Butler wedged himself down in the shadow of a jutting section of transmitting equipment, thinking furiously. Korbel was pretty small beer, a bit of Ukranian flotsam that had been left high and dry by the Second World War only to be picked up and recruited by his ex-fatherland after ten blameless but unrewarding years of freedom in the West. It had never been satisfactorily established whether it had been belated patriotism or blackmail, or sheer desperation, that had turned him into an enemy, but in any case he had never graduated beyond fetching and carrying and watching so that it had never seemed worthwhile picking him up. Butler had never met him or crossed his path, but he had watched the sad, moon-shaped face age and sag, creasing with stress-lines, in a whole succession of photographs taken over the years and exposed to him by routine in the periodical rogues' gallery sessions.
But now his face in its turn had been exposed to the near-pensionable Korbel and the spidery Protopopov
—and now Korbel was hurrying after the latest in the line of false Butlers to get his reward up on the crag.
His reward . . . Butler lent back uncomfortably against his pack. All he had to do was to ask Richardson, and Richardson would dutifully tell him that everything was going according to plan—Audley's plan.
A crafty plan, without doubt, full of elaborate twists and turns. But a sight too twisty and elaborate for Butler's taste.
The primary aim was to identify the opposition—no bonus for that conclusion, it was inherent in his instructions—because the enemy's strength and quality must always be a valuable pointer to the importance of the operation. And with all the advantages of a well-prepared battlefield and apparently unlimited equipment that aim ought to be attainable.
But being Audley's the plan included a deception: Peter Korbel's reward was to be deceived about something.
"Your man, sir—he's just crossed the road." The stocky Signals corporal murmured, deadpan. "He's limpin' a bit, but he's goin' like the clappers,"
Richardson stood up and peered through a crack in the grill on the other side of the truck.
"So he is, Corporal—so he is! Bloody, but unbowed. I think he'll make it now, you know. You can send dummy2.htm
off the all clear then, and tell 'em we'll rendezvous according to schedule." He turned back to Butler.
"You know what we've got for him up there? Not up there, actually—he's waiting down in Lodham Slack valley, just before Turret 4ob: Oliver St John Latimer in person!"
Butler frowned. Oliver Latimer was one of the more orotund of the resident kremlinologists in the department—a man with whom Audley was notoriously at odds too.
"Hah!" Richardson's teeth flashed. "I thought you'd take the point! David don't like Oliver—and Oliver don't like David. Which is why David has had Oliver dragged all the way up here from his fleshpots in the Big Smoke just to confuse poor old Korbel. Two birds with one stone—just like David!"
Just like Audley. That was true enough, thought Butler grimly: the man was too shrewd to go out of his way to settle his private scores but could never resist settling them in the line of duty if the opportunity presented itself. Young Roskill had said as much from his hospital bed only a few days before.
But Latimer was the private bird; it was Korbel who mattered, and Protopropov, and whoever was behind them.
"He wants to find out if you're meeting anyone on the Wall, see," continued Richardson, "and we didn't like to disappoint him. So we're giving him Latimer, and with a bit of -luck that'll set their dovecotes all aflutter, specially if they've got a line on David, because they'll know David and Latimer aren't yoked together, see—"
"I see perfectly well." Butler cut off the string of mixed metaphors harshly. "For God's sake, man, let's get on with the job. Let's get moving."
The Russians had followed him, and Audley's men were no doubt pinpointing the Russians. It was an old game, and the trick of it was still the same: you could never be quite sure who was outsmarting whom—who was the cat, and who the mouse.
XII
CORPORAL GIBSON SWUNG the big signals truck between the stone uprights of the farm gate, round an immaculate army scout car which was parked beside a Fordson tractor, and backed it accurately into the mouth of the barn.
A stone barn, Butler noted through the gap in the grill— everything in this countryside was in stone, and judging by the recurrent shape of the stones most of them had first seen the light of day under a Roman legionary's chiseclass="underline" the Wall, away on the skyline at his back, had been this land's quarry for a thousand years or more.
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The rear doors swung smartly open from the outside and Butler looked down on his reception committee.
"Ah, colonel!" Audley began formally.
The Royal Signals subaltern at his side stiffened at the rank instinctively, and then relaxed as Audley ruined the effect with a casual gesture of welcome. "Come on down, Jack! We've only got about half an hour, and a lot of ground to cover. And you too, Peter. Everything according to plan?"
Butler sniffed derisively. According to plan! It was a sad thing to see a man like Audley take pleasure in the shadow of events rather than their substance.
"Like a dream." Richardson swung out of the truck gracefully behind. "Korbel went up Winshields like a lamb, apart from his limp."
"Good, good." For a fearful moment Butler thought Audley was going to clap him on the back, but the movement changed at the last instant to a smoothing of the hair.
"If you like to carry on, Mr Masters. Just let us know if any of the suspects behave out of pattern."
"Very good, sir." The Subaltern fell back deferentially.
Audley indicated a doorway ahead of them. "I've got what used to be called a cold collation for you, Jack. Hard-boiled eggs and ham and salad. But a little hot soup from a thermos —we weren't quite sure whether things really would work out. You know what you've been taking part in?"
He eyed Butler momentarily before continuing. "It's what young Masters calls a 'Low Intensity Operation', by which I gather he means what the Gestapo and the Abwehr used to call 'Search and Identify'. Only now I think we could teach them a thing or two, after all the practice we've had. And with all the equipment!"
"You can say that again," said Richardson. "That frequency scanning thing they've got—the American thing—it's bloody miraculous."
"But just what does it add up to?" Butler growled.
"Add up to? Here—sit on the bale of straw, and Peter will serve your soup." Audley perched himself on a bale opposite Butler. "Add up to? Well, at the moment Korbel talks to Protopopov on a very neat little East German walkie-talkie. And Protopopov talks to another colleague of his just over the crest of the ridge back there, down towards Vindolanda— someone we shall be identifying very soon now. Then perhaps we shall know what we're about a little better."
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"But we don't at the moment," said Butler obstinately, staring at Audley through the steam of his hot cup of soup. "We don't know what they are about."
Audley blinked uncomfortably, and Butler's earlier intuition was confirmed. Back in the flat in London the fellow had been uncharacteristically nervous. But now he was evidently no closer to an answer, and what had happened this morning was a fumbling attempt to find out more by injecting Butler into the action in the hope that the enemy would reveal more of himself. It was little better than grasping at straws.
"Perhaps I shall know better when you've made your report," Audley said rather primly. "I hope you've got something worth listening to."
"Not a lot, really. You've had my report on the accident."
"Yes," Audley nodded. "He invited his own death, and the invitation was accepted. In effect he committed suicide."