Our Man in Camelot (2 page)

“Hell, man—he asked some bookseller about a book, he didn’t ask them himself. And an old book too. So let’s not go into orbit till we know what this Bede-thing is. One in Leningrad and the other in Gorky—you know what it is?”

“Never heard of it. Leningrad and Gorky are both non-strategic targets. They’re industrial/population primaries—iron and steel, oil refineries, major generating centres. They’d maybe figure in a second strike.”

Merriwether started to giggle, then checked himself quickly. “Harry, Harry—he’s talking about history books, not nuclear warfare. Old books and old history.”

Finsterwald examined the letter again. “Well, he sure isn’t talking about birds, and that’s the truth,” he admitted grudgingly.

“Now there you’ve got a point,” Merriwether agreed. “It looks like his bird watching was strictly for the birds. Seems he was doing one thing for our benefit and another for his own, and
that
is kind of suspicious. Let me have a look for myself.”

Finsterwald watched in silence as his partner read the letter.

“ ‘Wishing you all success in your continuing researches’.”

Merriwether repeated finally. “Whatever he was doing, sounds like he meant business… You ever heard of this battle of—what was it?—Badon?”

Finsterwald shrugged. “Search me. But it’ll be easy to look up—unless it’s some kind of code-word.”

“Uh-uh.” The negro shook his head. “If Davies wasn’t on the level and this was coded it’d be about birds, not battles.”

“Then why the hell the bird cover?”

“We don’t know it was a cover. He could have been interested in battles as well as birds. No law says what a man does in his own time.”

“And I say it still doesn’t add up. It smells from here to—to Novgorod.”

“Could be you’re right at that…” Merriwether flipped over the typescript to reveal the bill beneath it. For a moment he stared at the list of items casually, then he stiffened. “
Jesus
!”

“What is it, Cal?” His partner’s sudden excitement hit Finsterwald like a shock-wave. “Pay dirt?”

“Pay dirt?” Merriwether’s lip curled. “Man—I’ve been slow. I’ve been one stupid black son-of-a-bitch.”

“How?”

Merriwether held out the bill. “Look at it—just look at it.”

Harry Finsterwald looked at the list.

The Observer’s Book of Birds.
A Guide to the Birds of Britain.
The Bird-Watcher’s ABC.

“So he did bird-watch,” said Finsterwald.

“He bought a pile of bird books,” corrected Merriwether. “That was four months ago—see the date?”

Edward Grey: The Charm of Birds.
British Birds in Colour.
Gildas. De Excidio et Conguestu Britanniae. Trans.
Nennius: Historia Britonum. Trans.
Malory: Le Morte d’Arthur. Trans.
Bede: Historia Ecclesiastica. Trans.

“Bede.” Finsterwald looked up sharply.

“Keep going, man.”

Geoffrey of Monmouth: Historia Regum Britanniae. Trans.
Alcock: Arthur’s Britain.
Morris: The Age of Arthur.
Chambers: Arthur of Britain.
Bullitt: Britain in the Dark Ages (Two vols.).
O’Donnell Lectures: Angles and Britons.
Stenton: Anglo-Saxon Britain.

Finsterwald’s eye ran on down the page—

Continued overleaf

“For God’s sake—it goes on forever,” he protested. “He must have spent a goddamn fortune!”

“Not a fortune. About £220—say about 500 bucks.”

“But just on books.”

Merriwether grinned. “In four months? On his pay that was just the loose change. If it was women or horses you wouldn’t think twice about it.”

“But these are—hell, they’re weird.” Finsterwald slapped the list as though it offended him. “
The Archaeology of Post-Roman Britain…A Gazeteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites
. Just those two set him back—nearly 25 dollars. Cash money.”

“Cash money.” Merriwether echoed the words happily.

“Sure. It says ‘cash’ down here.” Finsterwald consulted the list. “As of this moment he owes just 38 pence—30 for the pamphlet and 8 for the postage.”

“Exactly right, man. He paid cash money for everything he bought—that’s what his cheque counterfoils say. And from the dates on that bill he must have called at that bookshop almost every week to pick up what he’d ordered. Only the last time he must have asked for a full list of what he’d bought—‘as per your instructions’ it says. And when he didn’t turn up last week the bookseller just popped the latest thing in the same envelope and brought him up to date with the news.”

Finsterwald nodded. “Okay—so what?”

“Harry—“ Merriwether spread his hands “—so this is probably the first letter Barkham ever wrote to him. If he called in every week, and paid cash for what he bought, there wouldn’t be any need to write to each other. And the guys who cleaned this place out must have known that. They just didn’t know there was a letter in the post.”

Finsterwald opened his mouth, then closed it.

“The guys who—? What guys?”

Merriwether waved his hand, for the moment ignoring him. “I knew there was something wrong with this place—it’s got a wrong feel to it, like ‘who’s been sleeping in my bed, man?’. Only I was dumb, and I just had to go looking for something that ‘ud tell me I had the right feeling.”

“For Pete’s sake—what guys?” Finsterwald pleaded.

“Who knows what guys? The ones who stopped Davies’s mouth. The guys from Nijni Novgorod, maybe, I don’t know. But for sure someone’s been here before us.”

“How do you know?”

Merriwether pointed. “That piece of paper you’re holding tells me how. Because there’s not one of the books on that list in this house but those five bird books—“ He thrust four chocolate fingers and a chocolate thumb at Finsterwald. “So where those books go? They didn’t fly away like birds, man. ‘And good luck with your continuing researches’—what researches? There’s not one scrap of paper in his desk says he was researching anything, nothing… And you can’t tell me someone who buys all those books doesn’t make a single note ‘bout what he’s working on.”

Finsterwald stared at the list.

Keller: The Conquest of Wessex.

“There must be forty—fifty—books here,” he said finally.

“Not here now, there aren’t. Just five—on bird-watching.” Merriwether’s derision was unconcealed. “And we nearly bought it, Harry. We came looking for a pilot who watched birds, and that’s what we got, and that’s what we were meant to get. Until the mailman delivered the mail.”

“But for God’s sake—“ Finsterwald lifted the list “—what would anybody want with
this
lot? It’s crazy.”

“Not to somebody, it isn’t. Looks like the Major researched into the wrong piece of history.”

I

IT WAS LIKE
they said: the seventh wave was often the biggest one.

The last big one had slopped over into the castle moat, smoothing its sharp edges. Then there had been six weaker ones which had all fallen short. And now came the fatal seventh.

Mosby had watched it gathering itself out in the bay. At first it hadn’t looked much, more a deep swell than a conventional wave like its white-capped predecessors. But where they had broken too early and wasted their strength in froth, the seventh had seemed to grow more powerful, effortlessly engulfing the first fifty yards of the line of saw-toothed rocks to the left and only revealing its true nature when it burst explosively over one tall pinnacle which until now had remained unconquered.

As the pinnacle disappeared in a cloud of spray the castle-builder looked up from his work. For a second he stood still, the sand dropping from his hands, staring at the oncoming wave. Then he swung round and lifted up the toddler beside him and deposited her within the innermost walls of the castle.

Mosby took in the scene with regret. It wasn’t just that the big Englishman had been working like a beaver for upwards of an hour getting the castle just the way he wanted it, but also that the end-product was a work of art the like of which Mosby had never seen.

It wasn’t just a pile of sand, but a real castle, with inner and outer walls and regularly-spaced towers, each capped with a conical fairy-tale roof, rising to a massive central keep. There was a moat and a drawbridge complete with a barbican and a defensive outwork, all of which had been constructed to a carefully drawn ground plan which had been marked out in the smooth sand before construction had started.

In fact it wasn’t only a real castle, but obviously an actual one—he had watched the man count off the towers one by one as though checking them in his memory, finally nodding in agreement with himself that he’d got it right. It was a good bet that somewhere, maybe not far from here, on some hill above some sleepy English town, he’d find a great grey stone pile, dog-eared by centuries of neglect, matching those walls and towers. And maybe once upon a time some highly-paid craftsman had built just such a model to show the King of England what he was getting for his cash.

The child’s squeal of excitement broke his flash of historical inspiration. Defeat on the natural breakwaters of the rocky headlands on either side of the bay seemed to have concentrated the wave’s power: it swallowed the last retreating remnants of the sixth wave and surged forward up the beach towards the castle.

The outer walls and towers were instantly overwhelmed, dissolved and swept away irresistibly as the rushing water encircled the castle, meeting in its rear in a triumphant collision on the site of the drawbridge.

For two seconds the child stood surrounded by the towers of the inner keep. Then, as the wave began to retreat, these last defences cracked and toppled outwards to be swept away with the rest. The ruin of the castle was complete. It was a goddamn pity.

As far as the child was concerned, nevertheless, the breaking of father’s masterpiece was the making of the occasion, and presumably that was the nature of the deal between the two because he showed no sign of irritation as she danced in triumph on the wreckage.

“Ozzie, Daddy—say Ozzie,” squealed the child.

Shirley lifted her head from the towel on which she lay sunbathing beside Mosby. He saw the little two-way radio tucked under a folded edge and, in the same glance, couldn’t avoid also seeing the shapely breasts which had been freed from the bikini top.

“Harry says he’s fixed the car,” she murmured. “He’s getting out now.”

“Great.” Mosby’s eyes felt like chapel hat-pegs.

“And stop peeking, Mose honey. Watch the birdie, not the boobs.”

“
Say Ozzie, Daddy—Ozzie-mandy
!”

Mosby smiled a warm, husbandly smile. “Shirley Sheldon is a shameless slut,” he hissed.

“Shirley Sheldon is trying to revive her long-lost tan.” She lowered herself back on to the towel. “You just mind the store like a good boy—just keep your mind on our business.”

Mosby shook his head in despair and turned back to observe the big Englishman.

“Ozzie-mandy, please, Daddy.”

“All right, all right.”

The Englishman looked around him, first to his left, then his right and finally behind him. Mosby lolled in his deck-chair as one half-asleep, his arms hanging loosely. There was no one else at all on the tiny beach; either it was not well-known or (which was more likely) Harry had devised some way of temporarily closing the track which led to it.

Secure behind his dark glasses Mosby watched himself being scrutinised. He sensed that there would be no ozzie-mandying unless he could give the impression of being dead to the world, so as a final piece of encouragement he drew a deep breath and returned it by way of what he judged to be a realistic snore.

The Englishman struck an attitude.

“I met a traveller from an antique land“

— he intoned in a deep voice.

“Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…”

He accompanied the words with gestures in the style of some great nineteenth century tragedian, the child watching him with her mouth hanging open, obviously understanding nothing, but enjoying everything.

“Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command—“

He paused in order to frown, twist his lips hideously and finally sneer horribly. The child gave two little excited jumps, but made not a sound even when her hands came together.

“Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:”

Mosby was overwhelmed by a feeling of unreality. He knew there couldn’t be any mistake, the identification was utterly positive.

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ “

Shirley raised her head again, this time clasping herself to herself more modestly. “What the hell’s going on?” she grated.

The sound of her voice couldn’t possibly have carried over the crash of the waves; it must have been his own involuntary movement which the man caught out of the corner of his eye.

“
Nothing beside remains
—“ he faltered. Mosby shifted his position, sinking further into somnolence, and snored again obligingly as a warning to Shirley and an encouragement to Ozymandias.

“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias bowed to his daughter and the child applauded him. Mosby himself concentrated on adjusting his preconceptions about the British.

But now there was a movement in the corner of his own eye. The man’s wife had risen from the tartan rug on which she had been lying and was strolling down towards the sea’s edge, a tall willowy ash blonde with that haughty don’t-give-a-damn British aristocratic expression which repelled and attracted him at the same time, at least when he encountered it in the female of the species. He smiled inwardly as he remembered arguing with Doc McCaslin over that look, as to whether it was bred or bought, with Doc finally convincing him that if caught young enough any little sow’s ear from the East End of London—or Brooklyn—could be converted into this sort of silk purse by English private education. All one needed was forty thousand spare dollars, give or take a few thousand, over ten or twelve years.