After months of expensive time and trouble he was stumped. And stumped on an assignment which obviously worried the men at the top, the Oxford and Cambridge men who would of all people be appalled at the ability of the KGB to tamper with their university recruiting ground.
And that meant Audley would be for the high jump. He'd pulled off some legendary coups in the past, dummy2.htm
but that wouldn't help him now because he'd never tried to make himself loved. Rather, there would be no mourners at the wake.
But then Butler discovered another revelation within himself, one that he had never expected: it was not such a matter of indifference to him, Audley's professional fate.
He didn't like Audley, and never would. But there was nothing in the small print about having to like the men one served with. What mattered was the Queen's service, and that service badly needed bastards like this one.
So if Audley was stuck, it was up to him to unstick him, or die in the attempt.
XIII
JUST 'WHAT HAVE you been doing in the last year?' Butler asked brutally. Duty might be a harsh and jealous god, but the more he asked of his worshippers the less he expected them to wear kid-gloves and pussy-foot around.
'What have I been doing during my sabbatical year?' Audley gave him a small, tight smile. 'Didn't you know that I had been elected first Nasser Memorial Fellow at Cumbria?'
'Why Cumbria? I thought you were an Oxford and Cambridge man?'
'My dear fellow—only Cambridge, thank God! But I'm afraid I'm a little too well-known down South and we didn't want to be obvious. .. Besides that, it happens to be an interesting experiment, what Gracey's trying to do here at Cumbria. We thought it made him a prime KGB target.'
'Quality instead of quantity?'
Audley looked at Butler with sudden interest. 'You know about that then?'
'It's no secret.'
'No, I suppose it isn't. Well, my contribution is in the realm of medieval Arab history.'
'Packs 'em in too,' said Richardson admiringly. 'Front row full of pretty girls—quality
'Abu Abdullah Mohammed al-Edrisi, you savage—you remind me that Edrisi said England was set in the Ocean of Darkness in the grip of endless winter!'
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'He said the world was round too, clever chap. But I'm only half a savage, remember—my old mum was a Foscolo from Amalfi, so at least half of me's civilised.'
Richardson's eyes and teeth flashed support of his ancestry and it struck Butler that there might be more than a touch of Abdullah Mohammed as well as Foscolo in his bloodline. Which was one more reason why the fellow would bear watching.
The bright, dark eyes slanted towards him. 'Point is—' Richardson went on quickly '—this Arab history makes David respectable with the students. Friend of the emergent nations and all that stuff. And he's had me and a dozen other poor devils rooting around at strategic points 'cross the country like pigs after truffles while he sat up here and tasted what we found. Or rather, what we didn't find . . .'
Audley was staring at the young man with a look of affectionate despair. He turned back towards Butler.
'Tell me, Jack, what do you think of Sir Geoffrey's idea of the great Red Plot now you've heard about it from his own lips?'
Butler stared at him for a moment. It was often Audley's way to start his own answer to a question with a question of his own, and it was no use hoping that he'd ever change.
He shrugged. 'There could be something in it, I suppose. Take away the natural leaders of any country and you cut it down in size. My Dad used to say that half the trouble in our bit of Lancashire in the twenties and thirties was all because our lads led the attack on Beaumont Hamel on the Somme in 1916.
The men who should have been running the businesses —and the unions—had all died on the German barbed- wire there.'
Every November 11 they had gone down to the War Memorial after the parade had dispersed and the crowds thinned away, leaving the bright red poppy wreaths and the forests of little wooden crosses stuck in the short-trimmed grass like the forests of larger crosses in the war cemeteries across the Channel, only far smaller. Rain or shine they had gone, his father's heavy boots skidding on the cobbles—
21049844 Butler G., Sergeant, R.E. Lanes R., and his boy, the future colonel who would never command any regiment.
The big calloused hand, always stained with printer's ink, would grip his tightly while they stood for an age before the ugly white cross and the metal plaque with the long lists of names. And because he could not escape from that hand he had read the names many times, had added them together and had found their highest common factor and their lowest common multiple. He had even tried to identify them: were MURCH A. E. and MURCH G. really the two uncles of Sammy Murch who had sat next to him at school? Was the presence of BURN M. and BURN E. here on the stone the reason why Mr Burn in the sweetshop was so bad-tempered? Once he had almost accrued enough curiosity to ask his father to answer these fascinating questions, but there was something in the fierce freckled face (so like his own now!) that had warned him off. Not anger, it wasn't, but something never present except on November dummy2.htm
11: his father's Armistice Day Face...
'Hah-hmm!' He cleared his throat noisily. 'I suppose there could be something in it, yes. But I have my doubts. It isn't that it's a bad idea—if they were very careful and very selective. But the KGB aren't usually so imaginative, I would have thought. And the benefits can't be shown in black and white... it isn't like them to start something where the damage can't be assessed in black and white as an end-product.'
'Might even do us some good in the long run,' cut in Richardson. 'Always thought there were too many brains in the Civil Service, seeing where it's got us. Bit of mediocrity might do us a bit of good, you never know!'
This time Audley didn't smile and Butler knew with sudden intuition why. It was not simply fear of failure that
