Nineteen years old. From Eden Hall to a backwoods farm in Mashonaland and a backwoods school in the Orange Free State. And then a grave in the bush.
“And now tell her about Paul Zoshchenko.”
Ryleiev grinned at him.
“You should have taken my offer, Polly. Now you have to take it on the chin about poor dear Neil—have you forgotten about him, Polly?”
“What about Neil?”
“Miss Epton—“ Butler began, tensing.
“The other half of the team, Polly, Neil was. Just another dirty little spy. My other half.” The shotgun came up an inch. “Don’t try it, Colonel!”
Butler clenched his fists impotently.
“You nearly bought it that time, Colonel … You see, he wasn’t quite honest with us back at the cottage, Polly, the Colonel wasn’t. He didn’t come up here to avenge Neil. He came up here to finish the job.”
“That isn’t true, Miss Epton,” Butler snapped. “Neil wanted to get away from it. He’d finished with it.”
“Not a dirty little spy any more. Only a dirty little traitor,” Ryleiev sneered. “Another of the flawed men—“
“Shut up!” Polly’s voice came shrill from the Wall, its coolness gone. There was a moment’s silence, then she spoke again. “How did—Neil—how did he die, Colonel? How did he die?”
“He died by accident.” Butler tried to reach out to her with his voice. “He was going to see your godfather at Oxford, to tell him the truth. It was dark and he was going too fast. It was an accident.”
“He was—“ McLachlan started scornfully.
“But I can tell you why he died—“ Butler overrode the words and the gun barrel. “He was this man’s colleague, that’s true.”
“His colleague?”
Zoshchenko had been cast as the go-between and messenger: the old schoolfriend whom Ryleiev could always meet with perfect propriety without exposing himself to suspicion. But nothing would be served by spelling it all out to the unfortunate girl now; it could only shake her nerve more when she needed steadying most.
“But he’d had enough.” Butler ignored the question. “He didn’t want to betray anyone, he just wanted to be an ordinary man. So he told your godfather who he really was.”
“But then why—why all this?”
Butler watched Ryleiev uneasily. After that one outburst of scorn which he had managed to cut off, the young Russian had remained silent. But the gun remained as firm as ever.
“Because they reckoned once we knew about Neil we’d work our way back to this man sooner or later, Miss Epton— unless we were satisfied that we knew what Neil was doing. So they tried to make us think he was part of an entirely different conspiracy, one they thought we were already working on. And this man, Ryleiev, worked on everyone to make them believe it—on Sir Geoffrey and on Mike Klobucki, even on Terry Richmond.”
A hint here—“Grendel’s loose”—and a snippet of information there; a word of agreement with Hobson and a suggestion wrapped in sarcasm for Richmond. It wouldn’t have been too difficult, because he was already preaching to the converted.
“And this demo was to make it real. They’d have killed Negreiros and ruined those boys—and your father—just to clinch it.”
Ryleiev shook his head slowly, smiling a small, bitter smile.
“Not quite, Colonel. We tried hard to let you know about it. And I made sure you’d be in the Gap. I knew you’d put up a good fight.” He laughed.
Butler flushed angrily.
“The Vice-Chancellor’s wanted to cook hare for ages,” Ryleiev went on. “You’ve no idea how suggestible all you English are.”
An overwhelming desire rose in Butler to wipe the smile from this handsome young face. To smash it because he hated it now, and feared it and envied it, with all the hate and fear and envy of the older for the younger.
Contempt, Audley had said.
“You had the better of the two, Miss Epton,” he said harshly. “This one thought he was clever. Thought he could play the hero for us. So I sent him up High Crags to be clever again, and he couldn’t resist it.”
He snorted. “Boy—you’re out of your class. And so was Neil, but at least he had the wit to see it—“ he threw his voice past Ryleiev into the mist “—they caught Neil when he was young and they made him think he was doing something worthwhile. But he had the guts to think for himself in the end.”
“Guts?” Ryleiev packed a world of his own contempt into the word. “Guts? He hadn’t even the guts to be an honest traitor. A fat girl and a fatter fellowship, that’s what he wanted. A fat girl with lots of fat godfathers.”
“Shut up, you bastard!” Polly’s voice was shrill.
Ryleiev nodded to Butler, his eyes bright suddenly.
“I want more than that, Colonel,” he said softly.
Butler saw their error in one agonising instant of understanding, the error Audley had made and he had blindly accepted.
They had caught this boy young too, and moulded him truer, steeling his patriotism with a pride to which contempt would only be a spur.
Come back with your shield or on it!
“Or nothing—“
Ryleiev threw himself backwards and downwards, twisting to the right and swinging the shotgun through that impossible arc like lightning towards the Wall.
The two guns roared out almost simultaneously.
Almost.
Last page of a letter from Sir Geoffrey Hobson to Dr Theodore Freisler:
… cannot deny that Colonel Butler then acted with commendable discretion. He admits now that it was no chimera I set him to hunt down, and that my assessment of the situation was accurate. But the fact that I have been proved right is of no consequence. It is best now that the whole unpleasant business should be buried. After this the authorities will not be caught napping again and (which is more important to us) the Russians will not try the same trick twice, thank God.
I wish from the bottom of my heart, old friend, that our success in frustrating them had not been so tragically marred by young McLachlan’s untimely accidental death. I have written to poor Potty, of course, though I know there is little that mere sympathy can achieve in lessening the guilt I know she feels because of her carelessness in handling the shotgun. Only the passage of time can heal that.
As to McLachlan—“whom the gods love die young”, the war taught us all that. Nevertheless, the waste of so bright a talent saddens me. He would have gone far and his loss is in the longer view also a great loss to his country.
Yours,
Geoffrey
Colonel Butler's Wolf Page 22
