“What kind of heat is the minimum?”

I told him: “Eight hundred Fahrenheit, which works out at four hundred and twenty-seven or so in Centigrade,”

Astrid was still worried. She said: “And a driftwood fire is hot enough?”

“Wood burns at twenty-seven hundred and thirty-two degrees, Fahrenheit. Or would you rather have it in Centigrade?”

Estrilla said promptly: “That’s exactly fifteen hundred, we’re not all stupid, you know.”

I was glad to see the enormous change that had come over her. She was bubbling around like a frenzied schoolgirl, fussing over Fenrek and then sitting down, then getting up quickly to fuss some more.

I said: “And the only problem now is where to leave you all while I go and find Loveless. The Alentejano? Are they open for breakfast?”

Fenrek was already struggling to his feet, not without difficulty. Estrilla had found him a long stave, grey-washed by the sea, crooked as a shillelagh, and she was helping him up too, not arguing with his implied authority; the number-two man, just moving out of position as the widowed mistress and getting back into shape again.

Astrid looked at him, worried, and said dubiously: “Well...Estrilla and I can help Cabot, of course, but I really think you ought to...I don’t know, to rest up, Uncle? Please?”

He snorted. He said calmly: “No. It’s time someone played this game who knows what the score is. I’m taking over now.”

Estrilla was delighted; but I thought that was rather unfair of him.

I wanted to carry him up to the top of the cliff where the Jensen was, but he preferred to lean on the two girls, his arm at Estrilla’s plump little waist and gloating over it, with Astrid holding uselessly onto the elbow above his broken wrist and the shillelagh under his armpit. He hobbled along happily; and I kept my eyes open for the Major. There was still time for us to come out of all this badly, so I climbed on ahead of them, searching each bush and cluster of boulders very carefully indeed.

I didn’t for one moment imagine that he would be there. Fenrek was quite wrong when he suggested that Loveless might even be watching us; it was too much out of character for that sad and reckless man.

Sad and reckless...it was a strange combination, and perhaps the key to his character. Somehow, I was half sure that I knew what Loveless would do now, though I couldn’t guess how he would do it; or more importantly, when. I couldn’t get out of my mind the memory of that appalling loneliness, a loneliness that perhaps he wasn’t fully aware of. Was that the force that had driven him, in the first place, into his profession? How does a man survive when he’s at odds with the whole world, even with God himself?

We found the Jensen where I’d left it, and I took the spare key from its hiding place under the dash, and checked the car over carefully first. I didn’t suppose anyone had tampered with it, because if Loveless had truly believed that he and I were leaving the country together as soon as the diminishing wind and the darkness of the night allowed us to get the whaler out of its underground pool, then obviously the car would have been just abandoned; and what a terrible thought that was! Or if he’d decided it wouldn’t be worth the risk of trusting me, then just as obviously I’d never have use for a car again, I would be lying there dead in a lost lake that had been closed off from public view and was likely to stay that way for eternity.

So I was surprised when I saw the tops of the spark plugs; a thin line had been drawn down them with an ordinary graphite pencil. Nothing serious, just enough to stop the motor from firing. It was a foolish, naïve little trick that wasn’t ever going to pay off one way or the other; but somehow, it pleased me. In one respect at least, I’d missed one tiny little value in the man’s makeup; I’d never suspected that he had a sense of humor, however fragmentary.

I wiped off the graphite and started the car. We pulled back the passenger’s seat to its utmost, to give Fenrek room for his leg, and we put Astrid and Estrilla in the back. I found the flask of cognac still locked in the console at the back of the squab and handed it silently to Fenrek. He shook his head and said: “I need all my wits about me now.”

“Since when does one drink deprive you of them? Go on, take a swig, it’ll take some of that pain away.”

He’d shown no sign of any pain at all, but that leg...and that shattered wrist? They must have been giving him hell. He was about to insist in his refusal, but I said, needling him: “You’re not impressing anybody. Drink it, a good long one.”

Grumpily, he glared at me. He looked back over his shoulder at Estrilla, saw that she was beaming at him, sighed, and drank.

We drove off, very slowly, across the broken ground, grass-tufted and sweet smelling. And a few minutes later we were on the highway, heading for Guincho. Slowly, very slowly.

I said to Estrilla: “Where’s that horrible little bug of yours?”

“That excellent little car of mine is parked on the highway two miles east of the Bocca. Do we need it?”

“No. I just wondered.”

I glanced sideways at Fenrek as we went over a pothole in the road. He didn’t even wince, The Jensen’s a well sprung car, perhaps the only European car that rides as softly as its Detroit counterpart; but the softness of the ride is illusory, the bumps are there even if you don’t feel them much, they have to be if the car is going to be safe at the kind of speed Jensens are usually driven at. It felt strange, crawling along now and watching for potholes; not a thing I usually pay much attention to.

We found the first of the police six miles up on the coastal road, just beyond the lighthouse. A barrier had been set up there, a barrier of red-and-white striped wooden bars with a coil of barbed wire beyond it, just lying across the road and ready to do a lot of damage to anyone who thought he could drive his way through all that lumber. An earnest young policeman flagged us down, took one look at Fenrek, at the deep red gash in his forehead and the white, strained look to his face, and said quickly:

“There is an ambulance, Senhores, in the lighthouse yard, I will get it...”

He began to move off, but Fenrek said: “No, hold it. You know who I am?”

“Sim, Senhor Colonelle, yes indeed.”

“Good. What’s the disposition now?”

The policeman pointed: “Another barrier, like this one, twelve kilometers east of here on the main road. One on the inland road directly north of us, that’s two and a half kilometers, with another one eight kilometers east of that.”

“There’s a track through the pine trees behind us. Where does that lead?”

“Nowhere, Senhor Colonello. A builders track, they are constructing a house there. If there is anyone moving east or west or north of the Bocca, they must use one of the two roads, unless they are all on foot.”

“One man now, only one left. The man Loveless. Tell the ambulance men there are two dead bodies on the beach, they’d better be removed.”

I said: “One of them was an archer, so if anyone gets interested in his arrows—they’re tipped with strychnine, make sure they’re handled carefully.”

He was puzzled. “An archer, Senhor?”

“A toxophilist, a bowman, an arqueiro. The heads on his shafts are razor sharp, and all it needs is a scratch, so watch out.”

Fenrek said: “The command post, has it been moved?”

“No, sir, still there in the forest.”

“Good.” He turned to me and said: “This is where it’s going to hurt, turn right into the woods.”

“If it’s not too far you’d be better off walking.”

He said patiently: “Why do you always want to argue, Cain? Turn right into the woods here. If this car of yours can take it, so can I.”

I pulled the wheel over and crawled at zero miles an hour over the broken pine strewn floor of the forest, squeezing between the trees, looking for smoother surfaces and finding none. In a few minutes we saw the tent they’d put up, a green canvas tent with long black telephone cables snaking off in all directions. A small fire was burning there, with a pot of coffee on it; it looked like a picnic. But Lieutenant Loureiro was there, running out to meet us.

He stared at Fenrek, but before he could speak, Fenrek said: “Later, Lieutenant, we’ve got work to do. Any report from the men at Guincho?”

“Nada feito, nothing doing there yet, Senhor Colonello.”

“Cascais? Estoril?”

“Nothing, Senhor Colonello.”

Fenrek looked at me. “He’s gone to Lisbon after all. If that damned nonsense about a telegram wasn’t just a bit of bull.” Fenrek speaks with a markedly Hungarian accent, and the idioms always sound strange. He saw me smile, and said: “He may have been bluffing.”

“No. We decided that’s what he’d do, and then I heard him tell Histermann he was going into Guincho, At that time, he’d decided one of two things. Either he could trust me, in which case there was no need to hide his intentions; or that I was going to be killed off, in which case it didn’t matter much if I knew what he was doing. No, he’s gone to Guincho, and even on foot he must have been there by now. What is it they’re looking for out there?”

He looked surprised. “Why, for Loveless, of course! Three good men who have an excellent description of him.”