Our man in Camelot

'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.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

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?'

'Well, he was once, according to old Dr Morton. Not only a nice boy, but also a very serious one. Much more serious than the usual run of pre-war students at Oxford. In fact he very nearly threw it all up—

going to college—to fight in the Spanish Civil War.'

Mosby stared at her. 'Now that's very interesting. We never picked that up on him—Harry never mentioned it.'

'I guess we wouldn't have. Because he went for a holiday in France in the summer of '38—he was going to Oxford in the fall of '38—and while he was there he just slipped across the border to Barcelona, where the Reds were holding out.'

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

'Hell—this is dynamite, honey.'

'I don't think it is.'

'Why not? We never had one thing up to now connected him with the Communists. He's always been on the other side.'

'That's the point. Seems he didn't like what he saw there. He didn't like the Fascists and he didn't like the Communists either, Dr Morton said… Like he'd looked for the Grail, and decided it wasn't to be found in Spain any more. But when he came back he joined the University Air Squadron straight off—which is their version of AFROTC. And then when the war broke out in 1939 he went straight into the RAF.'

Mosby closed his eyes for a moment, adding these new facts to those in the dossier Harry Finsterwald had shown him in the car two hours earlier. He had thirty-seven years of William Lancelot Bullitt's adult life spread out before him.

He remembered James Barkham's thin, dry old voice: There's European history for you— twelve hundred years of it. And now two American gentlemen want to find out about it.

And now the history of Billy Bullitt, the thirty-seven year saga not only of the man himself, but his times: the great war, Britain's 'Finest Hour', the Anglo-American alliance, the hollow victory and the Cold War, the decline and fall of the British Empire, the decline of Britain herself…