"I see. . . ." Audley pursed his lips. "Well, in that case I'd let the Spaniards contest it. You don't need to give it to them—
you can argue against them publicly. But you can use them to delay the pay-out."
"Of course we can. But you're forgetting your basic economics; we can delay the pay-out in a hundred and one ways, nothing easier. What we can't affect is the credit. And at this moment Charlie's credit is as solid as a rock in the City. In fact he's already negotiating a big loan at a very reasonable rate of interest."
"That's where we need you, for a start," said Stocker. "We can hit his interest rate even if we can't do anything else.
Through you."
"Through me? How?"
The Minister smiled. "In certain restricted circles you have a dummy5
reputation, Dr. Audley."
"Restricted—?" Audley stared at Stocker, aghast.
"Very restricted, naturally," continued the Minister soothingly. "We wouldn't be shouting your name from the rooftops. It would be more in the nature of ... dropping the word in the right place—that we aren't satisfied with the situation as it is . . . and that we are doing something about it."
"Dropping my name, you mean."
"Only in the first instance. And only at the very top, of course . . . where you have a reputation, as I've already said."
"A reputation for what?" Audley was again appalled and flattered at the same time, as well as being intensely curious.
To have a fame that could go before one like the rumble of thunder before the storm was gratifying, even if the sound could only be heard by a few; but to risk losing the element of surprise was a very high price to pay for that gratification.
"For what ..." The Minister looked to Stocker for aid.
"You make things happen," said Stocker brutally.
"And that is exactly what we want. Dr. Audley." The Minister adjusted his spectacles again. "In the matter of Charlie Ratcliffe's gold, we want something to happen. And we want it very urgently."
2
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AUDLEY drove westwards at his own speed, which was slow, and by his own route, which was by every small country road he could follow without too much difficulty. If he was late they would just have to wait for him.
As he drove he reviewed his predicament, and decided he didn't much care for it. He had a high regard for the efficiency of the police, but if Charlie Ratcliffe had bought himself a pro from London, or even from abroad, then they had never had a proper chance. And on a cold trail he himself stood no chance at all.
A cold trail which had suddenly become important. Well, at least he could understand the urgency of it: once that inquest jury had pronounced its verdict there was nothing anyone could do to stop Charlie Ratcliffe doing whatever it was they feared he would do. And maybe the Minister himself was his next target.
But that wasn't the real maggot in the apple, just a small bruise on the outer skin of it. The maggot was politics.
The Department never involved itself in internal politics, and no matter how much the Establishment feared Ratcliffe's ability to make a nuisance of himself with a ton of gold in his war chest, that still wasn't the Department's business—it was just the Establishment's bad luck. So someone very heavy must have leaned very hard on the Department—especially after what had happened with Nixon and the CIA.
Which could mean one of two things.
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Either—Yes, this is an interesting assignment. So we'll bring our best man back from Washington . . . David Audley.
Brilliant mind, remarkable record, blah, blah, blah. . . .
Or—Yes, this is a bastard job—if it goes wrong there'll be hell to pay, and the odds are it will go wrong. So who's expendable in the awkward squad at the moment—
There was a cowman in the road ahead, bright in his orange-banded safety jacket, motioning him to stop and give way for a milking herd on their way to the byre. He had noted the Cattle Crossing sign fifty yards back, and the tenth of his brain which read the signs had already lifted his foot off the accelerator.
If that was the case—
The first of a stately procession of beautiful fawn-coloured Jerseys nosed her way out of the gate on the cowman's left.
If that was the case it would be immensely satisfying to give the Minister what he wanted. But it would be much more prudent to aim at an attainable target.
Respectable failure?
No, that would be beneath his honour. He had promised the Minister, and that promise was binding. But he had not promised the Minister he would risk his neck and his career—
as he would have done if the enemy had been a foreign one and not a dirty little jackal who cracked the bones of politicians' indiscretions to get at the scandalous marrow dummy5
within.
Not failure, then. But he wouldn't aim at a total victory; he would fight a limited war strictly within the Geneva Convention, dropping no bombs beyond the Yalu and keeping his gloves on all the time. The Minister himself had spelt out the rules after all, so that was fair enough.
The leading Jersey nodded at him in agreement across the bonnet. That was decided then. For once he would behave himself, and, if he resolved that from the outset, he ought to be able to organise the mission without any scandalous incidents.
All he had to do was to operate in a regulation manner, using as many operatives and as much equipment as they would let him have. These could be deployed in complicated operations, while he himself was engaged in exhaustive researches into —into what?
The Jerseys were pouring out now, stepping daintily with their forefeet, but lurching boney hindquarters and distended milk-bags behind them as though their rear halves had been added on from some different and much more ungainly animal.
Into the seventeenth century, of course! Into the Civil War, and the Gold of Standingham Castle—and even into the Double R Society itself. He ought to be able to lose himself safely in all of those without offending anybody very much.
Meanwhile others could research into Charlie Ratcliffe and dummy5
The Red Rat.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember what the Rat looked like. He had only seen the thing once, together with a report of an investigation into the charge that the underground and semi-underground press was being funded by external subversive organisations.
Which, apparently, it wasn't . . . And all he could really remember was the origin of its title, which had derived not so much from Charlie's own name as from an insult hurled at him during some political rally —You bloody little Commie rat!
Which Charlie, in the best political tradition, had seized on and gloried in—If I'm a rat, then the plague I carry is death to the oppressors of the workers!
Good rousing stuff, that. Much better than the smudgy, crudely-printed character-assassination sheet packed with half-truths, innuendoes and near-libels which had taken its name from that violent occasion.
Audley opened his eyes and smiled at a doe-eyed heifer which had thrust her dripping black nose at him through the window of the car. The rich sweet smell of cow was infinitely preferable to the sour smell of hate and envy that rose from The Red Rat's pages.
All the same. The Red Rat had had a clean bill of health. For all that it occasionally came up with an uncomfortably genuine morsel of scandal—which it usually ruined with dummy5
crass exaggeration— there had been no hint of foreign manipulation, KGB or other. The only string to it was the shoestring on which it ran: it had almost certainly avoided the legal consequences of its most outrageous accusations because it wasn't worth taking to court, not because of the victims' generosity.