Roskill appeared at his shoulder.
Five dragons. Even Sir Lancelot might have baulked at those odds. And on an empty stomach too.
“Good afternoon, Captain Sheldon,” said Audley’s owner politely. “My name’s Clinton…”
The empty stomach caved in on itself: the Number One Dragon himself.
“Mr Clinton,” Mosby was aware that he sounded nervous, but this was one time when the dentist and the CIA man were in perfect accord. “Hullo, David.”
“Sir Frederick Clinton,” murmured Roskill in his ear.
“Sir Frederick…” Mosby repeated the name mechanically.
“Sit down, Captain.” Sir Frederick waved towards the settee. “Make yourself comfortable. Then we can discuss what we’re going to do with you.”
Mosby sank on to the cushions. The softness caught him by surprise: he sank and sank until he felt he was being engulfed, while the three Englishmen settled themselves into wing-chairs from which they could look down on him. If this was an example of British psychological warfare it was plain that they were dirty fighters.
“Good…” Sir Frederick interlaced his fingers across his stomach. “Now tell me, Captain—just for the record—are you or are you not an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency?”
“Am I—what!” Mosby struggled to raise himself from the settee’s embrace.
“Are you CIA?” asked Audley in a tone only a little less mild than Sir Frederick’s.
With an effort Mosby levered himself to the edge of the cushion. Even though this had the effect of bringing his knees up awkwardly under his chin it was a slightly less demoralising posture nevertheless. “You have to be crazy. Why the hell should I be CIA?”
“Meaning, I take it, that you’re not?” Sir Frederick nodded. “Which is in accord with what the CIA itself says.”
“The CIA?” Mosby blinked with bewilderment.
“Which is what they would say under the circumstances, of course,” said Roskill in his bored voice.
“You called the CIA—about me?” Mosby said in a strangled voice. “Just like that? Oh, brother!”
“Don’t distress yourself, Captain—at least, not on their account,” said Sir Frederick. “They gave you a clean bill of health.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll be clean all the way back to the States when my commanding officer hears about this.” Mosby gave Roskill a bitter look. “Some gentleman’s agreement.”
Sir Frederick looked at Roskill questioningly. “What gentleman’s ageement?”
“He seems more worried about his C.O. than about us, sir,” explained Roskill. “He likes it here, apparently.”
“Correction—liked” said Mosby. “And I’m beginning to get tired of being pushed around for no reason.”
“When you haven’t done anything wrong?”
“That’s dead right.” Mosby looked from one to the other. “Look, so I was searching for the site of Badon Hill—I admit it. But it isn’t any crime. You can’t hold me for just looking.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Roskill. “We’ve a lot of old laws you never heard of, not to mention the new anti-terrorist regulations.”
“Anti-terrorist? I’m not a goddamn terrorist.”
“Of course you aren’t,” said Sir Frederick soothingly. “You were simply looking for Badon and your search led you to Billy Bullitt.”
“That’s… right,” Mosby’s suspicion that Bullitt was the cause of his difficulties hardened. He pointed towards Audley. “It was David found him though. Until yesterday afternoon I’d never even heard of him.”
“Indeed?”
“Sure. Though now I come to think of it, it was Sir Thomas Gracey told us about him. Wasn’t that so, David?”
Audley regarded him impassively.
“Strange you’d never heard of him, when you were both looking for Mons Badonicus,” said Sir Frederick. “Did Major Davies never mention him, then?”
Mosby frowned. “Huh?”
“Obviously not. And by the same token I presume he never mentioned the Novgorod Bede?”
Jesus! Was there anything they didn’t know? thought Mosby despairingly. The common sense cancelled despair: there had to be more in this than mere cat-and-mouse cruelty. Sir Frederick Clinton was too important to waste his time merely putting the boot into the CIA, no matter it was a recognised international sport.
“The Novgorod Bede? I never heard of it.”
“He never mentioned it?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He doesn’t seem to have told you very much, your friend.”
“Well… not about what he was doing.” This was treacherous ground. “We just talked about Arthurian history in general. I never knew for sure he was really on to something until after he was killed.”
“So you didn’t know he’d discovered the site of Mons Badonicus?”
Mosby shook his head cautiously. “I still don’t know that for sure. It was—well, it was just an inference from what he told my wife… plus the stuff he left behind with us.”
“The evidence—yes. We’d very much like to examine that, Captain.”
“Help yourself. It’s in the trunk of my car.” Mosby raised a mental prayer that Howard Morris’s ground-bait—lifted from a dozen obscure museum collections—was as authentic —and as untraceable—as he had claimed it was.
“Ah, I don’t mean what you showed David. You mentioned some other material… bones, and so forth. Could we send someone to collect that?”
Even more treacherous ground: the other material existed strictly in Howard Morris’s ingenious imagination. So they had to be stalled—‘
“Sure. Only I’d have to go with them— I’ve stored it next to my surgery on the base. I’d only just started examining it.”
It was the best he could do, but it was pretty thin. The truth was, however good his own cover, the Davies part of his story had never been designed to be tested to destruction by the British themselves. Already the hairline cracks in it were beginning to show.
But the man Roskill’s words on the phone to Sir Frederick—I think he’s a good liar—meant that those cracks were still suspicions, not certainties; and there were limits to how far the British could go with a serving officer in the USAF, no matter what they suspected he might be, particularly if they really had checked up with the Station Chief in London. In fact, the worst they could do was to ship him home as an undesirable, and that still gave him a margin of time to play with.
Except that margin was a wasting asset, he sensed that as he felt their eyes on him. And the only thing to do with a wasting asset was play it to the limit; attack was not just his last line of defence left, but his plain duty.
He stared back at Sir Frederick. “Now come on, Mr—Sir Frederick—it’s time someone answered some of my questions. Like why I’m supposed to be a liar—and a CIA man—for for a start. And what the hell I’m supposed to have done that’s so awful.”
The Number One Dragon smiled thinly at him. “And where Mons Badonicus is?”
“And that too, yes. Did he really find it?”
“Is that all?”
Mosby thought for a moment. “I’d like to see my wife.”
The Dragon nodded. “Well, that I can certainly do.” He extended the nod to Roskill. “Hugh, would you ask Mrs Fitzgibbon to bring Mrs Sheldon along here as soon as she’s through. And you might see if they can manage a cup of tea for us at the same time.”
And cucumber sandwiches, Mosby thought irrelevantly, looking at his watch. It was already past five; he wondered if anyone had bothered to tell Billy Bullitt that his American guests, like Miss Otis, wouldn’t be keeping their engagement with him.
“Well, David?” Sir Frederick switched to Audley. “What do you think now?”
Audley’s pale eyes flicked over Mosby, giving no hint of what was behind them. “I haven’t changed. What doesn’t make sense can’t be right.”
“As your old Latin master used to say… I k
now—
‘Est summum nefas fallere,
Deceit is gross impiety.’
David sets great store by the observations of his long-defunct Latin master, Captain Sheldon… Do you know where we are now?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you know the name of this place?”
“No, I don’t. Your men forgot to tell me.”
“Weren’t you curious about it?”
Mosby shrugged. “I guess I was relieved—just so it wasn’t a police station. So what’s special about it?”
“If I tell you it could delay your departure somewhat. Would that bother you?”
“Depends how long the delay could be.” Mosby looked around the room. “I can think of worse places to be… delayed in.”
Again that thin smile. “It’s where you wanted to be.”
“Where I wanted to be? I don’t get you.”
“Camelot.”
“Cam—“ Mosby frowned. “There’s no such place.”
“There was no such place.” Sir Frederick shook his head. “So one place is as good as another, and this place is as good as any. If King Arthur is alive anywhere he lives here, you might say.”
“You’re still not getting through to me.”
“I’m not?”
“Est summum nefas fallere,” murmured Audley.
Sir Frederick laughed. “There—now David doesn’t believe you!”
Mosby gave Audley an angry glance. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn. I’m not interested in Camelot and I wasn’t looking for it. Camelot and Badon Hill are two plain different things— which David knows damn well.”
“Of course,” agreed Sir Frederick soothingly. “But Billy Bullitt and Badon are not two plain different things, you would agree I’m sure.”
“Billy Bullitt?” Involuntarily Mosby found himself looking up at the coat-of-arms. “You mean this is—“
“Red dragon of the Britons, white dragon of the Saxons,” Sir Frederick nodded. “The College of Heralds let old Professor Bullitt have them as—ah—‘supporters’, I think is the correct term, in 1928 when he quartered the Imberham arms of his mother’s family. And you can see what they let him have in the bottom left quarter, eh?”
Mosby examined what looked like a shaggy dog, but was obviously a heraldic bear.
“Up until 1924 this was Imberham Manor. But that was the year he published his famous ‘Britain in the Dark Ages’, and he renamed the manor in honour of his obsession. So you might say that Billy Bullitt grew up in Camelot.”
“And he’s been looking for the Holy Grail ever since,” murmured Audley. “Or his own version of it.”
“Following in grandfather’s footsteps, naturally. Right down to grandfather’s motto, which you will observe just below the shield—‘What I seek, I know’. Apparently a line from Matthew Arnold’s ‘Memorial Verses’: All this I bear, for what I seek, I know. The College of Heralds enjoyed the ‘bear’ pun, heraldic sense of humour being what it is.”
“Is that a fact?” Mosby overlaid his unease with feigned interest. The last time someone had taken for granted his ability to equate bears with King Arthur had been in the hall at St Veryan’s, and the someone had been Howard Morris. It made him wonder, if the British knew so much about what was going on, whether they were not also well aware of Operation Bear. “And does this mean I’m going to get to talk to Group Captain Bullitt after all?”
“If you still want to talk to him. And always supposing he wants to talk to you.”
Mosby cocked his head on one side. “Why shouldn’t he want to talk to me? Is Badon Hill some kind of top secret, maybe?”
“That’s the general idea—you’re catching on at last, Captain.” Sir Frederick nodded. “Plus the fact that he’s taken rather strongly against the CIA—doesn’t care for you at all at the moment.”
Mosby stiffened. “But I’m not CIA, for God’s sake—I thought we’d got that straight.”
“We only have your word for that.”
“And their word too,” Mosby played his deuce with all the confidence of a man convinced he had an ace. “Isn’t that worth anything? I thought your security people worked hand in hand with ours—?” He broke off lamely as he saw the expression on Sir Frederick’s face. “Uh-huh—I get it… Blood isn’t thicker than water any more…” He spread his hands helplessly. “Well, then there’s no way I can prove I’m not what I’m not, I guess. Except if I was I suppose I’d have some smart way of proving that I wasn’t.”
Sir Frederick turned towards Audley. “Well, David. Over to you.”
Audley considered Mosby silently for five seconds before speaking. “I told you: I’d need time. And you say we haven’t any.”
“Today’s Thursday. The deadline is midday Friday for Sunday—and that was a personal favour to me.”
Whose deadline?
“Not even with a D-Notice?” Audley shook his head, rejecting his own question before it had been answered. “No, that wouldn’t hold them this time. You couldn’t make it stick.”
“I wouldn’t even try. The Government wouldn’t wear it if I did—we’d be tarred with the same brush, and so would they. They wouldn’t wear it, and they’d be right: we’d just be trying to hold the lid down, and it would blow us to kingdom come. If not in our own press, then for sure in the foreign press—including the American. They’d make a meal of it.”
The two Englishmen gazed at each other, oblivious of Mosby.
Finally Sir Frederick nodded. “So it’s your way or no way at all.”
“I get whatever I need?”
“Just ask. If anyone talks back to you refer them to me. I shall be on the end of a phone.”
“And they’re both mine?” Audley pointed to Mosby.
“Hey! What is this?” exclaimed Mosby.
“They are yours until midday tomorrow.” Sir Frederick turned to Mosby. “As of this moment, Captain Sheldon, you and your wife are in the absolute charge of Dr Audley. What he says, you will listen to. What he orders, you will do.”
“Like hell I will!”
“I agree, though I would place the emphasis differently: like hell you will.” Sir Frederick’s tone was still conversational, as though he was clarifying a minor point of semantics. But that figured easily enough, because big dragons like Sir Frederick Clinton didn’t have to breathe fire to get their own way; with them a glance was as good as a roasting.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“A threat? My dear Sheldon, I don’t need to threaten you. The situation you are in threatens you. You maintain that you don’t know what is happening, that you are innocent… and as it happens I do not believe you—I believe you are a most absolute and accomplished liar… but your innocence or guilt are now completely irrelevant—“
“Well, it damn well isn’t to me! You can’t—“
Sir Frederick raised his hand. “Please hear me out, Captain. It is for your own good, I do assure you… You see, if you are a CIA operative you are in very great trouble at this moment—the biggest you are ever likely to be in this side of the Iron Curtain. But if you are what you claim to be you are almost certainly in even greater trouble, both you and your wife.”
Mosby stared at him. “Greater—? I don’t understand.”
“David will explain to you. And then he will require your co-operation.” Sir Frederick paused to let the words sink in. “And I want you to give him that co-operation as though your life and your liberty depended on it. Because they do, Captain—yours and your wife’s.”
“Our lives?”
“If you are innocent.” Sir Frederick nodded. “And your liberty if you are guilty.”
“Guilty of what, for God’s sake?”
“That again David will tell you. But look at it this way, if you like, Captain: you approached him two days ago and asked him to help you. And that’s just what he’s going to do… And a few minutes ago you offered Squadron Leader Roskill a deal—a gentleman’s agreement. So now if Da
vid offers you another deal… my advice to you is take it. Because you’ll never get a better offer.”
Mosby felt his cheek muscles tighten uncontrollably. Maybe that passage between the two of them a few moments before had been for his sole benefit—the Government wouldn’t wear it … it would blow us to kingdom come—as part of the psychological process of scaring the bejasus out of him. But now he had a gut feeling that it hadn’t been at all, and that Clinton was here not so much to see him as for an emergency briefing with Audley, his Number Four top trouble-shooter. Which meant that beneath the Ivy League urbanity the British were running even more shit-scared and desperate than the Americans.
Jesus! And what made that worse was that the British knew why they were running—
Sir Frederick’s eyes were on him—the Big Dragon’s eyes that burned little dragons into crisps.
“Well, Sheldon?”
He could almost feel the heat.
“Okay. Whatever you want. Just so you protect my wife.”
“We shall try to protect you both… By that I take it you still deny any connection with your CIA people?”
No choice. Even with Shirley at risk, no choice.
“It’s the truth. But since you all think I’m a liar I guess there’s not much point saying so.”
“Not all of us.” Sir Frederick stood up. “David over there believes you, for one.”
“David?” Mosby looked at Audley in surprise. “Well—that’s great.”
Great like a gift-wrapped time-bomb.
“Convenient, certainly.” Sir Frederick nodded to Audley before turning finally back to Mosby as he began to move towards the door. “Make the most of it, Sheldon, that’s all. Good afternoon to you.”
Mosby watched the door close. For the second time in one day he’d been badly frightened, but each time he’d been too busy—or too stupid—to realise the extent of the danger until it had passed.
“Phew!” he breathed out gratefully. There was nothing to be gained from trying to hide what must be pretty damn obvious.
Audley settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “He had you rattled, then?”
Our Man in Camelot Page 17