“He told me it was hate. Hatred for the Germans; and I didn’t believe him.”
“He went anyway. I thought that was all that mattered to you, you said you didn’t trust motive.”
“He wouldn’t do it for hatred, we know that. What is he then? We never knew him, did we? He’s near the mark, you know; he’s on his deathbed. What does he think of? If he dies now, tonight, what will be in his mind?”
“You shouldn’t speak like that.”
“Ah.” At last he turned and looked at Avery and the peace had not left his face. “When we met him, he was a man without love. Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray. We ourselves live without it in our profession. We don’t force people to do things for us. We let them discover love. And of course, Leiser did, didn’t he? He married us for money, so to speak, and left us for love. He took his second vow. I wonder when.”
Avery said quickly, “What do you mean, for money?”
“I mean whatever we gave to him. Love is what he gave to us. I see you have his watch, incidentally.”
“I’m keeping it for him.”
“Ah. Good night. Or good morning, I suppose.” A little laugh. “How quickly one loses one’s sense of time.” Then he commented, as if to himself: “And the Circus helped us all the way. It’s most strange. I wonder why.”
Very carefully Leiser rinsed the knife. The knife was dirty and must be washed. In the boathouse, he ate the food and drank the brandy in the flask. “After that,” Haldane had. said, “you live off the land; you can’t run around with tinned meat and French brandy.” He opened the door and stepped outside to wash his hands and face in the lake.
The water was quite still in the darkness. Its unruffled surface was like a perfect skin shrouded with floating veils of gray mist. He could see the reeds along the bank; the wind, subdued by the approach of dawn, touched them as it moved across the water. Beyond the lake hung the shadow of low hills. He felt rested and at peace. Until the memory of the boy passed over him like a shudder.
He threw the empty meat can and the brandy bottle far out, and as they hit the water a heron rose languidly from the reeds. Stooping, he picked up a stone and sent it skimming across the lake. He heard it bounce three times before it sank. He threw another but he couldn’t beat three. Returning to the hut, he fetched his rucksack and suitcase. His right arm was aching painfully, it must have been from the weight of the case. From somewhere came the bellow of cattle.
He began walking east, along the track which skirted the lake. He wanted to get as far as he could before morning came.
He must have walked through half a dozen villages. Each was empty of life, quieter than the open road because they gave a moment’s shelter from the rising wind. There were no signposts and no new buildings, it suddenly occurred to him. That was where the peace came from, it was the peace of no innovation—it might have been fifty years ago, a hundred. There were no streetlights, no gaudy signs on the pubs or shops. It was the darkness of indifference, and it comforted him. He walked into it like a tired man breasting the sea, it cooled and revived him like the wind; until he remembered the boy. He passed a farmhouse. A long drive led to it from the road. He stopped. Halfway up the drive stood a motorbike, an old mackintosh thrown over the saddle. There was no one in sight.
The oven smoked gently.
“When did you say his first schedule was?” Avery asked. He had asked already.
“Johnson said twenty-two twenty. We start scanning an hour before.”
“I thought he was on a fixed frequency,” Leclerc muttered, but without much interest.
“He may start with the wrong crystal. It’s the kind of thing that happens under strain. It’s safer for base to scan with so many crystals.”