Audley's face was scrubbed of emotion now. "You are prepared to come clean?"
"To betray everyone, you mean?" Roche could smell himself, washed and re-bandaged that morning, in preparation for this.
The scrubbed face changed to one of unconcealed interest.
"You really did mean it, did you—back in the Tower?
Nobody's side?"
That was something Roche was still working on, to be adjusted according to circumstances. But it had happened by degrees, and irregularly, and also irrationally; and he wasn't dummy5
at all sure that he could sustain it against the unexpected clemency which Audley appeared to be offering him.
But mercifully Audley didn't wait for him to resolve his dilemma. "Yes . . . well, as it happens, you don't have to worry too much about them . . . because by now they'll have run a mile in all directions—back to their Moscow dachas if they're lucky, I shouldn't wonder!"
Jean-Paul and Genghis Khan—
And Philippe? God! Philippe out of range of Paris didn't bear thinking about—that was greater punishment than Burgess and Maclean had had to bear, in swopping London for Moscow.
Audley nodded. "Yes . . . You see, Mike Bradford and I were a bit naughty really—we decided to re-write a bit of the script on our own account, after things went . . . not quite according to plan, you understand ..."
Things? But there had been so many things. "Things?"
"Mike did the actual work. Because he had the best contacts—
and also the CIA had seconded him to me, with a free hand, so it was no skin off his nose . . . But Fred Clinton agreed afterwards that it had its merits—putting it out that you'd worked for us all along, ever since Japan—sort of double-double, toil-and-trouble—and we had to do it quickly, to make it stick, for the maximum effect—do you see?"
Roche saw—or half-saw, with the fleeting image of every Comrade he had ever known, or ever half-known, running dummy5
for cover as the disinformation about him spread—not just Jean-Paul and Genghis Khan and Philippe— Christ!
Again, Audley read his expression. "That's right! Nothing like it since father drank the baby's milk, and made the baby suck a large Scotch—blood and confusion everywhere! And, what's more, your erstwhile employers will be having the most awful doubts about all their other doubles—from Cambridge and Oxford onwards.... If you were a ringer, then what about them, eh?"
Roche saw again, and saw more. Because if the Comrades had noticed that he had become increasingly twitchy, this would now only confirm their retrospective belief that he'd been setting them up for the final coup—which only Gaston's last mortar-bomb had dislocated, as well as peppering him with bits of metal.
"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!"
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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.
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"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 dummy5
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."
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"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."