The Labyrinth Makers (25 page)

It was the hotel manager, standing at his elbow, now beautifully dinner-jacketed and still sleekly out of place against the dark oak beams.

'Excuse me, Dr Audley.'

And marvellously out of place in Newton Chester too, thought Audley. The sleepy place could have seen nothing so Mediterranean since the Roman legion from Lincoln had come marching by to build its practice camp down the road.

'Excuse me for interrupting you, Dr Audley, but Mistaire Warren, of Castle Farm–he was looking for you this afternoon here. He left a package for you which I have.'

The man took each aspirate like a show-jumper on a tricky course of fences, landing triumphantly on the final full stop for a clear round.

Butler already had an airfield map, but Audley suddenly wanted to get away from them all–to consider Panin for a moment by himself and to collect his thoughts again. This was a sufficient excuse.

He followed the manager out into the hall, where the fellow darted into his office and reappeared flourishing a large envelope so exuberantly that Audley thought for a second that he was going to spin it across the hallway.

But the flourish was converted into an elegant little bow, and Audley felt honour-bound to open it there and then as though it was a document of the highest importance.

There was a note pinned to the folded map, biro-scrawled in a childishly copperplate hand.

'Dear Dr Audley–I enclose my father's map, as promised. I'm sorry it isn't quite what I thought. The runways are marked in pencil though, but none of the buildings. My father was very interested in—'

The next word stopped Audley dead in mid-sentence.

Carefully he unfolded the creased section of the large-scale ordnance survey map. It wasn't luck really, he told himself. He would have come to it himself in the end, sooner or later. Indeed, he could see the signposts pointing to it along the way, which he had left behind only half-read.

And there it was, of course: Steerforth's treasure neatly and precisely marked for him. Marked as exactly as if it had been Steerforth, and not Keith Warren's father, who had recorded it.

As for luck, though–if any man had had good luck, and then equally undeserved and final bad luck, it had been John Steerforth.

For the second time Audley watched the water tower sink slowly into the tarmac skyline behind him. He did up another button on his raincoat. Roskill was driving with his window down, and the Land-Rover was draughty; it was another unseasonable morning, clear enough, but grey and unfriendly. One of those mornings when spring hadn't even tried to break through, even falsely. Morning had purged the old airfield altogether of the atmosphere it had possessed on Sunday evening: it was no longer melancholy and forlorn, but merely bleak.

But it was a good morning for digging–that had been Butler's only comment as he dumped the spades in the back. And Butler, in navy-blue donkey-jacket and baggy gardening trousers, had undeniably come prepared to dig.

Roskill's confidence was not so complete; or perhaps it was simply that his equally ancient tweeds still retained a lingering elegance. As he had explained unapologetically the night before, he had no garden of his own, and consequently no gardening clothes.

Audley superimposed the ribbon of runway and the waving sea of grass on the map which was now etched on his memory. At about this point, on the left, there should be the break in the grass which marked the concrete base of the safe deposit hut.

'Stop here for a moment.'

He climbed out of the cabin and took in the whole circuit of the surrounding landscape. Ahead of him the taxiing strip stretched away, narrowing until it merged with the trees in the distance. Behind him the slow incline of the Hump obscured the old built-up area of the field. On each side the prairie lay wide and open. It was still a lonely and naked place, with only the distant racket of a tractor out of sight to the right: Farmer Warren was busy cutting his Italian rye grass for his wife's uncle's silage.

Audley climbed back into the cabin, pointing out to Roskill the low, irregular line of hillocks ahead and off the tarmac strip to the left, insignificant in themselves, but perfectly discernible in their level surroundings.

His confidence was almost absolute, and he recognised it as that same inner serenity which he had known sometimes before examinations, when he was sure that he could translate preparation into action. It was attended by the same uncontrollable physical symptoms, too–the dry mouth, the tight chest and the fast pulse.

He signalled Roskill to stop as they approached the nearest mound, little more than 300 yards from the edge of the taxiing strip, and walked to the top of it while the others unloaded the equipment. From the runway it had seemed to be no more than one of a haphazard group, but now he could see clearly that it marked the exact corner of the old Roman Practice Camp, the meeting point of two lines of hillocks and low banks now related to one another as the time-eroded remains of the earth ramparts.

He turned back to speak to the men behind him and saw with surprise that the water tower was once more in view. The changes in the land were extraordinarily deceptive, its rise and fall so gentle here that they tricked the eye. Yet it was perfectly logical: no Roman military engineer would ever have marked out a camp in a hollow, not even a practice camp, but would have used the rising ground to advantage.

And it even added a touch of perfection to Steerforth's opportunism.

He stepped down to where Roskill and Butler stood amid a small pile of equipment.

'Where to now?' The resignation in Roskill's voice suggested that although DECCO was a far cry from the old mine detectors it was heavier than it looked.

Right or wrong, Audley knew this was his moment and he couldn't resist underplaying it.

'Where you're standing, near enough.'

Butler looked around him disbelievingly.

'Here? But, damn it–we're still well inside the perimeter! Why, you can see this patch from miles away. No one could dig a hole here without its being spotted, not when the airfield was in use!'

'Let's try here all the same,' said Audley patiently. 'Let's see what the machine has to say.'

Roskill began to fiddle with DECCO, and with a shrug Butler emptied half a dozen reels of white tape from a canvas haversack.

'We'll lay down the start lines first, then. How long do you want for the base line, Dr Audley?'

'Ten yards, say.'

'
Ten yards
?' The scorn was stronger now than the disbelief in Butler's voice. 'I've got a hundred yards in each of these reels! You must be joking!'

'Jesus Christ!' whispered Roskill. 'I've got a reading!'

Butler swung round towards him.

'I've got a reading,' said Roskill. 'It's right here under my feet!'

Butler set the tape down and strode over to him, peering over his shoulder.

'It's a strong one, too. Left a bit … a bit more … steady–that's it!'

They both looked up at Audley.

'Well, there's something down there right enough, and it's fairly substantial,' said Roskill. 'Richardson said this thing was so sensitive it would pick up the studs in an old boot. But we've got a lot more than an old boot here.'

Butler looked accusingly at Audley.

'And that wasn't luck, Dr Audley. You knew damn well it was there–you knew to the inch!'

Roskill set DECCO down carefully to one side.

'After what we went through yesterday,' he said gently, 'I do think you owe us some explanation for this sudden fit of–what's the word–serendipity … Just tell us, Dr Audley –is this the real thing?'

Audley breathed out heavily, conscious suddenly that he had been holding his breath.

'I rather think it must be,' he managed to say. 'But I give you my word I didn't know until last night. I hadn't a clue up to then. Or rather, I couldn't make sense of the clues we had.'

'Never mind the clues,' cut in Butler. 'Just tell us how the hell Steerforth dug a hole in full view of everyone for miles around without anyone noticing.'

'The answer is that he didn't dig it, Major Butler. It was already dug for him. You see, there was an archaeological dig going on here all that summer, off and on. They filled the trench up just at this point on August 28, and that's the day after he landed his boxes in the hollow just down there.'

Roskill whistled to himself softly.

'They'd known about this Roman camp for ages, of course. But it wasn't a very promising site, and it was only because the farmer who owned the land was interested in archaeology that they decided to excavate it. That was in 1938, actually. But then the RAF got in first and they had to wait until 1945–and then they only obtained permission on condition that they dug one trench at a time and filled it in before they started on the next one.

'It's all neatly marked on a map the farmer's son lent me, and when I saw the date on this trench I was pretty sure that it was here if it was anywhere. It fitted in with something the navigator told me.'

'And Steerforth was bound to know about it,' Roskill murmured, looking back towards the airfield. 'He must have taxied past here often enough.'

'That's just it, Hugh–only he knew better than most, because he used to walk down this way to collect things he'd had dumped in a hut just down there. Tierney said he had an excuse for coming. I think that just might have been an innocent interest in archaeology.'

'By God, but he was damned lucky in his timing,' grunted Butler. The loot–and then the hole just at the right moment!'

But which really came first? Audley wondered. Was the idea of hiding the treasure in the trench the sudden flash of inspiration he had originally imagined? Or was the existence of that trench the fatal knowledge which tempted Steerforth into doing what would otherwise have been impossible?

'Lucky?' Roskill shook his head in admiration. 'Maybe he had serendipity too. But I think he was a very smart operator. Whichever way you look at it, it was a bloody marvellous bit of improvisation–no wonder old Ellis thought the world of him!'

Like Audley, Roskill was halfway towards giving in to John Steerforth, though perhaps for a different reason. Where Roskill was drawn to the man's audacity, possibly as a kindred spirit, Audley warmed to the knowledge that Steerforth had enjoyed the irony of it: the greatest archaeological loot in history, twice plundered already, planted in another archaeologist's hole in the ground! He need never be ashamed of his future father-in-law …

'He was a clever blighter, no doubt about that,' conceded Butler. 'But he'd have done better to have left well alone in the end. He just made work for us.'

He peeled off his donkey-jacket. 'And we're just giving it all back to the Russians, more's the pity.'

'… Who are even now coming to collect,' Roskill added, staring past Audley.

Audley swung round to follow his gaze. Panin had said that his official car would be down early, and here it was, creeping directly across the airfield like a black beetle, the sound of its engine drowned by the more distant, but noiser tractor. He hadn't wasted much time.

Butler bent down and picked up one of the spades.

'Come on, then, Hugh,' he said grimly. 'Let's not keep our masters waiting.'

The black car halted alongside the Land-Rover and a stocky man who had been sitting beside the driver got out and hurried deferentially to open the rear door. Panin eased himself out and to Audley's consternation Faith followed him.
That
had not been in the plan, but there was no helping it now.

'Good morning, Dr Audley.' Panin's voice was as flat and featureless as the airfield. 'I am sorry to have missed you earlier; I did not know that you were going to start so early. This is Mr Sheremetev from our embassy.'

The chunky man, who must have been dragged from his bed even earlier than Audley, nodded his head sharply and twisted his lips in a brief diplomatic smile.

'And I took the liberty of bringing Miss Steerforth with me.'

'I'm sorry, David,' Faith broke in. 'I know you said that there probably wouldn't be any action until this afternoon, but I couldn't bear to hang around the hotel by myself. And Professor Panin was coming up here.'

There was a muffled thump as Butler drove his spade into a square of grass which Roskill had roughly shaved with a small sickle. He lifted a segment of turf and placed it neatly to one side.

'And it seems that we were both wise not to delay, Miss Steerforth,' observed Panin. 'Is this the place, Dr Audley?'

'Our detecting device has picked up something just here, Professor. We were lucky to pick it up so quickly.'

Sheremetev gestured around him. 'Is it not rather a–a public place for such a purpose?'

'There were archaeologists excavating here at the time, Mr Sheremetev. They were just filling in a trench at this place.'

He met Panin's stare, only to be disconcerted by its lack of expression. Or was it unvarying intensity about those eyes which was disconcerting? His first impression had been one of anti-climax the night before. But the man's personality wasn't negative–it was simply shuttered.

And now Panin was nodding in agreement with him.

'Public, but not obvious–that is good reasoning, Dr Audley. And it was good reasoning in the first instance, too: the classic doctrine of the hiding place.' He considered Faith reflectively. 'Young airmen in my experience were not so devious, but this man we underrated.'

He walked over to where Roskill and Butler were digging behind a small rampart of turves. Neither of them took any notice of him, and he eventually continued past them up the slope of the nearest mound. Sheremetev followed obediently, as though linked to him by some invisible towline.

'I think he's rather a sweetie, really,' whispered Faith. 'He's got beautiful manners and he was charming last evening.'

After that awkward moment of encounter, the man had been courteous enough in a solemn way. The charm, however, was an illusion created by her own nervousness and a mixture of gin and claret drunk too quickly.

'As a matter of fact he's rather like you, David.' Faith grinned wickedly at the discomposure he wasn't quick enough to hide.