Sion Crossing (18 page)

“Cathy?” Butler stopped the screen for a moment, then rolled it back some more.

“Uncle Jack!” Audley’s daughter needed no computer to identify her godfather. “Where’s Daddy?”

“That’s why I’m phoning, my lass.” Butler studied the screen, then rolled it back further.

“I’ll get Mummy—”

“No need to bother your Mother.” This bit of screen clearly interested Butler. “Just tell ’er your Dad’ll be late again, and it’s all my fault. She’ll understand—right?”

“Oh?” Miss Audley was evidently not such a soft touch. “Well …
she
may—but
I
don’t, Uncle Jack … Honestly—he
promised
us—he really did!”

“Then he had no right to.” Butler treated his god-daughter as an equal. “You know what it says in the book—because I’ve showed it to you: ‘Duty is a jealous God’, it says. And wives and little girls come second to duty. So now I’m busy too—an’ I’ve got little girls of my own—”

“
Big
girls, they are—”

“Aye—an’ big girls are more trouble than little ones … at least, they used to be.” As he spoke, Butler cleared the screen. “Now, don’t
you
trouble me, my lass—you look after your Mother, that’s your job, an’ I’ll do mine—right?”

There was a fractional pause. “Yes, Uncle Jack.”

Butler avoided Mitchell’s eye. “Nay, my lass—you don’t fret now, eh? I have him here, under my hand—you tell your Mother that—right? So goodbye, then.”

“Good—” The rest of Cathy Audley’s goodbye was guillotined by the jealous god’s finger, ruthlessly.

Marvellous
! thought Mitchell.
One day, when I’m old and equally horrible, and if we’ve held the line for Cathy, maybe I’ll say to some god-daughter of mine
‘
I remember hearing old Colonel Butler talk to David Audley’s daughter, and he said
—’

“What actually happened last night, Paul?” said Colonel Butler.

Mitchell was caught between imagining the distant future and expecting Audley to come barging in without knocking, in the immediate present.

“He’ll take his time.” Butler identified half his fear, in allowing for what had been in Audley’s report of last night’s passage-of-arms, and what hadn’t been.

Once again, the truth was called for. “We tracked Howard Morris down in one of his pubs, sir. And he’d had a fair skinful by then already.”

“Aye.” Butler knew all about Howard Morris.

“David pushed him.” How could he adequately describe it? “I think they exchanged their own signals … And then they stopped, and we went on to another pub, and then we had a meal in another pub, and a lot more to drink. And I’m a bit vague about what happened after that—except that I think David put a watch on him, after we poured him back into his flat after midnight.” Truth. “I was a bit the worse for wear by then, sir. I came back here and slept it off until Latimer phoned up at the crack of dawn.”

Butler accepted the truth without dismay. “But since then you haven’t attempted to check with the computer about anything Colonel Morris gave you both. Why not?”

Truth? “I thought about it. But David seems to know all those answers already. And then there was Latimer’s call.”

“And you had a hangover to deal with.”

“That too,” agreed Mitchell. “But I thought you’d rather know about Sion Crossing, anyway.” He stared at Colonel Butler for a moment. “I suppose I could have inquired about a dead American by the name of Macallan, ex-CIA, and also ex-father to Senator Thomas Cookridge’s step-daughter, who apparently has long eyelashes and longer legs—the stepdaughter, I mean … And I’d be running a trace on
her
, if David hasn’t done that already. Because from what Howard Morris said it looks like she’s been
Mata Hari-ing
him and poor old Oliver St John Latimer both on behalf of her stepfather.” He watched Colonel Butler. “But David’ll have done that for sure.”

“Yes.” Butler met his scrutiny in the middle of the no-man’s-land between them, and drove it back into his own trenches. “And?”

How much had Audley reported? Well, he wasn’t about to play games with Jack Butler himself anyway, Mitchell decided. Friendship did not go as far as that on this occasion.

“David threw in a name which isn’t in my book. Before my time, he said … but it certainly put the fear of God—or the Devil—into Howard Morris. Because they both clammed up about the job after that, and concentrated on drinking themselves and me under the table.” Mitchell made a face at his lord and master. “Which they certainly succeeded in doing in my case.”

Butler regarded him unsympathetically. “What name?”

For a guess, Colonel Butler probably hadn’t thrown his heart up the morning after since King George VI had first addressed him as a trusty and well-beloved second-lieutenant all those years ago.

“Debreczen.” Mitchell’s tongue felt like a corpse on a three-day-old battlefield.

The console on the Colonel’s display unit emitted a nasty little beeping sound, and a light on it flashed red, to offer a transmission. Butler poked a key, and the screen filled up with words again. Someone, somewhere, had been busy this early Sunday evening, and knew where the Colonel could be found.

Butler was reading the screen. “Debreczen?”

“A place or a person, but probably a place. ‘Debreczen List’ was what he actually said—‘from the Debreczen List’. Sounds like anywhere east of the Oder-Neisse line. Though I suppose it could be a mining town in Pennsylvania.”

Butler finished reading, and methodically put the words back into the Beast’s memory before turning to Mitchell. “Debreczen—yes. It’s a place.” He nodded unhelpfully.

But such unhelpfulness was a challenge. And that was perhaps what it was meant to be. “Well, when you’re through with me I can always go and try my luck in the basement.”

“You could try.”

There was a distinctive
thump
on the door. In the absence of the presiding dragon-lady outside, Audley had penetrated to the Holy of Holies by himself, ignoring the red lights on the way while taking his time. But the last red light was physically impassable.

Another
thump.
That was Audley, for sure: not a light-handed man, he had never merely knocked on a door in his life, preferring to pummel it with the soft side of his clenched fist as though to warn those on the other side that he was about to come in whether they liked it or not.

Butler pressed another of his buttons, to release the lock.

“Come in, David.”

Audley came in frowning, and Mitchell was half-pleased and half-frightened to observe that he looked somewhat under the weather. Over the years, Faith had done her best with him, but there was still no one who could wear good suits more scruffily: he looked as though he had slept in this one—in fact, he looked curiously as though he’d stepped straight out of one of Matthew Brady’s Civil War photographs, unpressed and unshaven and unwashed. All that was needed was a stovepipe hat, a chewed cigar and the strong smell of whisky.

“Christ, Jack—one of these days I’m going to take a sledgehammer to that bloody contraption of yours in the basement!” Audley gave Mitchell a grimace. “I swear I will! I’ll boil its chips, and serve them up mashed.”

Butler sat back. “It’s been tried before. The Luddites tried to smash the industrial revolution. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.” He folded his arms. “You’ll be the one who gets mashed—like Ned Ludd.”

Audley gave him a sidelong look. “You think progress can’t be held up? Ask Attila the Hun—and ask the National Graphical Association, Jack. They’ve not done too badly.”

Butler sniffed. “You read too much ancient history—and you hobnob with too many journalists. Besides … I thought our Two-Four-Thousand was commonly known as ‘The Beast’, not as ‘a contraption’?”

“Huh!” It must be a matching hangover that was making Audley so vulnerable. But Butler was handling him with more authority, also; and the sooner Audley accepted the fact, the better for both of them. “And so it is—a beastly contraption! It’s a Jabberwock, Jack—and it needs a vorpal blade to go
snicker-snack
, and the sooner the better, before it dishes us all!” Plainly, Audley had not got the message yet. “You know what it did to me?”

Mitchell stole a glance at Colonel Butler. But Colonel Butler was still looking as nearly benign as he was capable of looking. Which meant—friendship aside—that the Colonel understood the Two-Four-Thousand Beast’s limitations, and how he needed Audley to work with it … even though he must know exactly what it had done to cause offence.

“It refused to give me what I wanted.” Outrage, rather than amazement, sat on Audley’s brow. “‘Not available’, it said—a bloody machine! ‘Not available’, when I know that half the stuff that’s
not available
is what I damn well put into the files myself!
A contraption
, Jack!” He pointed accusingly at Colonel Butler. “If you’d said ‘Not available’—damn it, I could have argued with you … but you wouldn’t have said that—but …
contraption
—is that the shape of things to come, now you’re boss? How soon before the Beast is the organ-grinder, and we’re all just the monkeys?”

Butler unfolded his arms. “I’m the organ-grinder. And the sooner you understand
that
, the better. What it won’t give you is what I don’t intend it to give you—or anyone else.”

Audley cooled. In fact, he cooled so quickly that Mitchell found a whole new set of reasons why Butler needed Audley as well as the Beast.

“Okay.” Audley gave his friend his coldest smile. “If you think I can’t reconstruct Bill Macallan’s last years from my own sources … then
up yours
, Jack! Because I’ve got contacts who’ll talk to me, who wouldn’t give your Beast the time of day—okay?”

Mitchell glanced at Colonel Butler uneasily, in the knowledge that he had just lost a bet with himself. Because it wasn’t
Debreczen
which had been embargoed, wherever it might be, but the long-time-a-dying Macallan, the Senator’s wife’s first husband, on whom Audley’s curiosity was centred.

“I don’t doubt it for a moment.” Butler was never as polite with Audley as with the rest of mankind, but he was always more long-suffering.

“No.” And Audley, for his part, was more quickly defused by Butler than anyone else. “But when you do, my redundancy letter will be in the post, eh Jack?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jack—you’re right, and I’m wrong … I’m Captain Swing, if not Ned Ludd … But that Beast of yours
is
a beast … And after last night I’m a bit fragile—” he looked at Mitchell “—when you get to my age you don’t get drunk so easily, Paul … you just begin to feel your age next day, and that isn’t pleasant.” He smiled. “How do you feel?”

He was with two very dangerous old men again, thought Mitchell. And it was because they were both good men—old-fashioned
good
, as well as good at their job—that they were so very dangerous.

“Don’t ask, David!” No pretence was required. “At the moment I feel your age rather than mine, if you must know.”

“Yes. Boozing is so
tiring
.” Audley switched back to Butler. “But we were only doing our duty, Jack. Old Howard Morris is a First Division drinker, but he’ll not be thinking straight for twenty-four hours. And, short of taking him into custody, that was the best we could do.”

“And what will he be doing then?” Butler leaned forward.

“He’ll start trying to put two and two together. And then, as he would put it, the shit will be in the fan, I rather think.”

Butler frowned. “But he’s out of favour. So what weight does he carry?”

Audley shook his head. “He’s only out of favour so long as he doesn’t draw on his capital. If he wants to push it all the way back to Washington, then they’ll start to take notice. Because then they’ll remember just how damn good he is—Bradford knows that, and Bradford knows me as well, and when Howard throws me in Mike will start taking him very seriously. Because they’ll both be able to put Macallan into the picture, Jack. And I’d guess Macallan is dynamite.” He paused. “With Senator Cookridge as the fuse in the dynamite … They’ll be into bomb disposal, with those two.”

“But
why
?” Butler stared at Audley. “Where’s the sense?”

“Search me! But when someone sets a bomb where’s the sense? All I’ve done is buy a little time—and all I know is that we’ve got a bomb and a fuse. And Oliver St John Latimer may be sitting on top of it, studying the American Civil War and scratching his backside. That’s all
I
know, Jack.” He gazed at Butler innocently. “The Beast wouldn’t give me any more—remember?”

Butler pushed the file across the table. “It’s all in there. I was going to give it to you anyway. I just didn’t want anyone else to look at it.”

Audley didn’t touch the file. “What’s in there that’s new?”

“Nothing. That’s the whole trouble.”

Audley looked down at the file, and then back at Butler. “He wasn’t doing anything? What was he doing?”

Butler’s face set hard. “He was dying, David. That was what he was doing.”

“I know that. He’d been dying for years, off and on.” No one could be more brutally honest than Audley when he set his mind to it. “He’d had a lot of practice.”

“He knew it this time.”

“Well … that’s something.” Audley cocked his head.

“The daughter nursed him. Lucy Cookridge.”

“Why Cookridge? Why not Macallan?”

“That was the mother’s doing. Cookridge brought her up as though she was his own.” Butler paused. “And the word is that Cookridge is clean.” Another pause. “Deep vetted.”

“By whom?”

“Bradford. They gave us that before he came over. He’s cleared all the way up. Debreczen included.”

Audley nodded. “Bradford’s about the best there is.” His nose wrinkled. “And that makes it … contradictory, Jack.”

Mitchell knew he was out of his depth, but he was tired of being part of the furnishings. “Why contradictory?” he inquired.

“Because it means a man like Cookridge isn’t going to play silly games—mischievous games,” snapped Butler. “Not with this department’s new deputy-director.”

“Not with
anyone
in this department at the moment, Paul.” Audley gave Mitchell his evil smile. “Not even with
me
—not when we’re about to take the first delivery of Cruise missiles. And the way Central America and the Middle East are shaping up … troubles they’ve got enough to complicate their relations with us in the coming months, without … what Jack likes to call ‘silly games’.” The smile grew more evil. “And certainly not at Oliver’s expense, much as that would delight me personally.”