“Right?” Audley continued to misread him. “Besides which, we also told Fred Clinton that you were dying. Which, to be honest, we thought you were when we pulled you out from under that extraordinary machine.”
Roche lay back against his pillows, grateful for their support.
“And the virtue of that, from your point of view, is not only that they won’t pursue you—because although they’re rather down on traitors, they’re curiously old-fashioned about patriots—but also Clinton himself will have to let you go now … In fact, he’ll probably have to give you a medal and a pension, to make it all stick. But that’s cheap at the price, with what he’s got—you and the d’Auberon papers!”
Clinton?
You and the d’Auberon papers? Roche exercised the names weakly, trying to place them in the right order.
“The d’Auberon papers?”
“Them most of all. They were the whole point of the sodding operation— and you did a grand job of getting them! So it all came out right in the end, in spite of the unpleasantness at the Tower … which was all Clinton’s fault, anyway—he was so bloody busy planting his rumours, it never occurred to him that the Algerians and the Israelis would pick up the wrong signals, and get stuck into poor old Etienne! But all’s well that ends well, anyway.”
Roche recalled Larimer’s assessment of Audley. “But not for Miss Stephanides.”
“Ah …” Audley screwed up his expression “… now that was jolly strange, you know.”
“Jolly strange?”
“Yes. The eighth deadly sin—in that French film about the seven deadly sins—remember?”
Roche set his teeth. “No.”
“Suspicion—you must remember? To see sin where there is none? One of our occupational diseases too. We had the report a week ago—it really was a genuine accident. The poor girl always did drive too fast, and something important in that old car of hers broke.” Audley waved his hand vaguely. “Besides which, some wretched Algerian the French interrogated said he thought you’d done it, and that was why they’d zeroed in on you—seeing you collect the brief-case merely clinched what they’d suspected was going to happen after that. Only they were convinced it was the Morice Line blueprint, of course.”
“What did the French do?”
“They weren’t frightfully amused. But by the time it dawned on them that there was something not quite kosher going on. I’d swopped your bastide notes for the real stuff. And d’Auberon then insisted that he hadn’t broken his agreement with them… which was nothing less than the truth, after all. So all they were left with was a terrorist outrage against innocent tourists and a lot of nasty suspicions. The only real trouble we had was getting you out… they did rather want to take you to pieces to see what really made you tick. Or who made you tick. But your SHAPE status gave us the edge therein the end.”
A hideous suspicion had been spreading inside Roche, much nastier than anything French security could have imagined. “You knew… about me?”
“Oh yes—Clinton did. From way back.”
“From way back?” The steadiness of his voice surprised him.
“From Japan onwards—it was the company you kept, you see. That’s why you never got any decent jobs… only the ones where we were already compromised—or when we wanted something passed on … In fact, in a way, getting the d’Auberon stuff was the first really important job you were ever given. Clinton had to have it, but he knew Etienne would never give it up—not to us. But he also knew there had to be a copy snugged away in the KGB files in Paris. The trick was to get you to winkle it out—from them or d’Auberon, it didn’t really matter which. But he reckoned you could do it—he’s a lot like King Gaiseric of the Vandals, really… and in more ways than one, too.” Audley smiled. “Sitting there, waiting for the winds to carry his fleet to the country that God desired to ruin, I mean. Only, like King Gaiseric, Fred Clinton was pretty damn sure which way the wind ought to blow, that’s all.”
It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, it was much worse. But he had to blank out the pain before it became unendurable in order to press his questions while Audley was willing to answer them. “I was set up—from the start?”
Audley nodded. “Very comprehensively. And he had all sorts of other things going to back you up—rumours dropped, bits of information available … people briefed to say the right things—“
The pain was unendurable. “People?”
“All sorts of people, yes—“
“Who?”
“Stocker … people you’ve never met … me, latterly.” Audley shrugged. “Lots of people.”
“Major Ballance?” The thought of Bill despising him was horrible, yet not the unkindest cut because it was Bill’s job to screw the enemy. But he couldn’t bring himself to the worst straight away.
“I think he had the general task of looking after you—yes.” Audley seemed unaware of the damage he was doing.
Roche’s chest itched under the bandages, with the wounds of every single mortar-bomb fragment registering individually.
He gritted his teeth. “Major … Mr Willis?”
Audley frowned. “I think … I think he was just ordered to answer your questions. But—“
“Jilly?” The itch was graduating to discomfort.
“No. She had her instructions, that’s all. Only, about old Wimpy—“
“Colonel Stein?” Roche didn’t much care about the Israeli, and Bradford must be career-CIA and didn’t matter. But he still couldn’t work himself to her. “Where was he?”
“At the Tower?” Audley shrugged again. “He was away somewhere taking his prehistoric pictures.” He shook his head. “Davey’s got nothing to do with intelligence—never has had, never will have. Davey takes pictures and flies planes. He’s just a very nice man, and a good friend of mine.”
The discomfort became physical pain, joining the agony inside his head as he came to her at last. “Lady Alexandra?”
“Lexy?” Audley looked at him incredulously. “Oh, come on, man! Lexy couldn’t keep a secret—or obey an instruction—if her life depended on it! And you were an ultra secret—Clinton couldn’t take chances on you, for God’s sake!”
The pain abated just when it was beginning to blur his vision. Lexy didn’t know—
“Besides which, Fred didn’t dare give you everything on a plate. The whole aim was to let you come to your own conclusions, to work things out for yourself—to get at the truth in your own way—“
The truth?”
“Ninety per cent of it, yes! All the best lies are made up of truth—that’s what makes them stick—nothing else will do … So almost everything you were given was true … as well as almost everything you were allowed to find out—“ Audley leaned forward, his face twisted into a curious expression, half sly and half shy “—the risk was that you’d see clear through to the other side. And that’s why you had to be hindered as well as helped— right?”
“Hindered?” Roche was sweating with relief about Lexy. “Side-tracked is better. That’s why they gave you me to get your teeth into, don’t you see?”
With an effort, Roche shook himself free of her. “You?”
Uh-huh. You see, Fred Clinton has these tame psychologists he sets great store by… and they said, after they’d had a bloody good look at you, that you had to be given something to divert your attention—like ‘give him an interesting tree to study, and he won’t see the wood itself, roughly. And I was the tree.” Audley’s eyes narrowed. “So was I really interesting?”
“Interesting?” Roche lay back, and played for time. Audley had never really accounted for his presence here, ahead of the professional de-briefers. Nor, for that matter, was there any professional reason why he should pile up indiscretion on indiscretion like this … But, with Audley, there always had to be a reason.
“Just idle curiosity.” Audley patted his pockets, as though looking for a cigarette or his pipe. But he didn’t smoke.
“I’m sorr
y?” Roche plucked at the coverlet with his hand, trying to win another minute.
“I’m wondering if the head-shrinkers were right, that’s all, Roche.” He didn’t smoke, and he was too casual, so the pocket-patting was to remind Roche about a certain letter.
“It’s not really very important,” said Audley. “I merely wondered what you’d dug up—if it was interesting.”
So there it was. And of all the things that were not important, this was genuinely unimportant. But everyone had an Achilles-heel, even Audley … and even though he’d challenged the world by hanging a picture of it on the wall of his home for all to see, as though it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t have enough time to put you together,” said Roche carefully. All the best lies were mostly truth, after all.
“No?” Audley only just failed to conceal his relief. “Well, that was part of the strategy, of course. Clinton wanted to keep your people a bit off-balance all the time. That’s why we stirred Mike Bradford into the pot.”
Roche nodded. He could see now where he was safe. “And all that stuff about Antonia Palfrey? But that wasn’t all moonshine, was it?”
“Well …” Audley bridled. “Not quite all. Bradford’s Hollywood people do want to dig her out—that’s all above board and checkable.”
“And Antonia Palfrey?” Roche could feel the ground firm under him: a lot of valuable effort, both his own and that of the Comrades, had been devoted to Miss Palfrey. “She’s checkable too?”
Audley grimaced happily.
“So you really did write Princess in the Sunset!” Roche pretended to be not quite absolutely certain.
The grimace completed itself as Audley nodded. “But that’s not for public consumption, Roche. Because after the publication of The Winds of God next spring Antonia Palfrey is going to fade away gracefully … but permanently. Is that understood?” Audley simulated grimness.
“I’m not really in a position to argue, am I?” Roche led him on.
“Not really.” But Audley still hadn’t got what he wanted. “But what else did you discover—that was interesting?”
They had come to it finally, thought Roche. “I discovered that your legal guardian—your former legal guardian …Willis—Wimpy?…that he can talk the hind leg off a donkey—that’s what I discovered.” He sighed. “But I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying.”
“No?”
“No.” He shrugged painfully. If it meant so much to Audley, then the less said the better—as Wimpy himself would have put it! “I never did come close to realising that you were already working for Sir Eustace Avery, if that’s what you want to know.”
All the best lies were still mostly truth. And even the Comrades, with all their resources, had failed abysmally there, so he had no reason to feel ashamed.
“For Avery? Good God, man—I’ve never worked for him!” Audley relaxed into derision. “You were sent to recruit me—don’t you remember?”
“What?” But he couldn’t have been further deceived, surely?
“Are you all right?” Audley half rose from his chair. “Your dragon-lady nurse said I mustn’t stay too long—?”
“No! Don’t go …” Lies and truth swirled inextricably before him. “I think I’m just beginning to feel totally humiliated.”
Audley perched himself on the edge of the chair. “But … my dear chap—you don’t need to feel that. It wasn’t your fault—the odds were stacked against you. Actually, you did rather well, all things considered.”
“I mean … I don’t even understand what you’re talking about any more.” Roche looked down, and saw his hand shake on the coverlet.
“And I mean you don’t need to be humiliated. I’ve never worked for Avery.”
There was no more time now than there had ever been to sort things out—lies from truth, doubt from certainty. “But you did work for the British?”
“Up to ‘46. But then I had this big row, like I told you. And you couldn’t possibly know that I put things together differently after Cambridge—that was when I went to Clinton and asked to be taken back—“
Taken back? Taken back?
“—he was the only one I knew. And Archie Forbes sent me … But Clinton wouldn’t have me—not then. He said the bad times were coming, and the service was compromised … ‘let me tuck you away for a rainy day’ was how he put it, for when he needed me, when the time was ripe…So he and Archie laid everything on after that—how I should refuse them in public, and how they’d stick the Russians on to me, to make matters worse, so they’d be sure I was fed up with both sides after what had happened in ‘46 … So I became a sort of ‘sleeper-in-reverse’—that’s how Archie put it… on a private feudal arrangement between them and me, with nothing in writing—they spread the word, and I went to ground, to wait the bugle-call. Do you see?”
Roche saw, but still didn’t see.
“The trouble was, I needed money,” said Audley. “In fact, I needed it rather badly at the time, for my house as well as my expensive Cambridge tastes … Only they wouldn’t give me the Cambridge fellowship I wanted— Clinton said it wouldn’t pay well enough, but I rather suspect they thought that once I’d got it I’d never come back into Intelligence … So he had this American friend of his—ex-OSS—who was a literary agent, and who owed him a favour from’45 … and I’d written this joke novel, just for fun, about Galla Placidia. So Mickey Tempest made me take out the jokes, and tighten up the dirty bits—and then he sold it for a bomb …. It was a bit embarrassing, what he did with it, but it did solve my cash-flow problems.” This time Audley wasn’t pretending. And—Lord God!—he didn’t have to pretend, either: what had happened was something unfair, which neither Clinton nor the Comrades could have allowed for—the perfect cover of a runaway best-seller! That must surely have disconcerted Clinton almost as much as it had deceived the Comrades, to loosen his grip on Audley …
“I must admit I’ve enjoyed all the money,” said Audley simply. “Because I’ve done all the things I ever wanted to do … to my home, and all that …” He shied away from what all that implied, which Roche wasn’t meant to know. “But I haven’t enjoyed trying to avoid being that damned woman Mickey thought up—she’s someone I’m really going to enjoy killing off, you know.” He twisted a smile of pure mischief at Roche. “But not until The Winds of God are blowing in the bookshops next spring … because the more independent I am from Colonel F. J. Clinton, the more I shall like it, to be honest.”
Audley being honest was something beyond Roche’s imagination. But he could remember how he had relished his brief freedom from Genghis Khan, and the sense of no longer depending on anyone else, and that gave him a hint of what Audley’s bank balance could do for another soldier-no-more.
And Clinton wouldn’t like that much. And Clinton, Clinton, Clinton was what it all came back to with Audley—not d’Auberon, or even Avery …
“Clinton?”
Another chilly smile. “Now you’re beginning to put it all together the right way! It was foxy Fred who picked up the whisper about d’Auberon’s inconvenient report from his German friends in Gehlen in the spring— because they really do have a man in Moscow … or they did have, because they must have pulled him out after they leaked the Stalin denunciation before the Twentieth Congress to the Americans … So Fred had the details, but what he needed was the real thing, because he had to have tangible proof—“
“Why?”
“My dear fellow! Avery was just getting the job he wanted—the job he deserved—with him as Number Two Dogsbody … which was what he didn’t want. But Avery was king after Suez, and Fred couldn’t screw him without d’Auberon’s report—and d’Auberon wouldn’t give it to him … and that was when he remembered me—and…you!”
Clinton, Clinton—Clinton!
“I was just finishing The Winds—and my real book, on Charles Mattel— down near Carcassone. And that’s where I got the call at last, after six fat years—to go and settle on the Do
rdogne and renew my old wartime antipathy with Etienne, when we were supposed to be on the same side, more or less … by which time I was so bloody fed up with fucking around, if he’d asked me to escalade the Château du Cingle d’Enfer single-handed I’d have tried it … Instead of which I chatted up Madame Peyrony again, and bought the Tower for twice what it’s worth—not on expenses, either—“
Truth.
And lies and lies and lies—
“You never did have a copy of d’Auberon’s report?” Audley had already told him that twice over, but he wanted to hear him say it aloud just once.
“Christ! D’you think Etienne would have given it to me, of all people? That’d be the day!” The question hurt Audley. “I didn’t even want you to talk to him—I thought that was where it would all go wrong … But Fred Clinton reckoned the KGB would be so mad-keen to plant the stuff on Eustace Avery that they wouldn’t risk involving Etienne—not if they could get you promoted at the same time … What he said was that they were bound to take the risk, for the profit, so we could take the risk too, and then Avery’s goose would be cooked.” The accuracy of Clinton’s forecast seemed to hurt him as much as the original question. “So he was right—and I was wrong—okay?” Avery’s goose.
Clinton had known all along that the d’Auberon papers were useless— except for the damage they would do to Avery. But Avery himself hadn’t known that—any more than he’d known that Audley was already Clinton’s man … ‘on a private feudal arrangement’! “So what’s happened to Avery?”
He resigned four days ago,” said Audley.
All along Clinton had been gunning for Avery, and the Comrades had supplied him with the ammunition he needed.
“Full of honours, and with several succulent jobs on well-paid boards in the City,” continued Audley. “But just in time, before they sacked the bugger … What did you expect?”
Roche tried hard to look wiser than he was. But of course it wouldn’t be a bullet-behind-the-ear for Sir Eustace Avery, whatever it might be for Genghis Khan. It was Captain Roche who had had all the luck, even though he still didn’t quite know why. .
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