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Now–she reached for the oil–to do the face

The girl's thumbs had scarcely pressed into the sockets of the ing The sound reached iarden At once the un But he didn'tstopped There was the , but it sounded hu instructions The voice stopped and one of the esture of suesture, the nakedShe watched the brown back flash through the open glass door Better not let hi, perhaps listening She got to her feet, took two steps to the concrete edge of the pool and dived gracefully in

Although it would have explained her instincts about the irl's peace of mind that she did not knoho he was

His real name was Donovan Grant, or 'Red' Grant But, for the past ten years, it had been Krassno Granitski, with the code-name of 'Granit'

He was the Chief Executioner of SMERSH, the murder apparat of the MGB, and at thishis instructions on the MGB direct line with Moscow

Chapter Two

The Slaughterer

Grant put the telephone softly back on its cradle and sat looking at it

The bullet-headed guard standing over hiive you any idea of the task?' Grant spoke Russian excellently but with a thick accent He could have passed for a national of any of the Soviet Baltic provinces The voice was high and flat as if it was reciting so dull from a book

'No Only that you are wanted in Moscow The plane is on its way It will be here in about an hour Half an hour for refuelling and then three or four hours, depending on whether you coht You had better pack I will order the car'

Grant got nervously to his feet 'Yes You are right But they didn't even say if it was an operation? One likes to know It was a secure line They could have given a hint They generally do'

'This tih the glass door on to the lawn If he noticed the girl sitting on the far edge of the pool he olden trophies of his profession, and walked back into the house and up the few stairs to his bedroom

The room was bleak and furnished only with an iron bedstead, fro down on one side to the floor, a cane chair, an unpainted clothes cupboard and a cheap washstand with a tin basin The floor was streith English and Aazines Garish paper-backs and hard-cover thrillers were stacked against the wall below the

Grant bent down and pulled a battered Italian fibre suitcase from under the bed He packed into it a selection of well-laundered cheap respectable clothes from the cupboard Then he washed his body hurriedly with cold water, and the inevitably rose-scented soap, and dried himself on one of the sheets from the bed

There was the noise of a car outside Grant hastily dressed in clothes as drab and nondescript as those he had packed, put on his wrist-watch, pocketed his other belongings and picked up his suitcase and went down the stairs

The front door was open He could see his two guards talking to the driver of a battered ZIS saloon 'Bloody fools,' he thought (He still didhiine that a foreigner would want to live in their blasted country' The cold eyes sneered as Grant put down his suitcase on the doorstep and hunted as on the kitchen door He found his 'uniform', the drab raincoat and black cloth cap of Soviet officialdom, put them on, picked up his suitcase and went out and cli aside one of the guards as he did so