‘What’s that, Commander?’ said Mrs Harlin dangerously.
It wasn’t in the least surprising that they both knew what a tripod mast was, the naval officer and the military historian—the sometime-sailor and othertime-scholar. But what the devil did those masts signify here and now?
‘Tripod masts—yes.’ Paul nodded to his friend, then braced himself in Mrs Harlin’s direction. ‘Nonetheless … and in spite of the Deputy-Director … I will speak with Miss Loftus now, Mrs Harlin. On a purely professional matter. And an urgent one.’ He turned towards Elizabeth, and pointed at the entrance door behind her. ‘Just two minutes, Elizabeth—outside.’
‘Dr Mitchell!’ snapped Mrs Harlin.
‘Professional business, Elizabeth. Flag of truce on other matters—that’s a promise. Scouts’ honour.’
‘Dr Mitchell!’
‘It’s all right, Mrs Harlin.’ Elizabeth could see that Paul was genuinely worried, and that he didn’t care about hiding his real feelings. So that was perhaps the right moment for her to start worrying too. ‘Very well, Paul. Two minutes.’
‘Hmm … ’ The sound indicated that Elizabeth had gone down a snake in Mrs Harlin’s estimation. ‘Very well, Miss Loftus. But I shall inform the Deputy-Director that you are on your way.’
‘Well, Paul?’
‘I’m sorry I fluffed it out there, Elizabeth—with the fashion bit. But I always do, you know me … Just, I prefer you unadorned.’
Naked and unadorned? remembered Elizabeth. He was still fluffing it. ‘Two professional minutes, you said.’
His face set, almost expressionless. ‘We haven’t seen each other for an age, Elizabeth. We’ve both been busy.’
She felt absurdly disappointed with his breach of trust. ‘Paul—you promised—‘ She broke off.
‘I’m not breaking any promise. We’ve all been busy.’
‘Then get to the point.’
‘That is the point. I know what you’ve been doing here: you’ve been co-ordinating the Cheltenham inquiry—Audley’s big job.’
Elizabeth stared at him. There was no reason that he should know who was on the computer at this end. No reason, except that he was Paul Mitchell.
‘I know because I’ve been not only supplying you with some of your information, but also answering some of your questions, Elizabeth.’ He seemed to be able to read some of her mind. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that everyone has an individual style of mind—mind, as distinct from literary style? And once you know the person, it’s almost as good as a fingerprint. Like a mind-print … But, anyway, I know—okay?’
That was really quite interesting, and not least because it warned her how much she still had to learn. ‘So what?’
‘So it’s quite important, in its way, what you’ve been doing. And you’re asking the right questions. You’re good, Elizabeth—I hate to have to admit it, but you are good. You sit here, in that little nunnery cell of yours, and you actually think. And you think to some purpose.’
‘Now you’re being patronizing—that’s what I’m thinking at this moment.’
His eyes clouded. ‘Of course. Don’t you realize that that’s my doom, Elizabeth—the one gift the Good Fairy denied me? If I love someone I always say the wrong thing to her, no matter what I mean to say. But we’re talking business now.’
‘I’ve yet to hear any.’ She couldn’t afford to weaken. ‘Come to the point.’
‘I’m still there, I haven’t left it. I—‘ He stopped suddenly, and shook his head, though more at himself than at her, Elizabeth thought. And, in spite of his redoubled promise, that suggested that he still wasn’t talking business. ‘Look, Elizabeth, I obviously haven’t got a lot of time, so I can’t explain in any detail how I know what I know, so what I think may not seem very convincing to you. But I want you to listen—and to bear with me, please. Please?’
‘For about thirty seconds.’ She didn’t look at her watch. ‘You heard what Mrs Harlin said?’
‘Oh—the hell with her!’ He gestured. ‘And bugger Oliver—Fatso! Blame me, if you like.’
‘It’s easy for you to say that. You’re old establishment. I’m hardly fledged.’
He stared at her. ‘Not so easy, actually. I’m on a bloody knife-edge with our Deputy-Director. But … not that I care. Just trust me this once, enough to listen to me, Elizabeth—Miss Loftus, if you like.’ The stare became fixed. ‘In fact, if you listen to me now, you can be Miss Loftus for ever after. And that’s another promise—until the Sun stands still, and the Moon ceases to rise. Okay?’
The offer took her aback. He was offering her … he was offering her too much, in terms of what he had to offer. Or perhaps he was offering enough to frighten her, on those terms.
She had to devalue it, to make a jest of it. ‘Okay, Paul. But only if you’ll tell me what “tripod masts” means, between you and James—?’
Again that clouded, defenseless look. Then it vanished. ‘That’s easy—James was just warning me to lay off. To run for my life, before Mrs Harlin sank me without a trace.’ He almost smiled. ‘Tripod masts—you ought to have got that one, Miss Loftus, with all those naval histories of your father’s that you copy-typed for him.’
The reminder of past drudgery hardened her heart finally: he knew altogether too much about that past of hers, and by recalling it he merely encouraged her to hold him to his latest promise. ‘I know what tripod masts are, Dr Mitchell.’
He took the point: she could see him reading the full meaning of the smallest print of the agreement he had proposed. ‘Not what they are, but what they meant.’ The fixed emotionless stare was back. ‘Perhaps not inappropriately on this occasion, more than Commander Cable meant himself.’
There was no percentage in trying to read his riddles. ‘And what did they mean?’
‘Death, Miss Loftus, just death.’ He let the word sink in. The Battle of the Falklands—not the recent unpleasantness, but the original one in 1914. James and I both read it up when he got back from there, just for curiosity. Before he closed in on Port Stanley in 1914, von Spec sent in a light cruiser to have a look. And the poor devil in the crow’s nest spotted tripod masts in the harbour. And he knew in that second that he was a dead man, because they meant battle-cruisers—too big to fight, and too fast to out-run—I’m sure you remember that, Miss Loftus.’
Elizabeth did remember that, from Father’s cold comparison of the customs of naval warfare in the good old days of wooden ships, when a man could surrender to superior force without losing his honour, and the rules of the supposedly more civilized twentieth century, in which no quarter was asked or granted—‘the logical requirement of democratic warfare, which was of course conducted not for vulgar profit, but for noble causes.’
‘I see.’ And on a quite juvenile level she could see that James had warned Paul not to tangle with Mrs Harlin, who certainly had tripod masts. But, on a more serious level, Paul had seen the masts, yet had stayed to fight. ‘So what is it that you have to tell me, that’s so important it can’t wait?’
‘Okay.’ While she had been thinking, so had he been. ‘I think we have all the ingredients of a panic. And, as we don’t have them very often here, they always scare the pants off me.’
‘What sort of panic?’ The why could come later.
‘I don’t know, exactly. But all the signs are there.’
Better to let him have his way. She must be late already, but she could handle the Deputy-Director, at a pinch. ‘What signs?’
‘We’ve all been taken off what we were doing. And I know what I was doing—and what you were doing, close enough. And I know what Major Turnbull was doing, for other reasons, which I don’t intend to bore you with … And I’ve a pretty damn good idea what old James was up to, come to that.’
As usual, he knew too much for his own good.
‘All right.’ He misread her silence and her expression, nevertheless: with people, and perhaps with her in particular, he was fallible. ‘They took me off. And
they took David Audley off. And they took you off. Which I know because I have this access to the computer, to pick its brains, and they haven’t cancelled it. So I tried to pick yours a couple of days ago. And you just weren’t available. See?’
Even with her limited experience, Elizabeth saw. Anyone armed with those rights of access and his knowledge of how the department worked (never mind his insatiable curiosity) could probably elicit a great deal of information. For a start it might be mostly negative, but he would surely have more sophisticated methods than counting the cars in the car park to find out more.
The very thought made her cautious. ‘And what did you conclude from that, Dr Mitchell?’
‘It didn’t start with you.’ He shook his head. ‘I was engaged in something quite interesting, not to say important.’ The shake became almost an apologetic shrug. ‘I thought maybe I could find a substitute.’
Again, Elizabeth saw—and saw also how he had reached this pass: he had cast around for someone else to do the job he’d been given—someone engaged on less important matters—before making a fuss. And, naturally enough, he’d tried to hang the albatross on her neck first—the most junior, if not the newest, recruit.
Oh, typical Paul! ‘And came up with a dusty answer?’
The corridor door behind them swished and she saw his eyes flick past her, and then come back to her almost pleadingly.
‘Miss Loftus—‘ She just caught the last of Mrs Harlin’s frown at Paul as she turned ‘—the Deputy-Director has asked for you again. I cannot reasonably invent another excuse, unless you actually wish to be indisposed. At the moment he insists that either you are here, or you aren’t.’ She gave Elizabeth the benefit of the doubt, just. ‘I do think you ought to come now.’
Tripod masts! thought Elizabeth. Or, to get away from their ridiculous naval code, from a past which she preferred to forget, here was a snake or a ladder, and she could choose whether to go up or down.
Thank you, Mrs Harlin. Please tell the Deputy-Director that I’ll be with him as soon as I’m free.’
Mrs Harlin very nearly replied. But then she didn’t, and Elizabeth watched the door swish, and lock.
‘This had better be good, Paul—Dr Mitchell.’ That he was regarding her with that ridiculous expression only irritated her more, sharpening her voice: on his face it was a positively unnatural look, quite alien to his character. ‘And it had better be quick, too.’
‘Oh—it’s good.’ Far too late, he erased the expression. ‘That is, it’s good intelligence. But it’s bad news for you. Because I think Fatso is going to send you into the field.’
‘Why—‘ She just caught the wrong question in time -the Why do you think that’s bad news? question. ‘How d’you know I’m going into the field?’ Besides, damn it, it wasn’t bad news at all—it was good news!
‘Because Jim Cable is taking your job, as of now. And you’ve got an appointment with Fatso in minus five minutes. And because I can read the signs when they’re in big flashing neon lights.’
He knew more than he was saying. All that stuff about using his SG rights might be true, but that also was window-dressing, concealing some other source of information which he was not about to reveal. So she must push him.
‘You haven’t really told me anything I couldn’t deduce from the cars down below.’ She gave him Admiral Varney’s down-the-nose look.
‘Is that so?’ She got a Mitchell-ancestor look in return—maybe from his 1918 grandfather, of whom he was so inordinately proud, who had died on the far side of the Hindenburg Line. ‘And you counted David Audley’s car too, did you? And that didn’t worry you, then?’
‘Why should that worry me?’ But it did now, all the same.
‘Oh—come on, Elizabeth! Jack Butler’s on leave, because he has to take some leave, some time … So he made bloody sure that David wasn’t around, when Fatso Latimer was running the shop. And Fatso wouldn’t have summoned David back if there wasn’t an emergency—he may be a basket-hanger, but he isn’t an idiot.’ He glowered at her. ‘And I’m being sent back to Cheltenham. Though there’s precious little I can do there in David’s absence.’
When he delivered the final emphasis she knew that he wasn’t going to tell her any more. But, because of his weakness (and however badly that made her feel, for pressing that unfair advantage), it was worth one more push—even if she had to lead in with that wrong question, which she had managed to avoid.
‘All right. So maybe there is some sort of emergency. And maybe the Deputy-Director is going to give it to me.’
‘No “maybe”—‘
‘All right—no “maybe”.’ She concealed her pleasure, but thought that he was a fool not to allow for it. But then, where she was concerned he was quite often foolish, they were agreed on that. ‘And I’ll even grant you the field-work hypothesis—though you haven’t supported it with a single hard fact.’ That was the first element of the push. Now for the second. ‘But why should that be bad for me?’
He pursed his lips. But, of course, he wasn’t that foolish: he knew when he was being pushed.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ She acted out a pretense of irritation by settling her handbag under her arm and swaying towards the door. ‘I’ve had practically two years here—even allowing for the instruction courses, and the information seminars, and all the rest of it … I know we are “Research and Development”, and not an active department. But we do undertake field-work on occasion -I do know that too.’
What she also knew was that she didn’t need to elaborate on that. He had been engaged in field-work when they had first met. And she had been the field in which he had been working.
‘Yes.’ He couldn’t escape from his own memories. ‘We do field-work.’
‘So what are you complaining about?’ The truth about Paul was that although he was reputedly very good in the field, he had several very bad experiences among those memories, which were probably warping his judgment now. Nevertheless, the more he agonized, the more certain she was that he had something more than hypothesis to go on.
A tiny muscle twitched in his cheek, betraying the clenched teeth beneath.
Field-work, thought Elizabeth happily. ‘You’re just wasting my time.’ She settled her handbag under her arm, and started to make the beginning of her turn towards the door.
‘Elizabeth—!’
So much “for the running of the Sun and the rising of the Moon! thought Elizabeth. But this wasn’t the moment to remind him of their already-forgotten treaty—not when he was cracking.
‘Well?’
‘I can’t tell you what I think you’re going to do. But you mustn’t do it.’ For a moment he was lost for words. ‘Field-work is always a matter of choice—we’re not contracted to do it.’
Those were the wrong words, even though accurate. Because they both knew that she couldn’t refuse, even if she had wanted to. Which she didn’t.
‘Why can’t you tell me?’
‘Because … if I’m right—‘ He damn well knew he was right! ‘—it’s a secure classification. And I can’t buck that. Not even for you.’ He shook his head.
God! No wonder he’d been treading like a cat on hot bricks! And—if he was on a knife-edge with the Deputy-Director, as he well might be, being Paul—those bricks would have been more like red-hot if he’d accidentally stumbled on a secure classification! Because—because, if he even mentioned it to her (having once been cleared for it himself), and then she let it slip, she would have to account exactly where and how she’d got it. And that would be all nine lives at one go for the cat.
Poor old Paul! she thought, with all the tolerance of pleasure: to be admitted to such a classification was a mark of professional confidence—not a snake, but a ladder. So he couldn’t have told her in advance anything better calculated to encourage her to accept whatever was offered—he’d got it all dead-wrong again!
‘Ah!’ Now she could afford to be merciful. ‘Yes—of course.’ Nod to him—she owed
him that, at least: he’d come in far too close for safety already, knowing already that those tripod masts were there in harbour, waiting for him.
But now he was fumbling in one pocket after another, to find something. ‘But I suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have read the newspapers.’ He was fiddling with a tiny fragment of newsprint, to prise it out from his wallet. ‘David always says that half our work starts in print somewhere, long before we get a tip-off. So you could have read this, from last week’s Telegraph.’ He looked at her as he offered it. ‘And that will establish whether I’m right, anyway.’
Elizabeth took the fragment. It must have filled a hole somewhere, at the bottom of a column: just one small paragraph, with a little two-line heading. It was, she remembered from the Newspaper Course, what they called a ‘filler’. And the Telegraph liked fillers—those tiny bits of news which might, or might not, see the light of day, according to the space left by more important stories above.
Just a matter of chance, in fact—Pointe du Hoc—
And chance, and Paul (who had been trained by David Audley, and who was cleared for this particular secure classification), had rescued this fragment from oblivion.
‘I’d like it back, please.’ After the half-minute he generously allowed, he reached for the evidence of his indiscretion. ‘Have you ever heard of the Pointe du Hoc, Miss Loftus?’
He had remembered the Sun and the Moon. Perhaps the indiscretion had sharpened up his memory.
‘No,’ she lied, with false innocence. ‘It’s in Normandy, somewhere—?’
‘Or Thaddeus Parker?’
‘Who?’ She had maybe been a shade too innocent with that ‘Normandy, somewhere?’, when it was obvious from the text where the Pointe du Hoc was. But she didn’t have to pretend this reaction: that wasn’t the name in the text. ‘Who?’
‘They got it wrong—“Edward Parker”.’ He held up the cutting for an instant, before slotting it back among his credit cards. ‘He ought to have been “Tad”, but for some reason he was always “Ed”. So they made him “Edward” somewhere along the line.’ As he replaced the plastic folder in his pocket, ‘You’ve never heard of Thaddeus Parker—Major “Ed” Parker?’
Here Be Monsters Page 2
