The Memory Trap

'Okay — old-regimental-tie, then.' Mitchell was implacable.

'Failed the old regiment — and then failed us, the way I heard it.'

Elizabeth was frowning at him again. But he had to settle with Mitchell now. 'Then you heard it wrong.' The trouble was, in a perverse way the fellow had it right, all the same.

He could even remember Neville Macready summing up Richardson when the news of his departure was announced:

' Yes . . . well, they can't say I didn't warn them . . . Clever dummy1

fellow, of course — total recall, and all that. And plenty of style with it. But . . . 'Tiggers don't like honey', I said to Fred. 'And they don't like acorns. And they don't like thistles

— you'll see'. But, of course, our Fred's never read 'Winnie-the-Pooh' — wrong generation — he simply didn't understand what I was talking about.'

'How should I have heard it, then?'

Where Mitchell had been much more importantly right, however, was that guess about 'the old days'. But that was where he kept coming up against the blank wall in the records, and the equally blank wall of his memory (which was more reliable than any record). So it couldn't — it damn-well couldn't — be anything that they'd share, he and Richardson, that had made Kulik bracket their names in his last breath.

'He was a very talented man.' He eyed Mitchell reflectively.

'In some respects he was maybe even better than you, Mitchell.'

'Oh aye?' Having goaded Audley into starting to answer, Mitchell wasn't offended by the comparison. 'But I got his job nevertheless, didn't I?' He even grinned knowingly at Elizabeth. 'We're both Audley-recruits, aren't we, Lizzie?

So ... we may not be as talented. But we're not quitters, are we?'

Elizabeth, who hated being knowingly-grinned-at by anyone, but particularly by Dr Paul Mitchell, became even more dummy1

Loftus-faced. 'Why did he resign, David? From Research and Development? And then the army, too? If he was so good

— ?'

That had been the question which had hurt Fred Clinton, when his potential star-pupil had graduated cum laude, and then turned his back on the services. But, if he —hadn't read A. A. Milne, he had known his Dryden —

'I can't say that I'm not disappointed, David. Not to say surprised, too . . . Although Neville says he warned me, with some rubbish about acorns and thistles.'

' Yes . . . but, then, it's the difference between 'cold' war and

'hot' war, Fred — isn't it?' (That had been the first time he'd had to face what he already knew, but hadn't faced: that Fred was getting old now, and that the generation-gap between those who had felt the heat, and never wanted to feel it again, and those who hadn't, but who wondered endlessly about what it had been like, was becoming a problem to him.) ' It's like it was with my late unlamented father-in-law, Fred: so long as the guns were firing, he was a hero. But once they stopped, he began to get bored. And then he got up to all sorts of mischief —

'A daring pilot in extremity ...'

'... but for calm unfit ...'

dummy1

— so it's probably just as well. Because he'd have got up to all sorts of mischief, if he'd stayed with us.'

'Haven't we got enough mischief for him?'

' More than enough —1 agree!' (But that had been exactly the right moment to hit Fred with what he'd been worried about himself, at that time so long ago: that memory was still sharp, by God!) ' But he's the sort of chap who might get involved with politics, Fred. And . . . de-stabilizing the Government isn't what we're into — is it?'

'He isn't into that.'

' No.' (Fred wasn't over the hill yet. But he was no longer sitting on the top of it quite, either.) ' But some of the people he knows are ... or, let's say, I'm not sure about them, anyway. And . . . I have rather got the impression that intelligence research bores him — when we have to advise others when to risk their necks out there — ?'

That was it: whatever Mitchell might question as unlikely, he wouldn't argue with that. Because Mitchell and Richardson were brothers-under-the skin; only Richardson had been flawed, and Mitchell wasn't. 'He wasn't a research man, at heart.' And, also, there was that other difference — which would wound Mitchell deeply. But it would also stop his mouth, too. 'He was a soldier, you might say. And we didn't have a proper war for him. So that's why he resigned — from the army, as well as from R and D, Paul.'

dummy1

'Yes. He resigned.' Unexpectedly, Elizabeth hit him from the flank. 'But he also retired, David — from everything? Just like that — from everything?'

'Uh-huh?' Once the man had left R and D, that had been the end of him, was all he could recall. Fred had helped him back, of course: it had been Fred's influence which had promoted him from captain to major ... if not to keep him on his career-track, then maybe not to discourage their next recruit. So that had been merely prudent, never mind keeping faith with Richardson himself.