Audley sniffed. 'If you believe that, then don't fight on my side, Willy.' But then he shifted his postion, bringing up his knees in front of him and clasping his arms across them in a quaintly youthful way which was quite uncharacteristic, but which Elizabeth found oddly touching. For this was how he might have faced the old man forty years ago or more. 'My world isn't like that, Willy dear, you silly old bugger. And your world wasn't like that either, come to that… Besides which, the received wisdom in this case is that once upon a time I made a bad mistake somewhere down the line - do you understand?' Mr Willis nodded. 'We all do, dear boy - we all do.' He didn't look at Elizabeth. 'But you didn't make it with the Haddock - agreed?'
'Right. And nor did I make it with Sir Peter Barrie, who is the other candidate here.'
Audley flicked a glance at Elizabeth.
'Sir Peter - ?' Mr Willis perked up. 'Doesn't matter.' Audley shook his head. 'The point is that I have the distinct feeling that I did make a mistake somewhere. I didn't think so at first, but now… now we've lost a man. And that makes it a First Division match, Willy, I'm afraid. Because the other side wouldn't have played so rough without damn good reason - '
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He frowned ' - although I've been uneasy from the start, to be honest.'
'Why?' The old man caught the frown. 'The original vetting wasn't just routine.' Audley shook his head. 'I can't tell you about that, Willy - sorry…' Another shake. 'But the Other Side must have known how we'd react - how we couldn't let it go. Not after other things, just recently.'
'"The Other Side" meaning the fellows with snow on their boots and red stars on their caps?' inquired Mr Willis gently. 'The same chaps we ran up against at Balaclava and down the Valley of Death, when they were under different management?'
Audley's face screwed up. 'Uh-huh. And I also can't help feeling that they must have known damn well that it would be me who would be sent down the Valley again. Because I was there last time. And they know about me, you see. They've even got a man over there who's an expert on me, who knows all my little secrets.'
Elizabeth switched back to Mr Willis just in time to catch a curious flicker pass across his face. ' All your little secrets, dear boy?'
'All except the ones you know, Willy, anyway - about me being a sullen and solitary youth, and putting my hand up Mrs Clarke's niece's skirt in the old barn, on those occasions when I wasn't being solitary.' Audley rested his chin on his knees.
The old man waved a mottled hand irritably. 'Don't be flippant, David. What do you mean?'
'What indeed!' Audley raised his head. 'What I mean is… whether I was right or wrong about Haddock Thomas and Sir Peter Barrie back in '58, there is another interpretation of what I did then, which fits an altogether different scenario for it - one which will even do well enough if I was right, but much, much better if I just happened to be wrong.' He raised his chin arrogantly. 'Which I wasn't, as it happens. But who's to say that now, when old Fred's dead, and Brigadier Stocker - and my old tutor at Cambridge - among others?
Because if Haddock is a traitor, then why not David Audley too?'
Old Mr Willis's jaw dropped slightly. 'But that's daft, David.'
Audley shrugged. 'There's a man back in our office - a "grandee", you would call him, Willy - a bloody basket-hanger I'd call him - who's gunning for me. But he doesn't matter, I can take him any day, with one hand tied behind my back and one foot stuck in a bucket.
But if the KGB is setting me up now - if they're sicking me on like a hunting dog on to a motorway, after a real fox or an imaginary one - then that could be tricky.'
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Good God! thought Elizabeth: This was something which not even Paul himself had thought of -
although David himself had pointed at it already, when he'd said 'If it was disinformation once, it can be disinformation again… There's a man on the other side … if I was in his shoes I know exactly what I'd be doing.'
'I see.' The old man eased himself forward, first to the edge of the deck-chair, then up and out of it. 'Let me get you something, then.'
Audley fumbled around for his glass. 'That's very civil of you -'
'Not that!' Mr Willis shook his head at Elizabeth. 'Carrying bags and looking for camp-beds, indeed! More likely, he's already had more than his fair share, surreptitiously…'He shuffled towards the cottage, still shaking his head.
Audley's eyes fixed on her over his beer as he drank. 'And just what did you say to him…
other than what he let slip?'
He didn't sound at all grateful, thought Elizabeth. 'I asked him what was in Sir Frederick's letter.'
'Huh! Old Fred must have had something juicy on him, to make him swallow his liberal conscience.' He gazed up at the thatched roof, on which a flight of house-sparrows was dog-fighting noisily. 'They first met during the retreat to Dunkirk, in which Willy's battalion was massacred and Fred acquired a mysterious DSO. And they never quite lost touch after that. In fact, I suspect Willy did a job or two for him later on. But he's never talked about it.' His eyes came back to her. 'And I'll bet he didn't tell you a damn thing, either.'
'He said he had a little secret, actually.'
'He did?' He watched the birds again. 'I'll bet it wasn't so little! But when you've got a man's secret, you've got the man himself. "If I told thee all was betrayed, what wouldst thou do?" - he knows his Kipling, does our Willy: he read me that when I was a boy. And now someone seems to be trying to tell me that, in a way… The only trouble being, I don't know what this particular secret of mine is.' Once more he came back to her. 'What else did he say?'
'He said his secret was safe now.'
'Mmm…' He nodded. 'It would be now that Fred's dead. Because Fred kept all his promises, right to the end. Lucky Willy!'
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'And lucky David.' The voice came from behind them: the old man had returned noiselessly. 'Why lucky Willy, pray?'
Audley waited until the old man had seated himself. 'Your little secret - your little sin… or your little mistake, anyway… it died with old Fred, presumably? Or did you miss that obituary?'
'No, dear boy. But it didn't say much about him, did it?'
'No.' Audley shook his head. 'But then it couldn't, could it? It could hardly say how he burnt the midnight oil all those years so that you could indulge your liberal conscience in safety, could it?' Audley paused. 'Why "lucky David"? I don't feel so lucky at the moment.'
'Oh, but you are, dear boy, you are!' The old man searched for his glass on the flagstones, and then sipped from it. 'Lucky in love - to have such a beautiful and understanding wife, and intelligent to boot… and a daughter who takes after her mother, not her father.' He set down the glass carefully. 'Lucky to be a round peg in a round hole - or whatever shape it is, it is your shape, at all events.' He looked at Elizabeth. 'Lucky in this instance too, to have so loyal and persuasive a colleague - undeservedly lucky there indeed, as in those other regards.' He smiled at Elizabeth. 'And he was lucky in war, also. For I vividly recall - all too vividly still! - having occasion to trace the route of his armoured regiment across the Norman bocage, shortly after its passage therein… Purely by chance, you understand, Elizabeth. For I had other fish to fry… But it was not difficult - it was well-marked with burnt-out tanks and the fresh graves of their occupants. So many, in fact, that I gave up stopping to check identities after a while, where there were identities, as the odds on finding his name shortened. For I wasn't so sure that he was so lucky then, you see.' He switched to Audley suddenly. 'Forty years to the day now, that would be, almost - eh, dear boy!'