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attempt.
    ‘A carefully planned job,’ commented Brand, ‘but much too elaborate. I wonder where they got the tear gas. Stolen from an army depot, I suppose.’
    ‘Clearly the police had a tip-off.’
    ‘Not a very detailed one, though, by the look of things. Five men got away. What is a power-lift truck?’
    ‘I think they are used for delivering heavy objects – machines, refrigerators, things like that. The tail board is power-driven and can be raised and lowered vertically like an elevator. Presumably that was going to be used to load the bullion.’
    ‘Gold bars worth half a million sterling, it says.’ Brand thought for a moment. ‘That would weigh about eleven hundred kilos. Yes, eight men would certainly need help if they expected to load that in a hurry. What idiots!’
    ‘Nothing idiotic about half a million sterling.’
    ‘But idiotic to try to take it in gold.’
    ‘I don’t see why. There is always a market for gold and no need to pay a fence. Any crooked fool can sell gold if he goes to the right places.’
    ‘And if he can take the gold with him to these places, yes. Eleven hundred kilos!’ Brand snorted. ‘If I decided to get rich quickly I would choose something lighter to take to the market.’
    Jost smiled. ‘Half a million in used banknotes would be lighter, but they would make an awkward parcel.’
    Brand did not reply immediately. His eyes wandered around the empty room and then returned to Jost. He spoke very quietly now. ‘For those of us who have access to knowledge,’ he said, ‘there are surely other negotiable commodities.’
    There was another pause. Jost was aware of a sensation in his stomach that he recognised very well, but a sensation with which he had for some years been unfamiliar. He was in the presence of danger again. To reassure himself, to make sure that his friend was joking, he invoked the old formula.
    ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I am as eager as the next man to supplement my pension,
but
–’ he sighed regretfully – ‘isn’t the special knowledge of the kind we have much too unstable to travel? On such a difficult, dangerous road I would feel safer with liquid nitroglycerine.’
    Brand did not smile. ‘There is much special knowledge thatwith careful handling can be made safe,’ he said, ‘knowledge, moreover, that raises no issues of conscience.’
    ‘Oh. Play material, you mean.’ Jost was relieved but also slightly disappointed. ‘Play material’ was the jargon phrase used to describe the low-grade classified information fed back to the enemy through double agents. It wasn’t like Brand to talk nonsense.
    Brand shook his head. ‘No, not play material. Much better than that.’ He leaned forward. ‘Hard stuff, but hard stuff that is possibly already shared.’
    ‘And therefore probably useless? Oh, I see.’
    ‘Useless but not valueless.’ Brand did smile now. ‘Just like gold, some might think.’
    Jost was aware again of the danger sensation, but it was not unpleasant now. ‘Like gold, perhaps,’ he said, ‘but without the market that there is for gold.’
    ‘A market could be found, no doubt.’
    ‘Can you see us looking for one?’
    ‘No.’ Brand shrugged. ‘Perhaps for that sort of commodity the market has to be made.’ He picked up the evening paper again. ‘Eight men on the job,’ he commented, ‘and there were doubtless as many again involved in the planning and preliminaries. No wonder their security was bad. No wonder the police had a tip-off.
    That was all that was said then.
    The expected reorganisation took place and official occasions for their private meetings became rarer. Over a year passed before the subject of ‘access to knowledge’ came up again between them. This time it was Jost who raised it.
    They were dining at a restaurant in Rome.
    Towards the end of dinner Jost said casually: ‘I heard the other day of a strange commodity sold in an even stranger market.’
    He saw Brand’s eyes