“If you like to carry on, Mr Masters. Just let us know if any of the suspects behave out of pattern.”
“Very good, sir.” The Subaltern fell back deferentially.
Audley indicated a doorway ahead of them. “I’ve got what used to be called a cold collation for you, Jack. Hard-boiled eggs and ham and salad. But a little hot soup from a thermos —we weren’t quite sure whether things really would work out. You know what you’ve been taking part in?”
He eyed Butler momentarily before continuing. “It’s what young Masters calls a ‘Low Intensity Operation’, by which I gather he means what the Gestapo and the Abwehr used to call ‘Search and Identify’. Only now I think we could teach them a thing or two, after all the practice we’ve had. And with all the equipment!”
“You can say that again,” said Richardson. “That frequency scanning thing they’ve got—the American thing—it’s bloody miraculous.”
“But just what does it add up to?” Butler growled.
“Add up to? Here—sit on the bale of straw, and Peter will serve your soup.” Audley perched himself on a bale opposite Butler. “Add up to? Well, at the moment Korbel talks to Protopopov on a very neat little East German walkie-talkie. And Protopopov talks to another colleague of his just over the crest of the ridge back there, down towards Vindolanda— someone we shall be identifying very soon now. Then perhaps we shall know what we’re about a little better.”
“But we don’t at the moment,” said Butler obstinately, staring at Audley through the steam of his hot cup of soup. “We don’t know what they are about.”
Audley blinked uncomfortably, and Butler’s earlier intuition was confirmed. Back in the flat in London the fellow had been uncharacteristically nervous. But now he was evidently no closer to an answer, and what had happened this morning was a fumbling attempt to find out more by injecting Butler into the action in the hope that the enemy would reveal more of himself. It was little better than grasping at straws.
“Perhaps I shall know better when you’ve made your report,” Audley said rather primly. “I hope you’ve got something worth listening to.”
“Not a lot, really. You’ve had my report on the accident.”
“Yes,” Audley nodded. “He invited his own death, and the invitation was accepted. In effect he committed suicide.”
“I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that. It depends on whether he decided to ride to Oxford before he started drinking or after, which is something we don’t know. But he was cracking, that’s sure enough.”
“The Epton girl corroborated that?”
The Epton girl. Butler felt a stirring of irritation at the memory of her involvement: somebody had not done his job very thoroughly in delving into Smith’s background for her to have been overlooked.
“She hadn’t seen him for three weeks, but she’d been worried about him for some time. She reckoned he was working too hard—he didn’t write to her at all that last week.”
“It wasn’t exactly a great love affair though?” Audley cocked his head on one side. “Not a very passionate affair, would you say?”
“She may not have been his mistress, if that’s what you mean.” Butler could hear the distaste in his own voice.
“I’d say that’s exactly what I mean. If she had been I think it would have been known up at Cumbria. Would you say that it was a genuine engagement even?”
“I think it was.”
“Hmm … “ Audley considered the proposition. “He should have been a bit wary of emotional entanglements—and she’s no great beauty, is she.”
“I found her a rather attractive young woman myself.”
Audley’s eyebrows lifted. “A bit overblown—but then she certainly has some attractive family connections, I admit. The vice-chancellor of Cumbria is her godfather.”
Beside Polly Epton’s apple-cheeked charm Audley’s own wife was a thin, washed-out thing, thought Butler unkindly. But it was Smith’s taste in women, not Audley’s, that mattered.
“I’m aware of it,” he rasped. “The Master of King’s is her godfather too, as a matter of fact.”
“Hah! Yet you still think it was a real romance?”
“If it had been bogus, then I don’t think Smith would have kept quiet about it,” Butler began awkwardly, fumbling for words to describe what he knew he was ill-equipped to imagine. “It was … a very private thing they had, just between the two of them.”
Audley looked at him curiously.
“Well—damn it!—she’s a nice sort of girl—“
He saw Audley’s face contort in bewilderment: nice was another of those words which had been twisted and blunted until its meaning was hopelessly compromised.
He felt embarrassment and irritation tighten his shirtcollar round his neck. But what he wanted to say had to be said somehow—
“Damn it all! What I mean is—I don’t mean she keeps her legs crossed tight all the time,” he plunged onwards. “It’s possible they did sleep together now and then when he came down to Oxford. But I don’t think it was just a physical thing with them—I’d say she was full of life when a man needed it, but full of—well, quietness and comfort when he needed that. And she thinks now—because of what I’ve told her—that if she’d been up at Cumbria instead of studying—whatever it is —occupational therapy, it maybe wouldn’t have happened.”
“She thinks it was an accident?”
“No, not after what happened at the bridge. But if she’d been there with him … “ He shook his head hopelessly. “I’m afraid I’m not expressing myself very efficiently.”
“Efficiently?” Surprisingly, the bewilderment had faded from Audley’s face. “On the contrary, you’ve put it very well indeed. If you think this of her—and of them!” Audley nodded to himself. “A girl for all seasons—if she strikes you that way, then that would explain it very well, too.”
“How would it do that?” Butler frowned.
“Well, you had me worried for a moment. But now I think I see the way it was.” Audley looked at him. “You see, our friend Smith had it made—as Peter here would say—he had it made. He had this two-year research fellowship, and after that he was dead certain of a lectureship.”
“Certain?”
“So Gracey tells me. Nothing but the best at Cumbria— and Neil Smith was the best. Why does that interest you?”
“Miss Epton thought that might be why he was working so hard: to make sure of a permanent post there. He wanted that very much.”
“He wanted it and he’d got it. It was right in the palm of his hand. He’d got it, and we weren’t on to him. Not even near him. And this engagement with the Epton girl would have made things perfect, socially as well as academically.”
Audley paused, watching Butler over his spectacles.
“He should have been on top of the world then. But he was right at the bottom—thanks to Sir Geoffrey we know that, and Gracey checks it out. The last two, three weeks he was one worried young man—a ball of fire with the fire burnt out, Gracey says. Which means that things hadn’t gone according to plan after all.”
“He had himself pretty well under control at Oxford. Whatever happened to him happened up here.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I’d guess you were closer to the mark in your report when you suggested that he took a spiritual knock at Oxford. Freedom of everything must have been a strong drug for a man with his background—“
“You know what his background was then?”
“We’ve a fair idea now, according to Peter here.”
Butler turned towards Richardson.
“Not for sure,” said Richardson quickly. “These things take time to establish, and time we haven’t had. What we’ve got— and Stocker had to go cap in hand to the CIA for it—is that the KGB pulled out one of their old-established ‘illegals’ from New Zealand a few years back to give someone some polish at their Higher School in Moscow. And we’ve got a tentative identification for Smith at the Sch
ool for just about that time —only tentative, mind you. And the New Zealand angle fits.”
“You think he was never in New Zealand?”
“We reckon he was there, but not for long. Way we see it was that they pulled the switch just before the real Smith was due to fly out. Our Smith wasn’t really a very good likeness. Or he was only right in a fairly general way—height and colouring and so on. But he was starting out fresh here, and in a year or two when he’d filled out a bit and grown his hair we think he could have bluffed it out with anyone he’d known back there.”
“Even with his aunt?”
“Great-aunt, to be exact. Half-blind, and if she ever leaves New Zealand, then I’ll be a greater spotted kiwi. As far as false identities go, they had it pretty well made.”
“But a KGB graduate nonetheless,” cut in Audley incisively. “And then an Oxford graduate.”
“You can’t say he wasn’t well qualified,” murmured Richardson irreverently. “And of course David thinks Oxford cancels out Moscow!”
“Not Oxford by itself. I think he was the wrong man for the job. But it was when he stopped learning freedom of thought and started to teach it that it began to get under his skin.” Audley stared directly at Butler. “What I believe is there was one thing about him that his bosses didn’t realise— or they didn’t realise how important it was going to become: the fellow was a natural born teacher!”
Butler nodded cautiously. “That was what Hobson thought.”
“Gracey did too, and he’s a sharp man. The crunch came when Smith found out he was in the wrong business. Poor devil, I’d guess he’d become what he was pretending to be— and he liked it better.”
Poor devil indeed! thought Butler: the Devil himself had been a mixed-up archangel, and this poor devil had straightened himself out only to discover that there was no escape from Hell …
“And falling for Polly Epton put the finishing touch on things?”
“Not quite the finishing touch—no.” Audley rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Actually, it had me worried a bit when I first learnt about it. He didn’t seem a very highly-sexed man, and I knew she was no Helen of Troy, but I did wonder if that wasn’t behind what he did.”
“She’s not that sort of girl at all—“
Audley held up his hand. “Precisely. That’s why I’m so grateful to you. A nice girl, that’s what she is.”
“You know what I mean, damn it!”
“I do indeed. And I know that nice girls don’t drive men to treachery and suicide: it’s the little prick-teasing bitches that do that. From what you say of young Polly, she’d more likely have soothed him down and jollied him out of it if she’d been here. But she wasn’t here, and that’s half the point. What had kept him going was Polly Epton—and the fact that he wasn’t having to do any dirty work.”
“And then suddenly up comes the dirty work—and there’s no Polly with her nice soft shoulder … “
“But you don’t know what the dirty work was?”
Audley grimaced. “We don’t know what it is. The whole trouble’s been that Smith wasn’t on our watch list.”
“And if I go round asking too many backdated questions my cover’s going to wear out just when we need it most,” said Richardson.
He cocked an unashamed eye at Audley. “Trouble is, David’s right—we made a boob over Smith, a bloody great boob, and that’s a fact.” He paused. “And the back-tracking hasn’t been easy. But as far as I can dope it out Smith kept his nose clean like David says—no dirty work, not even one suspicious contact. Until three weeks ago.”
“Three weeks,” Audley nodded at Butler. “The right time.”
“It’s only circumstantial,” said Richardson tentatively. “The right chap in the right place.”
“What right chap?”
Richardson looked at Audley.
Audley smiled reassuringly. “The truth is, we’ve had a bit of luck in their apparat over her. We’ve got a major defector. By autumn we’ll be ready to blow the whole thing sky-high, but in the meantime we’ve got one or two unexpected names. Names they don’t know we’ve got.”
“Like this new chappie in the Moscow Narodny Bank over here—an economic whizz kid,” Richardson took up the tale again. “Only actually he’s a KGB whizz kid, and the word is he’s here on a special emergency job. A top secret one-off job.”
“But he doesn’t know we’re on to him, see? So we’ve given him a nice long lead to see which lamppost he cocks his leg on. And sure enough he took a quick trip to Newcastle three weeks ago. He goes to the University Museum, to the mock-up of a bit of Roman stuff they’ve got there—“
“The Carrawburgh Mithraeum, man—you’re supposed to be a post-graduate student, not a ruddy tourist,” said Audley testily.
Richardson grinned and nodded gracefully, totally unabashed at the rebuke. “As your worship pleases—a facsimile of the temple of Mithras, hard by Coventina’s shrine at Brocolitia—“
“I know the place,” snapped Butler.
Just a few hours earlier, although it seemed an age, he had stood beside the little shrine to the god the Christians had feared most, trying not to watch Protopopov on the hillside behind him. Now, however, he found Richardson’s high spirits even more trying: this was a young man who needed taking down a peg or two. “For God’s sake get on with it!”
“For Mithras’ sake, you mean! Well, they’ve built this mock-up in the Museum: you go behind a curtain and press the tit, and the lights go out and you’re there in the temple with a commentary to tell you what’s what. And we’re pretty sure that this chappie Adashev told Smith what’s what at the same time. They were both in just about the same place at the same time, anyway—that’s almost for sure.”
“For my money it’s sure,” Audley cut in. “Because from that moment on Smith was worried sick. Which means—“
He paused, frowning. “Let me put it this way: I don’t agree with Peter that we missed out on Smith earlier because we were inefficient. We didn’t spot him because his cover was almost perfect and because he didn’t do anything to compromise it. They even took the trouble to bring over someone new to be his contact, someone we weren’t likely to know about.”
“All of which means this could be a big one.”
He blinked nervously at Butler.
So this was the revelation: not so much that a “big one” might be due—the escalating Russian activity in Britain which was common knowledge in the Department made that no surprise—but that Audley, the great Audley, was up a gum-tree at last!
After months of expensive time and trouble he was stumped. And stumped on an assignment which obviously worried the men at the top, the Oxford and Cambridge men who would of all people be appalled at the ability of the KGB to tamper with their university recruiting ground.
And that meant Audley would be for the high jump. He’d pulled off some legendary coups in the past, but that wouldn’t help him now because he’d never tried to make himself loved. Rather, there would be no mourners at the wake.
But then Butler discovered another revelation within himself, one that he had never expected: it was not such a matter of indifference to him, Audley’s professional fate.
He didn’t like Audley, and never would. But there was nothing in the small print about having to like the men one served with. What mattered was the Queen’s service, and that service badly needed bastards like this one.
So if Audley was stuck, it was up to him to unstick him, or die in the attempt.
XIII
JUST “WHAT HAVE you been doing in the last year?” Butler asked brutally. Duty might be a harsh and jealous god, but the more he asked of his worshippers the less he expected them to wear kid-gloves and pussy-foot around.
“What have I been doing during my sabbatical year?” Audley gave him a small, tight smile. “Didn’t you know that I had been elected first Nasser Memorial Fellow at Cumbria?”
“Why Cumbria? I thought you were an Oxford and Cambri
dge man?”
“My dear fellow—only Cambridge, thank God! But I’m afraid I’m a little too well-known down South and we didn’t want to be obvious. .. Besides that, it happens to be an interesting experiment, what Gracey’s trying to do here at Cumbria. We thought it made him a prime KGB target.”
“Quality instead of quantity?”
Audley looked at Butler with sudden interest. “You know about that then?”
“It’s no secret.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t. Well, my contribution is in the realm of medieval Arab history.”
“Packs ‘em in too,” said Richardson admiringly. “Front row full of pretty girls—quality and quantity, if you ask me. I know ‘cause I went to those lectures on Edrisi-what’s-his-name-“
“Abu Abdullah Mohammed al-Edrisi, you savage—you remind me that Edrisi said England was set in the Ocean of Darkness in the grip of endless winter!”
“He said the world was round too, clever chap. But I’m only half a savage, remember—my old mum was a Foscolo from Amalfi, so at least half of me’s civilised.”
Richardson’s eyes and teeth flashed support of his ancestry and it struck Butler that there might be more than a touch of Abdullah Mohammed as well as Foscolo in his bloodline. Which was one more reason why the fellow would bear watching.
The bright, dark eyes slanted towards him. “Point is—“ Richardson went on quickly “—this Arab history makes David respectable with the students. Friend of the emergent nations and all that stuff. And he’s had me and a dozen other poor devils rooting around at strategic points ‘cross the country like pigs after truffles while he sat up here and tasted what we found. Or rather, what we didn’t find … “
Audley was staring at the young man with a look of affectionate despair. He turned back towards Butler. “Tell me, Jack, what do you think of Sir Geoffrey’s idea of the great Red Plot now you’ve heard about it from his own lips?”
Butler stared at him for a moment. It was often Audley’s way to start his own answer to a question with a question of his own, and it was no use hoping that he’d ever change.
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