Free Red Crystal by Clare Francis Page A

negotiate the eastern entrance to Dover harbour.
    ‘She’ll be docked in about seven minutes,’ said the local Special Branch man. ‘D’you want to come down to the desk or watch through the window?’
    ‘The window,’ Nick Ryder replied. He didn’t want to be seen.
    He picked up the batch of names and photographs, tapped his pocket to make sure he had a pen, and followed the officer down to the observation room.
    The room was sited high in the wall of the immigration hall and had a large one-way window so that it was possible to look down on all six of the channels unobserved. Nick settled down in a chair and spread out the photographs on the shelf in front of him. Picking up a pair of binoculars, he practised focusing them. Below, the local Branch men were stationed behind the immigration booths.
    The first passengers came into the hall at a rush, anxious to get to their trains and coaches. Then came the families and shoppers, hampered with children, large amounts of baggage, and trolleyloads of French food. Orderly lines formed in front of the immigration booths.
    Nick scanned the lines carefully, but there were no familiar faces. At the far end of the hall the slower passengers shuffled in: a group of older people; some young hikers with enormous back-packs …
    He sat up. And some faces.
    Yes. Several he recognized.
    He took one at a time, matching each face to the list or, where he had a photograph, to that as well.
    Ellis, Bishop, Wheatfield …
    He tried to remember something about the first two although, as Marxists, they didn’t strictly fall into his Section. Ellis: International Marxists and CND; Bishop: International Marxists and Vietnam United Front. The third was Wheatfield, Max. International Trotskyists and now Socialist Students’ League. One of his.
    Within ten minutes he had fifteen out of the seventeen names. He’d probably missed the other two in the crowd. He watched the last passengers pass through the channels, but there was no one else.
    He made his way back to the immigration office and waited. The local man came in and announced, ‘All accounted for.’
    ‘I missed two,’ Nick admitted.
    They checked their lists and decided he’d missed the two who had passed through first.
    ‘Well, that’s nice and tidy for once, then,’ said the inspector.
    ‘As long as none of them sneak back into France,’ Nick pointed out, ‘or decide to start something similar here.’
    The local man shrugged and put on a look that said don’t let’s worry about that now.
    Nick made a call to Claude Desport at the DST in Paris and said, ‘Can’t say I’m grateful, but all seventeen have been received. Will there be more?’
    ‘Another nine or ten tomorrow,’ Desport replied, and gave him a list of names. ‘If we find any more you’ll have them within twenty-four hours.’
    That’s what Nick liked about the French system: any aggravation and it was immediate expulsion, with no chance of appeal.
    ‘But there are – let me see – three we cannot send back to you,’ Desport was saying. ‘Two decided to go over the Belgian border, and a third decided to – er, stay.’
    ‘Stay?’
    ‘She got away. Her name is …’ There was a pause. ‘Wilson, Linda. If we pick her up again, we will let you know.’
    Linda Wilson. The name rang a bell, but it took a moment for Nick to place it. Of course. The raid after the Linden House Hotel affair. The girl on the stairs. He had a fleeting vision of her body, long and beautiful, then, with an effort, closed his mind to it.
    Three unaccounted for.
    Nick reflected that the local man had been somewhat premature. Nothing was ever neat and tidy.
    Gabriele forced herself to stand up. A moment later, when the dizziness had passed, she walked unsteadily from the bed to the window. She looked down into the street. It was quiet. There was nothing to suggest that, five days after the Night of the Barricades, the country was virtually at a standstill. Six million were