The Old Vengeful

Director, or the Duke of Plaza-Toro, or the Kabaka of Buganda, or the Akond of Swat—Jack Butler is a perfectly good Director—his overwhelming qualification for the title is that he doesn't want it, if you ask me.'

The irony about that, thought Mitchell, was that it was probably true. And the other and greater irony was that Jack Butler favoured Audley for the very same reason, so rumour had it.

'But, as it happens, Latimer would have made a dog's breakfast of this one—Butler's quite right, as usual—

Latimer's a high IQ plodder: he can set up an operation much better than I can, but he's no good at this sort of thing—

this is something else, I suspect.'

So Audley had won ... if this particular prize could be called winning. 'So where are the complications, for God's sake, David?'

'Season your impatience for a moment—the complication is that you can't take this one single-handed, and Master Latimer is as artful as a cartload of monkeys—'

'I've not got a partner?' Mitchell's chest expanded: Frances dummy3

had been his partner, and Frances slept in a little country churchyard now—now and forever. 'I don't want a bloody partner—'

'Not a partner. More ... a bodyguard—a driver . . . someone to watch your back and do the chores, Paul. And he'll be good at all those things, I assure you.'

He—?

'No!'

'Yes. Do you know a man named Aske? Humphrey Aske?'

'Aske?' Mitchell ran the tapes. There was a new Special Branch man taking over from Cox—Andrews— Andrew . . .

and an Agnew, who was half-French and a Hull University Law graduate . . . Aske—Christ!— Aske!

'He's a—he's a—oh, shit—' Mitchell ran out of words, into outrage.

'Odd? Queer? Gay?' Audley raised an eyebrow. 'A cupcake?

I heard that word recently, from one of our newer recruits—

you know of Humphrey Aske, then?'

'David—no, for God's sake—'

'I might have known you'd know him. You always know too much, Paul.'

'I've only seen him a couple of times—I've talked to him once

—'

'But once was enough? Tchk, tchk!' Audley tutted at him.

'Prejudice is a terrible thing! And since it takes all sorts to dummy3

make a world—and particularly our world—has it never occurred to you how useful the Askes of this world can be, once we've stopped trying to sweep them under the carpet?'

He gazed at Mitchell. 'What was he doing, when you encountered him?'

'He was poncing around in records.' Mitchell recalled his incredulity from that encounter.

'In the Balkan Section? He has been covering one of their embassies—probably the Bulgarian . . . the old Bulgarian heresy?' Audley was at his most maddening. 'That's one of Master Latimer's areas of activity, and he's one of Latimer's creatures. That's why we've got him now—or you have.'

More incredulity. 'Latimer isn't—?'

'No. Latimer isn't. Latimer is neither homo nor hetero, so far as I can observe. He is merely and unfortunately very smart, in this instance. So I'm afraid you have Aske as your back-up.'

'Why not Bannen? I like him.'

'Because Bannen doesn't have the right qualifications. Aske does—and Latimer has kindly made him available, because he wants to know what I'm up to ... and Jack Butler is being obstinately fair-minded, because Aske needs more field experience at the sharp end, to qualify for promotion.'

Audley gave Mitchell a wicked look. 'But you don't need to be nice to him, or to let him into your confidence. He's just there to hew wood and draw water for you, and to die for you dummy3

if he has to.'

That was altogether too close to the bone: there was no answer to that, only another pang of remembrance.

'Now . . . the project.' Audley dismissed the complication of Aske as though the truth had exorcised it. 'It was Project Vengeful—and the Vengeful was in English, not Cyrillic, so there are no semantic or etymological arguments about

'avenger', or 'vengeance', or 'vindictive', even though they were all Royal Navy ships in their time too.'

Loftus of the 'Vengeful' , thought Mitchell automatically. But that was two-thirds of a lifetime ago—