War Game

'David Bishop and Philip Oates, I presume?'

Davenport looked crestfallen. 'You know them already?'

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'Confirmation is always helpful. No one else?'

'I don't think so. But they're good operators—very careful. I'd guess they have instructions not to let him do anything, which pisses him off some I suspect.'

'He sees himself as a man of action, eh?'

Small shrug. 'He's been playing things close to his chest ever since Swine Brook Field, doing what he's been told. But I think you've shaken him up a bit this last week, with what you've been doing.'

'Doing nothing isn't to his taste, eh?'

'Right.'

So the editor of The Red Rat was pining to be a power in the land, the well-informed scourge of the enemies of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

'And where does Professor Stephen Nayler figure in this grand design?'

'Oh, he's just window-dressing. Give him a TV programme and he'll kiss anyone's ass.' Davenport's contempt warmed Audley's heart. 'He's a punk, but he's clean—we looked him over good.'

That was almost the last loose end tied up, thought Audley.

All he had to do now was to tie all the ends in a new knot somehow.

'Well, that almost makes the trade, Master Davenport,' he said.

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'I'm glad to hear it.' Davenport breathed out. 'I shall be sorry to miss Standingham though. That should be quite a show, and I've gotten to enjoy the Double R Society—there are a lot of good people in it.'

Audley smiled. 'Oh, but you're not going to miss it—almost a trade, I said. I'm going to lose your extra passport and forget the breaking of our agreements, but there are things I need you to do first . . . after I've phoned Colonel Morris and talked to one or two other people. Nothing very difficult, certainly nothing very dangerous. But I want you there on the battlefield, preaching the revolution. It wouldn't be the same without you now, would it?'

He skirted the crowd unobtrusively, weaving in and out of the cars parked under the trees and the picnic groups among them. It surprised him, how many people there were, often whole families, able and willing to spend a whole weekday afternoon watching a cricket match. A rugger crowd he could understand, that was a contest of mind and muscle he enjoyed himself; and a football crowd, that was a statistical fact to be accepted, so there had to be more in it than met his eye. But cricket, that was a pleasant surprise.

His pulse quickened as he spotted Weston's car in the shadow of the trees beyond the old bandstand, and then Weston himself standing very still in the angle of the steps and the wooden balustrade of the stand.

The Superintendent was, if not the only unpredictable factor dummy5

left, the last of the tools he required to handle Charlie Ratcliffe at Standingham. At a pinch he could probably do without Weston, but then he would have to give Weston's task to someone from the Department, and that might enable someone within it to ask awkward questions afterwards.

Whereas if he had Weston and Frances and Davenport all doing their own different things— the police, the Department and the CIA— it was an odds-on certainty that they would never be in a position to exchange notes, and would never therefore be in a position to understand what they had done between them.

Weston was looking at him now. . . . Well, to be honest with himself, they might each of them suspect. Frances possibly, Davenport probably, and Weston . . . Weston, being Weston, for sure, but without proof—only Charlie Ratcliffe would be able to supply that, and that was the one thing Charlie would be in no position to do.

But that thought armed him now for what he had to say. It was better to have

Weston doing something for him than to leave him to his own devices. After what had happened to Sergeant Digby and with what he might already suspect, a copper like Weston would never rest quiet and easy.

The look on Weston's face confirmed his fear. There was no mistaking the policeman for any tinker, tailor, schoolmaster or country doctor now: advancing on that look he knew how Prince Rupert's cavalry had felt when they saw the sun glint dummy5

on the swords of Cromwell's Ironsides.

'Weston.'

'Audley.' The courtesies were minimal. 'You've got a lot of explaining to do, I'm thinking.'

'No.' Audley shook his head. 'Not to you.'

The jaw squared. 'If not to me, then to my chief.'

'Not to him either. Sergeant Digby died in the execution of his duty while questioning two suspected terrorists who subsequently blew themselves up by accident. That was nothing to do with me— now or ever. The case isn't closed for me because it was never open.'

Weston stared at him in silence for a moment or two, then took a sheet of paper from his breast pocket.

'Read it.' He held out the paper. 'Read it, Audley.'

Audley opened the sheet. It was close-typed on cheap official paper, the words cutting across the faint blue lines beneath.

'Right worshippfule Sir, Whereas of late have I suceeded to thee Estate wherof mine Fathyr was seised there cameth into myne possessioun alsoe a certeyne quantitie of treasure the whych did my Faither take from a certeyn Papisticalle shippe.