Our man in Camelot

to say.

'Makes me what?'

Mosby shook his head. 'Just… I was remembering your wife said you worked for the Government, that's all.'

'Does it worry you?'

'Not so you believe I'm telling the truth. Was that on the level?'

'I chose not to believe you work for the CIA, if that's what you mean.'

'It'll sure do for a start. But do I get to ask why?' Mosby grinned nervously. 'Or you could tell me why everyone else thinks the opposite, I don't mind which, so I get some sort of answer.'

'But of course.' Audley sounded positively amiable now, almost friendly. 'To take the uncharitable view first, quite simply—they were expecting you.'

'Me?'

'You meaning the CIA… Let me put it another way: if you were a policeman and a rich man came to you and said he thought he was about to be burgled, what would you do?'

'Well, if I was a cop… I guess I'd stake out his place—is that what you want me to say?'

'Exactly. And then when a stranger turns up—a stranger with the wrong sort of accent, carrying a sack and a set of house-breaking tools—you'd be inclined to take that uncharitable view, I rather think.

Wouldn't you?'

Mosby frowned. 'Sure. But—'

Audley cut him off. 'I know what you're going to say: if the burglar arrived in company with a detective superintendent—and if he could prove the detective himself had suggested they should visit the rich man's house in the first place? Is that it?'

'Something like, I guess.'

'Then you could have a bent copper, or a stupid one. So it was fortunate for me that I checked up with my police station first, otherwise I might be in quite a spot now.' This time there was no amusement in Audley's smile, and some of the friendliness had drained from his voice. 'But I did check. And so the official view is that the CIA was perhaps trying to be a little too clever for its own good.'

Mosby cursed Howard Morris and Schreiner both for so grossly miscalculating Audley's reaction. How could they have been so hopelessly off beam, though?

'The official view? But not yours?'

'No, not mine. I knew the CIA has its little moments of weakness, but I can't see my old friend Howard Morris dropping a clanger like that. He knows me much too well.'

It was macabre, the way Audley's mind had travelled along the same line, to the same destination. And the wrong one, too.

'Howard—?'

'Morris. CIA Field Control, UK. Quite a sharp fellow. He'd never have sent his burglar to me—unless he wanted me to know about the burglary…'

Unless? The word pumped Mosby's heart painfully. It wasn't possible, it surely wasn't possible, that Shirley and he had been deliberately sacrificed to stir up the British. That had been a contingency, but not the objective. And yet unless was there now, squeezing his chest—

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

'… which is just about the last thing in the world that he'd be wanting at this moment,' Audley continued reflectively. 'Which means you aren't his burglar '

'But I'm still a burglar?' It was no sweat to sound puzzled.

'Oh, yes—you are a burglar. I've no doubt about that.'

Mosby nodded. 'Uh-huh? And just what am I supposed to be stealing?'

'Why, Mons Badonicus, of course, Captain Sheldon—or may I call you Mosby? It fits your character better.'

'It does? Well, be my guest. You can call me William Clarke Quantrill or John Wilkes Booth for all I care, just so you tell me how I can steal a battlefield, that's all.'

'By finding it.'

'That's no crime.'

Audley pursed his lips. 'Now there you're wrong. In most civilised countries 'stealing by finding' is a crime. If your Confederate ancestor had made away with that Yankee payroll he happened to find behind the lines…'

'But a battlefield isn't a payroll.'

'This isn't just any battlefield. This is an extra special one—King Arthur's greatest victory, no less.

Knowledge like that could be worth more than a Yankee payroll. Not only could be—but is.'

Audley's sudden conversion to King Arthur was curious, to say the least, thought Mosby. But if he really believed that money was the objective then it was time to let a little honest avarice show through.

'You really think so?' He looked at the Englishman sidelong.

'I know so. In fact one of the ironies of your position, Mosby, is that you don't seem to know just how valuable