The Old Vengeful Read online

  PROLOGUE

  Loftus of the Vengeful

  “THERE’S NOTHING WRONG with funerals,” said Audley. “I met my wife at a funeral.”

  Mitchell studied the picture again. In the original newspaper it had been a good sharp reproduction, but the photo-copier hadn’t improved it. “I hope the weather was better than it was for this one.”

  “It was bloody cold, as I recall—an east wind and an open churchyard.” Audley peered over his shoulder. “Yes … they do seem a bit bedraggled, I must say. But that’s because it’s never been considered conducive to good order and military discipline to carry umbrellas into action—though I believe Sir Thomas Picton carried one at Waterloo, didn’t he?”

  “Or naval discipline, in this case.” Mitchell ran his eye down the line of officers. “Two captains, three admirals, and a flag-lieutenant—and the two-striper’s the only dry one … or half-dry, anyway.”

  Audley smiled evilly. “And that’s only because he’s holding an umbrella over the hero’s daughter. Smart fellow! And the C-in-C looks rather unhappy, I do agree. But then he never did like Loftus— they were at Dartmouth together, and Loftus pipped him for the Sword-of-Honour, or something… although, to be fair, I don’t think that was the whole reason.”

  Mitchell went down the line again, and on to the civilians. They too were in the rain, and bare-headed as the bugler called them to attention, two bald as coots and three with their variously grey and white hair plastered to their scalps, but all wearing their medals proudly.

  His eye was drawn to the other picture on the page, of the Vengeful burning furiously, with a list to port, but still spitting gunfire from her 4-inchers, and with a couple of mortally-wounded E-boats in foreground and background. It was a painting, and it had probably never been as dramatic as that, but the artist’s untruth conveyed the truth of the battle, which was that the elderly ship had died well and not alone.

  “Those old boys are the surviving Vengefuls, I take it?”

  “’Vengefuls’?”

  “That’s the term for the crew. Like ‘Hampshires’ and ‘Norfolks’— and your ‘Wessexes’, David.”

  “Ah! We called our chaps ‘Wesdragons’ actually—because of our cap badge … but I take your point. And—yes, they are. Plus two of the admirals, who were midshipmen at the time—or one was a midshipman and the other a sublieutenant, to be exact.”

  That exactness cooled Mitchell’s ardour somewhat: if there was anything the big man was, he was exact in his details; and if there was anything that he wasn’t, he wasn’t a fool.

  All the same, facts were facts, so he had to gesture to the scatter of papers on the desk. “But I don’t see that there’s anything for us here—honestly, David.”

  Audley adjusted his spectacles to study the papers.

  “THE LAST ROLL-CALL—

  “The Royal Navy remembered one of its war-time heroes yesterday: Loftus of the ‘Vengeful’—“

  And the bald, prosaic, low-key Times obituary cutting: ‘Commander Hugh Loftus, RN, VC, who died yesterday …’

  There had been a gap between those two: the obituary washout of departmental records, filed and dated from three weeks ago; the pictures of the funeral and of the last fight of the Vengeful were from some other source—at a guess from the Daily Mirror, or some such. There was no clue on the photo-copy, so it must be something of Audley’s own notoriously catholic culling, which ranged from The Sun to Pravda, or the Buffalo Courier-Express to the Bicester Advertiser—the only clue here was that there was no clue, which was in itself a tell-tale indication.

  “Why do you say that?” Audley challenged him.

  “Well …” He had to get this right, even if it was wrong. “Well, someone’s done the routine search on Loftus—and he was living way above his pension … But there’s nothing unusual about that, in this day and age—he was prematurely retired a long time ago, that’s why he never got beyond commander … War wounds and ill-health— quite straightforward, no black marks, although he was never a well-loved man among his equals … His wife left him a bit of money: she came of a well-to-do naval family. But that was also a long time ago—she’s been dead nearly thirty years. They weren’t married very long.”

  “He wrote books though. ‘Naval historian’ is how The Times described him.”

  “That’s right. Naval histories. He probably made a bit from them. Not a lot, but some.”

  “What are they like?”

  Mitchell shrugged. “Carefully researched … he took his time over them. He liked travelling around, staying at good hotels—he knew his food and drink. Drove a Daimler.” He thought for a moment. “The books … they weren’t bad. Maybe they weren’t quite one thing or the other—detailed, but not quite scholarly, and not quite popular either.”

  “You don’t like them?”

  “There’s something about them … a certain irritability … a preference for blame above praise. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  “Perhaps he was embittered by that premature retirement.” Audley tapped the picture. “Those two admirals were his junior officers, after all… But you don’t know?”

  “I don’t think I’d like to have served under him, hero or not, that’s all.”

  Audley pointed again. “But they turned up to see him buried. ‘The last roll-call’.”

  “Yes. I may be doing him an injustice—I probably am.” Mitchell looked at Audley. “The point is, for whatever it’s worth, he’s—he was—absolutely clean. No contacts. No hint of anything.”

  “But he’s dead.”

  Mitchell shook his head. “Nothing there, either. I had Bannen check that out. He’d had a dickey heart condition for years—his doctor had told him to go easy, but he took not the slightest bit of notice. When his Daimler was boxed in on that car park he tried to manhandle a Ford Escort out of the way. It was a hot day, and he was angry … There are plenty of witnesses, and Bannen talked to the owners of both the cars that had boxed him.” He shook his head again. “Pure as driven snow, both of them.”

  “No one is as pure as that.”

  “Then … pure enough for Bannen and me. David … the man was seventy-one years old—he had a heart attack. Short of digging him up again you’re going to have to accept that. He certainly spent a bit more money than we can readily account for—and he had a big car and a biggish house … But that doesn’t make him a traitor, or a security risk—and for Christ’s sake, the old boy’s dead now, anyway! And if he was up to anything he’d have been much more careful about the money angle—“

  “I didn’t say he was a traitor—or anything else,” said Audley mildly, bending over the picture again.

  “Then what the hell have I been doing this past week?” Mitchell let his cool slip. “Damn it—you had me pulled off the Czech link with Dublin just when it was beginning to look good!”

  “Waste of time!” murmured Audley, without looking up. “They’ll never let you go back to Dublin now your cover’s blown … Besides which, you were taking too many risks there latterly.”

  “I’m only doing research now. I like doing research.”

  “More waste of time … Is this the daughter?”

  “Yes.” It was never worth arguing with Audley.

  “Not a good likeness … at least, I hope not for her sake!”

  Mitchell fished among the documents on his left, and then slid the enlarged photograph in front of Audley.

  Audley studied it for a moment. “Oh dear! A good likeness.” He frowned at the daughter. “It looks like a prison picture … or maybe a ‘Wanted’ poster?”

  “It’s from a hockey group. We enlarged it.”

  “A hockey group … mmm … the nose is a problem, and so are the teeth—an ort
hodontic problem, left too late … I hope she plays hockey well, poor girl.”

  “She got a Blue at Oxford. And a First in History, at LMH.” For no reason, except perhaps his exasperation with Audley, Mitchell felt defensive on the woman’s behalf.

  “That’s good to know.” Audley nodded. “It’s always comforting when nature indemnifies in other ways—even though Miss Loftus herself may not look at the mirror so philosophically.”

  “I think she’s got an interesting face. Not beautiful, certainly, but…” Mitchell searched for a word “… but interesting.”

  “Plain? ‘Homely’, the Americans would say … Equine is a word that springs to my mind. But no matter!” Audley turned to Mitchell. “A good hockey player—‘Take your girl’, they used to shout at Cambridge, as I remember, when I once watched our Blues thrash theirs … and ours did seem to take the game much more seriously than they did—when they came off at the end … I shall never forget it … one of them slapped her winger on the back and cried out ‘Well played, Anthea, well played—good man, good man!’ And I must confess that I did wonder for a moment, when I looked at Anthea, whether we might not have put an unfair one over on the Dark Blues.” He grinned at Mitchell. “But … a good hockey player and a good historian … So what does she do now?”

  “She teaches history part-time at the local high school.”

  “Only part-time? What does she do with the rest of her time?”

  “Nothing at the moment. She waited on her father hand and foot while he was alive, so they say—so Bannen says, anyway.”

  “She didn’t share in the good life, then? The wine and the food and the good hotels?”

  “Apparently not. But we didn’t inquire too deeply into her.” Mitchell studied Audley’s face. “That wasn’t in the brief. Should it have been?”

  “Mmm … Maybe it should at that.” Audley pursed his lips and held the picture up again. “Maybe it should …”

  “For God’s sake—why? She’s a plain, thirtyish spinster schoolmistress who’s never said ‘boo’ to a goose since she scored the winning goal in the Parks at Oxford ten years ago!” This time Mitchell’s cool snapped unplanned. “What the hell are you up to, David?”

  Audley set the picture down carefully. “I’m not up to anything, Paul. But Colonel Butler is … and Oliver St John Latimer is too, I shouldn’t wonder … and the Prime Minister and the President of the United States and the Central Office of Intelligence certainly are.” He looked up. “Will they do for a start?”

  The cool came back together instantly, with the join hardly showing even though Mitchell was angry with himself for underrating both Audley and Audley’s summoning him from the safe and rather boring job he’d been doing while he put the finishing touches to his own new book, which had been the cover for his tour of duty in Dublin, and its by-product.

  “Yes, I’m sure they’ll do very well, for someone. But not for me.”

  “Why not for you?”

  “Because Jack Butler said this was a one-off, David.”

  “And so it is. But you haven’t finished yet.”

  “But I have.” Mitchell selected the green folder from among the papers on the table and pushed it towards Audley. “You wanted Loftus of the Vengeful, and there he is—investigated, signed, sealed and delivered. And cleared. And dead.”

  “But you still haven’t finished, Paul.”

  “And I still think I have,” said Mitchell obstinately. “You wanted a good quick job, and you’ve got it. I had Bannen doing the leg-work over here, and he’s a first-rate man. Smith in Paris covered his research trips there, and Frobisher handled his American jaunt—and they’re good men too … And I put the whole thing together.”

  “And you’re smart too, of course.” Audley smiled to take the offence out of the statement.

  “I’m smart enough not to want to waste any more of my time and the country’s money.” Mitchell decided not to take offence. “Look, David … if we were Inland Revenue, or maybe Fraud Squad, I’d maybe recommend our digging into his apparent excess of spending over income … though until his affairs have been sorted out even that’s a long shot. But for the rest, if there was the slightest smell I think we’d have picked up a whiff of it between us.” He pushed at the folder again. “And my assessment of the man is that he was probably embittered—he was undoubtedly bad-tempered and quarrelsome and dogmatic … he always made more enemies than friends … and he treated his daughter like a servant. But he was also brave as a lion and utterly devoted to Queen and Country and the Royal Navy. In fact, he was the archetypal old-style naval officer, pickled in aspic … or brandy, more like—like someone out of his own history books. And I’d stake my job on that.”

  Audley nodded approvingly. “That’s good, Paul—I accept that—all of it. But now we need more field work.”

  “More field work—?” That approval and acceptance, and then more field work could mean only one thing. “So you know something that I don’t know—that I couldn’t know—?”

  “Of course! I’ve no wish to waste time and money either, Paul.”

  For a second Mitchell was tempted, but only for that one second. “Well … I’m not a field man now—you know that, David. The Dublin tour was my swan-song—you know that, too.”

  “Yes.” They both knew that, and Mitchell was pretty sure that Audley had always known why, after Frances Fitzgibbon’s death, he had taken the job. And, when he thought about that, it was a strike to Audley, and an unpaid debt too, that the big man hadn’t vetoed his private war with the KGB in Dublin. Vendettas were usually grounds for disqualification, not promotion.

  “Yes.” The fleeting look of remembrance, of that shared sadness, confirmed Mitchell’s suspicion. “But this time you’re the square peg for the square hole, Paul. I wouldn’t have asked for you otherwise.”

  “Bannen would do as well—I like him, David.” It was odd how liking a man could be a reason for endangering him. “James Cable would be even better—he’s Navy … and I can’t even swim very well!” Mitchell grinned. “And I’d guess you need a naval man for this one.”

  “Cable’s busy …” Audley cocked his head “… and aren’t you into naval matters, in your next book?”

  As always, Audley was disconcertingly well-informed. “First World War naval matters. I hardly think—“

  “That will do very well! There was a Vengeful at Jutland—sunk, of course … but then Vengefuls tended to have a submarine tradition— the last of them was actually a submarine, I believe. But fortunately it was transferred to the Greek navy before anyone could submerge it permanently … But the First World War will do well enough, for a start.”

  Mitchell sensed the job closing in on him, like the infantry subaltern who had volunteered for the safety of the RASC in 1915, because he knew how the internal combustion engine worked, and found himself commanding one of the first tanks on the Somme.

  “What is it that you know, that I don’t know, David?” That was the crucial question—the tank question!

  “Some of it you do know: the PM went to Washington a fortnight ago.”

  Mitchell knew that: the Marine band had played on the lawn outside the White House, and the BBC had transmitted the sound of the music and the platitudes.

  “They got on rather well—they exchanged gifts—the special relationship was renewed.” Audley closed his eyes for a moment. “The PM gave him cruise missile promise, and the okay on Poland … And the President gave us a top secret—an ultra-secret—from the CIA’s inside man in the Kremlin, whom they’ve just pulled out one jump ahead of the chop—a Politburo-KGB liaison officer, no less.”

  That was more like it: now they were into the real business of the Research and Development Section, which had nothing to do with routine security checks on long-retired and palpably innocent naval heroes and everything to do with hot potatoes which no one else wanted to touch.

  “It seems that some time back their man got a sight of a list of KGB proje
cts to which the Kremlin was giving operational approval.”

  “Projects?”

  Audley nodded. “Just the names—no details. But of course project names are the real thing. And we know these are the real McCoy because there were six of them, and the Americans have confirmed their five as being in progress.”

  “And the sixth was British?”

  “The sixth was British.”

  Mitchell thought for a moment. “How long ago is ‘some time back’?”

  “You can assume that ours is in progress too.”

  He thought again. “But if the Americans have identified theirs … and pulled their man out since … everything he ever handled will be compromised by now, I’ll bet. In which case won’t they abort?”

  Audley shook his head slowly. “The received wisdom is that they won’t. They always accept higher risks than we do … besides which they may not have twigged yet—the man hasn’t been out long, and the Americans did try to cover his departure in confusion. So we may have a little time in hand.”

  More thought. It was certainly true that the Russians took greater risks, partly because their resources were so much greater and they could afford to squander them, and partly because of the dominance of military men among the planners, who subscribed to the Red Army’s belief that no defensive position could be held against attackers who were ready to pay the price for taking it.

  “What was our project name?” The jackpot question was overdue.

  “I’ll come to that in a jiffy.” Audley smiled at him, and the smile hinted at an odd mixture of satisfaction and apology. “There are some complications to this one, Paul.”

  First the bad news, thought Mitchell. And then the worse news. “I can see that. If the President gave this to the Prime Minister as a gift, then she’ll want results—she won’t want egg on her face. No wonder no one else wanted it!” That last was a guess—but no guess really: this was what R & D was for, and Audley himself was notoriously attracted to eccentric and dirty jobs—they were what he got his kicks from.

  “Oh—of course that…” Audley waved a hand vaguely “… that goes without saying. But there’s an internal political angle to this one. Which I ought to explain to you since it will affect you, Paul.”