Colonel Butler's Wolf (18 page)

“This report,” Butler interrupted him, “I’ve never seen it on the check list. Damn it—I’ve never even heard of it.”

“The famous Dzerzhinsky Street Report?” Audley’s lips curled. “You’re not the only one. We only got it from the CIA last summer, and it was more than ten years old when they got it.”

“Why the hell—?” Butler frowned at Audley.

“Why didn’t they pass it on earlier?” Audley smiled thinly. “For the same reason—the same basic reason—as the Russians managed to conceal it so well. They simply didn’t reckon there was any value to it.”

“You see, when the KGB turned it down as useless it was declassified, so no one took any notice of it. It wasn’t until the mid-sixties that someone in their K Section remembered about it. He was swotting up the latest American campus riots in Newsweek and Time—at least, that’s how the story goes—and he remembered reading one of the recommendations of the Dzerzhinsky Street committee. They’d reckoned that it was in the nature of youth to revolt under a given set of circumstances, and the Party ought to watch out for them developing in the West. They reckoned they could cash in on them because the Western governments wouldn’t be capable of handling them with ‘revolutionary firmness’.”

“Meaning eight armoured divisions and a couple of MVD special brigades,” murmured Richardson. “And a thousand cattle trucks for the lucky survivors … “

“Maybe not so lucky, Peter,” said Audley. “But that was the start of it anyway. Because all of a sudden the Dzerzhinsky Street formula—pampered students and materialist parents—seemed to fit the West like a glove.”

Butler frowned. “You mean the Russians have had a hand in the student power movements? Because I rather understood the students didn’t approve of the Kremlin any more than the Pentagon—“

Audley raised an admonitory finger. “Now
that
is precisely the point: they didn’t and they don’t! You’ve got it exactly, Butler. There was a bit of Maoism or Castroism on the edges —and a lunatic fringe of Weathermen and such like—but none of them was amenable to anything like effective manipulation. The KGB agents in the States reported back that it was hopeless to try anything with them. It seems the activists were either too darned intelligent or too active to toe their sort of line.”

“We know this for a fact?”

“For a fact we know it. The CIA had a priority instruction to watch for it, and the moment they spotted the KGB’s men on the campuses they went to work in a big way—right the way back to their own Kremlin cell. And the result was a big zero—the right wing in the CIA would have liked to have found just the opposite, but they didn’t. You see, what the KGB found was loads of trouble for the American establishment, but it wasn’t trouble they could either direct or control. And what’s more, it frightened them.”

“
It frightened them?
”

“I have that straight from the horse’s mouth—from my old buddy Howard Morris, in the State Department security. What Sukhanov, the KGB top man over there, told Andropov was that it was a damn dangerous disease, and the sooner the Yanks stamped on it the better for everyone.”

Butler stared at the big man, and then past him at the wall of baled hay at his back. He had seen the symptoms of this dreadful disease, which apparently struck down healthy little communists and coddled capitalist toddlers alike, scrawled on the ancient stones of Oxford:
Beat the system
—
Smile
and
Make love, not war.
For all his ambition, clever Dan McLachlan had it—and maybe the man who called himself Smith had died for it. And back in his Reigate terrace home there were three little girls incubating it for sure.

And the name of the disease was Youth.

If the societies of the West were still fundamentally healthy, they wouldn’t die of it; they would slowly change and grow stronger because of it. Maybe they would even grow up!

But Sukhanov’s society, which relied on such quack remedies as tanks and cattle trucks and censorship, would die of it sooner or later, if only the West could hold on.

Except—the disquiet twisted inside Butler—except if the KGB had failed in Britain as it had failed in the States, what was he doing here with Audley?

He focussed on Audley again.

“So what’s happened here to change the pattern?” he growled. “Is Sir Geoffrey Hobson really on to something after all?”

Audley shook his head and spread his big hands in a gesture of near despair. “Up until a few days ago I’d have said almost certainly not. There are a few suspicious cases, but not enough to add up to a conspiracy. What we’ve found this year adds up substantially to what the Americans found —and much the same goes for the French too apparently: from the KGB’s point of view the whole thing’s been a flop— and it never was more than a reconnaissance … “

“But now?”

“But now—I don’t know, Butler. I really don’t know. Because we’ve got a whole houseful of the best young brains from King’s and Cumbria up at Castleshields and there’s something damned odd cooking up there.”

“
…
THE DEVIL OF
it is, Jack, that just when we need it most we haven’t got anyone of our own in the house at student level. Peter’s not really in with them—he’s been off on his own too much. And when it comes to it they don’t really trust me, of course.”

That might be the truth of it. Or it might be that Audley was still not quite desperate enough to compromise either himself or Richardson. There was no way of telling.

“You’ve no idea at all what they might be up to?”

Audley spread his hands. “If it’s a demo of some kind there are only two places up here—there’s the satellite tracking station at Pike Edge and the missile range on the coast. But they’d need to hire transport to get to them. They haven’t got enough of their own.”

“Are those the sort of places they’d be likely to demonstrate at?”

“Not this bright lot, I shouldn’t have thought. The Americans have been helping us at Pike Edge, it’s true, so we’ve had the usual crop of rumours. But it isn’t like Fylingdales, and these boys would know it.”

“And the missile range?”

“Only very short range stuff—anti-aircraft and antisubmarine. It’s the better bet of the two though.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a long shot, but there has been a rumour or two that the South Africans are interested in some of the weaponry there.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“It isn’t true, that’s the trouble. And the Russians know it, which is more to the point.”

“Damn the Russians! If they want to compromise these lads it doesn’t matter whether it’s claptrap or not—it might be better if it was, but it doesn’t matter either way. South Africa’s the one thing all the young idiots can be led by the nose on.”

Audley blinked and frowned. “It still doesn’t fit. These boys aren’t fools to be led by rumours.” He paused. “But the real objection isn’t that at all, to my mind.”

“What is, then?”

Audley sighed and shook his head. “It’s simply that I agree with you. This thing of Hobson’s—it’s a bloody intelligent project, but it just isn’t the sort of ploy that would appeal to the Russians. Industrial sabotage, or trade union infiltration, yes. But there’s evidence there, and until Smith phoned up Hobson there wasn’t a shred of real evidence we’d picked up at Cumbria. Yet now there seems to be, and there’s something that smells all wrong somewhere.”

“Aye, you’re right about that, man,” Butler agreed harshly. “And I’ll tell you what smells wrong to me, too: by all the laws, they should have dropped whatever they’re up to like a red-hot poker the moment Smith went round the bend. They know we’re on to them—the whole thing’s compromised for them. And yet it looks as if they’re going on regardless.”

“So bully for them!” Richardson grinned. “So we get an extra chance of putting the skids under them—“

“If you think that, then you’re a fool,” snapped Butler. “If they haven’t disengaged, it’s because they can’t disengage. And you better pray that it never happens to you like that— that you’re on the wrong side of the wall and the other side’s on to you, and the word comes back that you’ve got to stay with it. Because that means
it
is more important than you. That’s when you become expendable, Richardson.”

He glared at the young man fiercely, partly because it was time someone cut him down to size and partly because he had no wish to catch Audley’s eye. It had not been so long ago that he had warned Hugh Roskill in the same way, but Hugh had trusted his own judgement and because of that Hugh would never fly for the RAF again. And Hugh had been lucky at that: if he couldn’t fly he could still limp to his pension.

“All right, Colonel Butler, I’ll pray that day never comes,” replied Richardson coolly, his long face tilted towards Butler. “But I don’t have to get scared in advance by the thought of it.”

“No—you don’t have to. But their day has come and I’ll bet they are scared, Richardson. And that makes them very dangerous. So if you haven’t the wit to be frightened, I have!”

“
Gentlemen!
”
The embarrassment was unconcealed in Audley’s voice. “This isn’t leading any place, is it?”

“But it is, David.” Something of his former banter was back in Richardson’s voice. “Colonel Butler agrees with you —and this is a big one. The question is whether he can help us find out what it is before it goes off bang underneath us.”

“Maybe I could at that.”

They both stared at him.

“I’ve already recruited your inside man for you,” said Butler heavily. “And your inside girl.”

“McLachlan?” Audley’s eyebrows lifted. “And Polly Epton?”

“Aye. The boy and the girl.”

The eyebrows lowered. “I thought you were against that sort of thing—using civilian labour?”

“I am dead against it. But in this instance I haven’t any choice. They volunteered.”

“And you accepted?”

“After the business at the bridge they tumbled to a few false conclusions of their own. They think Smith was murdered and they’d like to see the killers put down—“

“And naturally you let them go on thinking that?” Audley looked at Butler curiously, nodding to himself at the same time. “So naturally they would want to help. That was neatly done—though not quite your usual style, surely?”

“They made it a condition for agreeing to tell me about Smith,” said Butler unwillingly. “It was not much my doing.”

“Of course not. Not so much volunteers as blackmailers.” Audley smiled. “And just what did they tell you in exchange for lies?”

Butler glowered at him. “Not anything that’s of much use, damn it all! In fact, what Miss Epton knew made nonsense of what happened at the bridge.”

“I doubt that.” Audley shook his head. “The Russians simply didn’t know how much she knew. And they couldn’t come round and ask her, so they had to prepare for the worst. I’d guess they were ready to leave her alone as long as we did —much the same as they left Eden Hall intact until you turned up there. When they spotted you in Oxford they went into action—not quite quickly enough, fortunately.”

Butler stared at him. “It wasn’t good fortune—it was young McLachlan’s reflexes.”

“Was it indeed?” Audley said, as though his mind was no longer entirely on the job. “But it was still what people would call lucky.”

“It’s all in my full Oxford report, anyway,” said Butler, feeling in his breastpocket for the photocopy.

“I shall enjoy reading that. But there was nothing you could put your finger on—nothing that stands out?”

Butler shrugged. “She said they once had an argument— several of them—about the nature of treason. Smith was very hot against traitors, surprisingly so she thought, because he was normally an internationalist. But he said they were no good to anybody, or any side. But everyone had had a few more drinks than usual and she put it down to that.”

“Whereas you think it was a case of
in vino veritas?
”

“If he thought he had become a traitor he wouldn’t value himself very highly, I think that.”

Audley bowed his head. “Very well, then. And now we come to McLachlan of the fast reflexes—what about him?”

“Hah—hmm. I asked the Department to run a report on him. I only have what he—and the others—told me.”

“Peter has the report and we’ll hear from him in a moment. It’s your opinion I want. You think highly of him?”

“If we don’t expect too much of him we can use him.”

“Too much? Is he a weakling then?”

“Far from it. He’s a tough boy.” Butler searched for the image of Daniel McLachlan as he was and found only the image of what he would be in a few years’ time: there was a submerged hardness about the boy—a maturity beneath the immaturity—which in a subaltern would make him as a man worth the watching, a man for responsibility soon, and beyond that eventual command far above the regiment.
Far
was the operative word for Dan McLachlan: he was at the beginning of a career which stretched out of Butler’s sight. Sir Geoffrey Hobson, who ought to know a flier when he saw one, subaltern or scholar, had forecast as much:
he should go far, unless
—

That ‘unless’ was the stumbling block. In war there was always the necessary risk to be taken when the McLachlans were blooded, the risk of the malevolent chance bullet that missed all the empty heads and spilled the brains out of the bright one. But this wasn’t McLachlan’s war.

Or was it?

“He’s quick and he’s bright,” said Butler, coming to an instant decision. “He’ll do right enough.”

If Hobson’s theory held water, then it was McLachlan’s war more than anyone’s: he was already in the front-line.

“If there’s anything in the South African angle he’s just the chap for us,” Richardson said eagerly. “With his background he’s a dead cert to be in on anything that’s cooked up.”

Audley nodded slowly, still eyeing Butler. “How does that sound to you, Jack?”

“He’s no firebrand politically. But—aye, if he could be stirred up by anything it’d be that. From what he said I’d say he feels pretty deeply about it. It’s mixed up with the bad time his father gave him too.”