The Memory Trap

by Anthony Price

‘So they have.’ Mitchell opened a cupboard door. Then closed it, and opened another one. ‘You’re still alive, Major—Peter … Be thankful for that!’ He reached into the cupboard. ‘It’s David here who has to worry now: he has to live down enlisting Spetsnaz … “in aid of the Civil Power”—eh, David?’ He unhooked a succession of mugs from the cupboard. ‘Here you are, Miss Franklin—will these do?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary Franklin had found a teapot. ‘But nobody is going to have to live down anything, Dr Mitchell,’

  ‘No?’ Mitchell handed her his fourth mug.

  ‘No.’ She fixed him with the mug between them. ‘Not if you want to keep your job, Dr Mitchell—‘ She turned towards Richardson ‘—and not if you want to enjoy your ill-gotten gains, Major Richardson. Because we can always give you back to the Mafia, if you don’t. So all this never happened. Right?’

  No trouble was her bottom line, thought Audley—no matter what humiliation that entailed: no matter, for Richardson, that it left him and his mother both unavenged … or the Russians in the clear. Or, maybe, even Dr Audley himself as a survivor again—at least for the time-being, anyway.

  But, then, that was what obeying orders was all about. And, in this case, that was also what survival was all about. And, whether you were young and beautiful, or old and stupid … survival was a virtue.

  The End