Declare

‘Go to prison, in disgrace.’ ”
    “Good God, Jimmie!” said Hale in unfeigned alarm. “What have you scripted?”
    “A good way to make something look plausible is to make it appear to be just one more of an established ongoing series, right? We’ve been, that is, MI5 has been, exposing a lot of corruption in the secret service files lately, turning up old shamefuls like the ones the Prime Minister mentioned a few minutes ago; and the Russians are certainly aware of Profumo’s imminent fall, and they probably know about the new evidence against Philby. The liberal press always headlines each new instance of it, it’s been like a running serial, and Macmillan is known to hate it, and it’s terrible for the country. One more would not look at all deliberate.”
    “I follow you. I’m not a longtime Soviet plant, obviously, since they’d know that wasn’t so. Mossad? Have I secretly been a Zionist all along?”
    “I’m afraid you’re just a crook, Andrew. Our new, unimpeachable evidence indicates that when you were in Kuwait from ’46 to early ’48, you were involved in betraying British Petroleum interests in the Persian Gulf by selling strategic secrets to the Americans at Standard Oil, and a couple of murdered Bedouin guides now appear to be on your conscience; and you used your cover post as Passport Control Officer to sell forged British passports to fugitive Nazi war criminals stranded in Oman. Oh yes, and you took money from a now deceased Russian illegal to break a couple of Soviet agents out of a Turk prison and smuggle them safely back across the Soviet border; the illegal kept no records, it can’t be disproved. There’s a good deal more, you’ll be briefed in Kuwait.”
    Hale was frowning as he listened to this, his lips pressed tightly together. “Right,” he said finally. So much for all the good work I did do there, he thought. This will be the version preserved in the Registry Archive files. “The murdered Bedu ,” he said, correcting Theodora’s pronunciation, “probably aren’t a helpful element, but very well. None of that old stuff will get me into the papers, though.”
    “No, something immediate is doing that. You remember Claude Cassagnac, the MI5 consultant.”
    “Yes,” said Hale in a tight voice. “Fondly.” It occurred to him that this would be the version she would get. Even if he managed to find her in Beirut, he could hardly tell her the true story and thus compromise this operation—Macmillan had personally cleared it, and it was Hale’s unlooked-for chance to finally right the big defeat of his espionage career, and in some sense justify the deaths of the men he had commanded on Ararat.
    Across the table, Theodora’s withered old face was expressionless, his eyes blank as slate. “Cassagnac called you on the telephone at your college this morning, it appears, and gave you an old SOE code proposing a meeting; that covers any clumsiness you might have exhibited during the call, you see. The two of you met at your house in Weybridge about two hours ago, and he told you that all of these old crimes of yours had been discovered; he wanted you to accompany him back to Century House—that’s the SIS headquarters now, we’re not in Broadway anymore—and give yourself up, so that you could at least avoid a publicized arrest. Among the elect there will be hints that he wanted you to participate in this Philby affair as an advisor, that you might have been able to ask for immunity in exchange for telling us everything about Philby and Ararat in ’48. You resisted Cassagnac.”
    “What—have—you—done?” whispered Hale. “Is he dead?”
    “He’s been shot,” snapped Theodora, “with a gun of yours, in your house, I can tell you that. And—”
    “That’s a .45! Dum-dum bullets! And he must be as old as you are!”
    “And!” Theodora repeated. Again he looked at his watch, raising his frail fist to do it. “And right about now , a minute and a half ago, technically, you are shooting a policeman not two miles from here, with the same gun, just to help cover it in case you were recognized on the train or in the park. I don’t know if he’s dead either.”
    Hale’s mouth was open.
    The old man slumped in his chair and flapped a pale hand at Hale. “Ah, lad, run you now to your old haunts in Kuwait, as you would if you were on the run from SIS—which you are, absolutely; by night-fall you’ll be on the Middle Eastern watch list for