The Old Vengeful

looked at him slyly.

'Who?'

'The owner of the Vengeful box, Dr William Willard Pike, no less!' Audley bent over the page. 'The CIA liked the sound of him—or, if not the sound, then the smell. . . because it's a dummy3

smell they know, I suspect—even at this length of time—the authentic whiff of the enemy within the gate!'

This time it wasn't a question of not being drawn: it was as though Audley was talking to himself.

'This is pure Howard—pure Howard!' Audley shook his head admiringly. '' There are two schools of thought about Dr Pike, another known associate of Jim Burns (who in our day would have undoubtedly have been wasting our time running hot Armalites across the Canadian border for the IRA to shoot Limeys in Crossmaglen). They both disappeared from the scene here in 1812, never to return, ostensibly to do George III a mischief. But for my money—

and for that of Professor John Kasik, who is nobody's fool—

Pike was a British double-agent, who lit out one jump ahead of Burns with whatever passed for microfilm in those days in his pocket, on the first boat (which was a Portuguese brig bound for Lisbon) with Burns in hot pursuit in a Yankee trader licensed for Plymouth and Antwerp. Kasik and I can't prove anything, but we've both got a 'pricking of the thumbs', as you and William S. of Stratford-upon-Avon would say. So forget Timms and check out Burns and Pike.

Ends message'.''

Mitchell had heard of Professor Kasik—had even corresponded with him on an American aspect of Watch by the Liffey, as the best-known living authority on Irish Americans. But that recollection was secondary to his growing sense of unreality over this turn in the conversation.

dummy3

Their interest in the true story of the old Vengeful ought to have ended, yet Audley seemed as enthusiastic about it as ever.

The big man was smiling at him. 'We're checking what we can of this in the Bodleian, in FitzGerald's monumental history of the Paddies in America, as well as Kasik's own book. But Howard's chaps probably gained access to a lot of their unpublished material, so our new boy, Phillip Dale—the thin one—is burrowing into the old Foreign Office archives.

If Pike was one of our agents he ought to turn up in association with some of Richard Wellesley's bright boys of the period there. Our very own ancestors, in fact!'

Was it mere academic interest? But it couldn't be that, surely

— surely? Mitchell's brain ached with tiredness.

'If he is ... the Portuguese brig accounts for him being in Lisbon, and he picked up the Vengeful there, while Burns was putting out a general alarm for him. Which, of course, could be why the French eventually became so interested in the Vengeful, eh?'

The Portsmouth Plot, thought Mitchell. If Pike had had information about that which couldn't wait, then that could be why he had trans-shipped to the less-damaged Fortune after the battle.

It was all supposition—all pictures from a distant planet of a drama enacted long ago, in which the competing actors had been dust and forgotten for generations, mixed with the earth enriched by infinite millions of the long- dead heroes of dummy3

lost causes. But if, when the Last Trump sounded, it was all of immense importance in some ledger of human courage and constancy in adversity, it added up to nothing in the cruel and selfish priorities of now.

'What's the point of all this, David—the object of it?' He hated the question even as he asked it, but it was the only honest question left to him in the extremity of his weariness.

'The point—the object, my dear Paul ... is your Elizabeth—

potentially our Miss Loftus.' Audley's voice was gentle, almost sad. 'The object and the point is to make your history repeat itself in her . . . through you ... for us—do you see?'

'No. I don't see.' A huge disquiet enveloped Mitchell.

'No. Then perhaps this is not the time—'

'This is the bloody time!' Mitchell flogged himself awake.

'What are you up to, David?'

'My duty. Or . . . what I conceive to be my duty.' The fatigue showed in Audley too. 'They've pissed us around something shocking this time—you and me both, and your Elizabeth—

Latimer has, anyway, to get him out of trouble! So now we must take our profit from it, if we can.'

'What profit?'

Audley considered the question. 'I want you to go to Hadfields tomorrow—or today, as it is now—to see Elizabeth Loftus. And I want you to chat her up—I want you to be very nice to her ... I want you to offer to finish off her Vengeful book, as you promised you would do in the first place, Paul dummy3

—' A little twitch of pain there: Audley always knew when he was being devious '—you can even take my name in vain, if you have to—but not too much, for safety's sake—'

'Why?'

'Why me? Because she mustn't hate me too much!' The pain became pure. 'Why you? Because you're the