The Labyrinth Makers dda-1

by Anthony Price

  'Here's what gave us our reading, anyway,' he said. 'Genuine Roman wheels — or maybe Trojan!'

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  He wrenched a pair of rusty wheels, still joined together on their axle, from the bottom of the trench, gazed at them ruefully, and then threw them out on to the grass.

  Everyone stared wordlessly at the wheels. They were even joined by Panin's driver, a wizened gnome who had been pacing up and down beside the car as though he was afraid someone planned to steal it.

  Then Audley realised that they were all looking at him. There was sympathy in Faith's eyes, disappointment in Butler's gaze and amusement in Sheremetev's. Only Panin retained his inscrutability.

  Or perhaps only Panin understood that the rusty wheels represented not failure, but final success.

  'Don't just stand there, Hugh–get digging!' said Audley. 'The trolley went into the trench after the last box, no point in leaving it around. You're nearly there now.'

  It seemed to Audley then that the world shrank to the circle round the trench. Even the distant noise of the tractor seemed to fade, as though their collective eagerness filtered out everything except the thud and scrape of the spades in the earth.

  Neither the diggers nor the watchers uttered a word as the first of John Steerforth's boxes came to the light again and was raised from the earth.

  They all stood looking at it for a long minute: a very ordinary box, damp-darkened, with its lid already splintered where the first fierce spade stroke which had discovered it had smashed into the wood.

  Then Sheremetev knelt beside it and levered up a splintered dummy4

  segment of the lid with the edge of a spade. Beneath the broken wood was the top of what seemed to be another box, made of metal.

  Sheremetev looked up at Panin, and nodded.

  'This is the box,' he said.

  Panin touched Audley's arm gently.

  'If I might have a minute in private with you, Dr Audley,' he said courteously.

  They drew aside from the group, to the foot of the corner mound of the old camp.

  'I know that your instructions are quite clear, Dr Audley. I am to have what you find — Brigadier Stocker has made that plain, and there can be no misunderstanding about it. You have done brilliantly, and my government will not be ungrateful.'

  Audley listened to the sound of the tractor, which now came loud and clear across the airfield.

  'The Schliemann Collection is here, Dr Audley,' Panin continued,

  'and we shall restore it to its owners as promised. But this first box I will have now–I will take it now, Dr Audley. Without fuss, without argument. It is necessary that I do this.'

  So Steerforth's loot had truly been a Trojan cargo–what it seemed, but also more than it seemed. That had been the only logical explanation.

  'I'm not sure that I can agree to that, Professor,' said Audley slowly.

  'My instructions cover the Schliemann Collection. But I'm also bound by the Defence of the Realm Act, which gives me a wider obligation.'

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  Panin nodded. 'I understand that. But this is a matter which does not concern your country, Dr Audley. It is an internal matter concerning my country alone. If there is any . . . irregularity in my position it arises simply from a crime committed many years ago by one of your officers. But I do not wish to make an issue of that.

  And it would only bring pain and discredit on innocent people now–people like the young woman back there.'

  Audley faced the Russian. 'You know as well as I do, Professor Panin, that I can't simply take your word in this matter, anymore than you would take mine. Miss Steerforth must take her chance, I'm afraid. And we must be the judges of what concerns us.'

  'I think you are exceeding your instructions, Dr Audley,' Panin sighed. 'But fortunately it is of no real consequence. We will take the box now, and without further argument. That is how it must be.'

  He turned on his heel with an uncharacteristically quick movement.

  'Guriev!'

  The gnome-like driver did not look round, but with a smooth, unhurried movement produced an automatic pistol from inside his coat.

  'All hands in view, please,' he said in a surprising bass voice. 'No sudden movements, I beg you.'

  'Sheremetev!'

  The embassy man, with his inevitable return to Russia as a persona non grata written mournfully on his face, began to check Butler and Roskill for any hidden weapons.

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  'We are not armed, Professor Panin,' Audley spoke with deliberate bitterness. 'We aren't gangsters.'

  Sheremetev folded the donkey-jacket neatly on top of the tweed jacket and shook his head.

  'I regret this action most sincerely,' said Panin. 'We are not gangsters either, Dr Audley. But we have wider obligations, too, as you have. You have my assurance that your country's security is not involved. And now you have my apology.'

  He gestured to Roskill and Butler. 'If you two gentlemen will be so good as to place the box in the boot of the car . . .'

  'No!' Guriev's deep voice cut off the end of Panin's words.

  The pistol remained unmoving in his hand, pointing at nobody in particular. But now it pointed at everyone.

  'The box remains here,' said Guriev. 'Sheremetev–you will empty the contents from it on the grass there. Then you will take a match from a box which I shall give you, and you will burn them. Then you will grind the ashes under your heel.'

  His eyes flicked to Panin. 'And then, Comrade Panin, if you wish to recover the Schliemann Collection, I have no objection.'

  Panin's face was stony, with the lines in it cut like canyons. He spoke quickly and quietly in Russian to Guriev, his voice deep and urgent with authority. Audley strained his ears, but could not catch the sense of it, beyond the words 'Central Committee' and the familiar initials of the KGB, coming over as 'Kah Gay Beh' in the vernacular.

  Guriev cut him off short again.

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  'Nyet,' he said with harsh finality. Then in English: 'Everyone stays still. Open the box, Sheremetev!'

  Sheremetev gave Panin an agonised look.

  'A hole can be a grave, Sheremetev,' Guriev growled. 'If you wish it to be. There is no help for you–we are all alone here.'

  'Actually, you're just going to have visitors,' said Roskill conversationally. 'So be a good fellow and don't do anything hasty.'

  He pointed across the airfield.

  The noise of the tractor engines was much louder already. In fact there were two of them, one towing a grass cutter with an extraordinary raised chute like the head of some prehistoric monster, from the mouth of which wisps of grass were falling; and the other a trailer with tall netting sides bulging with fresh-cut grass. They were coming obliquely across the field, almost exactly in the tracks of Panin's car, straight towards the Roman camp.

  'Everyone still,' said Guriev, moving sideways so that the Land-Rover masked him from the tractors. 'There is only one pistol here, and I shall shortly put it inside my coat. Comrade Panin and Dr Audley will join Sheremetev beside the box. You will talk to each other and you will let the farm workers pass you without trying to speak to them . . . Tell them that I mean what I say, Comrade Panin!'

  'Dr Audley,' Panin said coldly, 'this traitor is prepared to commit suicide, so I must warn you that he is unlikely to stop short of murder. It would be better if you left him to me.

  'Move, then–but slowly,' ordered Guriev. 'And do not mask one dummy4

  another.'

  Audley followed Panin to stand on one side of the box, watching the deafening approach of the tractors.

  Panin spoke to him above the noise: 'Please do not do anything brave, Dr Audley–and don't let your associates do anything. The man there is all the more dangerous for being alone. I don't wish to add bloodshed to my own stupidity.'

  'Don't worry, Professor,' Audley shouted back. 'We're not heroes.'

  The ungainly cavalcade was very close now. Audley could see Keith Warren sitting easi
ly in the seat of the leading tractor, a battered deerstalker jammed hard down on his head. Warren swung the wheel of the tractor to bring it parallel with the line of mounds, waved gaily to Audley, and accelerated away in a cloud of diesel fumes and flying grass.

  Behind him the second tractor thundered up, halting with a shudder just abreast of the group. The driver shouted unintelligibly against the roar of his own engine and pointed to the hole.

  Audley shook his head and spread his hands.

  The tractor driver turned off his engine and reached down out of sight, mumbling to himself. Then he straightened up and the Sterling sub-machine gun in his hands was pointed directly at Guriev.

  Richardson rose from the pile of grass in the trailer, also cradling a Sterling.

  'Easy there, everybody,' he said loudly. 'These things are bloody dangerous. Once you pull the trigger you can't stop 'em.'

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  Jenkins, the long-haired woodworm hunter, carefully got down from the tractor. He jerked his Sterling at Guriev, who stood frozen with his hands open and his fingers slightly crooked, like an old time gunfighter.

  'Hands behind your neck, comrade–slow and easy like the man said. If you'd take his gun, Major Butler, I'd feel much happier.

  Richardson's quite right. These Sterlings are nasty things.'

  He paused beside DECCO. 'You can relax now, Maitland,' he told the machine. 'All the silage is gathered in safely.'

  Panin looked from DECCO to Audley.

  Audley nodded. 'They've been listening in, Professor Panin. Like you, I had to be ready if the worst came to the worst. And like you, I rather thought it must.'

  Panin shook his head. 'I am too old for this sort of thing–too rusty.

  Perhaps I should have known better.'

  'Major Butler. You and Hugh open that box and have a look at what's inside.'

  'Dr Audley,' Panin began, 'I must—'

  'Dr Audley,' Guriev broke in, 'you will—'

  Audley turned his back on Guriev. Panin might not be the sweetie Faith thought him, but he had the better manners. Besides, he had no orders covering Guriev.

  Faith! He had almost forgotten her. She stood at the edge of the group, white-faced: the young lady of Riga!

  There was only time to smile at her, and he tried not to make it a dummy4

  tigerish smile. Then he took Panin's arm, much as the Russian had taken his a few minutes earlier, and walked him back towards the corner mound.

  Delicately, he must put it delicately.

  'Professor Panin, if I can satisfy you I will. But you must satisfy me first.'

  Panin had regained his composure. Or rather, he had reassumed his mask of indifference. He nodded.

  'You've been leaking information to us from the start, Professor–

  about G Tower, for instance. Just for our benefit. But why?'

  The mask slipped and a look of incredulity passed across the man's face. Then it faded and for the first time Panin actually smiled.

  'For your benefit?' The smile was bitter. 'No, not for your benefit, Dr Audley.'

  Audley felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

  'Not for your benefit,' Panin repeated.

  'For whose, then?'

  'Guriev's masters.'

  Guriev's masters? It flashed across Audley's mind with horrible certainy that he had been too clever by half, yet not half clever enough. Panin hadn't been playing to him at all, but to someone else. Which meant–which meant he'd been right about Steerforth, but for utterly false reasons. And wrong about Panin . . .

  Panin looked at him. 'You did well, Dr Audley,' he said, almost soothingly. 'In fact you did too well. It is ironical, is it not, that dummy4

  when I wanted the boxes to be found I could not find them. But when I did not need them, you found them at once.'

  'You didn't need them?'

  'I never believed they could be found. I wasn't even sure they'd reached England. It was enough that Guriev's people should believe I had found them, and I made all the preparations for that.'

  Panin paused. 'It seems that I prepared for everything except what actually happened.'

  All for Guriev's people! So Panin also had been too clever: it had not occurred to him that Audley would act on the same stimulus.

  Irony indeed! Whatever this elaborate scheme of Panin's was, it had failed because there was a self-destructive factor built into it–

  he had convinced Audley that the boxes existed and could be found.

  So Audley had found them, by following his own incorrect reasoning.

  There was a sharp cracking of wood behind them. Butler was methodically splintering open the metal box's outer wooden cocoon.

  Panin watched Butler sombrely for a moment, and then turned towards Audley again.

  'How long have you known that there was an extra box, Dr Audley? When all the others just accepted it as part of the collection?'

  'You were hunting Forschungsamt files back in '45, and I never could quite convince myself that Schliemann was enough to bring you all this way today. The–the psychology was wrong.' Thank dummy4

  you for that, Theodore Freisler; for tipping the balance. 'So there had to be more to it. There had to be something else.'

  'But you never knew what it was?'

  It would never do to admit just how much he'd been in the dark, and no use denying how much in the dark he still was. But there was still something to play for.

  'I never knew, no. But that doesn't matter now.'

  Panin shrugged.

  'You're missing the point, Professor Panin,' Audley said gently. 'I'm sure all the answers aren't in the box, but you can put that right.'

  The Russian regarded him woodenly.

  'To threaten me, Dr Audley, is mere stupidity. What can you do to me? You cannot hold me. You are not big enough. You can merely inconvenience me by withholding the box from me for a short time.'

  'I wouldn't threaten you, Professor–I'd leave that to Guriev.' Audley smiled. 'I think I'm just big enough to hold you for an hour or two.

  And small enough to let Guriev loose right now. Then it would be no business of mine what mischief he could organise in a couple of hours. On the other hand, if I knew what I was doing I could very easily sit on Guriev for a day or two and obey my instructions to the letter.'

  It was a crude bluff, but it was the best Audley could manage. Its strength lay in the fact that Panin had not dealt with the British for years and might still believe in their traditional perfidy. Or if there was an element of doubt there, at least, there could be no doubt about the ruthlessness of Guriev's masters, whoever they were.

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  'Tukhachevsky,' said Panin. 'Marshal Tukhachevsky.'

  Marshal Tukhachevsky?

  'I would have thought that name would not be unknown to you,'

  Panin continued. 'But possibly not–it was before your time, and there are many of your generation even in Russia who have never heard of him.'

  That made it a matter of honour, and Audley flogged his memory.

  Marshal Tukhachevsky: the trial of Marshal Tukhachevsky.

  'The Great Purge of the thirties–the "Yezhovshchina".'

  Panin nodded. ' "The Yezhovshchina", that is right.'

  Millions had been exiled or imprisoned, and untold thousands had died, among them nearly all the old Bolsheviks–Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov. And the great Marshal Tukhachevsky, the hero of 1920. Russia had seen nothing like it since the days of Ivan the Terrrible.

  'The Army trials,' said Audley. 'He was one of the marshals Stalin liquidated. Yezhov framed him for spying for the Germans. And it was the Nazis who actually supplied the forged evidence.'

  'Very good, Dr Audley–a very fair summary. Except that Tukhachevsky was not merely one of the marshals–he was the greatest Russian soldier of his time. And he didn't die alone, either: he took four hundred senior officers with him, the cream of the Red Army. One cannot blame the Nazis for helping to frame them; they we
re winning their first battle against us without firing a shot.

  But tell me, Dr Audley –why would Stalin want his best soldiers branded as traitors?'

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  'Tukhachevsky was too popular, I suppose. He was just another rival. It used to be pretty standard Soviet practice, didn't it? From Trotsky onwards.'

  Panin should know that well enough.

  'Discredit, then eliminate.' Panin spoke as though he hadn't heard Audley.

  The forgeries. Heydrich would have been the Nazi boss to organise them, and Heydrich had mixed some of his old Sicherheitsdienst files among the Forschungsamt records –that brought Tukhachevsky and Panin together.

  But if that was in the box the old objection still held: even back in

  '45 the full details of this scandal would have been a mere embarrassment to Stalin. And today they were utterly valueless.

  Stalin was dead and discredited; the Party itself could not err; and the ancestors of the KGB had neither honour nor credit to lose.

  'But the Tukhachevsky forgeries don't matter now, Professor.

  They're just dirty water down the drain.'

  'And the truth behind the forgeries?'

  The truth?'

  'Stalin was a butcher, but he was not a stupid butcher, as the West likes to think. He knew the risk when he ruined his own army.'

  'Professor, you can't tell me that Tukhachevsky and four hundred generals and colonels were all in league with Hitler. It won't wash.'

  'Not in league with Hitler. But in league against Stalin and the Party, Dr Audley.'

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  Panin gestured abruptly as though tired of arguing and being forced to explain simple facts–and tired above all of pretending that the real Panin was a grey nonenity on a derelict English airfield.

  'In 1937 there really was an army plot against the Party.

  Tukhachevsky had no direct part in it–he was like Rommel in 1944. But it was a genuine plot and a very dangerous one. The soldiers planned to reverse the whole collectivisation policy–the Party's cornerstone.'

  He spoke harshly.

  'Stalin had a nose for such things–it is a talent some Georgians have–and he moved first. He knew it was so, but we never uncovered the proof, the full details. It didn't matter then, for it was better that they should be destroyed as traitors than mere party enemies.