War Game

by Anthony Price

  Charlie Ratcliffe grunted derisively. “So it’s your gold now, is it?” He shook his head.

  “My gold—yes.”

  “Oh, no … I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about with your treason and your killing, and all that— hogwash… . But when it comes to gold at least I can begin to understand you. And the answer is—go take a running jump at yourself, fuzz.”

  “You haven’t heard the deal yet.”

  “I don’t need to.” Charlie’s confidence was reasserting itself, despite the arm-grip. “I should have expected greedy fuzz —or whatever you are. Just because you’ve got a good imagination you think you can make things awkward for me, so I have to buy you off—is that it?”

  “I’ve got a lot more than a good imagination.”

  “No way.” Charlie shook his head. “Your bunch would like to smear me, I know that. But it takes proof to do that, and proof is what you haven’t got. And the same goes for blackmail on the side— I’ll enjoy giving you a paragraph or two all to yourself in my next issue, Colonel Hog. Not that it’ll surprise anyone— crooked fuzz working for a crooked establishment.”

  “You think I’m bluffing?”

  “I think I’d like you to let go of my bloody arm—you’re hurting me almost as much as you’re boring me.”

  Audley held the pressure steady. “That’s because you don’t listen, Charlie lad. That’s one trouble with you—you talk, but you don’t listen. And another trouble is … you’re not nearly as clever as you think you are.”

  “I have trouble figuring out how pigs think—if they do—ouch!”

  “That’s enough now. Just listen … I have a deal for you and I have proof for you—and the proof is in the deal. Listen!”

  His urgency transmitted itself at last. Charlie Ratcliffe stared fixedly into the valley, where the Roundhead musketeers were beginning to withdraw slowly towards their battle line. On the Royalist side, under the cover of their own guns, pioneers were carrying bundles of brushwood towards the marshy ground. The next phase of the battle was beginning.

  “I don’t want your Russian gold, Charlie—you can do whatever mischief you like with it, I don’t give a damn. Because you did your seventeenth-century research just a bit too well, but not well enough, that’s why—and I did it better.”

  Charlie moved uncontrollably, twisting against the pressure. “What the hell d’you mean by that?”

  “I mean, lad—you can keep the Russian gold. And I’ll keep the Spanish gold.” Audley released the arm abruptly as he spoke.

  Charlie stared at him.

  And stared.

  Audley nodded slowly, letting himself smile at last. “That’s right … I’ve found it.” He paused to let the words sink in. “You see, Charlie, you worked it out—you and Professor Nayler worked it out between you.” He paused again. “But the difference between us was that when you’d worked it out you didn’t have to look for it, you just had to work out why it was where you intended to put it … which you did remarkably well. In fact you had me convinced it was the real thing.

  “So when I … found out where your gold really came from I couldn’t resist going back over your evidence again—to see if there was a hole in it somewhere—a weakness. And of course there was.”

  Charlie Ratcliffe frowned, and the frown seemed to loosen his tongue at last.

  “A weakness—?”

  “Oh yes … Nayler saw it too, only the gold blinded him to it—quite understandably. But that isn’t the point. The point is—I came up with a different answer. The right answer.”

  Charlie’s tongue had stuck once more: his lips moved, but no word escaped before they closed again.

  “That’s why I don’t want your gold, Charlie. Because—you could say—I’ve already got your gold.” Audley showed his teeth between the smile. “Which is really quite amusing, because there isn’t a thing you can do about it. I mean … you can’t find the same treasure twice, can you? That’s something neither of us can afford now—too much gold would be as bad as none at all.”

  He turned away from Charlie, focusing the little telescope on the battle lines beneath them. With the help of the brushwood which had been trodden into the ooze earlier in the day the Royalist pioneers were making good progress with their causeway. Another five minutes, or ten at the outside, and the assault troops would be able to move.

  “And that’s where you come in, lad,” he continued, casually running his eye along the Roundhead line. There was Robert Donaldson, Bible in hand, praying on his knees to the Lord of Hosts just behind the Roundhead guns; and there was little Frances among the band of Angels in the shadow of the trees on his left, watching him; and there, staring at him through his binoculars from his post just inside the wood, was Superintendent Weston.

  “You see, we’ve each got our gold, but if we don’t do something about it we’re each going to lose it, I suspect.”

  “Why?” Charlie Ratcliffe’s voice was thicker than it had been.

  “Why?” Audley’s eye ran back along the battlefield. The man had to be there somewhere, but he could no longer afford to wait for him. “See there—behind your cannon —like a black crow.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m trying to tell you. See that man in black down there?”

  Charlie Ratcliffe glanced quickly towards the Roundhead guns, then back at Audley. “Bob Davenport, you mean?”

  “Right—and wrong.” Audley lowered the telescope, reaching under his buff-coat for his trouser pocket with his free hand. “Name of Donaldson. Operates out of the CIA’s station in the Hague normally, but working with our people at the moment.” He offered the telescope to Ratcliffe. “He’s been watching you for months.”

  Charlie raised the telescope to his eye.

  “And watching both of us today, but me particularly,” continued Audley. “Agent Donaldson is just beginning to have his doubts about me, I rather think. … So please don’t stare at him too hard.”

  Charlie lowered the telescope.

  “One American passport, in the name of Donaldson.” Audley passed the green book over for Charlie’s inspection. “Lifted by me out of his flat yesterday afternoon. Check the picture … and the dates of the Channel crossings.”

  Charlie flipped the pages of the passport.

  “So what?” he said harshly.

  “So Agent Donaldson knows too much about you. And he suspects too much about me.” Audley paused again. “And what is even worse he’s on the way to suspecting too much about our gold.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “Because I’ve been working with him. All he needs is one cosy talk with Professor Nayler and he’ll have everything I’ve got … which talk is scheduled for this evening To be precise—“ Audley raised his lace cuff “—in exactly thirty-five minutes from now.”

  He took the passport from Charlie’s hand. “So you see, Charlie, if our gold is to be preserved one of them has got to go. And for my money it’s got to be Agent Donaldson. So you’re going to kill him for me.”

  Charlie’s mouth opened, but Audley forestalled him. “Oh, not you personally, lad. You must get one of those nursemaids of yours to do the dirty work for you— Oates or Bishop, I don’t mind which. There’s not the slightest risk involved, because I’ve pulled all our people off the three of you, as you may already have noticed. … All they have to do is to follow my instructions and it won’t take a second—I set it all up for them last night.”

  The distinctive beat of the Royalist drums broke out again on the far hillside, but this time more fiercely—

  Tum, tum, tum-tum-tum—

  “Set up what?”

  “A shocking accident.” Audley nodded towards the red tent. “The Double R Society is about to have another tragedy.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “No.” Audley let the edge of desperation show. “If I was mad I’d risk doing it myself. It’s because I’m sane that I’m determined to be in the clear. It’s got t
o be one of your men who does it—we’ll never have another chance like this. So it’s now or never.”

  Tum, tum, tum-tum-tum—the columns of pikemen were beginning to assemble.

  “Donaldson thinks he’s meeting Nayler in the powder tent at half-past five exactly —when everyone’s busy with the battle.”

  Audley nodded. “And that’s exactly where I intend to be—busy with the battle— when it happens.”

  “When what happens?”

  “There’s a First Aid box in the tent, right next to the black powder charge for tomorrow’s explosion. Last night I put a fifteen-minute time pencil in the box—a grey plastic cylinder, to arm it all your man has to do is twist the head anticlockwise and press it down. He’ll know, anyway—it’s standard CIA issue.” He smiled coldly at Charlie. “That was another thing I lifted from Donaldson’s flat. … So that’s all there is to it: twist and press at 5.15, and we both keep our gold. Or do nothing—and we both keep nothing. That’s the deal.”

  He gave Charlie one last hard look to go with the ultimatum, and then turned away towards the parapet to examine the progress of the assault.

  It was obvious at a glance why the Double R Society found it necessary to rehearse their major operations; the fire-fight had gone according to schedule, and the pioneers had wallowed in the mud to good effect, but the conversion of the lines of pikemen into columns was proving more difficult in practice than in theory. Also, with the advance of the first regiments on to the newly-laid causeways, it was becoming apparent that the width of the column was greater than the width of the causeways.

  As he watched, several of the outer files were jostled into the mire, where they quickly discovered that it was one thing to negotiate eight inches of mud unencumbered, but quite another to do so in full seventeenth-century battle order carrying a twelve-foot pike. Nothing could have more effectively illustrated why their ancestors hadn’t attacked on this side of the defences until they were confident that treachery would even the odds.

  He took a few paces towards the side of the bastion, where the remains of an embrasure still marked the spot from which old Edmund Steyning had intended that the defenders should enfilade any Royalists who might get as far as the ditch below the curtain wall. Not even Sebastian de Vauban could have sited it better, nor could Vauban have used the ground better to shape a peaceful manor house into a fortress. The old warrior had deserved a kinder fate than a kinsman’s betrayal, no matter what the good cause.

  He turned on his heel and faced Charlie, the great cannon between them now, with its flanking pyramids of weathered cannonballs.

  “Time’s up. Am I your partner? Or do I go back to Robert Donaldson and tell him the meeting’s off?”

  Charlie watched him intently, brushing nervously at a strand of fair hair which kept falling across his eyes. Audley conjured up the image of Henry Digby, and hardened his heart with the memory. “You still have a problem?”

  “That would be one way of putting it.” Charlie gave up trying to discipline the look. “I find you … intriguing, as pigs go. But hardly believable.”

  “No?” Audley stepped forward and placed both hands on the cannon. Then he lent towards Charlie. “You find greed unbelievable—and you know the feel of gold? I find that even harder to believe.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Oh—not your greed, that I can accept. I can even understand why you’re so pig-scared of your own side that you have to give yourself a perfect alibi.”

  “That’s true—I admit it. But then I’m still risking my life for my gold. You only stand to lose your gold and spend a few years in jail.”

  “Your gold … your gold …” Suddenly Charlie’s expression hardened “Why should I believe in your gold? Why should I believe one single word you’ve said?”

  “Why?” Audley drew a deep breath “Well, I’ll tell you why… . Because your ancestor Edmund Steyning was an artillery expert by profession—a trained gunner.”

  “So what?”

  Audley straightened up. “So he brought his biggest gun—this gun—“ he slapped the cannon sharply with the palm of his hand “—and he put it in the one place where it would be absolutely useless.”

  Charlie frowned. “What d’you mean?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Audley pointed out across the valley towards the earth ramparts of the old castle on the far hillside. “Four hundred yards as the crow flies—that would be point-blank range for this gun. Even the smallest field-pieces could carry far further than that. … So it’s wasted here—there wasn’t anything to fire at anyway: this wasn’t the vulnerable side, this wasn’t where the Royalist siege works were, or their batteries.”

  “But this was where they attacked in the end—“ Charlie answered automatically, as though he didn’t know why he was arguing.

  “A surprise attack. So how long d’you think it takes to load and fire this gun? Five minutes—ten minutes? Man, you’d be lucky to get ten shots an hour out of a monster like this—and even if you did you wouldn’t hit anything.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s too big to depress the angle of the barrel down the glacis. All he could do was fire straight ahead—“ Audley pointed his finger across the valley “—and that’s what Edmund Steyning did for a whole week: he fired point blank into a great bank of wet earth and vexed nobody. Except that he vexed Black Thomas Monson and Oliver Cromwell when they came to look for Nathaniel Parrott’s ton of gold and found that it had vanished into thin air. And they didn’t find it inside the castle defences because it wasn’t inside any more—it was outside.”

  Charlie Ratcliffe was staring at the old castle as though hypnotised by its grassy banks.

  Audley came round the rear of the cannon and stood at his shoulder. “The night before last I took an electronic metal probe and worked all along there,” he murmured. “And after an hour it started to sing like a nightingale to me. … See that scar of earth spread in the middle there—about half-way along—like a big rabbit-hole? They’re planted all around there, most of them, not more than three-foot deep, so far as I can make out … I dug a couple out from there, anyway.” He paused for a second. “Because I thought you might like to see a sample.”

  Charlie turned his head quickly. “A sample?”

  “Call it a souvenir, if you prefer. Or even a present.” Audley smiled. “I shall have enough for my modest needs, so I can spare you one—if not a present, say a down-payment?”

  He lifted his sword-scabbard and jabbed hard at the topmost cannonball on the pyramid in front of them.

  The ball quivered very slightly in its concrete socket.

  “Forty-pounders—or something more, seeing that this one isn’t like the others,” said Audley. “I rolled the original one into the ditch.”

  He held the scabbard in both hands and ran the metal tip of it down the dirt encrusted surface. “A very proper token from one traitor to another—in the best tradition, wouldn’t you say?”

  The scabbard-tip began to bite deeper into the encrustation as it travelled down the arc of the ball towards its widest circumference, until finally it dislodged a whole flake of dirt.

  Under the dirt, bearing the bright new scratch of the scabbard-tip in its softness, lay pale gold.

  EPILOGUE

  A SKIRMISH NEAR WESTMINSTER

  SOMETIMES it was better not to know a man too well, decided Audley. For just as inevitability took all the fun out of victory, so it removed the blessing of hope out of approaching disaster.

  But there it was: Sir Frederick Clinton was standing under the John Singer Sargent portrait of Rear-Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, the greatest of all of his predecessors, with a glorious blaze of gladioli in the fireplace behind him and a welcoming smile on his lips, as he was accustomed to do before putting in the boot.

  “David—good of you to drop in—sit down… . And how was Washington?”

  Setzen Sie sich, Herr Audley!

  “Too hot.”

  Like this
office.

  “Yes, you’re a cold weather mortal, aren’t you! Next time we’ll have to find somewhere cooler for you… . But we’ve been having it quite warm here, you know, as a matter of fact.”

  Too many double meanings there for comfort.

  “So I’ve gathered,” said Audley.

  Clinton sat down. “Well, I’ve been reading your reports—“

  Plural.

  “—the CIA one is most interesting.” Clinton paused. “And the Ratcliffe one … that’s interesting too. What you might call a satisfactory conclusion, fiscally speaking.”

  Obviously he was expected to fight to the end, thought Audley. He shrugged. “We were lucky.”

  “Ye-ess … I’m inclined to think you were.”

  Audley smiled back at him. “The Minister said I was lucky. He’ll be glad to know I’m still on form.” Put that one in your pipe, Fred, and see how it tastes. “It’s a great virtue—luck.”

  “But not everyone would say you’d been virtuous.”

  “Not everyone would say I’d been given a fair chance. Little Tommy Stocker didn’t exactly confide in me at the briefing.”

  Clinton shook his head. “Ah, now that’s not quite fair. We hadn’t the faintest idea Ratcliffe’s gold wasn’t genuine. And we had no proof of the Moscow connection either.”

  But a suspicion, Audley thought bitterly. And a suspicion would have made all the difference to Henry Digby.

  “So this is another one we owe to the CIA, then?”

  “Indirectly, you might say.” Clinton had had almost enough of sparring now. “But then they did break the rules, didn’t they.”

  “What rules?”

  “Ye-ess, from you that’s a good question, David.” Clinton stirred the files in front of him to reveal a sheet of paper with a pencilled scrawl on it. “I’ve had a call from the Chief Constable of Mid-Wessex. It seems that you’ve annoyed one of his officers—a superintendent by the name of Weston.”

  Audley felt absurdly pleased. It made him feel better not to have put one over on the Superintendent too successfully.