Our man in Camelot

And Badon Hill overshadowing the legendary King Arthur and the fabled towers of Camelot.

Plus somewhere, somehow, Comrade Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin…

'This isn't the time to go fast asleep, Mose,' said Shirley. 'Any moment now you're going to have to tell everyone how much you admired St Who's-it's Church.'

St Swithun's Church.

St Swithun's Churchyard.

'I'm not sleeping. I'm just trying to work out Billy Bullitt's pattern.'

'How he ticks, you mean? Oh, that's easy—every once in a while he breaks out and rocks the boat some just to satisfy his sense of honour.'

Mosby opened his eyes suddenly. Shirley had turned back to her mirror to make the final adjustments to her face.

Sexy back, thought Mosby. But sharp, sharp little mind.

Eighteen uneventful British schoolboy years, to be crowned with the accolade of Oxford.

Then a trip to Spain, and his whole career at risk for a moment.

Nine years of distinguished war service, Britain, North Africa, Europe, Greece—medals, promotion and a career.

Then a trip to Israel, and the whole career at risk again for a moment.

More distinguished years. Malaya, Korea, Malaya again, Aden and the Persian Gulf, Cyprus, Germany… and finally work on the guidance systems of the TSR-2, the wonder plane.

And then, when the politicians decided to scrap the wonder plane the old pattern re-asserting itself: the outspoken letter to The Times—and this time the career shattered. 'A nine days' wonder,' Audley had said.

So exile in Arabia, running a counter-insurgency squadron for an obscure sultan. But running it brilliantly and returning to Britain in 1971 in a small blaze of glory, and his famous red shirt, like a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, with a new political career his for the taking—

'He made the headlines,' Audley had said.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Offered Parliamentary seats by three Constituency parties, two Conservative, one Liberal, the dossier had said.

Offers rejected. Instead, the pattern again in a bitter television interview in which he had slashed as fiercely at the political right as at the left, and at management as much as at the unions.

Four silent years in rural Wiltshire, in the midst of Grandfather Bullitt's Arthurian library and 'No known political affiliation'.

Then the Oxford riot-Pattern: first the activity, second the outburst. And each time the period of activity had been shorter and the outburst more violent.

'Are you ready, Mose honey.' Shirley was wriggling into her best and most spectacular afternoon dress.

Delectable.

'As ready as I'll ever be.'

So Billy Bullitt was about to rock the boat again. Only this time it looked like various people hoped—

and feared—that he was going to overturn it.

Audley was standing at the foot of the stairs, waiting for them with a shuttered look on his face and two strangers at his back.

'Hi, David,' said Shirley.

Audley stood to one side for her.

'Captain Sheldon?' One of the strangers took a pace towards him.

'That's me.'

The stranger took a folder from his pocket.

'Special Branch, sir,' he said.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

IX

THERE WERE TWO sorts of loneliness, thought Mosby: that of the forgotten man, the Robinson Crusoe loneliness; and that of the man in the condemned cell, solitary but unforgotten. And at this precise moment he would have given a great deal for the sound of the waves on Crusoe's beach.

Instead he listened to the sound of the big power-mower on the lawn outside. Once upon a time, in another life, he had always liked that Saturday morning clatter, the noise of the beginning of the weekend. But it would never be like that again, just as little pale yellow butterflies would never be just butterflies again.

The bastards had done it smoothly, he had to give them that; they had even done it with a touch of old- fashioned good manners. There had been no uniforms, except that was to be expected of the British and it would probably have been much the same back home. What had bugged him had been the 'pleases'

and the 'thank-yous', and the genteel opening of doors, all designed to create the fiction that there was no real compulsion yet at the same time establishing the hopelessness of any resistance beyond argument.