The Labyrinth Makers

by Anthony Price

  ' "A daring pilot in extremity",' murmured Faith.

  Maclean regarded her with interest.

  'I see you know your Dryden, Miss Jones. Very apposite –it sums up Steerforth very well, that whole passage.'

  He turned back to Audley. 'As I remember now there were a lot of questions about that last flight of ours at the time. They never found the plane, or Johnnie for that matter. I never understood why they made such a mystery of it; it was just pure bad luck.'

  Maclean had evidently missed the newspaper reports of the Dakota's reappearance. And naturally he hadn't been privy to the ditching plan.

  'We're not interested in that last flight, headmaster. We're only interested in the previous one from Berlin to Newton Chester.'

  'The previous one?' Maclean frowned. 'But that was just—' His voice tailed off slightly, then rallied unconvincingly '—just routine.'

  Maclean remembered well enough, or at least had just remembered well enough. But Audley judged that with him frankness might pay a bigger dividend.

  'Headmaster, we know all about Steerforth's cargo. We know what it was, where it came from and how it was taken off the plane. We also know that you had nothing to do with it. We're not trying to cause trouble for anyone. All we want to do is to find out where Steerforth put it.'

  Maclean looked at him incredulously, and then on through him back into the past.

  'Do you mean to say that Johnnie's precious boxes are still where he put them–after all this time?' he said at length.

  'Do you know where he put them?'

  'Good heavens–no! You'd do better to ask his second pilot — his name was Tierney. Or Morrison, the radio operator. I'm afraid I'm the person least likely to know.'

  'But do you remember the boxes?'

  'I remember the circumstances,' Maclean admitted ruefully. 'Now that you've reminded me I remember them all too well.'

  He paused. 'I really didn't want to be involved. I wanted to finish my service with a clear conscience–I even used to congratulate myself with the thought that we hadn't actually killed anyone–except accidentally, when we hit them with cannisters of supplies: Johnnie had the instincts of a bomber pilot, you know. It sounds rather naive, and quite false from a moral standpoint. But it kept me out of Johnnie's little rackets.'

  'The boxes?' Audley tried to prod him gently.

  'He was always offering to cut me in. To save me having to spend the rest of my life teaching Shakespeare to small boys! But I remember that on that penultimate flight he varied the offer: he said if I'd set my heart on teaching I could buy a school of my own with my share.'

  'And what did you say to that?'

  'I don't remember what I said. But I recall that it scared me considerably. I thought that if one share in Johnnie's boxes was sufficient to buy a school–you don't make that scale of profit from American cigarettes and nylons! I was afraid desire might have outrun performance with Johnnie. And evidently I was right!'

  The man's casualness had to be a sham, though not a guilty sham: no intelligent person could fail to be consumed with curiosity about the boxes' contents, least of all someone who had been involved with Steerforth, however innocently. Unless, of course, he already knew; but that didn't ring true of him, Audley judged.

  'I'm sure I can rely on your discretion, headmaster, if I tell you that those boxes contained priceless objects from a German museum. You were very wise to avoid the temptation.'

  'Johnnie looted a museum?'

  'Not quite. Say rather he looted the looters.'

  Maclean smiled. 'That sounds more like him. In fact it would rather have appealed to him.'

  He hadn't approved of Steerforth, or helped him, but he still had a soft spot for him–much as David Copperfield had for the other Steerforth. It vaguely irritated Audley that he had failed to see the Dickens analogy, even though it was as irrelevant as it now was obvious.

  'The point is we suspect the boxes are still somewhere on or near the old airfield at Newton Chester, sir. Do you have any suggestions as to where they might be, even if only in a general sense?'

  Maclean pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then shook his head. 'I don't think I have, really. It's a very long time ago, after all–half a lifetime. My memories are rather fragmentary. I wouldn't know where to begin to look: Newton Chester wasn't a big station, as I recall it, but it covered quite a large area. There were — let me see — about half a dozen boxes, and fair-sized boxes too–but it would still be like looking for a needle in a haystack. What makes you think they're still there?'

  'Steerforth didn't have the time or opportunity to move them far. We've covered his movements between the flights fairly well. He was duty officer on the Wednesday and he went to London with you and Flight Lieutenant Wojek on Thursday. Did he say anything about them then?'

  Maclean was staring at Faith, who was absent-mindedly polishing her glasses. He turned slowly back towards Audley.

  'I beg your pardon? We went to London? If we did I can't think why! It was a beastly journey there, and even worse coming back. A day trip was hardly worth it.'

  He spoke absently, and Audley could sense his interest slipping. Or rather, not slipping, but shifting to Faith.

  'Miss–Jones–I can accept irrational coincidences, but I have a good memory for faces, and I don't see how you can be a coincidence.'

  Faith started to put on her glasses, and then stopped, returning Maclean's curiosity coldly.

  'Steerforth had a baby daughter,' continued Maclean. 'She'd be just about your age now … You have your father's eyes and forehead, Miss Jones, and some of his disdain too, I think. A stronger chin and mouth, but the resemblance is quite striking nevertheless.'

  'It's been remarked on before — you're memory is very accurate.'

  Maclean gave her a satisfied nod, smiling at her.

  'I was at your christening, Miss Jones–Miss Steerforth. As a matter of fact I was a proxy godfather. I remember the occasion quite well.'

  'It's a pity you can't remember what my father did with his stolen treasure,' said Faith icily. 'It's a pity you weren't able to keep him on the narrow path with you in the first place. It would have saved a great deal of heartache.'

  Maclean's face clouded. 'You think I was the Pharisee who passed by on the other side? That's not quite fair, my dear. You ought to know that young people don't interfere with their friends' private affairs–only the old and the middle-aged do that. And I was worried about your father; I said to him …'

  He stopped, and then swung to Audley again, nodding in delayed agreement.

  'You're quite right: we did go to London. My sister had tickets for a Myra Hess concert. Johnnie and Jan Wojek were going up on their own, and I just tagged along for the journey. We met up again to get the last train from King's Cross.'

  He tailed off, but Audley didn't dare to prompt him for fear of breaking the chain of remembrance.

  'I'd been sitting there thinking about your father, Miss Steerforth, and thinking about his boxes. And when he got in I asked him if he'd got rid of them all right.'

  He paused. 'He said "Forget you ever saw those boxes of mine, old boy. You've had your chance"–or something like that. And he laughed and said that the German would be turning in his grave. I said "What German? You haven't been fraternising, have you?"–because we weren't supposed to have anything to do with the Germans then. He nearly fell off his seat laughing at that–and he said his private German had been dead for ages. "The joke is it would take someone like him to find it now" he said.'

  He gazed at them both rather sadly. 'Perhaps that means more to you than it does to me. It was a private joke to him, but that's more or less what he said. And whatever you may think, Miss Steerforth, I did care. But your father went his own way — we even had some more of his boxes on that last flight, as a matter of fact.'

  'He was with Wojek when he came to join you on the train, was he?'

  'He was, yes–but I doubt that Jan Wojek will remember anything. T
hey'd both had rather a lot to drink, but Jan was in the worse condition …'

  In the end Maclean had become rather fed up with his inebriated comrades, the Englishman full of excitement and misplaced elation, the Pole full of sadness, still fighting the well-founded suspicion that he had won his war and lost his country. So Maclean had settled back in his corner seat listening to his sensible conscience, which told him it was high time to stop flying and start his real career. To him, unlike the other two, the war had never been the great adventure, and now it was over anyway.

  Audley crunched away down the well-tended drive beside Faith, once more in a gloomy world of his own. He was aware that they had been less than gracious to Maclean at the conclusion of the interview. Faith had rebuffed the man's conventional questions about her mother with short answers; his own equally conventional gratitude had been short and insincere. And each was merely projecting personal feelings.

  With typically feminine unfairness, Faith obviously blamed Maclean for everything. He could have been the cohesive force in the crew, tipping the balance against temptation. Instead he had left well alone, saving his strength for himself, so it must seem to her. But human relations were never as simple as that in reality.

  His own disappointment was better founded, for that feat of memory which Faith's disapproval had stirred had thrown the whole question of the boxes' whereabouts into confusion again. If that private joke of Steerforth's had been recalled with any accuracy the boxes were below ground again, where Schliemann had found their contents in the first place. And that would make their rediscovery appallingly difficult, even impossible.

  He was tempted to throw in his hand–to insist that the whole idea of tracking down long-lost treasure was a nonsense for which he had neither the aptitude nor the experience. His bouts of confidence seemed in retrospect as misplaced as Stocker's confidence in him — if Stocker ever really had such confidence.

  But even if Stocker's confidence was assumed, there was still the reality of Panin. The Russian's coming was the one sure proof that the treasure existed and could be found. Yet it made no sense–or it meant that he'd been approaching the problem from entirely the wrong direction. In that case what was needed was–what was it the Arabs called it?–a tafsir il aam: the calculated throwing away of the old rule book which stopped one winning the game.

  But to do that would mean returning to London, and then to an unwelcoming home full of electronic eavesdroppers. And it would also lose him the chance of getting into a real bed with Faith.

  That was the one worthwhile product of the whole operation, and he wasn't going to ruin it now. As he climbed into the car he could see that she looked as gloomy as he felt, but that smartly-pinned hair would look better spread on a pillow. So the idea of quitting and the tafsir il aam could both damn well wait, and he would go on as planned.

  They drove off in silence. The last sight he had of Maclean was of the compact man still standing where they had said goodbye to him, deep in his memories. Audley hoped the lifejacket of his clear conscience would keep him afloat. Then a gleaming wing of Wadham Hill cut him off from view.

  They continued without speaking, and for once he concentrated on his driving; Butler's Rover was a car which rewarded effort, very different from his undemanding Austin. But in the end he had to break the silence.

  'You didn't enjoy that either?'

  'Enjoy it? In a way it was worse than Tierney. You should have been nicer to Tierney and nastier to him–my proxy godfather!'

  'And then I would have got nothing out of either of them. But he wasn't so bad; you've just got a prejudice against headmasters.'

  'Against that one, anyway. He could have stopped my father dead in his tracks if he'd really wanted to. And I think he knew it, too, whatever he said, the sanctimonious bastard.'

  She sighed. 'But then my dear father would have got up to some other murky little scheme, I suppose–gun-running, or something like that. You're right, of course: this way's no worse than any other–and at least I've met you this way, David!'

  She reached over and put a slender hand on his, and then leant across and planted a light kiss on his cheek.

  '"Meet you at the Bull",' she whispered in his ear. 'This way I'm following the family tradition as well!'

  XII

  If there had ever been any ghosts in the Bull, old ghosts or shadows in RAF blue, they were gone now, thought Audley. The central heating would have been too much for them.

  He sat on his luxurious bed and watched Faith double up on hers in helpless laughter. There might be a suggestion of hysterics in it, but it seemed genuine enough even if he was not disposed to share it: the Bull had proved a more daunting experience than he had expected. Worse still, the management evidently took them for honeymooners, if not elopers, and this was its special bridal suite.

  It might have been the way Richardson had booked them in. It might even have been the awkward way Audley had claimed their room. It might very well have been their arrival without a single item of luggage, an oversight which had struck him much too late.

  But he suspected that it had been their actual reaction to the Bull itself which had finally convinced the staff of their romantic status. No hardened adulterers or casual fornicators would have behaved so eccentrically.

  Faith had spent the last half-hour of the journey describing the decaying establishment which had been the rendezvous for the Newton Chester air crews, their families and hangers-on.

  Not that the old Bull had been prepared for its sudden wartime prosperity. It had in fact been left high and dry by time until Hitler's rise and renewed friendship with France had caused the migration of the RAF bomber squadrons from their old haunts in the south midlands to a new generation of bases which spread across East Anglia, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Newton Chester had been the last and the least of these airfields, a temporary intruder which had never managed to attract the biggest bombers.

  But if the creaking beds and antique plumbing of the old pub had been strained to the uttermost, so too had the stamina of the wives and girl friends who descended on it. Its draughtiness and arctic conditions beyond the two cheerless bars had been a byword; it was a folk legend that the rear upper gunner of a Hampden, who should certainly have been inured to cold, had frozen to death during the winter of 1940 in one of the bedrooms. Circumstantial evidence for this was that his girl had forsaken him for a pilot in the next room–one of the advantages of the place was that it encouraged passionate night-long embraces simply as a means of keeping warm.

  It was famous also–or infamous–for running out of beer, for the landlord's habit of despatching patrons to borrow fresh supplies from a pub in the neighbouring village and for his unblushing overcharging of the Samaritans who had helped him. And his whisky, on the rare occasions when it was available, was so heavily watered that flies falling into it were able to swim to safety and take off at once, cold sober.

  The meals were more reliable; except so far as Jewish aircrew were concerned, for the menu was always a Hobson's choice based on illicit pigs which the landlord fattened on the choicest scraps bribed out of the sergeants' mess at the airfield …

  One way or another, from the reminiscences of her grandmother, mother and step-father, Faith knew the Bull inside out, from the decrepit creaking floorboards at the head of the stairs to the notice in the unlockable upstairs lavatory appealing to the users not to pull the chain after midnight because of the noises which then racked the water pipes. She was an expert in every legend, tradition and horror which 3112 Squadron had inherited from its long-suffering predecessors.

  The Bull she raised in Audley's imagination was built of nostalgic wartime gaiety and stark discomfort–'The Way to the Stars' staged in Dotheboys Hall. But as the discomfort was more likely to have survived than the gaiety he began to have the gravest doubts about the night ahead of them. It promised to be even less comfortable than the previous one.

  His doubts were strengthened by the rambling pu
b's unchanged appearance. It was as beautifully Old English as she had said: what had survived by luck, accident and sheer lack of prosperity since Jacobean times was now its greatest attraction. The lattice of timbers, the uneven plaster and the tiny, irregular leaded windows would be preserved as, long as chemicals and crafty restoration could hold them together.

  But 3112 Squadron's Bull vanished like a dream in warm air, expensive continental cooking smells and deep carpeting the moment they stooped through the low oak doorway. Before Audley had got his bearings, while he was still looking for one of Faith's landmarks, a darkly handsome waiter in a white coat and tight maroon trousers materialised at his elbow.

  Audley unwillingly admitted that he was the Dr Audley who had booked a double room.

  The waiter was joined by an even smoother and swarthier grey-suited manager who expressed his gladness at their arrival and his desolation at their lack of a double bed. Faith, at his other elbow, gave an odd, muffled snort.

  Nevertheless, the manager assured him, there could be no doubt about their comfort, as the beds in every room were of the latest American design, identical with those supplied to the London Hilton. The measurements of these beds—

  Audley hastened to assure him back that what was good enough for the Hilton was good enough for him.

  And the luggage? Well, there had been a silly misunderstanding about their luggage. It had been left behind and a friend was bringing it down later in the evening. Understanding smiles spread from face to face like treacle. A tragedy –but all would be well, assuredly. If Mrs Audley was inconvenienced in any way, the hotel would spring to her assistance.

  They followed the white coat up the staircase–not the narrow alpine climb on which the drunken wing commander had broken a leg in the winter of '44, but a gentle, generous stairway which neither sagged nor creaked–and along the soft-carpeted, well-lit passage.

  Was there anything else the Doctor required?

  The Doctor had already had more than enough. Except for one thing: 'Which way from here to the airfield?' Audley inquired.