Here Be Monsters

One untimely death, plus Haddock Thomas's resignation: was that an emerging pattern?

'Was that why the operation was aborted?'

'Partly that.' He was studying the cottages ahead of them now: cottages, idyllic, English, as opposed to cottage, idyllic, French, near St Servan-les-Ruines, thought Elizabeth. 'Not everyone I was bullying was as friendless as Peter Barrie. Haddock, for example - he had friends in several high places, rather surprisingly… You see, it wasn't popular, what I was doing - there were accusations of 'witch-hunting'… or, in the American vernacular,

'McCarthyism' - the Senator wasn't just history in those days, either.'

She had clean forgotten about that. 'This was happening in America, too… Of course!'

'Of course?' He came back to her quickly. 'My dear Elizabeth, that was really the chief reason why we aborted… That is, apart from the fact that I was fed up - and Fred was worried about Research and Development getting a bad name… which was a lot more important than my being thoroughly pissed-off, in the final reckoning.'

'It went wrong in America?'

'Wrong? Huh!' he emitted a growling noise. 'It depends what you mean by 'wrong' -

'Define your terms', I should say: maybe 'wrong' in '58 might mean 'right' in '84 - eh?'

Irritation tightened her hands on the steering wheel, so that she suddenly became aware of them. They were no longer sweaty, merely disgustingly sticky. And she herself felt cold now, in the shadow of the trees, and tired and thirsty with it. Whereas he seemed altogether to have forgotten that he had been dying for a cup of tea an hour ago.

The Yanks had three things going for them that we didn't have.' He was lost in his own memory now. 'They had the resources. And the man who was running their show was a real professional, much more experienced than I was…' He trailed off, memory engulfing him altogether.

Elizabeth dredged her memory. 'And he enjoyed his work?'

'That's right.' He focused on her. 'I told you, didn't I?'

'You also said you didn't get on with him.'

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'An understatment. He disliked and mistrusted the English in general, and me in particular. He only worked with me because he hated traitors even more - he was a good hater. Old Scottish Presbyterian stock, out of Virginia from way back. They were always good haters.'

Audley had done his homework on his hostile colleague, typically. 'And you returned the compliment?'

'I didn't fancy him as a drinking crony. He didn't drink, anyway.' He retreated behind more English understatement. 'But more than that, I was a little scared of him, to be truthful.'

The thought of Audley scared was itself a little frightening. And the more so because he was also quite notoriously a lover of America and all things American. 'Why, David?'

'Huh! I was afraid I might turn up on his private Debrecen hit-list one day, for one thing.

But I also didn't like his methods, they were a bit rough for my effete tastes - I suspect he regarded Senator McCarthy as a much misunderstood man. But he was damn smart, all the same.'

'So what went wrong?'

'Hmmm…' He thought for a moment. 'What we thought at the time was that he'd trodden too hard on too many toes - as I was doing - only much worse. And that was part of the truth: that he forced good men and true to gang up against him, because of the damage he was doing.'

'And the other part?'

'Other parts, my dear… The other part we knew about was that when the good men got the dirt on him and he needed friends, we - if I may mix metaphors - we put the boot in.

Because I convinced Fred that if he prospered in the CIA we could kiss goodbye to the Special Relationship, what there was left of it.' He compressed his lips. 'Mistake Number Two, in retrospect?'

Elizabeth waited for the third part of the truth.

Audley drew a slow breath. 'What we think now - which we came to long afterwards, and much too late - is that maybe - just maybe - it was the KGB which fabricated the dirt on him… which was that he was taking bribes to discredit innocent liberals.' Another breath.

'Oh, it was all done neatly and painlessly, the way good men do bad deeds: he wasn't able dummy2

to make a martyr of himself, or anything like that.' He cocked a defensive eyebrow at her.

'You understand?'

'Mmm…' What she understood was that he was ashamed, but he wasn't actually going to admit it. 'But David -'

'Yes?'

There was no way of putting it except baldly. And she was too tired to put it any other way. 'If the KGB framed him… that means Debrecen was genuine. Surely?'

'Oh no - it means no such thing.' He had been ready for the question. 'When you fish with a net, you don't just get what you're fishing for - you get all sorts of things. Just because we were fishing for one sort of traitor - a very rare and special sort, which maybe didn't even exist - it doesn't mean that we didn't catch anything else edible, which just happened to be swimming in the wrong place, at the wrong time.'

Fish, thought Elizabeth