"Yes. It's all rather comical, really . . ."
"Comical?" Mitchell watched him extract a folder from the case. "Comical" wasn't a word he'd have chosen.
"Yes. . ."Audley flipped open the folder and peered at its contents. "Our kindly cousins are to blame for our present predicament... If they hadn't got wind of Project Vengeful, neither Moscow nor London would have run scared—they would simply have converged on their collision course, and you and I ... and Miss Loftus and Comrade Aske . . . would not have become involved." He turned a page. "But they did, and when the President gave Project Vengeful to the Prime Minister he also instructed our CIA cousins to give us every dummy3
assistance, as befits their old wartime allies."
"What's comical about that?"
Audley looked up. "What's comical, my dear Paul, is that the first request we made was for them to disinter facts from the year 1812, when we were last at war with each other. And that tickled them no end—in fact, Howard Morris sent me a special SG: 'Have given this Immediate Maximum Effort classification—like Amy Carter's homework'." He shook his head at Mitchell. "What those poor innocent American academics made of Howard's IMAXEF teams arriving on their doorsteps I simply cannot imagine."
Mitchell refused to be drawn further.
"Wilder gave us two lists of names." Audley consulted the folder again. "Living Americans who might be able to tell us about dead ones, as he put it."
Mitchell weakened. "Why Americans?"
"Ah . . . well, he knew you and Aske were in France, because I told him . . . And when he knew that he said I ought to check the American end, just to be on the safe side." He scanned the page under his nose. "I've never heard of any of his live Yankees here, but some of the other names . . . Abraham Timms at the top, naturally . . ."
"Tom Chard?"
"No—no Tom Chard here. But Amos Ratsey, Jas. O'Byrne, Octavius Phelan—aren't they the fellows from Miss Loftus's Vengeful box?"
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"What about them?"
"Nothing about them—they did unearth a couple of references to a Michael Haggerty, who was an associate of an equivocal Irish American named Jim Burns . . . and there's a Michael Haggerty in the Vengeful list. But it's a common Irish name, and they've got nothing more at all on him than that. Whereas they've got a lot on Abraham Timms ... It seems he became quite a distinguished man in the later post-war period—' self-taught scholar and naturalist; corresponded with Sir Joseph Banks and John James Audubon; issue one son, Thomas Chipperfield Paget Timms, note names' —that's what it says: ' note names' —" he looked at Mitchell "—the names are rather touching, don't you think?
His fellow escapers?"
"Yes." Mitchell frowned. "What did the cousins find out about them?"
"Nothing, I'm afraid. There's only Timms, and Haggerty—
two mentions, associate of the egregious Burns, who was a merchant of some sort, always lobbying Congress to make war with the filthy British—no—no, the really interesting one
—and also the most surprising one—is the one you least expect, which shouldn't be there at all, Paul." Audley looked at him slyly.
"Who?"
"The owner of the Vengeful box, Dr William Willard Pike, no less!" Audley bent over the page. "The CIA liked the sound of him—or, if not the sound, then the smell. . . because it's a dummy3
smell they know, I suspect—even at this length of time—the authentic whiff of the enemy within the gate!"
This time it wasn't a question of not being drawn: it was as though Audley was talking to himself.
"This is pure Howard—pure Howard!" Audley shook his head admiringly. "' There are two schools of thought about Dr Pike, another known associate of Jim Burns (who in our day would have undoubtedly have been wasting our time running hot Armalites across the Canadian border for the IRA to shoot Limeys in Crossmaglen). They both disappeared from the scene here in 1812, never to return, ostensibly to do George III a mischief. But for my money—
and for that of Professor John Kasik, who is nobody's fool—
Pike was a British double-agent, who lit out one jump ahead of Burns with whatever passed for microfilm in those days in his pocket, on the first boat (which was a Portuguese brig bound for Lisbon) with Burns in hot pursuit in a Yankee trader licensed for Plymouth and Antwerp. Kasik and I can't prove anything, but we've both got a "pricking of the thumbs", as you and William S. of Stratford-upon-Avon would say. So forget Timms and check out Burns and Pike.
Ends message'.''
Mitchell had heard of Professor Kasik—had even corresponded with him on an American aspect of Watch by the Liffey, as the best-known living authority on Irish Americans. But that recollection was secondary to his growing sense of unreality over this turn in the conversation.
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Their interest in the true story of the old Vengeful ought to have ended, yet Audley seemed as enthusiastic about it as ever.
The big man was smiling at him. "We're checking what we can of this in the Bodleian, in FitzGerald's monumental history of the Paddies in America, as well as Kasik's own book. But Howard's chaps probably gained access to a lot of their unpublished material, so our new boy, Phillip Dale—the thin one—is burrowing into the old Foreign Office archives.
If Pike was one of our agents he ought to turn up in association with some of Richard Wellesley's bright boys of the period there. Our very own ancestors, in fact!"
Was it mere academic interest? But it couldn't be that, surely
— surely? Mitchell's brain ached with tiredness.
"If he is ... the Portuguese brig accounts for him being in Lisbon, and he picked up the Vengeful there, while Burns was putting out a general alarm for him. Which, of course, could be why the French eventually became so interested in the Vengeful, eh?"
The Portsmouth Plot, thought Mitchell. If Pike had had information about that which couldn't wait, then that could be why he had trans-shipped to the less-damaged Fortuné after the battle.
It was all supposition—all pictures from a distant planet of a drama enacted long ago, in which the competing actors had been dust and forgotten for generations, mixed with the earth enriched by infinite millions of the long-dead heroes of dummy3
lost causes. But if, when the Last Trump sounded, it was all of immense importance in some ledger of human courage and constancy in adversity, it added up to nothing in the cruel and selfish priorities of now.
"What's the point of all this, David—the object of it?" He hated the question even as he asked it, but it was the only honest question left to him in the extremity of his weariness.
"The point—the object, my dear Paul ... is your Elizabeth—
potentially our Miss Loftus." Audley's voice was gentle, almost sad. "The object and the point is to make your history repeat itself in her . . . through you ... for us—do you see?"
"No. I don't see." A huge disquiet enveloped Mitchell.
"No. Then perhaps this is not the time—"
"This is the bloody time!" Mitchell flogged himself awake.
"What are you up to, David?"