Sion Crossing (17 page)

He smiled. “So everything’s gone according to plan—except for me?”

“For you?”

“I’m not Dr David Audley.”

“Oh … no.” Her face clouded for an instant, casting a shadow also on his own satisfaction at having finally tied up the last loose ends. “No. But sometimes I guess a plan can go better than it was planned, Oliver.”

“How d’you mean … better?” If it had been a compliment it was at odds with her expression.

“Uh-huh. This Dr David Audley … the way Dad remembered him … he doesn’t sound a very nice man?” The cloud darkened. “And I think maybe you are.”

No one had ever said that to him. But—so why was she so sad? The contradiction of the words with the look in her eyes confused him, not least because it made him think of his enemy with a detachment he had never achieved before. Because he wanted to agree with her, and yet now that he looked at the evidence it was against him: the truth was that David Audley was undoubtedly well-hated in certain quarters, his own particularly; but he was equally certainly admired and well-liked, and presumably loved also, in others. Even, within the limits of duty and self-interest, he somehow extracted loyalty of a sort from his professional foreign contacts, men like Colonel Howard Morris, and the Israeli, Shapiro, and the German, Herzner … not to mention the cynical and self-seeking Paul Mitchell. And he, Oliver St John Latimer, had no one like that on whom he could half-ways depend.

“I think you’re wrong.” Even that Thin Red Line, Colonel Butler, who let nothing sway him from the Queen’s service,
liked
Audley, even when he disapproved of his unreliability: it was utterly incomprehensible, that. “And he’s extremely clever.”

“Yes. Dad said that.” She looked at him. “But so are you—and I think Dad would have liked you, Oliver.”

Suddenly, he understood. He had dignified himself, to believe that he had anything to do with her sadness, when it had nothing to do with him at all—when, much more simply, anything which had to do with her father—her
real
father—automatically saddened her. For she had seen him die, and he’d probably died slow and hard while pulling all these papers together as his only legacy.

And, seeing that, he could glimpse much more, about both of them, father and daughter—

There would be love and rage in both of them: love and rage in her father at the unfairness of death, which forced him to use two men he probably hated most, Audley and the Senator, to carry out his plan; and love and rage in her, to carry out his plan with those men when she didn’t need his legacy at all. But that, of course, would only make her all the more determined to execute his last will and testament: not out of greed, and for profit, but out of love and rage, and for loyalty.

“I think I might have liked him, as a matter of fact.” In reality that was unlikely, the way he felt about most Americans. But Lucy Cookridge—or whatever her real name was—was an exception to his rules about embarrassingly tall and thin women, not to mention Americans. And a good plan deserved to succeed for its own sake, not to mention the benefits he must derive from doing Senator Cookridge this little favour. “And, if it’s there, I’ll do my best to find it, anyway—I promise you that.”

If anything, she looked more unhappy. But his head ached, and he felt airlessly air-conditioned if not actually cold; and although it would no doubt be hellishly hot and humid outside in the real Georgia of 1983 and 1864, that was where he wanted to be now. He’d had enough of documents, and clues
down
, and
across
, for the time being.

He drew a deep breath, and tried to indicate that he’d had enough of scholarship for the time being, without actually saying so.

“Would you like something to eat?” She misread the signal.

“No. I’d like to take some exercise.” In a way, the challenge now wasn’t very different from those he had to tackle professionally, back in England:
first
, the information (which in this instance had been very skilfully assembled, for all that it was still incomplete—as it always was!);
second
, the extrapolation from that information, after the chaff and the waste paper and the red herrings had been blown and thrown away respectively, so that more precise and relevant facts might be sought. And then,
third
, after those facts had been acquired, his own plan of action.

“Oh … yes.” She frowned. “I suppose … you want to see Sion Crossing?” She spoke with a curious unwillingness.

“Yes.” It would be oven-hot outside—ridiculously hot, judging by yesterday. But his curiosity about the locations and events of 1864 was even hotter than that now. “Kingston said you had a car if I wanted it—” he turned back to the papers “—and there’s a sketch-map here, somewhere … and we can’t be more than five miles away from where it all happened—” he had the right pile now, and the sketch-map was in that somewhere, if he could just find it—

There it was! Although those were not her father’s marks on it—they were too decisive for that in their reconstruction of 1864 on 1983.

He studied it for a moment, to get his bearings, and then turned it towards her, daring to move closer and getting a whiff of expensive perfume as a reward for his daring.

He drew back as far as he could. “And I want to go from
there
… to
there
—”

All Sion land, on the ridge above Sion Crossing, from Sion Church to Sion itself: it was the Promised Land which he wanted to see for himself now.

“SIT DOWN, PAUL,”
said Colonel Butler, ever courteous.

It might be Sunday evening outside in the real world, and midday or thereabouts in Sion Crossing; but it was always any time on any working day of the year for Jack Butler, thought Mitchell.

He sat down gingerly, in order not to disturb the enduring remains of his hangover unnecessarily. “You’ve heard the tape of my dialogue with Latimer, from this morning, sir?”

Butler was staring at him as though the hangover showed. “Where’s this place Sion Crossing?”

Mitchell collected his thoughts. “We think it’s in Georgia, sir. Not very far from Atlanta. The nearest town is called Smithsville—”

“We?”

“I managed to hunt up a pal of mine who was able to place it. And we ran a trace on Latimer’s call—I got the number from him while we were talking. It was engaged while he was on the phone. I’m pretty sure he is where he says he is, sir.”

Butler nodded. “Who is this friend of yours?”

“He teaches American history.” Although he had drunk several pints of orange juice he still felt dreadfully thirsty. “In a university up north. He’s on vacation at the moment. He’s going to call us back when he’s got something for us.”

Colonel Butler was unmoved by such evidence of friendship. “Military history, that would be?”

“What else?” The hair of the dog which had bitten him was the traditional recipe. But the way he felt, there had been a whole pack of them. “He’s what they call ‘a Civil War buff’.”

There was a new file on Butler’s desk, under his hand. But he didn’t look down at it. “How did you think Latimer sounded?”

“Like himself.” Mitchell didn’t shrug, in case his head fell off. “A bit stroppy. Not at all worried.”

Colonel Butler gave a single nod. “That’s what I thought. He didn’t sound pushed in any way that I could detect.”

“And he phoned in roughly on time.” He couldn’t nod any more than he could shrug. “He obeyed the rules.”

Another single nod. “So what should we think of that?”

The first thing that Mitchell thought, and not for the first time, was that the comforting thing about Jack Butler was that responsibility came as naturally to him as breathing: that ‘we’ meant that he was taking it now, whatever happened.

“I think it stinks.” The less comforting thing about Butler was that his virtues encouraged honesty, against better judgement. “If it was me I’d pull him out.”

“You think Oliver Latimer is up to something?”

Dearly as he would have loved to nod, Mitchell found himself shaking his head, and instantly regretted doing so. “No. But I think someone is, sir.”

“Who?”

But even honesty went only so far. “What does David say?”

“I’m asking you, not David,” Butler chided him gently.

Put your money where your mouth is, Mitchell.
“Okay. But he knows Howard Morris better than I do. They’re old chums.”

“So this is CIA business, you think?”

The honesty came back. “Not the way Howard Morris tells it. It seems he doesn’t like it either. In fact … if you ask me, I think Colonel Howard Morris is a rather worried man.”

“And what is it that is worrying him? Apart, that is, from the involvement of Senator Thomas Cookridge in whatever it is—?”

Ordinarily, Mitchell might have smiled. “I’d say … the same two things that are worrying me now. He stuck his nose into something which wasn’t his business. And now his nose is caught, and he doesn’t know what the hell’s going on.”

“Yes …” Sympathy was not within Butler’s range of emotions. Without moving the hand covering the file he reached out to the buttons of his intercom.

Nothing happened. The blunt bricklayer’s fingers tapped on the file, and then the intercom fingers tapped another number.

“Sir?” inquired the voice.

“Is Dr Audley in?” Butler stared through Mitchell.

“Yes, sir.” The voice didn’t need to consult the book. Research and Development was no hive of industry on any August Sunday evening.

“Find him for me.” Butler paused. “Try Records. Thank you.” Butler stabbed another button and focussed on Mitchell. “You have no call to worry. You should have spoken directly to me, instead of to James. But that’s a minor detail. Just remember that it’s always better to be safe than sorry next time.”

“Yes, sir.” On Butler’s lips the most banal cliché was somehow acceptable. And also there was the underlying suspicion that beneath that veneer of soldierly simplicity lay all the vast resources of peasant cunning Butler had inherited from his humble northern origins. It was at moments like this that Mitchell always remembered Field-Marshal “Wully” Robertson, who had risen from the ranks to head the Imperial General Staff of the biggest and best British Army of all time.

Buzz-buzz, buzz-buzz
—

Butler jabbed the intercom. “David?”

“Jack—I’m busy with this dreadful Beast of yours—”

“Come up out of there.” Butler brushed aside Audley’s dislike of the wonderful new technology in the basement, which summoned up distilled information on to the screen at a touch of the finger in a fraction of a second. But then, of course, what Audley didn’t like was that the dreadful instrument not only logged the user’s identity, but also—as a prerequisite of use—the requirement reason as well as the date and time of the inquiry.

“But I haven’t finished, Jack.”

Butler swivelled in his chair, towards the screen at his right, and punched its keys confidently. The blank screen came alive, with a pre-ordained list of questions with which Mitchell himself was well acquainted: the dreadful Beast was asking Colonel Butler not only what he wanted, but also by what right and authority he wanted this information.

Butler stabbed a finger at Mitchell. “You look out of that window, Dr Mitchell.”

Mitchell looked into the pale blue of Sunday evening over the Thames. One day, when he sat in that chair, his unique voice-print would be enough; but, for the time being, Butler had to print his own master’s code to satisfy the computer, to override all its prohibitions.

“Right.” Butler released him, and the screen was full of words now—the exact words which Audley must be reading on his own screen far below them. Once upon a time he could have browsed at leisure on those words, when he had at last found them, and no one but he would have known what he had consumed. But now he was betrayed on record.

“For God’s sake, Jack—”

“Come up. I’ve got a print-out of all that. Don’t waste your time with it—or mine.” The north-country vowels were undisguised in Colonel Butler’s voice. “And I’ve got Dr Mitchell here too, and you’re wasting his time—you
coom oop
, an’ don’t argue the toss with me, David!”

Jack Butler had been bullying David Audley for years, as long as Mitchell had known them—ever since they had first looked him over in his own days of innocence. As a subordinate, an equal and now as his master, Butler had bullied Audley, and chivvied him, and protected him, and cherished him; even, until the cause had become plainly hopeless, since Audley would have none of it, old Jack had schemed (as far as he was capable of that sort of scheming) to sit old David in the very chair in which he now sat.

“Oh—all right, Jack! Have it your own way, if you must!” Audley grumbled peevishly. “You’ve got my bloody report—you know how much sleep I had last night? You know how late I got home? All the bloody week at Cheltenham—back here Friday afternoon—back on the job last night—back here again now … If I was in a trade union I’d be on overtime and double time-and-a-half now, and you couldn’t bloody
afford
me—you know that?”

“Up here on the double.” Butler’s finger cut off the complaint, and then punched another number on the intercom. Then he looked at Mitchell. “He doesn’t change, does he?”

That was true: the nice thing, and the nasty one, was that David was always David, which was his strength and his weakness. But what was more interesting, was that there was a subtle change in Butler himself: from being Acting-Director he was Director now; and, although he would not have sought that promotion, he had accepted it because it was his duty to obey his sovereign’s orders, and that was that.

The intercom buzzed. But the blunt finger first tapped a key in the visual display unit, to bring up more of what Audley had been looking at on the Beast in the basement, before moving across to accept the intercom’s call.

“Steeple Horley—Dr and Mrs Audley and Cathy Audley—?” A childish voice answered the acceptance.

Butler was rolling back what Dr David Audley had been looking at in the basement: the curse of the Beast was that the Director could now recall exactly what any of his subordinates had been recalling out of the department’s records, and from those in all other linked computer memory banks integrated with the system and cleared for the Director’s scrutiny.