Colonel Butler's Wolf Page 21

  So now Alek knew one more thing: that against all the likely odds he had once more survived. Until the next time, anyway.

  McLachlan coughed diplomatically behind him.

  “If we don’t go and collect Polly soon we’re all going to get soaked to the skin.” A lock of damp hair fell across the boy’s face in agreement with his statement. “I think the rain up here’s wetter than the stuff down south, you know.”

  Butler nodded. “All right. Let’s go then.”

  McLachlan picked up the shotgun and fell into step beside him.

  “That chap with the rifle—that was a bit of luck, you know.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “I mean … I just stumbled on him. He was fiddling with his gun—it wasn’t loaded. I think he was putting it together.”

  “You were lucky then, weren’t you!”

  “What I mean is, I didn’t forget what you told me, sir,” McLachlan went on stiffly. “But I didn’t have any choice.”

  “Aye, I can believe that,” said Butler.

  McLachlan started to say something, then stopped in deference to Butler’s taciturn mood, shaking his head to himself at the unfairness of it nonetheless.

  They climbed in silence for a while along the track beside the Wall. The rain-mist thickened around them as they ascended, while the Wall itself rose and fell beside them, sometimes only waist-high and sometimes head-high, cutting off the edge of the cliff beyond it. And as they went higher the rocky outcrops on the open southern side began to build up too, enclosing them on the narrow path as between two walls, one natural and the other man-made.

  “This will do,” Butler muttered. He stopped and turned to McLachlan, who had fallen half-a-dozen paces behind him. “I’ve got some instructions for you.”

  “Instructions?”

  “Orders would be more accurate.”

  McLachlan grinned at him uncertainly. “More orders? We’ve not finished, do you mean? I hope to God they aren’t too complicated.”

  “They’re not complicated.” Butler stared directly into the wary eyes. “And this really is the finish, boy. The game’s over.”

  “What game?”

  “Our game—and your game. All you have to do is to go back from here and pack your things up. Don’t bother to see Epton—we’d rather you simply left him a note saying you’ve had to return to Oxford to see Sir Geoffrey Hobson—“

  “See the Master? What about?”

  “You aren’t going to see him. You will write him a letter. You’ll tell him you’re resigning your scholarship and you’re leaving Oxford.”

  “Leaving—?” McLachlan tossed the damp hair across his forehead. “Are you crazy?”

  “We want it in writing, but you can keep it short. Tell him the family business makes it necessary for you to return to Rhodesia.”

  “Rhodesia! I’m damned if I—“

  Butler overrode the angry words. “Of course we don’t expect you to go there. There’s a ship in the Pool of London that will suit you better—the Baltika. You have my word that no one will stop you going aboard.”

  McLachlan stared at him incredulously.

  A good one, thought Butler with dispassionate approval. And a good one would quite naturally play to the last ball of the last over. It made it all the easier to obey Audley’s parting words: we don’t want any trouble, so don’t make it too difficult for him. Just make the lie stick.

  “It’s over, lad—all kaput,” he began gruffly. “It never did stand a chance, even before Zoshchenko cracked up.”

  McLachlan continued to stare at him for one long, bitter moment. Then slowly, almost as if the hands were disobeying the brain, the muzzle of the shotgun came up until it was in line with Butler’s stomach.

  Only it wasn’t McLachlan any more.

  It was subjective, of course; Butler knew that even as he recalled the Master’s words, ‘He’s more mature than the usual run of undergraduates’.

  And yet not wholly subjective, because the acceptance of failure was putting back those concealed years into the face, just as it must have done with Zoshchenko as his hold on Neil Smith’s identity weakened at the last. Now he was watching the same struggle for that inner adjustment: he was watching the false McLachlan wither and die.

  What was left was older and harder—this had been the vital half of the pair, after all. But it was still a pathetically young face, even over the shotgun’s mouth.

  “Don’t be foolish now,” said Butler gently. “Not when we’re giving you the easy way out.”

  McLachlan licked a runnel of rain from his lip. “The— easy way?”

  “Aye. I meant what I said: we’re letting you go home. You’ve been damn lucky, lad. If Zoshchenko hadn’t gone sour on you, we might have let you go and hang yourself. I think we would have done, too.”

  The damp strands of straw hair fell forward across the face again. Viking hair, thought Butler. But then he had read somewhere that the Vikings had also sailed eastwards, down the Russian rivers, leaving their ruthless seed there as well as in the West.

  The young man licked his lips again.

  “I could have sworn you didn’t know. At the bridge, I mean—“ McLachlan bit off the end of the sentence as though ashamed of it.

  Butler shook his head slowly. A touch of truth now, to gild the big untruth.

  “I didn’t know, not then. You weren’t my business.” Let the boy wonder which of his friends hadn’t been his friend. “I didn’t know until yesterday afternoon.”

  “Yesterday afternoon?”

  “McLachlan was partially left-handed, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but—“

  “Oh, you were good. You must have put in a great deal of practice. I didn’t notice anything wrong, anyway.”

  “I don’t understand. If you didn’t notice anything wrong, what did you notice?”

  “You made me think, lad, you made me think! You see, your left-handedness—or McLachlan’s—is the rarer variety. There are plenty who bat right-handed and bowl left—Denis Compton does, and so does Derek Underwood for Kent. But not many do it the other way round. The last time I saw it was years ago, a chap named Robbie Smeaton in the Lancashire League, a spin-bowler.”

  “No, you were damn good.” He smiled patronisingly into the young man’s frowning face. “A little clumsy at times, maybe. But you even held the croquet mallet like a lefthander when you swung it between your knees.”

  He gestured casually at the shotgun. “Do we really need that now, lad?”

  The muzzle didn’t move. “Go on, Colonel.”

  Butler shrugged. It had been bad luck, that rare variety of left-handedness. But then the false McLachlan had dropped every game where it showed—cricket and golf and hockey— and concentrated on rugby, where it didn’t show.

  Every game except croquet. And in that he had schooled himself to play as the real McLachlan would have played.

  “You made me think about you. You see, we had a file put together quickly on you, but it didn’t mention that. It wasn’t important, I suppose they thought—if they even thought about it.”

  The rain rolled down McLachlan’s white face. There was a strained, blank look about it now which made Butler uneasy. For the first time he found himself measuring the distance between them. It was no more than four paces, but there rose a sharp little outcrop of rock in the middle of it, like the tip of an iceberg thrusting through the turf. He hadn’t noticed it before because it hadn’t mattered. Only now it seemed to matter.

  He shook the rain from his face, stamping his feet and edging to the left of the rock.

  The shotgun jerked peremptorily. “Just stand where you are, Colonel … And stop talking in riddles.”

  “Riddles?”

  “You didn’t see anything. But you saw something. What did you see ?”

  “You could be on your way home now. This isn’t getting you anywhere.”

  Again the gun lifted. “What did you see?”

  T
he boy was frightened: for some reason he was scared rigid. That pinched look was unmistakable.

  “What did you see?”

  And the fear was catching. To be at the end of a gun held by a frightened boy wasn’t what he had expected.

  “I saw the reason why your man set fire to Eden Hall,” Butler growled. “I never could understand why he did it— Smith’s records weren’t important any more—we knew who he was, and he was dead. So killing me didn’t make sense.”

  “But when I saw you playing croquet out there on the lawn, it was then I realised that your files would have been in that attic too—that if I’d known about you then, I’d have looked at them too. Then I really saw you and Smith together for the first time, as a pair, and that was all I needed, really.” He paused. “Just what was there in those records?”

  McLachlan looked at him blankly for a moment. Then his lips twisted.

  “We never did know. It was the only piece of his life we never properly covered, because the man we sent down originally, back in ‘68, couldn’t find any of those old records. But when Smith was killed we reckoned someone might go down, someone of yours. We couldn’t risk you seeing what we hadn’t seen.”

  “What made you think we’d check on Smith?”

  “He said he was going to give himself up. Just himself, not me. He hadn’t the guts to be a traitor. But we weren’t sure how far he’d gone with it.” McLachlan checked himself suddenly. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

  Butler shrugged again, elaborately. “It never did matter. We were on to you from the start. I tell you, boy, you’ve been lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Aye. Luckier than most. You’re young—it isn’t the end of your career. You’ve had a valuable experience, you might say. And it wasn’t your fault you failed. They won’t hold it against you.”

  McLachlan looked at him narrowly, a little of his old self-possession reasserting itself.

  “I wonder about that—whether you really were on to us.”

  Butler snorted derisively. “Think what you like. If you think a man like David Audley would waste his time … “

  “Audley?”

  “You young fool, do you think Audley’s been at Cumbria all these months chasing shadows?” Butler snapped. “Put that bloody fool gun down and be thankful we don’t take you seriously. Go back home and tell ‘em not to send a boy to do man’s work.” He ran his hand over his head and shook the rain from it. “Just go home and stop being a nuisance. There’s nothing else you can do now.”

  The gun came up convulsively from Butler’s stomach to his face.

  “Oh, but there is—th-there is!” McLachlan stuttered. “The boy can still do m-man’s work.”

  Butler stared into the twin black holes, trying to show a contempt which he didn’t feel.

  “What man’s work?”

  “I’ll be a nuisance.” McLachlan’s voice was eager now. “If that’s the only thing I can be, I’ll be that then.”

  “What—?” The word stuck in Butler’s throat.

  “I’ll give the Press a field day. The bastards are afraid of the students as it is. But I’ll give them something to get their teeth into—I’ll give them Paul Zoshchenko and Peter Ryleiev.”

  “Poppycock!” Butler tried desperately to force derision into the word. But he could only remember what Audley had said back in London: You can imagine what the Press would do with Comrade Zoshchenko if they got hold of him! “You’re crazy!”

  “Crazy!” McLachlan laughed. “Terry Richmond tipped the papers off about Ortolanacum—they know something’s up. I’ll tell ‘em a lot more.”

  “They’ll not believe you—nothing happened at Ortolanacum, damn it.”

  “I’ll give them something happening—something they’ll have to believe. I’ll give them you, Colonel Butler!” He giggled. “I’ll give them you with your head blown off!”

  Butler looked down the twin barrels: the black holes seemed enormous now, like the mouths of cannon.

  Tomorrow the girls would get his Edinburgh postcards— Princes Street for Diana, Arthur’s Seat for Jane and Mons Meg the Cannon for little Sally.

  And he was looking down Mons Meg—this mad boy who was too scared to go home empty-handed would squeeze the trigger and he’d be dead when the postman knocked and the girls came scampering down the stairs.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he croaked. “Put it down!”

  “Put it down, Dan!” Polly Epton commanded out of the mist.

  XX

  SHE WAS SOMEWHERE away to the left, ahead of him and behind McLachlan, but he couldn’t see her.

  “Don’t turn round, Dan—you couldn’t do it quick enough. And, you’re in the open.” Polly’s voice sounded preternaturally clear in the silence between the rocks and the stones. “Put it down.”

  She was behind the Wall. Alongside them it rose head high, but it dropped abruptly a yard or two behind McLachlan, who would have to swing the shotgun almost 180 degrees to get in a shot at her.

  But the muzzle covering Butler only shook a little.

  “If he shoots me, tell Audley, Polly—nobody else!” Butler barked urgently.

  He let the breath drain out of his lungs; until that second he hadn’t felt them strained to bursting point. Now he let himself relax without taking his eyes off McLachlan.

  “You can’t win now, boy. Do as she says.”

  “I can still pull the trigger. Then it’d be too late for you.”

  “Aye. But so can she. Then Audley would deal with things. You’d still lose.”

  “Another tragic accident?” McLachlan was getting a grip on himself. He raised his voice to carry over his shoulder. “Would you really shoot me, Polly dear?”

  “Try me.”

  “Have you ever killed anyone before? With a shotgun?”

  Polly said nothing. The stillness was thick on the crag, as though the rain and mist had blanketed every sound as well as every object outside the twenty yards of visibility that was left to them.

  “Makes an awful mess of a man, you know, Polly. At this range you’d make an awful mess of me.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first man the Eptons killed on the Wall,” Polly said. “I’m running true to form.”

  Good girl.

  “Touché!” McLachlan laughed. “But tell me—“

  “He’s talking to put you off your guard, Miss Epton,” Butler cut in. “He’s cornered and he knows it.”

  “Cornered?” McLachlan shook his head. “It’s you who are cornered, Colonel. If Polly pulls the trigger, then my finger’s just as likely to squeeze too. It seems to me you get it either way.”

  “I don’t see that’s going to do you much good, boy. The only hope you’ve got is to put down your gun.”

  “And the only hope you’ve got is for Polly to go away.” McLachlan’s eyes flickered. “Do you hear that, Polly. If you clear off smartly I won’t kill him. That’s fair.”

  “If you go away, Miss Epton, he’ll kill us both. Me first, then you.”

  “I’m not going away. Put the gun down, Dan.”

  “No.” McLachlan’s mouth tightened. “I’ll count ten.”

  “It won’t do any good.”

  “One.”

  “I only heard the last part of what you were saying to him, Colonel—“

  “Two.”

  “—Who is he?”

  “Three.”

  “I think his real name’s Ryleiev. Peter Ryleiev.”

  “Four.”

  “He’s a Russian?”

  “Aye. An agent of their KGB.”

  “Five.”

  “But I thought—spies—were older.”

  “He’s a new junior sort, Miss Epton. Specially trained for one job.”

  “Six.”

  “What job?”

  “To join our Civil Service, I’d guess. Foreign Office most likely. He’s very bright.”

  “But why?”

  “Seven.”

  “Ever
ybody likes to have an agent in the heart of the enemy camp, Miss Epton. The trouble is you have to find a traitor. Someone like Burgess or MacLean, or Penkovsky.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They’re flawed men, my dear. They do good work, but it’s as though they wear out more easily than patriots. The head-shrinkers could probably explain it better than I can, but it’s almost as though they want to get caught in the end.”

  “EIGHT!”

  There was a touch of panic there, and the girl snapped it up like a spider on a fly.

  “You can count until you’re ruddy well blue in the face, Peter whatever-it-is. I’m not going.”

  “You bitch!”

  “You see, Miss Epton, what all intelligence directors dream of is getting one of their own men—not a traitor but a patriot —into the other camp. But it’s almost impossible to do, because the outsiders and latecomers are always screened so carefully. And even if they pass they’re never really trusted.”

  “So even the ordinary candidates from the universities are screened thoroughly now. A lot more thoroughly than Peter Ryleiev’s masters expected.”

  He stared at Ryleiev coldly. It wasn’t true, of course. But it would be true in future—the swine had seen to that!

  “They thought if they could slip one of their men in between school and university. Someone they’d specially groomed for the job, someone who looked younger than he was. To take the place of the boy they’d short-listed.”

  There was a pause.

  “You mean he’s the real Dan McLachlan’s double?”

  Butler met Ryleiev’s eyes through the drizzle.

  “No. I’d guess the resemblance was only a general one. Because no one over here had seen the boy for years, and he had no relatives here.”

  “But his father?”

  “A drunken blackguard in Rhodesia? They chose the McLachlans almost as much for the father as the son, Miss Epton. They needed someone they could lean on.”

  “But the real Dan, what did they do with him?”

  The voice out of the mist faltered as the only likely answer hung between them in the damp air: six-foot of Rhodesian dirt somewhere in the bush, with stones piled on it to stop the hyenas from digging.