Colonel Butler's Wolf (27 page)

“I wonder about that—whether you really were on to us.”

Butler snorted derisively. “Think what you like. If you think a man like David Audley would waste his time … “

“Audley?”

“You young fool, do you think Audley’s been at Cumbria all these months chasing shadows?” Butler snapped. “Put that bloody fool gun down and be thankful we don’t take you seriously. Go back home and tell ‘em not to send a boy to do man’s work.” He ran his hand over his head and shook the rain from it. “Just go home and stop being a nuisance. There’s nothing else you can do now.”

The gun came up convulsively from Butler’s stomach to his face.

“Oh, but there is—th-there is!” McLachlan stuttered. “The boy can still do m-man’s work.”

Butler stared into the twin black holes, trying to show a contempt which he didn’t feel.

“What man’s work?”

“I’ll be a nuisance.” McLachlan’s voice was eager now. “If that’s the only thing I can be, I’ll be that then.”

“What—?” The word stuck in Butler’s throat.

“I’ll give the Press a field day. The bastards are afraid of the students as it is. But I’ll give them something to get their teeth into—I’ll give them Paul Zoshchenko and Peter Ryleiev.”

“Poppycock!” Butler tried desperately to force derision into the word. But he could only remember what Audley had said back in London:
You can imagine what the Press would do with Comrade Zoshchenko if they got hold of him!
“You’re crazy!”

“Crazy!” McLachlan laughed. “Terry Richmond tipped the papers off about Ortolanacum—they know something’s up. I’ll tell ‘em a lot more.”

“They’ll not believe you—nothing happened at Ortolanacum, damn it.”

“I’ll give them something happening—something they’ll have to believe. I’ll give them you, Colonel Butler!” He giggled. “I’ll give them you with your head blown off!”

Butler looked down the twin barrels: the black holes seemed enormous now, like the mouths of cannon.

Tomorrow the girls would get his Edinburgh postcards— Princes Street for Diana, Arthur’s Seat for Jane and Mons Meg the Cannon for little Sally.

And he was looking down Mons Meg—this mad boy who was too scared to go home empty-handed would squeeze the trigger and he’d be dead when the postman knocked and the girls came scampering down the stairs.

“Don’t be a fool,” he croaked. “Put it down!”

“
Put it down, Dan!
”
Polly Epton commanded out of the mist.

SHE WAS SOMEWHERE
away to the left, ahead of him and behind McLachlan, but he couldn’t see her.

“Don’t turn round, Dan—you couldn’t do it quick enough. And, you’re in the open.” Polly’s voice sounded preternaturally clear in the silence between the rocks and the stones. “Put it down.”

She was behind the Wall. Alongside them it rose head high, but it dropped abruptly a yard or two behind McLachlan, who would have to swing the shotgun almost 180 degrees to get in a shot at her.

But the muzzle covering Butler only shook a little.

“If he shoots me, tell Audley, Polly—nobody else!” Butler barked urgently.

He let the breath drain out of his lungs; until that second he hadn’t felt them strained to bursting point. Now he let himself relax without taking his eyes off McLachlan.

“You can’t win now, boy. Do as she says.”

“I can still pull the trigger. Then it’d be too late for you.”

“Aye. But so can she. Then Audley would deal with things. You’d still lose.”

“Another tragic accident?” McLachlan was getting a grip on himself. He raised his voice to carry over his shoulder. “Would you really shoot me, Polly dear?”

“Try me.”

“Have you ever killed anyone before? With a shotgun?”

Polly said nothing. The stillness was thick on the crag, as though the rain and mist had blanketed every sound as well as every object outside the twenty yards of visibility that was left to them.

“Makes an awful mess of a man, you know, Polly. At this range you’d make an awful mess of me.”

“You wouldn’t be the first man the Eptons killed on the Wall,” Polly said. “I’m running true to form.”

Good girl.

“Touché!” McLachlan laughed. “But tell me—“

“He’s talking to put you off your guard, Miss Epton,” Butler cut in. “He’s cornered and he knows it.”

“Cornered?” McLachlan shook his head. “It’s you who are cornered, Colonel. If Polly pulls the trigger, then my finger’s just as likely to squeeze too. It seems to me you get it either way.”

“I don’t see that’s going to do you much good, boy. The only hope you’ve got is to put down your gun.”

“And the only hope you’ve got is for Polly to go away.” McLachlan’s eyes flickered. “Do you hear that, Polly. If you clear off smartly I won’t kill him. That’s fair.”

“If you go away, Miss Epton, he’ll kill us both. Me first, then you.”

“I’m not going away. Put the gun down, Dan.”

“No.” McLachlan’s mouth tightened. “I’ll count ten.”

“It won’t do any good.”

“
One.
”

“I only heard the last part of what you were saying to him, Colonel—“

“
Two.
”

“—Who is he?”

“
Three.
”

“I think his real name’s Ryleiev. Peter Ryleiev.”

“
Four.
”

“He’s a Russian?”

“Aye. An agent of their KGB.”

“
Five.
”

“But I thought—spies—were older.”

“He’s a new junior sort, Miss Epton. Specially trained for one job.”

“
Six.
”

“What job?”

“To join our Civil Service, I’d guess. Foreign Office most likely. He’s very bright.”

“But why?”

“
Seven.
”

“Everybody likes to have an agent in the heart of the enemy camp, Miss Epton. The trouble is you have to find a traitor. Someone like Burgess or MacLean, or Penkovsky.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re flawed men, my dear. They do good work, but it’s as though they wear out more easily than patriots. The head-shrinkers could probably explain it better than I can, but it’s almost as though they want to get caught in the end.”

“EIGHT!”

There was a touch of panic there, and the girl snapped it up like a spider on a fly.

“You can count until you’re ruddy well blue in the face, Peter whatever-it-is. I’m not going.”

“You bitch!”

“You see, Miss Epton, what all intelligence directors dream of is getting one of their own men—not a traitor but a patriot —into the other camp. But it’s almost impossible to do, because the outsiders and latecomers are always screened so carefully. And even if they pass they’re never really trusted.”

“So even the ordinary candidates from the universities are screened thoroughly now. A lot more thoroughly than Peter Ryleiev’s masters expected.”

He stared at Ryleiev coldly. It wasn’t true, of course. But it would be true in future—the swine had seen to that!

“They thought if they could slip one of their men in between school and university. Someone they’d specially groomed for the job, someone who looked younger than he was. To take the place of the boy they’d short-listed.”

There was a pause.

“You mean he’s the real Dan McLachlan’s double?”

Butler met Ryleiev’s eyes through the drizzle.

“No. I’d guess the resemblance was only a general one. Because no one over here had seen the boy for years, and he had no relatives here.”

“But his father?”

“A drunken blackguard in Rhodesia? They chose the McLachlans almost as much for the father as the son, Miss Epton. They needed someone they could lean on.”

“But the real Dan, what did they do with him?”

The voice out of the mist faltered as the only likely answer hung between them in the damp air: six-foot of Rhodesian dirt somewhere in the bush, with stones piled on it to stop the hyenas from digging.

Nineteen years old. From Eden Hall to a backwoods farm in Mashonaland and a backwoods school in the Orange Free State. And then a grave in the bush.

“
And now tell her about Paul Zoshchenko.
”

Ryleiev grinned at him.

“You should have taken my offer, Polly. Now you have to take it on the chin about poor dear Neil—have you forgotten about him, Polly?”

“What about Neil?”

“Miss Epton—“ Butler began, tensing.

“The other half of the team, Polly, Neil was. Just another dirty little spy. My other half.” The shotgun came up an inch. “Don’t try it, Colonel!”

Butler clenched his fists impotently.

“You nearly bought it that time, Colonel … You see, he wasn’t quite honest with us back at the cottage, Polly, the Colonel wasn’t. He didn’t come up here to avenge Neil. He came up here to finish the job.”

“That isn’t true, Miss Epton,” Butler snapped. “Neil wanted to get away from it. He’d finished with it.”

“Not a dirty little spy any more. Only a dirty little traitor,” Ryleiev sneered. “Another of the flawed men—“

“Shut up!” Polly’s voice came shrill from the Wall, its coolness gone. There was a moment’s silence, then she spoke again. “How did—Neil—how did he die, Colonel? How did he die?”

“He died by accident.” Butler tried to reach out to her with his voice. “He was going to see your godfather at Oxford, to tell him the truth. It was dark and he was going too fast. It was an accident.”

“He was—“ McLachlan started scornfully.

“But I can tell you
why
he died—“ Butler overrode the words and the gun barrel. “He was this man’s colleague, that’s true.”

“His colleague?”

Zoshchenko had been cast as the go-between and messenger: the old schoolfriend whom Ryleiev could always meet with perfect propriety without exposing himself to suspicion. But nothing would be served by spelling it all out to the unfortunate girl now; it could only shake her nerve more when she needed steadying most.

“But he’d had enough.” Butler ignored the question. “He didn’t want to betray anyone, he just wanted to be an ordinary man. So he told your godfather who he really was.”

“But then why—why all this?”

Butler watched Ryleiev uneasily. After that one outburst of scorn which he had managed to cut off, the young Russian had remained silent. But the gun remained as firm as ever.

“Because they reckoned once we knew about Neil we’d work our way back to this man sooner or later, Miss Epton— unless we were satisfied that we knew what Neil was doing. So they tried to make us think he was part of an entirely different conspiracy, one they thought we were already working on. And this man, Ryleiev, worked on everyone to make them believe it—on Sir Geoffrey and on Mike Klobucki, even on Terry Richmond.”

A hint here—“Grendel’s loose”—and a snippet of information there; a word of agreement with Hobson and a suggestion wrapped in sarcasm for Richmond. It wouldn’t have been too difficult, because he was already preaching to the converted.

“And this demo was to make it real. They’d have killed Negreiros and ruined those boys—and your father—just to clinch it.”

Ryleiev shook his head slowly, smiling a small, bitter smile.

“Not quite, Colonel. We tried hard to let you know about it. And I made sure you’d be in the Gap. I knew you’d put up a good fight.” He laughed.

Butler flushed angrily.

“The Vice-Chancellor’s wanted to cook hare for ages,” Ryleiev went on. “You’ve no idea how suggestible all you English are.”

An overwhelming desire rose in Butler to wipe the smile from this handsome young face. To smash it because he hated it now, and feared it and envied it, with all the hate and fear and envy of the older for the younger.

Contempt,
Audley had said.

“You had the better of the two, Miss Epton,” he said harshly. “This one thought he was clever. Thought he could play the hero for us. So I sent him up High Crags to be clever again, and he couldn’t resist it.”

He snorted. “Boy—you’re out of your class. And so was Neil, but at least he had the wit to see it—“ he threw his voice past Ryleiev into the mist “—they caught Neil when he was young and they made him think he was doing something worthwhile. But he had the guts to think for himself in the end.”

“Guts?” Ryleiev packed a world of his own contempt into the word. “Guts? He hadn’t even the guts to be an honest traitor. A fat girl and a fatter fellowship, that’s what he wanted. A fat girl with lots of fat godfathers.”

“Shut up, you bastard!” Polly’s voice was shrill.

Ryleiev nodded to Butler, his eyes bright suddenly.

“I want more than that, Colonel,” he said softly.

Butler saw their error in one agonising instant of understanding, the error Audley had made and he had blindly accepted.

They had caught this boy young too, and moulded him truer, steeling his patriotism with a pride to which contempt would only be a spur.

Come back with your shield or on it!

“Or nothing—“

Ryleiev threw himself backwards and downwards, twisting to the right and swinging the shotgun through that impossible arc like lightning towards the Wall.

The two guns roared out almost simultaneously.

Almost.

Last page of a letter from Sir Geoffrey Hobson to Dr Theodore Freisler:

… cannot deny that Colonel Butler then acted with commendable discretion. He admits now that it was no chimera I set him to hunt down, and that my assessment of the situation was accurate. But the fact that I have been proved right is of no consequence. It is best now that the whole unpleasant business should be buried. After this the authorities will not be caught napping again and (which is more important to us) the Russians will not try the same trick twice, thank God.
I wish from the bottom of my heart, old friend, that our success in frustrating them had not been so tragically marred by young McLachlan’s untimely accidental death. I have written to poor Potty, of course, though I know there is little that mere sympathy can achieve in lessening the guilt I know she feels because of her carelessness in handling the shotgun. Only the passage of time can heal that.
As to McLachlan—“whom the gods love die young”, the war taught us all that. Nevertheless, the waste of so bright a talent saddens me. He would have gone far and his loss is in the longer view also a great loss to his country.
Yours,
Geoffrey