But Goodhew, these days, was in no mood for such sallies. "He said we should stay in much closer touch. I agree with him. There are too many people about with vested interests. He said there was a whiff of something rotten in the air. I couldn't have put it better myself. He would like to go on record as one of those who wasn't afraid to track it down. I shall see he does. He didn't mention Flagship by name, neither did I. Sometimes it pays better to be reticent. But he was greatly taken by your list, Leonard. The list did the trick. It was bald, it was uncompromising. There was no getting round it."
"
"The list, Leonard. The one our friend photographed. The backers. The investors. The runners and starters, you called it."
There was an imploring note in Goodhew's voice that Burr wished he couldn't hear. "The smoking gun, for heaven's sake. The thing that nobody ever finds, you said, except that our friend did. Leonard, you're being willfully obtuse."
But Goodhew had misread the cause of Burr's confusion. Burr had known immediately which list. What he couldn't understand was the use that Goodhew had made of it.
"You don't mean you've shown the
"Good heavens, not the raw material, how could I? Just the names and numbers. Properly recycled, naturally. They could have come from a telephone intercept, a microphone, anything. We could have filched it from the post."
"Roper didn't dictate that list or read it over the phone, Rex. He didn't put it in a letter box. He wrote it on a yellow legal pad, and there's only one of it in the world and one man who took a photograph of it."
"Don't split hairs with me, Leonard! My master is appalled, that's my point. He recognises that a summation is close and heads must roll. He feels ― so he tells me, and I shall believe him until I am proved wrong ― he has his pride, Leonard, as we all do, our own ways of avoiding unpleasant truths until they are thrust upon us ― he feels that the time has come for him to get off the fence and be counted." He attempted a valiant joke. "You know his way with metaphors. I'm surprised he didn't throw in some new brooms rising from the ashes."
If Goodhew was expecting a peal of jolly laughter, Burr did not provide it.
Goodhew became agitated: "Leonard, I had no alternative. I am a servant of the Crown. I serve a minister of the Crown. It is my duty to inform my master of the progress of your case. If my master tells me he has seen the light, I am not employed to tell him he's a liar. I have my loyalties, Leonard. To my principles as well as to him and to you. We're having lunch on Thursday after his meeting with the Cabinet Secretary. I'm to expect important news. I'd hoped you'd be pleased, not sour."
"Who else has seen the list of backers, Rex?"
"Other than my master, nobody. I drew his attention to its secrecy, naturally. One can't go on telling people to keep their mouths shut; one can cry wolf too often. Obviously the substance of it will go before the Cabinet Secretary when they meet on Thursday, but we may be sure that's where it will stop."
Burr's silence became too much for him.
"Leonard, I fear you are forgetting first principles. All my efforts over the last months have been devoted to achieving greater openness in the new era. Secrecy is the curse of our British system. I shall not encourage my master or any other minister of the Crown to hide behind its skirts. They do quite enough of that as it is. I won't hear you, Leonard. I won't have you fall back into your old River House ways."
Burr took a deep breath. "Point taken, Rex. Understood. From now on, I'll observe first principles."
"I'm glad to hear it, Leonard."
Burr rang off, then called Rooke. "Rex Goodhew gets no more unrefined Limpet reports from us, Rob. That's with immediate effect. I'll confirm in writing by tomorrow's bag."
* * *
Nevertheless, everything else had been going well, and if Burr continued to fret over Goodhew's lapse, neither he nor Strelski lived with any sense of impending doom. What Goodhew had called the summation was what Burr and Strelski called the hit, and the hit was what they now dreamed of. It was the moment when the drugs and arms and players would all be in the same place and the money trail would be visible and ― assuming the joint team had the necessary rights and permissions ― its warriors would fall out of the trees and shout "Hands up!" and the bad guys would give their rueful smile, and say "It's a fair cop, Officer" ― or, if they were American, "I'll get you for this, Strelski, you bastard."
Or so they facetiously portrayed it to each other.
"We let it ride as far as it can go," Strelski kept insisting ― at meetings, on the telephone, over coffee, striding on the beach. "The further down the line they are, the fewer places they have to hide, the nearer we are to God."
