I suppose – whatever that may mean. Only Bruno has it, which is why he is the catcher.’

‘This I have to see. And the great mentalist at work.’

‘No problem. On the way in.’ Fawcett consulted his watch. ‘We could leave now. Mr Wrinfield is expecting us?’ Pilgrim nodded in silence. A corner of Fawcett’s mouth twitched: he could have been smiling. He said: ‘Come now, John, all circusgoers are happy children at heart. You don’t look very happy to me.’

‘I’m not. There are twenty-five different nationalities working for this circus, at least eight of them mid-or eastern European. How am I to know that someone out there might not love me, might be carrying a picture of me in his back pocket? Or half a dozen of them carrying pictures of me?’

‘The price of fame. You want to try disguising yourself.’ Fawcett surveyed his own colonel’s uniform complacently. ‘As a lieutenant-colonel, perhaps?’

They travelled to down-town Washington in an official but unidentifiable car, Pilgrim and Fawcett in the back, the driver and a fourth man in the front. The fourth man was a grey, balding anonymity of a person, raincoated, with a totally forgettable face. Pilgrim spoke to him.

‘Now, don’t forget, Masters, you better be sure that you’re the first man on that stage.’

‘I’ll be the first man, sir.’

‘Picked your word?’

‘Yes, sir. “Canada.”’

Dusk had already fallen and ahead, through a slight drizzle of rain, loomed an oval, high-domed building festooned with hundreds of coloured lights that had been programmed to flicker on and off in a pre-set pattern. Fawcett spoke to the driver, the car stopped and, wordlessly and carrying a magazine rolled up in one hand, Masters got out and seemed to melt into the gathering crowd. He had been born to melt into crowds. The car moved on and stopped again only when it had reached as close to the building entrance as possible. Pilgrim and Fawcett got out and passed inside.

The broad passageway led directly to the main audience entrance of the big top itself – a misnomer, as the days of the great canvas structures, at least as far as the big circuses were concerned, had gone. Instead they relied exclusively on exhibition halls and auditoriums, few of which seated less than ten thousand people, and many considerably more: a circus such as this had to have at least seven thousand spectators just to break even.

To the right of the passageway glimpses could be caught of the true back-stage of the circus itself, the snarling big cats in their cages, the restlessly hobbled elephants, the horses and ponies and chimpanzees, a scattering of jugglers engaged in honing up their performances – a top-flight juggler requires as much and as constant practice as a concert pianist – and, above all, the unmistakable and unforgettable smell. To the rear of the area were prefabricated offices and, beyond those, the rows of changing booths for the performers. Opposite those, in the far corner and discreetly curved so as to minimize the audience’s view of what was taking place back-stage, was the wide entrance to the arena itself.

From the left of the passageway came the sound of music, and it wasn’t the New York Philharmonic that was giving forth. The music – if it could be called that – was raucous, tinny, blaring, atonal, and in any other circumstances could have been fairly described as an assault on the eardrums: but in that fairground milieu any other kind of music, whether because of habituation or because it went so inevitably with its background, would have been unthinkable. Pilgrim and Fawcett passed through one of the several doors leading to the concourse that housed the side-show itself. It covered only a modest area but what it lacked in size it clearly compensated for in volume of trade. It differed little from a hundred other fairgrounds apart from the presence of a sixty-by-twenty, garishly-painted and obviously plywood-constructed structure in one corner. It was towards this, ignoring all the other dubious attractions, that Pilgrim and Fawcett headed.

Above the doorway was the intriguing legend: ‘The Great Mentalist’. The two men paid their dollar apiece, went inside and took up discreet standing positions at the back. Discretion apart, there were no seats left – The Great Mentalist’s fame had clearly travelled before him.

Bruno Wildermann was on the tiny stage. Of little more than average height, and of little more than average width across the shoulders, he did not look a particularly impressive figure, which could have been due to the fact that he was swathed from neck to ankle in a voluminous and highly-coloured Chinese mandarin’s gown, with huge, billowing sleeves. His aquiline, slightly swarthy face, crowned by long black hair, looked intelligent enough, but it was a face that was more pleasant than remarkable: if he passed you in the street you would not have turned to look after him.

Pilgrim said, sotto voce: ‘Look at those sleeves. You could hide a hutchful of rabbits up them.’

But Bruno was not bent on performing any conjuring tricks. He was confining himself strictly to his advertised role as a mentalist. He had a deep carrying voice, not loud, with a trace of a foreign accent so slight as to make its source of origin unidentifiable.

He asked a woman in the audience to think of some object then whisper it to her neighbour: without hesitation Bruno announced what the object was and this was confirmed.

‘Plant,’ said Pilgrim.

Bruno called for three volunteers to come to the stage. After some hesitation three women did so. Bruno sat all three at a table, provided them with foot-square pieces of paper and envelopes to match and asked them to write or draw some simple symbol and enclose them in the envelopes. This they did while Bruno stood facing the audience, his back to them. When they had finished he turned and examined the three envelopes lying on the table, his hands clasped behind his back. After only a few seconds he said: ‘The first shows a swastika, the second a question mark, the third a square with two diagonals. Will you show them to the audience please?’

The three women extracted the cards and held them up. They were undeniably a swastika, a question mark and a square with two diagonals.

Fawcett leaned towards Pilgrim: ‘Three plants?’ Pilgrim looked thoughtful and said nothing.

Bruno said: ‘It may have occurred to some of you that I have accomplices among the audience. Well, you can’t all be accomplices because then you wouldn’t bother to come and see me, even if I could afford to pay you all, which I can’t. But this should remove all doubt.’ He picked up a paper plane and said: ‘I’m going to throw this among you and although I can do lots of things I can’t control the flight of a paper plane. Nobody ever could. Perhaps the person it touches would be good enough to come to the stage.’

He threw the paper plane over the audience. It swooped and darted in the unpredictable fashion of all paper planes, then, again in the fashion of all paper planes, ended its brief flight in an ignominious nose-dive, striking the shoulder of a youth in his late teens. Somewhat diffidently he left his seat and mounted the stage. Bruno gave him an encouraging smile and a sheet of paper and envelope similar to those he’d given the women.

‘What I want you to do is simple. Just write down three figures and put the sheet inside the envelope.’ This the youth did, while Bruno stood with his back to him. When the paper was inside the envelope Bruno turned, but did not even look at the paper far less touch it. He said: ‘Add the three numbers and tell me what the total is.’

‘Twenty.’

‘The numbers you wrote down were seven, seven and six.’

The youth extracted the paper and held it up for the audience to see. Seven, seven and six it was.

Fawcett looked at Pilgrim, who had now adopted a very thoughtful expression indeed. Clearly, if Bruno were not genuine then he was either a consummate magician or an extraordinarily devious character.

Then Bruno announced his most difficult feat of all – that of displaying that he was possessed of a photographic memory, that of identifying, given the location, of any word in a double-spread of any magazine, irrespective of language. Masters left nothing to chance or the impetuousness of any eager beaver who might care to forestall him for he was on stage even before Bruno had finished his explanation. Bruno, slightly lifting amused eyebrows, took the opened magazine from him, glanced at it briefly, handed it back and looked interrogatively at Masters.

Masters said: ‘Left page, second column, let me see now, seven lines down, middle word.’ He looked at Bruno with a half-smile of triumphant expectation.

Bruno said: ‘Canada.’

The half-smile vanished. Masters’s nondescript features seemed to fall apart then he shrugged his shoulders in genuine disbelief and turned away.

Outside, Fawcett said: ‘I hardly think that Bruno is likely to have the inside track on the CIA. Convinced?’

‘Convinced. When does the performance start?’

‘Half an hour.’

‘Let’s go and watch him on the high wire or whatever. If he’s half as good out there – well, he’s our man.’

The exhibition hall that housed the three-ring circus was completely full. The air was alive with music, this time more than tolerable music from a very competent orchestra, an air that was charged with tension and excitement and anticipation, with thousands of young children transported into an enchanted fairyland – almost, indeed, to the extent their grandparents were. Everything glittered, but it was no cheap tinsel glitter, but a background that seemed the integral and inevitable part of everything a circus should be. Apart from the dun-coloured sand in the three rings, a dazzling rainbow of colours caught the eye even more than the music the ear. Circling the ring were beautiful and beautifully dressed girls on the most outrageously caparisoned elephants and if there was any colour in the spectrum that the designer had omitted it wasn’t apparent to the eye. In the rings themselves clowns and pierrots vied with each other in the ludicrousness of their antics and the ridiculousness of their costumes, while both of them vied with the tumblers and the stately procession of stilt-walkers. The audience watched it all in fascination – albeit with an element of impatience, for this spectacle, magnificent as it was, was only the warm-up, the prelude to the action to come. There is no atmosphere in the world quite like that of the charged atmosphere in the big top just before the performance begins.

Fawcett and Pilgrim sat together in excellent viewing seats, almost opposite the entrance of the main ring. Fawcett said: ‘Which is Wrinfield?’

Without appearing to do so, Pilgrim indicated a man sitting only two seats away in the same row. Immaculately clad in a dark blue suit, matching tie and white shirt, he had a lean, thoughtful, almost scholarly face, with neatly parted grey hair and pebble glasses.

‘That’s Wrinfield?’ Pilgrim nodded. ‘Looks more like a college professor to me.’

‘I believe he was once. Economics. But bossing a modern circus is no longer a seat of the pants job. It’s big business and running it requires corresponding intelligence. Tesco Wrinfield is a highly intelligent man.’

‘Maybe too intelligent. With a name like that and on a job like this it’s going to be – ’

‘He’s a fifth-generation American.’

The last of the elephants left the arena and then, to the accompaniment of a blare of trumpets and the suddenly amplified effects of the orchestra, a golden chariot, drawn by two magnificently adorned black stallions, erupted into the arena at full gallop, followed by a dozen horsemen. From time to time these horsemen retained some form of contact with their horses, but for the most part performed a series of acrobatic feats as spectacular as clearly suicidal. The crowd yelled and cheered and applauded. The circus had begun.

The performance that followed more than bore out the circus’s claim that it had no peer in the world. It was superbly arranged and superbly presented and, as was to be expected, it numbered among its acts some of the best in the world: Heinrich Neubauer, an all but incomparable trainer with an uncanny power over a dozen very unpleasant Nubian lions; his only equal, Malthius, who treated the same number of even more unpleasant Bengal tigers as if they were kittens; Carraciola, who had no trouble at all in making his chimpanzees look a great deal more intelligent than he was; Kan Dahn, billed as the strongest man in the world, which, on the basis of his extraordinary one-handed feats on the high wire and trapeze while seemingly unencumbered by the presence of several attractive young ladies who clung to him with a touching degree of devotion, he might well have been; Lennie Loran, a high-wire-walking comedian, who would have made any insurance agent in the country jump on his pen; Ron Roebuck, who could perform feats with a lasso that a rodeo cowboy wouldn’t even dare dream about; Manuelo, a knife-thrower who could extinguish a lit cigarette at twenty feet – with his eyes bandaged; the Duryans, a Bulgarian teeterboard team who made people shake their heads in wonder; and a dozen other acts, ranging from aerial balletists to a group who climbed up tall ladders and balanced there entirely unsupported while they threw Indian clubs at each other.

After an hour or so of this Pilgrim said graciously: ‘Not bad. Not bad at all. And here, I take it, is our star turn.’

The lights dimmed, the orchestra played suitably dramatic if somewhat funereal music, then the lights came on again. High up on the trapeze platform, with half a dozen coloured spotlights trained on them, stood three men clad in sparkling sequinned leotards. In the middle was Bruno. Without his mandarin’s gown he now looked singularly impressive, broad-shouldered and hard and heavy muscled, every inch the phenomenal athlete he was reputed to be. The other two men were fractionally slighter than he. All three were blindfolded. The music died away, and the crowd watched in eerie silence as the three men pulled hoods over their blindfolds.

Pilgrim said: ‘On balance, I think I would prefer to be down here.’

‘That’s two of us. I don’t think I want to look.’

But look they did as The Blind Eagles went through their clearly impossible aerial routine – impossible because, apart from the occasional roll of a solitary drum in the orchestra, they had no means of knowing where each other was, of synchronizing their sightless movements. But not once did a pair of hands fail to smack safely and securely into another and waiting pair, not once did an outstretched pair of hands appear even remotely liable to miss a silently swinging trapeze. The performance lasted for all of an interminable four minutes and at the end there was another hushed silence, the lights dimmed a second time and almost the entire audience was on its feet, clapping and shouting and whistling.

Pilgrim said: ‘Know anything about his two brothers?’

‘Vladimir and Yoffe, I believe they’re called. Nothing. I thought this was going to be a one-man job.’

‘It is. And Bruno has the motivation? The incentive?’

‘If any man ever had. I was making enquiries when I was in eastern Europe time before last. I couldn’t find out much from our man there, but enough, I think. There were seven of the family in the circus act – dad or mum more or less retired – but only those three made it over the border when the secret police closed in. I don’t even know why they closed in. That was six, maybe seven years ago. Bruno’s wife is dead, that’s for sure, there are witnesses who will testify to that – well, they would, if they didn’t live in the part of the world they do. He’d been married two weeks. What happened to his youngest brother, his father and his mother, nobody knows. They just disappeared.’

‘Along with a million others. He’s our man, all right. Mr Wrinfield is willing to play. Will Bruno?’

‘He’ll play.’ Fawcett was confident, then looked thoughtful. ‘He’d better. After all those weeks of trouble you’ve been to.’

The lights brightened. The Blind Eagles were now on a wire platform some twenty feet above ground, the wire itself stretching to another platform on the far side of the centre ring. Both other rings were empty and there was no other performer in sight except one – and he was on the ground. There was no music and among the crowd the silence was absolute.

Bruno straddled a bicycle. Across his shoulders was strapped a wooden yoke while one of his brothers held a twelve-foot steel pole. Bruno edged the bicycle forward until the front wheel was well clear of the platform and waited until his brother had placed the pole in slots across the yoke. It was totally insecure. As Bruno moved off, bringing both feet on to the pedals, the brothers caught hold of the pole, leaned forward in perfect unison and swung themselves clear of the platform until, again in perfect unison, they hung suspended at the full length of their arms. The wire sagged noticeably, but Bruno didn’t: slowly and steadily he pedalled away.

For the next few minutes, balanced partly by himself but mainly by the perfect timing of Vladimir and Yoffe, Bruno cycled backwards and forwards across the wire while the brothers went through a series of controlled but intricate acrobatics. On one occasion, while Bruno remained perfectly steady for seconds at a time, the brothers, necessarily moving with the same immaculate synchronization, gradually increased their pendulum swing until they were doing hand-stands on the pole. The same extraordinary hush remained with the audience, a tribute that wasn’t entirely due to the performance they were witnessing: directly below them as they performed were Neubauer and his twelve Nubian lions, the head of every one of which was turned yearningly upwards.

At the end of the performance the silence in the audience was replaced by a long and far from silent collective sigh of relief, then once again came the same standing ovation, as heartfelt and prolonged as the one that had gone before.

Pilgrim said: ‘I’ve had enough – besides, my nerves can’t take any more. Wrinfield will follow me. If he brushes by you on the way back to his seat that means that Bruno is willing to talk and that you’re to follow him at a discreet distance at the end of the show. Wrinfield, I mean.’

Without making any sign or looking in any particular direction, Pilgrim rose leisurely and left. Almost at once Wrinfield did the same.

A few minutes later the two men were closeted in one of Wrinfield’s offices, a superbly equipped secretary’s dream, albeit somewhat compact. Wrinfield had a much larger if ramshackle office where most of his work was normally carried out just outside the arena itself; but that did not possess a cocktail bar as this one did. On the principle that he forbade anyone to have liquor on the circus site proper, Wrinfield accordingly denied himself the privilege also.

The office was but a tiny part of a complex and beautifully organized whole that constituted the mobile home of the circus. Every person in the circus, from Wrinfield downwards, slept aboard this train except for some independent diehards who insisted on dragging their caravans across the vast spaces of the United States and Canada. On tour the train also accommodated every single performing animal in the circus: at the end, just before the brake-van, were four massive flat-cars that accommodated all the bulky equipment, ranging from tractors to cranes, that were essential for the smooth operation of the circus. In all, it was a minor miracle in ingenuity, meticulous planning and the maximum utilization of available space. The train itself was a monster, over half a mile in length.

Pilgrim accepted a drink and said: ‘Bruno’s the man I want. You think he will accept? If not, we may well cancel your European tour.’

‘He’ll come, and for three reasons.’ Wrinfield’s speech was like the man himself, neat, precise, the words chosen with care. ‘As you’ve seen, the man doesn’t know what fear is. Like all newly naturalized Americans – all right, all right, he’s been naturalized for over five years but that rates as yesterday – his patriotism towards his adopted country makes yours and mine look just that little shabby. Thirdly, he’s got a very big score to settle with his former homeland.’

‘Now?’

‘Now. And then we speak to you?’

‘I’m the last person you speak to. For both our sakes you want to be seen with me as little as possible. And don’t come within a mile of my office – we have a whole battalion of foreign agents who do nothing but sit in the sun and watch our front door all the time. Colonel Fawcett – he’s the uniformed person who was sitting beside me and the chief of our East European Field Operations – knows a great deal more about it than I do.’

‘I didn’t know that you carried uniformed personnel in your organization, Mr Pilgrim.’

‘We don’t. That’s his disguise. He wears it so often that he’s more readily recognizable in it than in civilian clothes, which is why nearly everyone calls him “the Colonel”. But never underestimate him.’

* * *

Fawcett waited until the end of the show, dutifully applauded, turned and left without glancing at Wrinfield: Wrinfield had already given him the signal. Fawcett left the circus and made his way through the darkness and the steadily increasing rain, moving slowly so that Wrinfield might not lose him. Eventually he came to the large, dark limousine in which he and Pilgrim had arrived and climbed into the back seat. A dark figure was pushed up against the far corner, his face as deeply in shadow as possible.

Fawcett said: ‘Hello. My name’s Fawcett. I hope that no one saw you arrive?’

The driver answered: ‘No one, sir. I was keeping a pretty close look-out.’ He looked out through the rain-spattered windows. ‘It’s not much of a night for other people to be minding other people’s business.’

‘It isn’t.’ He turned to the shadowy figure. ‘A pleasure to meet you.’ He sighed. ‘I have to apologize for all this comic-opera cloak-and-dagger business, but I’m afraid it’s too late now. Gets in your blood, you know. We’re just waiting for a friend of yours – ah, here he comes now.’ He opened the door and Wrinfield got in beside them. What little could be seen of his face didn’t display a great deal in the way of carefree rapture.

‘Poynton Street, Barker,’ Fawcett said.

Barker nodded in silence, and drove off. Nobody spoke. Wrinfield, more than a little unhappy, kept turning restlessly in his seat and finally said: ‘I think we’re being followed.’

Fawcett said: ‘We’d better be. If not the driver of that car would be out of a job tomorrow. That car’s following us to make sure that no other car follows us. If you follow me, that is.’

‘I see.’ From the tone of his voice it was questionable whether Wrinfield did. He became increasingly unhappy as the car moved into what was very close to a slum area and unhappier still when it drew up in an ill-lit street outside a sleazy walk-up apartment block. He said, complainingly: ‘This isn’t a very nice part of town. And this – this looks like a house of ill-fame.’

‘And a house of ill-fame it is. We own it. Very handy places, these bordellos. Who, for instance, could ever imagine that Tesco Wrinfield would enter one of those places? Come inside.’

CHAPTER TWO

For such an unsalubrious place in such an unsalubrious area the sitting-room was surprisingly comfortable, although the person who had furnished it would appear to have had a fixation about the colour russet, for the sofa, armchairs, carpet and heavily discreet curtains were all of the same colour or very close to it. A smokeless coal fire – for this was a smokeless area – did its best to burn cheerfully in the hearth. Wrinfield and Bruno occupied an armchair apiece: Fawcett was presiding over a cocktail cabinet, one of the portable kind.

Bruno said carefully: ‘Tell me again, please. About this anti-matter or whatever you call it.’

Fawcett sighed. ‘I was afraid you might ask me that. I know I got it right first time, because I’d memorized what I had to say and just repeated it parrot fashion. I had to because I don’t really know what it’s all about myself.’ Fawcett handed round drinks – a soda for Bruno – and rubbed his chin. ‘I’ll try and simplify it this time round. Then maybe I’ll be able to get some inklings of understanding myself.

‘Matter, we know, is made up of atoms. There are lots of things that go to make up those atoms – scientists, it seems, are becoming increasingly baffled about the ever-increasing complexity of the atom – but all that concerns our simple minds are the two basic constituents of the atom, electrons and protons. On our earth – in the universe, for that matter – electrons are invariably negatively charged and protons positively charged. Unfortunately, life is becoming increasingly difficult for our scientists and astronomers – for instance, it has been discovered only this year that there are particles, made of God knows what, that travel at many times the speed of light, which is a very upsetting and distressing concept for all those of the scientist community – and that was one hundred per cent – who believe that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. However, that’s by the way.

‘Some time ago a couple of astronomers – Dicke and Anderson were their names – made the inconvenient discovery, based on theoretical calculations, that there must exist positively charged electrons. Their existence is now universally accepted, and they are referred to today as positrons. Then, to complicate things still further, the existence of anti-protons was discovered – this was in Berkeley – again electrically opposite to our protons. A combination of positrons and antiprotons would give rise to what is now termed “anti-matter”. That anti-matter does exist no serious scientists seriously dispute.

‘Nor do they dispute that if an electron or positron or proton and anti-proton collided or both sets collided the results would be disastrous. They would annihilate each other, giving off lethal gamma rays and creating, in the process, a considerable local uproar and a blast of such intense heat that all life within tens or perhaps hundreds of square miles would be instantaneously wiped out. On this scientists are agreed. It is estimated that if only two grams of anti-matter struck our planet on the side out-facing the sun the result would be to send the earth, with all life immediately extinct, spinning into the gravitational orbit of the sun. Provided, of course, it didn’t disintegrate immediately on contact.’

‘A delightful prospect,’ Wrinfield said. He did not have the look of a convert about him. ‘No offence, but it sounds like the most idle science-fiction speculation to me.’

‘Me, too. But I have to accept what I’m told. Anyway, I’m beginning to believe it.’

‘Look. We don’t have any of this anti-matter stuff on earth?’

‘Because of anti-matter’s unpleasant propensity for annihilating all matter with which it comes into contact, that should be fairly obvious.’

‘Then where does the stuff come from?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ Fawcett hadn’t intended to be irritable, he just disliked treading the murky waters of the unknown. ‘We think ours is the only universe. How do we know? Maybe there lies another universe beyond ours, maybe many. It seems, according to latest scientific thinking, that if there are such universes, there is no reason why one or more should not be made of anti-matter.’ Fawcett paused gloomily. ‘I suppose if any intelligent beings existed there they would consider our universe as being composed of anti-matter. Of course, it could have been some rogue material thrown off at the moment of creation of our own universe. Who’s to say?’

Bruno said: ‘So the whole matter is speculation. It’s just a hypothesis. Theoretical calculations, that’s all. There is no proof, Colonel Fawcett.’

‘We think there is.’ He smiled. ‘Forgive the use of the “we”. What could have been, in the terms of human lives, a disaster of the first magnitude occurred in a happily unpopulated area of northern Siberia in 1908. When Russian scientists got around to investigating this – almost twenty years later – they discovered an area of over a hundred square miles where trees had been destroyed by heat: not fire but by instantaneous incineration which, in many cases, led to the petrification of trees in the upright position. Had this extraordinary phenomenon occurred over, say, New York or London, they would have become blackened cities of the dead.’

‘Proof,’ Bruno said. ‘We were speaking of proof, Colonel.’

‘Proof. Every other known damage caused to the earth by the impact of bodies from outer space has, without explanation, been caused by meteors. There was no trace of the meteor that might have caused this Siberian holocaust and no signs of any mark upon the ground where the meteor might have crashed into it; when meteors crashed into Arizona and South Africa they left enormous craters in the ground. The now accepted and indeed inevitable conclusion is that Siberia was struck by a particle of anti-matter with a mass of something of the order of one hundredth of a millionth of a gram.’

There was a considerable silence, then Wrinfield said: ‘Well, we have already covered this. Second time round it’s a bit clearer, but not much. So?’

‘Some dozen years ago there was scientific speculation as to whether the Russians had discovered the secret of anti-matter but this was dismissed out of hand because – well, because of anti-matter’s unpleasant propensity of annihilating all matter with which it comes into contact, the creation, harnessing and storage of it was impossible.

‘Was impossible. What if it were possible or about to become possible? The nation that held this secret could hold the world to ransom. Comparatively, nuclear weapons are inoffensive toys for the amusement of little toddlers.’

For a long minute no one spoke, then Wrinfield said: ‘You would not be talking in this fashion unless you had reason to believe that such a weapon exists or could exist.’

‘I have reason so to believe. This possibility has obsessed the intelligence agencies of all the modern world for some years now.’

‘Obviously this secret is not in our hands, or you wouldn’t be telling us all this.’

‘Obviously.’

‘And it wouldn’t be in the hands of a country such as Britain?’

‘That would give us no cause for anxiety.’

‘Because when the chips are down they would be allies with responsible hands?’

‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’

‘Then this secret resides – if it does reside anywhere – in the hands of a country which, when the chips were down, would be neither friendly nor responsible?’

‘Precisely.’ Pilgrim, Fawcett reflected, had warned him not to underrate Wrinfield’s intelligence. Wrinfield said slowly: ‘Pilgrim and I have already made some tentative arrangements, come to preliminary agreements. You will know that. But he never told me any of this.’

‘The time wasn’t right.’

‘So now it is?’

‘Now or not at all.’

‘Of course, you want this secret or formula or whatever?’

Fawcett began to revise his opinion of Wrinfield’s intelligence. ‘What do you think?’

‘What makes you think our hands are more responsible than those of a score of other nations?’

‘I’m a paid employee of the United States government. Mine is not to reason why.’

‘It will not have escaped you that that was precisely the reasoning adopted by the Gestapo and the SS in Germany during the Second World War or by Russia’s KGB since?’

‘It has not escaped me. But I don’t think the analogy is very exact. The United States doesn’t really want more power – we have already overkill capacity. Can you imagine what would happen if this secret fell into the hands of, say, the certifiable leaders of a couple of the new Central African republics? We simply think we have more responsible hands than most.’

‘We have to hope we have.’

Fawcett tried to conceal his long slow exhalation of relief. ‘That means you’ll go along.’

‘I’ll go. A moment ago you said the time was now right to tell me. Why?’

‘I hope I was right in saying I was right.’

Bruno stirred. ‘What do you want of me, Colonel?’

There were times, Fawcett was aware, when there was little point in beating about the bush. He said: ‘Get it for us.’

Bruno rose and poured himself another soda. He drank it all down then said: ‘You mean, steal it?’

‘Get it. Would you call taking a gun away from a maniac stealing?’

‘But why me?’

‘Because you have unique gifts. I can’t discuss what type of use we would propose making of those gifts until I have some sort of answer. All I know is that we are pretty certain that there is only one formula in existence, only one man who has the formula and is capable of reproducing it. We know where both man and formula are.’

‘Where?’

Fawcett didn’t hesitate. ‘Crau.’

Bruno didn’t react in at all the way Fawcett had expected. His voice, when he spoke, was as bereft of expression as his face. Tonelessly, he repeated the word: ‘Crau.’

‘Crau. Your old home country and your old home town.’

Bruno didn’t reply immediately. He returned to his chair, sat in it for a full minute, then said: ‘If I do agree, how do I get there? Illegal frontier crossing? Parachutes?’

Fawcett made a heroic – and successful – effort to conceal his sense of exultation. Wrinfield and Bruno – he’d got them both in a matter of minutes. He said matter-of-factly: ‘Nothing so dramatic. You just go along with the circus.’

This time Bruno seemed to be beyond words, so Wrinfield said: ‘It’s quite true, Bruno. We – that is, I – have agreed to co-operate with the government on this issue. Not that I had any more idea, until this moment, what the precise issue involved was. We are going to make a short tour of Europe, mainly eastern Europe. Negotiations are already well advanced. It’s quite natural. They send circus acts, dancers, singers to us: we’re just reciprocating.’

‘The whole circus?’

‘No, naturally not. That would be impossible. Just the cream of the cream, shall we say.’ Wrinfield smiled faintly. ‘One would have imagined that to include you.’

‘And if I refuse?’

‘We simply cancel the tour.’

Bruno looked at Fawcett. ‘Mr Wrinfield’s lost profits. This could cost your government a million dollars.’

‘Our government. We’d pay a billion to get hold of this.’

Bruno looked from Fawcett to Wrinfield then back to Fawcett again. He said abruptly: ‘I’ll go.’

‘Splendid. My thanks. Your country’s thanks. The details – ’

‘I do not need my country’s thanks.’ The words were cryptical but without offence.

Fawcett was slightly taken aback, sought for the meaning behind the words then decided he’d better not. He said: ‘As you will. The details, as I was about to say, can wait until later. Mr Wrinfield, did Mr Pilgrim tell you that we’d be grateful if you would take along two additional people when you go abroad?’

‘He did not.’ Wrinfield seemed somewhat miffed. ‘It would appear that there are quite a number of things that Mr Pilgrim did not tell me.’

‘Mr Pilgrim knows what he is doing.’ Now that he had them both Fawcett took off the velvet gloves but still remained urbane and polite. ‘There was no point in burdening you with unnecessary details until we had secured the co-operation of both you gentlemen. The two people in question are a Dr Harper and an equestrienne, Maria. Our people. Very important to our purpose. That, too, I’ll explain later. There are some things I must first discuss urgently with Mr Pilgrim. Tell me, Bruno, why have you agreed to do this? I must warn you that it might be extremely dangerous for you and if you’re caught we’ll have no option but to disown you. Why?’

Bruno shrugged. ‘Who’s to say why? There can be many reasons that a man can’t explain even to himself. Could be gratitude – America took me in when my own country threw me out. There are people there to whom I would like to perform as great a disservice as they did to me. I know there are dangerous and irresponsible men in my old country who would not hesitate to employ this weapon, if it exists. And then you say I am uniquely equipped for this task. In what ways I don’t yet know, but if it is the case how could I let another go in my place? Not only might he fail in getting what you want but he could well be killed in the process. I wouldn’t like to have either of those things on my conscience.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Just say it’s a bit of a challenge.’

‘And your real reason?’

Bruno said simply: ‘Because I hate war.’

‘Mmm. Not the answer I expected, but fair enough.’ He stood up. ‘Thank you, gentlemen, for your time, your patience and above all your cooperation. I’ll have the cars take you back.’

Wrinfield said: ‘And yourself? How do you get to Mr Pilgrim’s office?’

‘The madame here and I have an understanding of sorts. I’m sure she’ll provide me with some form of transport.’

Fawcett had keys in his hand when he approached Pilgrim’s apartment – Pilgrim both worked and slept in the same premises – but he put them away. Pilgrim, most uncharacteristically, had not even locked his door, he hadn’t even closed it properly. Fawcett pushed the door and went inside. The first partly irrational thought that occurred to him was that he could have been just that little bit optimistic when he had assured Wrinfield that Pilgrim knew what he was doing.

Pilgrim was lying on the carpet. Whoever had left him lying there had clearly a sufficiency of ice-picks at home, for he hadn’t even bothered to remove the one he’d left buried to the hilt in the back of Pilgrim’s neck. Death must have been instantaneous, for there wasn’t even a drop of blood to stain his Turnbull and Asser shirt. Fawcett knelt and looked at the face. It was as calmly expressionless as it had habitually been in life. Pilgrim had not only not known what hit him, he hadn’t even known he’d been hit.

Fawcett straightened, crossed to the phone and lifted it.

‘Dr Harper please. Ask him to come here immediately.’

Dr Harper wasn’t exactly a caricature or a conceptualized prototype of the kindly healer, but it would have been difficult to visualize him in any other role. There was a certain medical inevitability about him. He was tall, lean, distinguished in appearance, becomingly grey at the temples and wore a pair of horn-rimmed pebble glasses which lent his gaze a certain piercing quality which might have been illusory, intentional or just habitual. Horn-rimmed pebble glasses are a great help to doctors; the patient can never tell whether he is in robust health or has only weeks to live. His dress was as immaculate as that of the dead man he was thoughtfully examining. He had his black medical bag with him but wasn’t bothering to use it. He said: ‘So that’s all you know about tonight?’

‘That’s all.’

‘Wrinfield? After all, he was the only one who knew. Before tonight, I mean.’

‘He knew no details before tonight. No way. And he’d no opportunity. He was with me.’

‘There’s such a thing as an accomplice?’

‘No chance. Wait until you see him. His record’s immaculate – don’t you think Pilgrim spent days checking? His patriotism is beyond question, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s got a “God Bless America” label sewn on to his undershirt. Besides, do you think he would have gone to the time and trouble of arranging to take his whole damn circus – well, most of it – to Europe if he had intended to do this? I know there’s such a thing as erecting a façade, laying down a smokescreen, dragging red herrings – you name it – but, well, I ask you.’

‘It’s not likely.’

‘But I think we should have him and Bruno up here. Just to let them see what they’re up against. And we’ll have to notify the admiral immediately. Will you do that while I get hold of Barker and Masters?’

‘That’s the scrambler there?’

‘That’s the scrambler.’

Dr Harper was still on the phone when Barker and Masters arrived, Barker the driver and Masters the grey man who had confronted Bruno on the stage. Fawcett said: ‘Get Wrinfield and Bruno up here. Tell them it’s desperately urgent but don’t tell them anything about this. Bring them in by the rear tunnel. Be quick!’

Fawcett closed but did not lock the door behind them as Dr Harper hung up. Harper said: ‘We’re to keep it under wraps. According to the admiral, who is the one man who would know, he had no close relatives so he died of a heart attack. Me and my Hippocratic oath. He’ll be right round.’

Fawcett was gloomy. ‘I thought he might be. He’s going to be very happy about this. Pilgrim was the apple of his eye, and it’s no secret that he was next in line for the admiral’s chair. Well, let’s have a couple of the boys with their little cans of dusting powder and let them have a look around. Not, of course, that they’ll find anything.’

‘You’re so sure?’

‘I’m sure. Anyone cool enough to walk away leaving the murder weapon in situ, as it were, is pretty confident in himself. And you notice the way he’s lying, feet to the door, head pointing away?’

‘So?’

‘The fact that he’s so close to the door is almost sure proof that Pilgrim opened it himself. Would he have turned his back on a murderer? Whoever the killer was, he was a man Pilgrim not only knew but trusted.’

Fawcett had been right. The two experts who had come up with their little box of tricks had turned up nothing. The only places where fingerprints might conceivably have been, on the ice-pick handle and door-knobs, were predictably clean. They were just leaving when a man entered without benefit of either permission or knocking.

The admiral looked like everybody’s favourite uncle or a successful farmer or, indeed, what he was, a fleet admiral, albeit retired. Burly, red-faced, with pepper-and-salt hair and radiating an oddly kind authority, he looked about ten years younger than his acknowledged if frequently questioned fifty-five. He gazed down at the dead man on the floor, and the more kindly aspect of his character vanished. He turned to Dr Harper.

‘Made out the death certificate yet? Coronary, of course.’ Dr Harper shook his head. ‘Then do so at once and have Pilgrim removed to our private mortuary.’

Fawcett said: ‘If we could leave that for a moment, sir. The mortuary bit, I mean. I have two people coming up here very shortly, the owner of the circus and our latest – ah – recruit. I’m convinced neither of them has anything to do with this – but it would be interesting to see their reactions. Also, to find out if they still want to go through with this.’

‘What guarantee can you offer that they won’t leave here and head for the nearest telephone? There isn’t a newspaper in the country that wouldn’t give their assistant editor for this story.’

‘You think that had not occurred to me, sir?’ A slightly less than cordial note had crept into Fawcett’s tone. ‘There is no guarantee. There’s only my judgement.’

‘There’s that,’ the admiral said pacifically. It was the nearest he could ever bring himself to an apology. ‘Very well.’ He paused and to recover his position said: ‘They are not, I trust, knocking and entering by the front door?’

‘Barker and Masters are bringing them. By the rear tunnel.’

As if on cue, Barker and Masters appeared in the doorway, then stepped aside to let Wrinfield and Bruno in. The admiral and Dr Harper, Fawcett knew, were watching their faces as intently as he was. Understandably, neither Wrinfield nor Bruno was watching them: when you find a murdered man lying at your feet your ocular attention does not tend to stray. Predictably, Bruno’s reactions were minimal, the narrowing of the eyes, the tightening of the mouth could have been as much imagined as real, but Wrinfield’s reactions were all that anyone could have wished for: the colour drained from his face, leaving it a dirty grey, he put out a trembling hand against the lintel to steady himself and for a moment he looked as if he might even sway and fall.

Three minutes later, three minutes during which Fawcett had told him what little he knew, a seated Wrinfield, brandy glass in hand, was still shaking. Bruno had declined the offer of a restorative. The admiral had taken the floor.

He said to Wrinfield: ‘Do you have any enemies in the circus?’

‘Enemies? In the circus?’ Wrinfield was clearly taken aback. ‘Good God, no. I know it must sound corny to you but we really are one big happy family.’

‘Any enemies anywhere?’

‘Every successful man has. Of a kind, that is. Well, there’s rivalry, competition, envy. But enemies?’ He looked almost fearfully at Pilgrim and shuddered. ‘But not in this way.’ He was silent for a moment, then looked at the admiral with an expression that approximated pretty closely to resentment and when he spoke again the tremor had gone from his voice. ‘And why do you ask me these questions? They didn’t kill me. They killed Mr Pilgrim.’

‘There’s a connection. Fawcett?’

‘There’s a connection. I may speak freely, sir?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, there are telephone boxes and sacrificial assistant editors – ’

‘Don’t be a fool. I’ve already apologized for that.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Fawcett briefly searched his memory and found no apology there. It seemed pointless to mention this. ‘As you say, sir, there’s a connection. There’s also been a leak and it can only have come from within our own organization. As I said, sir, and as I have explained to these gentlemen, it’s clear that Pilgrim was killed by someone well known to him. There can’t have been any specific leak – only you, Pilgrim, Dr Harper and myself really knew what the intentions were. But any of up to a dozen people or more – researchers, telephone operators, drivers – within the organization knew that we had been in regular touch with Mr Wrinfield. It would be unusual, if not unique, to find any intelligence or counter-intelligence agency in the world whose ranks have not been infiltrated by an enemy agent, one who eventually becomes so securely entrenched as to become above suspicion. It would be naïve of us to assume that we are the sole exception.

‘It was hardly top secret that Mr Wrinfield had been in the formative stages of planning a European tour – a primarily eastern European tour – and it would have been comparatively simple to discover that Crau was on the list of towns to be visited. As far as the gentlemen in Crau are concerned – more precisely, the gentlemen responsible for the research taking place in Crau – coincidence could be coincidence but the obvious tie-up with the CIA would be that little bit too much.’

‘So why kill Pilgrim? As a warning?’

‘In a way, sir, yes.’

‘Would you care to be more specific, Mr Fawcett?’

‘Yes, sir. No question but that it was a warning. But to make Pilgrim’s death both understandable and justifiable from their point of view – for we have to remember that though we are dealing with unreasonable men we are also dealing with reasoning men – it had to be something more than just a warning. His murder was also an amalgam of invitation and provocation. It is a warning they wished to be ignored. If they believe Mr Wrinfield’s forthcoming tour is sponsored by us, and if, in spite of Pilgrim’s death – which they won’t for a moment doubt that we’ll be convinced has been engineered by them – we still go ahead and proceed with the tour, then we must have extraordinarily pressing needs to make it. Conclusive proof they would expect to find in Crau.

‘And then we would be discredited internationally. Imagine, if you can, the sensational impact of the news of the internment of an entire circus. Imagine the tremendously powerful bargaining weapon it would give the East in any future negotiations. We’d become an international laughing stock, all credibility throughout the world gone, an object of ridicule in both East and West. The Gary Powers U-plane episode would be a bagatelle compared to this.’

‘Indeed. Tell me, what’s your opinion of locating this cuckoo in the CIA nest?’

‘As of this moment?’

‘Zero.’

‘Dr Harper?’

‘I agree totally. No chance. It would mean putting a watcher on every one of your several hundred employees in this building, sir.’

‘And who’s going to watch the watchers? Is that what you mean?’

‘With respect, sir, you know very well what I mean.’

‘Alas.’ The admiral reached into an inside pocket, brought out two cards, handed one to Wrinfield, the other to Bruno. ‘If you need me, call that number and ask for Charles. Any guesses you may have as to my identity – and you must be almost as stupid as we are if you haven’t made some – you will please keep to yourselves.’ He sighed. ‘Alas again, I fear, Fawcett, that your reading of the matter is entirely correct. There is no alternative explanation, not, at least, a remotely viable one. Nevertheless, getting our hands on this document overrides all other considerations. We may have to think up some other means.’

Fawcett said: ‘There are no other means.’

Harper said: ‘There are no other means.’

The admiral nodded. ‘There are no other means. It’s Bruno or nothing.’

Fawcett shook his head. ‘It’s Bruno and the circus or nothing.’

‘Looks like.’ The admiral gazed consideringly at Wrinfield. ‘Tell me, do you fancy the idea of being expendable?’

Wrinfield drained his glass. His hand was steady again and he was back on balance. ‘Frankly, I don’t.’

‘Not even being interned?’

‘No.’

‘I see your point. It could be a bad business. Am I to take it from that that you have changed your mind?’

‘I don’t know, I just don’t know.’ Wrinfield shifted his gaze, at once both thoughtful and troubled. ‘Bruno?’

‘I’ll go.’ Bruno’s voice was flat and without colour, certainly with no traces of drama or histrionics in it. ‘If I have to go, I’ll go alone. I don’t know – yet – how I’ll get there and I don’t know – yet – what I have to do when I arrive. But I’ll go.’

Wrinfield sighed. ‘That’s it, then.’ He smiled faintly. ‘A man can only stand so much. No immigrant American is going to put a fifth-generation American to shame.’

‘Thank you, Mr Wrinfield.’ The admiral looked at Bruno with what might have been an expression of either curiosity or assessment on his face. ‘And thank you, too. Tell me, what makes you so determined to go?’

‘I told Mr Fawcett. I hate war.’

The admiral had gone. Dr Harper had gone. Wrinfield and Bruno had gone and Pilgrim had been carried away: in three days’ time he would be buried with all due solemnity and the cause of his death would never be known, a not unusual circumstance amongst those who plied the trades of espionage and counter-espionage and whose careers had come to an abrupt and unexpected end. Fawcett, looking as bleak and hard as the plumpness of his face would permit, was pacing up and down the dead man’s apartment when the telephone rang. Fawcett picked it up immediately.

The voice in the receiver was hoarse and shaking. It said: ‘Fawcett? Fawcett? Is that you, Fawcett?’

‘Yes. Who’s that?’

‘I can’t tell you over the phone. You know damn well who it is. You got me into this.’ The voice was trembling so much as to be virtually unrecognizable. ‘For God’s sake get down here, something terrible has happened.’

‘What?’

‘Get down here.’ The voice was imploring. ‘And for God’s sake come alone. I’ll be in my office. The circus office.’

The line went dead. Fawcett jiggled the receiver bar but dead the line remained. Fawcett hung up, left the room, locked the door behind him, took the lift to the underground garage and drove down to the circus through the darkness and the rain.

The external circus lights were out except for some scattered weak illumination – it was already late enough for all the circus members to have sought their night accommodation aboard the train. Fawcett left the car and hurried into the animal quarters, where Wrinfield had his shabby little portable office. The lighting here was fairly good. Signs of human life there were none, which Fawcett, on first reaction, found rather surprising, for Wrinfield had a four-footed fortune in there: the second and almost immediate reaction was that it wasn’t surprising at all for nobody in his right mind was going to make off with an Indian elephant or Nubian lion. Not only were they difficult animals to control, but disposal might have presented a problem. Most of the animals were lying down, asleep, but the elephants, asleep or not and chained by one foreleg, were upright and constantly swaying from side to side and in one large cage twelve Bengal tigers were prowling restlessly around, snarling occasionally for no apparent reason.

Fawcett made for Wrinfield’s office then halted in puzzlement when he saw no light coming from its solitary window. He advanced and tested the door. It wasn’t locked. He opened it and peered inside and then all the world went black for him.

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