Latimer experienced a pang of disappointment. It was no good, that avenue: either she knew better, but wasn’t telling, or she didn’t know, and couldn’t tell. Yet there was still a far more intriguing question remaining which she could answer, and by wrapping it up inside an unimportant one he was perfectly placed to ask it quite innocently.
“Yes, I know just the sort of thing you mean.” He nodded as though satisfied, and then gestured to the Sion Crossing papers. “And those tell me that he was good at whatever he did. There’s nothing like a man’s research notes for revealing the quality of his mind—it’s like listening to him thinking.”
She gave him a pathetically grateful look.
“Yes.” He was encouraged to lay on the praise to an extra thickness. After all, apart from the gratitude it would undoubtedly inspire, it was substantially well-deserved: if the man could achieve this in the extremity of a terminal illness, he must have been quite something in his prime. “He had a keen mind, did your father.” That was thick enough, coming from a stranger; anything more might be disbelieved, for although she was vulnerable where her dead father was concerned, she wasn’t stupid. “And this … was part of your inheritance, was it?”
“Not part of it.” She swayed, giraffe-like. “Poor old Dad … he didn’t have much to leave. He just had his pension … and he felt bad about that. Although, heaven only knows—Mother was loaded, and Tom wouldn’t touch a cent of that, naturally … And he’s always trying to give me more.” She smiled wanly. “So this was all of it, Oliver. The family fortune—if I could find it, you might say.”
That was perfect, thought Latimer, inflating “Tom” to the man he had met in the Oxbridge, the Chairman of the President’s new defence committee, for whose favour he had come all this way; she had led him to that crucial question herself.
“Yes, I can understand that, too.” He nodded understandingly. “It’s the same with us. ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ is not exactly the quickest route to treasure on earth … so he tried to find a short-cut for you.” He smiled at her, only slightly discomforted by that familiar twinge of self-knowledge and self-contempt. “‘Tom’ being your step-father, I take it? But how did he come into this?”
She looked at him doubtfully.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s private.” He shook his head. “I’ve no axe to grind—this is just a favour I’m doing him, and it’s none of my business. So you can trust me—but, by the same token, I don’t need to know everything, if it’s private.”
If that didn’t fix the hook, nothing would!
“It’s just … he knew … Dad knew, towards the end, that he wasn’t going to be able to unravel everything, you see.” She pointed to the papers. “It’s not all there, is it?”
Latimer considered the papers in their neat piles, and then thought for a moment. “Well … not quite, perhaps.” He could put the whole thing together much better now, he realized: the man had not been mobile, and correspondence was no substitute for face-to-face interrogation. But, much more important than that, he must have been dogged by the fear that he would betray what he was really seeking to his correspondents—
“Not quite.” Suddenly he looked at her with a brand-new certainty. He had written memoranda to intelligence sections, and departments, and agencies, dogged by exactly the same fear—that they would be prematurely alerted to his line of investigation. “But the signposts are there, sure enough.”
“They are?” She frowned. “But … but, Oliver—all those questions—about the division of Georgia counties, and how the volunteer units were raised in the Civil War—? And all that nonsense?”
Latimer grinned, and turned to the table to find the sorted pile of material which he regarded as important, in which the specks of gold glinted in the midst of rubbish.
There it was—Rabbit-trap, Bear-hug, Hound-dog, Sugar-tit, Wolfskin— “places holding court are generally called ‘law-grounds’”—and the Wolfskin Rifles, the 184th Georgia Volunteers, had boasted that they pinched their sweethearts’ cheeks until they squeaked, and took their liquor straight, and chewed tobacco with the right jaw, and could beat a negro at double-shuffle, and ate red pepper for breakfast and drank gunpowder for supper.
And much more. Starting from those exhaustive lists of Iowan regiments and musterings and personnel, the author had appeared to march southwards, following his Iowans through sickness and health as well as skirmishes and battles and sieges—Arkansas Post and Shiloh, Corinth and Vicksburg, Snake Creek Gap and Kennesaw Mountain, Ezra Church and Lovejoy Station—until the veteran survivors and replacements had finally massed in the ruins of Atlanta for Sherman’s bombing raid on the Confederacy, the march to the sea.
But by then the researcher’s interest seemed to have expanded to embrace not only the whole of Sherman’s army, but also the motley Georgia state militia which was now all that opposed them—an immense pile of facts, out of which in the end the tiny vital clues about the Sion Crossing had naturally surfaced here and there; which had first trapped his interest accidentally, and then roused his curiosity more as he extracted them and united them together, and finally had taken over the whole book, like a cuckoo in the nest.
Well … that was what he had thought until a moment ago, but he had been wrong!
Sion Crossing had been the beginning and the end of the whole thing, and everything else had been an elaborate blind designed to deceive his scholarly correspondents, and anyone else who might look at all this research without the one vital piece of knowledge which the author had bequeathed to his daughter—that, in the hijacking and dispersal of the loot, the best part of it had been overlooked and abandoned!
Latimer squinted at the papers in his hand, and wondered if he himself would have come to that exact conclusion if he hadn’t known from the start what he was looking for.
Would he? He had to be honest with himself about this—
“Oliver?” Lucy was tired of being stared at.
“I’m sorry. I was just thinking.” He tried to focus on her, but the question nagged at him.
“Thinking about what?” She was being more polite to him than she would have been to most people, in different circumstances, he decided.
“About your father.” He would have got it in the end, given a lot more time, because that was what he was trained to do, but also because his mind worked that way, and because he liked doing what he was doing.
“What about my father?” She was nearly at the end of her tether of politeness.
“He worked for your Central Intelligence Agency—or the Federal Bureau … didn’t he?” Since this wasn’t a matter of state security, American or British, he could be honest with her without indiscretion.
That made her frown—as well she might, whether she was very clever, and wanted to deceive him, or not so clever, and knew no better.
“I don’t know.” She thought for a moment. “But—maybe he did … I don’t know, Oliver.”
That sounded like honesty. And she had no reason to be dishonest, that he could imagine—not when her step-father was involved. For he would never involve the British in any sort of security indiscretion: that was the real safeguard and guarantee in this curious affair.
“But I know. Because I know what he was trying to do now—and how he was trying to do it.” He lifted the papers in his hand, and then put them back on the desk. “Because I would have done the same, I suppose … But I still can’t really work out where your step-father comes in, that’s all.” Holding to the objective was what it was all about, not simply in peace and war but in life itself. Everything else was self-indulgence.
She studied him with a strange intentness. “I think … I think maybe you won’t like it, Oliver.”
Latimer thought that, if she thought that, she was probably right. But he was committed now. “Try me.”
“All right.” She nerved herself to it. “Dad knew this man—this Englishman … He worked with him, in the old days, you see …” She tr
ailed off, with the slightest shade of extra colour touching her well-made-up cheek-bones. But, of course, an ex-model would know how to apply all that stuff they put on their faces—
And then, of course and of course and of course, he knew what she was trying to say!
“David Audley?”
“Yes.” The well-made-up cheek twitched. “Dad didn’t actually like him—he said he was an arrogant bastard—a big clever arrogant bastard …”
“Yes?” That was a very fair description of David Audley, as economical as it was accurate.
“But he said he was good—” she baulked momentarily “—good at his job, and good at finding things.”
Also accurate. “Yes?”
“Yes.” She swallowed. “And he also owed Dad a favour, apparently.”
If that was accurate it was interesting. But it still rang true: Audley was a great one for favours, it was very much how he operated. And, after all, that was how he himself was operating now, however belatedly.
She indicated the papers. “Dad wanted him to take them over. He knew … he knew I couldn’t make anything out of them—which is true. But … he wasn’t sure Audley would help me—” her eyes widened “—do you see?”
Latimer saw, and to the uttermost part. Although this was exactly the sort of conundrum which would have tempted Audley, that in itself might not have been enough, particularly since the man had been in hot water more than once for indulging his private curiosities in defiance of the rules. It had been the prospect of doing the Chairman of the Atlantic Defence Committee a favour which had made it at once respectable and irresistible to them both.
“Yes, I do see.” He nodded. “Your father suggested you should enlist your step-father.”
“Right. He knew Tom was the chairman-elect of this new committee. And that meant a European trip pretty soon, with all the hassle over there about the new missiles, he said.” She paused. “And … well, he knew Tom wouldn’t refuse me, once he was sure it was all above board—not illegal, or anything. And he said Audley wouldn’t refuse Tom.”
Latimer nodded again. That was the final reassurance, on which he’d relied from the start even without knowing all this. And presumably it had only been because the Senator was perhaps a little sensitive about mentioning his wife’s first husband—the more so if that man was ex-CIA—that he’d been inhibited from complete frankness in London.
He smiled. “So everything’s gone according to plan—except for me?”
“For you?”
“I’m not Dr David Audley.”
“Oh … no.” Her face clouded for an instant, casting a shadow also on his own satisfaction at having finally tied up the last loose ends. “No. But sometimes I guess a plan can go better than it was planned, Oliver.”
“How d’you mean … better?” If it had been a compliment it was at odds with her expression.
“Uh-huh. This Dr David Audley … the way Dad remembered him … he doesn’t sound a very nice man?” The cloud darkened. “And I think maybe you are.”
No one had ever said that to him. But—so why was she so sad? The contradiction of the words with the look in her eyes confused him, not least because it made him think of his enemy with a detachment he had never achieved before. Because he wanted to agree with her, and yet now that he looked at the evidence it was against him: the truth was that David Audley was undoubtedly well-hated in certain quarters, his own particularly; but he was equally certainly admired and well-liked, and presumably loved also, in others. Even, within the limits of duty and self-interest, he somehow extracted loyalty of a sort from his professional foreign contacts, men like Colonel Howard Morris, and the Israeli, Shapiro, and the German, Herzner … not to mention the cynical and self-seeking Paul Mitchell. And he, Oliver St John Latimer, had no one like that on whom he could half-ways depend.
“I think you’re wrong.” Even that Thin Red Line, Colonel Butler, who let nothing sway him from the Queen’s service, liked Audley, even when he disapproved of his unreliability: it was utterly incomprehensible, that. “And he’s extremely clever.”
“Yes. Dad said that.” She looked at him. “But so are you—and I think Dad would have liked you, Oliver.”
Suddenly, he understood. He had dignified himself, to believe that he had anything to do with her sadness, when it had nothing to do with him at all—when, much more simply, anything which had to do with her father—her real father—automatically saddened her. For she had seen him die, and he’d probably died slow and hard while pulling all these papers together as his only legacy.
And, seeing that, he could glimpse much more, about both of them, father and daughter—
There would be love and rage in both of them: love and rage in her father at the unfairness of death, which forced him to use two men he probably hated most, Audley and the Senator, to carry out his plan; and love and rage in her, to carry out his plan with those men when she didn’t need his legacy at all. But that, of course, would only make her all the more determined to execute his last will and testament: not out of greed, and for profit, but out of love and rage, and for loyalty.
“I think I might have liked him, as a matter of fact.” In reality that was unlikely, the way he felt about most Americans. But Lucy Cookridge—or whatever her real name was—was an exception to his rules about embarrassingly tall and thin women, not to mention Americans. And a good plan deserved to succeed for its own sake, not to mention the benefits he must derive from doing Senator Cookridge this little favour. “And, if it’s there, I’ll do my best to find it, anyway—I promise you that.”
If anything, she looked more unhappy. But his head ached, and he felt airlessly air-conditioned if not actually cold; and although it would no doubt be hellishly hot and humid outside in the real Georgia of 1983 and 1864, that was where he wanted to be now. He’d had enough of documents, and clues down, and across, for the time being.
He drew a deep breath, and tried to indicate that he’d had enough of scholarship for the time being, without actually saying so.
“Would you like something to eat?” She misread the signal.
“No. I’d like to take some exercise.” In a way, the challenge now wasn’t very different from those he had to tackle professionally, back in England: first, the information (which in this instance had been very skilfully assembled, for all that it was still incomplete—as it always was!); second, the extrapolation from that information, after the chaff and the waste paper and the red herrings had been blown and thrown away respectively, so that more precise and relevant facts might be sought. And then, third, after those facts had been acquired, his own plan of action.
“Oh … yes.” She frowned. “I suppose … you want to see Sion Crossing?” She spoke with a curious unwillingness.
“Yes.” It would be oven-hot outside—ridiculously hot, judging by yesterday. But his curiosity about the locations and events of 1864 was even hotter than that now. “Kingston said you had a car if I wanted it—” he turned back to the papers “—and there’s a sketch-map here, somewhere … and we can’t be more than five miles away from where it all happened—” he had the right pile now, and the sketch-map was in that somewhere, if he could just find it—
There it was! Although those were not her father’s marks on it—they were too decisive for that in their reconstruction of 1864 on 1983.
He studied it for a moment, to get his bearings, and then turned it towards her, daring to move closer and getting a whiff of expensive perfume as a reward for his daring.
He drew back as far as he could. “And I want to go from there … to there—”
All Sion land, on the ridge above Sion Crossing, from Sion Church to Sion itself: it was the Promised Land which he wanted to see for himself now.
Chapter Seven
Mitchell in London: Council of War
“SIT DOWN, PAUL,” said Colonel Butler, ever courteous.
It might be Sunday evening outside in the real world, and midday or thereabouts i
n Sion Crossing; but it was always any time on any working day of the year for Jack Butler, thought Mitchell.
He sat down gingerly, in order not to disturb the enduring remains of his hangover unnecessarily. “You’ve heard the tape of my dialogue with Latimer, from this morning, sir?”
Butler was staring at him as though the hangover showed. “Where’s this place Sion Crossing?”
Mitchell collected his thoughts. “We think it’s in Georgia, sir. Not very far from Atlanta. The nearest town is called Smithsville—”
“We?”
“I managed to hunt up a pal of mine who was able to place it. And we ran a trace on Latimer’s call—I got the number from him while we were talking. It was engaged while he was on the phone. I’m pretty sure he is where he says he is, sir.”
Butler nodded. “Who is this friend of yours?”
“He teaches American history.” Although he had drunk several pints of orange juice he still felt dreadfully thirsty. “In a university up north. He’s on vacation at the moment. He’s going to call us back when he’s got something for us.”
Colonel Butler was unmoved by such evidence of friendship. “Military history, that would be?”
“What else?” The hair of the dog which had bitten him was the traditional recipe. But the way he felt, there had been a whole pack of them. “He’s what they call ‘a Civil War buff’.”
There was a new file on Butler’s desk, under his hand. But he didn’t look down at it. “How did you think Latimer sounded?”
“Like himself.” Mitchell didn’t shrug, in case his head fell off. “A bit stroppy. Not at all worried.”
Colonel Butler gave a single nod. “That’s what I thought. He didn’t sound pushed in any way that I could detect.”
“And he phoned in roughly on time.” He couldn’t nod any more than he could shrug. “He obeyed the rules.”
Another single nod. “So what should we think of that?”
The first thing that Mitchell thought, and not for the first time, was that the comforting thing about Jack Butler was that responsibility came as naturally to him as breathing: that ‘we’ meant that he was taking it now, whatever happened.
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