War Game

'And you said 'To a cricket match'?'

Butler registered his displeasure by waiting for the delivery of another ball, the last of the over. 'And then he demanded to phone his embassy,' he concluded heavily.

'But he doesn't seem worried?'

'More angry than worried, I'd say. He won't crack easily.'

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'What makes you think so? He ran quickly enough.'

For an answer Butler produced an American passport from his pocket and handed it to Audley.

Robert Donaldson. Born: Hartford, Connecticut . . .

'Preacher' Davenport stared up at him.

'It's good.' He thumbed through the pages. 'It looks perfect.'

'It is perfect—perfectly genuine.'

'Uh-huh? And Robert Davenport's passport?'

'Just as good. Only the trips are different, nothing else.'

'The Paris trips?'

'The Donaldson trips coincide with Charlie Ratcliffe's—while Davenport stayed at home.'

Audley nodded slowly. So anyone checking up on Davenport's movements wouldn't equate him with Ratcliffe; Davenport was for public consumption, Donaldson for private comings and goings from different points of entry and exit. It was all nice and simple—and professional. And that was what Butler was telling him, just as the man Maitland had told Butler from his own equally professional observations.

It was a pity a hundred or so reliable witnesses put Preacher Davenport on the wrong side of Swine Brook Field at the right time, but that simply meant he wasn't that sort of professional. And although they had him dead to rights on dummy5

his two passports, that was a minor grief on a much smaller scale beside the things they really wanted him for.

'And yet he ran,' Audley frowned at the cricketers.

'Maybe he was ordered to run,' said Butler. 'Even if he didn't get cold feet himself, maybe his control did—the way we were pushing him. That's happened before now.'

His control, thought Audley. There it was, staring him in the face again, what he had begun to suspect and fear ever since Digby's death: that they were playing in a different league from the one he had assumed they were in, and that Charlie Ratcliffe was something very different from the ruthless young political activist he had seemed to be.

It had been there all along, of course. There in the urgency of the Minister's voice; there in the doctored Ratcliffe file; there in the cool efficiency of James Ratcliffe's death; and there even in Frances Fitzgibbon's disquiet at the resources lavished on them for the asking. It had been there, and he had seen it all and ignored it because it didn't fit his childish preconception of the case.

Butler was right, shrewd and perceptive as ever behind that red military face of his: the young American wasn't so much worried about his predicament as angry with it.

Audley stared at him across the confined interior of the car.

He looked younger in the flesh than in any of his pictures, but not so lean; perhaps the leanness had been an illusion dummy5

fostered by the Puritan costume he had affected as

'Preacher' Davenport, but there was something about the bone-structure of his face which suggested that the Preacher's face was the shape of the face to come in full maturity. And then it would truly be an Old Testament face to the very life.

'And just who the hell—' Donaldson began belligerently, and then stopped abruptly, breathing out the rest of his stored anger as a sigh of relief. 'Well— am I glad to see you!'

Glad? Audley froze his own face to prevent it betraying his surprise. The last time he'd heard that voice it had been declaiming pure seventeenth-century revolution in the words of Gerard Winstanley out of Frances Fitzgibbon's mini-tape.

It couldn't have nonplussed him more now if it had continued in the same vein.

'Mr. Donaldson?' His opening gambit of polite disbelief already sounded irrelevant. 'Or is it Master Davenport?'

The American grinned at him, the laughter lines in his face at odds with those etched by anxiety. 'Davenport, Dr. Audley—

Bob Davenport. And I guess I can say I'm pleased to meet you. I've certainly heard a lot about you, sir.'

Audley had no choice but to shake the hand offered to him. It had not been his intention to do anything remotely like that, but then it couldn't be said that this harsh interrogation was going exactly to plan.

'Indeed? Well, I wish I could say the same for you, Mr.

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Davenport. So perhaps you could give me another name to reassure me—someone else's name.'

Davenport nodded. 'Sure. At the embassy here I think Colonel Morris would be your best bet—Colonel Howard Morris. Or Mr. Legrange at The Hague, he's my boss. But I think you know them both, so you can take your pick.'