minutes had passed. He wanted to hear the woman's voice again.
"Has you husband arrived?" he asked.
"He just called from the local, wouldn't you knowl The Brace and Bit on Old Church. He's quite irritable, if I do say. Must have had a dreadful day." Bray hung up. He knew the number of MI-Six-London; it was one a member of the fraternity kept in mind. He dialed.
"Mr. Symonds, please. Priority." "Right away, sir." Roger Symonds was not on his way home, nor was he in a pub called The Brace and Bit. Was he playing a domestic game?
"Symonds here," said the familiar English voice.
"Your wife just told me you were on your way home, but got detained at The Brace and Bit. Is that the best you could come up with?" "I what?... Who's this?" "An old friend." "Not much of a one, I'm afraid. I'm not married. My friends know that." Bray paused, then spoke urgently. "Quickly. Give me a sterile number, or one on a scrambler. Quicklyl" "Who is this?" "Two thousand pounds." It took Symonds less than a second to understand and adjust; he reeled off a number, repeated it once, then added, "The cellars. Forty-five stories high." There was a click; the line went dead. Forty-five stories high to the cellars meant halving the figure, minus one. ,He was to call the number in exactly twenty-two minuteswithin the one-minute span-during which scrambling and jamming devices would be activated. He left the booth to find another as far away as time and rapid walking permitted. Telephone intercepts were potentially two-way traces; the booth at Green Park could be under observation in a matter of minutes.
He went up Old Bond Street into New until he reached Oxford, where he turned right and began running toward Wardour Street. At Wardour he slowed down, turned right again, and melted into the crowds of Soho.
Elapsed time: nineteen and a half minutes.
There was a booth at the corner of Shaftsbury Avenue; inside a callow young man wearing an electric-blue suit was screaming into the phone.
Scofield waited by the door, looking at his watch.
Twenty-one minutes.
He could not take the chance. He took out a five-pound note and tapped on the glass. The yotmg man turned; he saw the bill and held up his middle finger in a gesture that was not cooperative.
Bray opened the door, put his left hand on the electricblue shoulder, tightened his grip, and as the offensive young man began screeching, pulled him out of the booth, tripping him with his left foot, dropping the fiver on top of him. It floated; the youth grabbed it and ran.
Twenty-one minutes, thirty seconds.
Scofield took several deep breaths, trying to slow the rapid pounding in his chest. Twenty-two minutes. He dialed.
"Don't go home," said Bray the instant Symonds was on the line.
"Don't you stay in London!" was the reply "Grosvenor Square has an alert out for you." "You know? Washington called you in?" "Hardly. They won't say a word about you. You're terminated personnel, an off-limits subject. We probed several weeks ago when we first got word." "Word from where?" "Our sources in the Soviet. In KGB. T'hey're after you, too, but then they always have been." "What did Washington say when you probed?" "Played it down. Failure to report whereabouts, something Re that.
They're too embarrassed to put an official stamp on the nonsense. Are you authoring something? There's a lot of that over there--' "How did you know about the alert?" interrupted Scofield. "The one out for me now?" "Oh, come now, we do keep tabs, you know. A number of people Grosvenor has on its payroll quite rightly have first loyalties to us." Bray paused briefly, bewildered. "Roger, why are you telling me this? I can't believe two thousand pounds would make you do it." "That misappropriated sum has been sitting in a Chelsea bank drawing interest for you since the morning after you bailed me out." "Then why?" Symonds cleared his throat, a proper Englishman facing the necessity of showing emotion. "I have no idea what your quarrel is over there and I'm not sure I care to-you have such puritanical outbursts-but I was appalled to learn that our prime source in Washington confirmed that the State Department subscribes to the Soviet ploy. As I said, it's not only nonsense, I find it patently offensive." "A ploy? What ploy?" "That you joined forces with the Serpent." "The 'Serpent'?" "It's what we call Vasili Taleniekov, a name I'm sure you'll recall. To