War Game

It looked as though Professor Nayler belonged to the wise-after-the-event brigade.

'It certainly looks that way, I agree.'

'I should think so. The idea that this young man—what's his name . . . Ratcliffe—could rob Fort Knox does seem a somewhat quaint conceit, if I may say so. But then I suppose you Treasury people have to leave no stone unturned, eh?'

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Audley wondered idly for a moment how his opposite number in the KGB would have conducted this inquiry, then thrust the thought out of his mind. That way lay sinful and very dangerous heresies.

'We're rather more interested in establishing why the—ah—

young man was so sure the gold existed. After all, the experts said it didn't.'

'Oh no, not all the experts, Audley. No indeed!' Modest pause for the shaking of distinguished head. 'I've long had my suspicions about that little episode. “

'You thought the gold did exist?

'I thought there was a strong possibility.' Nayler was hedging slightly now. 'Of course there was no direct evidence, of course. As things stood it was—ah—a mere footnote. Or not even that, really.'

Message received: if Nayler had really believed as much, which was bloody doubtful, he hadn't been willing to commit himself in print as saying so. But no matter—

'No direct evidence? Meaning there was indirect evidence?'

'Circumstantial evidence Or shall we say inferential evidence?'

We could say what we liked as long as we said something useful, thought Audley tightly. 'Apart from the timing of the disappearance of the Conception and the wreck of the Elizabeth?'

'Oh yes, indeed. I shall be saying as much on the television dummy5

shortly, on their 'Testimony of the Spade' programme— BBC

2, of course.'

Of course. No vulgar commercials there —except for Professor Nayler.

'Indeed? Well, you wouldn't care to give me a brief preview? I

—and the Treasury—would be in your debt then, Professor.

For our ears only, as it were?' Uriah Keep couldn't do better than that, by God!

'I don't see why not. It's really quite simple when you know how to interpret the facts. . . . You see, Audley, the gold went to ground in North Devon after it was landed. Edward Parrott was a prudent man, he knew exactly what would happen if word of it reached the Government. He ... he knew the score, you might say—if you will forgive the colloquialism.'

Pompous bastard!

'You mean—he didn't want to hang in chains with the other pirates in execution dock?'

'Hang in chains?'

'You said it was the blackest piracy.'

'And so it was, Audley, and so it was. But I mean the political score. You mustn't think of the Parrotts as mere nobodies; they were squires and gentlemen. Edward Parrott sat for Hartland in the first three of Charles I's parliaments—he owned the seat. And his son Nathaniel sat in the other two, the Short Parliament and the Long Parliament. So they were dummy5

very well aware of the political situation.'

Audley cudgelled his memory viciously. He knew now exactly the game Nayler was playing—and winning, petty though it was: the price of information was that he must crawl for it, admitting his ignorance.

On your knees then, Audley—for God, Queen and Country!

'What was the political situation?'

'Tck, tck, tck!' Nayler tutted contentedly down the line at him. 'You have forgotten a lot, haven't you, my dear fellow!

All those tutorials, all that sherry old Highsmith poured down you—has it all gone for nothing?'

God bless my soul! thought Audley in genuine surprise, remembering for the first time how Nayler had envied his happy and boozy friendship with old Dr. Highsmith, which had made their early evening tutorials as much social occasions as academic ones. Had that really been niggling the silly man for a quarter of a century?

But the sudden recollection of those evenings was like a benison—those summer evenings, long and cool, and winter ones dark and cosy, with the mist rising off the river. . . . And the quick irony of Nayler's sarcasm now was that it unlocked his memory as nothing else could possibly have done: old Highsmith had been a born teacher saddled with an arrogant young ex-soldier who fancied himself as a budding medievalist and maintained that nothing of very great interest had happened after the year 1485—

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The tide of memory surged back: Charles I had angrily dissolved his Third Parliament one March day in 1629—

which Firth had called 'the most gloomy, sad and miserable day for England in five hundred years'—and hadn't called another for eleven fateful years—

And it had been whisky, not sherry.