War Game (23 page)

“And that leaves Robert Davenport.”

“Ye-ess. …” Butler spread the word reflectively. “That does leave Robert Davenport.”

“ ‘Preacher’ Davenport.”

“He certainly does his share of preaching—for a foreigner in a strange land.”

“You sound as though you’ve doubts about Davenport, Jack.”

“Not doubts—reservations.” Butler shook his head. “Davenport is the obvious one, that’s all … and I don’t like obvious ones, they worry me. He fits too well.”

“How does he fit?”

“Right politics, for a start—or right
left
politics,” Butler growled disapprovingly. “Left of left, never heard anything like it in my life. Nor has anyone else, I should think.”

Audley smiled, thinking of poor Gerard Winstanley and his ragged band of Diggers, who had once tried to cultivate a tiny corner of common land in Christian brotherhood and humility. That had been much too strong for Oliver Cromwell’s stomach too. “I don’t know about that.”

“You haven’t heard him talk.”

“Did he talk like that in the States?”

“We’re working on that.” Butler bridled at the question somewhat, and Audley knew exactly why: it would ordinarily have been the easiest thing in the world to ask the CIA about Davenport, but in this case that might amount to washing their own dirty political linen in an inquisitive neighbour’s machine. And with Davenport’s radical politics there was the added complication that American intelligence might already be well-established in his home territory, wherever it was, so that any British agent moving into it would have to act with the greatest caution. But caution made for slowness.

“He’s a New Englander, from his voice. And he’s well-educated—he knows his history,” said Audley.

“We know that. What we don’t know is what he’s been doing since he left his state university nine years ago.”

“What’s he doing over here—we have to know that, for heaven’s sake.”

“Officially, just travelling for pleasure. He’s supposed to have had a legacy, or an inheritance of some sort, and decided to do Europe on it. He hasn’t got past England yet.” Butler paused. “Been here eight months now, and clean as a whistle. But he’s still the obvious one—and we’re working on him.”

The years had mellowed Butler, thought Audley.

“But … I’ll tell you one thing …” Butler spoke slowly, as though he wanted the words to sink in deeply “… we’re not really working on Ratcliffe himself. We’re pushing him, but we’re not investigating him. That’s specifically outside the brief.”

“Uh-huh?” And saying as much was also outside the brief, at a guess, thought Audley. It was a glorious defect of Butler’s that his loyalties, even his overriding loyalty to Queen and Country, were still limited by his ideas of fair play.

“You know, eh?” Butler spelt out his warning with a shrug.

“I’ve been fairly explicitly warned off,” Audley nodded. “And the file on Ratcliffe is an edited one, too—which means that they already have a shrewd idea what Charlie intends to do when he’s able to do it. So this is in the nature of a spoiling operation.” He smiled at Butler in sudden gratitude; fair play wasn’t friendship, but among equals it was the next best thing, and possibly a better thing at that. “But thanks, Jack.”

Butler shied away from the smile as though it were a snake in his path, half turning towards the window and putting his nose back into the tumbler. As he did so there came a shout of command from outside and the same brittle drumming which had marked the change of the guard on the bridge fifteen minutes earlier.

“Well, if you want anything else from me you’d better make it quick,” said Butler. “Your man’s arrived.”

Audley peered over his shoulder down at the bridge. The Royalist musketeers had formed up in a line alongside one parapet, complete with drummer and standard bearer, all standing rigidly to attention. From the other side of the bridge a trumpet pealed out and a Roundhead trooper rode into view, less gorgeous than the knot of cavalier officers who had gathered at the Royalist end, but much more warlike in his lobster-tailed steel helmet, polished breast-plate and leather buff-coat. For a moment or two he fought with his horse, which clearly disapproved of the trumpet call, but having mastered it rose in his stirrups and lifted a white flag of truce high above his head.

“You’re getting the full treatment,” observed Butler.

One of the cavalier officers advanced a few steps and doffed his plumed hat, holding it across his chest. The Roundhead dismounted and advanced on foot across the bridge to meet him. The cavalier, still bareheaded, gave a small bow and the Roundhead lifted his gloved hand in salute—presumably his helmet was rather more difficult to remove. Then, after a few minutes of conversation, each returned to his own side.

“Just like a film,” said Audley.

“Aye. And us in the one-and-nine-pennies,” said Butler.

“That dates you, Jack—the one-and-nine-pennies.”

The trumpet pealed again and a new figure appeared from the Roundhead side; like the troopers, he wore a steel breastplate and a buff-coat, but these were topped by a wide lace collar and a large, stiff-brimmed black hat.

“Except I was always in the one-and-threepences,” murmured Butler. “But there he is, anyway: the Parliamentary Labour candidate for Mid-Wessex … alias Oliver Cromwell for today. Which isn’t altogether inappropriate, I suppose.”

The black-hatted Roundhead paused for a second in the centre of the bridge. The Royalist drummer beat a fierce little ruffle and the King’s flag came down in salute. Once more the cavalier officer advanced to meet his enemies, but this time he wore his hat—and this time when he swept it off he bowed much lower.

“What’s he like?” asked Audley.

“William Strode?” Butler sniffed. “He’ll never sit for this seat, I tell you. It’s rock-solid Conservative, no matter how moderate he tries to be, they’ll never elect him here.”

“But he will sit for somewhere, sometime?”

“Oh aye. When he’s done his time losing they’ll give him a winner. If your Minister stays in power, that is.”

Audley ignored the jibe; Butler’s contempt for politics, left, right or centre, was always apt to make him irascible. “He’s a genuine moderate, then?”

Butler sniffed again. “Aye.”

“Security rating?”

“Clean as a whistle. He’ll not be one of Charlie Ratcliffe’s friends, that you can rely on.”

That was altogether very convenient, thought Audley. The way the moderate left viewed the far left was like the old orthodox Christians had felt about heretics: whereas pagans just didn’t know any better, not having had the True Faith revealed to them, heretics were the devil’s Fifth Column in their own ranks… .

Which hatred the heretics returned with compound interest, because they also knew that the only historical difference between orthodoxy and heresy was the final winning or losing.

He nodded at Butler. “So maybe we can do business with him.”

“Not
we
—you. I’m damned if I’m going to horse-trade with politicians when I’m not even sure of the business I’m in. I’ll do the donkey-work for you, but this time you do your own dirty work, David.”

“Suit yourself, Jack.” Audley smiled at Butler. The Colonel’s political hangup went much deeper than his military instincts, he reminded himself; in fact, despite all appearances, he had risen from the ranks and a cloth-cap background in which his subsequent career was regarded as an act of defiance, if not actual treason.

In close-up the Double R Society’s version-for-the-day of the Grand Plotter and Contriver of all Mischiefs in England was something less impressive than the original, at least in appearance; even in his Roundhead General Staff uniform he was still a ratty little man, sharp-featured and bright-eyed.

The eyes fastened instantly on Audley, snapping him for future reference. So it wasn’t going to be so easy after all: the prospective Labour candidate for Mid-Wessex was no fool and no beginner, those eyes indicated. The natural selection of political jungle warfare, which forced men like this one to watch their backs as well as their fronts, had made William Strode very wary.

“Mr—?” Strode didn’t wait to be introduced.

“Audley.”

“Mr. Audley … Colonel Butler asked me this morning if I could come to see you now—here.” The eyes flicked briefly towards Butler. “You both represent a branch of the security services?”

“That’s correct.”

“I can give you five minutes. In ten minutes’ time I’m seeing the Royalist commander. You can have half that time, no more.”

“I might want more than that, Mr. Strode.”

“It’s all you can have.”

Audley smiled his most unfriendly smile. “Then I shall have to be brief, won’t I? Mr. Strode, I want your help.”

Strode said nothing for a few seconds, as though an appeal for aid hadn’t been what he was expecting.

“Indeed?” he said finally. “Or?”

“Or—what?”

“Or what will you do if I don’t choose to help you?” The gleam in Strode’s eye was obstinate now. “After all, helping the internal security service isn’t going to make me popular in my own party. If I help you I take a risk. It doesn’t happen to be a risk I want to take.”

“But I haven’t told you what sort of help I want.”

“You don’t need to. I know the Roundhead Wing has some pretty far-out types in it—political extremists you people are bound to be interested in. But I intend to beat them my way without your help, Mr. Audley. By the rule book and the ballot box, I shall beat them.”

“Not Charlie Ratcliffe, you won’t beat him that way.” Audley shook his head.

“Charlie—?”

“That’s right. Because Charlie isn’t going to use the rule book and the ballot box. He’s going to use the printing press. And he’s going to do to you, Mr. Strode —and people like you—what the South Africans are alleged to have done to the Liberal Party. And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about him, Mr. Strode. But there just may be something I can do—with your co-operation.”

Strode stared at him. “You mean … you’re just after Ratcliffe, no one else?”

“Ratcliffe—and whoever helped him murder James Ratcliffe.”

Strode frowned. “You’re re-opening the murder case?”

“It was never closed. Though, to be frank, I don’t give a stuff who killed who—I already know that. But I want Ratcliffe to start worrying about it, so I want the word out that the police are pursuing a promising new line of inquiry. And I want that rumour to start at the very top—from you.”

The cast of calculation was in Strode’s eye now. “That’s no problem. That’s pure law-and-order.”

“The next thing’s no more difficult… . Will you be at Standingham next weekend?”

“Of course. I’m playing the part of Sir Edmund Steyning.”

“With Charlie as Nathaniel Parrott?” Audley smiled. “It’s all planned, is it?”

“It’s the biggest show we’ve ever put on.” Strode nodded, more cautiously this time. “The BBC is filming it for television, so we’re aiming at a maximum muster.”

“And it’s all planned?”

Strode nodded again. “The advance party will be going down on Thursday to set the scene. Then there’s a full-dress rehearsal on the Friday evening, and we’ll stage the storming for the public on the Saturday and the Sunday. With any luck we’ll have a turn out of at least eight hundred.”

“Eight hundred and one now. I shall be attaching myself to your staff, Sir Edmund.”

Strode frowned. “You can’t fight if you aren’t a member. I can’t break our own rules.”

“I don’t want to fight. I want to be free to ‘come and go and look and know’—put me down as a friend of yours, or a foreign observer, or whatever you like. But one way or another, Mr. Strode, I want to be there to breathe down Charlie Ratcliffe’s neck. I’m going to run him to hounds, and run him to ground—and then I’m going to dig him out and let him go again, and hunt him again—until he doesn’t know whether it’s April 1st or Christmas Day. And you’re going to let me do it, with no questions asked and no answers given … which you’ll do for the same reason that Oliver Cromwell came down on the Levellers: either we break them or they break us.”

They stared at each other. The five minutes was long passed, thought Audley, but for this cause a Royalist general ought to be indulgent.

Strode blinked at last. “All right, Audley… . But not for that reason.”

Audley shrugged. “Then whatever reason you like.”

“I don’t like—and neither should you.” Strode shook his head. “It’s because there’ll always be someone like you, whoever wins. But if Charlie Ratcliffe has his way you won’t have to ask me to help you—you’ll be giving the orders. And I wouldn’t like that.”

Butler lingered at the door, one eye on the hall until Strode had gone.

“And now?” he said.

“And now—if they start cracking anywhere, Jack—then we’re in with a chance.”

“Aye. And if they don’t?”

“Then we fail.” Audley met the odds blandly. “This is bloody politics, man. We do our best, but we go by the rule book, like Mr. Moderate William Strode. So at least we don’t get our fingers burnt picking up someone else’s chestnuts.”

Butler grimaced at him. “You don’t think we’ve got a hope, do you? You’re just causing mischief, that’s all.”

Audley shrugged. “All right, then. Let’s say: ‘Mischief, do thy work’, Jack. Maybe it will, at that.”

“Aye.” Butler looked out of the window, towards the cavaliers guarding the bridge. “But whose work will it do, I wonder?”

HOW TO BE A BAD WINNER

15. ROYALIST ARMY
regroups. Final exhortation by Lord Monson (to be relayed by loudspeaker to crowd). Pioneers will obtain fresh fascines.

16. Roundhead Army regroups. Regimental commanders to ensure that no personnel are within fifty (50) yards of glacis below Great Bastion (red flag markers).

17. 4.40: Special Effects Section will fire simulated magazine explosion.

18. 4.41: The Great Assault. Pioneers will …

It had taken Audley four days to complete his report on the current state of the Central Intelligence Agency, which was three days less than he had allowed himself originally; and which, he reminded himself irritably, would have left him ten days buckshee holiday with Faith and Cathy if he hadn’t been conned, bullied and dragooned into messing around with politicians’ chestnuts to absolutely no effect.