A Prospect of Vengeance

by Anthony Price

  ‘And that man?’ He repeated the gesture. (Big, blunt-fingered hand, quite unlike Philly’s: she must hold on to that dissimilarity!) ‘MacManus—?’

  She could shake her head honestly. ‘I don’t know who sent him. So … it could have been you, Dr Audley.’ Now she really had his attention. ‘To frighten us off … if Dr Mitchell doesn’t like squeezing the trigger, as you say … Because you do seem to have succeeded in frightening my partner. And what happened to John Tully certainly frightened me.’ The thought of John Tully came to her shamefully late. But, having come, it allied John to Philly and finally hardened her heart against Audley. ‘John Tully was acting under my orders, Dr Audley. So what happened to him is my responsibility, St Matthew would say.’ She clenched her teeth, knowing that she had almost betrayed Philly because of a freak imagined resemblance which had knotted her up. But now that was in the past, and she was herself again. ‘And Burdett versus Abbot also cuts two ways, Dr Audley: if you think I’m going to walk away and forget John Tully, then you have the wrong woman—‘ Even, in fairness, she must make it stronger than that ‘—and the wrong journalist.’

  He looked at her for what seemed an age. But finally he nodded. ‘Well … suppose I told you a story, then? How would that be?’

  ‘A story?’ Careful, now. ‘Fact or fiction?’

  ‘Just a, story, Miss Fielding. An old Chinese story—?’

  ‘With nothing promised on either side?’

  ‘With nothing promised on either side—of course!’

  ‘Then I’d listen.’ Suddenly she had to play fair with him: that much, from their first sight of each other, she owed him. ‘With all my “rights and duties” relating to Philip Masson and John Tully protected, Dr Audley?’

  He nodded again, and the compact was made. ‘There was this problem in this Intelligence department, nine years ago—nine years, give or take a few months, either way-‘

  ‘Research and Development—‘

  ‘This department—‘ He cut her off sharply—‘—because its director was retiring … and his deputy had just dropped dead in his tracks, of over-work and a dickey heart. So the question was … who was going to run the show?’

  The compact had been made, so all she had to do was to nod.

  ‘It was an important job. Because, whoever got it, it opened up a lot of secret—very secret—ultra secret files to him—okay?’

  Him wasn’t okay. But she had to ride that, this time. So … another nod.

  ‘So we had to get the best man for it—‘

  She didn’t have to ride that. ‘But there were two best men, weren’t there?’ And then she had to pin him down. ‘Philip Masson and Jack Butler. And you wanted Jack Butler.’

  He looked down on her, and his face became quite beautifully ugly. ‘It really is quite irrelevant now who wanted who, Miss Fielding. Or, anyway, quite unimportant in this context … so please don’t interrupt.’ He set his jaw. ‘There was of course the usual manoeuvring and lobbying and fixing that one expects on such occasions—‘ Then his face broke up almost comically ‘—actually, Fred and I both wanted Jack. And we underestimated the opposition, too. And perhaps that isn’t irrelevant, I agree! Because they started testing poor old Jack, to see how he’d measure up. And neither Fred nor I expected that.’ He paused. ‘And then, so it seemed, Jack nearly got killed on the job—twice in the same week … And the second time was within a hair’s breadth, so we thought.’

  ‘But it was the other candidate who died, Dr Audley—‘

  He stared her down—just as Philly had used to do. ‘That was an accident, we supposed. And it wasn’t our business to inquire into it: that was a police job first, and then Special Branch, with MI5 in reserve.’ He drew a breath. ‘And they didn’t find one thing out of place—anymore than we did, later on.’ He let the breath out with the words. ‘Everybody did his job properly, believe me.’ Finally he nodded. ‘Whoever did it was a real pro. And, as Paddy MacManus was O’Leary’s side-kick and junior partner then, maybe it was him … But we don’t know, now … And then, when they’d given it a clean bill-of-health, we were quite relieved. Because it took all the heat off Jack Butler, so he got the job. And because all we were concerned with was why they were trying to kill him, you see—do you see?’

  Jenny didn’t see. What she saw, in the next second, was that the little car was still burning in the valley: as always, it was amazing how long a collection of bits of metal burned, once they took fire. ‘Why—?’

  He shook his head at her. ‘This isn’t the Middle East, Miss Fielding: we don’t go round killing their chaps. And they don’t go round killing ours—it’s bad for business.’ His lip curled. ‘You journalists steal stories from each other, and that’s fair enough. But if you started killing each other every time, then you’d pretty soon have a recruitment problem—especially if the editors started knocking each other off, as well, eh?’ He shook his head again. ‘No … putting O’Leary on to Jack Butler was too heavy to ignore: we had to sit down and find out why. Because Jack’s a great chap. But he’s not irreplaceable—even after your godfather’s “accidental” death there were other candidates—‘ The lip curled once more ‘—including me even, faute de mieux … Except that I wasn’t willing. Because I don’t like the paperwork—the managing, as they say? Because I’m not a civil servant at heart: I’m a leopard who’s too old to change his spots, Miss Fielding.’

  Arrogant bugger! But then Philly had been pretty arrogant, too! But … she mustn’t interrupt—

  ‘So there had to be a reason.’ He repaid her restraint by continuing. ‘And we very soon came up with one. Because Jack was promoted, then he had access to a lot of highly-restricted files. So we thought … once he sees those files, then he’ll see something no one else has, maybe? So … they can’t afford for him to see them … maybe?’

  He looked at her, and she realized that he wanted her to react now, to prove that she understood. ‘Like … there was a traitor somewhere? What Mr Le Carre calls “a mole”—?’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes. Or … it could be that they’d deceived us somehow, with a piece of disinformation. They’re damn good at that—feeding us with a great big pack of lies … or feeding the Yanks, or the Frogs, or the Krauts … or Mossad, and then they feed us … and we all believe it, and act accordingly—?’ He almost grinned at her, but didn’t. ‘If you start off from the wrong place, then you usually end up at the source of the Nile, and you think you’ve made a great discovery. So you don’t notice the boat they’ve moored on the Thames, alongside Westminster … ’ He repeated the almost-but-not-grin. ‘Don’t ask me, Miss Fielding. Because I won’t tell you.’

  But he was self-satisfied. So he had come up with an answer. And all he wanted to do was to wrap up the question in the Official Secrets Act, so that he could shrug off his answer, in turn. So she had to get the question right. ‘But … you had Sir Jack Butler there, beside you, after that. So … if he did see those files—?’

  David Audley beamed at her. ‘Absolutely right, Miss Fielding: we had him there beside us—‘ Then the beam dulled.

  ‘What’s the matter, Dr Audley?’

  ‘Nothing—‘ He was uneasy for a moment. Then he was himself again. ‘—your Mr Ian Robinson is talking to my wife, with your Mr Buller … and to my daughter. And I was merely wondering what they were saying down there—‘ He jerked his head ‘—in the rocks down there—?’

  Jenny remembered the pointy-eared fox, which was also somewhere down there in the rocks. But it was beyond her imagination, what they were all up to now, down there: Ian and Reg and the pointy-eared fox, never mind Audley’s wife and his daughter, after Paul Mitchell’s two failed shots, and then that burst of gunfire, the turret-gun’s concluding broadside.

  But there was no one there in the rocks. ‘What did you discover, Dr Audley?’

  He made another ugly face. ‘It took us a long time, Miss Fielding. And Paul Mitchell worked longer than I did.’ He stared at her, and then nodded.
‘Because your Mr Robinson is right—O’Leary wasn’t enough for him: he wanted whoever was behind what happened at Thornervaulx.’ Nod. ‘And so did I, come to that.’ Another nod. ‘But for a quite different reason.’

  ‘A quite different—?’

  He shook his head again. ‘But we didn’t find anything—not even with old Jack alongside us: we didn’t find a damn thing: not a happening, not a policy, not a name, not even a smell—nothing.’

  Jenny junked Paul Mitchell with Frances Fitzgibbon: they had been, respectively, infantryman and infantry-woman who had fought and died in the front line, and of no interest to the historian’s deeper truth.

  ‘Paul worked all hours God sent—8 A.M. to midnight. Or later, sometimes, I suspect.’ Audley tested her. ‘I don’t know … I went home each night. But he was always there next morning, when I came in, Miss Fielding.’

  As with Reg Buller, so with David Audley. And as with Reg Buller, so with Ian Robinson too: whatever spell she cast across the years from Thornervaulx, Frances Fitzgibbon really must have been quite a woman, to ensnare them all like this, in all their different ways, thought Jenny enviously.

  Except that Frances-Marilyn Fitzgibbon-Francis was dead now: so sod her!

  So she waited.

  ‘One morning, I came in … And Paul said “There’s nothing here, David; the bastards have beaten us. Or Jack can’t remember anything, anyway. So, even if O’Leary hadn’t been so damned incompetent and done the job properly … either at the University, or at Thornervaulx … it wouldn’t have made any difference. Because there’s nothing here.”’

  Jenny still waited.

  ‘And then it was easy, of course.’ Audley nodded.

  ‘Easy?’ He wasn’t talking about the woman now.

  ‘O’Leary was the best—the best, Miss Fielding.’ He nodded. ‘Your Paddy MacManus wasn’t in the same class: he was just a pale carbon-copy of the real thing.’ He cocked his head dismissively towards the dispersing column of smoke in the plain between the Greater and Lesser Arapiles. ‘O’Leary might have screwed up once, if he’d had very bad luck. And he did have very bad luck, when Frances Fitzgibbon turned up out of the blue, at Thornervaulx. But he didn’t have any bad luck at the University. And he must have had Jack Butler right in his sights at Thornervaulx.’ He stared at her. ‘What my old Latin master used to say … God rest his lovely soul! … was that “nonsense must be wrong!”, Miss Fielding.’ Still, he stared. ‘What if O’Leary didn’t screw up? What if he did exactly what they paid him to do—to make us concentrate on Jack Butler—and not on Philip Masson?’

  ‘And then it was easy’, just as he had said: it was like the scales falling from her eyes, in the Bible story she’d once had to learn by heart, to take her O-level Religious Studies exam.

  He saw that she understood. ‘The irony is that dear Frances deceived us both: because of her we both had blinkers on: we couldn’t think of anything except her—and Jack Butler. And we weren’t getting any answer because we were asking the wrong question. But we got there at last, anyway.’ Audley nodded. ‘Your “Philly” was a great guy, Miss Fielding: we did him over after that, right from his birth to what we no longer believed was his accidental death. Although we still believed that he’d been drowned, of course—we never expected him to turn up again. And it took us a long time, I can tell you … Because we couldn’t ask any of our questions obviously—in case we alerted the Other Side.’ Nod. ‘Because, either way—if he was theirs, or if he wasn’t—we didn’t want to let them know that we were on to them. Because that would have given the game away.’

  Jenny felt her mouth fall open.

  ‘No—he wasn’t on their side, my dear.’ Audley reassured her quickly. ‘Your “Philly” was absolutely on ours, you have no need to worry.’

  She wasn’t worrying; it was insulting even to suggest that.

  They simply didn’t want him to see one of our most secret files—that’s all, Miss Fielding.’ He accepted her silence gently. ‘And it took three of us—Mitchell and me, and someone I cordially detest—four months to find that file: three of us, and four months of hard labour … So that I know all about you, and your father as well as Philip Masson—all about the Korean War, and how he won his Military Cross … I know all about that … And about his career, after that. And his hobbies—and his girl-friends … and the girls he took on that boat of his—the Jenny III was it? … And when he took you for a holiday in France, that time—in that cottage in the Dordogne—?’ The next nod was expressionless. ‘Because your father was worried about that: because you were only fifteen years old, and he thought his old friend might just fancy you—? And his tax returns—everything, Miss Fielding.’

  Jenny felt the sun burning her head, but a dreadful chill far below, where it hurt. ‘That’s ridiculous—‘

  His mouth twisted again. ‘That’s what we thought at the time, Miss Fielding.’

  God! They hadn’t quite got it right, even though they were clever—and even though Daddy had appeared then, out of the blue! Because it had been her—almost-sixteen-year-old-Jenny—who had had hot-pants for him, without knowing how to take desire further, when he’d discouraged her—God!

  But she didn’t even want to think about that now. ‘Who killed him, Dr Audley?’ She felt empty as she rammed the question at him. ‘Who killed him?’

  He relaxed. ‘Oh, come on, Miss Fielding! You know I can’t answer that!’

  He was also like Mitchell: of course he was like Mitchell! But … she would never have a better chance than now. ‘Then I’ll have to work harder, Dr Audley—to find out for myself. With or without Ian. And it may not be such a good book without him. But there are other writers who’ll work for me.’

  ‘Whatever the risk?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll write it myself.’ She put on her obstinate face. ‘Someone had him killed. And I’m going to ruin the bastard—whoever he is.’

  He nodded. ‘You really did love him.’ The nod continued. ‘And not just like a good god-daughter, of course!’ The nodding stopped. ‘Well, then I shall have to tell you the rest of the story, Miss Fielding.’

  He was too sure of himself for comfort. ‘I’m listening, Dr Audley.’

  He stared at her in silence for a moment. ‘It hasn’t occurred to you that your revenge has already been accomplished?’

  Somewhere in the stillness of the valley an engine started up. Jenny was drawn towards the sound: the armoured personnel vehicle with the little turret-gun had started up; nearer to them, at the foot of the plateau in the gap in the fence beside the track, Paul Mitchell was in earnest conversation with one of the Spanish civilians; and the shapeless wreck of the little 2-CV was smoking now, rather than burning.

  She felt quite empty. He hadn’t mentioned a country, let alone a name. And of course he never would. And it didn’t have to be a Russian name, or any one of half a dozen of their East European surrogates. Or it could be an Arab name. Or even an Israeli name. Or it could just conceivably be some clean-cut, crew-cut American. Or, as an ultimate possibility, a Savile-Row-suited Englishman.

  ‘Are you saying that he’s dead, Dr Audley?’

  ‘No, Miss Fielding. That’s a lie I’m not prepared to tell you. Because we’re not into that sort of vengeance: it’s not what we’re hired for.’

  She remembered what Reg Buller had said. ‘You don’t do wicked things like that—?’

  A curious expression passed across his face. ‘No, Miss Fielding. We don’t do wicked things like that. Killing is too simple for us: we want more than that. Killing wouldn’t give us our proper satisfaction.’

  ‘More?’ She couldn’t read his face at all. ‘Proper—?’

  ‘Oh yes. When you’ve been deceived—as we were deceived … and for a long time before Philip Masson was killed—the trick is to continue the deception. But you turn it round the other way.’ He smiled with his lips. ‘It’s like, if you find a traitor in the ranks, there’s no point in arresting him. He’ll o
nly get a successor—probably someone you don’t know. So you leave him where he is.’ The not-smile widened. ‘Ideally, of course, you turn him around—that’s what Masterman did during the war, with his Germans … But that’s very risky these days, when a man can be ideologically bent … So you leave him. Or you promote him, even: you make him even more successful, even more valuable to them … But this wasn’t quite like that—‘ He raised his hand. ‘—no, Miss Fielding! That’s as far as I can go there. So don’t ask.’ The not-smile became even uglier. ‘Our first problem was to make them think that we were still deceived, back in ‘78—or ‘79, as it soon was … So we put out rumours that the wicked Dr Audley had maybe had your godfather pushed off his little boat, suitably weighted. And had then stifled any sort of investigation by pretending to investigate the matter himself.’ He nodded. ‘All to ensure Jack Butler’s promotion, of course … And you, of course, duly came upon those rumours … nicely matured by the years?’

  She nodded. But the devil in the back of her brain leered at her. ‘But I mustn’t believe them now—is that it? Because I must believe you now?’

  ‘You must believe what convinces you, Miss Fielding.’ His mouth set hard.

  She had cut deep, justly or not. ‘I believe that Philly—that my godfather was murdered nine years ago, Dr Audley. And I also believe that John Tully is dead. And I need a much better answer to John Tully.’

  ‘Ah … that’s fair enough.’ He agreed readily, almost like a judge taking an objection. ‘As to poor Mr Tully, I can’t answer you with any certainty—I can only hazard a guess there, Miss Fielding.’

  ‘A guess?’ The devil shook his head warningly.

  ‘Yes … I think maybe we’ve not been as clever … or as clever for as long … as we thought, perhaps.’ He made a face. ‘Nothing lasts forever. And … we’ve been running our Masson deception for a long time, now.’ One huge shoulder lifted philosophically. ‘They may have tumbled to it … Or, they may suspect, honestly I don’t know. But I rather fear I’ll be working on that when I get back to London—while my dear wife and daughter are spending my money in Paris—?’ The great once-upon-a-time rugger-playing shoulder rose again. ‘Did they teach you seventeenth-century poetry at Roedean, Miss Fielding?’