Our Man in Camelot (25 page)

He looked up at Audley again.

“You must go on reading,” said Audley flatly.

“Radar, the Hovercraft. Not that we are a super-race, far from it. We are a mongrel race. Nor because we have coal and oil if we had the courage to win it. A mongrel race, as I said: an amalgam of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans—imagination, staying power, restlessness, pragmatism—and the waves of refugees and immigrants, French Protestants, German Jews—and Africans and Asiatics too. I am no racist, as some foolish young people want to think—I’d as soon see a daughter of mine, if I had one, married to the best of my Arab levies than to the worst of the young fools I saw at Oxford. But we have no honour left. No honour. Perhaps it comes from losing the best in the two wars. And the loss of empire. But we won the wars, perhaps that is the trouble, for it has happened before—Gildas told the same story, of course. And I have watched this happening for thirty years, but for most of the time without understanding. That it’s not the winning that matters, but the fighting for something. Strange that I fought for so many causes— other people’s causes—and never understood that until quite recently, in Arabia. It was there I began to under-stand, and I remembered my childhood, here in Camelot. My grandfather understood, he glimpsed it—Rex quondam rexque futurus—what it has always meant. It is no accident that the British have endlessly pursued Rex quondam rexque futurus, the Present and Future King. However vague the understanding, the instinct was true. And the Grail legend is never truer than now: the Fisher-king lies wounded unto death in the magic castle in the wasteland. The Grail-knight reaches the castle and asks a certain question. The king is healed and the wasteland blossoms…”

“The Fisher-king and the Grail-knight—for God’s sake!” Mosby scowled at Audley. “Does it really go on like that?”

“For five or six pages.”

“More than that,” said Frances. “There’s a page on what he calls ‘the historicity of Arthur’, and another on the influence of Arthur on British history—plus why Henry II had a grandson named Arthur and Henry VII’s eldest son was named Arthur. And the Korean War and the TSR-2 get mixed up in it too at one point. And it all adds ug to how finding Mons Badonicus and proving Arthur won it will give Britain back her honour.”

“Well, then…” Mosby looked to Audley for confirmation. “… He’s crazy.”

“Of course. Not certifiable—but crazy.” Audley nodded. “But up until a few days ago he was also harmless, and now he’s most definitely not. Thanks to the CIA… So what page do we turn to, Frances?”

“Halfway down page eight. It’s marked with a pencil cross.”

A pencil cross—

“I first met Major David ‘Dai’ Davies at Woodhenge, which I was visiting in connection with other studies I was making at the time. He was measuring a burial mound. I asked him what he was doing, and he explained he was looking for Mons Badonicus. I told him that he was almost certainly far to the south of the most promising search area, that I myself had explored the Chilterns and the general line of the Icknield Way north-eastwards of the Thames as being a strong possibility, and that I had only recently returned to the belief that the western end of the Berkshire Downs was the likeliest site. To my surprise he disagreed firmly, though courteously. It soon became clear to me not only that he believed Badon to be in the Salisbury region, but that he was in possession of some information or evidence to confirm this belief—“

Mosby looked up at Frances. “Either this is not verbatim, or he’s taken a turn for the better.”

“It’s word for word, Captain.”

“Well, it reads like an official statement.”

“There’s a reason for that,” said Audley. “This wasn’t the first time he dictated this part of the statement. Go on and you’ll find out.”

“confirm this belief. This intrigued me a great deal, the more so after I had discovered that he was extremely well-informed about all aspects of Arthurian studies. I accordingly invited him to Camelot for dinner.”

“Not so crazy after all, maybe,” said Mosby. “Being crazy doesn’t mean not being shrewd,” agreed Audley. “He’s all of that, Billy Bullitt is.”

“It was during this first evening that I learnt he was a USAF pilot, flying PR Phantoms in the NATO Order of Battle. In fact, our combat experience overlapped, and although of different front-line generations we had much in common. And not only as concerned flying, for although a third generation American, he was also the grandson of a Welsh coal miner who had emigrated over 50 years earlier. Hence his Christian name and its Welsh diminutive ‘Dai’—“

“So it’s ‘Dai’ with an ‘a’, not D-I,” said Mosby.

“Of course. ‘Dai Davies’ is as Welsh as ‘Paddy O’Reilly’ is Irish. Which could account for his interest in Arthur, of course.”

“—and his interest in Arthurian Britain. I pressed him on the subject of the battle’s location, but he was reticent about it. Also, while promising to keep in touch with me he insisted that I should never contact him at the base. Before he left I supplied him with one of my blank physical relief maps of the district, having first ringed all potential Badon sites for him. He stated his intention of viewing these from the air. He visited me on three subsequent occasions. It was on the first of these that he asked me about the Novgorod manuscript of Bede’s ‘Historia Ecclesiastica’ and I was able to show him my grandfather’s copy of Bishop Harper’s ‘Russian Missionary Letters’, from which he made notes. Shortly after the third visit he phoned me in a state of great excitement. He said he had found Badon, but that he would not be able to see me until he had completed his exchange duty with the RAF in Germany. I awaited his return also in a state of excitement. On the 5th of this month he phoned me again. This time he was in a state of extreme agitation and rage. He informed me that promises made to him by a certain USAF general officer, by name Ellsworth, had been broken, as a result of which the site of Badon, or at least its cenotaph and grave pits, had been totally desecrated. He explained to me in detail the circumstances leading to his identification of Mons Badonicus as Windmill Knob at Wodden. He further informed me that he had been ‘grilled’ and cautioned by a CIA officer, and that he was now confined to base pending transfer to South-East Asia. He had told this officer that he intended nevertheless to ‘blow this thing wide open’. Although he had not revealed my involvement he said he relied on me to support him in this, and that his navigator, Captain Collier, who was a witness to many of these events, would be bringing me evidence of his discovery after the next day’s training mission had been completed. In the event Captain Collier did not visit me, and I learnt from Press reports of the loss of a Phantom aircraft on a routine training flight. I made further inquiries in connection with the information Major Davies had given me, and these confirmed certain suspicions of mine that a monstrous crime, or series of crimes, had been committed by, or with the connivance of, the American CIA. Full details of this are now with the editor of a certain newspaper. Two further copies are in places of safety with my instructions as to their publication in the event of my death or unexplained disappearance.”

The final lines swam before Mosby’s eyes. A certain newspaper.

Their deadline is midday Friday for Sunday
. Two further copies in places of safety.

“And what does the CIA say to this?” Shirley’s voice was absolutely steady. “And our State Department?”

“We haven’t approached them.”

“You haven’t approached them?” Incredulity now. “Don’t they have a say?”

“What can they say?”

“Well, they can deny it for a start.”

“Of course they’ll deny it. They’ll say there’s not one single word of truth in it. Major Davies never found Badon Hill and Badon Hill isn’t Windmill Knob. So General Ellsworth never promised him the bulldozers wouldn’t move in until the archaeologists had excavated it thoroughly. And Davies wasn’t being posted to South-East Asia. He just crashed by accident—and took Captain Collier with him. Why would the CIA want to grill him? No reason at all-just a pack of lies made up by Group Captain William Lancelot Bullitt, DSO, DFC.”

Audley paused. “And James Barkham died in his sleep, like an old man should—or if he didn’t, then it was some wicked relative who wanted to inherit his bookshop. And our two men who followed Feiner haven’t come to any harm —they’ve just lost their way and they haven’t got tuppence between them for a phone call, that’s all. And Airman Pennebaker was just playing with this pistol of his, and it just went off by accident—“

Where the hell did Airman Pennebaker fit in? thought Mosby desperately. Where the hell did any of them fit in? “And Asher Klaverinsky never went for a swim. He just dropped out of circulation. Or maybe he didn’t like it in Tel Aviv as much as Gorky. He was homesick, perhaps.” “Who on earth is—Asher Klaverinsky?” said Mosby. “He’s the man who stole the Novgorod Bede, Captain—Mosby. But then he never met Major Davies anyway, did he? There’s not one single piece of evidence that he did—except in Billy Bullitt’s fevered imagination. He just imagined the deal they made. Or perhaps it was Major Davies’s fevered imagination. Or they cooked it up between them, just to cause trouble.”

“What d’you mean—he stole the Novgorod Bede?” “Just exactly that. He was working on its restoration when he finally got his emigration permit, and he reckoned the Russians owed him something for taking all his possessions and his money in exchange for letting him go. So he pretended he’d sent it on to Moscow for further specialist work, but in fact he smuggled it out with him. They probably don’t even know they’ve lost it yet, the way they do things.”

“But—“ Mosby stopped, realising that he wasn’t supposed to know that there was nothing of interest about Badon in the Novgorod Bede. And that nobody had stolen it.

“But what is there in it? In the Bede text—absolutely nothing. Just a straightforward early eighth century Bede, just like the Leningrad one. Only when Asher Klaverinsky got down to looking at it carefully he noticed that the Preface started about four inches down the page—that’s four inches of wasted sheepskin before the dedication to ‘the Most Glorious King Ceolwulf. And he then noticed that those four inches were rougher than the rest of the page, which meant that they’d probably been scraped clean and re-chalked. Which in turn meant that the page had been written on before, and then cleaned and re-used, because parchment was enormously expensive—it was a common practice in those days. So he popped the page under ultra-violet light, and you’ll never guess what he got instead.” Audley nodded to Roskill. “Give him the first sheet, Hugh.”

Roskill handed Mosby a typed sheet of paper —

… usque ad a??um obse?.?io?s Bad????? mentis qui p??pe Sord’n?? host?um ex D?r??v??a ?r?ur? habetur novi???ma????? ????? de furci???ris…

“Which may not be very clear to you and me, but seems clear enough to the experts. Sheet Two, if you please, Hugh—“

… usque ad annum obsessionis Badonici montis qui prope Sord’num hostium ex Durnovaria Arturo habetur nossissi-maeque ferme de furciferis…

Mosby stared hypnotically at the word
Arturo
.

“The free translation of which, more or less,” continued Audley, taking the third sheet into his own hands, “reads as follows :…
until the year of the siege of the enemy hosts from Dorchester-on-Thames by Arthur at Badon Hill, which is near Salisbury
… They aren’t absolutely sure about Dorchester-on-Thames, because they only know its Saxon name. So they’ve worked on a comparison with Roman Dorchester in Dorset. And technically ‘Sord’num’ is the monkish abbreviation for Sorviodunum, which is Sarum, just outside Salisbury. But historically and militarily the whole thing fits rather well then, with the Saxon army coming down the Icknield Way right from Cambridgeshire, picking up men as they moved along from one stronghold after another right to Dorchester, their big base on the Thames— and then striking at the main British army in the south and biting off more than they could chew.” He looked at Mosby. “Can you identify the passage—the original passage, that is?”

He was deliberately ignoring the real dynamite, thought Mosby. The dynamite which blew the thing far higher than Badon by itself could ever do.

“I guess it has to be Gildas the Wise.”

“Good man! Gildas it is—the end of Chapter XXV, only with seven new words. And of course, that fits too: the monks of Jarrow obviously had a copy of Gildas to make their own copies from, because Bede used it. And their copy had something like that Cambridge gloss in it—the one everybody ignores as corrupt. And so it was. But not quite.”

“Plus Arthur,” said Mosby.

Audley drew a deep breath. “Plus Arthur. You’ve put your ringer on what really matters. And what ties our hands completely.”

“What d’you mean?” said Shirley. “I thought it was Badon that was driving everyone crazy.”

“Uh-huh.” Mosby shook his head wearily. “Badon’s a big thing—just knowing where it was will change a lot of history books. But they always knew it existed. Arthur is the real blockbuster: the first absolutely conclusive historical proof that puts him squarely on the historical map. Not somebody everyone wants to believe in, but a real person. Right there in—“

He stopped as the full significance hit him. He stared at Audley with the beginning of panic stirring in him. “You have got the Novgorod Bede—or the Israelis have?”

“No.”

The question dried up in Mosby’s mouth.

“Klaverinsky apparently went for a swim, and never came back,” said Audley. “His rooms were ransacked—Billy Bullitt checked with an Israeli air force general he knows, who checked with the police. Nothing was stolen. Except what they didn’t know was there.”

That was the final pay-off: suddenly everything clicked into place in Mosby’s brain, like the tumblers of a time-lock which no one had been able to pick until too late.

It was all a con. The KGB hadn’t been planning any action against the USAF in Britain. That had just been the come-on to get them stirred up. The thing had been planned against the CIA itself from the start—the ultimate dirty trick. And everything they’d done had only helped to make it dirtier—and deadlier.