War Game

by Anthony Price

So this was Charlie Ratcliffe’s ace in the hole, thought Audley. A copy of a copy of a letter from Colonel Nathaniel Parrott to John Pym … unsigned and unaddressed, but that was of no great matter in the circumstances. It might be a forgery or it might not, though with the run of the Earl of Dawlish’s papers and the technical expertise of the KGB’s draughtsmen that might never be established. It might even be genuine.

  But it would serve as wel as maibe to make his case: 2,000 pounds of Spanish-American gold had been lost, and 2,000 pounds of Spanish-American gold had been found.

  He looked up at Weston. “A poor speller, but an interesting writer. Where did you find it?”

  “On Henry Digby.”

  “And what else did you find?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Well then—that’s all there was, I suppose.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Audley.” Weston’s voice was cold, but well-controlled. He wouldn’t be a man to let anger get the better of him ever. “You know who he obtained this from, I take it?”

  “Professor Stephen Nayler at Cambridge, I’d guess. I told him to have a word with the Professor.”

  “The letter doesn’t surprise you, then?”

  “Not very much. I’d expect something like that to surface sooner or later. I couldn’t get it out of Nayler, but I suppose Sergeant Digby had a more persuasive manner than I have.”

  “So he was investigating the gold, not the murder.”

  “He was following my orders—“ Audley lifted a finger quickly “—which didn’t take him anywhere near the Ferryhill Industrial Estate, Superintendent. He must have gone there on a private matter.”

  Weston stroked his chin. “You seem to have changed your tune in the last few hours.”

  “I can play lots of different tunes on the same instrument.”

  “Aye, I can believe that. But I preferred the first tune. It sounded truer to my ear.”

  “That could very well be. I could play it again if you made it worth my while— just so long as you don’t think you can force me to, that’s all. Because you can’t, you know.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Not a chance. I may not look it, but I’m top brass, Superintendent. And not in the Home Office, either. And Henry Digby’s killers are dead, too.”

  “But not their killers.”

  Audley shook his head. “I can’t give you them … any more than I can give you James Ratcliffe’s killer.”

  Weston pursed his lips. “What can you give me, then?”

  “First we have to make our deal, Superintendent.”

  Weston shook his head. “I don’t make deals.”

  “Better hear the deal before you turn it down. It won’t stretch your conscience, I give you my word on that.”

  “I can listen.”

  “Off the record—the way I listened to you beside the Swine Brook?”

  “No. After Ferryhill the case is altered.” Weston shook his head again.

  “I can close your mouth with the Official Secrets Act, man.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Good for Weston, Audley thought approvingly. So long as there were policemen like him there would be no police state in Britain.

  He nodded. “Very well. I’ll just have to trust you, won’t I?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Of course… . But then, you see, after Ferryhill the case is altered for me too, Superintendent. Because Henry Digby was my man at the time. So I have a score to settle too.”

  Weston stared at him thoughtfully, then away across the open field beyond the bandstand towards the children’s playground. Finally his eyes came back to Audley.

  “Off the record, then,” he said.

  “Thank you.” Audley paused. “I have no proof for what I’m going to tell you, and I doubt if I could get it now. But I think I’m guessing right—at last.”

  “I understand.” Weston nodded slowly.

  “James Ratcliffe was killed in June by a Russian agent—KGB Second Directorate, Second Division, Ninth Section. Probably a man by the name of Tokaev, operating out of Paris at the time.”

  Weston’s jaw tightened. “You knew this when you spoke to me last week?”

  “No.” Audley drew a deep breath. “I thought this was a domestic political matter—which in a sense it still is. Charlie Ratcliffe is a nasty little muck-raking revolutionary, and a lot of useful people have skeletons of one sort or another in their closets. If he became rich suddenly he’d have the resources to cause a lot of trouble—that’s what I thought I was dealing with. And the trouble with me was … that it didn’t interest me one bit.”

  “Why not? A job’s a job, isn’t it?”

  “Not for me. I’m a counter-intelligence expert, not a bloody little political errand boy. Besides, I’m not at all sure that a little muck-raking isn’t a good thing—if the Americans sometimes go too far we usually don’t go far enough. We’re a bit too damn good at sweeping secrets under the carpet … I’ve had the brush in my hands more than once, so I should know.”

  “I see. So you just went through the motions, eh?”

  “More or less. To be honest, I thought the Double R Society was more interesting than Ratcliffe himself. I didn’t think I could prove anything against him—and I never dreamed he was hooked in with the Russians.”

  “But your … superiors knew better— yet they didn’t tell you?”

  Audley shook his head. “Frankly— I just don’t know. They may just have had a suspicion, with no proof, and they wanted to see what I came up with. They certainly edited Ratcliffe’s file, but I thought that was to remove some of the political dirt he’d uncovered. Because I doubt whether even he dares to print everything he digs up.”

  “Aye, there’s still a law of libel. So you didn’t do anything, is that it?”

  “Oh, I set about trying to cause trouble for Charlie, in case he could be stampeded —lots of thrashing about was what it amounted to, with us doing the thrashing. There was an outside chance that one of his accomplices might crack. But if no one did … well, you can’t win ‘em all.”

  Weston’s lip curled. “Yes… . And Henry Digby?”

  This was the bitterest part, the price of stupidity that someone else had paid.

  Another deep breath. “At a guess I’d say you’ll be able to establish the killers as Irishmen, and maybe as suspected members of a Provo splinter group. But that won’t mean a thing.”

  “No?”

  “The KGB has men in every guerrilla outfit. They used these two to hit Digby, and then turned them into evidence for you. And you haven’t a hope in hell of proving it. It’ll be another dead end.”

  The only thing Weston couldn’t control was that muscle in his jaw. The lips and the eyes were steady, but the jaw betrayed him. “Why Digby? Why not you?”

  “They knew about Digby. They don’t know about me.”

  “I see. Like the old story of King David and Uriah the Hittite—you put him in the forefront of the battle. Off the record, Audley—I hope that helps you sleep at night.”

  “Digby doesn’t help me sleep—you’re right there. But I didn’t get him in the forefront of the battle, I thought I was putting him in the rear rank. I sent him to do a little gentle research into how Charlie Ratcliffe found his gold.”

  “And that killed him?”

  “Yes, I suppose you can say that it did. I think he went to Professor Nayler, and the Professor told him how Charlie Ratcliffe had done it.”

  “We can check on that.”

  “It’s perfectly innocent, what Nayler told him. But I’d guess Nayler also told Charlie about him, and that frightened him.”

  “Why should it do that—if it was innocent?”

  “Because Digby had been investigating the murder, and now he was investigating the gold. And he was an expert on the Civil War in his own right. Nobody else had those three qualifications.”

  “Qualifications for what?”

 
“For working out that the gold wasn’t the Standingham treasure at all—that it couldn’t be the real thing.”

  Jaw, eyes and mouth this time: Weston wasn’t hiding anything.

  “What d’you mean—the real thing?”

  “It’s horribly simple, man. You want to know why I’ll always have Henry Digby on my conscience? Not because I was wicked, but because I was stupid, that’s why. Because I had all the information too, that’s why. I saw where Charlie Ratcliffe found the treasure. I suspected Charlie Ratcliffe of murder, even though I didn’t know the KGB did the job for him. And I also know that Oliver Cromwell was one hell of a smart man—“ Audley thrust the copy of the alleged copy of Nathaniel Parrott’s letter to John Pym under Weston’s nose. “If he knew—and I mean knew—there was a ton of gold in Standingham he’d have found it. And I’m betting he did find it, like the experts always said.”

  Weston waved the letter to one side. “That’s … theory. You don’t kill men for theories like that. Never in a million years.”

  “Right. Exactly right.” Nothing would make Henry Digby’s death less than bitter. But this was the beginning of the expiation. “And that’s why the gold isn’t the real thing: because it was found in the wrong order.”

  Weston frowned. “Wrong order? What wrong order?”

  “Man—he had James Ratcliffe killed before he could possibly have known the gold was there. He had to bring in a bulldozer and grub up a damn great stone monument and two fully-grown apple trees—and even then he had to dig down fifteen feet before he reached it. So he couldn’t possibly have known it was there to start with, it had to be just a theory. He couldn’t have been sure.”

  Weston’s frown deepened. “But … he could have used one of those metal detectors. All the treasure-hunting people have them now, we’ve had complaints from landowners about them tramping over likely sites using the things—“

  “At fifteen feet?” Audley shook his head emphatically. “No way, Superintendent. There isn’t a detector made that can sniff metal at that depth, most of them don’t get below the surface topsoil. Even the very latest induction-balance units—or pulse induction ones, come to that—they can’t manage more than five feet, and they’re tricky to handle if there’s damp around or the temperature’s wrong. He’d have needed proper mining equipment, and he’d never have got through the paving round the monument without making one hell of a mess—which the old gardener would have seen. I tell you, no way.”

  Weston stared at him, still unwilling to commit himself.

  “It had to be a theory,” Audley met the stare. “And you’ve made the rule for that yourself: you don’t kill men for theories. Not even the KGB kills men on the off chance. They don’t like off-chances—they like certainties. And there was only one way they could make it a certainty: they could supply it themselves. And that’s what they did.”

  Still Weston wouldn’t speak. The psychology of a ton of raw gold was too heavy for him. And that, thought Audley, was the measure of the KGB’s shrewdness: figures with pound signs and dollar signs were mere abstractions, meaningless as the paper on which they were printed. Spend a hundred million pounds on a dying industry, or ten million on tarting up an obsolete warship, or strike as much off for a trade union squabble, and no one saw tons of gold flushed down the lavatory. But slap a single sovereign on the counter and you could catch everyone’s eye: that was money.

  So now it was beyond this shrewd man’s understanding, that ton of gold. Spanish gold, still the rightful property of the Spanish people, stolen twice from them— and stolen before that from the poor sweating Indians who had hacked it out of the ground; Russian gold, a small price to pay for sowing subversion between the decks of America’s biggest aircraft carrier, still moored unsinkably off Europe.

  Charlie Ratcliffe’s gold.

  Weston surfaced with an effort of will. “It was planted.”

  “Right. First dig the hole—then add the gold. Because with one ton of gold Charlie Ratcliffe can spread tons of trouble. And with what the Russians can feed him, plus what they can arrange for him, that’s good business for them. The First Division of the Second Directorate spends ten times as much every year, with not a tenth as much chance of being believed.”

  “I see … or I’m beginning to see.” The measure of Weston’s intelligence was the speed with which he was adjusting himself to the new mathematics. “So—you had a deal for me.”

  “Yes. I don’t want you following up Digby’s death the way you might have done—I want them to think they’ve got away with it this time.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until after the storming of Standingham Castle, no longer. If I fail … then you can do your best to prove what I’ve told you.”

  Weston nodded. “That seems fair enough. So I agree.”

  “And I shall want your help at Standingham. With no questions asked.”

  Weston looked at him sidelong. “I won’t break the law. Not even for Henry Digby.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to. I just need you to soften someone up for me, that’s all.”

  “I can do that any time.”

  “Just this time, is all I want.

  “To what end?”

  “The other end of the deal, you mean?” No smile this time. This was a matter of vengeance. “I’m going to try and give you Charlie Ratcliffe—on a plate.”

  “How?”

  “History, Superintendent Weston. They used history against us—now we’re going to use it against them.”

  3

  TEN MINUTES, Weston had said. Half a day, or maybe never, for a guilty man, but for an innocent one only ten minutes.

  There was a moral in that somewhere.

  Audley watched the empty road ahead and wondered what it was like to be leaned on by Superintendent Weston. Probably it would be like being leaned on by an elephant, a remorseless pressure made all the more irresistible by the certainty that resistance was in vain: either the beast would stop of its own accord or that would be the flattening end of everything.

  A movement at the roadside caught his eye. Police Constable Cotton was emerging from the Police House for his evening tour, majestic in his tall helmet, his height emphasised by the cycle-clips which tapered his trousers to drainpipes. A dull ache of guilt stirred in Audley’s soul as he watched the constable cycle away. Less than a week ago he had sat at this very spot with Henry Digby, and those few days had been the rest of Digby’s life. But nothing would change that now, the death sentence for Digby and the life sentence for Audley; not even vengeance, if he could manage it, would reverse those verdicts.

  He locked the car and strolled down towards the Steyning Arms. At the corner there was a new temporary signpost, a handsome little poster on gold paper bearing a red hand pointing up the road and a boldly-printed legend in black:

  Standingham Castle

  Civil War Siege 1643, 3 p.m.-5.30 p.m. 17th Century Fair, 11 a.m.-7 p.m

  Adults 30p; children 15p Sat August 30 & Sun August 31

  It wasn’t the first of such signs he had noticed, there was a rash of them for miles around. Nor indeed was it the only sign of the approaching hostilities and festivities. Stacks of POLICE—NO PARKING cones were dotted in readiness round the village, balanced by cruder posters directing motorists to roped-off fields which were obviously about to yield their owners unexpected cash crops.

  Even outside the Steyning Arms itself the coming siege was evident in a fresh notice:

  NO VACANT ROOMS

  CAR PARK RESERVED STRICTLY

  FOR PATRONS AND GUESTS

  ONLY

  Audley pushed through the hotel entrance door and advanced towards the reception desk.

  The girl sitting in the office behind the desk didn’t bother to look up from her nail polishing. “We’re all booked up until Monday,” she said to her left hand in a bored little pre-recorded voice.

  “I don’t want a room. I believe you have a Professor Stephen Nayler s
taying here,” said Audley.

  “Eh?” She stared at him as if he had made a lewd suggestion.

  “What number room is Professor Stephen Nayler in?” said Audley conversationally.

  “Oh … Number 10, up the stairs and turn left—“ she answered before she realised what she was saying, then frowned at herself for being so unnecessarily helpful. It was a happy thought that next day several hundred rapacious cavaliers would be descending on her. He hoped they would behave with proper attention to historical authenticity, as they had done at Easingbridge, only more so.

  The deep murmur of Weston’s voice behind the door of Number 10 was stilled by his knock, but for a moment no one answered. Then another voice, high and familiar, answered.

  “Come!”

  The room had been a small one with no one in it. With Nayler it had grown smaller and with Weston it had become smaller still. But with the large detective sergeant who had accompanied Weston— a man with a marvellously brutal bog-Irish face which looked as if it had been carved out of soft stone and then unwisely exposed to the elements for a century or two—it must have been claustrophobic for those ten long minutes.

  And now, as Audley eased the door shut behind him, it was the Black Hole of Calcutta.

  “Audley!” Surprise and relief were mingled fifty-fifty in the exclamation. And for sure the elephant was the right animal: Nayler’s aura was the shape and consistency of a Shrove Tuesday pancake.

  “Good evening, Professor.” Audley reserved his sharpest look for Weston. “Superintendent Weston—what brings you here?”

  “Sir.” Weston straightened up deferentially. “We’re pursuing inquiries into certain matters.”

  This was a new Weston, subtly altered: it was Weston playing himself on television, not as he really was, but as the viewers might imagine him.

  “Well, I didn’t think you were paying a social call.” Role for role, Audley played back. “The ‘certain matters’ are Sergeant Digby, I take it.”

  “That’s correct, Dr. Audley.”

  Audley pointed towards Nayler. “And just what has Professor Nayler got to do with him, may I ask?”

  “That’s for us to decide, if you don’t mind, sir.”