Lammas Night (45 page)

But if that was
all
that was intended in their current lives, then why had both of them fastened on the Becket-FitzUrse episode as well? It smacked too strongly of the Hanged Man and old Conwy's acclamation.

What of Graham's other memories of slayer and slain? Might William eventually recall those, too? Where did it end? Why did it have to start coming to a head right now, when Lammas was little more than a week away and Graham had no time to deal with it?

“Perhaps that last part
was
a dream,” he finally agreed, trying as much for himself as for William to put out of mind the potential endings he had been imagining. “Perhaps the idea of seeing your own death was top frightening to deal with, undisguised, so your mind substituted a familiar face for the unfamiliar one of death.”

“But why yours?” William persisted. “God knows, if I don't trust you, Gray, whom do I trust? That just doesn't make sense.”

“Well, there
are
unknown, frightening aspects of me that you don't know about,” Graham replied. “All this magic—it would be unusual if you
weren't
afraid of me just a little, if only because I represent part of the unknown. That's probably all it was.”

William seemed to accept that explanation. At least that was what he said. He soon hit on the similarity of his “dream” to the murder of Thomas Becket and wondered whether Graham had noticed it, but Graham was noncommittal. After another half hour or so and a glass of port apiece, Denton drove the prince home to get some sleep.

Graham did not sleep for some time after William left, however; and when he did, he dreamed that he was FitzUrse again, killing Becket—only this time the archbishop had William's face.

When he woke, in a cold sweat, he had to turn on the light and look before he could convince himself that he did not have William's blood on his hands.

C
HAPTER
18

Graham was still haunted by the dream when he went in to his office the next morning, slightly later than usual and with a dull headache from having slept so badly. He rang William to see how he was doing but was informed that the prince was out for the day, inspecting troops with His Majesty. Graham's mental state was not improved when, just past noon, Denton handed him an envelope marked
personal and urgent
. The Yorkshire postmark was two days old, but the handwriting was almost certainly Dieter's.

“Did this just come in?” Graham asked, glancing up at Denton in surprise as he slit the envelope with a paper knife.

Denton paused in the doorway. “Yes, sir.”

Graham scanned the lines penned on the stiff, single sheet, then turned it face down on his blotter and began rummaging in a desk drawer for paper and a pencil.

“Thank you, Denny. Please hold all my calls for the next hour or so.”

As soon as Denton closed the door, Graham settled down to the tedious task of decoding, a part of his mind asking disturbing questions while eyes and hands made the required substitutions.

The hand was unmistakably Deiter's, signed with his sigil at the bottom, but the letter had been posted in England on the twenty-second. Dieter could not possibly be in England. Someone else must have mailed it for him, perhaps even one of Wells's Thulists—which meant that whatever prompted the letter had occurred at least a day or two earlier than the postmark, right around the time of Wells's death.

But Graham had never contacted Dieter since the Wells affair. When he sent Selwyn's report, he had asked advice, but communications with Selwyn were often sporadic now that his flotilla was on convoy duty. Though nearly a week had passed, Graham still had received no reply. That Dieter initiated contact with Graham, apparently on his own, seemed distinctly ominous—and appeared even more so, when Graham had the clear text of the letter before him.

IMPERATIVE WE SPEAK FACE TO FACE BEFORE ONE AUGUST STOP YOUR FRIEND IN GRAVE DANGER STOP ISAIAH FORTY THREE FOUR STOP CONFIRM YOUR AGREEMENT TO RENDEZVOUS SECOND MIDNIGHT AT BELOW COORDINATES BY SENDING SIGNAL AFTER BBC NINE NEWS ANY NIGHT AS FOLLOWS STOP WOOZLES WAIT IN THE HEFFALUMP PIT TO GOBBLE CHARMING BILLY STOP

The coordinates that followed pinpointed a very precise location off the coast of Brittany.

As Graham pulled down a copy of the Bible to look up the Isaiah reference, so many points clamored for attention that he hardly knew where to begin. Most disturbing on the face of it, besides the mere fact of a message from Dieter, were the urgency of meeting before Lammas and the phrase
Your friend in grave danger
. No matter how Graham read that, the friend had to be William. If anyone else were intended, the warning would have gone to Selwyn or Alix—not to him.

The reference to “charming Billy” seemed to be the clincher. What was the line from the old ballad?
“O where have you been, Billy-boy, Billy-boy, O where have you been, charming Billy?”
If Dieter had heard about the Wells affair, he might well ask that question. The Milne allusions to Woozles and Heffalump pits, juxtaposed with the ballad, only heightened the sense of danger.

He found the Isaiah quotation and had to read it twice to make certain he had it right. It
might
refer to Dieter himself and an offer to form an alliance, but the sense tallied all too closely with things he had already been worrying about. With a sick churning in his gut, he wondered whether it was possible Dieter knew:

“Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.”

Graham did not waste time on intermediaries. He needed to find out what Dieter was talking about. Within an hour, he wheedled the location of Selwyn's convoy out of a contact at the Admiralty and arranged to meet a flying boat at Calshot to fly him there. He gave Denton instructions to ring William that evening and tell him Graham had been called away unexpectedly for a few days. He was on the train to Southampton before two and in the air by half past four.

By dusk, Graham was boarding Selwyn's destroyer from a bobbing whaler. Selwyn was not expecting him, but he led Graham below without a word, as if it were the most usual thing in the world to have visitors arrive by aircraft. All around, the ships of Selwyn's flotilla were going dark as they rigged for night running.

“I'm going to agree to the meeting, and I want you there,” Graham said when Selwyn had read Dieter's message. “I don't know what he's trying to pull, but I want to have it out face to face as soon as possible. The August first deadline suggests that something is going to happen on Lammas besides what we're planning, and it looks to me like William's safety is involved. They
must
know about the Wells affair, David.”

Selwyn skimmed through the decoded message again, nodding several times as he read, then sat back in his chair with a sigh as he removed his glasses.

“I agree that it has to be investigated, but I'm afraid you're asking a lot. Even if I could leave my ship at a time like this—”

“I don't think you understand, David. I'm going to ask for your ship, too,” Graham responded before Selwyn could finish. “I want the clout of a British warship behind me when I talk to Dieter, as well as your support and advice. You can reach the coordinates by Friday—we'll say Saturday, to be on the safe side. I'll make the arrangements with your flotilla leader before I leave in the morning. Besides, there's no other way to get that close to the French coast and be sure of coming out.”

“If it's a trap, you won't come out, anyway,” Selwyn said gloomily. “Dieter could have that whole sector crawling with U-boats and other unpleasant surprises by the time we get there.”

“Yes, but if he's on the level, he could have it deserted, too. He doesn't know what kind of transportation I'd arrange, David. He's probably expecting a fast torpedo boat or something of that ilk.”

“Yes, but wouldn't a destroyer be a prize?”

“At least it could put up a fight if there
were
a double-cross.”

Selwyn dropped his head into his hands and sighed. “All right, Gray. If you can get my boss to agree, I won't argue with you. You're calling the shots now. I'd hoped I'd never have to look at Dieter again, though. If Merilee were still alive, she'd die of shame to know what he's done.”

“I'm certainly not condoning his actions,” Graham replied. “I don't trust him any more than you do. But there's something else you should be aware of.”

“What's that?”

“There's more than one way to read that verse from Isaiah. The key idea is sacrifice. Now it's possible Dieter meant it to refer to himself—a willingness to help us, and William, even at the risk of his own life and those he's pretended to work with—but what if the verse actually refers to William himself? The subject of William as sacrifice has come up independently before.”

Selwyn's face went as white and still as a waxen mask.

“What are you talking about?”

Graham told him about the FitzUrse recall and William's more recent parallel recollection of Becket.

“I haven't even mentioned that one to Alix yet,” Graham concluded. “It only happened last night. After the discussion she and I had about the Hanged Man and everything, the whole thing begins to connect all too readily. I won't allow it. If anyone is going to die, it's going to be me, not William.”

“If it's up to me, it isn't going to be either of you!” Selwyn retorted, but fully agreeing that they must confront Dieter.

Graham slept on a cot in Selwyn's cabin that night, for he did not wish to advertise his presence aboard ship any more than his unusual arrival already had. The next morning, Selwyn brought his ship alongside the one serving as flotilla leader, and Graham transferred across by breeches buoy. The day was fine but hazy enough to make it difficult to spot approaching aircraft; the convoy spread across several square miles to the north and west. Graham could see Selwyn's ship dropping back to run half a mile behind and to the west as he followed a young midshipman up to the bridge.

This destroyer's skipper was the same Royal Navy captain who had called Graham to the Admiralty little more than a month ago. The man lowered a pair of field glasses and turned to raise one dark eyebrow in surprise as Graham gave formal salute. He took his time about returning it, blue eyes noting every detail of Graham's salt-stained battle-dress, beret, and the black polo sweater visible at the neck, in stark contrast to his own immaculate service dress uniform.

“So you're the mystery guest that Sunderland brought in last evening, colonel,” he said with a slight smile. “I'd wondered. Back to your usual state of undress, I see.”

“Yes, sir. I need another favor,” Graham said without further prelude. “May we talk?”

Frowning a little, the man led him out of the enclosed portion of the bridge to an open platform in front that was still in plain sight of the bridge watch but out of casual earshot.

“I'm sorry, but I can't leave the bridge right now,” the man murmured, raising his field glasses again and scanning the eastern horizon. “We're expecting a German raid. Can you keep it short and sufficiently vague that we don't try the patience of my junior officers inside?”

“I'll try, sir,” Graham replied. “Put briefly, if not vaguely, I need to borrow one of your captains and his ship for the rest of the week.”

“You need to borrow a destroyer and its captain for the rest of the week,” the man repeated slowly, not lowering his glasses. “I assume you have someone particular in mind.”

“I think you know who, sir.”

The man let his glasses dangle from their neck strap and glanced at Graham sidelong, then laid both hands precisely along the metal rail in front of them.

“One would need a very good reason for granting such a favor,” he said, looking out to sea again. “Ought one to assume that this has to do with—ah—the matter we discussed before?”

“The same, sir. And with the man who was responsible for having me ‘out of battle-dress' that night, as I believe you put it.”

The other's features stiffened, but he only continued looking out to sea. This time, Graham had the distinct impression he was no longer worrying quite so much about a German raid.

“I see,” the man said after a slight pause. “Is—ah—
he
involved in this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May one ask how?” This with a slight edge of ice.

“The—ah—other thing you arranged for me, sir,” Graham said cautiously, hating the necessity of having to speak in shorthand. “He was there, at his own insistence, and things have progressed since then. I didn't start out to involve him, sir.”

“I should hope you didn't,” the other man muttered, the blue eyes glancing at him furtively as the fingers of one hand drummed on the metal rail in consternation. “What about this—future thing, then?” he continued. “He isn't going to be involved in that, is he?”

“I'll certainly try to prevent it, sir,” Graham replied carefully. “With my own life, if necessary. I mean that. I have reason to believe he's in very grave danger unless something drastic is done. I need your destroyer—and its captain—to find out whether that's possible.”

“Where do you want them sent?”

Graham handed him a folded piece of paper without a word. The man studied the coordinates and timetable for several seconds before slipping them into an inner pocket.

“You know, of course, that if anything happens, he'll have acted without orders and my name will never be mentioned. Officially, I can only send him close enough to continue there under cover of darkness—and he'd jolly well better be out of there by dawn.”

“We're aware of that, sir.”

“Very well. I'll have the new orders cut before you leave, provided the Jerries don't keep us too busy this morning. I assume another flying boat is coming to collect you?”