Enigma
sharing it with some tramp or derelict but then he realised that this was him—the yellowish face, the dwindled and feverish eyes, the windblown hair, the two days' growth of blue-black beard—this was his reflection. The toilet was blocked and stinking. A trail of sodden, soiled paper curled from its bowl and wrapped around his feet like an unravelled bandage.
'Ticket please.' The guard rapped loudly. 'Slide your ticket under the door, please.'
'It's in my compartment.'
'Oh, is it then?' The handle rattled. 'You'd better come and show me.'
'I'm not feeling awfully well.' (Which was true.) I've left it out for you.' He pressed his burning forehead the cool mirror. 'Just give me five minutes.'
The guard grunted. 'I'll be back.' Jericho heard of rush of wheels as the connecting door opened, then the slam of it closing. He waited a few seconds then flipped open the lock.
There was no sign of Puck in this carriage, or in the next, and by the time he'd leaped the gyrating iron plates into the third he could sense the train beginning to slow. He moved on down the corridor.
Two compartments filled with soldiers, six in each sullen-looking, their rifles stacked at their feet.
Then one empty compartment.
Then Puck.
He was sitting with his back to the engine, leanin forwards—the same old Puck, handsome, intense, his elbows on his knees, engrossed in conversation with someone just out of Jericho's line of sight.
It was Claire, thought Jericho. It had to be Claire. It would be Claire. He was taking her with him.
He turned his back on the compartment and moved discreetly crabwise, pretending to look out of the dirty window. His eyes registered an approaching town -scrubland, goods wagons, warehouses—and then an anonymous platform with a clock frozen at ten to twelve, and faded posters with jolly, buxom girls advertising long-dead holidays in Bournemouth and Clacton-on-Sea.
The train crawled along for a few more yards, then stopped abruptly opposite the station buffet.
'Northampton!' shouted a man's voice. 'Northampton Station!'
And if it was Claire, what would he do?
But it wasn't her. He looked and saw a man, a young man—neat, dark, tanned, aquiline: in every essence, foreign—saw him only briefly because the man was already up on his feet and releasing Puck's hand from a double clasp. The young man smiled (he had very white teeth) and nodded—some transaction had been completed—and then he was stepping out of the compartment and was moving quickly across the platform, sharp shoulders slicing through the crowd. Puck watched him for a moment, then pulled the door shut and sank back into his seat, out of sight.
Whatever his escape plans, they did not appear to include Claire Romilly.
Jericho jerked his gaze away.
Suddenly he saw what must have happened. Puck cycling over to the cottage on Saturday night to retrieve the cryptograms—and instead finding Jericho. Puck returning later to discover the cryptograms were missing. And Puck assuming, naturally, that Jericho had them and was about to do what any loyal servant of the state would do: run straight to the authorities and turn Claire in.
He glanced back at the compartment. Puck must have lit a cigarette. Films of smoke were settling into wide, steel-blue strata.
But you couldn't allow that, could you, because she was the only link between you and the stolen papers? And you needed time to plan this escape with your foreign friend.
So what have you done with her?
A whistle. A frantic working-up of steam. The platform shuddered and began to slide away. Jericho barely noticed, unconscious of everything except the inescapable sum of his calculations.
What happened next happened very quickly and if there was never to be a single, coherent explanation of events, that was due to a combination of factors: the amnesia induced by violence, the deaths of two of the participants, the bureaucratic fog-machine of the Official Secrets Act.
But it went something like this.
About two miles north of Northampton Station, close to the village of Kingsthorpe, a set of points connected the west-coast main line with the branch line to Rugby. With five minutes' notice, the train was diverted off its scheduled course, westwards down the branch line, and very shortly afterwards a red signal warned the driver of an obstruction on the tracks ahead.
The train was therefore already slowing, although he didn't recognise it, when Jericho slid open the door to Puck's
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