Our Man in Camelot

by Anthony Price

  “There are also some bronze pendants, more horse stuff,” Mosby consulted his list ostentatiously. “Sort of decorative trappings… plus a couple of cuirass-hinges—what they call lorica segmentata—“

  What would they look at with the same fascination in fifteen hundred years’ time? he wondered. What would there be to look at after other great catastrophes and upheavals had convulsed and changed the world, swept it clean and buried its wreckage to be dug up again and argued over?

  Fragments of Vulcan rotary cannon, American, late 20th century… blade from axial-flow turbojet, Russian, same period… part of starboard flap, unidentified jet fighter, probably West European, mid-20th century…

  “But that’s infantryman’s stuff, Roman. ‘Very worn’, it says here,” He offered the paper to Audley. “See for yourself.”

  Audley lowered his spectacles on to his nose again and studied the list. “ ‘Very worn’,” he repeated to himself, frowning. “Yes, well I suppose it would be…”

  Mosby waited until Audley had checked each of the things against their more detailed specification. There was no advantage in pressing him towards a hasty conclusion: his whole training both as a historian and a counter-intelligence man was weighted against that, and outside his own particular field he would be doubly cautious.

  In the end it was Faith who broke the silence. “What do you make of it, darling?” she said.

  Audley’s first reply was a non-committal grunt. “I don’t know that I’m competent to make anything of it, I’d need a lot more information.” He looked at Mosby shrewdly. “Besides, it seems that an expert’s already examined it.”

  Mosby shook his head. “Strictly speaking—no, not one expert. Different people have seen different pieces, but you’re the first to see this lot all together.”

  Audley considered the implications of that statement for no more than five seconds. “Am I to take it that it was all found together?”

  Gently now. “Supposing it was?”

  “Then I’d want to know where it came from.” Audley’s voice hardened. “Did you find these objects?”

  Again Mosby was warned of a pitfall ahead by the change in tone, but this time he could see no reason for it.

  “No, I didn’t,” he replied cautiously.

  It was the right answer as well as the true one: Audley relaxed visibly, as though he had been saved from an awkward situation. “But you know where it comes from?”

  “That’s still a sixty-four thousand dollar question—no, I don’t. I told you there was a slice of bad luck, and that’s part of it.”

  “What I don’t see is where the slice of good luck comes in,” said Shirley. “I mean, it isn’t as if there’s anything valuable there, like maybe gold and jewellery. It isn’t even as if there’s anything new, either—I’ve read your old list, and it’s all stuff they’ve found already.”

  She was playing smoothly now, reacting to Audley’s unwillingness to commit himself and feeding him with fresh opportunities for bringing matters to a head. But again it was Faith Audley who rose to the feed line.

  She chuckled uncontrollably.

  Audley frowned at her. “What on earth’s the matter, love?”

  The chuckle became a laugh. “I was thinking—“ she shook her pale head at Shirley in sympathy “—oh, dear—I can see you’re not used to archaeologists, but we know several, and—“ she turned towards her husband “—do you remember Tony Handforth-Jones’s friend and his valuable coprolites?”

  “What’s a coprolite?” asked Shirley.

  “You may well ask,” exclaimed Faith. “A valuable coprolite—I thought it was a semi-precious stone of some sort.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Well, to Tony’s friend it was a semi-precious stone,” said Audley. “But to the rest of us it was… not to put too fine a point on it—and actually you can’t put too fine a point on it—it was a piece of fossilised animal excrement. In this instance belonging to a Neolithic dog, I think.”

  “A piece of—“ Shirley stopped.

  For an instant Mosby envisaged his final report of this conversation, but then hastily abandoned the vision: that way hysteria lay. CIA headquarters in Langley was not equipped to evaluate dog shit.

  “Ah… I think what my wife means is that you can’t use the word ‘valuable’ in a conventional way when it comes to artefacts like this, Mrs Sheldon,” continued Audley, gesturing towards the box. “All these objects can be identified because they’ve been found in different places, and in themselves they perhaps aren’t especially valuable. But all together in one place—I’ve never heard of a find like this before, never.”

  “That’s what I told you, honey,” said Mosby. “The Roman stuff, all worn out and mended, and the Celtic stuff, and the Saxon stuff—all in one place and not one bit later than A.D. 500. And all the rest of it—“

  Audley stiffened. “All the rest of it? You mean this isn’t all of it?”

  “Hell, no—it isn’t the half of it. I only brought the bits that would travel. There are more weapons, all broken—there are two or three Saxon swords, what do they call them—scramasaxes? And more horse stuff. And bones—man, you name it, I’ve got it.”

  “Bones?”

  “Sure. Human and horse. I’ve got a skull with the prettiest depressed cranial fracture you ever saw, a classic blunt instrument fatality. And another with what looks mighty like a sword-cut.”

  “It sounds as though someone’s been ransacking a museum,” said Faith.

  “No, ma’am, not a museum. Most of it’s still got the original dirt on it.”

  “God Almighty! It’s far worse than ransacking a museum,” Audley burst out angrily. “Someone’s ransacked the most important Dark Age discovery since Sutton Hoo.”

  So that was the key to that earlier hint of anger: he should have guessed from Barkham’s reaction that Audley would be as incensed by the possible destruction of an archaeological site as excited by the appearance of the objects from it.

  “You’re dead right,” he agreed. “Badon.”

  “Badon?” Audley stared at him. “You mean—the date’s right… and the equipment’s right?”

  “More than that. I mean the guy who had this stuff reckoned he could prove it.”

  Before Audley could speak, the phone in the hall pealed out.

  “Honey, someone’s actually remembered we’re alive!” Shirley leapt into her role as the non-pioneer wife. “Go answer it before they change their mind.”

  Mosby hurried to complement her performance with that of the obedient American husband.

  “Sheldon here. Who’s that speaking?”

  “Gallagher—“

  For an instant Mosby was unable to place Gallagher in the ranks of his CIA colleagues, who had been sprouting in the most unlikely places since Davies’s death.

  “— Is Harry Finsterwald there?”

  The sandpaper voice helped him decide: Gallagher’s cover as a moronic CAS sergeant, a character straight out of “The Flintstones’, was if anything better even than Finsterwald’s.

  “Blanche? Hi, Blanche.” He held the receiver back from his mouth and called through to the sitting room: “Honey, it’s Blanche Castillo.”

  “Gee, that’s great. Does she want to talk to me?”

  “You got someone else there, huh?”

  “Yes, Blanche, we’re both fine. Do you want to speak to Shirley?”

  “Okay. Has Harry and that nigger of his gone?”

  “Yes, she has… No, honey—she’s calling about some remedial treatment… Yes, Blanche.”

  “They heading back to base?”

  “Yes. Are you worried about it? You sound worried.”

  “Worried is right. You know an enlisted man named Pennebaker? A1C Pennebaker?”

  “Not so as I recall. Should I?”

  “If you don’t you never will now. He’s blown his brains out.”

  “He—how’s that again, Blanche?”

  “He
’s dead. The British police found him in his car about ten miles from the base. Suicide, it looks like, they say.”

  Shirley came to the doorway. “Has Blanche gotten herself into a tizzy again, honey?”

  “Uh-huh… I’m sorry to hear that, Blanche.”

  “Not half as sorry as we are.”

  “Was he on the short list, then?”

  “For the Davies job he was on the short list.”

  “Is that a fact? I guess that’s where the trouble is, you’ll find.”

  “Where it was. He had no right to be off base, so it looks as though he decided to run before anyone caught up with him.”

  “Certainly looks like that… But you don’t go along with the local dentist’s diagnosis?”

  “The local cops? Officially we do. Unofficially we don’t.”

  There was a pause. “You know where this leaves you, fella? Right in the front line, that’s where.”

  Mosby could see that all too clearly. If the dead man had been a professional planted on the base it would be near impossible to trace his movements and contacts off it, if he would have exercised professional care. But why had his own side silenced him?

  “Just watch yourself, that’s all. These bastards aren’t playing games.”

  “I know—and I will, believe me, Blanche. It’s nice of you to say so… and I won’t forget to tell Shirley too. ‘Bye.”

  He turned back towards the sitting room slowly, the force of Gallagher’s final warning weighing heavily on him. If Pennebaker had been a KGB plant, and not some poor devil blackmailed into sabotage… but the Davies hit had been too cold-blooded for that. So if the man had been a pro, then he wouldn’t have been thrown away on some penny-ante operation, but only on something big and nasty which made the loss acceptable if it delayed pursuit.

  Shirley smiled at him brightly. “You solved her problem?”

  He shook his head. “No. But she’s going to have to deal with it herself.” He looked at Audley. “We’ve got problems of our own, huh?”

  Audley nodded. “I think we have, Mr Sheldon.”

  “Mosby. I know it’s one hell of a name, but I’ve gotten used to it—David.”

  The Englishman grinned. “I beg your pardon—Mosby…” Then the grin vanished. “Before you tell me anything more I think I’d better make one or two things straight.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Well, for one thing, if there’s been an unauthorised dig—and from what you’ve said it looks as though there has been—there could be the very devil of a row about it.”

  “Does that sort of thing go on?” asked Shirley.

  “Not so much now. But there was a lot of unprofessional work with metal detectors not so long ago, and the thing became a bit of a public scandal.”

  “Is it against the law?”

  “It could be—especially if there are precious metals found which could be treasure trove, because they have to be reported to the local coroner. But in any case the land owner has to give permission, you can’t just dig where you like.”

  “Well, supposing he did give permission?”

  “There still could be a scandal.” Audley pointed to the box.

  “And with this stuff there will be scandal, I can promise you that.”

  “With that!” Shirley sounded incredulous.

  “I think your husband understands.” Audley glanced at Mosby quickly. “Archaeological discoveries can be front page stories in Britain—Fishbourne and Vindolanda were. And if… if this really did turn out to be the key to Badon—“ he shrugged “—I don’t believe in the King Arthur legend, but—“

  “But one hell of a lot of people do, huh?” Mosby completed the sentence.

  “Passionately. Lots of people have never heard of Badon, but there isn’t a single person in this country who hasn’t heard of King Arthur.”

  “It’d be headlines, in fact?”

  “The biggest. And there’d be hell to pay—there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “But—hold on—“ Shirley began hotly “—my husband didn’t dig this up. He just kind of… inherited it, that’s all.”

  “Inherited it?” Audley frowned at Mosby. “From whom?”

  “Well, I was going to tell you—I started to. There was this friend of ours, Di Davies—he was a pilot in recon.”

  Audley caught his wife’s eye. “Photographic reconnaissance,” he explained.

  “That’s right. There’s been one extra squadron on the base for the last six, seven months—RF-4cs—what you call Phantoms, only these are reconnaissance versions of the ships the RAF flies… And Di Davies was a real Arthurian nut, he even called his ship the Guinevere II. He came to me for a check-up one day and saw I was reading Keller—Keller’s “Conquest of Wessex”—and we got to arguing about Arthur before I even had a chance of getting a look into his mouth. He said Keller was a no-account Kraut-lover and Arthur was the real thing. And what’s more he was going to prove it.”

  “And how did he propose to do that?” asked Faith.

  “That’s just what I asked him. I said fat chance he’d got of doing it when the British had been trying to do just that for years, and they’d got no place—what’d he got that all the historians and the archaeologists hadn’t got?”

  “And what had he got?”

  Mosby looked at her. “Well, for one thing he said he’d got the exclusive use of one Phantom, with a whole battery of cameras that can do things you wouldn’t believe—forward oblique, low and high altitude panoramic, side oblique, vertical, automatic exposure control, image motion compensation, black and white, colour positive or transparency or infra-red, you name it, he’d got it. Plus all the flying time in the world as well as the know-how, he’d got that too.”

  Faith started to open her mouth, but her husband forestalled her. “So he could take good pictures, I don’t doubt it. But if that’s his material—“ he stabbed a finger at the box “—is it?”

  Mosby nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Well, if it is he’s come down to ground level.” He paused, frowning. “You say you inherited it?”

  “In a way.”

  “What way?”

  “What way…” Mosby sighed. “Last time I saw Di was— well, it’d be about a month back, with one thing and another. I went States-side on a conference, then he had some leave and after that I rilled in at Alconbury for a spell when a couple of the guys were sick there. And then he was on exchange duty with the RAF in Germany, at Wildenwrath, for the NATO cross-fertilization programme—it’d be all of two months, wouldn’t it, honey?”

  “You didn’t see him, and I didn’t see you,” said Shirley. “But I saw him.”

  “That’s the point. Go on, honey—tell it how it was.”

  She shrugged. “There really isn’t a lot to tell. When Mose was away at Alconbury Di came to me and asked if we could store some boxes for him. You see, we’ve got lots of room and he was in a little cottage off the base where you couldn’t swing a cat. He said he just wanted somewhere dry and safe, that was all.”

  She shrugged again as though she found the repetitiofi faintly boring; and lapsed into silence.

  “For God’s sake—“ Mosby exclaimed with a flash of simulated irritation “—that wasn’t all. I told you: just tell it like it was.”

  “Huh?” The look of incomprehension was pure Billy Holliday.

  “The bet, honey, the bet.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Oh, that—yes.” Mosby gave Audley an apologetic ‘I-know-she’s-beautiful-but-lefs-face-it-she’s-also-dumb’ lift of the eyebrow.

  “You and your silly bet. I can’t see why you make such a fuss about it, honestly.”

  “Because it was for real, that’s why.”

  “Oh—phooey.” She scowled at him, and then smiled sweetly at Audley. “Well, naturally I asked Di what was in his precious boxes, had he robbed a bank or something.”

  Audley nodded at her encouragingly. “Yes?”

&n
bsp; “I said if it was a bank job we’d want our cut. And he laughed and said not a bank, but something just as good. And we’d get our cut, only it was going to cost us. Or rather, it was going to cost Mose, because that was the deal—‘one bottle of Napoleon Brandy, the finest that money can buy. No more and no less’, those were his exact words, and he said I was to make sure and tell Mose that.”

  “We had this bet—“ Mosby started quickly as Audley switched his attention. “We had this argument in the club one night, started when I needled him whether he’d taken any good pictures of King Arthur lately. And he said how would I like a little bet on it—a proper wager entered in the squadron betting book the barman keeps under the bar for guys who are ready to put their money where their mouth is.” He nodded at Audley. “And I could see he meant it one hundred per cent.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “Hell, I told him I wouldn’t bet on Arthur—because I didn’t take candy from babies. Then he said ‘Okay, so you won’t bet on Arthur—so we’ll bet on Badon, I know you believe that exists…’ And he turned to the barman and he said ‘Get the goddamn betting book out, Paddy, and write this down: Major Davies wagers Captain Sheldon one bottle of Napoleon Brandy, the finest that money can buy, that he will locate the site of Badon Hill during this tour of duty in the UK, his evidence to be assessed by a mutually acceptable third party.’ And he signed it right there on the bar. One bottle of the finest Napoleon Brandy.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then Faith spoke. “You mean—“ she looked from one to the other of them “—but, David, you said that no one knows where Badon Hill was—or is?”

  “No one does.” Audley continued to stare at Mosby. “Where’s Davies?”

  “He’s at the bottom of the Irish Sea, somewhere between Anglesey and the Isle of Man, with what’s left of Guinevere II,” said Mosby “But the way I see it, I’ve still got a bet to settle.”

  VI

  THEY’D STARTED OUT at the crack of a grey dawn, following a cross-country route which Audley swore was not only simple and free from traffic bottlenecks, but which also encompassed some of the prettiest West Country and South Midlands scenery. But it rained miserably and one way or another they managed to lose their way four times, twice in a bewildering maze of tiny roads meandering in the middle of nowhere and twice in the middle of towns which they had never intended to visit.