Sion Crossing (14 page)

“And what did you think of him?”

“I thought he was an anti-British, anti-Israeli son-of-a-bitch—and more …”

“More?” Mitchell knew that Audley was pro-Israeli. That was why he had been hiked out of the Middle East a dozen years earlier, into Research and Development proper.

“A lot more. We were both working in a rather sensitive area.” A look of distaste spread across Audley’s face. “An unpleasant one, too … we were witch-hunting for traitors.”

Mitchell observed the distaste deepen, and his own curiosity with it: Audley was not usually so queasy on the subject of treachery.

“Sleepers,” said Audley. “The really deep ones … the Sleeping Beauties who were never going to be kissed …”

There was more, and Mitchell waited for it.

“He enjoyed it a bit too much even for my taste,” said Audley, looking away reflectively until his eye finally settled on the CIA man. “Those were the days of the Debreczen List—remember, Howard?”

Morris looked at Mitchell sidelong. “A long time ago, David.”

“Yes.” Audley stared past him, down the bar. “Long time ago …”

Mitchell could no longer control his curiosity. “What happened?”

Audley stared at him. “In the end he found his own name on the list.”

Morris nodded. “That was the way it looked.” He transferred the nod to Mitchell. “He was a sick man by then—what he’d got was just starting … So they let him go with his pension. No scandal that way.”

“Somebody screwed him,” said Audley. “And we let it happen—
I
let it happen …” He brightened suddenly. “Let’s go and find another pub, and have something to eat—okay?”

William Macallan
and
Debreczen
, thought Mitchell. The records ought to have something to say about both of them.

LATIMER LOOKED AT
his watch, and pushed the last of the Sion Crossing papers away, and stared at the blank white wall in front of him.

He felt saturated with information, heavy and soggy with it like a sponge. His head ached slightly, but that was a temporary and familiar symptom of an accustomed condition: all he needed was a few hours’ rest—a little exercise first and a little refreshment later—and the headache would be gone, and he would be light and dry again. And then, if there was something of value in all these facts, it would be there inside his head, glinting like specks of gold in the rubbish of the miner’s pan.

All the same, he did also feel slightly odd in a new way—slightly disorientated by the confusion of those vanished hours, lost or won in the crossing of the Atlantic, which he had assimilated over the elongated day at his disposal yesterday.

He looked at his watch again. He had arrived here, and eaten a fairly strange dinner, and had worked; and had phoned the office after midnight, and then had slept like the dead in a strange bed for a short time; then consumed an even stranger breakfast. When in Rome—but even the Romans might have baulked at syrup with sausages and bacon, on top of curious little pancakes—wouldn’t they? But Kingston had been there, watching him with that falsely casual air of his, so he had pretended that it had all been the most natural mixture in the world for him, not only in spite of its weirdness but also in flagrant disregard for the huge intake of calories it represented.

So one thing was certain: if he established a firm and useful American connection with his favour, he would soon recover all those hard-lost pounds, and become a true Fattypuff again, contentedly unhappy with his silhouette.

He looked down at the scatter of papers on the desk, and then at his own scribbled notes.

There was another certain thing there, too.

He began to move the photo-copied pages experimentally, rearranging them in the likely time-sequence of their acquisition. If he was right,
that
came first, then
that
(from a different copier), and then
those
… or perhaps
those
? As yet, he couldn’t be quite sure, but if he had the right inkling of how the researcher’s mind worked it was odds-on that the collection had been started long ago and then laid aside. But then the letter from the farmer in Iowa had arrived out of the blue, and the hunt had been revived, with new questions and further research.

When he’d finished there was still a bigger pile of unplaceable material in the centre. But he was more convinced than ever that the dead man had been a professional, and a sharp one.

Indeed, the evidence both of that sharpness and of the man’s uncertain health lay before him, in the sequence of underlined facts and in the manner of their underlining.

He bent over the first sheet, and then the others, studying the marks closely. It was undoubtedly a fountain-pen which had made those lines, and the hand which had held that pen had been very different from the brain which had directed it: the lines were shaky and uneven, the pressure of the nib varying them from tremblingly spider-thin to splutteringly thick.

So … very old, or very sick, or both, that hand had been.

But if that answered one question, it still left the larger one unanswered, which Senator Cookridge had promised to answer in due time, but which Latimer would have liked answered now for his own peace of mind: if, by reason of that pressing appointment, the original researcher could not be at this table, why—
really why
—had a stranger and a foreigner been chosen to replace him? Audley for choice, but Oliver St John Latimer by chance?

Well … he stared again at the blank wall, toying not altogether happily with the immodest thought that perhaps they simply wanted the best, which the Senator had given pretty clearly as his main reason, which was galling insofar as it involved Audley first, but flattering after that. Yet, while that was the most likely truth, he was uneasily convinced that it could not be the whole truth. Which meant that he, the very careful and cautious Oliver St John Latimer, had most uncharacteristically allowed himself to be lured far from home into something he didn’t quite understand, albeit it was a private matter which must ingratiate him with one of the most influential men in America.

A gentle tap on the door broke his concentration.

“Oliver?”

Latimer automatically scooped up his own notes and pushed them into his pocket. Old habits died hard.

“Come in … Lucy.” He stood up.

Lucy Cookridge smiled at him. “Oliver—you
have
been working hard … All these hours—and after you made your phone call your light was still on for at least an hour … Do you always work like this?”

He smiled back at her awkwardly, sadly aware of his own inability to deal with pretty girls in general, and tall slender girls who had the advantage of him in both directions in particular. “That’s how work gets done: by doing it.” Why was it that he always sounded so pompous when he was shy? “I mean … I don’t have a lot of time—I have to get back … and your father—”

“Step-father.” She smiled away the correction. “You can stay as long as you like. We’ve rented this place for the whole summer.”

“Yes … No, what I mean is … I have to get back to
my
work—my job.” He gestured towards the table. “Your step-father only wanted me to look over all this, and then to recommend possible …” he fumbled for the right word “… possible … action.” That wasn’t the right word, because he hadn’t started from the right place. Why was it so easy with men and so bloody difficult with women?

“I think he wants a lot more than that—if I know him.” The smile became a wry grin. “He wants to know where it is—he wants it found.”

“If it exists.” He couldn’t help grinning back at her, as though they were sharing a secret.

“Does it exist?” She sounded as though she didn’t care either way. But that would make her a most unusual young woman.

“Why does he want it?” That was another question plaguing him. Whatever the Senator needed, it wasn’t someone else’s long-lost treasures.

“Lord knows!” She raised a bare shoulder. “Why does my step-father want anything? What does a man who’s got everything want?” The shoulder raised itself again. “Maybe he just wants what’s very difficult to get. Or maybe he’d like some off-beat publicity—there could be a lot of mileage in this, it’s the sort of thing the Press would go a bundle on, if they got wind of it, Oliver.”

And maybe that was why the Senator had wanted a foreign stranger digging for him, thought Latimer. Because if the foreign stranger went poking around in Barksdale County, and in whatever archives there might be in Atlanta and Columbia and Richmond, it would be difficult to relate him to the Senator from the Mid-West, certainly. But—so what?

“Does it exist, Oliver?” She came back to her original question gracefully.

“As yet … I don’t honestly know.” He shook his head. “It’s early days yet—a few hours isn’t enough for this sort of thing, even with all this—” he gestured to the papers “—but … I have my doubts, let’s say.”

“What doubts?”

“Oh … let’s say … I’d like to know a lot more about the Wolfskin Rifles—the local militia, or whatever the Confederates called it.”

“What about them?”

“Well … I’d like to know how well some of them did after the war, for a start.” He blinked at her. “I seem to remember that there were a lot of new taxes the North imposed on the South—or the Carpetbaggers did … If we could find some Wolfskin riflemen who paid their taxes without difficulty, that might be significant.” He blinked again. “But then, maybe the ones who got the loot left smartly for fresh fields and pastures new … so an absence of local prosperity wouldn’t prove anything by itself.” He shrugged. “The thing about research is … there has to be a lot of it, usually, to show any results. It takes time, and a great deal of work, and a certain rather unfair spice of luck … Which is why there are so many impoverished treasure-hunters in the world.”

She stared at him. “You think the Rebs could have found the strong-box—the Confederates? Not Sherman’s bummers?”

That was the name for Sherman’s heavy-handed foragers, but Latimer winced to hear it on Lucy Cookridge’s lips. “I think … it’s certainly possible.”

“So it’s gone.” She nodded slowly. “That’s what Kingston thinks.” She looked downcast. “And that means you’ve come a long way for nothing, Oliver.”

Not for nothing, thought Latimer selfishly: either way, Senator Cookridge would have to be grateful. But he didn’t want to disappoint her utterly; and, against the odds, the unknown researcher had weighed his own instinct, too—there was that, at least.

“Not exactly nothing.” He searched for something to make her feel better. “It’s … it’s fascinating material—the letter from the farmer in Iowa, about his great-great-grandfather’s story … And the Alexanders of Sion Crossing—and the de Brissacs … the bride with her dowry from the coast … And the way the man who researched it put all that together.” He nodded. “And the way he set about authenticating the farmer’s story.”

“You think that’s genuine?” She was still uncertain.

“I don’t see why it shouldn’t be.” He stopped himself shrugging, and smiled instead.

“But if it’s
gone
—” she made a face “—and if you’ve wasted your time … That would be too awful!”

This time he could shrug. “I’m sure your step-father would understand.”

She gestured. “Oh,
he’d
understand. But … he said you’re frightfully high-up in the British Civil Service—or the State Department—Foreign Office?—and you’re doing him a favour … I do think he’s got the cheek of Old Nick, Oliver! Apart from which, your wife will miss you.”

That would be the day, thought Latimer. But at the same time he felt absurdly flattered. Pretty girls were rarely so sympathetic in his experience; and
tall
pretty girls looked over his head.

“I’m afraid I’m not frightfully high up. And I haven’t got a wife—I only have colleagues, and they certainly won’t miss me.” That was God’s truth! All he had to do was to remember how Mitchell had spoken to him on the phone only a few hours earlier. “In fact, they treat me rather the same way as Mr Kingston does, actually.”

“Oh … Kingston—he treats everyone like that—you mustn’t mind Kingston.” The smile lit her face again.

“I don’t mind him. If I was black I’d be a lot worse than that.” The smile warmed him. “I rather approve of Kingston—if that doesn’t sound too patronizing. He’s a man of spirit.”

“Oh …” His approval of Kingston seemed to confuse her. “Yes … well—would you like something to eat?” She looked at her watch. “It’s long past lunch-time, so you must be starving—?”

“No.” He resisted temptation. After that peculiar breakfast, lunch would be probably even stranger, and certainly more calorific. “I’d better not. I have this problem, you see …”

“Problem?”

“Yes. I’m trying to lose weight.” He had never spoken to anyone like this. But she was a stranger, and after this was over he would never meet her again. “I run to fat very easily. I become fat simply by looking at food.”

She frowned at him. “But you’re not fat, Oliver.”

“Yes, I am. Short and fat. Not at all like you.” Now he wanted to defend himself. “It’s a physiological thing—it’s rather like trying to keep the tide back: you have to fight it all the time, every day, and you can never win. You just have to cultivate resistance to roast potatoes, and steamed puddings, and thick slices of well-buttered bread—‘We shall fight them in the dining rooms, and in the restaurants, we shall fight them in the cafes and the snack-bars—we shall never surrender!’”

Her frown became half-amused. “Never?” The half-amusement became mischievous. “That wasn’t a white flag I saw at breakfast, then? And last night? … Those were just flags of truce?”

“Ah … well, in strange surroundings …” It had been a mistake to banter with her: now he would have to continue a game which he really didn’t know how to play “… one mustn’t offend one’s hosts—it wouldn’t be good manners.”

“Of course! Like finishing up your sheeps’ eyeballs in Arabia, right down to the last one—and then burping loudly?” She affected serious interest. “I should have served you hominy grits last evening—and pecan pie … But … you must have a very miserable life, Oliver—trying not to surrender, except in foreign parts. Or do you travel a lot?”