Our Man in Camelot (24 page)

“You mean he was murdered—that old man?” said Shirley.

“It looked like natural causes, Mrs Sheldon. But now we’re not so sure… What we are sure of, from what his assistant says, is that Mr Barkham was visited by Harry Feiner and a coloured man several days ago. And they were checking up to find out how much Major Davies told him.”

“And whatever it was, it was too much,” said Roskill.

“So we put two men on to Feiner this morning, and those two men are now missing,” said Frances Fitzgibbon.

The late afternoon sun slanted in through the tall windows, blazing on the legs of a suit of armour which stood sentinel on one side of the door—

And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot—reminding Mosby of the lines he had learnt so recently in his role of Arthurian enthusiast. And reminding him also, more terrifyingly, that it was the same sun which had shone so brightly on the bodies of the two British security men in the churchyard.

Nightmares in daylight were bad; and nightmares in sunlight were worse. But worst of all were nightmares that weren’t nightmares at all, but reality.

“You know, I do think he’s beginning to catch on,” said Roskill. “He looks quite sick.”

“Well, I’m still lost,” said Shirley huskily. “Because you just can’t mean that the CIA’s going round murdering people—innocent people.”

“Why not, Mrs Sheldon?” asked Frances.

“Why, we simply don’t do that sort of thing.”

“Not in Vietnam?”

“In Vietnam?” Shirley floundered beautifully. “But this isn’t Vietnam—this is England.” She looked around her as though for confirmation. “This is England.”

And it could hardly be more England than right here, thought Mosby bitterly: Camelot House, in the midst of its green parkland. The heart and capital of King Arthur’s Avalon.

“It’s England,” Frances nodded. “And it’s a foreign country, just like Vietnam. Where Harry Feiner cut his teeth, among other things.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Shirley obstinately. “And I won’t believe it. We’re on the same side—we’re allies. And I don’t mean like in Vietnam, either. That was different.”

“It certainly was—for the Vietnamese.”

“Your politics are beginning to show, Olga dear,” said Roskill lightly.

“Olga?” Shirley frowned. “I thought it was Frances?”

“Ah, but haven’t you noticed the striking resemblance to Olga Korbut? The shape and size—the delicate sense of balance? The swift karate chop?”

“Children—children!” Audley intervened. “What Mrs Fitzgibbon means, Mrs Sheldon, is simply that the CIA is concerned with the welfare of the United States. There’s nothing in their so-called 1947 Charter about being kind to foreigners—and nor should there be. National security won’t run in tandem with international relations—they trip each other up.”

“Doesn’t run awfully well with the Ten Commandments either, and that’s a fact,” said Roskill. “Whatever Olga thinks.”

“Don’t paraphrase Lenin at me,” Frances snapped back.

“Wasn’t thinking of Lenin—it was Allen Dulles, who ran the CIA when you were playing with your dolls. ‘Obedience to a higher loyalty’ was what he called it.” Roskill nodded amiably to Shirley. “Meaning, you can fight as dirty as you like if it’s for your country.”

“ ‘My country, right or wrong’,” murmured Mosby.

“That’s what it used to amount to, you’re right. Nice convenient double standards all round—Germans bomb Coventry, that’s terror bombing, we bomb Hamburg, that’s
area
bombing. They have wicked U-boats, we have brave submarines— life was a great deal simpler in the old days. But not any more, because now it works the other way round.”

“How d’you mean?”

“Because we have the U-boats now, and they have the submarines, my dear fellow.”

Mosby looked suitably puzzled.

“What he means,” said Audley, “is that if the Russians— the KGB, that is—play dirty, no one takes much notice. But if the CIA plays dirty and gets caught, then there’s likely to be a major scandal. You only have to look at the headlines over here, never mind in the United States. And exactly the same applies to… us… if we play dirty.”

“Which leaves us both with the Eleventh Commandment— ‘Thou shalt not be found out—or else’,” added Roskill. “Which the CIA has jolly well transgressed with a vengeance over Badon Hill, unfortunately.”

Mosby fought to keep his puzzled expression steady. For beyond the fear for himself and Shirley, and the helplessness and loneliness of their position, there was forming a terrible doubt. It was no longer a question of how the British could have gotten everything ass-about-face,
but supposing they hadn
’
t?

“Let me get you straight—“ Shirley spoke more harshly now, as though the same doubt had proved too strong for the Lady Macbeth interpretation “—you are really asking us to believe that our own Secret Service would not only kill—murder—some old man, some innocent old man… and maybe two of your people… but Americans too? Our own servicemen? You’re asking us to believe
that
!”

“The evidence is circumstantial.” Audley stared at her silently for a moment. “But that’s the way it looks.”

“In the cause of a higher loyalty,” said Frances.

“Higher loyalty my fanny!” snapped Shirley.

Roskill started to laugh.

“You think that’s funny?” Shirley rounded on him fiercely. “It’s all a big joke—killing people? You have to be sick.”

“I’m sorry, really I am.” Roskill looked contrite. “But I wasn’t laughing at you, and it isn’t funny. It was just the look on Olga’s face when you said ‘fanny’.”

“Huh?”

Mosby cleared his throat. “It isn’t the same part of the body in English as it is in American, honey.”

“It isn’t? Well, what is—?” She stopped suddenly and blushed to the roots of her hair. It was the first time Mosby had ever seen her blush.

“You were saying, Mrs Sheldon?” said Audley gently.

“I think I know what my wife was going to say—“ began Mosby.

“It’s okay, Mose,” said Shirley. “If that’s playing dirty I can take it. I guess they won’t take any notice of what I say anyway, but I’m still going to say it. And it’s this: if you think we’re the sort of people who’d kill a dog just to hush up that we’ve maybe accidentally messed up a piece of ground where somebody fought a battle a million years ago, then you aren’t only crazy—you really do have to be sick. And you can laugh at that if you like.”

Atta girl
, thought Mosby fondly. Not a Stephen Decatur patriot, nor even a Sam Smith one, but a pure John Paul Jones—
I have not yet begun to fight
—even with the ship sinking under her.

“I agree with you, Mrs Sheldon,” said Audley. “But, alas, it doesn’t happen that way. With the KGB certainly, but not with you Americans, nor with us British. With us both it happens by slow degree, not by wicked intention.”

“I don’t get you.”

“I don’t expect you to. Take Vietnam, for instance, about which Mrs Fitzgibbon is so very sure… No, Frances. Your view is far too simplistic… I happen to believe that Kennedy and Johnson were both great presidents. And what’s more, fundamentally honest men too, both of them. But by degrees they got into—Vietnam. And My Lai, and all the rest of it.

“And Watergate too, to make a more practical example… It wasn’t the original crime—the stupid little break-in—that wasn’t even necessary. Somebody simply had a higher loyalty on a much lower level, that’s all—somebody took a bad decision on a lower level, and somebody else took another bad decision on a slightly less lower level. And after that one thing led straight to another, and brought the whole house down.”

“But the rottenness at the top was the measure of the rottenness at the bottom, David,” said Frances Fitzgibbon.

“Simplistic again. Your rottenness at the top brought the boys back home from Vietnam, Frances. Your rottenness gave Henry Kissinger his chance… But that’s all a matter of opinion, and ours is a problem of fact. We have a much more important crisis here and now to resolve—which matters to Britain as well as America.”

“Which is?” said Mosby.

“Which is that the CIA in Britain is in jeopardy, and with it the whole of the American presence here. And that means in Europe. And that means the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. And
that
means the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.” Audley pointed at Shirley. “All because of your little piece of ground where somebody maybe once fought a battle —are the stakes high enough for you now, Mrs Sheldon? Are they enough to kill a dog for?”

Mosby was astonished at the Englishman’s vehemence: it was like discovering that in reality the game of cricket was played not for the sake of the game, but to the death.

“I don’t understand,” said Shirley.

“No?” Audley’s tone was brutal now. “Well, I’ll tell you. Destroying the site of Mons Badonicus would have been a bit of damn bad publicity for you—for the United States. People care about things like that nowadays, and some of them care passionately even. In fact even
I
care, and I’m one of your dirty trick players. Because a country’s past is the sum of its present, or should be, and I happen to love my country—even enough to have some of those higher loyalties of Allen Dulles’s. Not for England, or Wales, or Scotland, but for Britain.”

“But we don’t—“ Shirley began.

“No, honey,” said Mosby, “let him have his say.”

Audley looked at them for a moment. “Every year thousands of ancient sites are destroyed—half the time without anyone even knowing. We’ve even got an organisation called ‘Rescue’ which tries to save them, or at least to record them, before the damned motorways cut through them—or the runway extensions. This year the Government’s given Rescue over a million pounds, when we’re flat broke—that’s the measure of it. People care.

“And Badon isn’t just another Roman villa, another mediaeval pottery. Badon’s King Arthur—the lost battle. Nine-tenths of the people have never heard of it, but they’ve all heard of Arthur. So for a start, it isn’t just a piece of ground, do you understand
that
, Mrs Sheldon?”

Mosby stuck his jaw out. “Okay, Audley. We both understand what it is.”

“Good. But your General Ellsworth didn’t understand.”

“General Ellsworth?”

“That’s right. ‘Build the runway’ he says. And that was the first bad decision, because at that point you could have saved the whole thing. Wodden isn’t the only base surplus to RAF requirements by any means, if you want longer runways.”

“General Ellsworth said that?”

“He said it. And then when they’d bulldozed Windmill Knob flat and the thing started to blow up in his face, the CIA made another bad decision. They said
cover up
.”

He looked at Mosby expectantly, but this time Mosby had nothing to say. General Ellsworth?

Audley shook his head. “If they’d come to us instead, we couldn’t have stopped the bad publicity. Not by then, anyway. But we could have taken Ellsworth’s head on a plate, and we could have just about survived it one way or another. Only someone in the State Department must have realised how bad the publicity would be—someone who knew his Arthurian history, for all I know. Someone who could see the headlines and thought he couldn’t handle them. So Davies had to have his big mouth shut for good.”

“And
bingo
!” murmured Roskill. “Watergate!”

“Only the name will be ‘Wodden’ in future,” said Frances.

“Or ‘Badon’, more likely,” said Roskill.

Audley silenced them with a look. “And that was the dirty job the CIA had given to them: cover it all up. Bury it.”

For five seconds—ten seconds—nobody spoke. It was as though the last two words had told the whole story.

Then Shirley spoke: “How can you be so sure that’s the way it was? You said it was—circumstantial?”

“It’s more than that. I wish to God it wasn’t, otherwise we’d still have a chance of smothering it. And don’t think I wouldn’t if I could, Mrs Sheldon.”

She stared at him. “But—but Badon’s been destroyed. And Davies is dead. I know it’s—horrible. But he is dead.”

“But Billy Bullitt isn’t,” said Audley.

“And we can’t shut his mouth, Mrs Sheldon,” said Frances. “Because he’s already opened it.”

MOSBY SQUINTED AT
the villainous typescript. If British Intelligence couldn’t rise to anything better than this for its top secret documents then it was small wonder that they were about to preside over the biggest Anglo-American debacle since the Boston Tea Party.

“I am sorry about the typing,” said Frances Fitzgibbon. “It’s absolutely accurate—my shorthand’s one hundred per cent. But I don’t get much typing practise, and it was a rackety old machine—I had to put in all the g’s by hand, as you can see.”

“Excuses, excuses—and qui’s’excuse,’s’accuse,” said Roskill. “There you are, Mrs Sheldon—I’ve given you a slightly better copy than your lord and master… If that typewriter was good enough for Billy Bullitt’s grandfather, little Olga, it ought to be good enough for you. And his thrifty use of old worn-out carbon-paper matches our thrifty use of you as a tape-recorder. If the Civil Estimates chaps knew how we operate, they’d sleep a lot sounder after lunch.”

There were nine or ten closely typed pages, Mosby estimated, but no indication of what they contained by way of title—

“
This country has lost nothing but its honour, and having lost that has lost everything
—“

What the hell?

He looked up to find Audley’s eyes on him.

“I want you to read just the first page, to show you what we’re up against,” said Audley. “Then you can skip the next few pages and go straight to the meaty part. But that first page to start with, please.”

“What is it?” asked Shirley.

“It’s Billy Bullitt’s
credo
,” said Frances. “And it also explains why he’s going to evict the CIA from Britain—and how he intends to do it. That’s all.”

Mosby bent over Page One—

“This country has lost nothing but its honour, and having lost that has lost everything. Fifty million people, the people who stood alone against Hitler. The people who broke the German Army in the ‘14-‘18 War, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Philip of Spain, who produced Shakespeare, Newton, Penicillin, Radar—“