He replaced the receiver and settled his glasses firmly on his nose.
To be hauled out of his warm soft bed at such an hour was bad enough. To be then summoned to London at the same hour was worse: it suggested that someone had been caught with his trousers down, or his pyjama trousers even.
But to be required in addition to dress for a funeral–that was utterly ridiculous!
Funerals meant going outside, into the field, among strangers. And he was not a field man, never had been and never wanted to be.
The back room among the files and the reports was his field. It was far more interesting there, more rewarding and infinitely more dummy4
comfortable. And it was the only place he was any good.
He sat at his desk, staring into the night outside. No one he knew had died recently. He focused on the darkness and his mind wandered away into it. Two hours to dawn maybe; the dying time now, when those who had fought hardest in their hospital beds suddenly gave up the struggle. This hour, this blackness, suddenly reminded him of long-forgotten boarding school ends-of-term. The boys with the furthest to go got up now, all excitement, to catch the earliest trains. He had caught a much later train, with no particular joy.
Methodically he switched on the tea machine, showered, drank the tea. The Israelis were certainly not up to anything. Shapiro could be relied on there at least. And the Russian ships were in the wrong place for the Arabs to try anything important.
Uncalled for and long forgotten end-of-term memories intruded.
He remembered the boy in the next bed for the first time in over twenty years. Which was interesting: it meant that the right key unlocked a whole set of memories, and then one could recall and clarify the past, flexing the memory like the muscles.
Whose funeral? Half-dressed, trailing a faint smell of mothballs and fumbling with his ancient black tie, Audley decided he was hungry. But there was no time and his funereal suit reminded him that he had to watch his weight now. Where once the trousers had needed braces, now they were self-supporting.
He opened the safe and removed the files on which he had been working. Ever since May '67 they had expected marvels from him.
And that had been no miracle, but mere exasperation and lurking dummy4
sympathy for the Israelis. They had ignored it, anyway, just as they had ignored the Lebanese report and the Libyan one before it.
Audley sighed. It was not Fred's fault, he thought. Fred was good.
Perhaps it was his own fault, a defect in presentation. The difficult thing is not the answer, he reflected, but the working.
The light grew as he drove. No rain today, but a cold, unseasonable wind, just right for a funeral to cull the weaker mourners. The countryside was only just waking up, but the towers of London were already ablaze with light, and there was much more traffic than he expected. Every year it started earlier and ended later, and one day the start and the end would be indistinguishable. I must retire early, he thought. To Cambridge.
With malicious pleasure he parked in one of the habitual early birds' places, near the entrance. Here there were fewer lighted windows, surprisingly–except for a row high up, with one blank window in the middle. So that's my room, Audley thought.
Inside the sergeant's eyebrows raised fractionally as he passed. But it gave him no pleasure. Only by order, routine and unchanging habit could the hostile world be kept at bay. Even the presence of Mrs Harlin in her usual place–Mrs Harlin certainly represented all those virtues–could not turn 6 a.m. into 10.
But it was simple common sense not to take his irritation and disquiet out on Mrs Harlin. She was the source of certain simple comforts, and in any case secretarial staff were taboo. In his limited experience Audley had observed that those who took dummy4
advantage of secretaries, either mentally or physically, usually lived to regret it.
He could not bring himself to wish her a good morning, however, but only the tortured semblance of a smile. And she rewarded him by editing her welcome to a stately and sympathetic nod.
'Dr Audley–Sir Frederick wishes me to tell you that there is a file on your desk. If you would let him have your observations on it in the conference room at 7 o'clock he would be most grateful. The regular records staff is not available yet, so if you require anything else perhaps you could ask me?'
Audley blinked and nodded.
'And I am just about to prepare a pot of tea for Sir Frederick. May I bring you a cup?'
'That would be very kind, Mrs Harlin.'
The world was upside down, and he, the last man right way up, had to go along with it. Even his own familiar room seemed in the circumstances unfamiliar, with darkness outside, but without the atmosphere of a day's work done.
His only comfort lay in the file itself, which was not too thick and freshly photo-copied. Sixty minutes allowed, and he no longer felt any disquiet, only that old examination thrill. He extracted a red biro from his breast pocket and a fresh notebook from his stationery drawer.
When Mrs Harlin slipped in unobtrusively with his tea ten minutes later he was already prepared for her.
'There's some more material I'd like, Mrs Harlin. To start with, The dummy4
Times and the Mirror for last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Then from Records–here, I've made a list.'
Mrs Harlin was poker-faced. 'I'm truly sorry, Dr Audley, but Sir Frederick requested that you concentrate on that one file for the moment. He said that everything else would be available in due course.'
Candidates would not be permitted to consult text-books. And Fred had foreseen that he would start cutting the corners straight away.
Which was in itself informative, though aggravating.
By 6.45 he had completed the initial reconnaissance of the material. He closed the file and turned to the five photographs he had spread over his desk.
Five faces . . . five men. Four had baled out and lived. One had stayed aboard and had taken twenty-four years to die.
He lined up the survivors. Tierney the second pilot and Morrison the radio operator, the men with such good memories; Maclean the navigator and Jones the passenger, who had mildly contradicted each other. If they were all still alive it would be interesting to discover how much Tierney and Morrison had decided to forget, and how much Maclean and Jones had managed to remember.
He stared at them for a time, then turned them face downwards and drew the fifth face towards him.
John Adair Steerforth.
Photographs could lie just as persuasively as people, but this was surely Lucifer's face: handsome, proud and dissatisfied. Perhaps there was a trace of weakness about the chin, but the mouth was dummy4
firm and the slightly aquiline nose aristocratic. Women would have loved him very easily–hard luck on them that he was dry bones. Or maybe good luck?
At least the funeral was explicable now. But his own role and his involvement was still inexplicable. On the face of it there was not the slightest link with the Middle East here.
On the face of it. He opened the file again. A document like this was no simple collection of facts. It had a story of its own to tell.
The newness here was deceptive: the material and language was dated. But it had been cut since, possibly twice, and edited–once clumsily, and then more skilfully. Audley recognized the pattern.
He gathered up the scattered papers and his notebook. Now was the time for some of the answers.
Fred welcomed him with a graceful apology.
'Butler and Roskill I believe you know, Dr Audley. And this is Mr Stocker, who represents the JIG.'
Butler and Roskill were both European Section men as far as Audley remembered. He had once briefed Roskill on the Dassault company's dealings with the Israeli air force, and the young man had impressed him. Butler looked exceedingly tough, with his short haircut and bullet head.