Sion Crossing (2 page)

He knew that too, thought Latimer a little wearily. And the plain burden of that was … the American knew the still-classified result of the promotion contest—knew that Butler, who hadn’t looked to compete, had been forced to win when Audley had scorned to do so … and that Oliver St John Latimer, who had run the best race, had been fobbed off with second place.

For Christ’s sake
…
who wanted to be deputy-director?

“No, I suppose there isn’t.” He freed himself from further contemplation of the recent and disastrous past quite easily: it had been crowding his thoughts too much over the last few days, with no result itself except to diminish his customary efficiency in the discharge of routine matters. But pure chance might now be offering something which might be of real significance, and he knew he was not going to reject the opportunity. Rather, it concentrated his understanding of the pointlessness of any further analysis of the setback. Because he had
not
resigned, then he
was
deputy-director—or would be so in just one week’s time. That was the situation exactly: he would have more money, which he didn’t need, and more power, but not enough of it, and not the power he wanted. But he must make the best of it, and he would start doing that now—right here and now.

Senator Cookridge
.

Senator Thomas Cookridge, from somewhere in the limitless Mid-West, the world’s granary, who was now chairman of the President’s new Atlantic Defence Committee—in London for a flying visit to meet British defence chiefs: that, together with a blurred photograph of the Senator in
The Times
, was what he remembered.

He took another sip of wine, saw that his glass was almost empty, and reached towards the bell. And then looked at the CIA man. “However … be that as it may—” This was the deputy-director speaking, by God! “—just what is the Senator’s problem?”

Morris met the look, and then relaxed perceptibly in his armchair as the white-coated servant appeared again.

“The same?” Latimer inquired politely. It warmed him to know that he had moved out of debit and far into credit at a stroke. Perhaps the Americans hadn’t influenced the promotion decision directly. For, flawed though Colonel Butler’s decision might have been—flawed though it
had
been—he was not the man to let a foreign power’s influence play any significant part in it. Butler’s greatest strength and greatest weakness was that he was an honest man.

The American nodded, and the nod accepted more than another drink. “Thanks, Latimer.”

Rather than American influence, direct or indirect, it might very well have been his own lack of American experience and contacts such as this, thought Latimer self-critically. And, to be unmercifully honest with himself, that had been not simply due to his ambitious calculation that treason and danger came out of the East, not the West, but also a matter of personal preference and prejudice. As always, failure and defeat began at home, no matter what external reasons presented themselves at the end.

But that was in the past now—for now he was in the present and the future. He still had a few precious years over Butler and Audley both, and chance was giving him a promising beginning.

“It isn’t exactly a problem he’s gotten himself—no.” Morris’s mouth twisted. “It’s …
he
wants a favour—that would be more accurate. I’m just the middle-man … the messenger boy, to sound you out.”

On one level that was disappointing. The degree of difficulty and challenge lessened, and the urgency and possible profit with them. But at least, if Morris had effectively lowered the stakes, he had thereby almost certainly eliminated the grosser and more egregious ingredients of scandal too. Sex and violence and corruption, alike the British tabloid newspapers’ preoccupation and the KGB’s opportunity, happily receded: Latimer had been forced to deal with all three all too often, albeit safely at second or third hand; but he had never enjoyed the dealing, or been able to resign himself to them as facts of life.

“What does he want?” A third level, tantalizingly nebulous, brightened Latimer. Even if it was none of those, it was something which Howard Morris couldn’t handle easily by himself, without this humiliation. And, since Morris was a man of great experience, considerable seniority, and undoubted ingenuity, the lost difficulty and challenge of the first level were reinstated: whatever it was the Senator wanted, it wasn’t going to be easy to give it to him.

The servant returned, with another glass and another frothing tankard, and a chit to sign. Expansively, Latimer dropped one of the pound coins which had been weighing down his trouser-pocket on to the silver tray; from which it disappeared like lightning, with not the slightest acknowledgement of the excess. If that was the going price of service in the library it was no wonder the man had been hovering for the second round, he concluded.

“You,” said Morris.

“What?” Latimer’s hand, closing round his new glass, slopped its contents on the table.

“He’ll be here in about half-an-hour—” Morris looked at his watch again “—or nearer forty minutes if he’s running to schedule. By the back entrance—there’s a room booked on the third floor, if I give the word. And as he’s due to speak at the North Atlantic Union dinner, you better believe he’ll be on time, Latimer … By which time I’ll be safe on the other side of London, with an unbreakable alibi—and you can surely rely on that, because that’s the way he wants it.” He reached for his new tankard, and drank from it. But this time the line of froth remained on his moustache. “And the way he wants it is the way he gets it, old buddy.”

“Me?” That could not be true. Since his presence in the Oxbridge was an accident he was only an improvisation. “You mean … Audley, not me.” He was not simply second-best—he was all Howard Morris could produce at such short notice, when Audley had failed to turn up.

“Yes, that’s the goddam’ truth.” Morris didn’t attempt to dispute the indisputable. “I was going for David—I can’t deny that.”

“Because he’s a friend of yours.” No question, that.

“Dam’ right.” The American’s chin went up. “And I hardly know you, Mister Deputy-Director.”

That was laying it on the line: that was admitting everything, but at the same time it was mixing its challenge with an offer—it was throwing obligation and advantage and self-interest on to the scales:
as of now, Mister Deputy-Director, we both need each other, to do business!

“Which makes what you’re doing now even more surprising.”

The American smiled. “Hardly less surprising than what you’re doing.”

“No.” Latimer shook his head. “A colleague representing a friendly power … a close ally … wants a favour. Naturally, I have listened to him. The favour consists in doing a favour for one of his political masters. And I’ll listen to him, by the same token. But I have promised nothing—equally naturally. That is not at all surprising, any of it.” He raised his glass to his lips, but only pretended to drink. Two glasses were enough for the time being.

“No one writes blank cheques.” Morris nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Yes. But the difference is … that you know what is to be written on the cheque—and, on the basis of your friendship with Audley, you must have believed he’d sign. Whereas in my case, as you have said yourself, there is no such basis.”

“Uh-uh.” Latimer estimated the CIA man hadn’t intended to tell him anything, he had been concerned only to set up the meeting. Whatever he got from him in advance was therefore all the more valuable.

“I don’t know what the Senator wants. At least, not in any detail.” Morris considered him for a moment. “And I wasn’t at all sure David would buy it—though he was the right man for it.” He paused. “Which is perhaps more than I can say for you, Latimer.”

“You just had to take what there was. Hobson’s choice, it’s called over here.”

“Yeah.” Morris frowned suddenly. “Who the hell was Hobson?”

“I believe he was a Cambridge ostler who offered the next horse on the list or nothing.”

“Maybe he only had one horse.”

“Perhaps.” Latimer looked at his watch. “It looks as though you have only one horse, anyway.”

“Or none. I could disappoint the Senator.”

“If it was Audley he wanted, you already have.” They were only playing with each other, Latimer realized. “What does he want, exactly? Or … since you don’t know in any detail … what does he want in general?”

The white teeth showed, but in a thin white line. “Brains.”

“That is … rather general.” Then a thought struck Latimer. “
British
brains, obviously … since you ought to be able to supply some of the American sort, I would have thought.” With all his power, Senator Cookridge could have had any variety of American brain. So it must be a British one he wanted, whatever other attributes he required. “Audley’s sort, evidently. Rather than mine?”

Morris gave him another considering look. “Would you say there’s any difference?”

Under other circumstances Latimer would have said just that. Instead, he shrugged and sipped his wine.

Morris looked at the wine. “Maybe you’re right, at that. Different vintage year, but much the same vineyard. And the same goddam’ wine merchant—that’s for sure.”

“And yet you consider me less suitable than Audley?” In such a strong position Latimer felt inclined to push his luck in exchange for even indirect information.

“You haven’t got his special knowledge.”

“His … special knowledge?” Self-knowledge only just curbed Latimer’s instinctive reaction. In most areas he would back himself against Audley, but in all things American he had to admit that he lacked expertise. “And what sort of … special knowledge would that be?”

The American laughed. “Don’t let it upset you—”

“It doesn’t upset me.” He must have betrayed himself somehow. “I’m merely curious, that’s all.”

“Of course. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t mean …
professional
knowledge.” The brown hand waved away any temporary misunderstanding. “I meant … knowledge from way back, Latimer.”

What the devil did that mean? Audley had the edge on him in years too, but that was hardly an advantage now; indeed, it was more of a disadvantage—even the fact that Audley could boast war-experience, brief though it was and in his extreme youth, only served to associate him with a generation which had had its day and was pensionable. And Colonel Butler with him, by God!

“I meant history,” said Morris.

“History?” Latimer echoed him stupidly, but couldn’t help himself. “The war, you mean?”

“Huh! The war—dam’ right!” Morris only half-smiled, almost winced. “I mean … David’s a historian. He studied history at Cambridge—he writes history books.”

Latimer frowned at him. The conversation had been verging on the opaque, but now it had become incoherent. “Medieval history books.”

“History.” The American triumphantly lumped medieval and modern history together, the Normans in England in 1066, and the English in Normandy in 1944. “But you studied … English, was it?”

“I read English.” Latimer knew that Morris was only pretending to guess. He would know where and when as well as what. And, most particularly, he would know under whom—that above all. “And then economics.”

“So you wouldn’t be an authority on American history, exactly?”

That displayed a target which was irresistible. “Is there such a thing?”

Morris winced. “But American literature? Say … Stephen Crane—William Faulkner?”

Latimer frowned, Stephen Crane was a most obscure novelist, who had written one allegedly good book, about the American Civil War, in which he had not taken part but which was reputed to be accurate nevertheless; and Faulkner’s prose was decidedly eccentric—very possibly because he had been three sheets in the wind when his fingers hit the typewriter keys.

“Faulkner? Crane?”

The last time he had seen a Faulkner novel had been on Colonel Butler’s desk—the desk he had aspired to sit behind and control, which was now Butler’s desk by appointment and promotion. So maybe there was more in both Faulkner and Butler than he had imagined.

Faulkner and Crane—they sounded like Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths—what had they in common, apart from fiction?

“You know what I’m talking about?”

“I think I do, yes.” Faulkner had written quite a few books, but most of them had been set in the same territory. And Crane, whatever he had written, was remembered for just that one book: the ignorant farm boy caught up in a war he didn’t understand—someone had made a film of it, long ago, in black-and-white, in which the fictionally-heroic farm boy had been played by an actually-heroic farm boy from the recent war, Audley’s war—that had been the gimmick. “Audie Murphy?”

The CIA man regarded him curiously, frowning slightly. “Audie—?” His face cleared suddenly. “Yes, that’s right. He played the youth in
The Red Badge
—you’re right.”

“The Youth”—that was right too: the farm boy hero had had no name. And … “the war”—when Morris had said “
The war
—
damn right
” he had worn an odd, almost apologetic, expression. And he was wearing the same expression now.

“That is to say … I believe I have identified your war, Morris.” In his turn, Latimer frowned as he recalled their starting point. “Or Senator Cookridge’s war. But I can’t say I’m making any sense of it. I know more about cowboys and Indians, anyway.”

“But you do know something about the War between the States?”

The War between the States? It took Latimer a second to translate that presumably-alternative description of the Senator’s war, with more than half his brain busy wrestling with a much more taxing conundrum:
what the devil did the chairman of the new Atlantic Defence Committee have to do with the American Civil War that needed a senior CIA trouble-shooter as middleman?

“You do know about the war?” The American was staring at him, more doubtful than apologetic now, evidently misreading the emotions of surprise and incomprehension he was observing.

Or rather,
not
misreading, thought Latimer with a swirl of fear. Because, in all this laughable conjunction of accident and misunderstanding, there was one near-certainty and one absolute certainty.