Sion Crossing

by Anthony Price

  Audley looked at his watch again, and Mitchell decided that it was better to say nothing.

  “Debreczen was a KGB place in Hungary, way back.” Audley looked at him. “It wasn’t in the town, it was in the woods some miles away—in an old Hapsburg hunting lodge, not too far from the Russian border … The Germans trained their Brandenburgers there for the Russian front—their Long Range Desert-SAS deep-penetration groups—so it was all wired-up and developed when the Russians took it over in ’45 … And they used it in the early ’50s—the Russians—to coddle their deep sleepers … Not your run-of-mill agents, Paul: they were the really deep penetration agents, whose job wasn’t to betray anything, but only to be respectable and successful, and rise in the system—in government and politics, or in business and the trade unions—until they were policy-makers … Or, even, if they weren’t so successful, they could help to organize for the next generation after that, because they’d be so clean they’d always be able to set up safe-houses—that was the Debreczen thinking.”

  Audley observed Mitchell’s expression, and grinned. “Well, we got a line on this … from the inevitable defector … eventually—” the grin suddenly became painful “—by which time, for the same reason, they’d closed it down. So … all we knew was that a series of individuals had been individually processed—number unknown, name unknown … there never were names at Debreczen … nationality, various—British, American, French, German, Ruritanian … All we actually knew for sure was that they’d been away from whatever they usually did for about a week, and they hadn’t been where they’d said, but for about a week they’d been at Debreczen … Maybe they’d been climbing in the Alps, or studying the Renaissance in Florence, or skiing in Austria—or taking pictures of bears in Yellowstone National Park … But actually they hadn’t been—okay?”

  Mitchell could see. And he could also see that without some creature like the Beast … he could see endless paperwork, for a start.

  “And I got the job.” The memory was evidently bitter. “I think old Fred Clinton thought it would cut me down to size—Oliver would almost certainly have done it much better, because he wouldn’t have worried, because he’s got the soul of a clerk in a counting house … But I got the job—and I can vividly recall spending a week on a likely lad who claimed to have been studying Romanesque churches in Burgundy, or thereabouts … but who was actually screwing his best friend’s girl in a hotel at Cannes, as it turned out—and got her pregnant and married her, which only made it worse … At least, that’s what I think—but I’m not sure.”

  “Why aren’t you sure?”

  “He refused to talk. So there were five days I couldn’t trace, somewhere between Cluny and Cannes. I think he was screwing her, somewhere in Provence. But I certainly screwed his chances of promotion, because of those lost days … And I ruined six other men, because I had to put a question mark beside their names—and two of them were undoubtedly innocent—and they weren’t promoted either. I only got close to one genuine traitor, and he shot himself before I could pick him up—or maybe they did it for him … I had the feeling they were ahead of me. But it was a bloody disaster either way—I told Fred that every time I got warm, the effing KGB would get there first, but mostly I was just putting black marks against innocent names, and they were laughing their Russian heads off … Maybe I was wrong, but I told him I wanted to quit, anyway.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I was lucky, actually. Old Fred took a civilized view. He realized I wasn’t as clever as he’d thought. And I also think he was pleased—secretly pleased—to discover that I still had a vestigial conscience of a sort, maybe.” Audley made a face. “He once told me that his special nightmare was that he’d wake up one day to find he was running a British replica of the KGB. He said—” Audley stopped abruptly.

  Mitchell turned. Tom had appeared again behind the bar, and was raising the flap.

  “That’s it then, Gents.” He strode past them. “This bar’s going public again.”

  Mitchell leaned towards Audley. “But what about … Bill … you-know-who—?”

  Audley waited as Tom unbarred the door and recovered his sign.

  “Can we have another five minutes, Tom?”

  “You already owes me a good five minutes, Dr Audley.”

  “God will reward you, Tom, in the hereafter.”

  Tom banged the flap down. “I hope not! I’ll be servin’ drinks to you in the Other Place if ’e does, like that black bugger in the pome. So the answer’s ‘no’!”

  Pome? Mitchell gave Audley a baffled glance as Tom vanished into the salloon bar. “What black bugger?”

  Audley chuckled. “Come on, Paul—

  ’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals

  Givin’ drink to poor damned souls,

  An’ I’ll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!

  —Tom’s a Kipling-fancier, like all good men.”

  Damn! “But I’m a Macallan fancier at the moment, David.”

  “Yes.” Audley stood up. “But I ought to phone Jack after what you’ve told me—”

  Mitchell sat firm. “We had a deal, David. Remember?”

  Audley sat down again. “All right. But quickly.”

  “Quickly, then.” He was under orders for Cookridge, Mitchell told himself. But if Audley’s mysterious fears were well-placed he needed to know about Macallan.

  Audley drew a breath. “Bill Macallan was the American end of the Debreczen inquiry. But for Anglo-American reasons we worked in tandem for some of the time.”

  There was a hint of unwillingness there. “Go on, David.”

  “We didn’t hit it off—I told you last night … Chalk and cheese … damn Yankee and effing arrogant Limey … The cards were stacked against us, Paul: he’d ridden one of Patton’s Shermans—the tank, not the general—out into the wide blue yonder while I was slugging it out in the Normandy bocage … I thought he’d had it easy … and he thought I didn’t measure up—he thought my heart wasn’t in the job … Maybe he was right at that—I don’t know …”

  It had been a bad scene, certainly. For Audley to mention tanks was something out of the ordinary: the massacre which had been Audley’s war was pretty much a closed book, unmentionable.

  But tanks had nothing to do with Debreczen. “But you worked together on Debreczen?”

  “Yes. We didn’t hit it off on that, either … This was after Burgess and Maclean and Co—and the ones we don’t mention, of course. But … I suppose I understood them better than he did—I hated them, but I was also sorry for them, maybe—like, there, but for the grace of God goes David Audley … If I’d been at Cambridge ten years—fifteen years—earlier, in the wrong place at the wrong time—who knows?” He gave Mitchell an anguished look. “Christ! If I’d commanded a tank in Spain—would it have been an Italian tank or a Russian one? You tell me, Paul—?”

  The pub door opened. There was a pretty blonde framed in it, who seemed to be surprised that the bar was so empty, and whose mother hadn’t been born when the tanks of that other long-forgotten civil war had tested each other on the Ebro and the Jarama.

  The little blonde was propelled into the bar from behind, by a brunette—

  “David—”

  “Okay.” Audley glanced up at the girls and their followers. “Bill was different—I used to argue with him—I accused him of having the same attitude as the orthodox clergy had towards heretics in medieval times—during the Albigensian Wars.” He gave the group a friendly nod. “In fact, I said he was like Arnald-Amalric of Cîteaux at the siege of Bèziers in 1209—when the soldiers asked him what they should do with any good Christians captured in the storming of the town he’s supposed to have said, ‘Kill all: God will know His own’.” He turned back to Mitchell. “Arnald-Amalric became Archbishop of Narbonne in 1212—or maybe it was 1211 … He was Papal Legate in 1209.”

  The group’s curiosity wilted under the onslaught of medieval history and it took sanctuary at the bar.
r />   “To which Bill instantly replied, ‘Well, that was one guy who knew his business, then’. Which really just about sums him up. All you have to do is substitute patriotism for religion—he didn’t hate Russians nearly so much, because they were only doing their job and they were fair game … But American traitors … and to a lesser extent the British too—they profoundly offended him. That was heresy—” The door opened again “—that would have rated the thumb-screw and the stake, in his book, if he’d been allowed to use ’em, Paul.”

  “But he got the sack, David.”

  “Yes.” Audley stood up and started towards the door. “It’s getting too crowded here.”

  It was getting dark outside.

  “Why did he get the sack?” persisted Mitchell, following him.

  Audley looked up and down the empty street. “If I’m going to call Jack we’d better get our skates on.”

  “When’s your plane to Rome?”

  “Never mind the bloody plane.” Audley started to walk. If Rome could be avoided, it would be, thought Mitchell. But knowing Colonel Butler—and knowing that Macallan was dead, but Cookridge was alive—that was a faint hope.

  “Why did Macallan really get the sack?” He measured his stride against Audley’s.

  “It was inevitable, really. For one reason or another.”

  “What reasons?”

  “He wouldn’t give up. We gave up—but he wouldn’t … When he put a name on his list—a possible name, mark you … not a probable—he got his teeth into it … It wasn’t ‘Guilty until proved innocent’, it was ‘The-more-innocent probably the-more-guilty’—Arnald-Amalric would have loved him in the siege-lines at Bèziers and Carcassonne and Montségur!”

  Audley’s stride was three inches longer than his. “That was a reason?”

  “Too right it was! He started to offend people—and some of them were people with influence … apart from being innocent … this was after McCarthy, remember—Debreczen broke after him: that was one reason why it was kept so firmly under wraps … So he made a lot of enemies.”

  One reason …

  “Yes?”

  “Yes—” Audley nearly cannoned into him as they turned a corner “—and some of his enemies really were his enemies—”

  “What?”

  “I told you—he wouldn’t give up … so he got a real Debreczen graduate in the end—dead to rights … Whisked him out of his posh Wall Street office before you could say ‘Jack Robinson’—or ‘Kim Philby’ … A genuine Ivy League blue-blooded bastard—over there—” Audley pointed to a gap in the badly-lit street.

  It was where they had parked the car. “Yes?”

  “Got him in a safe house near Washington, just south of the Mason-and-Dixon line—way down South in Dixie—” Audley faced him across the car “—let’s go.”

  “What happened?”

  “Some safe house!” Audley placed both hands on the roof of the car. “They were softening him up gently, when some idiot let him walk in the garden to get a breath of air … Wide open countryside—I know the place, and they measured the distance afterwards. It was seven hundred yards … They say some buffalo hunter hit an Indian with a long rifle at eleven hundred … Well, the KGB got this chap at seven-hundred, right through the heart. Let’s go, Paul.”

  “No.” Mitchell had the keys in his pocket, so at last he had the whiphand. “That should have established his credit, David.”

  “Oh … it did—it did.” Audley took his hands off the car. “Open up.”

  “Not until I know why Macallan was sacked. We had a deal.”

  Audley looked at him for a moment, then smiled. “So we did. But I don’t have much time. So … open up, and I’ll tell you.”

  He had to leave the man something, decided Mitchell as he inserted the key. “You want a phone?” There probably wasn’t an unvandalized public phone for a mile.

  “No. Take me back. Jack will be worshipping the Beast—I’ll try him face to face. Bugger the plane!”

  Mitchell manoeuvred the car into the empty street, and then put his foot down. Audley intended to win by cheating—by missing the plane and chancing his luck with Colonel Butler.

  “If I miss it I won’t blame you.” Audley read his mind with disconcerting accuracy. “No need to kill us both on the way to Armageddon. Just take it easy and drop me by the Cenotaph.”

  “Why did they sack him, David?”

  “It was a combined operation, really.”

  “Combined?” He slowed down.

  “Yes. Anglo-Russian-American. That’s about as combined as you can get, wouldn’t you say?”

  “How did they combine?”

  “We didn’t actually combine, in a formal sense … but we worked towards the same end independently … And God blessed our consensus in His own inscrutable way.”

  There were the flashing lights of an accident ahead, blue and red.

  “Get in the other lane—we’ll cross the bridge,” said Audley.

  “That’s a fair old blasphemy—” Mitchell swung the car outwards “—even by your standards, David.”

  “Maybe.” Audley refused to take offence. “But it didn’t seem like that at the time. But … maybe you’re right.”

  Suddenly Mitchell remembered his own past—the thin Yorkshire drizzle misting the green-and-grey landscape, when Frances had died for him—

  He swung the wheel again, regardless of all the lights, and an angry car-horn protested behind him—

  “Steady on!” Audley sat up beside him.

  “Sorry—” Mitchell addressed the car behind and Audley together quite uselessly “—sorry!”

  Audley settled back. “We do get things wrong, you know, Paul. In fact, we very rarely get them all right. And we just have to trust in our luck, and let the dead bury the dead.”

  He couldn’t possibly be thinking of Frances—he wouldn’t have said that if he was, for God’s sake!

  Audley sat up again. “What I meant was … Bill got sick for the first time about then—it was the first twinge of this disease he had, you see—Paul?”

  Maybe he had remembered—but belatedly—?

  “Okay.” Sympathy was something Mitchell didn’t need. “So that was God. So what about the rest of you?”

  They had reached the other side of the bridge: he turned carefully, watching everything behind him as well as ahead.

  “The Russians set him up—at least, that’s what I think now … They wanted him out, after that … after he’d shown that he was dangerous.” Audley was eager to explain now. “There was some money in a bank which he couldn’t account for—somebody who looked like him had deposited it, and he couldn’t disprove it, and he had no money of his own … It wasn’t proved—” Audley sat back, and stared ahead “—but the people he’d offended applied his own rules to him—they implied he was taking back-handers to put names on his list … And that wasn’t proved, either, but there was this implication that the Russians were trying to use him to discredit good up-and-coming red-blooded Americans—the very thing I’d suggested to Fred, when I was trying to get out of the Debreczen operation, in fact.”

  The Mother of Parliaments reared up dark and empty—the lawgivers were away holidaying with their wives and families and mistresses, while Colonel Butler was minding the shop for them, with the help of the Beast, high up ahead.

  “They thought he was in with the Russians? Although you say he was a super-patriot?”

  “Yes … well, there was a certain irony there. Because one of the fellows he’d been hounding was also an extremely patriotic type, and Bill had argued that this was a cover—the best cover of all, he suggested, so … what was sauce for the goose became sauce to cook the gander in.”

  Mitchell looked for Boadicea in her chariot: only the British would celebrate the destroyer of their capital with a statue in its heart.

  “But you didn’t think that, David.”

  Audley caught sight of Boadicea. “Aren’t you going the wrong way
?”

  “James is digging Cookridge contacts for me. He may have someone by now.” And, of course, Elizabeth would be in for her night-shift, with any luck. It was no good dwelling on the guilty memory of Frances. Life had to go on. “I said I’d come back—”

  He took his eyes off the red tail-lights ahead for an instant. “But you scuppered him all the same, didn’t you, David?”

  Audley said nothing.

  “Didn’t you?” He almost missed his turning.

  “We didn’t exactly scupper him. But we might have been able to do something for him … and we didn’t.” Audley paused. “We let him cook.”

  “We …” Mitchell waited for the steel door to obey his signal “… meaning you, in this instance?”

  “Fred took the decision.”

  The door lifted.

  “Fred took the decision.” Audley tried the statement again, as though he wanted to be convinced by it. “Bill Macallan wasn’t any friend of ours. We didn’t owe him anything—he hadn’t done us any good turns, and he likely wouldn’t in the future. If he came out smelling of roses … the fact that we’d helped him wouldn’t have influenced his judgement … and he might have gone to the top.”

  “He was an honest man, in fact.” Mitchell found a parking space near the lift.

  “So was Arnald-Amalric of Cîteaux.” Audley turned to face Mitchell. “But you’re right: I let him cook—I advised Fred that he might harm us … that he was probably innocent, but certainly dangerous—dangerous to innocent people in the present and dangerous to Anglo-American relations in the future. Yes.” He raised his chin. “Is that what you want?”

  “Not quite.” He was a little sorry for Audley, but not very sorry. Everyone had to live with the guilt of their decisions. If they couldn’t they should try to live on a desert island. “You think you were wrong now—do you?”

  The chin went up half an inch. “About not helping Bill Macallan? No—not altogether …”

  “He wasn’t innocent?”

  “Oh—he was innocent—” The chin came down “—but he would have done us a mischief sooner or later. And it’s the Anglo-American accord which underpins NATO. And it’s NATO which allows people to have tender consciences, and to slag America off to make them feel good.” He shrugged suddenly. “Sorry to teach you to suck eggs. But Bill Macallan was a casualty in that war—and rightly so … And, of course, he was quite the wrong man to handle the Debreczen thing—I wasn’t wrong there, either.”