Here Be Monsters

in another time, damn you! But there was nothing to be gained from that: the letter he had to write, to that elderly maiden aunt in Eastbourne who was all the next-of-kin Brian Turner had, was his business, not Audley's.

Audley was staring at him. 'We would have lost Turnbull anyway, Jack. Even if I hadn't screwed things up. Or someone, if not him.'

Now they were coming to it. 'What do you mean?'

Audley took time to think. 'You asked me what the hell I've been doing, Jack. And the answer is that I've been making the mistake I was supposed to make - no question about that. I let myself be taken, and they took me. And, at a guess, it was Panin.'

'Panin?'

'Uh-huh. Old Nikolai's been laying for me for years - he knows me as well as I know him, from way back. You should remember, Jack. It was about the time we met again, long after the war, you and I. And he was one of Professor Kryzhanovsky's recruits too, so he'd know about the whole Debrecen nonsense without even having to look it up: he knows exactly how I tick - all he had to do was to wind me up. And killing people has never worried him, because he's a monster: he kills people selectively, like daisies in his lawn.'

Butler remembered Professor Nikolai Panin: that deceptively gentle face, slightly sheep-like with its badly-set broken nose; he had been… he had been a scholar once, not a psychologist - or archaeologist - ?

'They wanted to get the Cheltenham man out, Jack. And I made another mistake there, dummy2

because I didn't think he was on to me… Or, anyway, I didn't think he was going to run quite so quickly. But if I'd been there, in Cheltenham, I'd have maybe picked up the signs last week, when those American transmissions were coming through.' Audley shook his head. 'I don't know… But they didn't know - that's the point. So they wanted to get me out of there. But I'm just a bit too senior to have a convenient accident - ' He cocked his head at Butler ' - which would have resulted in a reciprocal sanction, maybe? Or something like?'

Butler said nothing. Audley might guess how the land lay there, but it was still beyond his certain competence.

'Okay.' Audley accepted his silence. 'But my guess is that, with what the Americans were doing to him, the man Parker was ready to run, so he was expendable. So Parker was to hand, and he was also one of their possibles from the alleged Debrecen List. And they must have known that he had a connection - an innocent connection - with Haddock Thomas, whom I had cleared back in '58. So they set Haddock up with Parker, and then killed Parker rather crudely, so as to set me up, Jack. Because they were pretty sure we'd react to the Debrecen List, after what happened to Latimer in America last year.'

Butler thought about Elizabeth Loftus's Interim Report, which lay in his top drawer a few feet away, and understood what Audley had left unsaid there: the unanswered questions in the whole Debrecen affair had been festering in the files for a quarter of a century - that was an unacceptable truth of it.

'But the way it worked out - ' Audley spread his hands ' - it worked out the way things always do: better than they'd planned in one way, and worse in another - '

Butler held his tongue with a shrewd idea of what must be coming.

'And you don't need to look so bloody innocent, Jack.' Audley was too quick for him. 'We both know that Oliver Saint John Latimer has made himself a Debrecen-expert since last year. And maybe Nikolai Panin was relying on that - I wouldn't put it past him, by God! In which case he would have reckoned that the fat sod would be only too pleased to set me up - right?'

Colonel Butler knew he couldn't have that. 'Oliver acted perfectly correctly, David. Apart from accepting all the responsibility.'

'Oh, sure! Oliver's not stupid,' agreed Audley. 'He didn't pull me out of Cheltenham until Turnbull had sussed things out. And he put poor little Elizabeth in charge - ' He held up his hand to cut Colonel Butler off ' - because it looked like a good training… Don't tell me, Jack! I can just hear the sainted Oliver justifying himself.' He sniffed contemptuously. 'So what happened was that I was hooked - partly because I thought Latimer was after me, dummy2

and partly because I suspected that I was about to be framed by the Other Side - the Other Side being Professor N. A. Panin… All of which pushed me into making a mistake at Cheltenham, I agree! But I was hooked, anyway: Oliver had to do what he did, and so I had to do what I did, not only to watch my back, but also to protect poor old Haddock. And Peter Barrie, too.'

Butler thought of the other memo in his drawer, from Neville Macready, warning him away from Sir Peter Barrie of Xenophon Oil, whose peace of mind was not on any account to be disturbed by any persecution, pending the completion of the Egyptian talks. And, as always, Macready was extremely persuasive.

'But I didn't turn up on the Pointe du Hoc,' continued Audley. 'Poor old Turnbull did, instead. And although I did leave Cheltenham for a day or two, there was no guarantee that I wouldn't return there. So they had to do something to make sure of me.' Audley's face became blank. 'If Latimer had sent Elizabeth to the Pointe du Hoc it would have been her. But he sent Turnbull, so it was him. But once we'd lost someone in the field, whoever it was… Jack, I couldn't quit then.'

They had been taken, thought Butler. It had been Latimer and Audley, but it might very well have been Butler and Audley. So the final and inescapable responsibility was his.

But then he thought: why was Audley so relaxed, for God's sake?

And then he thought: it couldn't be because David was in the clear, technically (on Latimer's order), or even actually (because even a clever man couldn't be condemned officially for being not quite clever enough, in these labyrinthine circumstances - not so long as he was Director, anyway!).

Audley's face broke up. 'Sorry, Jack. I fucked it up - I know!' But then he gave Butler a sly look. 'But all is not lost, actually.'

The sly look accelerated Butler's post-mortem thoughts. He had already prepared himself for the Minister's anger, and Number 10's recriminations: the fact that GCHQ Cheltenham still wasn't secure would actually strengthen the Government's stand on hard vetting and de-unionization. So, when this particular defector surfaced