Our Man in Camelot (18 page)

“One or two things.”

“Uh-huh?” She examined her face carefully in the mirror. “So you had an easy time… Well, I didn’t… That town sure doesn’t welcome the motorist. It may be beautiful, but it’s an awful place to park a car in, and that’s the truth. We had to walk miles.”

“You get to see it better that way.”

“Which wasn’t exactly the object of the operation… I look a wreck.”

Not from where I
’
m lying
, thought Mosby, marvelling at the sexiness of her back. He had seen it a good many times before, since the strip-off and make-up routine was her standard procedure, and it wasn’t the first female back he had ever seen. But there was something about Shirley’s back, even down to the slight bulges of flesh which the bra straps pressed up when she lent forward, that never ceased to arouse him. It was just one hell of a sexy back.

And now he was enormously relieved to find that it still aroused him. It signified that he was back to normal again; it was like flexing the fingers on an injured hand and knowing from their movement that no permanent damage had been done. He had killed a man, but Shirley still had a sexy back.

Crouching beside the two bodies among the nettles, waiting for Harry to bring his car up alongside the nearby wall, he had had one long moment of doubt about that. The feeling of shock had passed surprisingly quickly, and Harry’s common sense had given panic no time to develop. Plus the certain knowledge that he hadn’t
meant
to hit so hard—even that maybe he
hadn
’
t
hit so hard. It had been the brass knob on the end of the shaft which had done the mischief, he had found it on the broken end with the tell-tale blood bright on it. If Thickset hadn’t taken that fatal step back—

And then the little pale yellow butterfly had settled on Thickset’s open palm—the nettles were alive with pale yellow butterflies—and he had realised that all his explanations were mere excuses. Old wives’ tales said that butterflies lived just one single day, but the little butterfly was better off than Thickset. Intention, or accident, or plain bad luck didn’t make a damn of difference: the man was dead and he had killed him.

Shirley had stopped looking at herself in the mirror and was looking at him in it.

“You feeling okay, Mose?”

“I’m feeling fine.”

“You look rather pale.”

“I tell you I’m feeling great. But you could make me feel a lot better very easily, you know.”

Now why the hell did I say that
? he thought bitterly as he saw the change in her expression. It was like scratching an itch that was already raw with stupid scratching.

“Don’t kid yourself. It’s me I’m worried about, honey, not you,” said Shirley.

“Well, that’s a start. And you’re beautiful when you’re mad —did anyone ever tell you that?”

Even quarrelling with her was better than nothing.

“Only guys who didn’t get the message first time. But I need you on the top line at the moment.”

“Message received. ‘Is Captain Sheldon combat-ready?’ as General Ellsworth would say… Answer: affirmative. Don’t fret, honey. I’m a real killer today.”

“You’d better be. You’re having tea with Group Captain Bullitt this afternoon.”

“Uh-huh? More cucumber sandwiches?”

She stared at his reflection. “Aren’t you surprised?”

“Not a lot.”

“Or even interested how we got the invite?”

“Not particularly. Audley’s a great fixer, otherwise he wouldn’t be where he is. So he fixed it.”

She examined herself again. “Actually it was Sir Thomas. A friend of his turned out to be a friend of Bullitt’s.”

“Same thing. Audley knows someone who knows someone who knows Bullitt. Just a mathematical progression, like back at home. That’s part of the reason why we got him on our team—he knows the right people.”

“Always supposing Billy Bullitt is the right people.”

Mosby stared up at the ceiling. The blank white expanse of plaster challenged him, like a screen waiting for its pictures.

“He’s the right people.”

“Harry tell you something, then?”

“Some… but not that.”

“But you’re very sure of yourself.” She appeared to concentrate on her eyelashes.

“Uh-huh.”

“Even though it’s like hitting the jackpot first pull?”

The screen was still blank. “Could be the machine’s been fixed that way, honey.”

“You mean they haven’t told us everything?”

Mosby sneered at the ceiling. “Remember what Harry Finsterwald said: I have to be my age… But in the meantime, knowing how Billy Bullitt ticks could be half the battle.”

“And has Harry helped you there? It sounds a tall order— one English air force colonel. You only gave him a few hours to take him to pieces and put him together again.”

“Uh-huh… But I told you last night: if the British had a special file on him—one that Audley remembered—then there was a chance we had one too. We got a lot of files on a lot of people.”

“Mmm…” She brushed at the sooty-black lashes. “Which means we do have one?” No praise and no apology. “He flew with the USAF in Korea.” “
With
the USAF?”

“There were some RAF pilots attached to our F-86 squadrons for combat experience. The British didn’t have anything could stand up to the MiG-15.” “So he had a security clearance, obviously.” “Straight ‘A’ right down the line. World War Two veteran, and what was better, he had a record of fighting the Communists afterwards—British Military Mission to Greece ‘45-‘48, Malayan emergency ‘48-‘50.”

“Sounds our sort of guy.” She was no longer fixing her face, her hands were resting on her lap. “And Korea after that… He really must have been hooked on fighting by then… It makes you think.” “Think what?”

She swung round towards him. “You know he was a student at Oxford in 1939—what do they call them—an undergraduate?” “Think what?”

She shook her head slowly. “I didn’t spend all the morning in dress shops with Faith, Mose honey. David took us straight off to this college, Sir Thomas’s one—and he asked us if we’d had breakfast, for God’s sake, would you believe that?”

“Just an old Anglo-Saxon custom, maybe?” “And then he took us to this other college—that was what he said, but they all look the same to me—and up these staircases, like a rabbit-warren. And there was this room full of old books and papers and dust, and this old, old man. Dr Morton—Dr Oliver Morton. He looked like he was a hundred years old, and he was dusty like the books. And he asked us if we’d have breakfast too.”

“Beats hell out of cucumber sandwiches.”

“It was spooky, honestly. I saw into the bedroom through the open door, and it was full of books too—in piles, on the carpet. Sir Thomas said afterwards that they get to clean his rooms maybe once or twice a year, and then they have to put everything back exactly where it was, otherwise he complains that people have been messing about with his things— he knows where everything is, right down to the last cobweb.”

“And he also knows Billy Bullitt, huh?”

“That’s right. In fact Billy came to see him just recently, when there was all the trouble.”

“Is he an expert on Badon Hill, then?”

“No, he’s an English literature professor—eighteenth century or something. But that was what Billy studied all those years ago, just for a year. Then he quit and joined the RAF to fight the Germans… and he just never came back… Not to study, anyway, but he did come back to see Dr Morton whenever he was in England, which wasn’t often… Did you know he was an orphan?”

“He was brought up by his grandfather, Harry says.”

“That’s right. Professor William Walter Bullitt—and get this, Mose—who was professor of Mediaeval History at Wessex University in the 1930s and a leading authority on Dark Age Britain.”

“Meaning King Arthur.”

“Right. He even wrote a book on him. And the ‘L’ in Billy’s Christian names actually stands for ‘Lancelot’. He inherited a whole library of Arthurian books from the old guy, so it really runs in the family.”

“So?”

“Don’t be dim, honey. If anybody’s got that book on the Novgorod Bede by Bishop What’s-‘is-name it’ll be BiUy Bullitt. The old professor’s library was the best of its kind in the country, Dr Morton said.”

He had been afraid for the preceding half-minute that she would be drawing that intelligent conclusion, because there was no humane way of softening the blow he must then deliver. Better to get it over quickly—

“No good, Shirl. There’s nothing in it.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Howard Morris’s people traced a copy already.”

“Where?”

“The obvious place. In the library of the present Bishop of Walthamstow, where you’d expect it to be. The Novgorod Bede is just an inferior copy of the Leningrad Bede, made about the same time—at least, according to Bishop Harper, and he saw them both. Sorry, honey… But did the old man have anything to say about Billy Bullitt—what he was like?”

Her shoulders drooped in disappointment. She shrugged. “He said he was a nice boy.”

“Boy? At fifty-something?”

“Maybe he’s young for his age.” She turned back to the dressing table mirror. “If you’re a hundred I suppose fifty-something seems boyish, I don’t know… What other good news did Harry Finsterwald bring with him?”

Mosby looked up to the ceiling again. “He had one qufte interesting story about the nice boy—“

Picture.

“What was that?”

It was an airfield. Not the immense Americanised strip at Wodden, with its ever-increasing new runway extensions disappearing into the far distance, but Wodden as it must have been after the war: empty hangars and derelict huts with broken windows, and weeds spreading along the runway joints.

“What was that?” Shirley repeated.

Movement now: men wandering across the tarmac, scratching their heads over the patches of new oil and the bruise-marks in the grass…

“Bullitt had this long furlough coming to him in ‘48, after he came back from Greece and before he was posted to Malaya… Said he was going for a walking holiday in the Scottish Highlands. Only he didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Go walking… There was this film company planned to make a movie about the Battle of Britain. Got plenty of cash on hand, dollars and pounds and Swiss francs. Hired themselves an old RAF field up in the north somewhere… bought themselves some war surplus planes, Mosquitoes and Beau-fighters mostly. Which should have worried someone, but it didn’t…”

She turned. “Mose, you’re losing me.”

“Wrong planes. Battle of Britain was strictly Spitfires and Hurricanes. These were twin-engined jobs—long-range fighter-bombers, low-level strike, that sort of thing— Be like Hollywood making a picture about Pearl Harbour with P-38s and P-51s.”

“So they got the details wrong.”

“They had the details absolutely the way they wanted. Because when the film crew arrived on location to start shooting—no planes… They’d gone shooting somewhere else. Like, for instance, the Sinai Desert.”

“The Sinai?”

Mosby nodded. “1948, Shirl. Lots of Jewish money in motion pictures, always has been. But in 1948 they had other things to spend their money on—things money couldn’t buy so easily, though. Not with a world embargo on Middle East arms.”

She stared at him. “You don’t mean Bullitt flew for the Israelis?”

“Uh-huh. Beats walking in the Highlands by a mile, ferrying hot planes across Europe. Plus maybe a bit of combat at the other end.”

“What the hell did the RAF say to that?”

“They didn’t say anything—because they didn’t know. The British had to hush the thing up, because of the trouble it’d make for them in the Middle East, letting the Israelis pick up the planes under their noses. So they didn’t dare dig too deep. And the Israelis weren’t talking, naturally.”

“So how did we find out?”

“Oh, that’s just part of our good old double-crossing history, honey. Because we were slipping the Israelis the odd B-17— just like the Russians were shipping them old Me-109s crated in Czechoslovakia—so we had some of our boys out there to watch how they made out… And one of them spotted our Billy and his Mosquito.”

“But we didn’t snitch on him?”

“None of our business. Just filed it away for a rainy day, like now.” He smiled at the ceiling. “But he took one hell of a risk, that’s for sure.”

“Why?”

“That’s the big question. He had enough money, because his grandfather left him loaded in ‘45.”

“Any Jewish blood?”

“Not a drop—pure 100 per cent WASP right down the line. And up until that moment pure British patriot too.”

Shirley frowned. “I don’t see where patriotism comes in. The British weren’t fighting the Jews, not after they quit Palestine, anyway.”

“But they sure weren’t fighting
for
them, honey. In fact the Jewish terrorist groups—the Stern Gang and the Irgun—they were just like the IRA, sniping British soldiers in the back and blowing up hotels, and all that crap. I tell you, there was no love lost between the Israelis and the British in ‘48.”

“Maybe he just liked fighting.”

“So he risked getting kicked out of the RAF for one lousy flight and a week’s combat?” Mosby shook his head. “That horse won’t run, Shirl. If he liked fighting then he was set nicely to get all he wanted staying just where he was, the way things were shaping in ‘48. It has to be something else.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not sure. It proves he’s not a Stephen Decatur patriot, anyway. No ‘My country, right or wrong’ nonsense.”

“Could be he just liked the idea of helping David against Goliath. The Jews had it pretty rough.”

“Could be he was living up to his name: William
Lancelot
Bullitt.”

“A one-off ride to the rescue and then back to the arms of good Queen Guinevere?” She shook her head in turn. “Uh-huh. If he was anyone at the court of King Arthur it’d be Sir Galahad, not Sir Lancelot—it was Galahad who went after the Holy Grail, wasn’t it?”

Mosby sat up. “It was. But how do you know?”

“Oh, I know my King Arthur, even if I never heard, of Bede.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean how d’you know Billy Bullitt is a Sir Galahad?”