Our Man in Camelot (21 page)

He scrabbled desperately in his memory. But only the old bookseller’s taped voice came back to him:
I told him if it was true it was a great discovery. And he said
‘
And a great load of trouble, too
’
. And then Schreiner’s voice, leaving no room for misunderstanding:
If there
’
s trouble you are strictly on your own… what matters is the CIA remains uninvolved
.

Roskill looked at him hopefully. “Well, do any answers occur to you now, Captain?”

“Answers?” All the possible avenues of action opened up before Mosby briefly, and then the gates closed on all but one. “For God’s sake, you must have the answers. All I’ve got now is questions.”

Roskill shrugged. “Very well. If that’s the way you want to play it…”

“I’m not playing anything any way. I just—“

“Of course you’re not.” Roskill lifted the phone at his elbow and dialled a single number. “You’re just—hullo, sir… Yes, I’m ready now… No, he hasn’t… No, I don’t…” He smiled at Mosby “Yes, he is—and I’ve got an abscess starting under my first molar to prove it… Quite so, sir— yes. I think he’s a good dentist. And I also think he’s a good liar.”

AN IMMENSE MARBLE
fireplace, surmounted by an equally huge carved coat-of-arms, dominated the drawing room. But neither of the two men who stood in front of it were dwarfed by their setting: Audley, exuding his Ozymandias aura, looked as though he owned the place, and the man beside him, though half a head shorter, looked as though he owned Audley.

Mosby’s eyes strayed back for a second to the coat-of-arms, which was held aloft by two winged dragons breathing heraldic fire. So that made four dragons all told, he reckoned dispassionately. Four dragons versus one dentist.

Roskill appeared at his shoulder.

Five dragons. Even Sir Lancelot might have baulked at those odds. And on an empty stomach too.

“Good afternoon, Captain Sheldon,” said Audley’s owner politely. “My name’s Clinton…”

The empty stomach caved in on itself: the Number One Dragon himself.

“Mr Clinton,” Mosby was aware that he sounded nervous, but this was one time when the dentist and the CIA man were in perfect accord. “Hullo, David.”

“Sir Frederick Clinton,” murmured Roskill in his ear.

“Sir Frederick…” Mosby repeated the name mechanically.

“Sit down, Captain.” Sir Frederick waved towards the settee. “Make yourself comfortable. Then we can discuss what we’re going to do with you.”

Mosby sank on to the cushions. The softness caught him by surprise: he sank and sank until he felt he was being engulfed, while the three Englishmen settled themselves into wing-chairs from which they could look down on him. If this was an example of British psychological warfare it was plain that they were dirty fighters.

“Good…” Sir Frederick interlaced his fingers across his stomach. “Now tell me, Captain—just for the record—are you or are you not an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency?”

“Am I—
what
!” Mosby struggled to raise himself from the settee’s embrace.

“Are you CIA?” asked Audley in a tone only a little less mild than Sir Frederick’s.

With an effort Mosby levered himself to the edge of the cushion. Even though this had the effect of bringing his knees up awkwardly under his chin it was a slightly less demoralising posture nevertheless. “You have to be crazy. Why the hell should I be CIA?”

“Meaning, I take it, that you’re not?” Sir Frederick nodded. “Which is in accord with what the CIA itself says.”

“The CIA?” Mosby blinked with bewilderment.

“Which is what they would say under the circumstances, of course,” said Roskill in his bored voice.

“You called the CIA—about me?” Mosby said in a strangled voice. “Just like that? Oh, brother!”

“Don’t distress yourself, Captain—at least, not on their account,” said Sir Frederick. “They gave you a clean bill of health.”

“Oh, sure. I’ll be clean all the way back to the States when my commanding officer hears about this.” Mosby gave Roskill a bitter look. “Some gentleman’s agreement.”

Sir Frederick looked at Roskill questioningly. “What gentleman’s ageement?”

“He seems more worried about his C.O. than about us, sir,” explained Roskill. “He likes it here, apparently.”

“Correction—
liked
”
said Mosby. “And I’m beginning to get tired of being pushed around for no reason.”

“When you haven’t done anything wrong?”

“That’s dead right.” Mosby looked from one to the other. “Look, so I was searching for the site of Badon Hill—I admit it. But it isn’t any crime. You can’t hold me for just looking.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” said Roskill. “We’ve a lot of old laws you never heard of, not to mention the new anti-terrorist regulations.”

“Anti-terrorist? I’m not a goddamn terrorist.”

“Of course you aren’t,” said Sir Frederick soothingly. “You were simply looking for Badon and your search led you to Billy Bullitt.”

“That’s… right,” Mosby’s suspicion that Bullitt was the cause of his difficulties hardened. He pointed towards Audley. “It was David found him though. Until yesterday afternoon I’d never even heard of him.”

“Indeed?”

“Sure. Though now I come to think of it, it was Sir Thomas Gracey told us about him. Wasn’t that so, David?”

Audley regarded him impassively.

“Strange you’d never heard of him, when you were both looking for Mons Badonicus,” said Sir Frederick. “Did Major Davies never mention him, then?”

Mosby frowned. “Huh?”

“Obviously not. And by the same token I presume he never mentioned the Novgorod Bede?”

Jesus! Was there anything they didn
’
t know
? thought Mosby despairingly. The common sense cancelled despair: there had to be more in this than mere cat-and-mouse cruelty. Sir Frederick Clinton was too important to waste his time merely putting the boot into the CIA, no matter it was a recognised international sport.

“The Novgorod Bede? I never heard of it.”

“He never mentioned it?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“He doesn’t seem to have told you very much, your friend.”

“Well… not about what he was doing.” This was treacherous ground. “We just talked about Arthurian history in general. I never knew for sure he was really on to something until after he was killed.”

“So you didn’t know he’d discovered the site of Mons Badonicus?”

Mosby shook his head cautiously. “I still don’t know that for sure. It was—well, it was just an inference from what he told my wife… plus the stuff he left behind with us.”

“The evidence—yes. We’d very much like to examine that, Captain.”

“Help yourself. It’s in the trunk of my car.” Mosby raised a mental prayer that Howard Morris’s ground-bait—lifted from a dozen obscure museum collections—was as authentic —and as untraceable—as he had claimed it was.

“Ah, I don’t mean what you showed David. You mentioned some other material… bones, and so forth. Could we send someone to collect that?”

Even more treacherous ground: the other material existed strictly in Howard Morris’s ingenious imagination. So they had to be stalled—‘

“Sure. Only I’d have to go with them— I’ve stored it next to my surgery on the base. I’d only just started examining it.”

It was the best he could do, but it was pretty thin. The truth was, however good his own cover, the Davies part of his story had never been designed to be tested to destruction by the British themselves. Already the hairline cracks in it were beginning to show.

But the man Roskill’s words on the phone to Sir Frederick—
I think he
’
s a good liar—
meant that those cracks were still suspicions, not certainties; and there were limits to how far the British could go with a serving officer in the USAF, no matter what they suspected he might be, particularly if they really had checked up with the Station Chief in London. In fact, the worst they could do was to ship him home as an undesirable, and that still gave him a margin of time to play with.

Except that margin was a wasting asset, he sensed that as he felt their eyes on him. And the only thing to do with a wasting asset was play it to the limit; attack was not just his last line of defence left, but his plain duty.

He stared back at Sir Frederick. “Now come on, Mr—Sir Frederick—it’s time someone answered some of my questions. Like why I’m supposed to be a liar—and a CIA man—for for a start. And what the hell I’m supposed to have done that’s so awful.”

The Number One Dragon smiled thinly at him. “And where Mons Badonicus is?”

“And that too, yes. Did he really find it?”

“Is that all?”

Mosby thought for a moment. “I’d like to see my wife.”

The Dragon nodded. “Well, that I can certainly do.” He extended the nod to Roskill. “Hugh, would you ask Mrs Fitzgibbon to bring Mrs Sheldon along here as soon as she’s through. And you might see if they can manage a cup of tea for us at the same time.”

And cucumber sandwiches, Mosby thought irrelevantly, looking at his watch. It was already past five; he wondered if anyone had bothered to tell Billy Bullitt that his American guests, like Miss Otis, wouldn’t be keeping their engagement with him.

“Well, David?” Sir Frederick switched to Audley. “What do you think now?”

Audley’s pale eyes flicked over Mosby, giving no hint of what was behind them. “I haven’t changed. What doesn’t make sense can’t be right.”

“As your old Latin master used to say… I know—

‘
Est summum nefas fallere
,

Deceit is gross impiety.’

David sets great store by the observations of his long-defunct Latin master, Captain Sheldon… Do you know where we are now?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you know the name of this place?”

“No, I don’t. Your men forgot to tell me.”

“Weren’t you curious about it?”

Mosby shrugged. “I guess I was relieved—just so it wasn’t a police station. So what’s special about it?”

“If I tell you it could delay your departure somewhat. Would that bother you?”

“Depends how long the delay could be.” Mosby looked around the room. “I can think of worse places to be… delayed in.”

Again that thin smile. “It’s where you wanted to be.”

“Where I wanted to be? I don’t get you.”

“Camelot.”

“Cam—“ Mosby frowned. “There’s no such place.”

“There
was
no such place.” Sir Frederick shook his head. “So one place is as good as another, and this place is as good as any. If King Arthur is alive anywhere he lives here, you might say.”

“You’re still not getting through to me.”

“I’m not?”

“
Est summum nefas fallere
,” murmured Audley.

Sir Frederick laughed. “There—now David doesn’t believe you!”

Mosby gave Audley an angry glance. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn. I’m not interested in Camelot and I wasn’t looking for it. Camelot and Badon Hill are two plain different things— which David knows damn well.”

“Of course,” agreed Sir Frederick soothingly. “But Billy Bullitt and Badon are not two plain different things, you would agree I’m sure.”

“Billy Bullitt?” Involuntarily Mosby found himself looking up at the coat-of-arms. “You mean this is—“

“Red dragon of the Britons, white dragon of the Saxons,” Sir Frederick nodded. “The College of Heralds let old Professor Bullitt have them as—ah—‘supporters’, I think is the correct term, in 1928 when he quartered the Imberham arms of his mother’s family. And you can see what they let him have in the bottom left quarter, eh?”

Mosby examined what looked like a shaggy dog, but was obviously a heraldic bear.

“Up until 1924 this was Imberham Manor. But that was the year he published his famous ‘Britain in the Dark Ages’, and he renamed the manor in honour of his obsession. So you might say that Billy Bullitt grew up in Camelot.”

“And he’s been looking for the Holy Grail ever since,” murmured Audley. “Or his own version of it.”

“Following in grandfather’s footsteps, naturally. Right down to grandfather’s motto, which you will observe just below the shield—‘What I seek, I know’. Apparently a line from Matthew Arnold’s ‘Memorial Verses’:
All this I bear, for what I seek, I know
. The College of Heralds enjoyed the ‘bear’ pun, heraldic sense of humour being what it is.”

“Is that a fact?” Mosby overlaid his unease with feigned interest. The last time someone had taken for granted his ability to equate bears with King Arthur had been in the hall at St Veryan’s, and the someone had been Howard Morris. It made him wonder, if the British knew so much about what was going on, whether they were not also well aware of Operation Bear. “And does this mean I’m going to get to talk to Group Captain Bullitt after all?”

“If you still want to talk to him. And always supposing he wants to talk to you.”

Mosby cocked his head on one side. “Why shouldn’t he want to talk to me? Is Badon Hill some kind of top secret, maybe?”

“That’s the general idea—you’re catching on at last, Captain.” Sir Frederick nodded. “Plus the fact that he’s taken rather strongly against the CIA—doesn’t care for you at all at the moment.”

Mosby stiffened. “But I’m not CIA, for God’s sake—I thought we’d got that straight.”

“We only have your word for that.”

“And
their
word too,” Mosby played his deuce with all the confidence of a man convinced he had an ace. “Isn’t that worth anything? I thought your security people worked hand in hand with ours—?” He broke off lamely as he saw the expression on Sir Frederick’s face. “Uh-huh—I get it… Blood isn’t thicker than water any more…” He spread his hands helplessly. “Well, then there’s no way I can prove I’m not what I’m not, I guess. Except if I was I suppose I’d have some smart way of proving that I wasn’t.”

Sir Frederick turned towards Audley. “Well, David. Over to you.”

Audley considered Mosby silently for five seconds before speaking. “I told you: I’d need time. And you say we haven’t any.”