The Labyrinth Makers (3 page)

There was no point in suggesting that Fred himself had formalised the conference in Stocker's presence by dropping all the Christian names he usually affected. He probably intended to foster the JIG mystique, not reduce it.

'It has a perfectly reasonable co-ordinating function, which you all know perfectly well. But no matter. Have you any more immediate questions?

Roskill stirred. 'One thing–only I don't quite know how to put it. This Russian interest, after all these years–couldn't it be just a case of bureaucratic obsession?'

'And we could be making a fuss about nothing? Or something that has become nothing? It could be, Hugh, it could be. But if it isn't–then it could be rather interesting. Weighing the possibilities, I think we have to go ahead, at least for the time being.'

'Have you got any more questions, David?'

'I have–yes. But not about Steerforth. First, if it is decided that I must attend his funeral–I must assume it is his funeral–I must be allowed to have my breakfast first. I cannot go to a funeral on an empty stomach. Second—'

Fred held up his hand.

'David, I do apologise. You shall breakfast with me in a few moments. Mrs Harlin has the matter in hand. And then you will be going to the funeral–you've got the transport laid on, Hugh?'

'8.45 from here, Sir Frederick. It's a good two hours to Asham. We'll pick up the other car in Wantage.'

'Very good. And you're concentrating on locating the original cast, Jack?'

Butler nodded. 'Mostly routine, but it may take a little time. They may be all dead, except the Joneses.'

'I hope not for all our sakes. In the meantime, gentlemen, I have some explaining to do, I believe, for Dr Audley's benefit. I'll excuse you that.'

The departure of Roskill and Butler cued in Mrs Harlin, with breakfast. And breakfast conceived on a scale which shattered Audley. The condemned man's meal, or at least one designed to give an elderly vicar strength to go out to evangelise the Hottentots.

Before they had even sat down Fred moved to forestall argument.

'I know you're not a field man, David. But I don't see this quite as a field assignment. More an intellectual exercise in human archaeology.'

'But I deal with words, Fred, not people. I'm no good at interrogating. I don't know how to start.'

Fred snorted.

'Absolute nonsense. You interrogate our people all the time. Extremely closely, too, if what I hear is true.'

'I know them. That makes it different. Get me the reports on this as they come in. I'll do the job just as well that way–probably better. But why me, anyway? I'm a Middle East man.'

Fred lowered his knife and fork.

'And a damned unpopular Middle Eastern man, too.'

Audley stopped eating too. Here was the truth at last.

'Did it ever occur to you, David, that you might annoy someone with that recent forecast of yours–before the Lebanese business?'

Audley bridled. 'It was true.'

Fred regarded him sadly. 'But undiplomatically packed. It didn't leave anyone much room to manoeuvre in.'

He cut off Audley's protest. 'Damn it, David, it wasn't a report–it was a lecture. And an arrogant lecture, too. You're a first-rate forecaster who's stopped forecasting.'

'I've never twisted the facts.' Audley could sense that he was digging his heels into shifting ground. 'That forecast was accurate.'

'If anything, too accurate. If you were a gambler I'd say your cards were marked. And you're too far in with the Israelis.'

'I've used Israeli sources. I don't always believe what I get from them though.'

'You lunch with Colonel Shapiro every Wednesday.'

'Most Wednesdays. He's an old friend. But so are Amin Fawzi and Mohammed Howeidi. I meet a great many people.'

Fred sighed, and started eating again.

'I don't give a damn, of course. As far as I'm concerned you can have your own old boys' network. You can poke your nose anywhere, as it suits you. But that last report was the final straw.'

Good God, thought Audley: he was being taken out of circulation. Banished to the Steerforth File, where he could not cause any annoyance except to four ageing members of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.

Yet Fred was smiling, and that didn't fit.

'For a devious character you are sometimes surprisingly transparent, David. If you think that you are going to be put out to grass, you are mistaken. You ought to appreciate your value more clearly than that. What you need is a dose of reality. You've been leading a sheltered life for too long.

'In any case, you surely don't think the JIG would send one of their troubleshooters here at such a godforsaken hour just to watch you being cut down to size?'

Audley remembered the edited Steerforth file and felt a pricking of humiliation. He had gone off at half-cock.

'And you can thank your rugger-playing past for this. too. Or rather your impact on Dai Llewelyn–you remember him?'

Audley frowned. There had been quite a number of Welshmen in the old days. Mentally he lined them up, and Dai Llewelyn immediately sprang out of the line-up–an exceptionally tough and ruthless wing forward for the Visigoths. A far better player than Audley had ever been, older and craftier.

'He remembers you rather well. He says you were a blackhearted, bloody-minded wing forward, and not bad for a mere Englishman.'

'He was the black-hearted and bloody-minded one. If I've got the right Llewelyn, he was a rough player.'

Fred nodded. 'He's still a rough player for the Arab faction in the Foreign Office. But he seems to have a certain regard for you. He said your talents ought not to be wasted –provided you didn't play against his team. He has a marked weakness for sporting metaphors.'

Audley remembered Llewelyn well now. Almost a stage Welshman, all rugger and Dylan Thomas, until you crossed him. Then you had to look out.

It was on the tip of his tongue to protest that he hadn't been playing against anyone. But it wasn't quite true, and the thought of Llewelyn marking him again was somehow a shade frightening. He sensed that it would do no good any more to protest that he was a Middle Eastern specialist.

Fred shrugged off his objection.

'David, you're like a good many thousands of ordinary British working men: you are going to have to learn new skills. Or rather, you must learn to adapt your old skill in a new field. And I think you'll find the new field gives you greater scope. You've got the languages for it. You'll just have to catch up on the facts.'

Fred reached over and rang the buzzer.

'You wanted to know what had been taken out of the Steerforth File … Mrs Harlin, would you get me the Panin papers?'

Audley jumped at the Harlin presence at his shoulder. She moved as stealthily as a cat. Then the name registered.

'Nikolai Andrievich Panin. Does that name ring any bells?'

The tone implied that he was not expected to know very much, if anything, about Nikolai Andrievich Panin.

'Didn't he have something to do with the Tashkent Agreement?' he said tentatively.

Even that was too much. Fred raised his eyebrows and pushed himself back from the table.

'How in the name of God did you know that?'

'I just know he's a sort of troubleshooter–someone like Stocker, I suppose, except that he usually deals with internal affairs,' said Audley, trying to gloss over what appeared to be a gaffe. 'Once he was an archaeologist, or something like that. A professor, anyway.'

He hadn't said anything in the least funny, but Fred was laughing nevertheless.

'Like Stocker? I must tell Stocker that. He'd be flattered. And he'd also be impressed, because you seem to know quite a lot for a Middle Eastern man. It was his idea that we should give you Panin, too. If you can do half as well with him as you have with Rabin and Mohiedin, there'll be no complaints.

'But you wish to know his connection with Steerforth. It's quite simple: he's only been in England once, and that was to look for Steerforth 25 years ago. He was the fly-by-night attache who turned up at the Newton Chester airfield.

'When he became more important he was edited out of the Steerforth file, which is an open one.'

Mrs Harlin entered noiselessly, carrying a red folder as though John the Baptist's head rested on it.

'Actually,' continued Fred, 'we know very little about the man. But we do know that every year he spends a month in the spring excavating a site in ancient Colchis. Keeping his hand in, as it were. It's the only sacrosanct date in his calendar.

'Or it was sacrosanct.' Fred stared at Audley. 'This year he packed in after only four days and flew back to Moscow the day before yesterday. And for once we know why.

'It seems he thinks Steerforth is still interesting, even with a load of rubble.'

A cold wind came off the shoulder of the Downs, over the low wall of the churchyard, and straight through Audley's old black overcoat.

But he preferred the chill of the open air to the mockery of the service in the little church; there had been too many double meanings in the beautiful old words.

'For man walketh in a vague shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them …'

It all applied too exactly to Steerforth. And whatever the priest said there was not going to be any resting in peace for him. Resurrection was the true order of the day.

But now at last the wretched business was coming to a close and his work could begin: the official intrusion into private grief.

He scrutinised the mourning faces again. They were a disappointing lot. A few journalists; the RAF contingent from Brize Norton, with Roskill uniformed and anonymous among them; and a scattering of morbid onlookers. Only Jones represented the Steerforth file, and Jones could hardly avoid his wife's husband's funeral.

He had hoped for a better catch. But it seemed that not one of Steerforth's crew had come to see his captain's bones committed to the earth at last. Perhaps they didn't read the papers; perhaps they were all dead and buried too.

The rest of the mourners were Roskill's concern, anyway. His own lay just ahead: the family group already labelled in his memory, but only glimpsed for a moment in the flesh as they had followed the coffin out of the church. At least his point of contact was obvious, and he weaved his way through the crowd to catch him as he shepherded his family towards the lych-gate.

'Mr Jones?'

The man turned slowly. He had a rather heavy, outdoor face. The years had filled it out and lined it, but the dark, alert eyes were still those of the young airman in the file. What the file had not suggested was the uncompromising air of self-possession.

'My name is Audley, Mr Jones. I'm from the Ministry of Defence. Would it be possible for me to have a few words with you later?'

The eyes and the face hardened. But if there was a hint of resignation there was certainly neither fear nor surprise.

Jones gestured courteously for Audley to proceed through the gate in front of him, a measured, easy gesture. It might have been two old friends meeting on a sad occasion which did not admit an exchange of words, and it effectively sealed off Audley from the other mourners.

'Of course. I suppose you people never really give up. I've been half expecting you.'

Audley was nonplussed. This formidable man was already outrunning the script. No cock-and-bull cover stories would be any use on him, even if Audley had felt able to construct them. Nor would he repay pressure.

'If it's inconvenient just now, as I'm sure it is, I could see you this afternoon. But I'd rather not put our meeting off until tomorrow.'

Jones considered the family group by the line of cars in the lane, as though gauging their mood.

'No. Better now while they're busy with their thoughts. But I'd rather you didn't bother my wife. And my daughter–I should say my step-daughter–is obviously of no interest to you. If I talk to you now, will you guarantee to leave them alone?'

They were getting perilously close to the cars.

Audley felt that nothing but honesty would serve here. 'You know that I can't guarantee anything like that. But I'll do my best.'

'Fair enough. You can be a Ministry of Defence man charged with deep condolence from the Minister himself. That will please the old girl at least. And then you can come and have a drink with us.'

Jones's tone implied that he did not consider the occasion one for condolences, which was not really surprising under the circumstances. 'The old girl' could only mean Steerforth's mother, for Jones was not the sort of man who could refer to his wife in such terms.

Margaret Jones, the Margaret Steerforth of 25 years before, was still an attractive woman — one of those women who fined down with age. Her beauty had not faded, but had mellowed to serenity which not even the present strain had disrupted.

'My dear,' Jones took his wife's hand in an easy, affectionate way–he did everything with the same air of confidence, 'this is Mr Audley, from London. He is representing the Minister of Defence.'

Audley muttered a few conventional words awkwardly. He still thought of her as Steerforth's wife, and had to force himself to address her correctly. She looked at him as though she could sense the cause of his confusion, but was far too well-bred to let it disturb her.

'It's good of you to come, Mr Audley,' she said evenly. 'The Air Force authorities have been very considerate. As you can imagine, this has all been rather a shock to us, the past coming back so suddenly after all these years.'

Jones took the pause which followed–Audley could think of no appropriate reply–to introduce the older woman who hovered at Margaret Jones's shoulder.

Audley took in the blue-rinsed white hair and well-corseted figure. Not quite
grande dame
, but trying hard to be, he thought, and mercifully not too sharp-looking.

'I heard, Martin. As Margaret said, the authorities have been most considerate. And you are connected with the Royal Air Force, Mr Ordway?'

It seemed simpler to say that he was. Mrs Steerforth dabbed her eye with a handkerchief.