Charlie turned his head quickly. 'A sample?'
'Call it a souvenir, if you prefer. Or even a present.' Audley smiled. 'I shall have enough for my modest needs, so I can spare you one—if not a present, say a down-payment?'
He lifted his sword-scabbard and jabbed hard at the topmost dummy5
cannonball on the pyramid in front of them.
The ball quivered very slightly in its concrete socket.
'Forty-pounders—or something more, seeing that this one isn't like the others,' said Audley. 'I rolled the original one into the ditch.'
He held the scabbard in both hands and ran the metal tip of it down the dirt encrusted surface. 'A very proper token from one traitor to another—in the best tradition, wouldn't you say?'
The scabbard-tip began to bite deeper into the encrustation as it travelled down the arc of the ball towards its widest circumference, until finally it dislodged a whole flake of dirt.
Under the dirt, bearing the bright new scratch of the scabbard-tip in its softness, lay pale gold.
Epilogue
A Skirmish near Westminster
SOMETIMES it was better not to know a man too well, decided Audley. For just as inevitability took all the fun out of victory, so it removed the blessing of hope out of approaching disaster.
But there it was: Sir Frederick Clinton was standing under the John Singer Sargent portrait of Rear-Admiral Sir dummy5
Reginald Hall, the greatest of all of his predecessors, with a glorious blaze of gladioli in the fireplace behind him and a welcoming smile on his lips, as he was accustomed to do before putting in the boot.
'David—good of you to drop in—sit down. . . . And how was Washington?'
Setzen Sie sich, Herr Audley!
'Too hot.'
Like this office.
'Yes, you're a cold weather mortal, aren't you! Next time we'll have to find somewhere cooler for you. . . . But we've been having it quite warm here, you know, as a matter of fact.'
Too many double meanings there for comfort.
'So I've gathered,' said Audley.
Clinton sat down. 'Well, I've been reading your reports—'
Plural.
'—the CIA one is most interesting.' Clinton paused. 'And the Ratcliffe one . . . that's interesting too. What you might call a satisfactory conclusion, fiscally speaking.'
Obviously he was expected to fight to the end, thought Audley. He shrugged. 'We were lucky.'
'Ye-ess . . . I'm inclined to think you were.'
Audley smiled back at him. 'The Minister said I was lucky.
He'll be glad to know I'm still on form.' Put that one in your dummy5
pipe, Fred, and see how it tastes. 'It's a great virtue—luck.'
'But not everyone would say you'd been virtuous.'
'Not everyone would say I'd been given a fair chance. Little Tommy Stocker didn't exactly confide in me at the briefing.'
Clinton shook his head. 'Ah, now that's not quite fair. We hadn't the faintest idea Ratcliffe's gold wasn't genuine. And we had no proof of the Moscow connection either.'
But a suspicion, Audley thought bitterly. And a suspicion would have made all the difference to Henry Digby.
'So this is another one we owe to the CIA, then?'
'Indirectly, you might say.' Clinton had had almost enough of sparring now. 'But then they did break the rules, didn't they.'
'What rules?'
'Ye-ess, from you that's a good question, David.' Clinton stirred the files in front of him to reveal a sheet of paper with a pencilled scrawl on it. 'I've had a call from the Chief Constable of Mid-Wessex. It seems that you've annoyed one of his officers—a superintendent by the name of Weston.'
Audley felt absurdly pleased. It made him feel better not to have put one over on the Superintendent too successfully.
'If I have, then I'm sorry, Fred. He's an extremely capable chap, Weston.'
'He is?' Clinton raised an eyebrow. 'Well, he thinks you're capable too— capable of anything. And this time he thinks dummy5
you've got away with murder.'
Audley enlarged his smile. 'Yes . . . well, I often do, don't I?
