'Archaeologists at work are indistinguishable from navvies.'
'But an innocent hobby, Dr Audley. Archaeologists are safely sealed off from modern history. Historians are too often tempted to stray from their chosen field, are they not?'
Parry.
'Very true. And also there's always the danger that they'll make inconvenient discoveries.'
Thrust.
Panin nodded. 'And then they discover that the truth is not as indivisible as they thought. Not a clear glass, but a mirror sometimes.'
It was time to stop playing, thought Audley. 'But we're not concerned with history or archaeology, are we! Only indirectly, anyway. I take it as confirmed that you want me to find the Schliemann Collection for you?'
Panin inclined his head. 'I gathered from Brigadier Stocker that our small secret was out. Yes, Dr Audley, my government would be most grateful if you could do that. Then we will jointly restore it to the German Democratic Republic.'
Just like that, as though it was a mislaid umbrella!
'Well, I think we have a fair chance of finding it tomorrow, given a dummy4
little luck.'
Try that for size, Professor.
Panin was unmoved. 'So soon? But I am gratified to hear it. I had feared that it might prove a needle in a hay stack.'
'It certainly might have been easier if you had confided in us from the start–and I mean from the very start.'
The lines deepened around Panin's mouth.
'There was a certain . . . embarrassment about the loss of the collection in the first place, Dr Audley.'
Sir Kenneth Allen had hinted as much. To abstract the collection from G Tower had been the prerogative of the conquerors; to have lost it then so quickly reduced the conquerors to bungling plunderers.
'And then we formed the opinion that it was irretrievably lost,'
Panin continued. 'We believed that there was nothing anyone could do. It was only when I heard of the recovery of the aircraft that I revised my opinion.'
There was a great deal left unsaid there: the whole Russian obsession down the years with ditched Dakotas. A little honest curiosity would not be out of order.
'Professor Panin, we all know of your reputation as an archaeologist,' said Audley slowly, 'but I must admit I find your interest in the collection–and your government's interest–a little curious. Couldn't you have left it to the East Germans? After all, it's not a political matter.'
'There you have put your finger on the truth, Dr Audley. It is not a dummy4
political matter. For me it is a very personal matter. It was I who lost the Schliemann Collection. I lost it in Berlin, and I lost it again here in England.'
He stared lugubriously at the many-stranded necklace which rested on the false swell of Faith's chest.
'There is a German scholar,' he went on, 'a Dr Berve, who argues that there was never a siege of Troy–that Homer's Troy was a village overthrown by an earthquake. But I have handled Schliemann's treasures, and I have never forgotten them. In fact, as I have grown older I have thought of them more often.'
There was neither conviction nor passion in his voice. He was simply stating facts for Audley to accept or dismiss as he chose. Sir Kenneth might have used the same words. Faith had said it outright and Stocker had suggested it.
And now even Audley found himself wanting to believe it too.
Treasure–above all, treasure of gold–had always driven men to irrational acts. Cortes and Pizarro and all the victims of the search for the Seven Cities and the Gilded Man. Schliemann's treasure had been enough to tempt Steerforth to risk five lives and lose his own.
It had killed Bloch quickly and Morrison after half a lifetime.
But was it enough to haunt a man like Panin?
He realised with a start that he was staring direetly at Roskill, and staring that young man out of countenance. And there was something else—
It was the hotel manager, standing at his elbow, now beautifully dinner-jacketed and still sleekly out of place against the dark oak dummy4
beams.
'Excuse me, Dr Audley.'
And marvellously out of place in Newton Chester too, thought Audley. The sleepy place could have seen nothing so Mediterranean since the Roman legion from Lincoln had come marching by to build its practice camp down the road.
'Excuse me for interrupting you, Dr Audley, but Mistaire Warren, of Castle Farm–he was looking for you this afternoon here. He left a package for you which I have.'
The man took each aspirate like a show-jumper on a tricky course of fences, landing triumphantly on the final full stop for a clear round.
Butler already had an airfield map, but Audley suddenly wanted to get away from them all–to consider Panin for a moment by himself and to collect his thoughts again. This was a sufficient excuse.
He followed the manager out into the hall, where the fellow darted into his office and reappeared flourishing a large envelope so exuberantly that Audley thought for a second that he was going to spin it across the hallway.
But the flourish was converted into an elegant little bow, and Audley felt honour-bound to open it there and then as though it was a document of the highest importance.
There was a note pinned to the folded map, biro-scrawled in a childishly copperplate hand.
'Dear Dr Audley–I enclose my father's map, as promised. I'm sorry it isn't quite what I thought. The runways are marked in pencil dummy4
though, but none of the buildings. My father was very interested in
—'
The next word stopped Audley dead in mid-sentence.
Carefully he unfolded the creased section of the large-scale ordnance survey map. It wasn't luck really, he told himself. He would have come to it himself in the end, sooner or later. Indeed, he could see the signposts pointing to it along the way, which he had left behind only half-read.
And there it was, of course: Steerforth's treasure neatly and precisely marked for him. Marked as exactly as if it had been Steerforth, and not Keith Warren's father, who had recorded it.
As for luck, though–if any man had had good luck, and then equally undeserved and final bad luck, it had been John Steerforth.
XVI
For the second time Audley watched the water tower sink slowly into the tarmac skyline behind him. He did up another button on his raincoat. Roskill was driving with his window down, and the Land-Rover was draughty; it was another unseasonable morning, clear enough, but grey and unfriendly. One of those mornings when spring hadn't even tried to break through, even falsely.
Morning had purged the old airfield altogether of the atmosphere it had possessed on Sunday evening: it was no longer melancholy and forlorn, but merely bleak.
dummy4
But it was a good morning for digging–that had been Butler's only comment as he dumped the spades in the back. And Butler, in navy-blue donkey-jacket and baggy gardening trousers, had undeniably come prepared to dig.
Roskill's confidence was not so complete; or perhaps it was simply that his equally ancient tweeds still retained a lingering elegance.
As he had explained unapologetically the night before, he had no garden of his own, and consequently no gardening clothes.
Audley superimposed the ribbon of runway and the waving sea of grass on the map which was now etched on his memory. At about this point, on the left, there should be the break in the grass which marked the concrete base of the safe deposit hut.
'Stop here for a moment.'
He climbed out of the cabin and took in the whole circuit of the surrounding landscape. Ahead of him the taxiing strip stretched away, narrowing until it merged with the trees in the distance.
Behind him the slow incline of the Hump obscured the old built-up area of the field. On each side the prairie lay wide and open. It was still a lonely and naked place, with only the distant racket of a tractor out of sight to the right: Farmer Warren was busy cutting his Italian rye grass for his wife's uncle's silage.