“I won’t believe it. I know them too well. No one could…”
He tailed off as he regained control of himself.
“You are involved in a confusion I find hard to understand in a mind of your calibre. But it’s an old confusion. You don’t really believe all Unirads should have horns and tails, do you? You don’t really believe that you and your few supporters have a monopoly of virtue, of honesty, of pleasing personalities, do you?”
“No. But these are my friends.”
“And their friendship is, I am sure, sincere. It has built up in the years they have known you. It may even have developed to the point where there is a dangerous tension between their beliefs and their friendship. Though I’m sure Browning has kept a careful check on that. But to them, their friendship and their party’s policy have long had the same aim — to keep you out of the public eye — to let you indulge in activity without effect. You trouble no one, so the Party is pleased. You are in no danger, so their friendship is pleased.”
“Prove this,” said Matlock as dispassionately as he could. “Prove it.”
The Abbot’s eyes looked at him sympathetically from the small wrinkled face.
“How can I prove it? What proof would you accept? You have seen ‘proof’ already today that you are a married man with a son. What proof can I offer strong enough to overcome the memory of that?”
“Forget it,” said Matlock. “True or false, you have tried to reduce me to a cypher. But this is not the end. I know I have done little in these past thirty years. I know I have been out of touch. I know, whatever the details may be, that I have been spied upon, and manoeuvred, and suppressed, and misinformed. But I know also that I can have a seat in the Cabinet tomorrow. I know that I can be the cause of a complicated religious charade two hundred miles away. I begin to suspect that there may be others, silent as yet, who wish to speak soft words in my ear.”
“Oh, there are. There are. There’s an invitation from the Scottish Ambassador being delivered to your flat even now.”
“For a cypher, I am doing well. I’ve had the Browning version of the reasons why I’m suddenly in demand. Now let’s have yours.”
“Mine is no version, Mr. Matlock.
Mine is the simple truth. Or rather, the complicated truth, for it was only recently that I myself came to understand it. The point is this, that there is in the North a highly complex and organized Underground resistance movement, which is on the verge of open war.”
Matlock was stunned. This was such arrant nonsense that he could hardly believe he was hearing it.
Finally he laughed contemptuously. “Don’t be stupid, Abbot. This is a dream. My lines of intelligence may be suspect, but if such a thing existed on such a scale, I must have heard of it. It is impossible that I should not have heard of it.”
The Abbot leaned forward thoughtfully. He produced from an inside pocket a packet of long herbal cigars one of which he lit. The yellow smoke drifted across to Matlock and the sweet smell rubbed itself against his nostrils.
“I find it strange that you should say that about this Movement,” said the Abbot slowly. “Especially in view of the fact that you are its most honoured and respected Leader.”
4
It was after four when Matlock returned to his flat. The door was flung open as he approached and Lizzie rushed out to him, her face pale with worry.
“Matt,” she said, “Matt. Thank heaven you’re back.”
She pressed her head against his chest and dug her hands into his back. Automatically he rested his hands on her shoulders. Over her head and through the door he could see Ernst and Colin, their faces alight with relief also, but hanging back in the face of — or rather, the rear of — Lizzie’s emotionalism. He forced a smile and they came to him.
“Are you all right, Matt? For Godsake, where have you been?”
This was Ernst. Relief, with a hard core of curiosity. The friend and the heir apparent both on show.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Colin said nothing but reacted just as typically. He prised Lizzie loose and led Matlock into the room. His eyes, Matlock knew, were unobtrusively but efficiently examining his face and head for damage.
He sat down, took the glass which Ernst offered him and sipped a little of the drink. He wrinkled his mouth in distaste at the comparison evoked with Browning’s Scotch.
“I’m sorry I’m a bit late,” he began. “But I see no reason for you all to get in a panic.”
“But Matt, we got your note about Browning and waited for ages. Then Colin made some enquiries at the House. All the reporters there had seen you go in, but no one saw you come out. We were worried sick.”
“My dear Lizzie. What did you imagine had happened to me? That Browning had whisked me off to some dungeon under the Thames where I was being put to the test on the rack?”
Lizzie flushed violently enough for something like this to have been her actual fear.
“So what did happen, Matt?” asked Colin.
“Why, Browning offered me a seat in the Cabinet and I slipped out by a back way and went for a little walk to think things over. I was rather abstracted, I’m afraid, and quite forgot to telephone you. I am very sorry.”
He sipped his drink slowly and through half closed eyes watched their reactions closely. Lizzie and Ernst looked at him in disbelief, their amazement at the news aggravated by the casual way it had been offered. Only Colin looked unperturbed and nodded slowly as though confirming something in his own mind.
“You’re joking, Matt,” said Ernst.
“No,” said Matlock. “Fill me up again will you?”
He handed over his empty glass. It made a useful stage-prop. From now on, he realized, he would be acting all the time, never knowing who was acting with him. He was faced by a bewildering complex of possibilities through which the straightest way seemed to be to assume that he could trust no one, that everything he said would be reported back to Browning.
“I am nearly seventy years old,” he had said to the Abbot. “And you are asking me to be without friends. You are telling me that in seventy years all I have collected round me are my enemy’s spies.”
“No,” the Abbot had replied, “they are your friends. But to love a man does not mean to love his beliefs. Just as to love a belief does not mean you must love those who share it. In any case I have spoken against only two people. Of the man, Peters, I know nothing damaging. Nor of the great mass of your sympathizers.”
Perhaps the straightest path, he thought now, would be to tell them everything. But Colin’s slowly spoken question made him realize he had not the right to do this.
“Why,” he asked, “should Browning think you dangerous enough to be offered such a bribe?”
Matlock imagined he sensed a tensing in the other two as they waited for his answer.
If what he said now was going to be reported back to Browning, then his answer must ring true. But the crux of the matter would be whether or not Browning knew of his contact with the Meek. Twenty-four hours earlier he would have said that he was not important enough to be shadowed everywhere. Now he was certain he was, but whether his exit from Westminster had been surreptitious enough to throw them off the scent, he did not know.
He decided to sit on the fence. To hint knowledge, but not its source. Let Browning take it as he liked.
“I’m not sure. That’s what I’ve been trying to work out in these past few hours.”
“And?” It was Ernst, his face eager. Too eager? Or was it just that his own importance must swell in direct proportion to Matlock’s?
“I’m not sure. There are too many factors.”
“But you have an idea?”