“Polly, it’s only a scratch. Or it was until I let you get at it.”
They were safe enough here until the taxi arrived, anyway.
“Go and wash it.”
McLachlan was crossing obediently towards the sink as Butler came back into the kitchen.
“Besides,” the young man continued, “if he hadn’t known how that windscreen was going to behave, then there might have been something a lot nastier waiting for us. Or for you, rather.”
Butler looked hard at McLachlan’s back. If it was a guess, then it was a damn good one, even allowing for the fact that he’d said a bit more than he’d intended in the heat of the moment beside the bridge.
Something nastier. But there was still something not quite right about this situation. The KGB did not resort to violence willingly these days, but when they did they seldom made quite such a pair of balls-ups as he had encountered at Eden Hall and Millford bridge.
“Now, will someone kindly tell me what the hell’s going on?” Polly regarded him accusingly. “Someone shot at us, didn’t they?”
“Twice,” said McLachlan. “Jesus—this water’s cold. Once at the windscreen and once by the bridge.”
“But why? And who?”
McLachlan dabbed at his hand with the towel, also watching Butler. “At a guess that first shot was intended to cause a tragic accident. Would that be right, Colonel, sir?”
The boy was trying to needle him. But under the circumstances the boy had every right to needle him.
“An accident?” Polly’s brow creased. “I may be dim, but—“
“You are dim, Polly. The speed you go, if I hadn’t been there to do my heroic Gaius Mucius Scaevola bit—“ he held up the injured hand.
“Dan, what on earth are you gabbing about?”
“Why, Polly, if I hadn’t been there you’d have gone slam into the bridge or splat into the cutting. And if that hadn’t finished you, there was a chap with a rifle to make sure.”
Polly stared at him, white faced.
“And when they found the pieces of you and your little car they wouldn’t have gone looking for any bullets. No, they would have remembered you drove like a malkop, and they would have shaken their heads sadly and said: ‘She had it coming to her, silly girl’.”
Dan’s eyes switched to Butler’s face. “Do I get alpha for that, Colonel?”
There could be no lingering doubts about Sir Geoffrey Hobson’s assessment of Dan McLachlan. He was inconveniently bright.
“But Dan, why?” Polly bit a knuckle. “And how do you know it wasn’t some yob shooting at the first car to come by?”
“I don’t know why, Polly. But I’m damn sure it wasn’t some yob.” McLachlan pounced on the word
“Why not?”
“Because when he knew it was a shot, not an accident—“ McLachlan stabbed a finger at Butler—“he wasn’t one bit surprised, not one bit.”
Not by that second shot, thought Butler hotly, that was true. But by that first shot he’d been surprised, almost shocked.
“But not to worry,” McLachlan went on coolly. “The Colonel’s going to tell us what it’s all about.”
Butler raised an eyebrow. “Indeed?”
“Indeed.” McLachlan nodded to the girl. “Remember how he told us not to say anything when we caught the bus—about the shooting? Soon as I sat down it really hit me how topsyturvy things were getting—positively mind-bending.”
“How do you mean, Dan?”
“Why, when somebody shoots at me I get mad. But he doesn’t get mad. And when somebody shoots at me twice I get the feeling I ought to be dialling 999 and shouting for a policeman. But he just wants us to keep quiet. And that means one of two things, Polly dear—“ he swung accusingly towards Butler “— either he’s the wrong side of the law—or he is the law.”
Polly shook her head suddenly, as though she was at last coming awake. “The Lone Ranger!” she murmured.
“The lone—?” McLachlan frowned.
“He is the law, Dan. Or something like it.”
“Well—maybe. But he’s still got a hell of a lot of explaining to do if he wants me to stop dialling 999.”
Polly shook her head again, only more vigorously. “No, Dan—leave it. He’s a friend, honestly he is.”
“A damn dangerous one, if he is!” The young man eyed Butler more obstinately and aggressively than he had done before. “You’ve thought of something, haven’t you, Polly? I’ve got nothing against the cops, or the Special Branch, like our dim-witted lefties, but—“
He stopped dead, and Butler knew instantly that he had made the final connection. It had been a wise move to let him run on, working things out for himself as he went, instead of reading the riot act over him and then relying on his political caution and his ambition for a Civil Service career to stop his mouth thereafter.
“Well?” Butler growled. “So you’ve got nothing against me?”
Wiser too because even bright, pragmatic young men might under pressure lapse into half-baked idealism, and he would have enough to contend with at Castleshields without that.
“I’m the dim-witted one.” McLachlan nodded at him slowly. “The whole thing’s too similar, isn’t it … too much of a coincidence?”
“What is?” Polly cut in.
“The tragic accident, Polly. That’s what we said about Boozy.”
But wisest of all, reflected Butler, because only age and experience gave him the edge over this boy, who probably far surpassed him in intelligence. And experience told him that it was desirable to know just how much intelligence could make of this situation.
“About Neil?” Polly’s voice strengthened as the implication of the words clarified itself in her mind. “Do you mean Neil’s crash wasn’t an accident?”
She looked at Butler appealingly, as though hoping for a denial. And for once he could allow his face to show his feelings, to speak of the regret and sympathy he felt, just as though she had been one of his girls.
Then he saw the opportunity, the damnable, dirty little trick that would do the work of persuasion for him. It was working for him even as he looked at her, without a word being said.
“Oh, God!” she whispered. “They—killed—him!”
It was as easy as that. Butler raised his chin. Duty absolved him, nevertheless—duty and need: he needed the information these children might have, and then their silence. And possibly even a measure of their help. In an earlier age he could have called on patriotism to supply all that, but that age was dead and gone. All he could rely on now was outrage and anger.
“We can’t be absolutely sure, Miss Epton,” he said soberly. “Until now we’ve only had our suspicions. But after what has just happened—well, it’s too much of a coincidence.”
The girl stared at him, paler now but also more composed. “Why?” she asked simply.
“Why should anyone want to kill you?”
“Not me. Why Neil?”
She had come straight to the point, rightly assuming that her own brush with death was merely incidental to that answer. There were reserves of strength in adversity there as well as common sense: she might need the one, but he must beware of the other.
“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”
“Because I mustn’t ask any questions?”
“Partly that.”
“But that was before—before my car was wrecked. I’ve more right to ask now.”
“That’s true. But there are such things as Official Secrets—“ he raised his hand to silence her “—which means there are some things it’s safer for people not to know. No point in increasing the risk, eh ?”
He knew as he spoke that he had suddenly struck the wrong note with them. Secrecy had somehow become anathema to young people, an evil in itself, even though a moment’s thought should have convinced them that it was inescapable, and that openness was either a meaningless playing to the gallery or a dangerous snare and delusion.
“I should have thoug
ht Polly’s risk was about at the limit already,” McLachlan said drily.
“That’s precisely why you must answer my questions about Neil, Miss Epton. What he knew became a risk—and now what you know has become a risk. But now you have the chance of passing that risk to me.” He looked from one to the other, hopefully. “It’s what I’m paid to carry, after all.”
It was true again. But evidently it still wasn’t quite the right key with which to open their suspicious young minds to him, and bend their wills to his purpose. It was a situation Audley would have enjoyed, but which he found sickening.
Before he could stifle that thought an answer came back, undesired and undesirable: Audley would have lied more smoothly and enjoyed the game of lying more, and he would also have pretended to take them into the heart of his confidence and would have sought their help.
The thought of it made Butler’s soul cringe—that cynical delight in manipulating the innocent. And though he had heard Audley argue that it was no worse than conscription, the analogy seemed to him.as false and as dangerous as ever: it was far more like the guerrilla trick of pushing civilians out into a no-man’s-land to draw the enemy fire.
McLachlan stared at his injured hand for a moment, and then raised his eyes to Butler’s, a frown of concentration on his face. “Whatever Boozy knew, it hadn’t anything to do with Oxford,” he began reflectively, speaking aloud to himself. “There’s been nothing cooking here lately—the last lot of Proctors had things buttoned down nicely … And if he hadn’t been up since he went down … “
Butler grappled with the jargon: coming to Oxford was always “up” and leaving it was “down”, no matter what one’s direction.
“So it was likely at Cumbria … “ He nodded to himself. “I seem to remember they’ve been having their troubles there with the lefties—“
“But nothing like—“ Polly searched for a word “—like this.”
They looked at each other solemnly across the kitchen table, oblivious of Butler. He saw with a pang of sympathetic insight what their trouble was: it was to keep hold of reality—to convince themselves that they were inside a nightmare from which no morning alarm clock would free them, and that the anguish and involvement this time was not of their own choice. It had not been a Bengali or a Vietnamese or a Bantu who had been murdered by the 20th century this time; but Neil Smith, who had sat with them at this very same table in this very room.
He wanted desperately to help them, or at least to leave them alone. But Neil Smith had not been Neil Smith, so there was no escape for any of them.
“No,” McLachlan murmured to himself. “Nothing like this before. But now … “ He paused, frowning to himself. “You know, now I come to think of it Hobson’s been acting rather strangely just recently. He’s been full of dire warnings about dangerous influences.”
Polly shrugged. “Uncle Geoff’s always been pathological about the Communists and the Revolutionary Left. And he’s got much worse ever since he ducked his retirement.”
“Oh, I know that,” McLachlan agreed only in order to disagree. “But this was different. He’s usually pretty explicit, but this time he was … mysterious. It was almost as though he was warning me that someone was gunning for me.”
He stared at Butler speculatively. “And not just me. Mike Klobucki got much the same feeling … Mike said it was like there was something prowling the crags up at Castleshields and we ought to lock our doors at night. He said it was like being told that Grendel was loose again.” Grendel? Who the devil was Grendel? “So, Colonel sir—“ McLachlan’s tone was too elaborately I casual to be anything but deadly serious “—if Grendel’s loose up at Castleshields you’re going to have to tell us why. Because we’re going to be there as well, and you’re going to need our help.”
Butler looked at the boy in surprise for a moment before realising that he had let his mouth fall open. Then he closed his teeth on the irony of it: by refusing to take Audley’s way he had done better than even Audley might have done—he had turned conscripts into volunteers.
With a little help from Sir Geoffrey Hobson—and from Grendel, whoever Grendel was.
XI
IT TOOK BUTLER just over twenty-four hours to find out what he was really doing on Hadrian’s Wall, and then he didn’t much fancy what he’d discovered.
But there was nothing he could do about it except mutter mutinously under his breath: the thing had gone too far for any protest to be dignified, and in any case he was hamstrung by his own reputation. He could only go forward.
And by God—he couldn’t grumble about lack of instructions; he had never had so many orders, or so precise, in all his life.
So precise that he ought to have seen through them from the start.
… Take three days on the Wall first, Butler—we can spare as much because the full session at Castleshields doesn’t begin until Friday. Take your time and get the feel of it—in fact I’ll send you some books and an itinerary— …
An itinerary! It had been that right enough. For on the face of it Audley simply wanted him to play the false Butler to the life, rubbernecking his way from Newcastle to Castleshields, stopping at every heap of stones and undulation in the ground to gawp at the pathetic remains of the greatest military work ever undertaken by the finest army in history—
… and you’ll enjoy the Wall, you know, Butler. It’ll appeal to your military mind …
Military mind—military bullshit! He should have known Audley better than that.
And yet, undeniably, Audley knew this Wall and had learnt his facts—and took it for granted that Butler was prepared to do the same.
Except that there was a world of difference between the facts in the books and the facts on the ground. Because time, fifteen centuries of time, had not been kind to this Wall of Audley’s with its seventy-six miles of battlements, its turrets and mile-castles and fighting ditches, its chain of fortresses and supply dumps and roads. Whatever they had been once, there wasn’t much of them now for a plain man to see.
But if there was one thing the plain man understood it was a clear order, and the order encapsulated in Audley’s itinerary was clear indeed: Walk the Wall, Colonel Butler.
So Butler had toured the Newcastle Museum and had dutifully admired the vallum crossing at Condercum, with the little temple of Antenocitius (for God’s sake, who ever heard of Antenocitius?) which was wedged incongruously in the middle of a modern housing estate.
Then he had shivered among the wind-swept footings of the granaries at Corstopitum (always use the Latin names, Butler—get used to them), and had climbed, tape-measure in hand, over the cyclopean stones of the Tyne abutment at Fort Cilurnum.
… a tiddler compared with Trajan’s Danube bridge, but good for conversation at Castleshields, so don’t miss the good luck phallus carved in relief on the s. water-face …
He had noted the phallus and had stared enviously across the river towards the ruins of the regimental bath-house of the Second Asturian Cavalry, wishing himself there and fifteen hundred years back in time, where there would have been hot running water and mulled wine and good conversation.
But if Fort Cilurnum had the feel of a good posting about it, snug in the shelter of the river valley, the same was not true of Fort Brocolitia.
Ten miles westward, along the road the General Wade had built right on top of the Wall back in Bonnie Prince Charlie’s day, Fort Brocolitia lay in the middle of nowhere. And even Audley, the unmilitary Audley, seemed to have sensed that Brocolitia was a bad posting—
… the First Cugernians and the First Aquitanians in the 2nd century, the Batavians from the Low Country—at least they would have been at home at Coventina’s Well, sw. of the fort. You’ll need your gumboots for that. But the main thing is the Mithraeum s. of the fort—you can’t miss it, even if it doesn’t compare with the one under San Clemente in Rome and with all those you’re supposed to know on the Persian frontier. But quite something up here in the back of beyond. Note the
vicus site beyond the Mithraeum, marked by a rash of molehills …
After Handforth-Jones’s lecture any vicus seemed like home, and Butler had kicked his way from molehill to molehill, idly picking out tiny pieces of pot and tile and glass from the finely broken earth.
It had been at that point precisely in the itinerary that he had spotted his watcher.
The fellow was snugged hull-down in the dripping grass, above and to the left, and the knowledge of him was like a drop of ice-water between Butler’s shoulder blades. For ten seconds he had stared down blindly at the molehill between his feet, knowing that he was naked in that open, treeless little valley—as naked as those Chinese infantrymen had been on the Chonggo-Song.
Then common sense had reasserted itself. After two close calls in the last few days his nerves were fraying somewhat at the edges, but that was no excuse for abandoning logical thought.
So—it could hardly be a casual stranger up there, since no sane man would skulk on the cold, wet ground, but it could just as easily be a protecting friend as a watching enemy.
True or false?
False. Friends did not need to watch so closely, especially when they knew exactly where he was.
He moved on to the next molehill, slowly.
An enemy then.
But not a murderous enemy yet, surely?
Eden Hall had not made sense: the fellow there must have panicked or exceeded his orders. The bridge at Millford was more to the point: he had been in full view of that rifleman for two or three seconds before he had grabbed McLachlan, at little short of point-blank range. And then the man had fired to miss.
True or false?
True. They had him spotted, and he was no use to them dead. He was much more worth watching. That was logical and he could take comfort from it. There was nothing even surprising about it; with the paper-thin cover he had, even Audley must have expected it.
Even Audley must have expected it!
Butler grunted with vexation as the light dawned on him. He’d prided himself that he knew the Audley technique, but he’d been mighty slow recognising it this time, that habit of telling the truth, but not all the truth.
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