—no matter what.'
'We?'
'Sir Frederick and I.' Stocker paused. 'And others.'
'Others?'
Any chance of a reply to that question was blotted out by the roar of another big jet. This time the noise was almost unbearable, with the brute force of the sound vibrating the dummy5
car as it slowed down at the entrance to a lay-by on its nearside. There was a police car—a large, vividly- striped Jaguar—parked in the entrance so that there was only just sufficient room for them to squeeze by. The uniformed man at the wheel raised his gloved hand to Stocker's driver, beckoning him on.
It wasn't a custom-built lay-by, Audley realised. Once upon a time, before the runways had swallowed the fields, this had been the line of the main road lurching in a drunken meander between the quiet hedgerows, Chesterton's rolling English road to the life. But when the new highway builders had amputated this unnecessary loop they hadn't bothered to grub up the tarmac, and now the unrestrained hedges had sprouted into trees which screened it from the passing traffic.
But for the jets, it would have been an admirable place for love in the back seat.
But there was no love in this back seat, nor would there be any waiting for him in the back seat of the car parked in the shade of a gnarled crab-apple tree, an anonymous new wedge-shaped Leyland 2200 of the sort he and Faith had contemplated buying in the autumn, in patriotic replacement for his rusting old 1800. In a more peaceful, more honourable world he would be returning to her now.
He waited until the jet thunder had become a distant rumble.
'Others?'
The Joint Chiefs . . . among others. 'Uh-huh? You mean Sir Frederick and you and the joint Chiefs . . . and others ... all dummy5
cried my name with one voice in their hour of need?'
'Something like that. Something very like that.' Stocker was so sure of himself that he was prepared to be magnanimous.
Audley recognised the tone. Magnanimity was the civilised victor's final body-blow to the defeated.
'I'll bet.'
'You should be flattered, David. This is an awkward one, but you have the right equipment for it.'
Audley strained to make out the features of the man in the back of the 2200. 'I have the right equipment for rape, but I've no intention of letting anyone make a rapist of me, Brigadier.'
'That wasn't quite what we had in mind for you.' Stocker was almost genial now. 'It's your brain we need, not any other part of you. You won't even have to do much leg-work—I've detached Paul Mitchell and Frances Fitzgibbon to do all that, directly under your orders. And you can have anything else you want within reason, short of the Brigade of Guards.' He paused. 'If you like you can choose your field co-ordinator too.'
Now that was flattering, thought Audley. To be given two bright field operatives who had worked with him before was commonsense. But to be allowed to choose a co-ordinator was patronage on a grand scale.
Unfortunately it was also rather frightening.
'We'll give you Colonel Butler, if you like.' Stocker actually dummy5
smiled as he baited the hook with the best co-ordinator in the department. 'He's free at the moment.'
Audley was saved from not knowing how to react to that by the opening of the 2200's rear door. The mountain was coming to Mahomet.
'It's entirely up to you, anyway,' said Stocker mildly, offering the second cutting a second time. 'And naturally we're not going to insist on anything. But . . . well, you read this first, David, before you make up your mind.'
They weren't going to insist. Audley watched the 2200 as though hypnotised. Of course they weren't going to insist; with his own money and what he could earn—Tom Gracey had as good as promised a fellowship for the asking—he could flounce off in a huff any day of the week.
The pressures were much more subtle than that, though.
The occupant of the 2200 stepped out of the shadow on to the sunlit tarmac.
Of course they weren't going to insist. They didn't have to.
He took the cutting—
A TON OF GOLD FOR RED CHARLIE
Half a lifetime's professional interest in newspapers identified the typography instantly: this was the popular version of the dignified story he had read earlier.
dummy5
Dressed in a flowered shirt and with his long hair curling trendily round his collar, a 26-year-old revolutionary told last night of his amazing discovery of Cromwell's Gold—a whole ton of it.
But Charlie Ratcliffe, who inherited near-derelict Standingham Castle in Wiltshire only six weeks ago, is not yet willing to reveal how he found the treasure which is likely to make him one of the richest men in Britain.
Audley looked up as Stocker opened the car door for the man from the 2200.
'Thank you, Brigadier. No—it's all right. I'll sit here.'
The Minister drew open the extra seat from its fastening on the partition which separated them from the driver. 'There's plenty of room, I shall be perfectly comfortable . . . Did everything go satisfactorily?'
