"My colleague at the Health and Safety Executive, " he said without preliminaries, "informs me you may have something to tell me about the Unified Trading Company--and while we are at this stage, do you find your appearance a hindrance on occasion? " I said, "I couldn't come to your office, for instance, without someone remarking that I'd been here. " "Melanie, for instance? " "I'm afraid so. " "Mm. " He thought briefly, so briefly that I was pretty certain he'd thought before my arrival. "If you were to publish a textbook, Dr. Stuart, what subject would you choose? " I gave him not the instinctive answer of' Wind and rain, " but the more oblique thought' Depression " His eyes narrowed. He nodded briefly. He said, "I was told you might be a player. " A contemplative silence lengthened.

 

 

"There appears to exist, " he said finally, "a small packet of extremely sensitive information. I myself think it's very unlikely you've seen it, but I'm told that if you have, you may have understood what you were looking at. " He left another extended pause. "Can you help us? " Who, I wondered, was us? Us, I concluded, were "the authorities" I'd come looking for. "Us" had to be trusted...

 

 

for now.

 

 

I asked, "Where would you look for your sensitive package? " "It could be anywhere in the world.

 

 

"John Rupert pinched the thin bridge of his nose. "We had a man in Mexico, near the northern border. He'd had a sight of a sensitive package,

 

 

L

 

 

he'd reported its existence, he'd heard it was for sale and on its way to Miami. He asked us whether he should steal it if he could, or buy it.

 

 

"John Rupert grimaced. "He let the wrong people know that he had seen it, and he was found floating face down in the Florida Everglades with a bullet in his head and his legs half eaten away by alligators. " I'd got myself into a right pickle, I thought, and telling anyone anything at all was asking for more trouble, if not a bullet. I didn't know if what I'd learned was worth dying for, and yet I found I couldn't, from some obscure instinct towards justice and order, simply walk away and forget it.

 

 

"Suppose, " I said at length, "as a result of too many cooks trying to keep a sensitive package safe, it gets too thoroughly hidden away on an island and has to be retrieved so that it can be used. It's no good to anyone if it's not in use. " I stopped.

 

 

"Go on, go on,

 

 

"John Rupert urged.

 

 

"To collect the package there's a suitable light airplane available, but no suitable pilot to fly it, until along comes a meteorologist, a private pilot with a hankering to fly through the eye of a hurricane. The pilot agrees to make a detour flight to pick up the package, in return for his hurricane adventure. " John Rupert, understanding, gave me a nod.

 

 

"That simple errand fails, " I said. "The hurricane crashes the aircraft into the sea. Collecting the package, still essential, now involves more certain measures, such as a calmer sky, and a much larger aircraft with a bigger crew equipped and ready to do actual battle if necessary. " "Battle for the package? " "More like battle for the repossession of the whole island, whose ownership is in dispute. The crew, I think, are the UniIX !

 

 

I

 

 

unified Trading Company, who ruled the place before they frightened the residents away by growing exotic mushrooms in containers that gave off radioactivity... " I stopped talking.

 

 

H

 

 

face was smoothing to disbelief.

 

 

"Goodbye, " I said briefly, standing up. "Children in school can make more or less anything appear to give off radioactive alpha particles. Just scatter a little powdered uranium ore around. " I gave him a small card with my grandmother's phone number on it. "Phone if you're interested in any more. " "Stop, " he said, his interest growing already.

 

 

"People aren't wrong to be frightened, " I said from the doorway. "If you swallow a pea-sized alpha particle source, it will kill you, but you can carry it safely for a long time in a paper bag. I expect I'm telling you what you already know. " "Don't go yet. " "I have to take the bad news from Air to Ghent. " John Rupert laughed.

 

 

KRIS IN THE end was easy to find as he was back at the BBC Weather Center at Wood Lane, preparing to share with me the bad-weather broadcast ahead for the run-up to Guy Fawkes Night.

 

 

He greeted me with a yelp and a crushing hug, and I suffered similar warm squeezing all round the office. Comment on thinness and gauntness could last only minutes when, to the relief of the forecaster standing by to give the kids the damp news for squibs, reliable old Stuart had returned from the dead and popped up on time.

 

 

Kris himself looked spectacularly tanned with sun brightened hair and mustache, and he rose at the sight of me

 

 

from gloom to stratosphere as fast as any of his rocket lift-off poems.

 

 

"I can't believe it! " His voice could probably be heard all down Wood Lane. "How come you're here? We all thought your gran a bit touched yesterday, insisting you'd have got a message to her if you'd drowned! " We walked along a quiet passage towards the room we all shared between appearances--all except the guru, who had a retreat to himself--and Kris, with small skips and jumps like a young boy, told me that he in the life raft had scudded with the wind across the western edge of Odin for days until Robin's hired helicopter operators had spotted him and winched him up. The description of his rescue poured out of him like an uncorked flood, as if to prevent any other subject surfacing, but in the end I put an anchoring hand on his arm and congratulated him on his engagement to Bell.

 

 

"Don't tell her father, " he said in alarm. "Old Caspar wouldn't exactly have wept if he'd had to get someone else to tell him it was hay-cutting time. " There was too much truth in that to be funny. I let it go without contradiction and asked instead, "What did Robin Darcy say about losing his airplane? " "I haven't talked to him since that morning we set off.

 

 

If I call his home in Sand Dollar Beach I just get Evelyn's voice on an answering machine. But poor old Robin, what can he say?

 

 

It was he who urged us to go. " "Well... " I frowned. "What did he really want you to do on that island? " "Trox? " "Yes, of course, Trox. " "How should I know? " Kris shrugged absentmindedly, then suddenly looked wary.

 

 

"Perhaps, " I mildly suggested, "because he himself told you. " Kris slowed and stopped in two paces as if he had just remembered he'd given me two different answers already to that question.

 

 

"I'm so glad, " he said explosively. "I'm really so pleased you're alive. " "So am I that you are. " We beamed at each other, and whatever else was said, that was the truth.

 

 

We shouldered through a swinging door into a change clothes and brush-hair environment, where shiny foreheads and noses were dusted to matte by a lady dragon of twenty three who tended to follow one into camera range waving a powder puff. Kris fell into flirtatious chat with her, but kept glancing my way from under his eyelids as if half hoping that I would after all disappear.

 

 

Instead I asked, but lightheartedly, as if it were a joke, "What did Robin say about our wheels-up' approach to Trox Island? " "Nothing. I haven't talked to him. I told you. " The drago ness had been darkening his almost white eyebrows. Kris, irritated by my tactlessness in reminding him of his imperfection, pushed her hand away sharply and snappily told me no one was perfect all the time. It wasn't exactly the moment, I decided, to tell him I knew the right-hand--starboard-engine had stopped only because the pilot had forgotten to flip the switch from the empty fuel tank to the full one.

 

 

Flying though a hurricane had been stress enough. Kris had forgotten the switch until too late and dealing with the unbalancing weight of a dead engine as well had been beyond his limits.

 

 

The Cayman Trench was one of the deepest valleys in the world's ocean floor, and unless Robin went to the unlikely and expensive trouble of finding and raising the wreckage, Kris's last-second panicked too late wild yell and stretch-out-toward the-switch would remain forever his secret.

 

 

I did, though, want him to tell me truthfully why we'd gone to Trox at all, and in the end, in exasperation, he moodily gave m.

 

 

"It's no big deal, " he said. "All Robin wanted me to do on Trox Island was to collect a folder of papers that had been left behind by mistake, and bring them back to him without you having a good look at them first. Don't ask me why he didn't want you to, I don't know, but, like I said before, you and I both owed him a lot, so I agreed. He said his folder was in a desk in one of the thick-walled huts, and he wanted me to collect it safely before it was blown away by Hurricane Odin.

 

 

But when we got there I couldn't even find the desk. All the furniture had gone already. " "And... um... " I pondered. "You didn't tell Robin.. " "No, I didn't. Apparently when we didn't return according to our flight plan the control tower people in Grand Cayman got in touch with Evelyn on the Darcy answering machine, and it was Evelyn, that pearly old duck, who paid for the search helicopter to go out looking for me and you as soon as the weather was possible. " - I asked wryly, "Will she send us a bill? " "Which would you rather be, " Kris asked, "broke or dead? " DkIFTED ROUND the Weather Centre all afternoon catching up on the past two weeks of wind and gossip and preparing and presenting at six-thirty and nine-thirty the shape of things to come.

 

 

Friday, the next day, the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot, looked like being a groan again for dads and children alike. A band of rain would cross the whole British area between lunch and bedtime the next day, starting in the west of Scotland and traveling south and counterclockwise, with veering winds later in the day bringing clouds and drizzle across southern England to mess up the Catherine wheels of Essex. Light the sodden blue touch-paper and retire to bed.

 

 

I spent a quiet late evening with my grandmother and Jett van Els, a muscle and mind respite, a doze-on, doze-off breathing spell split only twice, first by Kris on a high at ten-thirty, giving a long TV funny overview of November fog banks.

 

 

Second, when Jett had begun the slow tough task of my grandmother's Tarzan act from wheelchair to nighttime comfort, the telephone rang clamorously andJett briskly answered it, but instead of a reply to the usual type of magazine question like,

 

 

"How does one paint one's toenails if one can't feel one's toes, " we had Jeff's no-nonsense inquiry, "I'll ask when he'll be available. Who shall I say called? John Rupert? " She lifted her eyebrows comically, and I stretched out a hand to the receiver and said,

 

 

"Hello? " He had a ghostwriter for me, he said straightforwardly, and I agreed to meet the ghost between broadcasts in the morning.

 

 

Later, with my grandmother as always only fitfully asleep in her airy room, Jett and I took a couple of cushions and sat, well wrapped in Edwardian-type fur-lined car rugs, on a stone seat for two in a small glass-windowed entrance porch built to keep nineteen-o-eight ladies dry from carriage to gentlemen's beds.

 

 

The night air felt fresh and smelled of low-tide mud. We sat close to each other for warmth and didn't talk much. If the whole of life were simple like this, I thought, there would be peace among seagulls and no wind to speak of. I kissedJett van Els without heeding my grandmother's fears, and got kissed cheerfully back, and many things became understood between us in an oasis of tranquillity.

 

 

But there's a calm spell at the center of every hurricane. The fury of the second wind was as always round the corner.

 

 

IN THE VERY early morning I shed my grandmother's comfortable sofa in time to appear on her screen at breakfast, and did my best to soften the rainy news for the nation. The celebration night of the brave traitor and his low-grade explosive was going to pass as unsatisfactorily as the first, whatever I said.

 

 

During the morning, between rueful appearances steering short of apology, I made a quick trip by bus to Kensington and rode the elevator to the seventh floor to discuss a book on depression with a ghost.

 

 

I accepted a so-so chair and coffee with ginger snaps, listening to John Rupert's rational plans for a book not about depressions, but about storms, which he said would sell better.

 

 

Was he serious about a book? I asked, and he said civilly why not? Books had been written about shark's teeth before now.

 

 

"And incidentally, " he murmured, eating the ginger cookie set out for me, "it was How they brought the good news from Ghent to Air. " "Whatever, " I said.

 

 

"Robert Browning, " he added.

 

 

The door quietly opened, admitting an unmistakable ghost, a feeble-looking grandfather with thin white hair and strong sinews for shaking hands.

 

 

They introduced him to me without melodrama by name as

 

 

"Ghost, " no Mr.... no first name, just Ghost, and John Rupert calmly asked me to repeat what I'd told him the day before.

 

 

"Say it all again? " I protested.

 

 

"Say it again, but different, so while Ghost understands it for the first time, I see things more clearly. " I sighed. "Well then... Say that by mistake a folder of papers has been left on a Caribbean island, and the island has no radio, no telephone, no mail service and no people... but it does have a usable airstrip. " I continued with breaks for thought, and for Ghost's assimilation of what had happened.

 

 

"Say it is essential to retrieve the folder. " A break...

 

 

"Say there is a suitable aircraft available, but no discreet pilot, as yours has been killed in a car crash. " - | Another break.

 

 

"Then at a lunch party in England a pilot appears who longs to fly through the eye of a hurricane. He's a meteorologist, and there's a hurricane in the offing in the Caribbean-Nicky--and it is hurricane season in general. A flight through a hurricane is offered in return for a simple side trip to collect the folder of papers. " "Reasonable, " Ghost said.

 

 

"Mm. The pilot took along another meteorologist friend as a navigator and general helper... " "And the friend was you?

 

 

"John Rupert said.

 

 

I nodded. "Our flight through the hurricane ended in the sea. The pilot was saved by helicopter, and I was thrown back onto the island by the currents. I came across the folder of letters, but I didn't know they were important, or at least not to begin with... They were written in many different scripts and languages. " "And you have them? " The ghost showed great excitement, a matter of twitches and shivers very like Oliver Quigley.

 

 

"No. " I disappointed him. "I did read everything as best

 

 

I

 

 

could, but I didn't speak any of the languages... " I picked absentmindedly at my fingers, but I was certain about what I said,

 

 

"One of the languages was Russian. " John Rupert, sitting on a corner of the desk and swinging a leg, interestedly asked, "So why was it Russian? And how did you know? " I explained, "There's a letter and a number combination that jumps off the page at anyone with the slightest bit of scientific knowledge, and it is U-235. On one of those foreign language pages, that combination was written Y-235, and that symbol Y is Russian for uranium. " I drew Y-235 to show them and said, "That sort of uranium has been enriched and condensed from U-238 by a process called sieving or gas diffusion. Pu-239 is enriched plutonium Pu-240. They are the materials for nuclear weapons. " They asked with frowns for more.

 

 

"Starting from U-235 as a fact"--I smiled faintly--"either that same letter and numbers combination, or that of Pu-239, reappeared somewhere in different scripts on every page in the folder. If I could guess at understanding, I'd say that what I've thought of as correspondence were definitely also lists. Lists in Greek and German and Arabic and Russian, and probably Hebrew. As for the others... I didn't know enough, but some of the other numbers had different appearances and might have been dates or prices. " "Lists... Lists of what, exactly? " "Lists of ingredients of nuclear explosive devices. They are, aren't they, the ultra sensitive package you were talking about? " They were unready to commit themselves.

 

 

I said,

 

 

"As far as I could understand those pages, I could see they were a sort of shopping list. Some of them stated what fissile material was available, and where. And some of them stated what was wanted. If those pages are lists of goods wanted and goods for sale, it means the Unified Trading Company are in essence middlemen. " There was a short silence. Neither Ghost nor John Rupert ridiculed the notion, so I went on. "There's a world shortage of many types of fissile material--that is, the wherewithal of making nuclear bombs. And there's a world glut of legitimate sovereign states and general brutish terrorists who know how to make them. They're not extraordinarily difficult to construct.

 

 

Only there's--thank God--not enough enriched uranium and plutonium to go round. There's a world shortage, as I said.

 

 

"Those letters in that package, I'm as sure as one can be, are notes of what's now out on the market. A high proportion of the world's bomb-making capacity has been locked up in Russia since the end of the Cold War. The old Soviet bloc don't want the dangerous makings scattered about any more than we do, and they guard them carefully, but there are thieves and schemers everywhere. I'd guess if anyone like you managed to put the Unified Trading Company out of business there would soon be someone else taking their place. " "One less is always significant, " Ghost said primly.

 

 

He had pale gray eyes reflecting gray threatening cloud from the skylight. He hadn't the vigor, I reckoned, to write a bounce-you-out-of-your-seat book about storms.

 

 

"Are you saying,

 

 

"John Rupert inquired, "that you believe there will be uncountable outfits similar to the Unified Trading Company, acting as middlemen, and I suppose raking off a huge commission? " "I've no idea how many, " I said. "I forecast the weather.

 

 

I got involved in the uranium business by accident, and I want out. " My protest fell on stony ground and was ignored.

 

 

"All those letters in the folder will soon be out of date, " I pointed out. "If they were inventories, if they were putting people who had access to U-235 in touch with people who could afford it... well, things will change in six months' , , time.

 

 

Ghost thinly smiled. "We are satisfied you saw the prime up-to-date collection of--shall we say--goods available. I think, although we usually operate on the need to know' principle, we sometimes don't tell people things it turns out they vitally did need to know, so what I am going to ask you, and perhaps tell you, may or may not be of help to you. Am I clear? " As mud, I thought. I looked at my watch. Buses were erratic anyway on busy shopping mornings, and it was raining. I would just run, I thought. Poor old feet.

 

 

"Don't worry about the time,

 

 

"John Rupert said. "I'll send you back to the BBC in a car. " Ghost said, "Think. Please concentrate. What we quite urgently need most from that package are the names of those who want and those who have. Can you remember any of them? " I was afraid I could remember only a part of one.

 

 

Anything, it seemed, would be better than nothing.

 

 

"Then, " I said, "one of the headings contained the word Hippostat. " I spelled it for them. "It might mean racecourse, and it might not. " "It might, " Ghost nodded. "Have you any idea where that whole package is now? " Clear and bright in my memory was an image of Michael Ford walking back from the second thick-walled hut carrying the Geiger counter in one hand and the folder in the other.

 

 

He had taken them into the aircraft, and there they stayed.

 

 

Equally sharp was the awareness of the care Michael Ford had taken not to put an early end to my days. Or maybe it had been Amy, who'd kept me alive with the bandages. Or maybe even Robin, the round one with brains.

 

 

I was behaving ambivalently when I answered Ghost truthfully, and felt guilty for it.

 

 

"I don't know, " I said, "where the package is now. " I had some sort of fumbling idea of persuading the group members to give up their habit--a bit like smoking--just more deadly. I hadn't thought everything through beyond my own salvation.

 

 

John Rupert, vaguely disappointed with what he rightly judged, I saw, to be a last-minute withdrawal of wholeheartedness, kept his own promise and beckoned up a car and driver to return me to Wood Lane.

 

 

In between afternoon forecasts I got through to him on the phone and found him polite but minus his earlier zeal.

 

 

He said, "Ghost believes you changed sides in midstream.

 

 

I'd like to know why. " "Some of the Traders could easily have put me in a coffin.

 

 

I remembered that they didn't. " "It's an old dilemma, " he said in a tired voice. "If you believe in a cause, do you kill your friend who doesn't? " I said slowly,

 

 

"No. " "Remember our man from Mexico. Remember the alligators. He got no mercy. When you're ready, call me again...

 

 

and don't leave it too late. " "I'll tell you now... " I began, stopped, began again, "If you're interested yet... about the radioactivity. The alpha particles on Trox Island. " His voice came to life a bit. He said,

 

 

"I did ask my children about that yesterday evening, and of course you were right, they had studied radioactivity in school. " "Mm, " I said. "But the thirty or so people who lived on Trox Island didn't know you can safely make a Geiger counter sound as if it's busting its guts. They heard the frantically fast clicks and they were told the appropriate story... panic, everyone, those fancy mushrooms are radioactive and there's radongaspouring out of the round beneath the houses, but we, your benefactors, the Untied Trading Company, will guarantee you won't be contaminated yourselves by radiation, only the actual buildings and the mushrooms, and we will send an excellent boat to take you all to safety. " "Do you mean the Trading Company deliberately persuaded everyone into leaving the island? " I smiled. "They couldn't leave fast enough. Radioactivity is scary because you can't see it or feel it. That's why people tend to think it's more dangerous than it really is. But they all in the end will be reassured, as none of them will show any signs of radiation sickness. " John Rupert thanked me, but still coolly, for the Geiger Muller road show. "And I suppose you know, " he said, "the big question it still leaves unanswered? " I nodded over the phone. "Why, " I inquired, "did the Traders want the island to themselves? "

 

 

"I

 

 

THE TIRING EVENING ended at last in clearing skies, and devoted enduring fireworks fanatics let off rainbow-colored pop-pop sparkling star bursts in soggily dripping back gardens.

 

 

I knew my grandmother and Jett would both be asleep when I finally left work. I couldn't ask refuge for a second night on the sofa, anyway. One night was succor, a second, indulgence. My grandmother had never believed in lengthy bouts of bleeding heart.

 

 

I walked the half mile from the BBC towards my home, towards attic, telescope, chronometer and futon, deeply breathing the damp night air and promising myself an absence of November fifth on future calendars.

 

 

When I neared my doorstep, midnight or not, there was agitation on my pager, which buzzed in the waist pocket of my pants, a tremor rather than a noise, owing to my frequent presence in silence-demanding places. Late hour regardless, Belladonna answered my call-back with relief and my

 

 

"Where are you? " inquiry with a giggle.

 

 

"In George Loricroft's bedroom. Don't tell Kris. " "Is there a Mrs. Loricroft there, perhaps? " "You're such a spoilsport, Perry, " Bell grumbled. "Her name is Glenda and she wants to talk to you. " Glenda Loricroft, dimly remembered from that fateful Sunday lunch as a shiny blonde in a pale blue sweater that stretched across the front, had a voice that Lancashire lasses would have felt at home with. Her George, she told me, had gone off to Baden-Baden, or so he said, and she wanted to know what the weather was like there, please luv.

 

 

"Give me Bell, " I asked, and wanted to know why I should go back into the Weather Center on such a hunt on such a night.

 

 

"Perry, be your age! " Bell said. "Glenda thinks George is having it off with an undeclared fraulein. If I give you date and time and place, could you tell her whether the actual meshed with what her lover-boy declared? " "No, Bell, it's a non starter Impossible. All he has to say is that he doesn't remember or was fast asleep. " "Glenda says he's never where he says he will be. Tonight he's supposed to be in Baden-Baden for the races, but tomorrow he won't know it's been snowing. " I said, "Stop it, Bell. Get Kris to do it. I'm asleep on my feet. " "Kris won't do a thing. He just talks about trains. " In alarm I said, "Where is he? Why is he talking about trains? " "Something about fuel switches, " Bell said lightly. "I don't understand him. You're the only one who follows his mind. " "Well... find him. " The urgency in my voice got through to her suddenly.

 

 

"He's not lost! " she exclaimed.

 

 

"Then where is he? " "He said he was up on your roof. " I went through the house in dismay and out into the cold little patch of wintry grass at the back and looked up, and there he was, sitting astride the vaulted roof of slates and leaning against a dead chimney of crumbling brick.

 

 

"Climb down, " I called. "I can't catch you. " "You can see fireworks all over London from up here, " he yelled.

 

 

"Come up. " "I'm going to bed. " "George Loricroft isn't in Baden-Baden, " Kris intoned, "and Oliver Quigley didn't turn up in Berlin or Hamburg, and I bet my future father-in-law chickened out of Cologne. " "What are you talking about? " I shouted up.

 

 

"Robin Darcy is in Newmarket. " I could still hear Bell's voice distantly on the telephone, so I put the receiver to my mouth and asked her if she'd heard what Kris said.

 

 

"He said Robin Darcy is here in Newmarket, and yes, he is, he's staying at the Bedford Arms. What of it? When he's in England on business he often comes here to see Dad. They'll be going to Doncaster races tomorrow. It's the last meeting of the main Flat season. Half Newmarket will be going. My boss George has a runner for my father in the November Handicap, the big race of the day, and there aren't any races tomorrow at Baden-Baden, the whole thing's rubbish. " "He'll be home for breakfast, " I said soothingly, which raised a wail from Glenda and an accusation of heartlessness from Bell.

 

 

Enough, I thought. I said, "Bell and Glenda, please get off my phone and Kris, please get off my roof, and I'll see you all tomorrow. " Incredibly, there was silence. I went indoors and up to my attic for hours of solid sleep and woke early to find Kris yawning in my kitchen alcove and pouring Thai curry sauce onto tofu, his latest disgusting obsession.

 

 

"Morning, " he said.

 

 

"How did you get in? " He looked pained. "You gave me a key last Christmas. " I thought back. "That was for waiting for the refrigerator repair man. " "Do you want it back? " Kris read labels on bottles of chili oil he took from a paper carrier. He'd been Thai-food shopping yesterday for that and lemon grass and dried spices, he said.

 

 

I said I supposed he could keep the key. Also he could use my shower (he had done so, my towels were wet) and watch my TV (now on, but mute). Making the usual dash to the door on the way to put together the Saturday morning program--including a summing up of the weather prospects for Saturday sport (dry, cold and sunny for racing at Doncaster, blustery showers for a soccer match at Wembley)--I caught a glimpse of Kris marking his choices on my newspaper's racing pages and starting to fill in my crossword.

 

 

I shrugged into my warm padded jacket and with temporary benevolence, as I opened my front door to depart, I asked him with restraint merely to lock up when he left.

 

 

"By the way, " he said, "I looked up your schedule. You're free today after the sports forecast. I'm flying to Doncaster races. There's an airfield next to the racecourse. Will you , , come?

 

 

I closed my door on his question mark and started down the stairs. If I didn't go he would believe it was because of wheels up and an empty fuel tank and, given his seesaw psyche, that imagined adverse judgment would convince him I despised him and that he had no friends. The answer to

 

 

"Am I my brother's keeper? " was yes, unfortunately, all too often.

 

 

Two floors down I reversed, though already late. When I opened my front door again Kris was standing waiting, expecting me.

 

 

"Pick me up in Wood Lane at ten-fifteen, " I said. "Don't forget Bell said Robin Darcy will be at the races with her father.

 

 

" Kris gave no sign of alarm. "Ten-fifteen, " I repeated, and ran. Well... hobbled, though things were getting better from the ankle down.

 

 

OUR FIGHT FROM White Waltham to Doncaster went impeccably, with Kris over meticulous at getting every check perfect. He had actually no need to, if he wanted to impress, as I now believed (and was never going to tell him) that he was a great pilot up to a fine line on a panic scale and a lethal danger above that. Without Trox and Odin, I reckoned, there was no one safer. After that I would learn and pay attention, and know what to look for.

 

 

Doncaster took the weather that would have smiled on poor Guy F. Kris and I almost missed the first race owing to the program's early start in the short daylight, but watched the second under the bright yellow-gray sky that itself brought out smiles, good humor and the favorites as winners.

 

 

Kris and Bell advanced and retreated all afternoon in a complicated mating dance. Caspar Harvey watched them with a scowl. George Loricroft strode past, head in air, his wife, Glenda, scuttling after him with endless complaints of "BadenBaden. " Oliver Quigley trembled from owner to owner, excusing his losers before they'd lined up to run.

 

 

People in clusters asked Kris for his autograph. "Don't you mind, " Bell asked me, "that they're asking him more than you? " "He's welcome. " As so often on November sixth, I'd collected more of a mournful battery of young reproachful eyes than an onslaught of enthusiastic name collectors. The day it worried me, I would resign.

 

 

I looked around and said to Bell, "Did you come with your father and Robin Darcy? I haven't seen Robin anywhere. " "They came by car together, " Bell said briefly. "They said they wanted to talk. I came with Glenda and she's driving me mad. Of course George didn't go to Baden-Baden, why ever should he when the races are here? And as for all the other places! She never stops. " "What other places? " I asked her absentmindedly, watching horses walk round the parade ring and admiring as always their loose-limbed natural beauty.

 

 

Bell dug a roughly torn memo square of pink paper out of her green coat pocket and squinted at it in the bright light.

 

 

"Glenda says George has excuses for Budapest, where he says it was snowing, ditto heavy snow at Pardubice in the Czech Republic, more snow in Berlin, and it was freezing in Warsaw and Hamburg, and he wasn't at any of those places, she's sure of it. So what's going on? " "I have absolutely no idea. " "If Glenda comes this way, " Bell said, "don't leave me. " Bell's pink eyelids fluttered over a thoroughly enticing smile.

 

 

Kris finished signing autographs instantly and edged his long spine between me and his (possibly) future wife.

 

 

They went off contentedly, for once, for a sandwich, nicely asking me to join them, but relaxed that I didn't. I stayed near the weighing room looking out unhurriedly for Robin the Round. I wished after all I'd gone for the sandwich when Glenda and her loud Lancashire voice advanced like a storm surge and smothered me with her theories.

 

 

Her dyed-blonde shiny hair was of Andy Warhol explicit brashness. Forty-eight identical Glendas haunted one's nightmare of an art gallery.

 

 

Oliver Quigley, of all people, came to my aid, or seemed to, stuttering at my shoulder while giving Glenda a stare of quite extraordinary ill will.

 

 

I'd seldom paid Oliver's quivering voice or problems much genuinely caring attention, and it was with similar make! l believe that I asked earnestly after the sick filly's health.

 

 

Glenda suspended her animation suddenly and stood with her mouth open wide, as if waiting for Oliver's answer, and suddenly it was as if this encounter were between two much deeper personalities than I'd superficially seen earlier. There were glints in the Lancashire eyes that were far from funny, and I began to wonder whether all the Quigley shivering was a way of camouflaging the stronger inner man, of hiding the iron foundations that he didn't want recognized.

 

 

I looked back to the lunch party, to the day I'd met all these Newmarket people, those strangers who now seemed familiar.

 

 

Perhaps they'd showed to the world that day only their out sides and perhaps, as with Robin Darcy, it was the inside that mattered.

 

 

"It's because of you, " Glenda said suddenly with venom, closing her lips together with pinching force. "It's you that's taking George to Baden-Baden, and don't you deny it. " She was accusing Oliver. She seemed oblivious of me.

 

 

Oliver Quigley certainly looked blank, but not, to my fresh vision, from ignorance, but rather from the shock of having Glenda put into public words what should have lived in secrecy and silence.

 

 

"And, " continued Glenda spitefully, "it's no good trying to tell me you didn't go with him to Poland and Germany and all those places, it was snowing a lot of the time and Perry could prove it if he could only be bothered... " "Glenda! " Oliver interrupted with straightforward warning and oblivious menace, wiping out in one word all the dithery presentation of ages.

 

 

a "Yeah, yeah, " Glenda said dismissively, "you're all angry because of the filly. " She swiveled on her high-heeled shiny boots and marched away, her weight forward on her toes, leaving Oliver Quigley speechless and aghast, as if he'd lost both his sword and his shield at one stroke.

 

 

He switched his gaze back to me, and although it was far too late in reality, he chose to believe I'd seen and heard nothing. The quakes came back into his manner. He stuttered a good deal, but no intelligible words came out. After a while, as if he'd resumed his habitual role, he nodded vaguely in my direction, and as his own personal quiver counter was more or less back to normal he unglued himself from my vicinity and was soon to be seen talking with jerkily disturbed hand movements to the filly's owner, Caspar Harvey. Neither man looked even reasonably calm, let alone happy.

 

 

Kris, further away, bent his height down to accommodate the size of a short plump man that I with a faint shock saw to be Robin Darcy. Though I knew he had arrived at Doncaster with Caspar Harvey, Robin Darcy in actual living presence was somehow disturbing.

 

 

The last time I'd seen him had been on Trox Island, when he'd been dressed in disguising overalls and helmet, and had watched Michael carry the folder from hut to aircraft, when Michael had transported before my eyes the same sort of ultra-sensitive package that I'd been told had brought finis to a careless man from Mexico.

 

 

I watched Robin Darcy amiably pat Kris on the arm without in any way being repulsed. Normally Kris jerked away from any affectionate touch, even from Bell, though if he himself was the toucher, that was different.

 

 

Kris, I reflected without excitement, had been determined to please Robin by having us detour to Trox. Kris liked pleasing Robin, and I would do well not to forget it.

 

 

The two of them spoke intensely for a short while with Kris nodding assent. When they parted, they shook hands. I watched and wondered if Kris would tell me what they'd said.

 

 

On past form, I supposed with a shrug, quite probably not.

 

 

I leaned against the rails round the weighing room and the winners' unsaddling enclosure and did my best to pretend that the comings and goings of other trainers and jockeys were of far greater interest than anything Glenda had said. I stood with laziness in the bright air and, as quite often, simply let random thoughts drift with disorganization, until

 

 

"Baden-Baden" and "Poland" and "snow" announced themselves to me insistently as somehow meaningful, and meaningful because of Glenda and the filly.

 

 

Glenda was tit-tupping away in the distance. Glenda was jealous of Quigley and of Harvey...

 

 

Nonsense, I thought. As a result of the filly's illness, Harvey had transferred his other horses from Quigley to her own husband, Loricroft, and I doubted if that outcome was what she'd intended.

 

 

Unexpectedly, with one of those inexplicable shifts in the drifting brain that delivers a revelation to a vacuum, a word arrived in my mind with such clarity that I couldn't understand why I hadn't thought of it earlier. The word had been part of the heading on one of the letters in the folder on Trox. I'd thought I could remember only Hippostat, but now I knew there was another--and probably more significant--address, though it still lacked pinpoint direction.

 

 

Renebahn.

 

 

Baden-Baden Rennbahn.

 

 

Turn titty turn turn.

 

 

Rennbahn, in German script.

 

 

I did what half an hour earlier I would have classed as impossible, and deliberately moved into Glenda's path. Her own thoughts were elsewhere. She tripped over my foot with her fancy boots.

 

 

She said, "Baden-Baden, " under her breath, not paying me any attention, a view of life that changed rapidly when I offered after all to look up for her the weather, past, present and anywhere, and any time she wanted.

 

 

"Do you mean it? " she demanded, eyes, voice and mind all sharpening fast to an acute awareness quite at odds with her glittery hair.

 

 

"I can't do it until Monday, " I said. "I can't use the necessary computer until then. " She objected, "Bell says you're the head of home forecasting. I'd have thought you could do what you like as such.

 

 

" I

 

 

said I was only the deputy head, and to myself I added that I wasn't going to use up any favors on results I thought of as highly speculative. I smiled my best apologetic excuse to Glenda and truthfully explained that the mainframe computer ran on Sundays for strictly necessary reasons. Tracing errant husbands wasn't classed as essential or necessary.

 

 

"And why, " I asked without pressure, "does he go to BadenBaden and those other places? " "Girls, of course! I'll give you the list. " Glitzy Glenda wasn't quite a fool. "All those places are racecourses, " she said. "I suppose you don't know. " "No, " I agreed. "All in Germany? " "What a clever boy! Not all, but most. " "And does your husband have runners there? " "Haven't I told you, he says so? He says the races are abandoned because of snow, but I'm telling you, it doesn't snow when he says it does. " "I'll look it up for you, " I promised.

 

 

She gave me from her handbag a copy of the list she'd given to Bell, and I glanced at it briefly before stowing it in a pocket.

 

 

"Baden-Baden, " she said. "It's rubbish. " I was so close to her at that moment that I could smell alcohol on her breath and see little black beads on the ends of her rigid eyelashes. The shiny blonde hair had minuscule black roots.

 

 

"I'll divorce George, " she said with sudden and vicious intent. "And it will serve him right. " I suddenly couldn't be bothered to try any more at that moment to unwind any of Newmarket's twisted and destructive personalities. I spent the hour round the November Handicap simply watching the mechanics of the different, bewitching, wider world of racing, and winning a tiny amount when Harvey's runner, the second favorite, came in third.

 

 

I wasn't sure whether or not Robin Darcy was actively avoiding me, but in the end the meeting certainly looked accidental, one of those times when two people turn together and find themselves face to face.

 

 

We must both have had hours to prepare. We said to each other everything appropriate. I bewailed the loss of his beautiful aircraft, he rejoiced in the survival of Kris and myself. He thanked me for the letter I'd sent him from Miami airport half an hour before I left to fly home. I hoped he'd had a good journey himself, he had arrived at Newmarket yesterday, he confided.

 

 

He was friendly. He shook hands. He invited me anytime to visit again with himself and Evelyn. I wanted to say to him, "Where's the folder? For whom will you fix the sale of the next bargaining chip, the next bit of bomb? " In the brown eyes behind the big black frames there was the same sort of question and answer,

 

 

"Did Perry Stuart read those lists in the folder? He can't have done. He couldn't have opened the safe. He certainly heard my password, Hereford, but it would have meant nothing. " I wanted to say, "Whichever of you thought of the blindfold, thank you", and I read, "You don't know how close you came to a bullet. " I wondered what he had said to Kris... wondered what he wanted Kris to do.

 

 

I wished Robin Darcy had been an ally, not an enemy. Born clever... why should such a man trade in death?

 

 

Too many clever men chose to trade in death.

 

 

He gave me a nod and moved off to where, not far away, Caspar Harvey, able but not brilliant, received lukewarm plaudits for his horse's third place in the November Handicap.

 

 

Nothing but winning would have pleased his bullish attitude to racing, and I thought Oliver Quigley literally to be invit/!

 

 

Ling trouble when in Caspar's hearing he said that given his training methods and his instructions to the jockey, the horse would have won.

 

 

By the end of six races, when Kris and I went back to the airfield to fly home, the extra physical demands of the past ten days had drained my normally perceptive self to the equivalent of a worn-out battery. We spent long minutes on farewells to most of the Newmarket contingent in the car park nearest to the landing ground, and I was dozing even when Kris was taxiing down the field for takeoff. He changed fuel tanks ostentatiously. I pretended not to notice.

 

 

On this Saturday, late in the year for daylight landings, Kris had arranged with his friend in the control tower at White Waltham to put car-battery-powered lamps down the runway to shine a path for his quiet approach and arrival at about five o'clock, half past toast and teatime.

 

 

We were in the air and a long way south of Doncaster when Kris shook me awake.

 

 

"Sorry, " I said, yawning and reaching for the map. "Where are we? " It was still just light enough to see the three Rs, roads, rivers and railways. "No problem with those, " I said. He always flew a straight heading.

 

 

Kris however wasn't worrying about being lost but about oil on the windshield, he said.

 

 

"What? " I asked blankly.

 

 

"Oil. On the windshield. Perry, wake up. " It was the urgency of those last three words that sharply reached my senses. I did wake up. My heart lurched.

 

 

There were dark gold thread like lines on the windshield, which as I watched were joined by more lines, which were running and spreading upwards over the glass.

 

 

Horrified, we both understood what was happening. The hot oil that should have been circulating inside the engine case, lubricating the four thundering pistons, was somehow coming out into the engine compartment itself, and from there it was sliding upwards and backwards in droplets through the engine cowling's crack like edges to hit the glass of the windshield..

 

 

and from there, gradually to spread and cover the whole windshield with oil... and so, effectively, blind the pilot.

 

 

The oil itself wasn't the dirty brown-black old stuff that had been cleansing inner engine surfaces for many hours of flight. Kris always looked after his pride and joy, and he had changed his oil regularly. The disaster on the windshield had been clean for the Newmarket lunch.

 

 

"God Almighty, " Kris said. "What the hell do we do now? " "Keep straight on our course, " I said automatically, "so we know where we are. " "That's the easiest. What if all the oil comes out? The engine will go dry and seize up. " Kris suddenly sounded comically unconcerned. "And how do we land, if we can't see where we're going? " "Can we break the windshield? " I suggested.

 

 

"Get with it, Perry. " He was both sarcastic and fatalistic.

 

 

"The windshield's made of toughened glass to withstand bird strike

 

 

And even if we could break it--and what with--we'd have our faces cut to ribbons, and we'd need goggles as in the old Tiger Moth days, and even then we'd be going too fast, it would be like facing a Category 3 hurricane wind, it can't be done. " "Forget it, " I said, "keep our course and height. We'll have to find a large public commercial airport open late on a Saturday afternoon. " "Oh great. " He glanced across at me. "How do we find one of those? " "It's a doddle.

 

 

"With immense thankfulness I took note that this time we were sensibly in contact by radio with the outside world, as we did have an aeronautical map giving the radio frequencies of airports. We didn't have parachutes or ejector seats--couldn't have everything.

 

 

"You keep straight, " I told Kris. "I'll get us down to an airfield. " "You get us down, " he repeated, making a joke of it, "and I'll crash. " Such a damned stupid way to die, I thought. Blinded by oil... the only thing worse would be to switch on the windshield wipers, which would fatally smear the oil into a thick continuous curtain, whereas now it was just possible to see through the thread lines to the ground far beneath.

 

 

Far... Kris was giving in to the temptation of losing height so as to see the ground better, but height gave us a better chance of clear radio reception by any airfield.

 

 

"Go back up, " I said coaxingly.

 

 

"It's my bloody airplane. " "It's my bloody life. " We needed a big airport as soon as possible, and fortune smiled on us for once. I asked Kris dryly if he had any objection to Luton, almost dead ahead.

 

 

"You're joking! A real live airport? Not so much of the dead. " I told the area radio controller about the oil and said we would aim for Luton, approximately only thirty miles away.

 

 

There was an incredulous silence at Luton at our lack of any radio aid except radio itself, and we got only a laid back assessment of our chances (slim) from a useful man in Luton's control tower, who said he could put us over the runway and clear everything else off it, and after that it was up to us.

 

 

He gave us a private frequency for talking to him direct, so as not to clutter other air traffic.

 

 

"On second thoughts, better than trains, perhaps, " Kris yelled to me, grinning, manic spirits ascendant in the actual face of mortal danger.

 

 

I said, "A suicidal pilot is the last thing I need! " "It may be the last thing you get. " "I'll never forgive you... " The man at Luton said in our ears,

 

 

"We've an old D/F machine here.

 

 

Do you know how to fly a QDM? " Kris said, "Sure, " and I said, "Yes, " but we should both have correctly said, "Affirmative, " which would still not, in my case, have been the truth. D/F meant Direction Finding and QDM was an air code asking for a direction to steer, and that was the extent of my own knowledge. Kris, I thanked the fates, muttered that he had done a QDM approach once, years before, when he had got lost.

 

 

Did he remember the procedure?

 

 

Not clearly, he said. A joke, he thought it. He typically would.

 

 

Our helper at Luton resignedly told Kris to press the "transmit" button and say nothing, then turn left and after two minutes transmit again, and he told us he now knew which blip we were on his dial, and he knew what we should steer to reach him, but he couldn't tell how far away we were from him, and he wouldn't know until he could see us on his doorstep.

 

 

He might see us, we told him, but we couldn't see him.

 

 

Oil seemed to be coming out faster. Forward visibility had reduce-d pretty much to zero. The side windows were starting to fog, with droplets blowing backwards in streaks.

 

 

We traveled straight to Luton airport with his expert help, Kris again flying on instruments as if born to it and telling weak jokes all the way. Lights were starting to show on the ground in the still see-through bit of glass along the lower edge of the side windows. Kris's stream of jokes dried as the radio operator carefully steered him round in a pear shaped sky pattern that ended with the Cherokee lined up with the single wide runway that now lay a mile straight ahead.

 

 

The runway ran from west to east. We were to land towards the west, into the prevailing wind.

 

 

To my private dismay, landing to the west meant also facing into the setting sun. The last rays of sunset hit the oil and made the windshield a glowing golden enclosing glory, exciting and beautiful and more deadly than ever.

 

 

"Jeez, " Kris said, "I'll write a poem. " "Not just now. " "Say your prayers. " "You keep your mind on getting us down. " "We'll get down anyway. " "Safely, " I said.

 

 

He grinned.

 

 

The voice from the control tower said in our ears, "I see you clearly. Lower flaps... descend to two hundred feet...

 

 

maintain heading... allow for a ten-knot cross wind from the left... " Kris checked that I'd set the altimeter to match the height of Luton's airfield above sea level and lowered the flaps, the wing sections that gave greater lift at slow speed.

 

 

"This isn't Odin, " he said. "Pity really. We could do with a nice warm sea here for a splash-down landing. " I'd thought the same. The oil was thicker on the windows, and getting progressively worse.

 

 

"You're about a hundred feet up, " the radio said in my ear. "The runway's straight ahead. Can you see the ground at all? " "Can I, shit, " Kris said, which wasn't in the air manual.

 

 

He throttled back the power to settle onto his normal landing speed and held the heading straight.

 

 

The tower said,

 

 

"Stay straight... good... reduce power...

 

 

no, increase power... hold it steady... reduce power..

 

 

sink... straighten the rudder. I said straighten...

 

 

straighten. " Traveling at landing speed we hit the ground extremely hard and bounced back into the air with every bone shaking, with even our eyes insecure in their sockets.

 

 

Our airspeed read eighty miles an hour on the dial and was now dropping too fast. At sixty we'd be going too slowly for the wings to keep us aloft.

 

 

"Power on, " yelled the tower. "Power... level out..

 

 

left rudder. " "I can't see a bloody thing, " Kris said, his teeth grating from the shock through our bodies.

 

 

"Power... POWER... " Kris pushed the throttle open and held the nose steady, and again we hit the ground with a frightful crash, though this time we bounced off grass, not off the hard runway, and were heading heaven knew where, still with a lethal but necessary airspeed giving us lift enough for a livable landing and still with the setting sun golden red in our eyes.

 

 

Kris said loudly, "To hell with this, " and pulled the throttle right back, chopping off the fuel and stopping the engine, which would have been fine if we'd had any wheels on the ground, instead of ten feet or more of air beneath us.

 

 

Normally Kris's landings consisted of a smooth nose-up float followed by a feather-soft transference of wheels to earth.

 

 

This time with the speed dropping off alarmingly fast, leaving Kris progressively without any effective control, we hit the ground again and bounced again into the air and bounced again, slowing, slowing, each bounce shallower but at the wrong angle for the wheels to stay down.

 

 

Kris from instinct finally pulled the control column yoke right back, raising the nose until the wings stalled and, with no lift left, the airplane's propeller dipped down and dug a deep groove in the earth. There was a screeching and a banging of metal and there were human bodies being flung about. There was a terrifying sudden and final standstill with the fuselage and tail pointing halfway to the sky.

 

 

s The oil on the windshield still shone radiantly, the glass unbroken, the last red-gold gleams of sunset slanting across towards a motionless dusk.

 

 

Silence. Stillness. My head rang.

 

 

It had been a miraculous deliverance and a splendid piece of flying, and within a minute we were surrounded by foam trucks and ambulances and police cars and half of the county of Bedfordshire that had been listening on the so-called "private" frequency dedicated to our troubles.

 

 

KRIS HAD BEEN knocked out by the last going-nowhere impact and was half hanging in his seat belt and half lying on the control column. I'd felt in myself a sort of resilient cracking bounce in my chest, disorienting but not disabling, nothing to stop me from trying to unlatch the door, which when it came to the point I couldn't do, as it seemed to be bent.

 

 

I'd reached a woozy level of thinking "fire" and dammit we have fuel in both wing tanks this time, " and various comforting little items along those lines, but the rescue mob outside jimmied the door open and scooped us carefully and quite fast out of our nose-down cabin and covered the fuel leaks around them and us with foam and expedition.

 

 

Kris woke up moaning, a noise that shocked him into silence and a weak grin. By the time the first news camera with microphone was seen advancing among the uniforms, his concern had been wholly transferred from the living to his mangled treasure, which no one would let him inspect.

 

 

I could have told him that the obvious damage was a nose wheel with broken struts, three burst tires and propeller blades bent into right angles.

 

 

I stood on the grass, shivering, while someone with kindness wrapped a blanket round my shoulders, and I watched Kris lose the battle against stretcher-bearers and other goodnatured forms of restraint.

 

 

It was inevitable, I supposed, that the question of why had the oil leaked out of the engine should be one of the first needing an answer and almost the last to get it.

 

 

For some reason my mind was inclined to clear sharply sometimes in a crisis, and it was then with a jolt that I remembered Kris's friend setting out the landing lights at White Waltham. Our savior from the Luton tower, coming down from his heights, promised amiably to alert him, with a consequent widening of the bad and good tidings, and no chance of a modest disavowal. Every one at White Waltham chatted onwards and agreed that the weathermen had nine, or better, twenty-nine lives.

 

 

Being carried off by paramedics--against his will--Kris urgently told me as he passed to stay with the Cherokee to the death (or to the scrap heap), as oil should not have got past his eagle-eyed checks, and indeed I was well aware, as he was carted protestingly to onward transport, that we had in fact flown safely to Doncaster a few hours earlier with the engine oil intact.

 

 

I folded the blanket from around my shoulders, returned it noncommittally to an ambulance and, covering most of my too easily recognized face with a hand, became a gawping bystander among others. Never mind that Kris wanted to know, I too was fairly anxiously curious. Except for the direction-finder and its operator in Luton's control tower, and but for Kris's "give-it-all-you've-got" semi-crash landing, the BBC would have lost two forecasters permanently, and on a cloudless fine evening, no less.

 

 

INEVITABLY IN THE end Kris and I became news fodder with names, but I did stay with the Cherokee to the crane lifting stage, for which Kris next day (out of hospital custody), said, "Thanks, kiddo, " absentmindedly and demanded to know what I'd learned.

 

 

I said, "When we... er... landed, there was no dipstick in , , the engine.

 

 

He stared at me fiercely. We were up in my attic surrounded by the Sunday papers he'd brought with him. All the later editions had given us front page slots with a frame or two of the nose-down wreck and our best BBC faces, with unstinted and not unduly complimentary comments on our recently reported escape from our flight through a hurricane. Two crashes within two weeks was excessive.

 

 

"It was not pilot error, " Kris asserted, deliberately ignoring any possible embarrassing reference to fuel tanks. "You saw me use the dipstick yesterday morning when we took off. I wiped the stick clean and put it into the engine sump to make sure there was enough oil, and there was. And I put the dipstick back and screwed it up tight, and no oil came out on the way to Doncaster. " "No, " I agreed.

 

 

"And I didn't look at the oil level again at Doncaster.

 

 

Go on, say it, I didn't do that check again as we hadn't come far from White Waltham--like I didn't check the oil that day for coming home from Newmarket. No one checks the oil after such a short flight. " I said,

 

 

"You certainly did not remove the dipstick at Doncaster and not put it back. " "You'd swear to it? " I'd been semi-asleep at Doncaster but I would have bet my life on his carefulness... as indeed I had done in Odin..

 

 

and nearly drowned for it...

 

 

At Doncaster there had been no pressure on him. The panic scale had registered zero. He wouldn't have made an elementary mistake.

 

 

The alternative had to be faced. Someone else, not Kris, had taken out the dipstick at Doncaster and not put it back.

 

 

Kris shook his head to any question about Robin Darcy, but in good spirits collected his newspapers and went down my stairs, slowly for him because of the medics' warning of dizziness and concussion, and I finally admitted to myself, chiefly as a result of a stabbing indrawn breath, that I'd possibly cracked a rib or two at Luton.

 

 

I'd been treated well there, courtesy no doubt of my employment by the Weather Center, and I'd learned how very lucky we had in fact been, as the single wide runway and the airport itself lay on a hill above the town. The control tower people, aghast, had seen our first heavy bounce throw the Cherokee off its straight course, and we'd been heading across grass towards a steep downwards slope when Kris had opted for his dramatic full stop.

 

 

Kris's Cherokee would be stowed safely in their hangar, they said, and there it would stay until the accident inspectors came to write their report. I would please meanwhile not talk about no dipstick. Silent as mushrooms, I said.

 

 

I called my grandmother and dispelled a flourishing outbreak of heebiejeebies. The Stuart feet, I assured her, may have been in the recent wars but were this time safely on the ground. She could however hear the lighthearted relief in my voice and unerringly understood it.

 

 

"You might not always escape, " she said worriedly. "Wear a bulletproof vest. " BY MONDAY MORNING we had yielded the front page to an eloping heiress and there was no denying the fact of my cracked ribs. Maybe two, I thought, not more. And no lung piercers the really extremely bad news.

 

 

I'd done much the same damage once before by falling down a Welsh mountainside. A visit to a doctor resulted at that time in "grin, bear it and take aspirins" advice, after Luton there seemed nothing to improve on that, except the distraction attained by looking up snowfalls in Europe.

 

 

Glenda surprisingly was apparently right. If her dominating George had reported icy temperatures as an excuse for infidelity, he hadn't been truthful, regardless of faithful.

 

 

I made a list of the actual air temperatures and inches of snowfall for all the places and cities I'd been given, and none of them matched. Either Glenda or George, or both, was playing winter games.

 

 

I telephoned Belladonna, reckoning to catch her at breakfast after she'd come in from riding morning exercise, and I located her with Loricroft and Glenda, eating corn flakes in the Loricroft kitchen. Racehorse trainers, it seemed to me, led half their days in the kitchen. It was warm there in winter, Bell explained.

 

 

Kris had refused sick leave, she said, and would be forecasting on Radio Four, as scheduled, and he had already told her that for the five weekdays ahead, starting on that day, Monday, I would be doing television forecasts in the evening after the six o'clock and nine o'clock news.

 

 

"Mm, " I agreed. "Could you and Glenda spare me any time tomorrow morning, if I come over? " "Is it good news for Glenda? Do you want to talk to her?

 

 

Will you be bringing Kris? " I said, "Maybe. Perhaps. And no. " "Hang on, " Bell said and put her hand over the microphone, I guessed, while she asked her boss and his wife for their reaction, because in a minute or two she was saying, "Perry? How about Wednesday? George says if you're here early enough you can see his jumpers going over the schooling fences. " I gathered I was being offered a medium honor which it would be impolite to refuse, I agreed on eight-thirty Wednesday, though I would rather have gone a day sooner.

 

 

Until then... Until then there was first of all Jett van Els, whose third week with my grandmother had concluded that Monday morning. At ten she had changed places with another of my grandmother's "dear girls, " and at one o'clock she met me in a sandwich bar for lunch.

 

 

She came dressed not in the nurse's uniform familiar to me, but in black pants, a thick white sweater and a boxy scarlet coat with black and gold buttons. I greeted her with frank admiration and the first thing she said was, "You're not well. " I kissed her anyway.

 

 

"I'm a nurse, remember, " she said, "and I've seen pallor in too many faces. " She made no more fuss about it, however, but hung her coat on a nearby peg and read the possible menu with half her attention.

 

 

"What job do you start next? " I asked, settling on cheese and chutney in brown bread for myself, but not caring much what I ate.

 

 

"I'm taking a week off, and next Monday I'll be back with Mrs. Mevagissey. " She spoke calmly as if this program were usual. Normally, if a nurse returned, it would be after at least a month.

 

 

"Did she agree? " I queried, my eyebrows rising.

 

 

Jett smiled at my surprise. "Your grandmother warned me severely not to grow fond of you, as you were inconstancy personified, or words to that effect. " "She doesn't want you to be hurt. " "And will I be? " It wasn't the sort of exchange I'd ever before embarked on.

 

 

I said weakly, "It's too soon to tell. " "I'll negotiate terms of disengagement. " We ordered food. She chose tuna, which I'd never liked, and I found I hoped her future plans wouldn't take her far away.

 

 

Jett van Els, with or without Belgian father, was more likely to leave Perry Stuart in tatters than the other way round.

 

 

"Seriously, " she said, having healthily dispatched the tuna, "what's hurting you? " "Onset of broken heart? " She shook her head, smiling. "I saw the papers yesterday, with your grandmother. It's amazin you and your friend Kris survived at all. " (, , , I said I'd probably cracked a rib or two, which could be a bit frustrating in the active love department, for a couple of days.

 

 

"Think in terms of a week or two, " Miss van Els instructed.

 

 

"Or a month or two. " She smiled with composure. "The first rule of disengagement is to take your time at the beginning. " "How about lunch tomorrow, then? " "All right, " she said.

 

 

ALTHOUGH I WOULDN't do my act before the cameras until well after six o'clock, I was always at work in plenty of time before two, when the twice-daily conference on world atmospheric conditions took place.

 

 

One had to consider as a whole the jacket of air swirling round the spinning planet and to foresee if possible how far the low pressure systems in hot areas might deepen further still, to give rise to gales.

 

 

I had always found it extraordinary that people turned their backs on physics as a subject at school and university, even if public opinion was at last gradually changing. Physics was the study of the hugely powerful invisible forces that ruled the way we lived. Physics was gravity, magnetism, electricity, heat, sound, air pressure, radioactivity and especially radio, the mysI terious forces that clearly existed, whose effects were commonplace, whose powers were unlimited, and which could not be seen. Every day I dealt with them as friends.

 

 

No one at work made much comment on Kris's or my Saturday escapade, as our colleagues seemed to have exhausted their "welcome backs" after Odin. Their matter-of-fact approach suited me fine, though perhaps I would have preferred a more concerned response to inquiries into the fate of a missing dipstick further north. When I telephoned for news, I got nowhere, as it wasn't my dipstick, I was told. When Kris telephoned, at my prompting, he still got nowhere, as nothing could be discussed unless he made the journey to talk to them in person.

 

 

"Get Luton to ask, " I suggested, but Luton received only a suggestion that Kris himself should be more closely questioned.

 

 

"What does that mean? " Kris demanded.

 

 

I said,

 

 

"It means they haven't found a dipstick at their end.

 

 

It means they think you didn't screw your dipstick in tight and they are trying to say it was your fault the oil came out. " Kris scowled, but when I went to Kensington on Tuesday morning to pretend to be engaged on a textbook, John Rupert took the leaking oil to be a bona-fide attempt to put Kris and myself underground.

 

 

"I fly my own plane,

 

 

"John Rupert said. "I've been a weekend pilot for twenty years, and I wouldn't like to try to land blind. A year ago, oil on the windshield killed four people who crashed into English cliffs on their way back from France.

 

 

Their dipstick was found on the ground where they'd topped up their oil before setting off for home. It was in all the papers. " "Poor sods, " I said. "I remember it. " "No one,

 

 

"John Rupert observed with conviction, "could have expected you both to be back at work unharmed. " The door opened quietly for the advent of Ghost. He shook hands with stretched sinews and finished off the single ginger cracker overlooked by John Rupert himself.

 

 

"News? " Ghost suggested laconically, quietly crunching.

 

 

"Thoughts? " "Apart from attempted murder by oil,

 

 

"John Rupert said.

 

 

"Because you both lived, " Ghost said dryly, "no one will consider it an attempt... " He broke off and asked me straightly, "Could it have been by any means an accident? " "Only if it was random mischief by a stranger, which is,

 

 

I

 

 

believe, what the local investigators think. " "But you don't? " "No. " "And is that why you've come back to us? " I blinked. "I expect so, " I said.

 

 

Ghost smiled, a fearsome facial expression threatening the wicked with decades in limbo.

 

 

I said, "I don't know exactly who whisked out the dipstick, but I've brought you a list of possibles. " They read them. "All from Newmarket, " Ghost commented. "All except this last one, Robin Darcy. " "I don't think it was him, " I said.

 

 

"Why not? " "He shook hands with both of us. Separately, that is. " "You're old-fashioned, " Ghost said. "Shakespeare was bang up to date. One can smile and smile and be a villain. " "I don't want it to be Darcy, " I said.

 

 

"Ah, " Ghost sounded satisfied. "Gut feelings... those I believe in. " John Rupert studied the list. "Tell us about these people, " he said. "What about Caspar Harvey? And Belladonna, his daughter? " I was surprised at how much I'd learned about each of them and it took me a good hour to roam round the perimeter of quivery Oliver Quigley (old and new perceptions) and George Loricroft, a bully who believed himself entitled to dominate his semi-bimbo wife, who was much brighter than her husband realized or allowed for and who half-understood too much but not quite enough, and was therefore a danger to herself, though she didn't know it.

 

 

"I don't think the dipstick was Glenda's doing, " I explained, drawing breath. "I don't think she wanted Kris and me dead.

 

 

She wanted us to be alive, to be weathermen, and to check on her suspicions. " I explained about the snow and ice discrepancies in Loricroft's actual and professed journeys.

 

 

Ghost listened intently. John Rupert said merely,

 

 

"Expand. " "Well... " I collected a few thoughts. "When I came to you... sought you out... I knew the names of three of the Traders, and I didn't tell you them because... " "Because, " Ghost said disapprovingly, as I hesitated, "you sentimentally wanted to save them from prosecution, as they hadn't killed you when they had the opportunity. Correct? " "I guess so. " "And? " "And that was fact, but what I can tell you now is inference and supposition. " "Glad to have them,

 

 

"John Rupert said with mock formality.

 

 

"Fire away. " "You may ridicule... " "Leave that to us. " "The Unified Traders... " I said slowly. "Well, these Unified Traders, it seems to me, are more amateur than professional. That's to say, they're dishonorable enough in intent, but not slick or hard enough in performance. For instance, leaving their folder of essential information lying about for so long was plain stupid, so was engaging Kris to collect it. On the surface it seemed a reasonable quid pro quo, as Kris would have done more or less anything in exchange for a chance to fly through a hurricane. " John Rupert nodded.

 

 

I said, "Caspar Harvey and Robin Darcy are very longtime colleagues, and apart from Harvey's barley and Darcy's turf farm, they are both used to handling things in small packets.

 

 

Harvey sells birdseed and Darcy sells vacuum-packed exotic mushrooms. Darcy set up a small mushroom operation on Trox Island, but I was told, seconthand, by full-scale mushroom growers, that the Trox operation was too small to succeed. In the end it was used, as I told you before, to frighten away the whole population of the island. But it was their ability to think small that started them off, I reckon, on arranging the introduction of buyers to sellers of tiny amounts of radioactive materials. " John Rupert said, "I suppose if you put enough small packets together you get a haystack. " "Or a bomb, " said Ghost.

 

 

"Or enough of a bomb, " I said mildly, "to raise the bargaining power of that amount. But I don't think the Traders actually handle the uranium or plutonium themselves. It's very dangerous stuff. But they do have small-scale know-how. " I stopped, but both men wanted more.

 

 

"I think, " I said, "and frankly I'm guessing, that Darcy recruited Caspar Harvey as a Trader, and Harvey drew in Oliver Quigley and George Loricroft... and for a while the middlemen operation ran smoothly and imnnensely profitably with the three Traders across the Atlantic, each of the group of six acting on the old musketeers' principle of All for one and one Ghost, his eyes shrewdly narrowed, asked,

 

 

"Why did the original Traders need more recruits? Why didn't Darcy and Harvey keep the proceeds to themselves? " "I think... " I found all my thoughts coming out as speculations. "... I think Harvey found Loricroft had a gift for sniffing out the truffles. George Loricroft kas traveled all over Europe--and especially throughout Germany--telling his wife lies about the local weather to explain why he hadn't been where he was supposed to have been, and always treating her as an idiot, and in fact it's possible that all those places he lied about were trading posts. They were nearly all in Germany, and as Loricroft is internationally known as a racehorse trainer, there is nowhere in the world more suitable or less conspicuous for him to trade and exchange information than on racetracks. " I looked down at my shoes, dodging their undoubted incredulity, but I'd gone too far to withdraw.

 

 

"I told you I could remember only Hippostat as a word in the heading of one of the letters, but I know another--it came to me when I wasn't concentrating... it just drifted back from my subconscious memory. " Ghost said impatiently,

 

 

"What is it? " "Well... " I looked up, "it's Rennbahn. It's Baden-Baden Rennbahn. " John Rupert smiled vividly. "And do you know what Rennbahn means? " "Racetrack, " I said. "I've looked it up. Baden-Baden Racetrack. It was written in German script in a letter in another language that I didn't know. " "We have German dictionaries downstairs, and every other sort of dictionary you care to mention, " John Rupert said.

 

 

"Would you remember any more if you... er... browsed?

 

 

" I said doubtfully,

 

 

"I don't know. " "We can try. " "Meanwhile, " Ghost said, "tell us about the other two Traders in Florida, Robin Darcy's colleagues. " "They're in the Cayman Islands, not Florida, " I explained, and described Michael and Amy Ford. "And they may be in the game because of idealism or political motives... I simply can't tell, but they also may be the original Traders. In any case, they are, I'd say, the richest of the whole group. " "Why do you think so? " Ghost wanted to know.

 

 

"I stayed in their house... and Amy's airplane, that we ditched in the hurricane, that plane was a perfect beauty. They said Amy had sold it to Darcy. " "But you doubt it?

 

 

"John Rupert asked.

 

 

"Well... I do, yes. But that's only an impression.

 

 

None of them seemed to be terribly upset by losing it. I don't know about insurance. None of them mentioned it. " There was a pause. John Rupert then said, "Is that the lot? " and prepared to rise, and I said with diffidence, "One more thing... " "Yes? " He relaxed in his chair, attention unending.

 

 

I picked at my fingers. "Well... it's only that the Unified Trading Company doesn't have a boss. They don't have a hierarchy.

 

 

" "Are you sure?

 

 

"John Rupert inquired doubtfully. "Every organization I've ever dealt with has had a hierarchy. " "I'm sure, " I nodded. "In an ordinary company, the lower members report upwards, and then receive their instructions from above. But in the Unified Trading Company they each act on their own ideas and report afterwards what they've done.

 

 

They act first and tell the others after. As a result they duplicate some things and omit others entirely, and they get in a muddle. " Both John Rupert and Ghost were shovwing more and more doubt.

 

 

"If both of you had been for a long time accustomed to rule, " I said, "which of you would make the decisions? " They answered quickly and in unison,

 

 

"I would. " "Who would? " I asked. "Which of you would give commands? " "I would. " They answered as one again, but more slowly, and then both of them looked thoughtful.

 

 

"The Traders so far identifiable, " I remarked, "have each run their own business, and are accustomed to command.

 

 

I

 

 

!

 

 

Michael Ford owned and ran a chain of profitable gymnasiums. His wife, Amy, made a fortune from video rental stores.

 

 

Robin Darcy farms turf, which in Florida is like growing gold.

 

 

Caspar Harvey too is a farmer, but also makes trillions out of birdseed. Both George Loricroft and Oliver Quigley are racehorse trainers and both succeed only by controlling their work force. All of those six people are accustomed to making the decisions. They're not used to being told what to do. Also they don't like being told what to do, so they do what they think is best, independently. And because of that, things, overall, go wrong. " "It's an interesting theory, " Ghost said.

 

 

"For instance, " I said, "Robin Darcy expected Kris to be able to pick up the folder without difficulty because he'd left it in a desk, but someone else, unknown to him, had removed the desk and installed a safe, using Darcy's own password. Like I said, they get things wrong, and Kris didn't find the folder at all. " I was fast running out of energy and felt sore along the protesting ribs. More than ready to leave, I asked, "Is there anything else I can do? If not... " They indecisively shook their heads.

 

 

"Only the dictionaries..

 

 

So I went downstairs with them into a busy world of books. There were indeed dictionaries by the hundred, but after a survey of incomprehensible scripts, with no reliable recognitions, I finally scraped together enough impetus to leave and meet Jett in her scarlet coat for lunch.

 

 

"You're ill, " she said over curried egg salads, and I hadn't the vigor to deny it.

 

 

"Tell the BBC you need sick leave. " "It's only ribs. They'll be better tomorrow. " "Let me drive you to Newmarket, then, in the morning. " I'd told her I was going to Newmarket to see George Loricroft's horses school over fences. She'd wanted to come anyway, and although I thought it incautious, I gratefully accepted her offer.

 

 

I got through the working day somehow, but when Jett arrived at my front door at six-thirty the next morning she said I wasn't fit to travel anywhere and should see a doctor.

 

 

We had agreed we would go in her own Honda as she felt happier driving it than sitting behind the wheel of my compact runabout. She said she knew a good doctor and I said we were going to Newmarket, and maybe for the last time with Miss van Els, I got my way.

 

 

At George Loricroft's house Bell greeted me with a kiss, switching her gaze past me to see how Jett reacted to that embrace. Waste of time. Jett was cool.

 

 

Glenda wrapped her arms lavishly around me so that her mouth ended up by my ear.

 

 

"Don't tell George... " It was scarcely more than a whisper. Then more loudly she said, "How divine of you to come, luv. " And George himself, unenthusiastic about me at all times, cheered up considerably when introduced to Jett. A thoroughly sex-conscious bunch of hellos, I thought, and couldn't eat any breakfast from nausea.

 

 

Glenda and Bell rejoiced again about the landing Kris had achieved on Saturday, and George, looking at his watch impatiently, crossly said that in his opinion Kris had been in too much of a hurry to set off from Doncaster before dark and that he'd left the dipstick on the ground and clipped the engine cowling shut without it in place.

 

 

"Easy done, " he said. "Get ready, girls. It's time to go. " And he strode out to his horses without looking back.

 

 

George, with well-developed brusqueness, had seemed considerably out of tune with his wife, and she from time to time had shot him searing glances of anxiety mixed with ill will. Neither was any longer bothering to pretend devotion to the other, an awkwardness for everyone else.

 

 

At a moment well out of her husband's sight, I gave Glenda her list of the icy venues George had sworn to that were contradictory to the freezing truth, and I watched her cheeks flush with justification and--I thought--with a sort of disappointment and disillusion that she'd been right.

 

 

Bell put an arm round Glenda's drooping shoulders and walked with her into the depths of the house, returning alone to mount a horse out in the stable yard and to leadJett and me (driving George's Jeep) to the schooling grounds for the promised jumping practice. I was gladJett seemed genuinely interested and that Bell, though herself due to ride one hustling breath-stopper over three rattling flights of hurdles, spent time explaining schooling routine in advance to me and to the next-best-thing to Florence Nightingale, the Miss van Els, who was that day wearing olive-drab trousers and jacket over the thick white sweater. She and I walked from the Jeep to a vantage point nearer the hurdles, to hear and be a part of the noise and commitment.

 

 

After the jumping and out of breath from the speed, Bell trotted her mount over to where we stood and dropped down from his back, surprisingly saying to us both with a smile, "I've not known you long, brother Perry, but I know a good brain when it flashes under my nose, and you and yourJett van Els, you're both loaded. " Bell started walking her horse round in a small circle nearby, to cool him, while I tried to keep up with her and talk as well.

 

 

"Like Robin Darcy? " I suggested.

 

 

She took ten seconds of silence to surf her memory, and came up with a straightforward account of bits of her father's lunch party. "I told you not to be fooled by his cuddly shell. " "Yes, you did. " "And I tried to warn Kris that Darcy was way outside his league, but that day Kris wouldn't have listened to me if I'd been the angel Gabriel. " Kris had listened to Robin that day and ever since.

 

 

"Kris and Robin talked for ages at Doncaster, " I said.

 

 

Bell nodded. "They talked when I went to the loo. Darcy asked Kris to spend another holiday with Evelyn and him, and to take me with him! " "A marriage trip? " "Sometimes I think we'll never get to the wedding. " She looked undecided herself, and then unexpectedly said, "Stay here with Jett and hold my horse by his bridle and I'll go and fetch George's Jeep. Honestly, you look pretty gray. " I couldn't understand it, because the cracked ribs in Wales hadn't caused sickness but only discomfort, but I did accept her offer and stood beside her steaming mount, pleased to be near the great primeval creature under the wide, cold, cloudless skies of Newmarket Heath.

 

 

Bell brought the Jeep and we exchanged conveyances, she rode the horse and I drove myself and Jett back to George's yard and felt awful.

 

 

In the warm kitchen George and Glenda were standing rigidly opposite each other, glaring as if ready to kill, and the reappearance of others hardly began to melt the cutting edges of hate.

 

 

George, in his mid-forties, always emanated heavy forcefulness, but at that moment the handsome set of his shoulders, thick smoothly brushed dark hair, the thin fingers clenching and stretching with tensile grace, all the stylishness served only to intensify the positive malevolence of his intention.

 

 

George's anger would, I thought, have erupted already into a physical attack on his wife if it weren't that she herself seemed to wear an impermeable and invisible armor.

 

 

Jett and I silently retreated, with Bell on our heels looking worried and trying to say, "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..

 

 

"Don't be, " I said, but I couldn't reassure her, not with only two brief words.

 

 

We walked across George's parking area and stopped byJett's Honda. I looked back at the big Loricroft house and saw only prosperity and peace. Tissue paper over an abyss, I thought.

 

 

"Bell... " I begged her uneasily, "leave Newmarket and move in with Kris in London. " She was shaking her head before I'd finished speaking.

 

 

"I can't leave. And what for? Kris doesn't need me, he said so.

 

 

Neither Bell norJett felt any of the urgency making my intestines cramp and my scalp itch. My grandmother, I realized, would have recognized this deep unease as heebiejeebies, but I didn't know whether the feelings I was having derived from reason or instinct or simply queasiness.

 

 

I said only, but with as much persuasion as I could manage, "Bell, I mean it. Leave Newmarket. I have an intuition...

 

 

you could call it premonition... call it anything, but leave here.

 

 

. " Jett said,

 

 

"You're ill. " "Maybe... But ill or not... Bell, leave Newmarket now. " Both she andJett, puzzled by my vehemence, nevertheless began to waver. I found it impossible to tell her that her father and her employer and Quigley and Robin Darcy were all involved in a conspiracy to supply to many lawless parts of the world and to many a clique and brotherhood the information needed to acquire tiny quantities of the highest-grade fissile material for weapons. Tiny quantities, if enough of them were gathered together, made a threat, an aggregation... a bomb.

 

 

All four men, and surely they knew it, were dealing in death.

 

 

One or two of them were themselves personally lethal.

 

 

Loricroft, the seeker and collector of the stuff of profitable deals, he certainly, with his conviction of his own superiority, with his wife ever nearer on the trail of his transactions, he most of all was closest to detonation.

 

 

I thought him dangerous as likely to cause heartless damage as any of his cold-blooded customers.

 

 

I said to Bell, "If Glenda wants out, take her with you. " Bell shook her head.

 

 

"I'll come back in an hour, " I said, and askedJett to drive me in her car through the town.

 

 

"To the hospital? " she asked hopefully.

 

 

"Sort of, " I said.

 

 

l

 

 

I

 

 

THE HOSPITAL I sought cared for horses.

 

 

I'd made a telephone call to prepare the way, and was greeted inside the main door of the Equine Research Establishment by a woman whose given name was Zinnia. Although a research veterinarian in general, she introduced herself as a specialist in poisonous plants and on their effect on any horse that ate them.

 

 

It had been she who'd been given the task not just of saving if possible the life of Caspar Harvey's filly but of finding what was wrong with her to begin with.

 

 

Zinnia had already attained fifty, I guessed, and wore a professional white coat over a gray flannel skirt. In spite of her colorful name she had short gray hair, no hint of lipstick, flat heeled shoes and an air of tiredness, which I discovered to be a permanent mannerism, not a pointer to lack of sleep.

 

 

"Dr. Stuart? " She greeted me with a toe-to-head inspection but no enthusiasm, and raised her eyebrows over Jett, who'd declined to be left outside in her car. A recital by me of Jeff's nursing certificates brought the eyebrows down again, and we were invited to follow the flower into a laboratory equipped with a herd of microscopes, centrifuges, measuring devices and a gas chromatograph. We all sat on high laboratory stools, and I went on feeling lousy.

 

 

"Mr. Harvey's filly, " Zinnia said without emotion, "presented with severe symptoms of intestinal distress. By the time I was called in to see her here, late on a Sunday afternoon, she was in a state of collapse... " She detailed her actions and her thoughts at the time which, as in nature horses had no provision for anti-peristalsis, or in plainer words, couldn't throw up, had consisted to a great extent of purging and of offering copious amounts of water, which the filly fortunately drank.

 

 

"I thought it certain that she'd eaten some form of plant poison that had been ground up into chaff and mixed into her hay, as there were no whole specimen leaves or stems in the hay net that came with her. I expected her to die, when of course I would have analyzed the stomach contents, but as she clung to life I had to make do with the copious droppings...

 

 

I thought that she might have ingested ragwort, which is extremely poisonous and often fatal for horses. It attacks the liver and is usually chronic, but it can have acute effects, as with Harvey's filly. " She paused, looking from my face to Jeff's and seeing considerable ignorance in both.

 

 

"Are you cognizant of Senecio jacobaea? " she asked.

 

 

"Er... " I said. "No. " i.

 

 

- "Better known as ragwort. " She smiled thinly. "It mostly lives in wasteland and was designated an injurious weed under the 1959 Weeds Act, so it's your duty to pull it up if you see any. " If she'd said that neither Jett nor I had any idea what it looked like on the hoof, so to speak, she would have been absolutely right. We asked, and she described.

 

 

"It has yellow flowers and jagged leaves... " She broke off.

 

 

"Ragwort has to do with cyclic diesters, the most toxic of pyrrelizidine alkaloids, and it causes the symptoms shown by the filly, the digestive tract upset, the abdominal pain and ataxia, the lack of control of the legs. " We listened respectfully. I wondered if I'd been eating ragwort myself.

 

 

"The leaves can be dried and will keep their poisoning capacity for ages, unfortunately making it all the more suitable for chopping and mixing with other dried fodder, like hay. " Jett said to Zinnia,

 

 

"So you found ragwort in the fiAly's droppings? " Zinnia glanced from her to me. "No, " she said without dramatics.

 

 

"There was no identifiable ragwort in the filly's droppings. We treated her with a series of antibiotics in case an infection was present, and she gradually recovered. We sent her to George Loricroft, having been given instructions to do that by the owner, Caspar Harvey. The filly had been trained by Oliver Quigley before that, of course, and we made inquiries in that yard from the head groom downwards, but the whole work force there strongly denied that anyone could possibly have tampered with the filly's hay net None of the other horses showed any symptoms like the filly, do you see? " "What was wrong with her, then? " Jett asked. "Did you ever find out? " "There are other theories, I believe, " she said, sounding as if any theory advanced by anyone except herself would automatically be wrong. "But the filly isn't here, of course. If you want to do blood tests for antibodies, Dr. Stuart, we have already suggested that course to Caspar Harvey, but so far he has declined the procedure. " Zinnia was saying, in her meticulous way, that if a horse or a human--had had a disorder successfully treated, then that creature's blood would likely forever contain the antibodies summoned up to defeat the infection. The presence of the antibodies to any disease proved that the individual had been exposed to that disease.

 

 

"No, I don't want to test for antibodies, " I said, "but...

 

 

did you keep any of the droppings? Do you still have any of them here in the research lab? " Zinnia said with starch, "I assure you, Dr. Stuart, we tested the droppings for every infection and every poison in the book and we found nothing. " My forehead was damp with sweat. I felt more or less on a par with the filly. No cracked bones that I'd heard of gave one such unquiet guts.

 

 

Zinnia with surprise agreed grudgingly that the Research Establishment had indeed retained some of the material in question, as the riddle of the filly's illness hadn't been solved.

 

 

"Caspar Harvey might change his mind, " Zinnia said.

 

 

I thought Caspar Harvey most unlikely to want light poured onto the filly's ailment, but regardless of his feelings, I said to

 

 

L

 

 

-K.

 

 

Zinnia, "Does the Equine Research Establishment by any chance have a Geiger counter among its equipment? " "A Geiger... " Words dried in Zinnia's throat.

 

 

"I believe, " I said without emphasis, "that someone here reckons the filly was suffering from radiation sickness. " "Oh no, " Zinnia shook her head decisively. "She would have deteriorated and died from that, but she recovered within days when treated with antibiotics. We have a research scientist here who advanced the radiation theory, chiefly I think on the grounds of some of the filly's hair dropping out, but yes, to answer your inquiry, we do have a Geiger counter somewhere, but the filly showed no abnormal count when she left here. " There was a pause. I had no intention of annoying or contradicting her, and after a short while she raised an at least semi-friendly smile and said she would go and find the researcher in question. Within five minutes she returned with another white-coated lady, whose knowledge of radioactivity could have done with a dusting off.

 

 

Her name, she said, was Vera, she was earnest, thorough and a cutting genius in bad cases of colic.

 

 

"I'm a veterinary surgeon, not a physicist, " she explained, "but since Zinnia found no trace of poison--and believe me, if she couldn't, then no one could--I began to think of other possibilities, and I just floated the idea of radiation sickness.

 

 

and of course it generated an instant atmosphere of fear, but we called in an expert on radiation and he did tests and told us not to worry, neither radiation sickness nor the filly could have been infectious. I wish I could remember everything he said. " "Dr. Stuart is a physicist, " Zinnia smoothly remarked.

 

 

"He reads the weather on the BBC, " the second veterinarian contradicted flatly, unimpressed.

 

 

"He's both,

 

 

"Jett assured her, "and a lecturer also. " I looked at her in surprise.

 

 

"Your grandmother told me, " she smiled. "She said you lecture on physics in general and radiation in particular. Mostly to young people, like teenagers. " Vera, the second white coat, showed none of Zinnia's constant tiredness, but quite the opposite. She woke to see me as a different creature.

 

 

She said, "Give me a sample of your lecturing wares and I'll lend you my records of the filly's droppings. " "That's totally reprehensible, " Zinnia reproved. "Unacceptable.

 

 

" Her friend nodded, unabashed.

 

 

"Promise? " I said.

 

 

"Of course. " I thought it might take my mind off greenish gills, so I started on a portion of the lecture I'd given so often that I knew it by heart. "This is about uranium, " I said. "It's from a lecture I give to sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds usually. " The second white coat approved. "Right. Carry on. " In a conversational voice I did her bidding.

 

 

I said from memory, "Just one gram of uranium ore contains more than two thousand million million million atoms, that's a two with twenty-one zeros after it, too big to imagine. Even though natural uranium is not very radioactive compared to some other really dangerous stuff, a couple of grams of it, less than half a teaspoonful, will emit about thirty thousand alpha particles every second and will go on doing so at almost that rate for millions of years. Thirty thousand alpha particles attacking your guts every second for a couple of days might certainly make you feel sick but I think you would recover eventually. " I stopped. I certainly did feel sick, but I hadn't touched uranium that I knew of. Jett looked alarmed, however, and Vera, evidently considering the bargain kept, made a short exit and returned carrying a buff folder that to my eyes looked the exact double of the one that had agitated the Unified Traders.

 

 

The contents, alas, were not twenty letters offering for sale or offering to buy any of the enriched version of the ore I'd just been chronicling, but a scholarly account and graph of the amount of radioactive waste expelled by a two-year-old filly over the short number of days she'd spent in recovery.

 

 

By the time Vera had thought of radiation sickness the Geiger count was already on the decline. The source of it, I reckoned, had been passed by the filly very early, maybe even in diarrhea during that first Sunday afternoon, while she lay and groaned in her stall in Quigley's stable.

 

 

As a charming gesture Vera also gave me a parcel of shoebox size which she said not to open in polite company. Zinnia, still disapproving, pointed out that the contents of the box were the property of the Research Establishment, or perhaps of Caspar Harvey, or even, arguably, of the filly, but not, definitely not, mine.

 

 

I stood up abruptly and asked for directions to the bathroom, and through the closing door behind me heard Jett thanking the two white coats and saying goodbye, and shortly, still unwell, I was sitting beside her on the way back to Loricroft's yard.

 

 

"Is that what's wrong with you?

 

 

"Jett asked anxiously.

 

 

"Radiation sickness? " "You have the symptoms. " "I simply don't know. " She braked to a halt on Loricroft's gravel. There was no one about.

 

 

"Don't argue, " she said. "I'm coming with you into the house. " I felt too rough anyway to demur. I slid out of the Honda and with Jett firmly alongside crossed the gravel and, after the briefest of taps on the door knocker, walked into the kitchen.

 

 

George Loricroft himself, to my enormous relief, wasn't there. I'd had visions of having to deal with him physically, and, apart from my persistent and weakening nausea, George was taller and stronger, and had already tried once to see me off.

 

 

The only person there was Glenda, who sat beside the big central table shaking with apprehension and looking a light shade of gray. She was clearly relieved that it was we, Jett and I, who had come.

 

 

She said, "George isn't here. He said he was going out with the second string to jump them on the Heath. " Her voice sounded flat, without life.

 

 

"And Bell? " I asked.

 

 

Glenda sat motionless, her stiff eyelashes unblinking. She still wore the semi-bimbo trappings of a too-tight sweater, highI heeled clattering boots, and the puffed-up glittery blonde hair arrangement, but the Glenda of before Doncaster had vanished. The woman who had enraged and stripped away the shaky facade of Oliver Quigley was now wholly in charge, except that she hadn't yet settled entirely into the role.

 

 

"Bell went to her house to pack a suitcase, " she said at length. "She's coming back here to take me with her. " After a pause I asked Glenda if she had discussed with George the list of frosty discrepancies I'd brought for her.

 

 

"Discussed! " She almost laughed. "It wasn't anything to do with girls, you know. " In bitterness it sounded as if she wished it was. "There hasn't been any racing at Baden-Baden since September. " I nodded. I'd looked it up.

 

 

"George is a traitor to his country, " she declaimed, and I murmured, "That's a bit dramatic, don't you think? " "He knows I think so. I'm going to London with Bell because I don't want to be here when he comes back. If you think I'm afraid of him, you're right, and I'm going to tell you things I never meant to tell anybody. " She swallowed, paused, screwed up her nerve.

 

 

"All those places, where I thought he was with girls, he was buying and selling nuclear secrets. " To do her justice, she sounded scandalized.

 

 

"And once"--her disgust intensified--"once he brought home a heavy little package and because I thought it was gold... a gold present for a girl... I was so furious.. " She visibly drew in an outraged gulp of air. "How could he... we've always had good sex... I took the packet out of his briefcase and opened it, and inside there was only this heavy gray box... So I opened that too, and right in the middle of some foam packing there was only this tiny twist of a coarse gray powder, but it was wrapped up tight in a tissue and I couldn't wrap it back again the way it had been before, and then George came in. " "And he noticed you'd opened his parcel? " I suggested, as she paused to draw breath.

 

 

"No, he didn't, but I was afraid he would, because he stuck around... and I had this stuff out of its box, so I popped it into my handbag in the tissue paper and it was still there when we went round to Oliver Quigley's yard on our way to Nottingham races on the day before Caspar Harvey's lunch. When I was looking for my lipstick... the tissue fell out of my bag and the powder went into a feed bowl full of oats lying on the ground ready for one of Oliver's horses. I didn't do it on purpose and I didn't know the horse would be sick. But I didn't tell George as I was frightened of him.

 

 

I just left it. " "And, " I asked, completely stunned but also believing her, "did you see which horse got that particular bowl? " Her eyes were wide, and she said, "No. " "Glenda! " I protested.

 

 

"All right then, you've guessed. I saw which stall it went to, but I didn't know it was Caspar's filly that was in that one. I didn't even think of it until Bell said the filly could have had radiation sickness, and then I really knew what George was probably doing in all those places and lying about it. He was buying stuff to make bombs with, so I asked you to sort out what he'd said about where he'd been. And I do wish Bell would hurry up. " So did I. I asked Glenda,

 

 

"Did George know at Doncaster that I'd said I would look up those weather discrepancies? " "He sure did. I told him. He wasn't going to do me any harm as long as he knew someone else could give him away. " Glenda, the new lesser-varnished edition, was still far too naive. I was less and less inclined to be in George's house when he returned, but Bell at last arrived, saying she'd packed a suitcase, argued with her father and talked to Kris on the telephone to persuade him to give her bed room.

 

 

Without urgency she loaded Glenda into her car while protesting that none of this haste was necessary.

 

 

"It will avoid a scene, " I pointed out, and with the equivalent of "wagons roll" we at last set off in two cars towards London.

 

 

Jett glanced over at me and said,

 

 

"How are you feeling? " "Don't ask. " "I didn't understand everything that Glenda said. " "You came in halfway through the movie. " "Was that powder uranium? " "Judging from its wrapping in tissue paper and lead--that heavy container sounds like lead--I'd guess it might be perhaps ordinary basic uranium ore, but also it might have been some other radioactive stuff giving off alpha particles. " Jett said,

 

 

"And is George buying and selling uranium? Is Glenda right? " "She's half right. He's putting in touch with each other people who know where to buy enriched uranium and enriched plutonium with people who want to buy it. The gray powder wasn't bomb-making stuff, though, since the filly recovered. " I told Jett about the Unified Traders frightening away the residents of Trox Island, and she said it explained why my grandmother spent her days biting her manicured nails.

 

 

"Then don't make it worse for her... but about that dipstick... " I stopped, in hesitation.

 

 

"Do you know who took it?

 

 

"Jett asked.

 

 

"Do you remember what George Loricroft said at breakfast? " She wrinkled her forehead. "Something about Kris must have left the dipstick on the ground at Doncaster when he clipped shut the folded-back engine cowling. " "Absolutely right, but Kris didn't un clip or fold back the engine cowling at all at Doncaster, so George couldn't have seen that. Add to that a few more facts, such as George's car was in the park near Kris's private airplane. Glenda had just told him that I would have him investigated. He knew I'd been to Trox Island, but didn't know what I'd learned there. And he could have known oil on the windshield could kill, as he could have read about a case of it that was in the news last year. " "That's damning,

 

 

"Jett said.

 

 

"And all circumstantial. He could have folded back half of the engine cowling and taken out the dipstick. Also he might not. " It was a bit later that I asked why we weren't on the right road in London. Wait and see, Miss van Els uttered calmly, and soon after that she found a parking place in a side street near wide busy Marylebone Road.

 

 

"Follow me... in sickness and in health, " Jett said with humor, and I found myself in a medical specialist's waiting room in an annex to a small private hospital that I certainly couldn't afford. The specialist's name, a placard informed me, was Dr. Ravi Chand, citizen of Uttar Pradesh.

 

 

"I can't stay long, " I warned. "At two-thirty I'm due in Wood Lane. " Jett didn't answer but was some sort of miracle worker, as in a very short time I was prodded, inspected and generally turned inside out by a briskly competent Indian practitioner with a wide grin of splendid teeth. To Jett, summoned as my nursing companion, the odd news was delivered in the neat accent of New Delhi.

 

 

"My dearJett, your impatient Dr. Stuart isn't suffering from radiation sickness of any sort, nor are his troubles to do with fractured ribs. He is developing a rash which is still under his skin but may erupt into sores in a day or two, or perhaps later today. He has been infected with a disease I can't readily identify. I need to grow cultures and take blood tests.

 

 

Meanwhile, he shouldn't go to work, but I can give him prescriptions to allay the severe nausea... This may be unwelcome news to you, my dearJett--and how nice it is to see you again--but I would advise you not to sleep with this young man until we know how infectious he may be. " Demurely she said,

 

 

"He hasn't asked me yet. " "That's unfair, " I protested. "Who said don't hurry? Consider yourself asked. " Ravi Chand smiled, ruminated, inspected his nails, which were lighter against the brown of his fingers, and told me to rest in bed (alone) in the hospital next door for at least a day or until he knew what was wrong with me.

 

 

"I can't afford it, " I said, and got overruled by Dr. Chand's quick reply that money came tailed off compared with health.

 

 

He himself called the BBC and alarmed them far too much.

 

 

So I spent a worse pincushion and pill-popping afternoon with X rays, C. T. scan and embarrassing interior searches, and wrote as requested a long list of where I'd been in the past two months. Halfway through the list I realized what might be wrong with me, relaying the revelation to the gleeful satisfaction of my Indian inquisitor.

 

 

"Cows! " he exclaimed. "I thought so. Unpasteurized milk!

 

 

Paratuberculosis! " He frowned. "You do not, though, have any ordinary form of tuberculosis. I had you tested for that routinely, to begin with. " He bustled away, thin, good-humored, dedicated to mystery solving.

 

 

In a bedroom that would have honored a hotel for comfort I watched someone else on television foretell cold showery periods for the following day with a chance of sunshine in Wales, later, and I recognized with gratitude that the feeling of abject illness had abated to a much more bearable level. Jett, returning to visit briefly in the evening, wore an anti-infection surgical mask, and having incautiously asked what she could do for me, made a face at the length of my list.

 

 

"In sickness and in health, " I reminded her teasingly.

 

 

"For richer, for poorer, " she replied, nodding. "I promised 1Xs Ravi I would pay your bill here, so you can cross off number one on your list, bring credit cards over. You don't need them. " "Bugger that, " I said.

 

 

"Please do get the cards. " "I'll pay your bill out of the money I earned looking after your grandmother. That, " Jett explained, "came from your BBC salary, didn't it? I know it did. " I said, shaking my head,

 

 

"After all those dreadful tests today, you must leave me at least a little pride. " "Oh. " She blinked. "I'm not used to your sort of man. I'm not used to self-sufficient survivors. I'm used to adult little boys being brave but needing succor. Needing comfort. Needing their hands held. Why don't you? " I would give it a try, I thought, one day.

 

 

"Please bring my cards, " I meanwhile said.

 

 

THE LOOKING GlASS in the morning (Thursday) confirmed the Indian doctor's prognosis. There were three sores round my mouth and several small outposts of the same bad news from forehead to chin, from chin to waist, and other places besides. The knowledgeable product of New Delhi seemed quite pleased however, and sent in well-protected and gloved nurses with relays of pills, needles and swabs.

 

 

He hustled in again himself at what would have been lunchtime if I'd felt like it, and with obvious pleasure rattled off his diagnosis.

 

 

"The already good news is of course that you don't have straightforward tuberculosis, as we'd established already, " he said. "The rest of the news, my dear Dr. Stuart, is that you have a variation of an already rare complication of Mycobacterium para tuberculosis " He waited quizzically for some sort of reaction from me, but all I was numbly thinking was that it seemed to be my week for long incomprehensible medical terminology and other words to that effect.

 

 

"The point is, " the precise voice confided, "that an absolutely positive culture may take weeks, as this is a bacterium that's uncommonly difficult to grow in a Petri dish. " I said, horrified, "I can't afford weeks away from work. " "No, no, of course not. We have already started you on antibiotics, and as far as can be seen up to now, you are not developing Crohn's disease--good news--or Johne's disease, which is more or less endemic in cattle more good news.

 

 

The best of all news is that on present showing, you should make a full recovery. " He paused, considering, then said, "This infection you have, this unusual variant of Mycobacterium para tuberculosis... it's from a strain that was developed originally for measuring how much or how little heat was needed to achieve viable infection after pasteurization. I would say that you might have drunk raw milk from a cow with yet another new variant... " He broke off, then continued, "I see you understand what I'm saying. " An experimental herd, I thought. A mixed herd, with specimens of several breeds, Charolais, Hereford, Angus, Brahman... Friesian...

 

 

A herd isolated on an island, breeding only among itself...

 

 

The presence and the purpose of the cattle on Trox abruptly made sense.