"How long have you known?" Butler kept a tight rein on his temper, listening to the bitter end without interrupting.
"What I've just told you?" Audley shrugged. "Not very long. But I suspected they'd set this student business up just for our benefit, even before you made your report yesterday. And when they put Alek on view for me to identify—then I was certain. After that it wasn't so very difficult." He smiled. "Eden Hall and Oxford—it was all there once we knew what to look for, as I've just said. You saw it for yourself in the end, too."
Butler stared at him, balanced between irritation and admiration.
"What made you suspicious—at the start?"
"My dear Jack," Audley waved airily, "it was a great little nightmare of Sir Geoffrey Hobson's, but that's all it ever was. It wasn't like the Russians—Theodore Friesler said so, and you said so, and I couldn't find one bit of real evidence to back it—" Audley's voice hardened suddenly "—and I don't make that sort of mistake."
"Then what the hell was all that rigmarole on the Wall yesterday?"
"Rigmarole?" Audley shook his head. "Say rather that was just Adashev and I playing chess with each other. I needed to give him the chance of telling me what he wanted me to know."
"Why?"
"Because this student thing is for real, too, Jack. It's not a blind—even a new boy like Adashev didn't reckon he could draw off my attention from the real thing with an imaginary operation. The real thing dummy2.htm
stood a chance only if the diversion was real too."
Butler nodded grimly. "I take it you know what the real diversionary target is now."
"If I was a betting man I'd bet on it. The coastal missile range."
"But yesterday you said it didn't fit, not well enough anyway."
"Yesterday it didn't fit—because I didn't know what I was looking for. I didn't know I was the one who was meant to get the answer. Today's different." Audley paused. "Look at it this way: they let me see Alek, and Alek's a man who needs a specific target—and a target they could rely on me identifying. And then a target I'd know the lads at Castleshields would identify too. That's enough for even an old square like me to come up with an answer."
"Which is—?"
"The Beast of Cazombo, no less."
"The beast of—where?" Butler frowned.
"Cazombo. It's in Angola, out near the Zambian border. It isn't a name that's been in the news over here, but in certain circles it's known right enough. The point is that last term at Cumbria we had an MPIA guerrilla leader talk to their Free Africa Society, of which I'm an honorary vice-president. He talked all about genocide and chemical warfare, and all the other things the guerrillas accuse the Portuguese of, and by the grace of god the name Negreiros stuck in my mind—"
"Negreiros!"
"You've heard of him?"
"There's a Portuguese General called Negreiros." Butler wrinkled his forehead. "He was an intelligence major in Brussels when I was there in '61."
"That's the man. A specialist in air cavalry, and the guerrillas don't like him one little bit. He also happens to be a link man with the South Africa general staff. And he happens to be leading the present Portuguese military delegation here."
"The one there was that London demonstration against just recently?"
"Now you're on target, like Alek. Because the Negreiros delegation is due to visit the Missile Range this afternoon at 3.30—they're driving up from Birmingham."
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Butler whistled softly. A target indeed—ripe for a demo and riper still for a bullet.
Audley nodded. "Yes, I don't need to spell it out, do I. But we don't need to worry about it any more either, thank God."
"You've turned it over to the Special Branch?"
Audley laughed. "Not bloody likely! As it happens, Negreiros has got a private engagement elsewhere, according to the Department, but just in case he changes his mind I've got 'em to take the whole delegation down to Filton instead to see the Concorde. There isn't going to be a missile range visit at all."
"And Alek?"
"Alek and Adashev can fold up their tents and steal away into the night. In a day or two Latimer's going to drop a word into the embassy pipeline that we don't want them hanging around, but the word from on high is that we're to play this whole thing very cool. As far as the demo goes, or whatever the lads had got planned, if they want to demonstrate against the Beast of Cazombo outside the Missile Range gate now, they're welcome. There won't be any scandal—that's the password all round—no scandal."
"Everybody goes free, you mean?"
"Everybody goes home. Even you, Butler—after you've given your lecture on Belisarius, of course. We want to keep things neat."
Everybody?
"Except me, of course," Audley went on, unruffled by the strange expression on Butler's face. "I've got the rest of my mock sabbatical year to serve at Cumbria. Not that it'll be any great hardship. In fact, in some ways I've learnt quite a lot. Having to teach Gracey's bright young men is rather like the prospect of being hanged: it concentrates the mind wonderfully. Take this place now—"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said 'Take this place'." Audley paused. "Do you know where we are, Butler?"
Butler stared at him stupidly. "Where we are?"
"This is what they called the Principia, Butler—the headquarters building—"
"I'm aware of that, yes," Butler said curtly.
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The big man gave him an oddly confiding sidelong glance. "Yes, I rather thought you'd know it." He smiled. "I knew I'd got you summed up correctly. You're a romantic at heart, no matter what you pretend to be. I know you wouldn't let me down, here of all places."
"I don't see what you think I am-—" Butler began stiffly, and then reared up against the implication of it.
"I don't see what that's got to do with—"
"Oh, but it has! It has everything to do with it." Audley gestured over the fortress and on towards the crags. "This place has the right atmosphere for us. What it is and what it was—
Snapped rooftrees, towers fallen, the work of the giants, the stone-smiths, mouldereth .. "
He seemed undeterred by Butler's wooden expression. "You didn't walk the Wall yesterday and not think about it."
It wasn't a question. Or rather the man was so maddeningly sure of the answer that it had come out as a statement.
Butler flushed. Its very accuracy made it offensive, like an invasion of the private part of his mind. It was none of Audley's damn business what he thought. And even if by some rogue intuition he could see so clearly, he had no call to speak of it. It was an act of intellectual ill-breeding.
" 'The day shall come when sacred Troy shall perish'," said Audley.
Butler exploded. "Oh, for Christ's sake, man—spare me the quotations. I've had a bellyful these last few hours. Say what you mean and have done with it."
Audley gave him a shrewd look. "I'm not getting through to you? Or am I getting through a bit too well?"
He paused, then gave Butler a grin that was disarmingly shy. "I apologise, Colonel. Sometimes I say what should be unsaid, I'm afraid. But you must remember I've been up on this bit of frontier longer than you. It's got under my skin."
He paused, staring northwards at the skyline.
"What I mean is that there must have been times when the Wall was strong and times when it was weak
—more like a confidence trick than a real defense. The way they'd have held it then was by good intelligence work. And by keeping their nerve."
Butler nodded slowly.
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"And by a little judicious contempt too, Butler."
"Contempt?"
"Contempt. Just that." Audley's eyes were cold now. "You and I—we're on our Wall when it's weak.
Weak on the Wall, and weak behind it." He pointed northwards. "Some of our people don't believe there are any savages out there. And of course the intellectuels gauchistes are quite happy to pick us off from behind—they think it's high time for the Wall to fall."