Sion Crossing (27 page)

“Evidently.” Audley was as susceptible to flattery as anyone—except Jack Butler. “So what was Bill Macallan’s connection with Sion Crossing?” He raised an eyebrow. “I take it you’ve been through to your … friend again? Does he know what you do?”

“Yes.” Mitchell drank some of his beer. “He has a fair idea.”

“And he’s reliable?”

“Absolutely. And as a teacher of American history he has a lot of contacts over there.”

“Even in Sion Crossing?”

“Not exactly
in
Sion Crossing. But the story’s quite well-known, it seems.”

“Yes,” Audley nodded. “Treasure stories usually are. It’s the treasure itself which is elusive. Was it a king’s ransom—a great treasure?”

“No. That’s really the point, David. You see, by ’64—1864—there wasn’t a great deal of hard cash left in the Confederacy. There was a lot of paper money—and bonds, and such like.”

“Uh-huh—naturally … ‘Promise to pay’ rubbish, yes—Scarlett O’Hara’s father invested everything in the ‘Glorious Cause’, as I recall. Like our National Savings and Victory Bonds in the last war—if Mr Hitler had won, all that would have been waste paper. And Mr Lincoln
did
win.” He nodded once more, but then frowned. “But Senator Cookridge must be after gold, not paper, surely?”

“Not this gold.” Peter’s facts and figures came back to Mitchell. “The whole of the Confederate treasury, that Jefferson Davis sent out of Richmond in ’65, only amounted to about a third of a million—in gold, that is … there were millions in paper—but there was actually more private gold in that convoy, from the Richmond banks. Nearer half a million, maybe.”

“From Richmond … in ’65.” Audley looked past him, at the clock. “But what has that got to do with Sion Crossing in ’64?!”

“Nothing—directly. Except that Jefferson Davis’s gold was also plundered. At a place called Chennault Crossroads, in Georgia. They got some of it back, and the lawsuits about possession went on for years afterwards.”

“I still don’t see—”

“What my … contact says, is that Chennault Crossroads is just a historical footnote to the war, David. And Sion Crossing is just a couple of lines on the end of it—a footnote to a footnote. Calling it ‘treasure’ is ridiculous, he says. At the most there was no more than 20,000 dollars in gold and silver, and that’s stretching it. The rest was paper.” He met Audley’s frown. “Chickenfeed, David.”

Audley blinked. “Gold’s never chickenfeed, my lad.”

“Chickenfeed to Senator Cookridge. Not worth the effort—particularly as it most likely doesn’t exist anyway. Because the local militia tangled with Union foragers there—some of it was recovered, but most of it went into the soldiers’ pockets.” He shook his head at Audley. “‘Tipu’s Treasury’ at Mysore. And after the battle of Vittoria in Spain—and the Summer Palace in China … never mind Chennault Crossroads in ’65, or Sion Crossing in ’64.”

A corner of Audley’s mouth twitched. “And Germany in ’45—you have a point, I agree.” He twitched away the memory of Germany in ’45. “But
somebody
thinks this is worth Oliver St John Latimer’s time—somebody thought it was worth
my
time, damn it!”

“Yes.” They had come to it. “And not just your time.”

Audley concentrated on him. “What d’you mean?”

Mitchell experienced a curious twinge of memory of his own past. “You remember what I was doing when we first met, David?”

“You were … writing a book.” For a fraction of time Audley’s expression softened. “I have a copy signed by the author—remember?”

“But that didn’t pay the bills, while I was writing it.”

“No.” Audley knew the economics of historical writing better than most. “You were a leg-man.” He smiled. “You did the donkey-work in the archives for those blessed with more of the world’s goods—or who had comfy academic tenure, and lots of other irons in the fire. Right?”

“I was a researcher.”

“And a good one.” Audley nodded. “That was one of the reasons why we hired you.”

“Yes.” ‘One of the reasons’ was a most delicate way of putting it. “Well … my contact, he uses researchers in the States. He’s been working off and on for several years on a biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest.”

“Oh yes?” Audley took a second to work that out: he was much better on medieval horse-soldiers than their mid-19th century Confederate descendants. “You mean Professor Welsh does?”

There were a lot of ways Audley could have known about Peter Welsh: he could simply have asked Colonel Butler whose Sion Crossing information had been fed into the Beast. But what he was signalling was for Mitchell to cut the crap with him.

Very well
, thought Mitchell. Their time was almost up, anyway. “He had a good one in Atlanta. A lady by the name of Wright—Mrs Holly Wright. She was an ex-librarian whose husband ran out on her, and left her with two children … And they don’t pay librarians much, so she branched out … Peter thought a lot of her, because she was bright, as well as accurate and tenacious, so he paid top rates.”

“Had?”
There wasn’t a hint of softness in Audley’s face now.

“She wrote to him, the last time, to say she’d got this commission from an old buff in the mid-west, to trace the route of a particular Iowan regiment in Sherman’s army. And though the money wasn’t all that good, it could be quite long-term, because the man was some sort of cripple and couldn’t do any of his field-work.”

“The last time?” Audley was adding two-and-two fast now. “What happened?”

“Actually, it wasn’t quite the last time—that was the last letter. But she sent him a card, David.”

“From Smithsville?”

“From near there. There’s nothing photogenic at Smithsville—she always used to make her own cards, with pretty postcards or photos of her own. So … this one was of a historic old church—an ante-bellum one that survived the war. The Sion Crossing Church, it was.”

“What happened to her?”

“She had an accident, David—a road accident—” Mitchell accelerated to forestall Audley’s mounting exasperation “—they found her upside down in her car, in the trees off the inter-state one morning. Her sister wrote to Peter Welsh … It was a dead-straight highway, so they reckoned some damn great truck had maybe shouldered her off, and didn’t stop—maybe didn’t even know … It happens like that out there. Sometimes they don’t even find the wrecks for weeks.”

Audley thought for a moment. “That does sound suspiciously like Mulholland. He likes an accident … And you’re sure Welsh is reliable?”

“Peter Welsh?” Mitchell was taken aback. “Good God—what d’you mean? He’s just a friend … we were up at college together.”

“Famous last words! You asked him about 1864—and he gave you a fatal accident in 1984. That was good of him.”

“So he’s got a suspicious mind. I told you—he knows I work for the government now. He thought what happened to Mrs Wright was a curious coincidence, in the circumstances.”

“In the circumstances we’re up to our necks in coincidences. And this is the final one.” Audley looked at his watch. “We’re into extra time—if Bill Macallan hired someone to look at Sion Crossing, and that someone had a fatal accident—and Winston Mulholland
specializes
in fatal accidents … then that’s way beyond coincidence, Paul.”

And when Oliver St John Latimer was unknowingly following in Mrs Holly Wright’s footsteps
, thought Mitchell.
Christ!

All the same—

“I only see Peter Welsh once in a blue moon. And I got in touch with him this time. I’ve no reason not to trust him, David.”

“Yes.” Audley was only half with him. “And he’s your vintage, not mine … we can check on him later … It’s Bill Macallan I’m worried about—
Bill Macallan
…”

It was no good saying …
but he’s dead, David
again, he had to accept that if Bill Macallan could still worry David Audley from the grave then there was something to worry about.

“Why, David?”

“Why?” Audley shook his head quickly, as though to clear it. “Yes …” He concentrated fully on Mitchell. “The trouble with the passage of time, Paul Mitchell, is that it leaves one behind, pickled with one’s memories … You don’t remember Bill Macallan—and, come to that, neither does Jack Butler … he was playing soldiers somewhere when I was playing silly buggers with Macallan. So Macallan’s just a name in the ‘dead files’ to both of you—and the same with Debreczen—Just a bit of history, like Sion Crossing and General Sherman. But I remember them both—they’re not history to me, they’re
experience
—and bitter bloody experience, too!”

Audley looked at his watch again, and Mitchell decided that it was better to say nothing.

“Debreczen was a KGB place in Hungary, way back.” Audley looked at him. “It wasn’t in the town, it was in the woods some miles away—in an old Hapsburg hunting lodge, not too far from the Russian border … The Germans trained their Brandenburgers there for the Russian front—their Long Range Desert-SAS deep-penetration groups—so it was all wired-up and developed when the Russians took it over in ’45 … And
they
used it in the early ’50s—the Russians—to coddle their deep sleepers … Not your run-of-mill agents, Paul: they were the
really
deep penetration agents, whose job wasn’t to betray anything, but only to be respectable and successful, and rise in the system—in government and politics, or in business and the trade unions—until they were policy-makers … Or, even, if they weren’t so successful, they could help to organize for the next generation after that, because they’d be so clean they’d always be able to set up safe-houses—that was the Debreczen thinking.”

Audley observed Mitchell’s expression, and grinned. “Well, we got a line on this … from the inevitable defector … eventually—” the grin suddenly became painful “—by which time, for the same reason, they’d closed it down. So … all we knew was that a series of individuals had been individually processed—
number
unknown,
name
unknown … there never were names at Debreczen … nationality,
various
—British, American, French, German, Ruritanian … All we actually knew for sure was that they’d been away from whatever they usually did for about a week,
and they hadn’t been where they’d said, but for about a week they’d been at Debreczen
… Maybe they’d been climbing in the Alps, or studying the Renaissance in Florence, or skiing in Austria—or taking pictures of bears in Yellowstone National Park …
But actually they hadn’t been
—okay?”

Mitchell could see. And he could also see that without some creature like the Beast … he could see endless paperwork, for a start.

“And I got the job.” The memory was evidently bitter. “I think old Fred Clinton thought it would cut me down to size—Oliver would almost certainly have done it much better, because he wouldn’t have worried, because he’s got the soul of a clerk in a counting house … But
I
got the job—and I can vividly recall spending a week on a likely lad who claimed to have been studying Romanesque churches in Burgundy, or thereabouts … but who was actually screwing his best friend’s girl in a hotel at Cannes, as it turned out—
and
got her pregnant and married her, which only made it worse … At least, that’s what I
think
—but I’m not sure.”

“Why aren’t you sure?”

“He refused to talk. So there were five days I couldn’t trace, somewhere between Cluny and Cannes. I think he was screwing
her
, somewhere in Provence. But I certainly screwed his chances of promotion, because of those lost days … And I ruined six other men, because I had to put a question mark beside their names—and two of them were undoubtedly innocent—and they weren’t promoted either. I only got close to one genuine traitor, and he shot himself before I could pick him up—or maybe
they
did it for him … I had the feeling they were ahead of me. But it was a bloody disaster either way—I told Fred that every time I got warm, the effing KGB would get there first, but mostly I was just putting black marks against innocent names, and they were laughing their Russian heads off … Maybe I was wrong, but I told him I wanted to quit, anyway.”

“So what happened?”

“I was lucky, actually. Old Fred took a civilized view. He realized I wasn’t as clever as he’d thought. And I also think he was pleased—secretly pleased—to discover that I still had a vestigial conscience of a sort, maybe.” Audley made a face. “He once told me that his special nightmare was that he’d wake up one day to find he was running a British replica of the KGB. He said—” Audley stopped abruptly.

Mitchell turned. Tom had appeared again behind the bar, and was raising the flap.

“That’s it then, Gents.” He strode past them. “This bar’s going public again.”

Mitchell leaned towards Audley. “But what about …
Bill
… you-know-who—?”

Audley waited as Tom unbarred the door and recovered his sign.

“Can we have another five minutes, Tom?”

“You already owes me a good five minutes, Dr Audley.”

“God will reward you, Tom, in the hereafter.”

Tom banged the flap down. “I hope not! I’ll be servin’ drinks to you in the Other Place if ’e does, like that black bugger in the pome. So the answer’s ‘no’!”

Pome? Mitchell gave Audley a baffled glance as Tom vanished into the
salloon
bar. “What black bugger?”

Audley chuckled. “Come on, Paul—

—Tom’s a Kipling-fancier, like all good men.”

Damn!
“But I’m a Macallan fancier at the moment, David.”

“Yes.” Audley stood up. “But I ought to phone Jack after what you’ve told me—”

Mitchell sat firm. “We had a deal, David. Remember?”

Audley sat down again. “All right. But quickly.”

“Quickly, then.” He was under orders for
Cookridge
, Mitchell told himself. But if Audley’s mysterious fears were well-placed he needed to know about Macallan.

Audley drew a breath. “Bill Macallan was the American end of the Debreczen inquiry. But for Anglo-American reasons we worked in tandem for some of the time.”