'So what went wrong?'
'Hmmm…' He thought for a moment. 'What we thought at the time was that he'd trodden too hard on too many toes - as I was doing - only much worse. And that was part of the truth: that he forced good men and true to gang up against him, because of the damage he was doing.'
'And the other part?'
'Other parts, my dear… The other part we knew about was that when the good men got the dirt on him and he needed friends, we - if I may mix metaphors - we put the boot in.
Because I convinced Fred that if he prospered in the CIA we could kiss goodbye to the Special Relationship, what there was left of it.' He compressed his lips. 'Mistake Number Two, in retrospect?'
Elizabeth waited for the third part of the truth.
Audley drew a slow breath. 'What we think now - which we came to long afterwards, and much too late - is that maybe - just maybe - it was the KGB which fabricated the dirt on him… which was that he was taking bribes to discredit innocent liberals.' Another breath.
'Oh, it was all done neatly and painlessly, the way good men do bad deeds: he wasn't able dummy2
to make a martyr of himself, or anything like that.' He cocked a defensive eyebrow at her.
'You understand?'
'Mmm…' What she understood was that he was ashamed, but he wasn't actually going to admit it. 'But David -'
'Yes?'
There was no way of putting it except baldly. And she was too tired to put it any other way. 'If the KGB framed him… that means Debrecen was genuine. Surely?'
'Oh no - it means no such thing.' He had been ready for the question. 'When you fish with a net, you don't just get what you're fishing for - you get all sorts of things. Just because we were fishing for one sort of traitor - a very rare and special sort, which maybe didn't even exist - it doesn't mean that we didn't catch anything else edible, which just happened to be swimming in the wrong place, at the wrong time.'
Fish, thought Elizabeth
And then Haddock -
Dance for your daddy, my little laddie!
You shall have a Haddie
When the boat comes in!
Was Haddock one of those other fish, if not a Debrecen man?
'Come on, Elizabeth. Let's go and get some well-earned refreshment.' Audley opened the car door before she could open her mouth, and she knew that he would avoid any question she put to him. She could only follow him - as she had been doing ever since their meeting in the foyer of the Xenophon Building. Damn!
And - damn! - her heels sank through leafmould into mud, threatening to unbalance her, if not to take her shoes off her feet. And - damn again! - she had no sensible country shoes in her overnight bag.
'David - ' She grabbed the car for support as she tried to extricate herself from the mud ' -
David - '
He was busy stretching his long legs again and flexing his shoulders on the other side of the car, free at last of it, just as he had done in the yard at the King's Arms. And then he stopped suddenly, and turned towards her with a new expression on his face, of quite dummy2
idiotic pleasure, which matched the sun slanting over the cottages behind him rather than the beastliness of everything he had just been telling her.
'By the big holly tree - Holly Cottage,' he jerked his head, still smiling foolishly. 'Name of Willis - same as the cricketer, okay? I'll join you in a moment.'
Her shoes were free, and her feet were still inside them. 'Where are you going, David?'
'To have a look at the road.' He nodded. 'Just to make absolutely sure.' He misread her expression. 'Don't worry, Elizabeth. I promise you I'd never have brought us here, of all places, if I rated the risk a remote possibility.' He shook his head. 'Not here, Elizabeth.'
What was so special about here - beyond their own safety? 'You take the cases.' The smile came back. 'I'll just check the road, to make assurance doubly sure - Holly Cottage, name of Willis - okay?'
' You take the cases' ? She watched him retrace their route down the track for a few yards.
Then he cut off into the trees confidently, as though he knew where he was going; which only confirmed her impression that he had been here before.
But that was David Audley, of course: having been somewhere before, and knowing someone there, was his stock-in-trade, acquired over the years. He had certainly been there before, in the foyer of the Xenophon Building, if not up to Sir Peter Barrie's holy of holies; and there had been that hail-fellow-well-met Egyptian general, who had been so old-world courteous and menacing at the same time - that was the world of David Audley, to the life-and-death of it.
Huh! And ' You take the cases' - that was Audley too, she thought, as she hauled out the two overnight bags, and tucked her bag under her arm as best she could, and set out towards the holly tree.
At least, they weren't too heavy. And at least the beaten track, away from its verges, was firm enough. All she had to do was avoid the puddles and the scatter of horse-manure along the way.
It was the biggest holly tree she had ever seen: holly was slow-growing - slower-growing than oak, was it? Or was it that people hacked at holly every year, for their Christmas decorations, to cut it back and diffuse its growth?
They had hacked back Debrecen, between them. But it had grown in spite of that -
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She caught her heel in another soft patch, as she was gazing up at the topmost branches of the tree, and had to set the bags down in order to extricate herself again. Her shoes were muddy now - her best and newest Italian shoes, foolishly chosen this morning (God! Only this morning!) when she had dressed for London and Oliver St John Latimer, not for a muddy lane in the middle of nowhere and bloody David Audley - and now, as she straightened up again, a case in each hand, her handbag - her best Italian handbag, matching her muddy shoes -was trying to slip past her elbow -
The tiny sound caught her in the midst of an ungainly attempt to catch the bag between hip and elbow, and it was just sufficient to divert her attention: the bag escaped her, glancing off her knee to land in a pile of fresh horse-manure.
Elizabeth swore aloud that particular forbidden word which nevertheless described the handbag's fate exactly - and then found herself staring straight into the eyes of the little old man who had been watching her performance through a gap between the tree and the hedge.
For a moment they looked through each other with equal embarrassment. Then the little man peered past her down the lane, towards the Morgan.
Elizabeth put down the cases and rescued her handbag. Florentine leather ought to be equal to English horse - manure, she hoped. Then she looked at the little man again.
'If you sponge it, it should be all right,' said the little man politely, in an educated voice at odds with his faded, collarless shirt, which had been inexpertly patched in several places, and his old pair of army battledress trousers which were supported by even more ancient braces barred with rust-marks from their metal clips, as though they had supported the trousers of other men of different heights, or trousers of different lengths.
'Thank you.' After the other word, her voice sounded incongruously demure in her ears.
He smiled at her. 'If it's Mr Harvey you want - Andrew Harvey? - he lives in the other cottage, my dear.' He pointed. 'But you can leave your cases here, just inside my gate. I'll keep an eye on them, they'll be quite safe. Then Andrew can come and collect them.' The blue eyes twinkled. 'Mustn't have any more mishaps, eh?'
How old was he? wondered Elizabeth. When it came to the Ages of Man, there were really many more than Shakespeare's seven in these more complex and better-medicated times.