He waited until the jet thunder had become a distant rumble.
"Others?"
The Joint Chiefs . . . among others. "Uh-huh? You mean Sir Frederick and you and the joint Chiefs . . . and others ... all dummy5
cried my name with one voice in their hour of need?"
"Something like that. Something very like that." Stocker was so sure of himself that he was prepared to be magnanimous.
Audley recognised the tone. Magnanimity was the civilised victor's final body-blow to the defeated.
"I'll bet."
"You should be flattered, David. This is an awkward one, but you have the right equipment for it."
Audley strained to make out the features of the man in the back of the 2200. "I have the right equipment for rape, but I've no intention of letting anyone make a rapist of me, Brigadier."
"That wasn't quite what we had in mind for you." Stocker was almost genial now. "It's your brain we need, not any other part of you. You won't even have to do much leg-work—I've detached Paul Mitchell and Frances Fitzgibbon to do all that, directly under your orders. And you can have anything else you want within reason, short of the Brigade of Guards." He paused. "If you like you can choose your field co-ordinator too."
Now that was flattering, thought Audley. To be given two bright field operatives who had worked with him before was commonsense. But to be allowed to choose a co-ordinator was patronage on a grand scale.
Unfortunately it was also rather frightening.
"We'll give you Colonel Butler, if you like." Stocker actually dummy5
smiled as he baited the hook with the best co-ordinator in the department. "He's free at the moment."
Audley was saved from not knowing how to react to that by the opening of the 2200's rear door. The mountain was coming to Mahomet.
"It's entirely up to you, anyway," said Stocker mildly, offering the second cutting a second time. "And naturally we're not going to insist on anything. But . . . well, you read this first, David, before you make up your mind."
They weren't going to insist. Audley watched the 2200 as though hypnotised. Of course they weren't going to insist; with his own money and what he could earn—Tom Gracey had as good as promised a fellowship for the asking—he could flounce off in a huff any day of the week.
The pressures were much more subtle than that, though.
The occupant of the 2200 stepped out of the shadow on to the sunlit tarmac.
Of course they weren't going to insist. They didn't have to.
He took the cutting—
A TON OF GOLD FOR RED CHARLIE
Half a lifetime's professional interest in newspapers identified the typography instantly: this was the popular version of the dignified story he had read earlier.
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Dressed in a flowered shirt and with his long hair curling trendily round his collar, a 26-year-old revolutionary told last night of his amazing discovery of Cromwell's Gold—a whole ton of it.
But Charlie Ratcliffe, who inherited near-derelict Standingham Castle in Wiltshire only six weeks ago, is not yet willing to reveal how he found the treasure which is likely to make him one of the richest men in Britain.
Audley looked up as Stocker opened the car door for the man from the 2200.
"Thank you, Brigadier. No—it's all right. I'll sit here."
The Minister drew open the extra seat from its fastening on the partition which separated them from the driver. "There's plenty of room, I shall be perfectly comfortable . . . Did everything go satisfactorily?"
"Yes, sir. We were in and out in five minutes."
"Good." The Minister turned to Audley. "I must apologise for the unorthodox approach, Dr. Audley. At least you were spared the usual inconveniences. And it was necessary, you understand."
"Of course, Minister." At least the man didn't try to sugar the pill with a diplomatic smile, thought Audley, which saved him from the pettiness of not smiling back. But then this one was the best of the bunch, and more than that a good one by dummy5
any standards; he wouldn't smile in this sort of situation unless he encountered something worth smiling about. "Or let's say I'm beginning to understand."
The Minister stared at him for a moment, as though he had expected a different reply. Then he nodded. "But you were reading one of the cuttings. I think you'd better finish it before we go any further."
Audley stared back into the cool, appraising eyes behind the thick spectacles before lowering his own to the fragment of newsprint. There were times when it wasn't disgraceful to be out-stared, even diminished. In that better—and nonexistent
—world which he had been mourning a minute or two back this man might have been the leader of his party, rather than a senior member of an embattled flank of it. Half his mind struggled with the printed words and the meanings beneath them—
. . . treasure trove inquest shortly to be held.
And in the meantime an inquest of another kind—
of suspected murder— stands adjourned. Its subject is James Ratcliffe, Charlie's cousin . . .
—while the other half grappled with the Minister's presence and the meaning beneath that.
Politics. They were the nightmare grinning on every intelligence chief's pillow; the wild card in the marked pack, the extra dimension in a universe which already had too many dimensions. In his time he had watched the Middle dummy5
East and the Kremlin as he was watching Washington now, and their politics were to him never more than academic matters to be assessed only in terms of his country's profit or loss.
But British politics were different. And so were British politicians, even this man for whom he was already half-inclined to break the golden rule of non-involvement.
. . . however. But country memories are long, and for the price of a pint in the oak-beamed public bar of the Steyning Arms the locals will still tell you the tale of Cromwell's Gold and the bloody siege of Standingham Castle on the hill above—
the gold for which so many treasure hunters have searched in vain . . .
He needed time to think. Time to figure the forces required to bring the Minister to a lay-by behind some bushes at the end of a runway.
But there was no time. He re-read the last three paragraphs as an act of self-discipline before looking up.
The same stare was waiting for him. One reason the Minister was here was to see in the flesh the man who had been selected for a particular job. There was no substitute for that.
"I've heard quite a lot about you, Dr. Audley," said the Minister.
"None of it true, I hope," said Audley.
"Exaggerated, perhaps. Or it may be that you've had more than your share of luck over the years."
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"I wouldn't deny it. But then . . . wasn't luck the chief qualification Napoleon looked for in his marshals?"
"Yes, it was." The Minister nodded. "But I've always preferred Wellington to Napoleon, myself."
Audley smiled. "As a general, I hope. I seem to remember that he was a deplorable politician."
"True." The smile wasn't returned. "And the moral of that—?"
Audley shrugged. "Good generals usually make indifferent politicians. One should stick to one's profession after the age of forty—I think that I should be just as ... unlucky ... if I became involved in politics at my age, don't you think?"
The Minister regarded him thoughtfully. "Yes, very probably.
In fact neither of us should seek to meddle in the other's —ah
—sphere of activity. If we both agree on the broad principles there's a lot that should be taken on trust, wouldn't you say?"
The oath of allegiance was being put to him more quickly than he had expected, thought Audley. But at least it was phrased in the best feudal spirit, with the acceptance that loyalty was a two-way obligation.