It seems that there are political considerations which rule that out—we're only allowed Philby and Maclean and Blunt dummy3
in public . . . But for once we're about to impress NATO and our American cousins, and we're going to sell maybe a billion pounds' worth of anti-submarine systems over the next decade into the bargain, if we're lucky. And not even a Labour Government—or an SDP one—can quarrel with that."
He looked at Mitchell suddenly. "Do you understand, Paul?"
Mitchell could only nod. The stakes had been raised far beyond his limit, but at least he could nod.
Audley gestured towards the papers on the desk. "Which is why I don't think you've got anything to worry about there.
We've got too much riding on this operation to let anyone make waves about those three . . . apart from the fact that you were only doing your duty as our diversion man, in any case. And we had to have that diversion."
"So you knew about their Vengeful operation long before the Americans told us about it?"
"That's right. But when we learned that the Americans knew about it we were pretty sure the Russians would be close behind them, and we didn't want them to abort the Vengeful one—not after all the trouble we'd gone to. We had to reassure them somehow." He half-smiled at Mitchell. "So Jack Butler gave me the job of making a fool of myself. . . and I came up with the old Vengeful as an opening ploy—I was going to make a mystery of it somehow . . . Or, if it refused to stand up, we'd got a contingency plan to make something out of the other Vengeful—the submarine that was transferred to the Greek navy in '46." He nodded at Mitchell, and then dummy3
pointed to the papers again. "But then those three turned up ... and Novikov. So what we had was better than I'd hoped for—Commander Loftus's mysterious riches, and three dead gangsters . . . and the real mystery of the old Vengeful herself
—that was a gift from the gods, because it was just the thing to help them believe that the so-clever Dr Audley was about to be too clever for his own good. With a little help from them, of course."
Mitchell looked at him reproachfully. "Why didn't you trust me? For God's sake!"
"I wanted to. But it wasn't my operation, and Latimer wanted you to be out of it." Audley shook his head. "The trouble was ... I think the clever Dr Audley was a little too clever for his own good" —another shake "—it never ceases to amaze me how what is basically simple becomes distorted and complicated by the human factor—I've never been able to make exactly the right allowance for that, you know . . ."
"Like what, for example?" Audley in this self-critical mood was too revealing not to encourage.
"Oh ... I never expected that smart policeman of ours to crack the source of Commander Loftus's ill-gotten gains so quickly . . .Not that it mattered—but it might have mattered."
Another shake. Then he looked at Mitchell. "And the French putting that red-headed beauty of yours on you—after they'd picked up the KGB so quickly: I didn't plan for you to be expelled from France like that, or not until our Shannon Operation was complete."
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"No?" The memory of an icy Nikki MacMahon seeing him off from the departure lounge still rankled with Mitchell too.
"No. We were meant to be sleeping soundly in Alsace by now
—you and I and your Elizabeth . . . with Comrade Aske watching over us. And after a good Alsatian dinner, too." But Audley wasn't smiling. "That's how the big things go wrong—
from too many little miscalculations."
"But . . . nothing big has gone wrong?" Safe and alive comforted Mitchell. He might never see Elizabeth again now; and even if he did he would never be able to convince her that he hadn't known about his true role—that they had both been ignorant foot-soldiers in the'same battle. But safe and alive was better than nothing—with these stakes and these players it could pass for a happy ending, near enough.
"No. Nothing seems to have gone wrong . . . not so far, anyway." Audley gave the grandfather clock another look.
"So long as they believe Aske and Elizabeth are both dead.
And there's no reason why they shouldn't. . . and even if they are jumpy at this end, there's not much they can do to unscramble their set-up in Scotland now, with Latimer's chaps already closing in—"
"Dead?" Mitchell's jaw dropped. "Aske ... and Elizabeth?"
"Accidentally dead." Audley adjusted his spectacles on his nose. "They ran out of road about five miles from here this evening, on the Three Pigeons bend just outside Buckland.
You may know the place—it's on the back road about a dummy3
hundred yards before the Three Pigeons pub. It's a notoriously bad place—the bend's deceptive and the camber's wrong, which is why the highways people put up the posts with the warning reflectors there, on the edge of the concrete culvert—a bad place at the best of times." He shook his head.
"It was pelting down with rain, and he was probably driving too fast. And he was tired . . . tired and scared, I'd guess ..."
The moment was unreal because what Audley was telling him had all the hallmarks of a cover story being rehearsed—
the circumstantial detail exact, the reasonable hypothesis for what had actually been an entirely different event, even the note of regret in the voice. Mitchell could remember staging similar lies himself in his time.
"There really has been an accident?"
Audley frowned. "That's what I'm telling you. They skidded and went straight through the posts into the culvert, on the back road there—but she's all right, I tell you."
"What the hell was Aske doing on the back road?" Mitchell couldn't place the bend, but he knew the Three Pigeons, he'd fortified himself there long ago, in Frances' time, before a sweaty session in this very room.
"He was making sure he didn't meet me, if you want an educated guess." Audley pushed at the spectacles again.
"But what does he say?"
"He's not saying anything. He's dead."
"Dead?"
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"He went through the windscreen." Audley's rugger-player's chin jutted out. "But that didn't kill him, it only cut him up and knocked him out. Only then he rolled off the bonnet into the ditch head-first, and there's always eighteen inches of water in that ditch, even in summer. And that killed him."
The voice matched the chin. "He drowned in eighteen inches of water, Mitchell. And six inches of mud."
Mitchell's mouth dried up. "And Elizabeth?"
"She's all right—I told you!" Audley's aggressive tone became defensive. "Three cracked ribs, and a few bruises . . . and a bit of shock, naturally. But she's a tough girl, is your Elizabeth—
women's hockey is a tough game, I'm told . . . And her seat-belt saved her, anyway."
Seat-belt?
"We've got her down as DOA—'Dead on arrival'—like Aske."
Audley's voice became suddenly softer, almost apologetic. "I was afraid you might have heard that on the grapevine somehow—it's the official version at the moment. But actually we've got her safe in Hadfield House, under wraps."
Safe in the safe house again, thought Mitchell automatically.
"She's okay.'" The big man looked at Mitchell helplessly for a moment. "I don't lie to my wife. If I have to lie to her, I refuse to tell her anything—or is that too Irish for you to understand?"
Seat-belt, thought Mitchell. "I don't believe you."
Conflicting emotions of anger and honesty warred on dummy3
Audley's face briefly. "I've talked to her. You can talk to her tomorrow, Paul—in fact, I want you to talk to her tomorrow."
Something almost approaching sympathy came out of the conflict. "That is the truth, Paul."