They were crossing swords as well as smiles, and asserting themselves and exchanging professional credentials at the same time.
‘And that gives us something in common with David Audley,’ Paul moved forward smoothly, choosing his ground. ‘Wessex Dragoons, wasn’t he—‘43-‘44?’
‘Well, well!’ Shapiro conceded a point. ‘”Not a lot of people know that.’”
Paul accepted the Michael Caine claim. ‘He doesn’t dine out on it—80 per cent casualties in Normandy, maybe. But then, David plays a lot of things close to his chest…’ He turned towards Frances. ‘Like you, Frances. Though the chest is much more worth playing close to, I must admit.’
‘Mrs Fitzgibbon—‘ The smile vanished from Colonel Shapiro’s face: he came from a race and a generation less crude, far less prone to such juvenile familiarity ‘—forgive me my deplorable manners. I am sorry to disturb you with not a word of warning, but your phone here isn’t secure.’
This was the grey country again: that was exactly—almost word for word exactly—what Sir Frederick had said to her twenty-four hours before, to the minute; the old-fashioned courtesy giving her an apology which Paul Mitchell would never have rated, but the new-fashioned equality of the sexes putting her in the front line of necessity, in which a woman could do a man’s job to the death.
‘That was your man in the woods behind the house, I take it?’ said Paul conversationally, but pleased with himself.
‘Yes.’ This time Shapiro’s irritation was plain. The poor devil in the woods would soon find himself somewhere even less pleasant than England on a dripping November night after this, said the irritation.
‘I thought he might be one of ours. Or just a copper.’ Paul was merciless: he had been too good for the man in the woods, and he liked being better than Mossad, who were good—and they were good because Shapiro was here now, within hours of one phone call; and that could be either because they were technologically good, or because they had an inside man somewhere; but however good they’d been, Paul had been too good for them, his sight-and-sound in the wet darkness had been better; if it had been a killing matter, he would have killed, and that would have been an end of it, not to be boasted about; but it had only been a passing in the dark, and he couldn’t resist exulting in it—None has ever caught him yet, for Paul, he is the master: His songs are stronger songs, and his feet faster.
His confidence offended her. If Paul died before his time, it would not be because he wasn’t good enough; it would be because he chose to test his excellence to an impossible invulnerability, giving the enemy the first shot because he had to believe no bullet had his name on it. He would die uselessly then, simply to test a theory, not by accident, like Robbie.
She felt the iron in her soul again. She had nothing to lose.
‘Have you contacted David, Colonel Shapiro?’
‘Yes.’ The deplorable manners were forgotten now, thank God: now they were on equal terms. ‘Not personally. But … yes, Mrs Fitzgibbon, we have spoken with him.’
Our Man in Washington. The Israelis had Washington sewn up tight as a drum when it came to contacts, even if they no longer called the tune in the Administration and Congress.
‘And he’s coming back?’
Shapiro nodded. ‘The ClA’s bringing him in.’ Then he smiled, a touch of wolf under the sheep-dog. ‘They owe him one.’
Everybody owed David one: David was both a Godfather and a Godson. Half his strength lay in those unpaid debts.
‘He’s made a proper bog-up of this one, all the same,’ said Paul, dryly superior.
Shapiro nodded again, to Paul this time.
‘Ye-ess … I’m afraid that with this one … desire has finally out-run performance.’ Another nod. ‘As you say—a bog-up. A proper bog-up.’
He sounded as though he’d never heard of a bog-up before, but that the onomatopoeic meaning of it appealed to him as being self-explanatory.
Frances was aware simultaneously that she was being ignored and that she didn’t know what they were talking about. She scowled at Paul. ‘What d’you mean—David has made a … bog-up?’
Paul looked over his shoulder at the door to the TV room.
‘Let’s go back into the library. Princess.’
* * *
‘A bog-up?’ repeated Frances.
Colonel Shapiro looked around him, just as Paul had done—just as she had done.
Then he looked at Paul.
Damn them all! thought Frances. The great male conspiracy of knowing too much was in that look.
‘David thought he had it all cut-and-dried before he went to Washington?’ Paul nodded at the Israeli. ‘Right?’
Slow nod. ‘That’s about the size of it. Yes.’
‘Had what cut-and-dried?’ snapped Frances at both of them.
Paul thought for a moment before replying. ‘You drew the top brass last night. Who was it?’
Frances kept her mouth shut. He’d fished for that name once already. He certainly wasn’t going to catch anything now.
‘All right. Let’s put it another way. Who wasn’t it?’
Who wasn’t it?
Frances saw her error of the night before. She had been so overwhelmed by Sir Frederick’s arrival, and then by her own cleverness in connecting it with Colonel Butler, that she’d clean forgotten to ask herself one very important question, even though it had been half-formulated in her mind after he had said You are not reporting to Brigadier Stocker.
‘It wasn’t Tom Stocker, was it?’ The question mark at the end wasn’t a question mark: it was Paul’s way of emphasising a statement of fact.
‘It wasn’t Tom Stocker because Tom Stocker is in an oxygen tent at King George’s,’ said Paul. ‘And his job’s up for grabs.’
So that was the Ring of Power waiting for a new finger.
And it was very surely a Ring of Power, no doubt about that: Sir Frederick’s Number Two … chief-of-staff, deputy managing director, first understudy—first lieutenant—and confidant. And more than that, too … All the doors opened to Brigadier Stocker, and all the files unlocked themselves for him. Liaison with other departments and other agencies passed through him, on his signature. He had the day-to-day patronage of hiring and firing and promoting.
He did all the work, including the dirty work.
It should have been Brigadier Stocker’s voice out of the darkness in her garden.
‘He failed his physical four months ago,’ said Colonel Shapiro.
God! thought Frances: the Israelis always knew everything. No wonder the Russians were so suspicious of their Jews; and that was more than half the reason why David Audley had given her his homily on cultivating them—why he had openly boasted to her of co-operating with Mossad unofficially. It had even sparked one of his rare moments of crudity: I’d rather have them inside the tent, pissing out, than the other way round!
‘He should have resigned straight away,’ said Shapiro. ‘He already had bad chest pains, even before the physical… But the man they had lined up for the job wouldn’t take it. Turned it down flat on them.’
‘David Audley,’ said Paul. He glanced quickly at Shapiro for confirmation. ‘It was David, wasn’t it?’
‘Correct.’ Shapiro didn’t take his eyes off Frances. ‘We have a copy of his refusal telegram—he’d just started his tour in Washington. Clinton was dining with the Provost of St. Barnabas at Cambridge that night, David’s old college. And David actually sent the telegram en clair just to let Clinton know he didn’t give a damn—typical David. But he also recommended Butler for the job while he was about it.’
Paul gave a half-laugh. ‘Typical David indeed! But he was quite right, of course—on both counts. He’d be an absolute disaster in that job, would David. An absolute disaster!’
Shapiro gave him a sharp look. ‘Why d’you think that, Mitchell?’
‘Paper-work and public relations? Talking to Ministers of the Crown? Ex-trade union bosses? David has a streak of mischief a mi
le wide at the best of times. He’d talk down to them quite deliberately—he’d try to make fools of them, and he’d end up making a fool of himself.’
He was wrong, thought Frances. Or at least half wrong. David didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he had learnt to suffer them. The private fight which he waged endlessly—and lost endlessly—was between duty and selfishness. He had refused the job simply because it was no fun.
‘He was right about Butler, though,’ said Paul dogmatically. ‘One hundred and one per cent right.’
Shapiro lifted one bushy eyebrow interrogatively, silently repeating his previous question.
Paul nodded. ‘Oh—he’s not a genius, is Fighting Jack—our Thin Red Line… He’s damn good, but he isn’t a genius.’
‘But he knows his duty?’
‘That’s one strike for him, certainly. He doesn’t want the job, but he’ll do it.’ He bobbed his head. ‘And he’ll do it well—and he’ll win his coronary ten years from now like poor old Stocker. The crowning glory of a life spent above and beyond the call of duty: one oxygen tent in King George’s, with a pretty little nurse to special him on his way out.’
Shapiro nodded.
‘But that isn’t the real qualification,’ said Paul. ‘I mean, it is the real qualification from our point of view—‘ He nodded to Frances ‘—General Sir Ralph Abercromby and all that … ever-watchful to the health and wants of his troops. Princess: when he sends us over the top, the wire will be cut ahead of us, and the reserves will be ready just behind—you better believe it!
‘But no… His real qualification is that the bloody politicians won’t be able to resist him.
Ex-grammar school scholarship boy, risen from the ranks by merit—son of a prominent trade unionist, a friend of Ernie Bevin’s—still with a touch of Lancashire in his accent, too. Which he can turn on when he wants, when he needs to … no Labour minister can resist that. Not for the power behind the throne in Intelligence, by golly!
‘And if the Tories have a hand in it … by God! all he’ll have to do is grunt at them, and all the other qualifications work for them too. They’ll see him as a true-blue Tory, risen from the ranks—the very best sort of salt-of-the-earth Tory. Even the fact that his Dad was one of Ernie Bevin’s friends will count for him—the Tories dine out on Ernie Bevin’s famous last words—The Buggers won’t work!—epitaph on the Welfare State! A perfect Intelligence profile, either way, for the late seventies—a man for all seasons!’
He nodded again at Shapiro. ‘But you’re right really, in the end … about Duty. So they’ll all take one look at him, and they’ll trust him on sight.’ He shrugged and grinned at them both, almost as though embarrassed. ‘Bloody hell! Come to that, / trust him—even though he hates my guts—I trust him!’
Well, well! thought Frances, in astonishment. Well, well, well, well, well And yet—well again!—all that made the whole thing even more inexplicable.
‘But if that’s the case, Paul—if that’s what everyone thinks of Colonel Butler—how have we ended up with the job of wrecking his chances?’ she frowned at him. ‘And how did David … bog it up?’
Paul looked to Shapiro for the answer. ‘Colonel?’
‘Who’s got it in for Colonel Butler?’ Frances shifted the questions in the same direction. And come to that, she added silently, what the hell arc you doing here. Colonel Shapiro?
Shapiro rubbed the tip of his nose with a grubby finger.
‘Yes…’ He considered her reflectively for a moment, as though he’d picked up an echo of what she hadn’t said. ‘Well, Mrs Fitzgibbon, I would guess that the probable answer to your second question is “Nobody”. Or it was to start with, anyway.’ He paused. ‘And I’m afraid that the answer to your first question is that David wasn’t very clever for once. He tried to play politics, and he played foolishly.’
‘Politics?’
Shapiro sighed. ‘And … very regrettably … some of the blame is mine too. I condoned—I contributed to—a most egregious error of judgement. I must confess it. And I have come here tonight to do all I can to rectify it.’
Frances began to feel out of her depth. That Mossad should be interested in Brigadier Stocker’s successor was fair enough. But although it would have suited them down to the ground for David Audley to take the job they had no reason to expect any favours from Colonel Butler.
‘It was such an excellent ideas, that was the trouble with it. One should always be suspicious of excellent idea,’ said Shapiro sorrowfully. ‘The better they are, the worse the situation becomes if they go wrong.’
Way out of her depth, decided Frances.
‘It was such a good idea that Audley came back from Washington to make sure Sir Frederick Clinton acted on it—to make sure nothing went wrong. And while he was here he came to me to enlist my support for it—I have some influence with the West Germans, also with the Americans over here. He wanted the right people to be primed if there was consultation … and we both agreed it was … an absolutely excellent idea.’
But why did the Israelis think Butler was an excellent idea?
‘For quite different reasons, as it turned out,’ continued Shapiro. ‘Although at the time I thought differently—I thought David was playing the same game as I was, even though he said he was being entirely altruistic—‘ he nodded at Paul’—exactly as you claim to be, Mitchell. You say Colonel Butler doesn’t like you, but you trust him… And that’s precisely what David Audley said. And I didn’t believe a word of it.’
‘Why not?’ said Frances. ‘Don’t tell me it was just because David is devious.’
‘You know, I am being rather altruistic,’ said Paul to no one in particular. He sounded suspicious of himself.
‘My dear lady—young lady—‘ Shapiro caught himself just in time. ‘I told you—I made a mistake. Isn’t that enough for you?’
Under the urbanity he was angry with himself—so furious that it required a continuous effort not to burn up everything and everyone around him, not excluding dear young ladies, thought Frances. But one thing he wasn’t going to receive from this young lady—and ‘young lady’ from him was patronising and he ought to have known better: in Israel ‘young ladies’ were accepted as young soldiers—was any special consideration. Whatever he’d done, there was no way Colonel Shapiro of Mossad would have behaved altruistically.
‘I didn’t believe him—‘ Shapiro saw that he wasn’t about to be offered an olive branch, and that cooled him down ‘—for the sufficient reason that Colonel Butler thinks very highly of him, professionally. Which is all that matters.’
Yes. And so here was another one who wasn’t concerned with motives and wives and murder, decided Frances. For all Shapiro cared. Colonel Butler could be the Motorway Murderer himself, with women planted under the roadway one to every hundred yards for miles on end. Professionally that was of no consequence whatsoever, provided it was done efficiently.
‘My God!’ said Paul in a hollow voice. ‘It’s Audley that they’re after, not Butler!’
‘What?’ For once Frances ignored her own hateful feminine squeak of surprise.
‘What?’
‘Christ—I’m dim—dim!’ Paul, in turn, ignored her, addressing himself to Shapiro. ‘I thought Fred Clinton was losing his grip—letting them push Butler out of the way, doing their dirty work for them.’
‘He is losing his grip,’ snapped Shapiro. ‘Five years ago … even two years ago … he would have closed up that file on Butler tight—he would have locked it up and thrown away the key. If Stocker hadn’t been a sick man he still might have managed it. But with Stocker the way he was—no help … waiting for the next pain in his chest … and he’s too old to fight the way he used to, Clinton is. The politicians pushed him—you’re right, Mitchell: there are people who know all about Audley, and they don’t like what they know—he doesn’t push around easily, and he isn’t polite with it either. Also there’s the anti-Audley faction in your own department—they really hate his guts to
o.’
‘For a different reason, I hope to God!’ murmured Paul.
Audley?
‘So do I,’ said Shapiro grimly. ‘By God—I hope that too!’
Audley? Audley?
‘Clinton’s 64. He’s retiring next year,’ said Paul.
Clinton—Audley? Not Butler, not Stocker. But Clinton and Audley?
‘In November. One year exactly,’ Shapiro nodded. ‘We have one year—to the day, near enough. He’ll be at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, and that’ll be the last time.’
The irrelevance of the exact dating threw Frances into confusion. Sir Frederick Clinton had always attended the Remembrance Day parade in Whitehall, every Sunday of every November that she could remember, with his medals on his chest. Twice, when she’d been duty officer, he’d quite deliberately taken her too—had put someone else on duty for an hour quite deliberately.
‘You’ll want to come of course, Frances. You have something to remember.’
She’d never seen David there—in spite of the Wessex Dragoons’ 80 per cent casualties. But-then David wasn’t sentimental.
She’d never seen Butler there either… And that was much stranger, with his passion for anniversaries and the Lancashire Rifles’ battle honours, which must be scattered across dozens of cemeteries all the way to Korea and back.
But that was all irrelevant: she was being diverted from the wood by the ba-rk on the trees.
Paul noticed her confusion at last, and took pity on her.
‘Frances—I’m sorry! I am dim-witted.’ But he was pleased with himself, nevertheless.
‘Fred Clinton’s retiring next year.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s as plain as the nose—‘ Paul’s eye flicked to Shapiro’s beak, which almost rivalled Nannie’s, and then came back to her ‘—as the pretty nose on your face. I just didn’t get it until I realised that no one would expect me to be altruistic—to want to do the right thing just for once for the right reason, like poor old Thomas Archbishop in Murder in the Cathedral.
Exasperation. ‘Paul, what are you talking about?’
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