“You turd!” he forced out. “You radiated bastard!”
“What happened?” Sheklov whispered, thinking of Danty.
“That reserved area where you came ashorel They sent a service crew there today. Know what they found? They, found it had been turned oiff in the small hours of the morning you arrived. Turned off l Do you understand what that means?”
Sheklov did. But waited for Turpin to put it into smoking words.
“It means someone else knows you’re here,” Turpin spat. “And you’ve put both our necks in a noosel”
• X0V
Around the shoulder of the world. Bratcheslavsky had once said without warning, in the middle of a training session, “Vassily Sheklovl”
To which he had reacted with a surprised cock of his eyebrows.
“Know why you’ve been picked for this assignment?”
“Welll” Selecting the least arrogant-seeming of a dozen possible answers in the space of less than a heartbeat, and moreover not wanting to appear to cast doubt on the competence of those who had singled him out by adopting a pose of exaggerated modesty. “Well, because out of the range available, I guess I must be the most suitable . . . comrade.”
“Your diplomatic turns of phrase do you credit,” Bratcheslavsky chuckled, stubbing the latest of the aromatic cigarettes that were certain to kill him before his time. “But I’m not here to have my perspicacity flattered, regardless of what you may safely put over on other people. I guess it hasn’t escaped your notice that one of the luxuries America permits itself is an exceptional degree of subtlety in the shades of meaning conveyed by the English language?”
At which: a nod.
“Well, thenl During your long struggle with the various idioms of modern English, you can hardly have failed to run across the image of someone `thinking fast on his feet’-hm?”
“Of course, comrade. A metaphor drawn from boxing, I believe. A term of praise for someone who-”
“Boxing be buggered,” Bratcheslavsky retorted. They were speaking English, of course; the entire briefing was conducted in it, the ideal being to drive Russian so far to the fringes of Sheklov’s consciousness that he would not be recognised as a Russian-speaker by those who might survey him after his injection into the States. “The idiom is used by people who hate boxing, who wouldn’t pay ten cents to get into a boxing-match, who would call up and
complain if a TV company wasted programme-time on an international championship! No, the image is detached from its origins. And what I want to know is this: Do you recognize its applicability to this mission?”
“You mean it was a quality that was taken into consideration when they picked me for it.”
“The quality, Vassily. The most important of all. Were it not for your possession of this talent, we might well have given up all hope of injecting another agent as blatantly as we shall have to in your case. Human beings have this peculiar limitation on their thinking, you know: They tend to put up with enormous risks simply because they can’t exhaustively analyse the nature of the actions they realise they ought to take to insure themselves. As thinkers, Vassily, we are an amazingly lazy species. It’s a wonder we survive from one day to the next. Yesl Let’s get on with itl”
All of which sprang back instantly into Sheklov’s mind, vivid as a 3-D movie picture.
He said coldly to Turpin, still looming over him as though about to tear him limb from limb, “Shut up and sit down.”
..You-1″
“I said shut upl” With an access of unfeigned anger. “I wish you’d use your wits now and thenl You just said someone else must have known I was coming ashore, didn’t you? But you didn’t take one deep breath and ask yourself whol Put your vanity away, will you?”
“What?” But his anger was turning to bluster, and Sheklov knew it.
“You heard. Stop and think for a moment. Who would be in a position to know that something was going to happen off-shore at a reserved area? Do you imagine you’re unique?”
Slowly Turpin sank back into his chair. “I-I don’t follow you.”
“That’s obvious.” Sheklov loaded his tone with sarcasm. “I’ll spell it out, then. You claim your cover has never been penetrated, right?”