Our Man in Camelot

by Anthony Price

  “He shot himself?”

  “Well, that’s what we’re required to believe. But our forensic people have their doubts… They think he was helped, you might say. And I’m very much inclined to believe them.” He paused. “Now here’s an interesting one.”

  The photograph was bigger, but not nearly so well focussed—a blown-up fragment of a larger unposed snapshot, maybe—

  Hell and damnation!

  “Ah! I see that one rings a bell,” said Audley happily. “Let your wife have a look, there’s a good chap.”

  Shirley stared. “Why, isn’t that Harry what’s-his-name— the Public Relations guy?”

  “Finsterwald,” said Mosby. “Is he—dead?”

  “Why, I saw him only three-four days back in the BX,” said Shirley. She looked from Mosby to Audley. “Do you mean to say he’s dead too?”

  Audley raised a hand. “Just look at the pictures, Mrs Sheldon. We’ll get to the captions in due time.”

  Another picture. This time Mosby was ready for anything, but the black face staring over his shoulder was totally new to him.

  There followed more black faces, snapped at a variety of angles, and judging from the background detail with a telescopic lens. By the time they reached Calvin Merriwether’s portrayal of sullen emptiness the fact was pretty well established that to Captain and Mrs Mosby Sheldon, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, all coloured men looked alike; which the British could hardly quarrel with, since they obviously had had the same difficulty.

  The hopeful sign about all the pictures—and about Harry’s too—was that they were taken from life, unlike the Pennebaker shot. But the deduction from that was that the British were on to the pair of them, even if they hadn’t yet established any connection with their captives.

  Audley offered him another picture. “Another nasty one.”

  It was of another dead face—not so horrible as that of the airman, but with the same lifeless stare… yet quite unlike anything he had so far been shown: the wrinkled features of old age beneath an untidy halo of white hair—

  Oh, God! Mosby thought with sickening certainty, recalling Merriwether’s admiration. ‘He’s a great old guy’.

  James Barkham, old-fashioned bookseller.

  “I’m sure I never met him,” said Shirley firmly.

  Mosby shook his head. “He’s new to me too.”

  Audley nodded. “Only two more.”

  The permutations of what he had said earlier raced through Mosby’s brain. Four killed—they had seen four dead men already. Maybe seven—but they had already seen two possibles, and another two would make eight. So it didn’t add up.

  He gazed into the face of Tall and Thin. Sickeningly, it bore the same smile as it had done in its last minute of life in St Swithun’s Churchyard a few hours earlier.

  “No,” he said.

  Shirley looked. “Same here—no.”

  And then Thickset, his own victim.

  He was calm now. The stakes were altogether too high for panic.

  “No. Never seen him before either. Sorry.” He watched Audley as he passed the photo to Shirley. “I guess we’ve not helped very much.”

  “I didn’t expect miracles.”

  “Were they all—have they all been killed?”

  Audley shook his head. “Not all. You’ve seen four dead men—you’ll have worked out which they were, of course. Plus two missing and two killers.”

  “Killers?” Mosby set his teeth. “Murderers?”

  “The presumption is overwhelming, yes.”

  Mosby pointed to the picture in Shirley’s hand. “You mean —that guy and the other one?”

  “No. Those are two of our men who haven’t reported in. The killers are your comrade Captain Finsterwald and his coloured associate, whom we haven’t yet identified.”

  Mosby gaped at him. “Harry Finsterwald? You can’t be serious!”

  “Why not, Captain Sheldon?” asked Frances Fitzgibbon.

  Mosby stared at her. “Harry Finsterwald? Hell—he’s in Base Public Relations, not Murder Incorporated. He’s just a dumb son-of-a-bitch with an expensive smile.”

  “That’s right.” Shirley nodded. “He maybe fancies himself as a lady-killer—at the Cobra Squadron Fourth of July party I had to fight him off in the parking lot—“

  “You never told me that,” said Mosby hotly.

  “Honey, I don’t tell you every time someone gets fresh with me. You’d only get your teeth knocked in.”

  “Harry Finsterwald—“ Audley broke in “—is not Harry Finsterwald.”

  “Huh?” Mosby and Shirley turned towards him simultaneously.

  “His name is Harry Feiner,” said Frances Fitzgibbon. “And he’s a veteran CIA operative—Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, all the way down to Singapore. Counter-insurgency expert, Special Operations Unit commander, counter-intelligence strongarm man—you name it, he’s been it. We know him from Singapore, no mistake.”

  “Though we didn’t know he was here in Britain until yesterday, apparently,” said Audley, looking at Roskill.

  “Well, he’s not on the embassy list, for heaven’s sake,” said Roskill defensively. “And they’ve got nearly ninety on it already, it’s one of the biggest single overseas posts. We just can’t keep track of all the extras they’ve brought in outside London, we just don’t have the manpower—at least, not to watch our own bloody allies.”

  “Bloody allies is right,” murmured Frances Fitzgibbon.

  “He’s a CIA man?” said Mosby. “Harry Finsterwald?”

  “Harry Feiner, Captain.” Frances Fitzgibbon corrected him with the air of a little schoolmarm trying to straighten out a big stupid pupil. “We caught up with him yesterday when we were inquiring into the death of the man who supplied Major Davies with his books, an old man named Barkham.”

  “You mean he was murdered—that old man?” said Shirley.

  “It looked like natural causes, Mrs Sheldon. But now we’re not so sure… What we are sure of, from what his assistant says, is that Mr Barkham was visited by Harry Feiner and a coloured man several days ago. And they were checking up to find out how much Major Davies told him.”

  “And whatever it was, it was too much,” said Roskill.

  “So we put two men on to Feiner this morning, and those two men are now missing,” said Frances Fitzgibbon.

  The late afternoon sun slanted in through the tall windows, blazing on the legs of a suit of armour which stood sentinel on one side of the door—

  And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot—reminding Mosby of the lines he had learnt so recently in his role of Arthurian enthusiast. And reminding him also, more terrifyingly, that it was the same sun which had shone so brightly on the bodies of the two British security men in the churchyard.

  Nightmares in daylight were bad; and nightmares in sunlight were worse. But worst of all were nightmares that weren’t nightmares at all, but reality.

  “You know, I do think he’s beginning to catch on,” said Roskill. “He looks quite sick.”

  “Well, I’m still lost,” said Shirley huskily. “Because you just can’t mean that the CIA’s going round murdering people—innocent people.”

  “Why not, Mrs Sheldon?” asked Frances.

  “Why, we simply don’t do that sort of thing.”

  “Not in Vietnam?”

  “In Vietnam?” Shirley floundered beautifully. “But this isn’t Vietnam—this is England.” She looked around her as though for confirmation. “This is England.”

  And it could hardly be more England than right here, thought Mosby bitterly: Camelot House, in the midst of its green parkland. The heart and capital of King Arthur’s Avalon.

  “It’s England,” Frances nodded. “And it’s a foreign country, just like Vietnam. Where Harry Feiner cut his teeth, among other things.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Shirley obstinately. “And I won’t believe it. We’re on the same side—we’re allies. And I don’t mean like
in Vietnam, either. That was different.”

  “It certainly was—for the Vietnamese.”

  “Your politics are beginning to show, Olga dear,” said Roskill lightly.

  “Olga?” Shirley frowned. “I thought it was Frances?”

  “Ah, but haven’t you noticed the striking resemblance to Olga Korbut? The shape and size—the delicate sense of balance? The swift karate chop?”

  “Children—children!” Audley intervened. “What Mrs Fitzgibbon means, Mrs Sheldon, is simply that the CIA is concerned with the welfare of the United States. There’s nothing in their so-called 1947 Charter about being kind to foreigners—and nor should there be. National security won’t run in tandem with international relations—they trip each other up.”

  “Doesn’t run awfully well with the Ten Commandments either, and that’s a fact,” said Roskill. “Whatever Olga thinks.”

  “Don’t paraphrase Lenin at me,” Frances snapped back.

  “Wasn’t thinking of Lenin—it was Allen Dulles, who ran the CIA when you were playing with your dolls. ‘Obedience to a higher loyalty’ was what he called it.” Roskill nodded amiably to Shirley. “Meaning, you can fight as dirty as you like if it’s for your country.”

  “ ‘My country, right or wrong’,” murmured Mosby.

  “That’s what it used to amount to, you’re right. Nice convenient double standards all round—Germans bomb Coventry, that’s terror bombing, we bomb Hamburg, that’s area bombing. They have wicked U-boats, we have brave submarines— life was a great deal simpler in the old days. But not any more, because now it works the other way round.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “Because we have the U-boats now, and they have the submarines, my dear fellow.”

  Mosby looked suitably puzzled.

  “What he means,” said Audley, “is that if the Russians— the KGB, that is—play dirty, no one takes much notice. But if the CIA plays dirty and gets caught, then there’s likely to be a major scandal. You only have to look at the headlines over here, never mind in the United States. And exactly the same applies to… us… if we play dirty.”

  “Which leaves us both with the Eleventh Commandment— ‘Thou shalt not be found out—or else’,” added Roskill. “Which the CIA has jolly well transgressed with a vengeance over Badon Hill, unfortunately.”

  Mosby fought to keep his puzzled expression steady. For beyond the fear for himself and Shirley, and the helplessness and loneliness of their position, there was forming a terrible doubt. It was no longer a question of how the British could have gotten everything ass-about-face, but supposing they hadn’t?

  “Let me get you straight—“ Shirley spoke more harshly now, as though the same doubt had proved too strong for the Lady Macbeth interpretation “—you are really asking us to believe that our own Secret Service would not only kill—murder—some old man, some innocent old man… and maybe two of your people… but Americans too? Our own servicemen? You’re asking us to believe that!”

  “The evidence is circumstantial.” Audley stared at her silently for a moment. “But that’s the way it looks.”

  “In the cause of a higher loyalty,” said Frances.

  “Higher loyalty my fanny!” snapped Shirley.

  Roskill started to laugh.

  “You think that’s funny?” Shirley rounded on him fiercely. “It’s all a big joke—killing people? You have to be sick.”

  “I’m sorry, really I am.” Roskill looked contrite. “But I wasn’t laughing at you, and it isn’t funny. It was just the look on Olga’s face when you said ‘fanny’.”

  “Huh?”

  Mosby cleared his throat. “It isn’t the same part of the body in English as it is in American, honey.”

  “It isn’t? Well, what is—?” She stopped suddenly and blushed to the roots of her hair. It was the first time Mosby had ever seen her blush.

  “You were saying, Mrs Sheldon?” said Audley gently.

  “I think I know what my wife was going to say—“ began Mosby.

  “It’s okay, Mose,” said Shirley. “If that’s playing dirty I can take it. I guess they won’t take any notice of what I say anyway, but I’m still going to say it. And it’s this: if you think we’re the sort of people who’d kill a dog just to hush up that we’ve maybe accidentally messed up a piece of ground where somebody fought a battle a million years ago, then you aren’t only crazy—you really do have to be sick. And you can laugh at that if you like.”

  Atta girl, thought Mosby fondly. Not a Stephen Decatur patriot, nor even a Sam Smith one, but a pure John Paul Jones—I have not yet begun to fight—even with the ship sinking under her.

  “I agree with you, Mrs Sheldon,” said Audley. “But, alas, it doesn’t happen that way. With the KGB certainly, but not with you Americans, nor with us British. With us both it happens by slow degree, not by wicked intention.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “I don’t expect you to. Take Vietnam, for instance, about which Mrs Fitzgibbon is so very sure… No, Frances. Your view is far too simplistic… I happen to believe that Kennedy and Johnson were both great presidents. And what’s more, fundamentally honest men too, both of them. But by degrees they got into—Vietnam. And My Lai, and all the rest of it.

  “And Watergate too, to make a more practical example… It wasn’t the original crime—the stupid little break-in—that wasn’t even necessary. Somebody simply had a higher loyalty on a much lower level, that’s all—somebody took a bad decision on a lower level, and somebody else took another bad decision on a slightly less lower level. And after that one thing led straight to another, and brought the whole house down.”

  “But the rottenness at the top was the measure of the rottenness at the bottom, David,” said Frances Fitzgibbon.

  “Simplistic again. Your rottenness at the top brought the boys back home from Vietnam, Frances. Your rottenness gave Henry Kissinger his chance… But that’s all a matter of opinion, and ours is a problem of fact. We have a much more important crisis here and now to resolve—which matters to Britain as well as America.”

  “Which is?” said Mosby.

  “Which is that the CIA in Britain is in jeopardy, and with it the whole of the American presence here. And that means in Europe. And that means the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. And that means the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.” Audley pointed at Shirley. “All because of your little piece of ground where somebody maybe once fought a battle —are the stakes high enough for you now, Mrs Sheldon? Are they enough to kill a dog for?”

  Mosby was astonished at the Englishman’s vehemence: it was like discovering that in reality the game of cricket was played not for the sake of the game, but to the death.

  “I don’t understand,” said Shirley.

  “No?” Audley’s tone was brutal now. “Well, I’ll tell you. Destroying the site of Mons Badonicus would have been a bit of damn bad publicity for you—for the United States. People care about things like that nowadays, and some of them care passionately even. In fact even I care, and I’m one of your dirty trick players. Because a country’s past is the sum of its present, or should be, and I happen to love my country—even enough to have some of those higher loyalties of Allen Dulles’s. Not for England, or Wales, or Scotland, but for Britain.”

  “But we don’t—“ Shirley began.

  “No, honey,” said Mosby, “let him have his say.”

  Audley looked at them for a moment. “Every year thousands of ancient sites are destroyed—half the time without anyone even knowing. We’ve even got an organisation called ‘Rescue’ which tries to save them, or at least to record them, before the damned motorways cut through them—or the runway extensions. This year the Government’s given Rescue over a million pounds, when we’re flat broke—that’s the measure of it. People care.

  “And Badon isn’t just another Roman villa, another mediaeval pottery. Badon’s King Arthur—the lost battle. Nine-tenths of the people have never heard of it,
but they’ve all heard of Arthur. So for a start, it isn’t just a piece of ground, do you understand that, Mrs Sheldon?”

  Mosby stuck his jaw out. “Okay, Audley. We both understand what it is.”

  “Good. But your General Ellsworth didn’t understand.”

  “General Ellsworth?”

  “That’s right. ‘Build the runway’ he says. And that was the first bad decision, because at that point you could have saved the whole thing. Wodden isn’t the only base surplus to RAF requirements by any means, if you want longer runways.”

  “General Ellsworth said that?”

  “He said it. And then when they’d bulldozed Windmill Knob flat and the thing started to blow up in his face, the CIA made another bad decision. They said cover up.”

  He looked at Mosby expectantly, but this time Mosby had nothing to say. General Ellsworth?

  Audley shook his head. “If they’d come to us instead, we couldn’t have stopped the bad publicity. Not by then, anyway. But we could have taken Ellsworth’s head on a plate, and we could have just about survived it one way or another. Only someone in the State Department must have realised how bad the publicity would be—someone who knew his Arthurian history, for all I know. Someone who could see the headlines and thought he couldn’t handle them. So Davies had to have his big mouth shut for good.”

  “And bingo!” murmured Roskill. “Watergate!”

  “Only the name will be ‘Wodden’ in future,” said Frances.

  “Or ‘Badon’, more likely,” said Roskill.

  Audley silenced them with a look. “And that was the dirty job the CIA had given to them: cover it all up. Bury it.”

  For five seconds—ten seconds—nobody spoke. It was as though the last two words had told the whole story.

  Then Shirley spoke: “How can you be so sure that’s the way it was? You said it was—circumstantial?”

  “It’s more than that. I wish to God it wasn’t, otherwise we’d still have a chance of smothering it. And don’t think I wouldn’t if I could, Mrs Sheldon.”

  She stared at him. “But—but Badon’s been destroyed. And Davies is dead. I know it’s—horrible. But he is dead.”

  “But Billy Bullitt isn’t,” said Audley.