The Old Vengeful (35 page)

“What the hell’s going on, David?” said Mitchell.

Audley blinked vaguely at him. “You may well ask! There’s a gutter blocked above the kitchen door, and I got a face-full of water as I came in, and I can’t see a thing!”

Faith Audley swept down the last of the stairs and relieved her husband of his burdens, setting them down at his feet.

“We’ve been very worried, David,” she said tightly.

“Oh?” Audley produced a huge silk handkerchief and began to dry off the lenses of his spectacles. “I should have phoned, of course— yes.” He held up the spectacles to the light. “But I’m here now.”

Faith caught Mitchell’s eye. “Not worried about you—about Elizabeth. And Mr Aske.”

“About Elizabeth?” Audley brought the spectacles down slightly, so that for an instant he was observing Mitchell through them. “What do you know about Elizabeth?”

“We don’t know anything about her.” Mitchell heard the sound of desperation, rather than righteous anger, in his voice. “Where is she, damn it?”

“But you’re worried about her?” Audley hooked the spectacles over his ears with maddening clumsiness. “Why?”

There was no point in letting anger take over from desperation. “When I got back from London she’d gone—they’d both gone. And you’d gone too …” Steady. “I told Aske quite specifically that he wasn’t to let her out of the house.”

“And I told Paul that you were worried when you left,” said Faith.

Audley cast a reproachful look at his wife, then came back to Mitchell. “So what did you do?”

“I phoned the Duty Officer, of course.”
Steady
!

“And what did
he
say?”

To hell with steadiness! “Damn it, David—you know what he said! Where the hell is she? What’s happened?”

Audley’s face became obstinate. “What did the Duty Officer say?”

This time Mitchell refused to catch Faith’s eye. “The first time he said there was an all-points alarm out on her, and I was told to sit tight. And the second time he referred me to you, fairly politely … And the third time he told me to get the hell off the line, he was busy—okay?”

“Okay. So he told you—to go to bed, and mind your own business!” Audley was adamantine. “So why aren’t you in bed minding it?”

“
Ff
—Elizabeth
is
my business!”
Is
or
was
? he heard himself cry out in pain “
Where is she
?”

Faith Audley stirred, tossing back the pale mane of her hair. “Where is she, David?”

Audley dropped Mitchell instantly, as though he didn’t matter, frowning and pointing at his wife accusingly. “Come on, love—we have a treaty on this—this is
business
—“

“But she was a guest in my house, David.” Obstinacy slammed head-on against obstinacy. “And she wasn’t—
isn
’
t
—one of your people … So
I
have a right to know—I don’t care what lies you tell Paul here—
I
want to know—
right
?”

There was some ancient quarrel here—something between them that Mitchell couldn’t even guess at, but cared about less.

“David—“

“No, Paul!” Faith cut him off. “Leave this to me … David—I
will
have an answer.”

“All right, love.” Audley caved in directly, and so quickly that he took Mitchell by surprise. “She’s alive. And she’s safe. My word on it.”

“Thank you, David.” This time Faith Audley didn’t catch Mitchell’s eye, she stared directly at him as though to confirm the truth of her husband’s given word. “And now I’ll go back to bed again.” She gave them both a sudden tired smile, not of understanding, but of relief. “If you two have things to discuss, the study will be warmer than out here. But don’t stay up too long—you both look exhausted.”

As Mitchell followed Audley the words began to sink in:
alive and safe
—
alive and safe
—
alive and safe
. He was aware that they were incomplete words, and that they might have other implications. But for that moment they were all he could handle—
alive and safe
was enough for this moment, that was all.

“What’s all that on the desk?” said Audley. He took three steps and peered down at the papers. “What on earth are you bothering with this for?” He frowned accusingly at Mitchell. “You should have been watching over Elizabeth Loftus—not messing with this!”

Mitchell came back to reality. “There was a message waiting for me at Heathrow when our plane landed.”

“About this? From whom?”

“From Del Andrew. Or … not exactly a message—he just tipped me off that CI 6 was sniffing around, and I’d better get my report into the pipeline before they made it official.”

“Damnation!” Audley smote his forehead. “That makes two mistakes I’ve made—three, counting tonight—“ he glanced at the grandfather clock “—or this morning … God, I’m slipping!”

“What mistakes?”

“Your Elizabeth Loftus, for one.” Audley looked at Mitchell keenly. “You like her, do you? That’s the reason for this inquisition, is it?”

Steady again. “I think she’s quite a woman—if you must know, David…Yes—I
l
ike
her.”

“Yes.” The look became rueful. “My dear wife told me as much a couple of nights back—she knew, and I couldn’t see it! I said she wasn’t your type, and she isn’t … But
she
said I’d better watch out—that you’d get awkward if things started to go wrong.”

Curiosity. “And that was your first mistake?”

“That was my
third
mistake. My first was not to realise quite how bright she really was—
is
, thank God!” He drew a deep breath. “It never occurred to me that she’d put the whole thing together—or half the thing … and the most dangerous half, too! God Almighty!” He shook his head.

Humiliation. What had Elizabeth put together that Paul Mitchell had missed?

And double humiliation: unlike Elizabeth, who didn’t know Audley as he did, he ought to have known that there was something to put together, because with Audley there always was. And what made it worse was that, in a sense, he
had
known all along—

“I really am rather an idiot,” said Audley. “I thought I’d got it worked out so well, for once.”

“Oh, yes?” If that was the case, then there was no point in exploding, Mitchell decided. “But just tell me one thing, David—I am curious about one thing …”

Audley blinked at him. “Yes?”

“Can you tell me what the hell I’ve been doing?”

“Ah …” Audley blinked again, and then looked round the room. “Now … if we were in the library I could show you, from David Chandler’s book on Marlborough. But then, as you’re a military historian, you won’t need to read about it—you’ll know it already.”

“Know what?”

“The battle of Ramillies—1706.”

“What about the battle of Ramillies?”

“He won it by a diversion: he lured all the French troops to his right flank by attacking there. Then he hit them in the centre.”

A nasty suspicion crystallised in Mitchell. “Are you telling me that I’ve been on the right flank of your army?”

“No … that’s not the point—“ Audley’s face creased “—the point is that Marlborough didn’t actually
tell
the troops on the right that the real attack was in the centre, any more than Monty told us in Normandy that our job was to draw off all the German armour so that the Americans could break out elsewhere.” He gave Mitchell a twisted smile. “We wouldn’t actually have mutinied if we’d known … but he was right not to tell us. Because the Germans would never have believed that we were the main attack if we hadn’t believed it first ourselves, you see. And, in a way, we were
right
to believe in it, Paul, because our diversionary bloodbath was essential to the breakout—it was all the same battle. And I like to think, when I remember absent friends, that we had the place of honour in it, if not the glory.”

Mitchell’s eyes strayed to the reports on the table. “The place of honour” was gift-wrapped bullshit for his benefit. But that “diversionary bloodbath” was an accurate description for what had happened on Saturday evening.

Or worse than that, even. “So those three—“ he pointed “—I killed them … as a diversion?”

“Ah … no, you mustn’t think of it like that. You saved a valuable life—perhaps a very valuable life. It was like saving a child from three mad dogs—you had no choice.”

“But it wasn’t planned—it wasn’t part of any plan?”

“It was better than we’d planned.” Audley paused. “We had to convince Moscow that we were chasing the wrong
Vengeful
—just for a few days they had to believe we were off in the wrong direction, and we had to give them those days. And you yourself said that the old
Vengeful
was exactly the sort of hare I’d be tempted to chase—so they thought so too, which was why they let you spot Novikov so easily, of course.”

“But they didn’t know about … those three … and Loftus’s money?”

“Not a thing. But when they did, they must have been as pleased as I was—that was a pure bonus for both sides.”

“But how did they know?”

“Because we made damn sure they did—“

“Wait!” Mitchell felt the plot thickening around him too fast. “You said ‘the
wrong Vengeful
’
. So which was the
right
one?”

Audley shook his head. “Your old
Vengeful
was the right one for you, Paul—and it still is.” Then he grinned. “But as your Elizabeth knows, I suppose it’s unrealistic not to tell you too. And you’ll be less trouble knowing than not knowing … The real
Vengeful
was the
Shannon
, of course.”

Of course. Stupid. Obvious.
Damn
! “The
Shannon
?”

“We had our own word on that long ago—that the Russians were planning something … Not the actual project name, but just that they intended dealing with the next generation of our anti-submarine systems.” Audley looked at him. “We don’t have many secrets worth having, but if there’s one area where we can still claim to be ahead, it’s anti-submarine work.”

That was true, even if it was only the natural legacy of the past, in which Britain alone of all other countries had twice nearly been beaten by the submarine, thought Mitchell.

“And their plan was made before the
Vengeful
was renamed? Before she became the
Shannon
?”

Audley nodded. “That’s right. It was as simple as that.” He paused. “So Oliver St John Latimer and James Cable set up a counter-plan. An in-depth anti-espionage system, you might say … And that Latimer’s a fat slug, but he’s a bloody good operator—better than everyone except me, in fact.” He gave the grandfather clock a calculating look. “As of two hours from now we’re set to take out the biggest Russian espionage operation of the decade, Paul. Not in the full glare of publicity,
alas
—which was what Jack Butler and I wanted … It seems that there are political considerations which rule that out—we’re only allowed Philby and Maclean and Blunt in public … But for once we’re about to impress NATO and our American cousins, and we’re going to sell maybe a billion pounds’ worth of anti-submarine systems over the next decade into the bargain, if we’re lucky. And not even a Labour Government—or an SDP one—can quarrel with that.” He looked at Mitchell suddenly. “Do you understand, Paul?”

Mitchell could only nod. The stakes had been raised far beyond his limit, but at least he could nod.

Audley gestured towards the papers on the desk. “Which is why I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about there. We’ve got too much riding on this operation to let anyone make waves about those three … apart from the fact that you were only doing your duty as our diversion man, in any case. And we had to have that diversion.”

“So you knew about their
Vengeful
operation long before the Americans told us about it?”

“That’s right. But when we learned that the Americans knew about it we were pretty sure the Russians would be close behind them, and we didn’t want them to abort the
Vengeful
one—not after all the trouble we’d gone to. We had to reassure them somehow.” He half-smiled at Mitchell. “So Jack Butler gave me the job of making a fool of myself… and I came up with the old
Vengeful
as an opening ploy—I was going to make a mystery of it somehow … Or, if it refused to stand up, we’d got a contingency plan to make something out of the other
Vengeful
—the submarine that was transferred to the Greek navy in ‘46.” He nodded at Mitchell, and then pointed to the papers again. “But then those three turned up … and Novikov. So what we had was better than I’d hoped for—Commander Loftus’s mysterious riches, and three dead gangsters …
and
the real mystery of the old
Vengeful
herself—that was a gift from the gods, because it was just the thing to help them believe that the so-clever Dr Audley was about to be too clever for his own good. With a little help from them, of course.”

Mitchell looked at him reproachfully. “Why didn’t you trust me? For God’s sake!”

“I wanted to. But it wasn’t my operation, and Latimer wanted you to be out of it.” Audley shook his head. “The trouble was … I think the clever Dr Audley
was
a little too clever for his own good” —another shake “—it never ceases to amaze me how what is basically
simple
becomes distorted and complicated by the human factor—I’ve
never
been able to make exactly the right allowance for that, you know …”

“Like what, for example?” Audley in this self-critical mood was too revealing not to encourage.

“Oh … I never expected that smart policeman of ours to crack the source of Commander Loftus’s ill-gotten gains so quickly …Not that it mattered—but it might have mattered.” Another shake. Then he looked at Mitchell. “And the French putting that red-headed beauty of yours on you—after they’d picked up the KGB so quickly: I didn’t plan for you to be expelled from France like that, or not until our
Shannon
Operation was complete.”