The Old Vengeful

'You said 'the wrong Vengeful' . So which was the right one?'

Audley shook his head. 'Your old Vengeful was the right one for you, Paul—and it still is.' Then he grinned. 'But as your Elizabeth knows, I suppose it's unrealistic not to tell you too.

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And you'll be less trouble knowing than not knowing . . . The real Vengeful was the Shannon, of course.'

Of course. Stupid. Obvious. Damn! 'The Shannon?'

'We had our own word on that long ago—that the Russians were planning something . . . Not the actual project name, but just that they intended dealing with the next generation of our anti-submarine systems.' Audley looked at him. 'We don't have many secrets worth having, but if there's one area where we can still claim to be ahead, it's anti-submarine work.'

That was true, even if it was only the natural legacy of the past, in which Britain alone of all other countries had twice nearly been beaten by the submarine, thought Mitchell.

'And their plan was made before the Vengeful was renamed?

Before she became the Shannon?'

Audley nodded. 'That's right. It was as simple as that.' He paused. 'So Oliver St John Latimer and James Cable set up a counter-plan. An in-depth anti-espionage system, you might say . . . And that Latimer's a fat slug, but he's a bloody good operator—better than everyone except me, in fact.' He gave the grandfather clock a calculating look. 'As of two hours from now we're set to take out the biggest Russian espionage operation of the decade, Paul. Not in the full glare of publicity, alas—which was what Jack Butler and I wanted ...

It seems that there are political considerations which rule that out—we're only allowed Philby and Maclean and Blunt dummy3

in public . . . But for once we're about to impress NATO and our American cousins, and we're going to sell maybe a billion pounds' worth of anti-submarine systems over the next decade into the bargain, if we're lucky. And not even a Labour Government—or an SDP one—can quarrel with that.'

He looked at Mitchell suddenly. 'Do you understand, Paul?'

Mitchell could only nod. The stakes had been raised far beyond his limit, but at least he could nod.

Audley gestured towards the papers on the desk. 'Which is why I don't think you've got anything to worry about there.

We've got too much riding on this operation to let anyone make waves about those three . . . apart from the fact that you were only doing your duty as our diversion man, in any case. And we had to have that diversion.'

'So you knew about their Vengeful operation long before the Americans told us about it?'

'That's right. But when we learned that the Americans knew about it we were pretty sure the Russians would be close behind them, and we didn't want them to abort the Vengeful one—not after all the trouble we'd gone to. We had to reassure them somehow.' He half-smiled at Mitchell. 'So Jack Butler gave me the job of making a fool of myself. . . and I came up with the old Vengeful as an opening ploy—I was going to make a mystery of it somehow . . . Or, if it refused to stand up, we'd got a contingency plan to make something out of the other Vengeful—the submarine that was transferred to the Greek navy in '46.' He nodded at Mitchell, and then dummy3

pointed to the papers again. 'But then those three turned up ... and Novikov. So what we had was better than I'd hoped for—Commander Loftus's mysterious riches, and three dead gangsters . . . and the real mystery of the old Vengeful herself

—that was a gift from the gods, because it was just the thing to help them believe that the so-clever Dr Audley was about to be too clever for his own good. With a little help from them, of course.'

Mitchell looked at him reproachfully. 'Why didn't you trust me? For God's sake!'

'I wanted to. But it wasn't my operation, and Latimer wanted you to be out of it.' Audley shook his head. 'The trouble was ... I think the clever Dr Audley was a little too clever for his own good' — another shake '—it never ceases to amaze me how what is basically simple becomes distorted and complicated by the human factor—I've never been able to make exactly the right allowance for that, you know . . .'

'Like what, for example?' Audley in this self-critical mood was too revealing not to encourage.

'Oh ... I never expected that smart policeman of ours to crack the source of Commander Loftus's ill-gotten gains so quickly . . .Not that it mattered—but it might have mattered.'

Another shake. Then he looked at Mitchell. 'And the French putting that red-headed beauty of yours on you— after they'd picked up the KGB so quickly: I didn't plan for you to be expelled from France like that, or not until our Shannon Operation was complete.'

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'No?' The memory of an icy Nikki MacMahon seeing him off from the departure lounge still rankled with Mitchell too.

'No. We were meant to be sleeping soundly in Alsace by now

—you and I and your Elizabeth . . . with Comrade Aske watching over us. And after a good Alsatian dinner, too.' But Audley wasn't smiling. 'That's how the big things go wrong—

from too many little miscalculations.'

'But . . . nothing big has gone wrong?' Safe and alive comforted Mitchell. He might never see Elizabeth again now; and even if he did he would never be able to convince her that he hadn't known about his true role—that they had both been ignorant foot-soldiers in the'same battle. But safe and alive was better than nothing—with these stakes and these players it could pass for a happy ending, near enough.

'No. Nothing seems to have gone wrong . . . not so far, anyway.' Audley gave the grandfather clock another