Tomorrow's ghost

'But if that's the case, Paul - if that's what everyone thinks of Colonel Butler - how have we ended up with the job of wrecking his chances?' she frowned at him. 'And how did David ... bog it up?'

Paul looked to Shapiro for the answer. 'Colonel?'

'Who's got it in for Colonel Butler?' Frances shifted the questions in the same direction. And come to that, she added silently, what the hell arc you doing here. Colonel Shapiro?

Shapiro rubbed the tip of his nose with a grubby finger.

'Yes...' He considered her reflectively for a moment, as though he'd picked up an echo of what she hadn't said. 'Well, Mrs Fitzgibbon, I would guess that the probable answer to your second question is 'Nobody'. Or it was to start with, anyway.' He paused. 'And I'm afraid that the answer to your first question is that David wasn't very clever for once. He tried to play politics, and he played foolishly.'

'Politics?'

Shapiro sighed. 'And ... very regrettably ... some of the blame is mine too. I condoned

- I contributed to - a most egregious error of judgement. I must confess it. And I have come here tonight to do all I can to rectify it.'

Frances began to feel out of her depth. That Mossad should be interested in Brigadier Stocker's successor was fair enough. But although it would have suited them down to the ground for David Audley to take the job they had no reason to expect any favours from Colonel Butler.

'It was such an excellent ideas, that was the trouble with it. One should always be suspicious of excellent idea,' said Shapiro sorrowfully. 'The better they are, the worse the situation becomes if they go wrong.'

Way out of her depth, decided Frances.

'It was such a good idea that Audley came back from Washington to make sure Sir Frederick

Clinton acted on it - to make sure nothing went wrong. And while he was here he came to me to enlist my support for it - I have some influence with the West Germans, also with the Americans over here. He wanted the right people to be primed if there was consultation ... and we both agreed it was ... an absolutely excellent idea.'

But why did the Israelis think Butler was an excellent idea?

'For quite different reasons, as it turned out,' continued Shapiro. 'Although at the time I thought differently - I thought David was playing the same game as I was, even though he said he was being entirely altruistic - ' he nodded at Paul' - exactly as you claim to be, Mitchell. You say Colonel Butler doesn't like you, but you trust him... And that's precisely what David Audley said. And I didn't believe a word of it.'

'Why not?' said Frances. 'Don't tell me it was just because David is devious.'

'You know, I am being rather altruistic,' said Paul to no one in particular. He sounded suspicious of himself.

'My dear lady - young lady - ' Shapiro caught himself just in time. 'I told you - I made a mistake. Isn't that enough for you?'

Under the urbanity he was angry with himself - so furious that it required a continuous effort not to burn up everything and everyone around him, not excluding dear young ladies, thought Frances. But one thing he wasn't going to receive from this young lady - and 'young lady' from him was patronising and he ought to have known better: in Israel 'young ladies' were accepted as young soldiers - was any special consideration. Whatever he'd done, there was no way Colonel Shapiro of Mossad would have behaved altruistically.

'I didn't believe him - ' Shapiro saw that he wasn't about to be offered an olive branch, and that cooled him down ' - for the sufficient reason that Colonel Butler thinks very highly of him, professionally. Which is all that matters.'

Yes. And so here was another one who wasn't concerned with motives and wives and murder, decided Frances. For all Shapiro cared. Colonel Butler could be the Motorway Murderer himself, with women planted under the roadway one to every hundred yards for miles on end. Professionally that was of no consequence whatsoever, provided it was done efficiently.

'My God!' said Paul in a hollow voice. 'It's Audley that they're after, not Butler!'

'What?' For once Frances ignored her own hateful feminine squeak of surprise.

'What?'

'Christ - I'm dim - dim!' Paul, in turn, ignored her, addressing himself to Shapiro. 'I thought Fred Clinton was losing his grip - letting them push Butler out of the way, doing their dirty work for them.'

'He is losing his grip,' snapped Shapiro. 'Five years ago ... even two years ago ... he would have closed up that file on Butler tight - he would have locked it up and thrown away the key. If Stocker hadn't been a sick man he still might have managed it. But with Stocker the way he was - no help ... waiting for the next pain in his chest ... and he's too old to fight the way he used to, Clinton is. The politicians pushed him - you're right, Mitchell: there are people who know all about Audley, and they don't like what they know - he doesn't push around easily, and he isn't polite with it either. Also there's the anti-Audley faction in your own department - they really hate his guts too.'

'For a different reason, I hope to God!' murmured Paul.

Audley?

'So do I,' said Shapiro grimly. 'By God - I hope that too!'

Audley? Audley?

'Clinton's 64. He's retiring next year,' said Paul.

Clinton - Audley? Not Butler, not Stocker. But Clinton and Audley?