Colonel Butler's Wolf

by Anthony Price

  “Absolutely nothing, Sir. No name, no address, no next-of-kin. Nobody’s lost him and nobody’s claimed him. And no prints on record—as far as we’re concerned he never existed. He’s definitely one of theirs.”

  “And his car?”

  “Much the same applies. Its documentation’s totally false. It was stolen two years ago in Hendon. And Major Butler was right about the engine too. We’d have had a job catching him once he got going.”

  “And you have no doubt he was the one who set light to your tail-feathers, Jack?”

  Butler demurred. “He was the man I saw from the attic. And the man I chased—unless there were two men wearing that make of driving-jacket. Whether he started the fire behind me, that I can’t say.”

  Sir Frederick smiled thinly at him. “I think it reasonable to presume so, Jack. And in that case I think we have emerged, thus far, more satisfactorily than we deserved—wouldn’t you agree?”

  It was plain to see what he meant even if it didn’t make much sense yet, thought Butler bitterly. The dead man must have had a watching brief on Eden Hall—a brief to wait and see if anyone came to check on Neil Smith. Only then, when it was clear that the authorities were interested in Smith, was he empowered to obliterate the evidence.

  But if that was how it had been, then things hadn’t turned out as planned. Thanks to the freak accident between the van and the fire engine—a truly accidental accident—the enemy would not know what had happened exactly in the Hall. They would know that something had occurred, but not whether the Smith documents were destroyed. Nor would they know the identity or fate of the British agent involved.

  But all that, in Butler’s book, was no cause for satisfaction. His own carelessness and then his unsuccessful pursuit of the dead man provided greater cause for dissatisfaction.

  And that had to be faced.

  “I cocked it up,” he growled.

  “My dear Jack—“ Sir Frederick held up his hand—“you do yourself an injustice. You might say equally that we should have warned you that there might be complications. But I do assure you that they were not expected. And if we’d sent young Roskill hobbling down to Thanet things might have turned out far worse. So you mustn’t blame yourself; under the circumstances you did very well—you made the fellow put his foot down on the pedal too hard!”

  It was odd that he seemed to rate the harrying of the man to his death as more important than the crumpled records of Smith’s career which he had delivered to Stocker a couple of hours earlier. Except that Butler had long ceased to be much surprised about his superiors’ order of priorities. He confided that they knew better than he did even though they seemed to rate luck a more desirable quality than diligence.

  “So I think we may proceed to the next matter,” Sir Frederick continued suavely. “Carry on, Bob.”

  Stocker shuffled the papers in front of him, straightened their edges, and then brought his palms together under his chin in an attitude of prayer.

  “Major Butler—what do you think of the younger generation?”

  Butler stared at Stocker. A bloody stupid question deserved a bloody stupid answer, but Stocker had already been a brigadier when he exchanged a promising military career for this thankless task, so rank protected him from insult now.

  “I don’t think I’d care to generalise,” he replied carefully.

  “The question isn’t as silly as it sounds, Jack,” murmured Sir Frederick. “We really do have to know where you stand.”

  “I don’t stand on questions like that, Sir Frederick. Young people, Jews, Catholics, Frenchmen, blacks—“

  “How do you feel about blacks, Major?” cut in Stocker.

  Butler smiled then, but inwardly, and it was a smile of pure malice. The technique he recognised, for it was a favourite one of his own. But it was not that which gave him pleasure —it was that Stocker had unwittingly walked into a trap.

  “When I was a lad I used to follow Lancashire League cricket, the way lads follow football today. That was real cricket, too, not what they play today. When the Australians had a young chap who was a test match possible they used to send him over here for a couple of seasons of Lancashire League, to get a bit of polish.”

  “I don’t see—“

  “There was a black man, Veejy Rao, who scored a thousand runs and took a hundred wickets in one season in the league. I’d rather have been him—and he was black as the ace of spades—than any man alive.”

  He held up his hand to stop Stocker breaking in.

  “The only prejudice I’ve ever had was against people who’d rather spend the afternoon playing tennis on the other side of Alexandra Meadows when they could be watching East Lancashire play Nelson. Once I’d learnt to tolerate them I never had any trouble with anyone else.”

  He ran his hand through the red stubble on his head and sat back, embarrassed suddenly at having said just a bit too much.

  Stocker grinned. “Not even with students?”

  “They get too much press coverage for their own good.” (That was Dingle talking—but there was no disgrace in agreeing with a shrewd old bird like Dingle.) “But I doubt they’re any worse or any better than they used to be.”

  “You wouldn’t object to taking an assignment involving you with students, then.” Sir Frederick spoke gently. “It’s rather out of your line, I know.”

  “It’s not for me to object, sir,” replied Butler stiffly. “If you think I’m suitable—“

  “Hah! The spirit of the Light Brigade: there are the enemy—and there are the guns! No, don’t get angry, my dear Jack! The service is so full of specialists who can’t turn their hands to anything, or prima donnas who won’t, that your old-fashioned attitude always comes as a refreshing surprise.”

  Not so much old-fashioned as archaic, thought Butler; he had sharp hearing and the habit of using it, even in the corridors of the department, and he knew very well what the younger generation of Sir Frederick’s bright young men called him behind his back: the Thin Red Line.

  It would have galled them to know that their nickname was a source of great pride to him, indifferent though he was to their half-baked opinions. And now it was a simple matter of pride to continue with what he had started, without making any more mistakes.

  But that, of course, could not be admitted publically; his decision must be explicable in terms that both Sir Frederick and Stocker could accept. For them it would be enough to show a professional interest.

  “I wouldn’t refuse the opportunity of going on with this,” he said. “Not after what happened at Eden Hall. Nothing personal, naturally. But there has to be something damned important at stake to make anyone behave like that.”

  “You’re quite right, Jack. It is important.”

  “Then naturally I accept.”

  Sir Frederick and Stocker exchanged glances, with an almost imperceptible nod built into Sir Frederick’s glance. It was time, surely, to tell him just what was so important that he’d already nearly died for it.

  “Well, Colonel Butler—“ Stocker began. Colonel Butler. Sir Frederick’s expression was too bland for it to have been a slip: they were promoting him. Just like that!

  No! Not just like that—never just like that. On a real battlefield merit on occassion might receive its reward, but not on this battlefield. Here it was only a necessary step in whatever design they contemplated. A means, not an end. Colonel Butler frowned suspiciously.

  “He knows us too well, Bob!” Sir Frederick laughed. “It’s a genuine promotion, Jack—well deserved. My congratulations. But I admit it does have a use on this assignment you’ve accepted.”

  Butler remained silent.

  “Colonel,” Stocker began again, slowly this time, “you must understand that ever since the Rudi Dutschke affair we have had to move very delicately in the academic world. You may remember that there was a petition circulating in the universities not long ago—they seem to find it quite intolerable that the security services should keep an eye
on them. Apparently they consider themselves above suspicion.”

  “We had nothing to do with the Dutschke business, of course,” murmured Sir Frederick. “If they’d asked me I should have told them that Balliol was just the place for him.” Butler held his peace. The Dutschke affair had been handled abominably—and Sir Frederick was a Trinity man.

  “We’re not going to put you into Oxford—or Cambridge,” said Stocker hurriedly, as though those ancient seats of learning had become lions’ dens in which security men might be privily eaten. “But we do need to give you some sort of cover where you’re going—sufficient cover to last for a few days, anyway.”

  “I don’t think I could persuade anyone that I am an academic for more than a few minutes,” said Butler. “I don’t talk the language. And I don’t look the part.”

  “You look like a soldier, Colonel—and you talk like a soldier. That’s understood. So we’re going to capitalise on that. You see, you have a namesake in the Army List. He’ll be going, on to the retired list very shortly—a certain Colonel John Butler. Your proper Christian name is John, isn’t it?”

  Butler winced. The first twenty years of his life had been lived under the name John—a decent, unexceptional name. It was a source of constant sadness, if no longer actual irritation, that he had been forced to abandon it for a diminutive he disliked. But now he had even learnt to think of himself as Jack.

  “I was christened John. When I joined my regiment my first company commander happened to have the same name. To avoid confusion my commanding officer renamed me.”

  “And the name stuck?” Stocker’s left eyebrow lifted a fraction. “How singular!”

  “By jove!” Sir Frederick flipped open the file in front of him. “It might very well be the same man—let me see—you were in the Royal East Lancashire Rifles, weren’t you?” He ran a slender finger through the page of typescript. “Here we are! ‘R.E. Lanes. R’. The very same man! Now that is singular—and most convenient. Do you suppose he knew that—“ He stopped suddenly, staring at Stocker with a smile on his lips.

  Stocker was examining a similar file. He looked up at Sir Frederick. “I think it’s very likely, sir. It’s much too convenient to be a coincidence. But in any case it does give the confusion an extra dimension. Very few people will be likely to know both of them.”

  “Now wait a moment!” Butler strove to keep the anger out of his voice. “If you are proposing that I should try to pass myself off as Major—I mean Colonel—Butler—“ He spluttered at the notion of it. “Why, it’s ridiculous.”

  The man, that senior Butler, had been a thin, taciturn officer, pursuing the minute faults of his subalterns with pedantic zeal. He had not liked the man who had stolen his name.

  “I fancy there are very few people outside your regiment who know what he looks like, Jack,” said Sir Frederick reassuringly. “He’s been out of England these seven years. He was with the UN in Cyprus first, and then he was attached to the Turkish Army. And he spends all his leaves in—where the devil is it, Bob?”

  “Adana, sir. Extreme south-eastern Turkey. He keeps very much to himself.”

  Butler looked questioningly from one to the other of them.

  “But he does happen to be an acknowledged authority on Roman siege warfare, Colonel,” Stocker went on smoothly. “In fact what he doesn’t know about—ah—Byzantine mechanical weapons really isn’t worth knowing. He’s written quite a number of papers on the subject. We have them all here”— he patted a despatch box—“including the proofs of an unpublished article on the siege train of Belisarius which you may find very useful.”

  The drift of their intention was all too clear, and Butler didn’t fancy its direction.

  “We’ll see that you don’t make a fool of yourself,” said Stocker quickly, moving to cut off objections.

  “I don’t give a damn about that,” said Butler harshly. “It won’t be the first time. I don’t mind risking that provided I know what I’m up to.”

  Sir Frederick nodded. “You shall, Jack—you shall. The object of this rigmarole is quite simple, you must see that: the people with whom you’re going to mix for a few days mustn’t question what you are, and they’ll be far less likely to do that if they think they know already.”

  “In a couple of days’ time you’re going up to a place called Castleshields House. It’s up north, not far from the Roman wall—Hadrian’s Wall, that is. It’s a sort of study centre for Cumbria University, just the sort of place your namesake would go to if he came home.”

  “So you can read ‘em the paper on Belisarius and then you can potter around to your heart’s content. What’s he supposed to be studying, Bob?”

  Stocker consulted the file again. “The rotation of cohorts on Hadrian’s Wall, sir.”

  “The rotation—urn—yes! You’re studying that, so you don’t have to know anything about it. That part’s not important, anyway. You can swot it up in a day or two.”

  Butler resigned himself to the inevitable. Half a lifetime earlier he had been well down the Sandhurst list in Military History—it had been Economics and Map Reading and Military Law that had lifted him into the top twenty. But that half lifetime had also taught him not to be surprised at the jokes duty played on him.

  “And just why am I going to Castleshields House, Sir Frederick?”

  And come to that, Sir Frederick—just what is the significance of Neil Smith’s measles and progress in Latin ? And why did Eden Hall burn for those ?

  “You must be patient for a little longer, Jack. You have my word that we won’t hazard you again without explanation— you shall have them all in due season. But first we have to put you into circulation. You’ve got that in hand, Bob, haven’t you?”

  Stocker nodded. “There was a paragraph in the Evening Standard at midday. And there’ll be another in The Times diary tomorrow—it’ll be written as though the visit was arranged long ago.”

  There was nothing surprising about Stocker’s pull in Fleet Street, where so many good turns were always being sought and done. But what would have happened if he had refused? The answer followed the question instantly: of course they knew him as well as he knew them, so they had confided from the start that he would do his duty.

  “But tonight?” Sir Frederick persisted, prodding Stocker.

  “Yes—well tonight, Colonel, is the quinquennial O. G. S. Crawford lecture at the Institute of Archaeology in Gordon Square. It’s organised by the Society for the Advancement of Romano-British Studies and everybody who is anybody will be there. Just the thing for you, Colonel.”

  Butler frowned. “Just the thing I should avoid, I would have said.”

  “Absolutely the contrary, my dear Butler. We have arranged a chaperone to protect you from outrage. And to see you are introduced to the right people. Believe me, it’s all laid on. And there’s more to it than just showing you off—you must wear your uniform, incidentally, so everyone will notice you—“

  “Damn it! But I never—“

  Stocker overbore him. “This once, Colonel, this once! I know it’s not the done thing, but there’s a very particular reason why you must be there.”

  Clearly there was no further point in questioning even small details of the operation; it had been all worked out by the experts, and there was some comfort in knowing that with Sir Frederick looking on the experts would be doing their best. But oddly enough there was something about this planning that struck a chord at the back of his mind—he couldn’t quite place it, but in time it would come to him. And somehow it was not quite reassuring . ..

  “What exactly do I have to do then?” he said carefully, purging the resignation from his tone.

  “Tonight, Colonel—nothing. It will all be done for you.”

  “Sit back and enjoy the lecture, Jack,” Sir Frederick smiled. “You never know your luck—it may be quite interesting.”

  V

  SOMEWHAT TO HIS surprise, Butler found the details of the excavations of the vicus at
the Roman fortress of Ortolanacum uncommonly interesting.

  This was all the more unexpected after he had discovered from his chaperone, a gaunt Ministry of Works man named Cundell, that a vicus was not a formation of the Roman army, but their camp-followers’ village.

  Butler had encountered similar holes outside British Army cantonments in India, and did not cherish the memory. It was a sad commentary on the continuity of military life that the Romans had also had a hard core of deadbeats determined to get blind drunk, if not actually blind, and to catch whatever exotic venereal diseases the local native British girls were willing to sell. But to hear about such beastliness in archaeological jargon was an uninspiring prospect, so it seemed.

  And yet despite himself he was caught both by the speaker’s enthusiasm and by the agreeable absence of bullshit in his thesis. It seemed that Roman forts were not only dull—the rustle in the audience there suggested that some backs were being rubbed the wrong way; that might be the reason why the hall was so packed—but also only fit for unskilled labour. When you’d dug one, you’d apparently dug the lot, and those concerned with adding real knowledge must turn to the humbler sites.

  It might be arrogant, but it made sense, thought Butler. And more, as he listened it seemed to him that the archaeologist mirrored the virtues he admired most in his own calling— virtues of patience and objectivity that were far more desirable than courage and daring.

  That train of thought was brought unexpectedly on to the main line at the end of the lecture, when the speaker stepped from the rostrum and made directly for him.

  “Colonel Butler!” he exclaimed loudly. “I’m delighted that you were able to come tonight!”

  Whatever was up tonight, this wicked-looking prematurely-grey young man was part of it, evidently.

  Butler rose from his reserved seat in the front row of the lecture theatre, deliberately presenting his profile to the entire audience. It went against the grain, but it was half the object of the evening—to print name and face together in the right memories.