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      Chavasse stood in the entrance of thea Caravel Club in Great Portland Street and looked gloomily out into the driving rain. He had conducted a wary love affair with London for several years, but four o’clock on a wet November morning was enough to strain any relationship, he told himself as he stepped out on to the pavement.

      There was a nasty taste in his mouth from too many cigarettes and the thought of the one hundred and fifteen pounds which had passed across the green baize tables of the Caravel didn’t help matters.

      He’d been hanging around town for too long, that was the trouble. It was now over two months since he’d returned from his vacation after the Caspar Schultz affair, and the Chief had kept him sitting behind a desk at headquarters dealing with paperwork that any reasonably competent general-grade clerk could have handled.

      He was still considering the situation and wondering what to do about it, when he turned the corner into Baker Street, looked up casually, and noticed the light in his apartment.

      He crossed the street quickly and went through the swing doors. The foyer was deserted and the night porter wasn’t behind his desk. Chavasse stood there thinking about it for a moment, a slight frown on his face. He finally decided against using the lift and went up the stairs quickly to the third floor.

      The corridor was wrapped in silence. He paused outside the door to his apartment for a moment, listening, and then moved round the corner to the service entrance and took out his key.

      The woman who sat on the edge of the kitchen table reading a magazine as she waited for the coffee pot to boil was plump and attractive in spite of her dark, rather severe spectacles.

      Chavasse closed the door gently, tip-toed across the room, and kissed her on the nape of the neck. ‘I must say this is a funny time to call, but I’m more than willing,’ he said with a grin.

      Jean Frazer, the Chief’s secretary, turned and looked at him calmly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, and where the hell have you been? I’ve had scouts out all over Soho and the West End since eight o’clock last night.’

      A cold finger of excitement moved inside him. ‘Something big turned up?’

      She nodded. ‘You’re telling me. You’d better go in. The Chief’s been here since midnight hoping you’d turn up.’

      ‘How about some coffee?’

      ‘I’ll bring it in when it’s ready.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?’

      ‘What a hell of a wife you’d make, sweetheart,’ he told her with a tired grin and went through into the living-room.

      Two men were sitting in wing-backed chairs by the fire, a chessboard on the coffee table between them. One was a stranger to Chavasse, an old white-haired man in his seventies, who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and studied the chessboard intently.

      The other, at first sight, might have been any high Civil Service official. The well-cut, dark-grey suit, the old-Etonian tie, even the greying hair, all seemed a part of the familiar brand image.

      It was only when he turned his head sharply and looked up that the difference became apparent. This was the face of no ordinary man. Here was a supremely intelligent being, with the cold grey eyes of a man who would be, above all things, a realist.

      ‘I hear you’ve been looking for me,’ Chavasse said as he peeled off his wet trenchcoat.

      The Chief smiled faintly. ‘That’s putting it mildly. You must have found somewhere new.’

      Chavasse nodded. ‘The Caravel Club in Great Portland Street. They do a nice steak and there’s a gaming room, Chemmy and Roulette mostly.’

      ‘Is it worth a visit?’

      ‘Not really,’ Chavasse grinned. ‘Rather boring and too damned expensive. It’s time I saw a little action of another kind.’

      ‘I think we can oblige you, Paul,’ the Chief said. ‘I’d like you to meet Professor Craig, by the way.’

      The old man shook hands and smiled. ‘So you’re the language expert? I’ve heard a lot about you, young man.’

      ‘All to the good, I hope?’ Chavasse took a cigarette from a box on the coffee table and pulled forward a chair.

      ‘Professor Craig is Chairman of the Joint Space Research Programme recently set up by NATO,’ the Chief said. ‘He’s brought us rather an interesting problem. To be perfectly frank, I think you’re the only available Bureau agent capable of handling it.’

      ‘Well, that’s certainly a flattering beginning,’ Chavasse said. ‘What’s the story?’

      The Chief carefully inserted a Turkish cigarette into an elegant silver holder. ‘When were you last in Tibet, Paul?’

      Chavasse frowned. ‘You know that as well as I do. Three years ago when we brought out the Dalai Lama.’

      ‘How would you feel about going in again?’

      Chavasse shrugged. ‘My Tibetan is still pretty fair. Not fluent, but good enough. It’s the other problems, specific to the area, which would worry me most. Mainly the fact that I’m a European, I suppose.’

      ‘But I understood you to say you’d helped out the Dalai Lama three years ago,’ Professor Craig said.

      Chavasse nodded. ‘But that was different. Straight in and out again within a few days. I don’t know how long I could get by if I was there for any period of time. I don’t know if you’re aware of this fact, Professor, but not a single allied soldier escaped from a Chinese prison camp during the Korean War and for obvious reasons. Drop me into Russia in suitable clothes and I could pass without question. In a street in Peking, I’d stick out like a sore thumb.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ the Chief said. ‘I appreciate your point, but what if we could get round it?’

      ‘That would still leave the Chinese,’ Chavasse told him. ‘They’ve really tightened up since I was last there. Especially after the Tibetan revolt. Mind you, I think their control of large areas must be pretty nominal.’ He hesitated and then went on, ‘This thing – is it important?’

      The Chief nodded gravely. ‘Probably the biggest I’ve ever asked you to handle.’

      ‘You’d СКАЧАТЬ