Paul frowned. 'No, not in Blackburn. What's so all-fired important about Blackburn?'
'You said you didn't know what he's doing there. But you know what he isn't doing.'
He shook his head. 'I meant that literally. He told Jim he was taking a half-day off on the Friday week ahead, and he'd be spending the night before in his home town, that's all. He'll be back on the job by 1.30 tomorrow, anyway - you can pick him up at the University then if you want him.' He continued to frown at her, half puzzled, half suspicious. 'We seem to have lost the thread rather, Princess. And you haven't yet revealed what you intend to do.'
The heavy door-knocker on the mock-Tudor door boomed out, echoing in the empty hall outside the library.
'Are you expecting callers?' asked Paul quickly.
Frances shook her head, listening intently. Even before the echoes had died away she could hear other sounds mingling with them inside the house.
'Then who - ?'
She raised a finger to cut off his question. That first sound had been the clatter of the latch on the TV room door. Then there had been a burst of unmuffled pop music - at that volume it was amazing that the girls had heard anything else, even that thunderous door-knocker - but the music had been quickly muffled again as the door was closed on it. Now there came the distinctive clackety-click of Sally's fashion clogs crossing the parquet floor of the hall, ending with the thud and rattle of mock-Tudor bolt and safety chain on the door itself.
At least it couldn't be Colonel Butler himself, because Colonel Butler was in the Grand Hotel, Blackburn, this night - this Thursday night (that other November night, nine years ago, had been a Monday night).
What was strange was that she wasn't as relieved as she should be that it couldn't be Colonel Butler. Indeed, analysing the strangeness, she came upon the beginning of a day-dream that he had come back, very late, after the girls were safely tucked up and asleep, and she herself was comfortably curled up (in Diana's exotic nightie and warm dressing gown, which Jane had found for her), reading his Tales of Yoknapatawpha County
- reading in it maybe 'As I Lay Dying', or 'A Rose for Emily', or perhaps 'The Bear', which she had first encountered so unforgettably at college - young Frances Warren as excited as John Keats On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - in 'Go Down Moses' -
* * *
'I
hope you don't mind me reading your Faulkner.'
(One hand clasping the book to her breast, the other modestly joining the edges of the gown together at her throat.)
Wo? at all, Mrs Fitzgibbon.' (Very formal, he would be.) 'You like Faulkner, do you, Mrs Fitzgibbon?'
'Very much! ('The old verities and truths of the heart,' Colonel Butler.) I think we've both read him in the same way, you know.' (Deduction: From the dates on the fly-leaves, each meticulously recording the book's date of acquisition. Butler had read his way through Faulkner at break-neck speed, book after book, in the midst of his duel with the EOKA terrorists in the Troodos Mountains, beginning with Intruder in the Dust, and then Absalom! Absalom! He must have had them flown in, money no object by then, for by then he was a rich man, the ex-poor boy from Blackburn, self-made officer-and-gentleman... Maybe lying in ambush all day on those rocky hillsides with his sub-machine gun and his newest Faulkner?)
(Well, in the same way, if not in the same circumstances exactly. Except that it was all in her imagination, every word, every picture. All a dream.)
* * *
'Frances,' said Sally. 'Frances - there's a policeman at the door, for you, he says. Not the one who brought the Chinese grub - food, I mean.'
Frances smiled at her, sisterly-step-motherly. 'Yes, dear?'
'He says he's a policeman, anyway. He says he'll show you his ... his warrant card.
But he's not in uniform, so I haven't let him in. But he says he knows you.'
So it would be Detective-Sergeant Geddes. The delivery of the Chinese take-away had been a constable's chore. But what would Geddes want?
'All right, dear. I'll see him.'
'Okay. I'll tell him you're just coming.' Sally ducked out obediently, sisterly-step-daughterly.
Frances looked at Paul. 'I'll take him into the sitting room.'
'Don't take long.' From his expression Paul's patience with the hard-to-get Fitzgibbon was close to exhaustion. 'I'd like to know what you're intending to do, Frances.'
What she intended to do.
What she was doing was also all a dream, thought Frances. Ever since the bomb everything had had an insubstantial quality, fuzzed at the edges, as though she was living out an alternative version of a life which had actually ended beside the duck-pond in a spray of blood and muddy water and feathers.
'I shall be here tonight and in Blackburn tomorrow ' she said.
* * *
The door was open, but on the chain. She could smell the wet November darkness through the gap, beyond the area of the porch light.
Through the side window of the mock-Tudor porch she saw a long strip of light where the curtains in one of the mullioned windows of the library hadn't quite met. As she watched, the light went out and a second or two later the curtains moved: Paul was observing her policeman.
'Yes?' she addressed the gap.
'Mrs Fitzgibbon?'
'Yes.' She peered through the gap. Whoever it was, it wasn't Detective-Sergeant Geddes. The moustache was there, and the rather swarthy complexion too; but this was a stockier and an older man.
'Special Branch, madam. My warrant card.'
Frances accepted the card - Detective-Superintendent Samuel Leigh-Hunter. That certainly made him top brass, on a level with their own formidable D. S. Cox in the department; and he had the same heavy-lidded seen-it-all-but-still-learning-from-it look which the best of them had, and which was frightening and reassuring at the same time
- that much one glimpse through the gap registered.
Caution, though: she still didn't know him.
'Yes, Superintendent?' The chain remained in position under her hand.
'I'd like a word with you, madam. Inside the house, if you don't mind.' The eyes were opaque. 'With reference to Dr David Audley.'
Frances's legs weakened at the knees. 'I beg your pardon?' she heard herself say, in Mrs Fitzgibbon's haughtiest voice.
'Let the man in, Frances,' said Paul from behind her.
'What?' she swung round.
'Let him in, you crafty little bitch - or I should say something complimentary really, I suppose!' Paul grinned broadly at her.
'What?'
'Then I'll let him in.' He reached past her towards the chain, lifting the knob out of the slot. 'Come in. Colonel Shapiro - join the club!'
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Israeli wasn't pleased. Frances sensed his displeasure the moment he stepped inside, it was like a tiny movement of air setting one leaf quivering on a still day.
'Captain Mitchell.' The leaf no longer moved, but it had told its tale: Paul had touched it with his unexpected presence.
'Not "Captain".' Paul's grin faded to a self-deprecating smile. 'The highest rank I ever aspired to was lance-corporal in the Cambridge University OTC, I'm afraid. Colonel.'
'Of course. But the first picture we ever took of you was as a captain - France in '74.
In an RTR black beret. And first impressions last longest.' Shapiro traded smile for smile.
'And you are something of a tank expert, 1918 and all that, I believe?'
'But not on your level - 1967 and all that ... the Jebl Libni counter-attack, was it?'
They were crossing swords as well as smiles, and asserting themselves and exchanging professional credentials at the same time.
'And that gives us something in common with David Audley,' Paul moved forward smoothly, choosing his ground. 'Wessex Dragoons, wasn't he - '43-'44?'
'Well, well!' Shapiro conceded a point. '"Not a lot of people know that.'"
Paul accepted the Michael Caine claim. 'He doesn't dine out on it - 80 per
cent casualties in Normandy, maybe. But then, David plays a lot of things close to his chest...' He turned towards Frances. 'Like you, Frances. Though the chest is much more worth playing close to, I must admit.'
'Mrs Fitzgibbon - ' The smile vanished from Colonel Shapiro's face: he came from a race and a generation less crude, far less prone to such juvenile familiarity ' - forgive me my deplorable manners. I am sorry to disturb you with not a word of warning, but your phone here isn't secure.'
This was the grey country again: that was exactly - almost word for word exactly -
what Sir Frederick had said to her twenty-four hours before, to the minute; the old-fashioned courtesy giving her an apology which Paul Mitchell would never have rated, but the new-fashioned equality of the sexes putting her in the front line of necessity, in which a woman could do a man's job to the death.
'That was your man in the woods behind the house, I take it?' said Paul conversationally, but pleased with himself.
'Yes.' This time Shapiro's irritation was plain. The poor devil in the woods would soon find himself somewhere even less pleasant than England on a dripping November night after this, said the irritation.
'I thought he might be one of ours. Or just a copper.' Paul was merciless: he had been too good for the man in the woods, and he liked being better than Mossad, who were good - and they were good because Shapiro was here now, within hours of one phone call; and that could be either because they were technologically good, or because they had an inside man somewhere; but however good they'd been, Paul had been too good for them, his sight-and-sound in the wet darkness had been better; if it had been a killing matter, he would have killed, and that would have been an end of it, not to be boasted about; but it had only been a passing in the dark, and he couldn't resist exulting in it -
None has ever caught him yet, for Paul, he is the master: His songs are stronger songs, and his feet faster.
His confidence offended her. If Paul died before his time, it would not be because he wasn't good enough; it would be because he chose to test his excellence to an impossible invulnerability, giving the enemy the first shot because he had to believe no bullet had his name on it. He would die uselessly then, simply to test a theory, not by accident, like Robbie.
She felt the iron in her soul again. She had nothing to lose.
'Have you contacted David, Colonel Shapiro?'
'Yes.' The deplorable manners were forgotten now, thank God: now they were on equal terms. 'Not personally. But ... yes, Mrs Fitzgibbon, we have spoken with him.'
Our Man in Washington. The Israelis had Washington sewn up tight as a drum when it came to contacts, even if they no longer called the tune in the Administration and Congress.
'And he's coming back?'
Shapiro nodded. 'The ClA's bringing him in.' Then he smiled, a touch of wolf under the sheep-dog. 'They owe him one.'
Everybody owed David one: David was both a Godfather and a Godson. Half his strength lay in those unpaid debts.
'He's made a proper bog-up of this one, all the same,' said Paul, dryly superior.
Shapiro nodded again, to Paul this time. 'Ye-ess ... I'm afraid that with this one ...
desire has finally out-run performance.' Another nod. 'As you say - a bog-up. A proper bog-up.'
He sounded as though he'd never heard of a bog-up before, but that the onomatopoeic meaning of it appealed to him as being self-explanatory.
Frances was aware simultaneously that she was being ignored and that she didn't know what they were talking about. She scowled at Paul. 'What d'you mean - David has made a ... bog-up?'
Paul looked over his shoulder at the door to the TV room.
'Let's go back into the library. Princess.'
* * *
'A bog-up?' repeated Frances.
Colonel Shapiro looked around him, just as Paul had done - just as she had done.
Then he looked at Paul.
Damn them all! thought Frances. The great male conspiracy of knowing too much was in that look.
'David thought he had it all cut-and-dried before he went to Washington?' Paul nodded at the Israeli. 'Right?'
Slow nod. 'That's about the size of it. Yes.'
'Had what cut-and-dried?' snapped Frances at both of them.
Paul thought for a moment before replying. 'You drew the top brass last night. Who was it?'
Frances kept her mouth shut. He'd fished for that name once already. He certainly wasn't going to catch anything now.
'All right. Let's put it another way. Who wasn't it?'
Who wasn't it?
Frances saw her error of the night before. She had been so overwhelmed by Sir Frederick's arrival, and then by her own cleverness in connecting it with Colonel Butler, that she'd clean forgotten to ask herself one very important question, even though it had been half-formulated in her mind after he had said You are not reporting to Brigadier Stocker.
'It wasn't Tom Stocker, was it?' The question mark at the end wasn't a question mark: it was Paul's way of emphasising a statement of fact.
'It wasn't Tom Stocker because Tom Stocker is in an oxygen tent at King George's,'
said Paul. 'And his job's up for grabs.'
So that was the Ring of Power waiting for a new finger.
And it was very surely a Ring of Power, no doubt about that: Sir Frederick's Number Two ... chief-of-staff, deputy managing director, first understudy - first lieutenant - and confidant. And more than that, too ... All the doors opened to Brigadier Stocker, and all the files unlocked themselves for him. Liaison with other departments and other agencies passed through him, on his signature. He had the day-to-day patronage of hiring and firing and promoting.
He did all the work, including the dirty work.
It should have been Brigadier Stocker's voice out of the darkness in her garden.
'He failed his physical four months ago,' said Colonel Shapiro.
God! thought Frances: the Israelis always knew everything. No wonder the Russians were so suspicious of their Jews; and that was more than half the reason why David Audley had given her his homily on cultivating them - why he had openly boasted to her of co-operating with Mossad unofficially. It had even sparked one of his rare moments of crudity: I'd rather have them inside the tent, pissing out, than the other way round!
'He should have resigned straight away,' said Shapiro. 'He already had bad chest pains, even before the physical... But the man they had lined up for the job wouldn't take it. Turned it down flat on them.'
'David Audley,' said Paul. He glanced quickly at Shapiro for confirmation. 'It was David, wasn't it?'
'Correct.' Shapiro didn't take his eyes off Frances. 'We have a copy of his refusal telegram - he'd just started his tour in Washington. Clinton was dining with the Provost of St. Barnabas at Cambridge that night, David's old college. And David actually sent the telegram en clair just to let Clinton know he didn't give a damn - typical David. But he also recommended Butler for the job while he was about it.'
Paul gave a half-laugh. 'Typical David indeed! But he was quite right, of course - on both counts. He'd be an absolute disaster in that job, would David. An absolute disaster!'
Shapiro gave him a sharp look. 'Why d'you think that, Mitchell?'
'Paper-work and public relations? Talking to Ministers of the Crown? Ex-trade union bosses? David has a streak of mischief a mile wide at the best of times. He'd talk down to them quite deliberately - he'd try to make fools of them, and he'd end up making a fool of himself.'
He was wrong, thought Frances. Or at least half wrong. David didn't suffer fools gladly, but he had learnt to suffer them. The private fight which he waged endlessly -
and lost endlessly - was between duty and selfishness. He had refused the job simply because it was no fun.
'He was right about Butler, though,' said Paul dogmatically. 'One hundred and one per cent right.'
Shapiro lifted one bushy eyebrow interrogatively, silently repeating his previous question.
&
nbsp; Paul nodded. 'Oh - he's not a genius, is Fighting Jack - our Thin Red Line... He's damn good, but he isn't a genius.'
'But he knows his duty?'
'That's one strike for him, certainly. He doesn't want the job, but he'll do it.' He bobbed his head. 'And he'll do it well - and he'll win his coronary ten years from now like poor old Stocker. The crowning glory of a life spent above and beyond the call of duty: one oxygen tent in King George's, with a pretty little nurse to special him on his way out.'
Shapiro nodded.
'But that isn't the real qualification,' said Paul. 'I mean, it is the real qualification from our point of view - ' He nodded to Frances ' - General Sir Ralph Abercromby and all that
... ever-watchful to the health and wants of his troops. Princess: when he sends us over the top, the wire will be cut ahead of us, and the reserves will be ready just behind - you better believe it!
'But no... His real qualification is that the bloody politicians won't be able to resist him.
Ex-grammar school scholarship boy, risen from the ranks by merit - son of a prominent trade unionist, a friend of Ernie Bevin's - still with a touch of Lancashire in his accent, too. Which he can turn on when he wants, when he needs to ... no Labour minister can resist that. Not for the power behind the throne in Intelligence, by golly!
'And if the Tories have a hand in it ... by God! all he'll have to do is grunt at them, and all the other qualifications work for them too. They'll see him as a true-blue Tory, risen from the ranks - the very best sort of salt-of-the-earth Tory. Even the fact that his Dad was one of Ernie Bevin's friends will count for him - the Tories dine out on Ernie Bevin's famous last words - The Buggers won't work! - epitaph on the Welfare State! A perfect Intelligence profile, either way, for the late seventies - a man for all seasons!'
He nodded again at Shapiro. 'But you're right really, in the end ... about Duty. So they'll all take one look at him, and they'll trust him on sight.' He shrugged and grinned at them both, almost as though embarrassed. 'Bloody hell! Come to that, / trust him -
even though he hates my guts - I trust him!'
Well, well! thought Frances, in astonishment. Well, well, well, well, well And yet -
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