Our man in Camelot

Arth-names and the Celtic goddess Artio… Christ! What was he doing here among English professors and Arth-names and monks dead fifteen-hundred years? What, conceivably, could they tell him about Major Davies's Phantom shattered into obscene scrap metal in tlie emptiness high over the Irish Sea?

He closed his eyes, fighting to distinguish the real from the unreal, as the engine-rumble faded into silence.

"—and Chambers quoted the Rhys theory that Arthur and Mordred were Airem and Mider in the ancient Irish fairy tale."

Goddamn. Enough was enough, surely.

"Sure. But—"

"—But you think there's something in it, all the same?" Audley bulldozed over him quickly.

"Yes, frankly I do. The trouble with Tony—at least when he's not digging up his Roman villas—is that he sees half the truth very clearly and the other half not at all… That analogy with the old Wild West, for instance—it's a good one as far as it goes. The old West, the Golden West where men were men and there was land for the taking. Where everything was simpler and more free."

Shirley laughed. "I don't think the West was really like that, Sir Thomas. I think it was pretty uncomfortable."

"Oh, I'm sure it was. Freezing in winter and boiling in summer. Dysentery and smallpox. Starvation and Red Indians—I'm sure it was unpleasant. But there were no payments on the new car or worries about the children taking drugs… and it's a natural human feeling to yearn for the good old days, le temps Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

perdu. So the Welsh looked back to the days when they were the British—when they had the whole island, not a scroggy corner of it. And later on the English take over the legend—and even people on the continent. In fact the first Arthurian story-cycles are Breton and French; he inspires most of the orders of chivalry on the continent. And here there was Edward III's Order of the Garter, and his Round Table at Winchester—his French Wars were essentially Arthurian Wars."

"All of which proves absolutely nothing about Arthur," said Handforth-Jones.

"Ah—but there you're wrong. So much of it started with Geoffrey of Monmouth, and of course no one believed him—I didn't for one. But then, you see, when Atkinson excavated Stonehenge in '52 and sent off stone chips from the blue sarsens there to the Geological Museum in Kensington they pinpointed the place the stones came from to within half a mile: a hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies, and on the other side of the Bristol Channel. That was the first thoroughly scientific study of Stonehenge, to my mind. And it just happens to fit in with another of Geoffrey of Monmouth's stories—which no one had believed either."

"You mean he was on the level?" said Mosby, caught again by the fascination of the Arthurian labyrinth despite himself.

"On the level?" Sir Thomas considered the Americanism with judicial gravity. "No, I wouldn't go so far as that. I think Geoffrey was a literary man of his time, which means that he didn't apply modern critical methods and that lack of evidence simply stimulated his imagination."

"He made things up too, huh?" Shirley's continuing disillusion with things British and English was still evident.

"I'm sure he did. And he was probably less scrupulous than most—he was looking for a good patron and a nice soft job somewhere so he wrote what the right people wanted to hear."

"The right people?"

"Whoever was boss, same as today," said Audley. "And there are still plenty of experts in that gentle art."

"But that doesn't mean everything he wrote was fiction," Sir Thomas went on calmly. "He was a sort of early don, but he was brought up on the Welsh Marches. And he always claimed that he'd had access to what he called 'a very ancient book in the British tongue', remember."

Mosby didn't remember, but nodded wisely.

"Huh!" Handforth-Jones snorted. "Typical spurious mediaeval claim—doesn't prove a thing. Evidence is what you want, and you simply haven't got it."

Audley laughed suddenly, as though it pleased him to see them strike sparks off one another. "But you do believe in Arthur, evidence or no evidence, don't you, Tom?"

Sir Thomas faced him. "Well, quite frankly, I do. Or I believe that there was somebody—call him Arthur or not, and Nennius did call him Arthur a long time before Geoffrey of Monmouth—someone who came up with a stunning victory for the Britons, big enough to check the Anglo-Saxons for the whole of the first half of the sixth century—" he gestured towards Handforth-Jones "—even Tony has to agree with that, it's what the archaeologists say."

"Ahah!" Audley pounced on the point. "Now you've got to watch yourself, Tony. The Devil's quoting scripture at you."

"I'm not arguing with facts," Handforth-Jones shook his head, "I'm only arguing with conjecture. Damn it, you should understand that, David."

Audley looked to Sir Thomas without answering that one.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Do you dispute Mons Badonicus?" said Sir Thomas.

"No. That's Gildas, which is fair evidence as far as it goes."

"And where would you place it?"

"Nobody knows."

Mosby understood at last why Audley had kept the debate moving as he had, and why his own flash of irritation had been so quickly capped. First he had ducked the question What have you got? by turning the debate on to Arthur; then he had let them argue their own way round to Badon, knowing that sooner or later they must come to it. So in the end they had seemed to come to it without his prompting.

"Nobody knows. But if you had to start looking, where would you look?" Sir Thomas waited for a reply, but Handforth-Jones wasn't to be caught that easily. He shook his head and grinned knowingly at Mosby as if to indicate that he recognised the familiar signs of ambush, even though he didn't know what form it would take.

"It's a pointless question."

"Oh, no. It's a question with two points, and the first is that you don't want to answer it." Sir Thomas stabbed a finger at the archaeologist accusingly. "He doesn't want to answer.

And I'll tell you for why." The switch from the first to third person indicated that the next observation was for everyone's benefit—and that the trap had been sprung. "Because he's already given the answer, only it was to a different question. That's why."

"Huh?" Shirley looked suitably mystified.

" 'West of Oxford, south of Gloucester, north of Winchester-Salisbury, east of Bath'," quoted Audley.

"Tom means you'd look for Badon in the same area as you'd look for Arthur. Give or take a few miles either way."

Give or take—? Mosby struggled with his English geography. He had actually been to most of the towns mentioned, because none was more than an hour or two's drive from USAF Wodden and all were tourist attractions, well supplied with cathedrals and colleges and other ancient buildings. But in retrospect he found it difficult to differentiate one from the other, beyond the vaguest impressions: tall spire for Salisbury, colleges for Oxford, Roman bath for Bath…

"Exactly." Sir Thomas nodded emphatically. "If you plotted the possible Badon sites—Bedwyn in the Kennet valley and Liddington Hill near Baydon, and the rest of them… none of them need to be the one, but all the ones that fulfil the basic criteria—they all fall within the area Tony said someone like Arthur would have to defend."

Mosby's first elation at having an area drawn for the Badon hunt began to cool. It must measure anything from fifty to seventy miles a side—maybe as much as five thousand square miles.

Sir Thomas continued: "So what Tony is saying is that Badon was fought just where Arthur would have fought it, and just when Arthur would have fought it, only Arthur never existed, so someone else fought it… And all I'm saying is why not Arthur?"

He looked at Mosby expectantly.

" 'It's true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides'," quoted Mosby. The phrase had stuck in his mind.

"Ah, now that would be dear old Winston Churchill. A romantic, of course, but he could very often smell what he couldn't see."

"And not the only romantic," murmured Handforth-Jones.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Meaning me?" Sir Thomas looked at him sidelong. "Well, at my age I can afford to take that as a compliment. And there are times when my sense of smell sharpens too." He smiled at Mosby. "So why not come out with a straight question, Dr Sheldon?"

The attack caught Mosby by surprise. "Sir?"

"A straight question. Something David is temperamentally incapable of asking. Or answering."

Mosby frowned. "I don't get you, Sir Thomas."

"Tck, tck." Sir Thomas clicked his tongue. "Now it's you who is playing games."

"I am?" Mosby looked at Audley for support. "Are we?"

"I didn't say David was playing games," said Sir Thomas quickly. "Indeed, that's what makes this so interesting now: David may have his fun, but he doesn't really play games any more."

"Except the 'great game', of course," Handforth-Jones amended. "But King Arthur's a bit long in the tooth for that, thank heavens."

Mosby couldn't place the allusion accurately, but it didn't take a genius to guess its meaning as Sir Thomas nodded his agreement: they knew damn well how Audley was employed.

"True, very true." Sir Thomas eyed Audley speculatively for a moment before coming back to Mosby.

"And it's that which makes it the more interesting, I'm thinking."

If only you knew, buster, thought Mosby, some of his awe evaporating. The clever men at Oxford didn't know quite all that was to be knowed after all.

"I still don't get you," he said.

"No? Well, perhaps we're doing you an injustice again… but it does rather look as though David is about to poach on our scholarly preserves. And that does make us a little cautious, because the last time he did that there was a certain amount of trouble and strife as a consequence."

Mosby remembered what Schreiner had said: Audley had had an intelligence assignment in some northern university two or three years before.

"Huh?" Mosby fought for time behind his well-tried look of bewilderment: he was just an American dentist doing his time in the Service, knowing nothing of any of this— just an American dentist with an interest in Arthurian history.

But the knowledge within him was cold as a sliver of ice in his heart. He had been less than fair to the clever men who couldn't imagine Badon Hill as a security risk: to imagine anything else would be crazy, not clever.

Except it wasn't crazy at all. The reality wasn't this gracious well-polished room with its gracious well-polished people in their quiet little Cotswold valley: it was a body drifting in the Irish Sea.

He looked at Audley questioningly.

Audley returned the look calmly. "I told you they were sharp this afternoon."

"Well, I wish to hell I was. All I want to know is—"

"Mons Badonicus," said Audley.

Mosby blinked at him in surprise, silenced by such a major script-change.

"Ye-ess," Sir Thomas nodded slowly, "yes, I think maybe Badon would fit the bill if anything did."

"Badon?" Margaret Handforth-Jones stirred. "What bill? What do you mean, Tom?"

Sir Thomas pointed at Audley. "David's bill. Dr Sheldon there has caught him—seduced him, if you like, away from poor William Marshall. And he couldn't do that with Arthur."

"Why not?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"My dear—because he's just like your husband. Not a sentimentalist… Arthur, Camelot, Excalibur, the Round Table, the Holy Grail—he'd laugh at them. They aren't facts. But Badon—Mons Badonicus, Mons Badonis, call it what you will—Badon is different."

Mosby's awe returned, tinged with worry. Sharp was right: the guy was too goddamn sharp for comfort—

altogether too damn explicit in putting his finger on what it had taken the psych, experts a whole day to come up with.

"Put it this way," continued Sir Thomas smoothly, "this is the so-called Dark Ages we're talking about, and the darkest hundred years or so of that. And what do we actually know about them—know as historians know, I mean?

"We know about very few solid facts. We know the beginning and the end of it—in the year 466 the Britons appealed to the last great Roman commander in the West, Aetius, and there were British Christians at the Council of Arles in 443. But Aetius turned them down and there weren't any Britons at the next council in 484.

"That's one end of it. And at the other is Tony's battle of Dyrham, near Bath, in 577, the decisive Saxon victory—their Gettysburg, if you like." He nodded towards Mosby. "Myself, I'd say the battle of Bedcanford, which is probably Bedford, in 571 was equally decisive, but that's neither here nor there.

One way or another the Britons were finished by then. They'd lost the initiative for good.

"And the middle fact—the truly fascinating one—lies between those two dates: the greatest lost battle in British history."

"Badon," said Margaret.

"Badon. We don't know where, we don't know how, and we don't know who." He swung round suddenly to stare directly at Mosby. "Or do we?"

"We don't," Audley cut in sharply.

"But you've got a strong clue." There was an edge to Sir Thomas's voice which had not been there before.

There was the risk which Audley had understood when he had insisted on not coming straight out with the question, Mosby realised: to get the information they needed they had to go to the experts, but in their own field the experts were jealous of interlopers. That reference to 'poaching on our scholarly preserves', no matter how gently delivered, had been intended as a warning to the interlopers.

"Maybe."

"No 'maybe'. I know you, David."

Goddamn it, there was more than scholarly suspicion here. They had been sitting self-confidently on their box of goodies, sure that they knew something no one else did. But maybe they'd been a little too confident at that.

"We think somebody had a clue." Audley wasn't going to reveal his ace in the hole that easily.

"Had?" Sir Thomas frowned.

"He's dead."

"Dead?" Sir Thomas switched his frown towards Handforth-Jones.

"If he is then it's news to me," said the archaeologist. "And it would've been in the papers for sure."

"Who?" Now Audley sounded puzzled. "Who's this 'he'?"

"You tell us, David."

Audley turned towards Mosby. "It rather looks as though we've got two somebodies, Sheldon."

"Sure as hell does." Mosby's mind had reached the same junction. " 'Tisn't likely they've got ours, Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

anyway."

"No…" Audley thought for a moment before nodding his head towards Sir Thomas again. "And your man's got a clue to Badon, has he, Tom?"

"Not so far as I'm aware. But he's been looking for one, I do know that."

"An historian?"

"I wouldn't call him that. At least, not in the accepted meaning of the term."

"An archaeologist, then?"

"Certainly not," snapped Handforth-Jones. "Not in any meaning of the term."

"He was an airman, actually," said Sir Thomas.

" An airman." Mosby was dumbfounded.

"An ex-airman, to be precise. Now he considers he's been called to even higher things."

"He was a very good pilot, so I'm told," Handforth-Jones addressed Sir Thomas conversationally. "I met a chap not long ago—he was excavating a site up in the Persian Gulf—he met him when he was leading a counter-insurgency squadron for some obscure sultan down the coast there. He was quite impressed with him."

"I don't doubt it at all," Sir Thomas agreed readily. "But good military commanders are very often deplorable politicians. The Duke of Wellington is a case in point." He nodded at Mosby. "And your Ulysses S. Grant is another. I don't believe that—"

" Billy Bullitt," said Audley.

"Billy Bullitt, of course. Do you know him?"

"I've heard of him, but never met him."

"A treat in store, no doubt. Because he's the man you want to see if it's Badon you're after. Complete with that famous red shirt of his."

"Who's—" Mosby began, only to be instantly over-ridden by Audley.

"But what the devil has he got to do with Badon?"

"Pursuing his patriotic duty, apparently. He was up here for a week last term looking for Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'very ancient book in the British tongue'. He didn't find it, not surprisingly, but he badgered the life out of the people in the Bodleian Library, so I've been told."

"Hah!" Handforth-Jones sniffed. "And he wouldn't leave poor old Fletcher Holland alone at the Institute of Archaeology either—Fletcher's an authority on early English history."

Mosby drew breath to try his question again.

"But—"

"But he was after Mount Badon, was he?" cut in Audley.

"Oh, sure. It was Badon all the time, with Arthur thrown in. In the end Fletcher got so exasperated that he insisted Arthur was actually a Scottish prince of Dalriada, or somewhere, and Badon was Vardin Hill up there—you often get transpositions of v for b. At which Billy Bullitt went off in a huff."

"Not that you can blame Bullitt for that. If you are an authority, or if you are running a library, you must expect to be bothered by people who want to know things—that's what you are there for." Sir Thomas gave a thin smile. Then the smile faded. "But he also accepted an invitation to speak at the Oxford Union

—what was the debate, Tony?"

"Oh, This House believe that Britons never will be slaves', or some such rot."

"That's right."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"It's a line from the chorus of Rule Britannia," explained Audley to Mosby.

"Well, actually it isn't—as Billy Bullitt was at pains to explain," said Sir Thomas heavily. "It's a line from an eighteenth century masque on King Alfred—not to be confused with King Arthur—according to him. And his point was that in Alfred's time the majority of the Britons were slaves—to the Anglo-Saxons. But at least that was slavery by conquest in war, whereas now nobody had the guts to fight for our country —now we were all slaves, and that was all we deserved to be. We'd lost our honour, apparently."

"Good rousing stuff," murmured Handforth-Jones.

"Rousing is the word. There was practically a riot after the debate and seven undergraduates were arrested for causing a breach of the peace—"

"Thus disproving Bill Bullitt's thesis that they hadn't the guts to fight," said Handforth-Jones.

"Ah, but it was no joke, Tony." Sir Thomas said seriously. "They turned a car over."

"Yes—they thought it was his car, but of course it turned out to belong to some perfectly innocent person. And then—"

"Now hold on a minute." Shirley tossed back her hair and stuck her chest out into the dialogue. "Will someone kindly tell me who this Billy Bullitt is?"

The chest instantly succeeded where Mosby had twice failed, though for a second or so it brought admiring silence rather than explanation.

Then Audley cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. Group Captain William Bullitt, DSO, DFC, RAF retired. Or resigned might be more accurate."

"Group Captain?"

"Colonel would be the equivalent in your air force."

"Uh-huh… And we should have heard of him, huh? " She pivoted towards Mosby. "You heard of him, honey?"

"Can't say I have, no." Mosby frowned.

"No reason why you should have. He was a nine-days' wonder ten years ago when he resigned from the RAF, and then he made the headlines a year or two back when he came home from the Middle East. But he's hardly an international figure. More a colourful one—the Press loves the red shirt and the combat hat he always wears."

"Why did he quit your air force?" asked Mosby.

"It was over the TSR-2, wasn't it?" said Sir Thomas.

Audley nodded. "That's right. The RAF's wonder plane of the sixties and seventies that never was."

"Never got off the drawing-board, huh?"

"Oh, it got off the drawing-board. And off the ground too."

"But it was no good, you mean?"

"On the contrary," Audley shook his head ruefully, "by all accounts it was very good—way ahead of its time. But unfortunately also way ahead of its budget too. So the Labour Government scrapped it and ordered your F-lll instead. Which they also cancelled—in the end we bought Phantoms from you."

"Uh-huh… and I guess Billy Bullitt had a few things to say about that too."

"A few."

"I get the picture. Your Billy Bullitt equals our Billy Mitchell—"

"Now, honey," Shirley waved him down frantically, "don't go making things worse. They won't know Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

who Billy Mitchell was any more than we knew this Billy Bullitt."

"Wasn't he the one who bombed the battleship?" said Handforth-Jones.

Mosby clapped his hands. "That's right. Back in 1921— he said planes could sink battleships. So they gave him an old German one, and when he'd proved his point they said 'Get lost, you bum—and don't show your face round here until after December 7, 1941'."

Shirley sighed theatrically. "You have to forgive my husband. Outside of teeth and King Arthur he's got a butterfly mind."

"Not at all," said Mosby. "If Billy Bullitt's anything like Mitchell then he must be quite a guy."

"More like quite a fascist, according to some people," said Faith Audley with a sudden flash of vehemence.

"A fascist?"

"Now hold on there, love," protested Audley. "He may have been a pain in the neck for some of your Labour friends, but now your schoolgirl prejudices are showing. He's never had any known political connection, left, right or centre."

No known political affiliation: the phrase welled up in Mosby's mind. He had seen it recorded on a dozen files, it was one of the first checks in any security profile.

And now, on Audley's tongue, it meant one thing only: the British had run such a profile on Billy Bullitt.

But just maybe not well enough.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

VII

NOBODY SEEMED TO mind Mosby's going off by himself on foot after breakfast, ostensibly to explore the village, even though he had used the same excuse to do the same thing after dinner the evening before. In fact everyone seemed pleasantly relaxed, bent on doing their own things along the several lines they had agreed during the evening meal, with no second thoughts and consequently no need for further discussion.

"Make sure you see inside the church this time," admonished Margaret, as she heaped potatoes into a bowl. "It's really quite a good one, and there are some super views from the top of the tower."

"It isn't locked, then?" Mosby repeated his explanation for the previous expedition's omissions. "The church, I mean?"

"Good heavens, no. Why should anyone want to lock it? There isn't anything of value there unless you count the Mothers' Union banner… which incidentally I've promised to repair. It's got the moths in it, or something." She smiled at him over the potato peelings. "You wouldn't be a dear and collect it on the way back, would you? It's waiting for collection inside the vestry…"

As he made his way down the hill between the now familiar (and, as usual, empty) canyons of Cotswold stonework, Mosby reflected that for once General Ellsworth would be proud of him.

The General was a keen advocate of Good Relations between his officers and what he termed 'the Indigenous Community'. As a result, while enlisted men were encouraged by every means to stay on base (since the only relations they could be relied on to establish with the natives were sexual), certain mature and reliable officers were practically ordered to do their bit in the cause of Anglo-American friendship. Mosby had hitherto not qualified for this unpopular duty, because the General clearly didn't regard him as a suitable representative of the American way of life. But now, with a tale of the Mothers'

Union banner which would lose nothing in the telling, he had the means of changing all that.

The General would also be proud, if not surprised, at the way he had handled himself yesterday, too, he decided. It wasn't simply that he'd mentioned Billy Mitchell, one of the General's heroes, but also that he'd implemented two of the highest Ellsworth precepts, Co-ordinated Effort and Delegation of Authority, as to the manner born: Audley, Shirley and Sir Thomas Gracey were for the time being doing all the work, while he busied himself with a little gentle Data Monitoring and Operations Analysis.

Which was exactly what he should be concerned with at the Informational Phase of his Implementation Structure Programme.

What was strange, almost disturbing, was the comfort he now derived from his virtuous condition. In his late-night debates with Doc Hollister on the essential nature of the Service mind, and in particular the devious mind of General Ellsworth, they had always ended by agreeing that it was high in crap and low in credibility; or as Doc McCaslin put it, 'Man cannot live by jargon alone.' Yet here he was, on assignment at last, instinctively playing it by the General's book.

Self-analytically, he decided that it was his involvement with Shirley that was to blame. Or, to be fair, it was the personnel controller who had united Agent Sheldon with Agent Morgan in simulated wedlock in the belief that nothing was liable to develop between them except maybe a little casual sex, which wouldn't inhibit their efficiency.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

That would have been the calculation, and it could hardly have been wider of the mark: Agent Morgan—

and that probably wasn't even her real name, he thought with a curious twinge of sadness—had kept her legs tightly together, and Agent Sheldon had graduated through thwarted desire to romantic and protective daydreams… Which were ridiculous —he'd even been comforted this early morning by the knowledge that she'd be safe enough in the joint company of Audley and Sir Thomas.

Or perhaps not so ridiculous, because danger there must sooner or later be, that was for sure. Not yet, this tranquil English summer's day, and not here, on the quiet lane to the church. But sooner or later the safe gathering of information among civilised men would end and they would catch up with the killers of Major Davies and Airman Pennebaker, who weren't playing scholarly games… Which cold bit of logic must sharpen his wits now, because Information Minimises Risk.

Ellsworth again, for God's sake.

He would have to do something about ditching Shirley. But since Shirley was unaware of his feelings that might not be so easy…

Either the village had once been a lot bigger or the old Englishmen who had lived there had reckoned on impressing the Almighty with their enthusiasm, because the Church of St Swithun and All Angels was out of proportion with the rest of the place: it was on the way to being a miniature cathedral.

The element of surprise was increased by its seclusion; it was so completely surrounded by tall elms that it was only possible to get glimpses of it—even from the road on the ridge above the village only the pinnacles had been visible through the trees—and because he hadn't realised the steepness of the valley and the height of the elms Mosby had been expecting a much smaller building.

And yet, surprisingly again, it was neither overshadowed nor overawed by its trees, but stood in the midst of a sunlit churchyard full of ancient tombstones which sprouted from the well-cut grass.

That first impression of loving-care was confirmed by a notice pinned on the board beside the gateway:

"This Churchyard received a Special Commendation in the Churchyard Section of the 1974 Best Kept Village Competition. Visitors are asked not to disturb the south-east corner, which has been left in its natural state for the purpose of ecological study."

Mosby pushed the wooden gate gingerly, fearing to disturb the false ecological tranquillity of a scene under cover of which millions of insects and small creatures were doubtless busily eating and being eaten. The hinges had been well-oiled, however—as one would expect of a Specially Commended churchyard—and it was not until the latch clicked shut again that he startled a group of glossy young blackbirds from their breakfast among the graves. Even then they flew only a few yards, to settle as though by common consent on another favourite feeding ground, full of confidence and greed. No doubt graveyard worms were especially succulent, even though man's role in the food chain of this older part of the churchyard, where the stones were grey-weathered, had long been exhausted.

The crunch of the gravel under his feet was unnaturally loud, so he forsook the path for the grass, pausing to read those stones which still had legible inscriptions.

William Higgs, Esquire/Born May 21 1672/Died March 17 1743… Benjamin Hunt, Esquire/Born April 3

1690/Died January 6 1757 … a healthy place, this; or maybe only the better-off could afford stones in the prime locations and the poor, dying young, went into unmarked graves…

Geo. Pratley / Departed This Life / February 12 1752 /Aged 72 Years/I know that My Redeemer liveth/

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

And his wife Sarah/March 3 17521 Aged 70 Years.

A life-long love story there, maybe, with Sarah hastening to follow her George. Or maybe just a hard winter balancing the ecological books.

But it would be nice to think of another stone some day, somewhere: Mosby S. Sheldon/Departed This Life—say— February 12 2025—that wasn't too greedy— And his loving wife/Shirley Aged—

Nice, but goddamn ridiculous. He didn't even know her real date of birth any more than he knew her real name.

He still had a full half-hour in hand before Harry Finsterwald arrived, enough time for him to see all the things Margaret Handforth-Jones would expect him to have seen.

But first things first. The church was unlocked and the door of the vestry was open, as Margaret had said it would be, and the Mothers' Union banner was there waiting for him, neatly furled alongside a crisp white line of choirboys' surplices and what looked like the vicar's second-best jacket and emergency dog-collar.

Reassured, he went back into the main part of the church; the banner could wait until after he'd met Finsterwald. It was one thing to beat General Ellsworth with it, at a time and place of his own choosing, but quite another to present Finsterwald with so choice a tit-bit.

Next, the tower—he must be able to enthuse about the 'super views', even if the other finer points of church architecture would have to be dismissed on the 'we've-got-nothing-like-that-back-home' level.

The tower door was concealed behind a heavy curtain and although it was also unlocked it was secured with a massive iron bolt, so stiff and set so high up that it would have discouraged the more adventurous of the local small fry. And the route thereafter was well-calculated to put off most other explorers: at first a steep stair climbed awkwardly in the thickness of the stone wall to another high-bolted door which opened on to a bell-ringing level festooned with ropes which disappeared into holes in a ceiling far above; faded biblical exhortations "O Lord, open Thou our lips" and "Our mouths shall show forth Thy praise", painted on the walls in large letters, gave place to a curtly printed card "KEEP THIS TRAP

SHUT" thumb-tacked on a trapdoor at the head of a rickety wooden staircase. After that there was a level empty except for the continuing bell-ropes and a naked ladder climbing to another trapdoor bearing a similar notice; then, at last, the bells themselves, huge and still in the confined space… one of Ellsworth's ambassadors, an officer of no known religious persuasion, had become an enthusiastic bell-ringer (and a devotee of warm English beer into the bargain)—he had even tried to infect Mosby with his strange mathematical passion for change ringing, but to no avail… and then another ladder to another trapdoor.

Then blessed sunlight and fresh air, and the cooing of pigeons turning into the flapping of heavy wings as the trap banged open.

Mosby caught his breath and steadied himself on one of the tall stone pinnacles which had looked so delicate from ground level, but which now had comforting stability. It was humiliating to have such a poor head for heights, and especially this particular height, the uneasy treetop zone belonging neither to earth nor heaven, too high for safety and too low for detachment. The slight queasiness in his stomach and the prickle of sweat on his face were the familiar symptoms of the fear he always experienced at the moment of take-off and landing.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

The difference was that here they were totally irrational, he told himself angrily: the tower of St Swithun's Church had stood firm for half a thousand years and was probably good for the next thousand.

If there was any place where he could get to grips with his weakness it was here.

Looking down was worst, so he would look down first—

In the stillness of the churchyard the movement at the gate caught his eye instantly. And even if there had been no movement the bright blue and yellow of Harry Finsterwald's check shirt would have shouted at him.

He cursed under his breath and looked at his watch. Just when he'd found the guts to experiment with his fear the stupid jerk had to jump the gun by a full twenty-five minutes, breaking the rule (which admittedly he had also broken, but with better reason) that rendezvous times should be kept exactly unless—

Unless.

The sudden thought shrank Mosby into the cover of the pinnacle. Then, very slowly, he raised his head into the right angle where the stone upright joined the parapet and peeked down again.

The confirmation of his fear was immediate. Finsterwald hadn't walked boldly up to the church porch, as he ought to have done, but had slipped to his right behind the cover of one of the trees which flanked the gate. And now he was reaching under his shirt for something in his right hip-pocket.

Mosby stared down incredulously, hypnotised both by the unfolding scene below and by the thought of the sequence of events which must have produced it.

Finsterwald had been tailed off the base, but hadn't spotted his tail and had believed until too late that he was in the clear.

Which wasn't altogether reassuring, because if Harry Finsterwald was no intellectual giant the mechanical things like spotting and shaking inconvenient tails would be right up his alley. Which in turn meant a whole lot of even less reassuring things, like for a start that the tail was smarter than Finsterwald

—and also that Finsterwald would be goddamn mad at having been outsmarted at his own game.

Mosby's pulse quickened. There was only one thing Harry could do, having screwed things up so beautifully, to unscrew them, which was to take out the tail before the tail could report back. That was what he was now preparing to do, and he, Mosby, had a grandstand seat for the performance. And there was nothing he could do about it except pray that Harry had the sense and skill to take the man alive.

Except, of course, it could be just Harry's imagination. Or merely Harry's prudent double-check against the remote possibility that someone had played it cleverer than he had. Lord, let it be pure imagination or prudence.

Trouble was that the Lord must know, since Mosby already knew, that Harry Finsterwald was short on imagination and long on arrogance. So—Lord, let him not foul it up right here in front of me. Just let him do it right.

For a minute nothing moved below him. The churchyard was as still as a churchyard ought to be. Even the blackbirds seemed to have decamped. Above the shielding trees he could hear the hum of the traffic away on the main road three-quarters of a mile away on the ridge, but down there it would be dead quiet, giving Harry the edge.

The minute lengthened. A pigeon—presumably the one he had disturbed—flapped heavily out of one of the elms towards the tower, saw Mosby crouching against the pinnacle, and banked off steeply to head away over the valley, following the meandering stream.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Hope flickered within Mosby. It was going to be all right after all. Or maybe it wasn't all right; maybe he ought to wish that there had been a tail on Harry Finsterwald, someone they could catch and interrogate.

Someone who could give them any sort of lead more solid and believable than the incomprehensible one he'd been following these last few days.

Then both conflicting hopes were extinguished in a brief glimpse of movement between the tree trunks outside the churchyard wall to his right. For the next two or three yards an inconvenient branch obscured the view, then he caught the movement again. Someone was moving warily—too warily for anyone on his lawful occasion—along the line of trees towards the gate.

Where Harry was ideally placed to take him. Mosby felt a pang of sympathy for the tail, remembering how he'd flunked three tests of this game hopelessly in training. On an unsuspecting, untrained, innocent subject it was easy, but no one had yet found a practical reason for following unsuspecting, untrained innocents, and against a properly trained pro with a bad conscience it was damn near impossible.

He remembered his instructor shaking his head at him phlegmatically, a squint-eyed, honey-faced ex-cop who'd done it all and seen it all.

"You gotta tail you don't make till too late, you gotta be blind. You do the thing right, and you make him

—he does the thing right, you still make him. Just ain't no way he can get the edge on you except—"

Holy damn! The memory of the next words punched Mosby's panic button sickeningly. Forty minutes'

drive from the base, it could hardly be less, and Harry still hadn't spotted his follower until too late to try anything except this. But no matter he was a fool, there was nothing wrong with his eyesight.

" Just ain't no way he can get the edge on you less he's got a partner doubling with him—"

A partner?

Now he couldn't even see the first man, let alone a second one. Just Harry waiting to jump—and be jumped.

Because that was what was going to happen, sure as fate. If the sole object was to watch Harry to see what he was doing and who he was contacting they wouldn't make the first move. But the moment they realised he was on to them—and, Christ, maybe they already suspected it—it would be the Davies-Pennebaker treatment.

He felt the seconds draining away, and seconds were all he had to figure the angles.

Too few seconds, too many angles.

He could shout a warning—nothing easier. Maybe scare the bastards off; they sure as hell wouldn't know the nearest thing he had to a weapon was a Mothers' Union banner down in the vestry—

But maybe they wouldn't scare that easy—

And maybe throw Harry's attention the wrong way at the wrong moment—

And, either way, blow his cover—

And screw the mission.

The man said: When in doubt, do it by the book.

The book said: When the success of a mission conflicts with the survival of an operative, no operative shall abort a mission without first having evaluated comparatively its importance against the value of the said operative—

Just great, that was. Evaluate comparatively the value of Harry Finsterwald against the importance of Mons Badonicus—how the shit did he do that?

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Maybe he should do like King Arthur—take up the banner and charge—

Then Sir Mosby bore on his shoulder the banner of the Mothers' Union in St Swithun's Churchyard, and through the strength of St Swithun and the Mothers' Union there was great slaughter of the heathens and they were put to flight—

Well—hell—they might die of surprise, at that. But they sure wouldn't mistake him for the local vicar, so

—

But why not?

Why not?

By the time he reached the vestry, every trapdoor left gaping behind him, every door swinging, he was almost as breathless as he'd been after the climb up to the tower. The soft life on the base keeping the world safe for democracy had taken its toll.

But the vicar's spare dog-collar was no bad fit, he decided gratefully as he fumbled for its button at the back—if it had been too tight God only knew what he could have done, for there was no time left for more ingenuity.

The grey linen jacket wasn't too bad either; a shade too long in the sleeve and a couple of inches too wide at the middle, but when buttoned up not too loose to hold down the black square of material which hung from the collar. Not a shred of his unecclesiastical—and unBritish—T-shirt was now visible, and that was what mattered.

There was nothing he could do about his blue flared trousers, so that risk had to be taken. At least he was all-vicar—all authentic vicar from the hip-line up.

A hat of some sort would have been a bonus, but one glance round the vestry revealed no hat. He could only hope that they didn't know him by sight already.

Then, as he reached for the banner, he felt a hard object move in the side-pocket of the jacket. A spectacle case, complete with spectacles. The bonus after all.

He perched them on his nose and the vestry blurred hopelessly : the vicar had long arms, but short sight

—the only way he could bring things back into focus was by lowering his chin and peering over the frames. But maybe that was no bad thing after all; it might add a vague, even scholarly, look appropriate to his stolen trappings.

But there was no more time. Even now he might be too late.

He seized the furled banner and ran.

At the door at the porch he forced himself to pause. This was the last moment for second thoughts. If they knew him by sight it might be last thoughts once he was outside. But he mustn't think of that.

Instead he must rely at the worst on a few seconds of doubt. For who, after all, was the most natural person in the world to encounter in a churchyard on a fine summer's morning?

The vicar.

He grasped the banner firmly with one hand, drew a final deep breath, and threw open the door.

Light, colour, noise and warmth enveloped him simultaneously, making him blink. The interior of the church had been cool and shadowy, filled with centuries of peace and quiet; in the bright sunshine outside everything was a dazzling green and the sounds of the birds and insects seemed deafening.

Then all these impressions vanished as his senses concentrated on the three figures under the trees near the churchyard gate.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

With a fierce effort of will-power he allowed himself only the briefest glimpse of them before turning back to fasten the door behind him. He couldn't stop his calf muscles tightening at the knowledge that his fear had become a certainty, but he could force his body to move with the calm deliberation of innocence. He was just a clergyman closing the door to his church.

Two of them.

And they'd taken Harry alive and kicking, without noise or fuss, which marked them as professionals for sure. Their mission had gone sour on them but they were making the best of a bad job: they had Harry and they could still hope for his contact.

Unwillingly, he turned away from the door and started slowly along the gravel pathway towards the gate. Only now he didn't have to try to slow his pace, that was the way his legs wanted it. From ground level things looked a lot more hairy than they had from up above.

Two professionals, one tall and lean and the other medium and thickset, he had gotten no more than that from the glance except to note that they'd backed Harry up against one of the trees. His appearance would have disconcerted them, but they certainly wouldn't be in a hurry to complicate matters with violence if it could be avoided, particularly to a priest in the shadow of his own church. The British police wouldn't like that at all—and the British newspapers would like it a whole lot.

There was a shred of comfort in that; it would confuse them, even slow them a fraction, and that might just give him the edge he needed—

Then Sir Mosby bore on his shoulder the banner of the Mothers' Union in St Swithun's Churchyard—

He pretended to be wrapped in his own ecclesiastical thoughts as he walked down the path, delaying noticing them until the last moment. He must get the words as well as the accent right, which according to Doc McCaslin's formula for speaking British English meant that he had to speak from the front of his mouth in fragmented sentences.

"Luverly mornin'." He beamed at them over his spectacles.

No reply. Tall and Thin wore a neat grey suit, Thickset the rumpled overalls of a working man. Harry Finsterwald showed no sign of recognition. Range, maybe eight or nine yards.

"Church is open to visitors," he said. Thickset was holding his right hand rather awkwardly behind his back.

Tall and Thin nodded, returning his smile. "Thank you. But we're just looking around."

Mosby cupped his ear with his free hand and stepped off the path towards them. "Beg your pardon?"

"I said 'we're just looking around'," repeated Tall and Thin clearly.

"Looking round?" Mosby echoed the words vaguely. Thickset swayed nervously, but held his ground, one eye firmly fixed on Harry. "Looking round… I see…" He bobbed his head at Tall and Thin, half turning his back on Thickset and Harry as though he had written them off as sources of conversation.

"Must see the interiah of the church, then—can show you round if you wish." He slid the banner from his shoulder as he spoke, letting the shaft rest on the grass. "Stained glass very fine."

Tall and Thin looked at him for a moment with just the beginning of a frown creasing his brow. It could be he'd exaggerated the accent too much, or it could be simple annoyance at his inconvenient appearance. The next few seconds would show which.

"That's very good of you, sir." There was a slightly guttural quality to the 'g' which reassured Mosby more than the words themselves; a foreigner would be far less likely than a native Englishman to question his authenticity. "But we must be on our way very soon, I am afraid."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Mosby smiled and shrugged. "Of course, of course… quite understand… some other time, perhaps…

Well, good day to you, then." He nodded to the man, lifting the banner with both hands as he did so as if about to set it back on his shoulder. At the same time he began to turn slowly towards Thickset and Harry.

"And good day to you—" he continued, still smiling.

Thickset's attention was still divided by the need to watch Harry, and as if he understood Mosby's intentions Harry chose that precise instant to take a larger share of it by shifting his feet.

As Thickset's eyes left him momentarily, Mosby sprang towards him, swinging the banner off his shoulder in a great sweeping arc. For one terrible fraction of a second, as the man's reflexes triggered him backwards, it looked to Mosby as though the swing would miss by inches—and as he moved, Thickset's gun hand came into view, swinging from behind his back on the opposite course.

But fast though he was, Thickset couldn't quite make up for that lost moment: the gun was still short of its target when the accelerating banner struck him just above the ear. Mosby had put every last ounce of strength into the sweep for the sake of speed as much as force; he felt the shaft bend and then snap like a rotten branch. The pistol flew out of Thickset's hand and Harry Finsterwald dived for it like an Olympic swimmer. Tall and Thin came back into view, clawing inside his waistband as Mosby reversed his momentum. He ducked as Mosby hurled the broken stump of banner at him and got his gun clear just as Harry squeezed off his first shot. The bullet spun Tall and Thin round and threw him against a tombstone in a tangle of windmilling arms and legs. For a moment the stone supported him, then he rolled off it on to the grass.

Mosby turned back towards Thickset, but saw no sign of movement. He felt suddenly drained of energy, and more frightened than he had been even during the walk down the gravel pathway from the church.

Now that it was over he could see the risk he had taken: he had allowed his better judgment of the odds to be overturned by a sudden harebrained idea which had seemed smart, but which had been plain madness. And he had been delivered from the consequences of his folly by good luck and Harry Finsterwald's snap-shooting.

He watched Harry examine the ruin of Tall and Thin.

Finally Harry straightened up and turned towards him.

"This guy's had it," he called across. That was no surprise to Mosby. There had been something about the way Tall and Thin's body had behaved after the bullet had struck which had suggested a puppet with all the strings irrevocably cut. The only surprise was that Harry's voice was cracked and shaky.

He was glad that he'd had the banner instead of the gun.

Not that Thickset wasn't going to have one hell of a headache, he decided as he walked towards the recumbent figure. The blow had spun him halfway back to the path, so that he'd come to rest face down almost in the shadow of Geo. Pratley's tombstone, and he was still out cold.

He knelt beside the body with a sigh. An unconscious prisoner was also going to be a headache for them too, much more so than a conscious, self-propelled one—

Oh God!

He stared in horror at the one eye he could see, an eye that was open and staring.

The man couldn't be dead, he couldn't be. The blow had been hard, but the tightly-furled banner itself ought to have cushioned the shock, and the snapping of the shaft ought to have taken the killing force out of it. He couldn't be dead.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Harry came up beside him.

"What's the matter, Doc?"

Mosby swallowed the sickness in his throat. "I think he's dead too."

Harry knelt down on the far side of the body and gently felt the neck pulse. Mosby heard him breathe out.

They stared at each other.

"That's about as dead as you can get," admitted Harry huskily.

"He can't be."

"I guess you don't know your own strength, Doc. You caved in the side of his skull like an eggshell."

Mosby gave an uncontrollable shiver.

"Come on, Doc," said Harry Finsterwald gently, "we couldn't help ourselves, you know that. These guys, they weren't going to just kick my ass and send me home—remember how Davies got it. You hadn't shown up, I'd 'uv gotten a piece of the same, you better believe it. So we just evened the score, is all." He paused and looked around him, frowning. "But what we have to do now is get them out of sight, and quick."

Mosby came back to immediate reality abruptly. This was neither the time nor the setting for conscience pangs: no matter it was a graveyard, it was no place to be caught squatting beside the brand-new corpses of their victims. Any moment now the vicar—or maybe the entire Mothers' Union—might come trotting up the path to the church, and then they'd have a fully-grown international incident on their hands as well as a glitched mission.

He stood up quickly, ripping the dog-collar from his neck and stuffing it into his coat pocket together with the spectacles. Apart from the bodies and the broken banner midway between them the scene was as peaceful as before; the insects still buzzed and even the blackbirds were back, squabbling among themselves near the overgrown south-east corner. Their outrageous luck was still holding.

"I can get the car up here and stash them in the trunk," said Finsterwald. "Once I've gotten them back on base I can handle them. But we got to get them out of sight first."

Mosby was aware that he was being jollied out of shock and into action. Maybe Harry Finsterwald wasn't so bad after all when it came to the crunch—maybe he was starting to repay the debt he owed Mosby for the preservation of his skin. Or perhaps he himself was naturally trying to see the best side of the skin he'd saved.

None of which mattered, compared with the need to tidy up St Swithun's Churchyard.

He pointed towards the south-east corner, where ecology had produced a fine crop of shoulder high nettles.

"Over there," he said. The 'Do not disturb' request on the notice should keep the dead men private for long enough, and if ecology implied survival of the fittest as well as the natural chain of living and dying they wouldn't be too out of place there anyway.

Finsterwald nodded. "Okay. You take the feet, Doc."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

VIII

SHIRLEY LOOKED ONLY briefly at Mosby before dumping her bag and pile of parcels on her bed.

"Take your dirty shoes off the quilt, honey—you're not at home now."

Mosby eased his shoes off with his toes and raised himself slightly in order to get a better view of things to come.

"Harry give you a bad time?" She stripped off her dress and seated herself at the dressing table.

"Harry's not so bad."

"He's not?" She examined her face in the mirror. "You mean he came up with something on Bullitt?"

"One or two things."

"Uh-huh?" She examined her face carefully in the mirror. "So you had an easy time… Well, I didn't…

That town sure doesn't welcome the motorist. It may be beautiful, but it's an awful place to park a car in, and that's the truth. We had to walk miles."

"You get to see it better that way."

"Which wasn't exactly the object of the operation… I look a wreck."

Not from where I'm lying, thought Mosby, marvelling at the sexiness of her back. He had seen it a good many times before, since the strip-off and make-up routine was her standard procedure, and it wasn't the first female back he had ever seen. But there was something about Shirley's back, even down to the slight bulges of flesh which the bra straps pressed up when she lent forward, that never ceased to arouse him. It was just one hell of a sexy back.

And now he was enormously relieved to find that it still aroused him. It signified that he was back to normal again; it was like flexing the fingers on an injured hand and knowing from their movement that no permanent damage had been done. He had killed a man, but Shirley still had a sexy back.

Crouching beside the two bodies among the nettles, waiting for Harry to bring his car up alongside the nearby wall, he had had one long moment of doubt about that. The feeling of shock had passed surprisingly quickly, and Harry's common sense had given panic no time to develop. Plus the certain knowledge that he hadn't meant to hit so hard—even that maybe he hadn't hit so hard. It had been the brass knob on the end of the shaft which had done the mischief, he had found it on the broken end with the tell-tale blood bright on it. If Thickset hadn't taken that fatal step back—

And then the little pale yellow butterfly had settled on Thickset's open palm—the nettles were alive with pale yellow butterflies—and he had realised that all his explanations were mere excuses. Old wives' tales said that butterflies lived just one single day, but the little butterfly was better off than Thickset.

Intention, or accident, or plain bad luck didn't make a damn of difference: the man was dead and he had killed him.

Shirley had stopped looking at herself in the mirror and was looking at him in it.

"You feeling okay, Mose?"

"I'm feeling fine."

"You look rather pale."

"I tell you I'm feeling great. But you could make me feel a lot better very easily, you know."

Now why the hell did I say that? he thought bitterly as he saw the change in her expression. It was like Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

scratching an itch that was already raw with stupid scratching.

"Don't kid yourself. It's me I'm worried about, honey, not you," said Shirley.

"Well, that's a start. And you're beautiful when you're mad —did anyone ever tell you that?"

Even quarrelling with her was better than nothing.

"Only guys who didn't get the message first time. But I need you on the top line at the moment."

"Message received. 'Is Captain Sheldon combat-ready?' as General Ellsworth would say… Answer: affirmative. Don't fret, honey. I'm a real killer today."

"You'd better be. You're having tea with Group Captain Bullitt this afternoon."

"Uh-huh? More cucumber sandwiches?"

She stared at his reflection. "Aren't you surprised?"

"Not a lot."

"Or even interested how we got the invite?"

"Not particularly. Audley's a great fixer, otherwise he wouldn't be where he is. So he fixed it."

She examined herself again. "Actually it was Sir Thomas. A friend of his turned out to be a friend of Bullitt's."

"Same thing. Audley knows someone who knows someone who knows Bullitt. Just a mathematical progression, like back at home. That's part of the reason why we got him on our team—he knows the right people."

"Always supposing Billy Bullitt is the right people."

Mosby stared up at the ceiling. The blank white expanse of plaster challenged him, like a screen waiting for its pictures.

"He's the right people."

"Harry tell you something, then?"

"Some… but not that."

"But you're very sure of yourself." She appeared to concentrate on her eyelashes.

"Uh-huh."

"Even though it's like hitting the jackpot first pull?"

The screen was still blank. "Could be the machine's been fixed that way, honey."

"You mean they haven't told us everything?"

Mosby sneered at the ceiling. "Remember what Harry Finsterwald said: I have to be my age… But in the meantime, knowing how Billy Bullitt ticks could be half the battle."

"And has Harry helped you there? It sounds a tall order— one English air force colonel. You only gave him a few hours to take him to pieces and put him together again."

"Uh-huh… But I told you last night: if the British had a special file on him—one that Audley remembered—then there was a chance we had one too. We got a lot of files on a lot of people."

"Mmm…" She brushed at the sooty-black lashes. "Which means we do have one?" No praise and no apology. "He flew with the USAF in Korea." " With the USAF?"

"There were some RAF pilots attached to our F-86 squadrons for combat experience. The British didn't have anything could stand up to the MiG-15." "So he had a security clearance, obviously." "Straight 'A'

right down the line. World War Two veteran, and what was better, he had a record of fighting the Communists afterwards—British Military Mission to Greece '45-'48, Malayan emergency '48-'50."

"Sounds our sort of guy." She was no longer fixing her face, her hands were resting on her lap. "And Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Korea after that… He really must have been hooked on fighting by then… It makes you think." "Think what?"

She swung round towards him. "You know he was a student at Oxford in 1939—what do they call them

—an undergraduate?" "Think what?"

She shook her head slowly. "I didn't spend all the morning in dress shops with Faith, Mose honey. David took us straight off to this college, Sir Thomas's one—and he asked us if we'd had breakfast, for God's sake, would you believe that?"

"Just an old Anglo-Saxon custom, maybe?" "And then he took us to this other college—that was what he said, but they all look the same to me—and up these staircases, like a rabbit-warren. And there was this room full of old books and papers and dust, and this old, old man. Dr Morton—Dr Oliver Morton. He looked like he was a hundred years old, and he was dusty like the books. And he asked us if we'd have breakfast too."

"Beats hell out of cucumber sandwiches."

"It was spooky, honestly. I saw into the bedroom through the open door, and it was full of books too—in piles, on the carpet. Sir Thomas said afterwards that they get to clean his rooms maybe once or twice a year, and then they have to put everything back exactly where it was, otherwise he complains that people have been messing about with his things— he knows where everything is, right down to the last cobweb."

"And he also knows Billy Bullitt, huh?"

"That's right. In fact Billy came to see him just recently, when there was all the trouble."

"Is he an expert on Badon Hill, then?"

"No, he's an English literature professor—eighteenth century or something. But that was what Billy studied all those years ago, just for a year. Then he quit and joined the RAF to fight the Germans… and he just never came back… Not to study, anyway, but he did come back to see Dr Morton whenever he was in England, which wasn't often… Did you know he was an orphan?"

"He was brought up by his grandfather, Harry says."

"That's right. Professor William Walter Bullitt—and get this, Mose—who was professor of Mediaeval History at Wessex University in the 1930s and a leading authority on Dark Age Britain."

"Meaning King Arthur."

"Right. He even wrote a book on him. And the 'L' in Billy's Christian names actually stands for

'Lancelot'. He inherited a whole library of Arthurian books from the old guy, so it really runs in the family."

"So?"

"Don't be dim, honey. If anybody's got that book on the Novgorod Bede by Bishop What's-'is-name it'll be BiUy Bullitt. The old professor's library was the best of its kind in the country, Dr Morton said."

He had been afraid for the preceding half-minute that she would be drawing that intelligent conclusion, because there was no humane way of softening the blow he must then deliver. Better to get it over quickly—

"No good, Shirl. There's nothing in it."

"What d'you mean?"

"Howard Morris's people traced a copy already."

"Where?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"The obvious place. In the library of the present Bishop of Walthamstow, where you'd expect it to be.

The Novgorod Bede is just an inferior copy of the Leningrad Bede, made about the same time—at least, according to Bishop Harper, and he saw them both. Sorry, honey… But did the old man have anything to say about Billy Bullitt—what he was like?"

Her shoulders drooped in disappointment. She shrugged. "He said he was a nice boy."

"Boy? At fifty-something?"

"Maybe he's young for his age." She turned back to the dressing table mirror. "If you're a hundred I suppose fifty-something seems boyish, I don't know… What other good news did Harry Finsterwald bring with him?"

Mosby looked up to the ceiling again. "He had one qufte interesting story about the nice boy—"

Picture.

"What was that?"

It was an airfield. Not the immense Americanised strip at Wodden, with its ever-increasing new runway extensions disappearing into the far distance, but Wodden as it must have been after the war: empty hangars and derelict huts with broken windows, and weeds spreading along the runway joints.

"What was that?" Shirley repeated.

Movement now: men wandering across the tarmac, scratching their heads over the patches of new oil and the bruise-marks in the grass…

"Bullitt had this long furlough coming to him in '48, after he came back from Greece and before he was posted to Malaya… Said he was going for a walking holiday in the Scottish Highlands. Only he didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"Go walking… There was this film company planned to make a movie about the Battle of Britain. Got plenty of cash on hand, dollars and pounds and Swiss francs. Hired themselves an old RAF field up in the north somewhere… bought themselves some war surplus planes, Mosquitoes and Beau-fighters mostly. Which should have worried someone, but it didn't…"

She turned. "Mose, you're losing me."

"Wrong planes. Battle of Britain was strictly Spitfires and Hurricanes. These were twin-engined jobs—

long-range fighter-bombers, low-level strike, that sort of thing— Be like Hollywood making a picture about Pearl Harbour with P-38s and P-51s."

"So they got the details wrong."

"They had the details absolutely the way they wanted. Because when the film crew arrived on location to start shooting—no planes… They'd gone shooting somewhere else. Like, for instance, the Sinai Desert."

"The Sinai?"

Mosby nodded. "1948, Shirl. Lots of Jewish money in motion pictures, always has been. But in 1948

they had other things to spend their money on—things money couldn't buy so easily, though. Not with a world embargo on Middle East arms."

She stared at him. "You don't mean Bullitt flew for the Israelis?"

"Uh-huh. Beats walking in the Highlands by a mile, ferrying hot planes across Europe. Plus maybe a bit of combat at the other end."

"What the hell did the RAF say to that?"

"They didn't say anything—because they didn't know. The British had to hush the thing up, because of the trouble it'd make for them in the Middle East, letting the Israelis pick up the planes under their noses.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

So they didn't dare dig too deep. And the Israelis weren't talking, naturally."

"So how did we find out?"

"Oh, that's just part of our good old double-crossing history, honey. Because we were slipping the Israelis the odd B-17— just like the Russians were shipping them old Me-109s crated in Czechoslovakia

—so we had some of our boys out there to watch how they made out… And one of them spotted our Billy and his Mosquito."

"But we didn't snitch on him?"

"None of our business. Just filed it away for a rainy day, like now." He smiled at the ceiling. "But he took one hell of a risk, that's for sure."

"Why?"

"That's the big question. He had enough money, because his grandfather left him loaded in '45."

"Any Jewish blood?"

"Not a drop—pure 100 per cent WASP right down the line. And up until that moment pure British patriot too."

Shirley frowned. "I don't see where patriotism comes in. The British weren't fighting the Jews, not after they quit Palestine, anyway."

"But they sure weren't fighting for them, honey. In fact the Jewish terrorist groups—the Stern Gang and the Irgun—they were just like the IRA, sniping British soldiers in the back and blowing up hotels, and all that crap. I tell you, there was no love lost between the Israelis and the British in '48."

"Maybe he just liked fighting."

"So he risked getting kicked out of the RAF for one lousy flight and a week's combat?" Mosby shook his head. "That horse won't run, Shirl. If he liked fighting then he was set nicely to get all he wanted staying just where he was, the way things were shaping in '48. It has to be something else."

"Such as?"

"I'm not sure. It proves he's not a Stephen Decatur patriot, anyway. No 'My country, right or wrong'

nonsense."

"Could be he just liked the idea of helping David against Goliath. The Jews had it pretty rough."

"Could be he was living up to his name: William Lancelot Bullitt."

"A one-off ride to the rescue and then back to the arms of good Queen Guinevere?" She shook her head in turn. "Uh-huh. If he was anyone at the court of King Arthur it'd be Sir Galahad, not Sir Lancelot—it was Galahad who went after the Holy Grail, wasn't it?"

Mosby sat up. "It was. But how do you know?"

"Oh, I know my King Arthur, even if I never heard, of Bede."

"I don't mean that. I mean how d'you know Billy Bullitt is a Sir Galahad?"

"Well, he was once, according to old Dr Morton. Not only a nice boy, but also a very serious one. Much more serious than the usual run of pre-war students at Oxford. In fact he very nearly threw it all up—

going to college—to fight in the Spanish Civil War."

Mosby stared at her. "Now that's very interesting. We never picked that up on him—Harry never mentioned it."

"I guess we wouldn't have. Because he went for a holiday in France in the summer of '38—he was going to Oxford in the fall of '38—and while he was there he just slipped across the border to Barcelona, where the Reds were holding out."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Hell—this is dynamite, honey."

"I don't think it is."

"Why not? We never had one thing up to now connected him with the Communists. He's always been on the other side."

"That's the point. Seems he didn't like what he saw there. He didn't like the Fascists and he didn't like the Communists either, Dr Morton said… Like he'd looked for the Grail, and decided it wasn't to be found in Spain any more. But when he came back he joined the University Air Squadron straight off—which is their version of AFROTC. And then when the war broke out in 1939 he went straight into the RAF."

Mosby closed his eyes for a moment, adding these new facts to those in the dossier Harry Finsterwald had shown him in the car two hours earlier. He had thirty-seven years of William Lancelot Bullitt's adult life spread out before him.

He remembered James Barkham's thin, dry old voice: There's European history for you— twelve hundred years of it. And now two American gentlemen want to find out about it.

And now the history of Billy Bullitt, the thirty-seven year saga not only of the man himself, but his times: the great war, Britain's 'Finest Hour', the Anglo-American alliance, the hollow victory and the Cold War, the decline and fall of the British Empire, the decline of Britain herself…

And Badon Hill overshadowing the legendary King Arthur and the fabled towers of Camelot.

Plus somewhere, somehow, Comrade Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin…

"This isn't the time to go fast asleep, Mose," said Shirley. "Any moment now you're going to have to tell everyone how much you admired St Who's-it's Church."

St Swithun's Church.

St Swithun's Churchyard.

"I'm not sleeping. I'm just trying to work out Billy Bullitt's pattern."

"How he ticks, you mean? Oh, that's easy—every once in a while he breaks out and rocks the boat some just to satisfy his sense of honour."

Mosby opened his eyes suddenly. Shirley had turned back to her mirror to make the final adjustments to her face.

Sexy back, thought Mosby. But sharp, sharp little mind.

Eighteen uneventful British schoolboy years, to be crowned with the accolade of Oxford.

Then a trip to Spain, and his whole career at risk for a moment.

Nine years of distinguished war service, Britain, North Africa, Europe, Greece—medals, promotion and a career.

Then a trip to Israel, and the whole career at risk again for a moment.

More distinguished years. Malaya, Korea, Malaya again, Aden and the Persian Gulf, Cyprus, Germany… and finally work on the guidance systems of the TSR-2, the wonder plane.

And then, when the politicians decided to scrap the wonder plane the old pattern re-asserting itself: the outspoken letter to The Times—and this time the career shattered. 'A nine days' wonder,' Audley had said.

So exile in Arabia, running a counter-insurgency squadron for an obscure sultan. But running it brilliantly and returning to Britain in 1971 in a small blaze of glory, and his famous red shirt, like a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia, with a new political career his for the taking—

'He made the headlines,' Audley had said.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Offered Parliamentary seats by three Constituency parties, two Conservative, one Liberal, the dossier had said.

Offers rejected. Instead, the pattern again in a bitter television interview in which he had slashed as fiercely at the political right as at the left, and at management as much as at the unions.

Four silent years in rural Wiltshire, in the midst of Grandfather Bullitt's Arthurian library and 'No known political affiliation'.

Then the Oxford riot-Pattern: first the activity, second the outburst. And each time the period of activity had been shorter and the outburst more violent.

"Are you ready, Mose honey." Shirley was wriggling into her best and most spectacular afternoon dress.

Delectable.

"As ready as I'll ever be."

So Billy Bullitt was about to rock the boat again. Only this time it looked like various people hoped—

and feared—that he was going to overturn it.

Audley was standing at the foot of the stairs, waiting for them with a shuttered look on his face and two strangers at his back.

"Hi, David," said Shirley.

Audley stood to one side for her.

"Captain Sheldon?" One of the strangers took a pace towards him.

"That's me."

The stranger took a folder from his pocket.

"Special Branch, sir," he said.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

IX

THERE WERE TWO sorts of loneliness, thought Mosby: that of the forgotten man, the Robinson Crusoe loneliness; and that of the man in the condemned cell, solitary but unforgotten. And at this precise moment he would have given a great deal for the sound of the waves on Crusoe's beach.

Instead he listened to the sound of the big power-mower on the lawn outside. Once upon a time, in another life, he had always liked that Saturday morning clatter, the noise of the beginning of the weekend. But it would never be like that again, just as little pale yellow butterflies would never be just butterflies again.

The bastards had done it smoothly, he had to give them that; they had even done it with a touch of old-fashioned good manners. There had been no uniforms, except that was to be expected of the British and it would probably have been much the same back home. What had bugged him had been the 'pleases'

and the 'thank-yous', and the genteel opening of doors, all designed to create the fiction that there was no real compulsion yet at the same time establishing the hopelessness of any resistance beyond argument.

"Special Branch?" He had registered bewilderment rather than surprise.

"Special Branch?" Shirley echoed him. "What's that?" "Police, honey—sort of FBI-type police." He frowned at the first man. "What can I do for you? Has something happened on the base?"

"We have reason to believe that you may be able to help us with certain inquiries, sir." The Special Branch man pronounced the formula without emphasising any single word in it.

"What inquiries?" asked Mosby.

"Police!" squeaked Shirley, as though Mosby's explanation had been a delayed-action bomb.

"It's all right, honey," said Mosby reassuringly. "What inquiries?"

"I'm afraid I'm not in a position to say, sir. But if you and your wife would be so good as to come with us then I'm sure my superior will be able to tell you."

"Me and my wife?" Mosby allowed the first hint of outrage to colour this bewilderment. He looked towards Audley. "What the hell is this, David?"

Shirley squared up in front of the SB. "For heaven's sake, what is my husband supposed to have done?"

"I haven't done anything, honey," Mosby snapped irritably, picking up her line instinctively once more.

"Well, they obviously think you have." She continued to stare up angrily at the SB. "Now, you—" "Shut up, Shirley," said Mosby.

"I will most certainly not shut up. Not until someone tells me what's going on."

The SB man weakened. "We'd like you to answer some questions, madam. That's all." "What questions?

About what?"

"That I can't say, madam. The questions will be put to you by a superior officer."

"Honey—" Mosby began desperately. "Don't 'honey' me. Where's this superior officer of yours, then?"

"If you would be so good as to come with us, madam, please, then we'll take you to him." "Why can't he come to us? We haven't done anything." The SB shook his head. "I'm sorry, madam." "Oh, great! You're sorry. You want us to help you with— inquiries of some sort. But you don't know what. And you want us to answer questions. But you don't know the questions. So you just go on back to your superior and Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

tell him to send someone who does know. Or better still, he can darn well come himself." She folded her arms defiantly.

Audley cleared his throat. "I think you'd better go with them, Mrs Sheldon." He looked meaningfully at Mosby.

Shirley goggled incredulously at Audley. "What d'you mean 'go with them', David? Whose side are you on?"

"No side. Apparently they only want you to help them with their inquiries—"

"But we all know what that means," cut in Shirley scornfully. "We've heard that on your TV dozens of times—and read it in the papers: 'A man is helping the police with their inquiries'—'helping', huh? Why, they're arresting us, that's what they're doing, David."

"That's not correct, madam," protested the SB man, deadpan.

"Then we have a choice? We can say 'Go fly your kite—we don't want to help you with your inquiries?'"

said Shirley quickly. "We can say that, huh?"

The second SB man stirred. "We very much hope you won't say that, madam. We have a car here and we'd be obliged if you came with us. If you refuse to come, then we have a new situation, of course…

and that might require us to act in a different way. But if you haven't done anything, then obviously you haven't anything to fear—right?" He looked to Mosby for support.

"Well…" Shirley allowed doubt to weaken her obstinacy, "… I don't like it at all."

Mosby turned back to Audley. "You think we should go along with them, David—you really think that?"

Audley shrugged. "I don't really think you've got much choice, Sheldon. There's probably been some sort of misunderstanding—if there has been then they'll apologise and bring you back."

" If—?" Mosby decided it was time to let a small light of suspicion shine through. "What d'you mean 'if'?"

"I think you had better wait and see."

Mosby gave Audley a hard look. "You sound like you know what's going on."

Audley regarded him with dull eyes, as though they were strangers playing in a boring charade. "Let's just say I can't help what's going on."

Shirley stared at Mosby, wide-eyed. "I don't like it. I don't understand what's happening, but I don't like it. And I think maybe we should phone the embassy."

"That won't be necessary, madam," said the second SB man smoothly. "Not at this stage."

"Uh-huh? Well, maybe this stage is the stage to phone before there's another stage." She nodded to Mosby. "I think you better go phone, honey—just in case."

It was perfectly obvious that they weren't going to be allowed to phone anyone, and Shirley knew it, Mosby realised. But she was playing the innocent game because it was the only game there was to play, at least until they knew better what had gone wrong. And probably even after that, right to the bitter end.

But the immediate problem was whether—or how far—to call the Special Branch's polite bluff.

He scratched his head doubtfully. "I don't know… If this is just some sort of foul-up, then we're going to look pretty damn silly… And it has to be a foul-up, because we haven't done anything."

She looked at him pityingly. "Mose, this is a foreign country. We don't know what they may do to us."

"But it isn't a police state," said Audley.

Mosby stared at him. What was also perfectly obvious was that Audley didn't want any trouble that would make the situation irrevocable. Something had gone wrong somewhere, and badly wrong, but if Schreiner's confidence in their cover wasn't misplaced they still had a fighting chance. Even the fact that Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

these were Special Branch agents was a comfort, because it ruled out what had happened in St Swithun's Churchyard as the source of the trouble: if anyone had witnessed that, then it would have been the local police here now, not the executive arm of British counter-intelligence.

"I'll see you get to a phone when you want to," said Audley.

"You will?" Mosby mixed relief and gratitude with doubt. "But if we go with them you're not going to know what happens to us, David."

For a moment earlier on it had looked as though Audley had been ready to take the wraps off himself, but now he seemed content to play along again. It was almost as if he wasn't really sure yet what to believe.

Audley caught the second SB man's eye for a fraction of a second before answering. "Not if I come along for the ride." He gave Mosby a lop-sided smile. "You didn't think I was intending to abandon you just when things were becoming interesting, did you, Captain Sheldon?"

The clatter of the mower began to diminish.

Mosby walked across the room to the French windows and looked out. It was a big lawn, perhaps nearly a hundred yards of smooth, well-tended grass—the sort of lawn that could only be achieved after a century or two of cutting and rolling and weeding. A slender iron railing divided it from the open parkland beyond, with its self-conscious clumps of beech trees. On the most distant slope, as if deliberately placed to complete an old world landscape, a flock of sheep was scattered across the pasture. Only the man with the guard dog patrolling the railing spoiled the view.

Presumably this was one of the minor stately homes which the British had taxed out of private hands and now maintained for a variety of official and semi-official purposes, publicised and unpublicised. But exactly where it was he had no idea since the glass of the rear windows and partition of the SB car had been artfully distorted so that it was impossible to read the road signs. But as they had travelled at a moderate speed for little more than an hour, and by no means always on busy roads, it could hardly be more than thirty miles in a direct line from the Handforth-Jones house. And the position of the sun indicated that the line lay more or less to the south, which meant they must be on or near Salisbury Plain and not far from where Mosby had actually intended to be this afternoon. Which, in turn, might or might not be significant.

He sighed and turned away from the window. The fine mahogany writing desk in the middle of the panelled room suggested that it was (or had once been) the master's private study, with the double doors to his left leading off into the library. A smart look in that desk would very probably reveal the location of the house, but if it did then they weren't really concerned to keep the secret. Besides, a dumb American Air Force dentist in shock from being picked up by the British FBI ought not to act like an old pro on the look-out for information.

But then, the dumb dentist act was starting to feel uncomfortably like the real thing. Because if something or someone had slipped he had not one single idea what or who.

The sound of the returning mower again began to fog his thoughts. He wondered uneasily where Shirley was. They had put her into the second car, but they had not thereafter driven in convoy. The odds were that she was also in this same house by now, but the damn mower effectively drowned out any sound there might have been of her arrival—

Maybe not quite no ideas. If what Sir Thomas and Tony Handforth-Jones had said was true about Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Audley keeping his wife out of his professional affairs then he hadn't spotted them as American agents straight off. Indeed, it was even possible that he hadn't suspected anything was wrong until the Special Branch men had appeared.

Everything depended on how good Howard Morris's security was. If it was good… then perhaps it wasn't the fact that they were Americans that was bugging the British, but simply their interest in the time-fused Billy Bullitt.

But either way, the show had to go on. Because whatever happened the CIA was never going to admit that they'd ever heard of Captain and Mrs Sheldon, that was for sure after what Schreiner had said. They were absolutely on their own.

The door opened behind him.

"Captain Sheldon—hullo there."

Tall, dark-haired, good-looking, mid-thirties.

"I'm sorry we've kept you waiting like this, Captain."

Plus a slight limp and a decidedly upper-class English accent: a very different type from the two Special Branch men and their drivers, unless British police recruitment had changed radically.

"My name's Roskill—Hugh Roskill."

Mosby ignored the outstretched hand. "Where's my wife?"

Roskill looked suitably apologetic. "Quite safe and sound, I assure you, Captain. In fact, they're just rustling her up some lunch at the moment—I gather you both missed out on it. We're sorry about that, too. Can I order you something to keep the wolf from the door?"

The man was different, but the idiom was the same: the British were devilish sorry about the whole beastly business. But one way or another that business was going to be transacted all the same.

"When can I see her?"

"Very soon. Just one or two questions first." Roskill grinned. "How about that lunch?"

Mosby shook his head. "Being arrested has taken my appetite away, Mr Roskill."

"Good lord—you haven't been arrested, Captain! We simply want to know what you're up to."

"Who's 'we'?"

"The powers-that-be." Roskill waved a hand vaguely. "The authorities. A rose by any other name…

Does it matter?"

Mosby studied the Englishman. This soft approach could be a carefully calculated phase of the breaking-down process, or it could be that they still genuinely weren't sure about him.

"To me it does. I'm a serving officer with the United States Air Force, attached to NATO—but I guess you must know that already, huh?"

Roskill nodded. "Of course."

"Uh-huh. Well, being—picked up, shall we say?—being picked up by your Special Branch isn't going to make me Man of the Year with my commanding officer."

"Yes, I can imagine that." Roskill smiled sympathetically. "Commanding officers are notoriously—

narrow-minded."

"That's right. No matter I haven't done one goddamn thing, I'm going to do the rest of my time on a weather station on Greenland. And up until this afternoon I've enjoyed it over here—so has my wife."

"I'm gratified to hear it. But—"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Mosby held up his hand. "Let me finish, sir. My wife wanted me to phone the embassy when we were back at Dr Handforth-Jones's house. And if I was going by the book now I ought to be demanding you let me phone the base. But I have the impression that somehow I've got into something way over my head—I don't know what, but it's sure as hell not parking on a double yellow line." He looked around him. "All this… and now you, Mr Roskill."

"Me?"

"You don't look like a cop to me."

"What do I look like?"

"I don't know…" Mosby paused. "But maybe someone I can make a deal with, I'm hoping."

"Well, well… now you are beginning to interest me, Captain. What sort of deal?"

Mosby shrugged. "You name it. You want me to answer questions—ask the questions. You want me to do something —within reason I'll do it."

"In exchange for what?"

"In exchange for I don't make any trouble, phoning the embassy—and you don't make any trouble calling General Ellsworth if I've accidentally stepped out of line somehow."

Roskill looked at him quizzically. "You think you may have stepped out of line?"

Mosby grimaced. "I don't know all your laws. I guess I'll know when you start asking the questions."

"But you can't guess what?"

"I can't, no… Unless the Special Branch is interested in illegal archaeology—if there is such a crime."

"And you've done that?" Roskill raised an eyebrow. "Gone treasure hunting, you mean?"

"No." Mosby shook his head. "But someone might think I had, that's all."

"I see." Roskill considered Mosby thoughtfully for a moment or two. "Well now… I'm not exactly empowered to make deals, but it seems reasonable enough. So let's just try it for size and see how it looks—right?"

"You mean a gentleman's agreement?"

"If you like—a gentleman's agreement."

Mosby swallowed ostentatiously. "Okay."

"Fine. You're with the 7438th Bombardment Wing—F-llls with an attached Phantom Squadron?"

"Correct."

"Stationed at RAF Wodden. Does the wind still blow up there six days out of seven?"

"You know it?"

"I knew it years ago. Built during the war as a basic training field—for Tiger Moths. But when I was there it was Jet Provosts." .

"You RAF, then?"

"Once upon a time." RoskiU's lip twisted as if the memory was painful to him. "You must have done a lot of work on it since my day."

"They haven't stopped since they moved in four years back. When the new runway's ready they'll be able to take anything that flies now."

"'They'? But of course you're not a career officer, are you. A three-year volunteer?"

"That's right."

"Which gives you a choice of foreign postings. And you chose England."

"We all make mistakes."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Roskill smiled. "And you're a dentist. Which makes you the very man I want to see, actually."

"Don't tell me you've got toothache," Mosby started to smile back, then noticed that RoskiU's smile had gone. "You have to be joking."

"I wish I was." Roskill sighed. "Truth is, if I hadn't had to come down here I should have seen my own dentist by now."

Mosby blinked with surprise. "Well, there's nothing I can do about it—I didn't bring my chair with me."

"Ah, but you can put my mind at rest—that's the least you can do. And knowing what's wrong will take some of the pain away."

It had to be some sort of test, thought Mosby. But why should they want to test him? The Special Branch man had already examined his ID card.

Then professional curiosity welled up inside him. This was one thing he could do, anyway. "You've got a problem?"

"Not at the moment. But last night after dinner—I'd just finished eating as a matter of fact—it was excruciating. Knocked me sideways for a few minutes, but then it went away. And then this morning, just as I was finishing breakfast—same thing: fearful pain." He looked at Mosby expectantly.

"And at lunchtime?"

"Well, nothing really. But I only had a salad—I didn't want a third go of it, I tell you."

"You had coffee?"

"Coffee?" Roskill frowned. "Yes, I did."

"But it was lukewarm, I guess."

"That's right." Roskill stared at him. "How did you know?"

"And the other two times it was hot, eh? When you had the pain, that is?" Mosby nodded. "Come on over to the window and I'll just have a look."

He led the way to the French windows. The man on the mower was still hard at work. So was the man with the dog.

"Now, just open wide."

"Don't you want me to tell you where it hurt?"

"If it's what I think it is I'll find it. Just open wide."

He peered into the Englishman's mouth. Someone had worked hard on it over the years, but then that figured: the English dentists were paid for what they did, not what they prevented. He worked his way around the jaw, for one happy minute far from reality.

"Okay… Well, you've got a semi-erupted wisdom tooth at the back there, with a large gum flap. But that's not your problem just at this moment."

"So what is my problem?"

"Posterior left six—the first molar. You're starting an abscess. There's a swelling on the gum, the inflammation's plain to see. Your dentist'll deal with it in no time."

"How?"

"He'll extract the tooth, and then you'll be okay. No problem."

"No problem. I see." Roskill grimaced. "And that was what the coffee grounds told you?"

"Sure, because I've come across it before. People like to drink their coffee when it's hot. And with an abscess you get small amounts of gas formed, so the heat from the coffee causes the gas to expand and you get terrible pressure on the inflamed nerves. Like you said, it'll knock you sideways until it cools Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

down again." He looked at Roskill candidly. "So n6w you know I'm a dentist."

"You're cold-blooded enough for one, I'll say that."

"But there must be easier ways of checking up on me than finding a—a whatever you are—with toothache to diagnose."

"Of course. We could have gone straight through to your commanding officer at Wodden. 'We have this man who says he's one of your officers, General. Height five foot ten, brown hair, born in Richmond, Virginia—'"

"You've made your point." Mosby raised a hand in surrender. "Except I never told you where I was born."

"Oh, we've done a little checking here and there."

I'll bet, thought Mosby. But that sort of checking must have started earlier than this morning, and possibly even earlier than yesterday, allowing for the Atlantic time difference. In fact it could only mean that they'd started running the check almost as soon as he'd made contact with Audley.

"And did you turn up anything interesting?"

Roskill shook his head slowly. "I'm bound to admit we didn't. Your life is an open book, Captain Sheldon, and a remarkably easy one to read."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mr Roskill."

"But you didn't disappoint us—we don't disappoint so easily. It merely made us wonder whether you were who you said you were."

"Whether-r-who?" Mosby screwed up his face in bewilderment. "Now you really have to be joking."

"Stranger things have happened, believe me."

"You're telling me! They're happening right at this moment. Only—I was thinking—maybe you should check up with my wife. She just might be able to help you make your minds up."

"Unless she was part of the act, of course."

"Shirley?" Mosby packed scorn into his voice. "Oh, come on! I know I'm kind of ordinary-looking, but you'd have to look some to get a ringer for her. And anyway, why the heck should anyone want to claim to be me—or us—for God's sake? What have we got that anyone else could possibly want?"

Roskill shook his head. "It isn't quite like that, Captain Sheldon. As I told you, we've done a little checking up on you already. And on your wife."

"And we're a couple of open books."

"So it would seem. All except the last page."

Mosby frowned. "The last page? I don't get you?"

"You don't?" Roskill gazed at him in silence for a second or two. "But you're interested in King Arthur, aren't you?"

"In—" Mosby matched silence for silence. "Yes, I am… in a way. But what's that got to do with you?"

Roskill grinned. "For a man who's promised to give all the answers you ask a lot of questions."

Mosby lifted his hand helplessly. "Sorry. You're absolutely right, it's just—hell—okay, ask the questions, then. Yes, I'm interested in Arthurian history."

"And Badon Hill in particular?"

Mosby drew a deep breath. "You've been talking to Audley—and that isn't a question. Because if you've been talking to Audley we can cut the double-talk."

"What double-talk?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"He's one of your civil servants. A Special Branch man—or whatever you are—asks him a question, he's not going to tell you to get lost. Or make deals. He's going to talk, right?"

The corner of Roskill's mouth twitched, but he merely nodded.

"Right. Then I guess you know everything I told him— right?" Mosby nodded back. "So I'm a dentist I don't have to be stupid into the bargain. And I'm not going to ask what's so terrible about looking for Badon Hill, but I'm sure as hell going to think about it until you tell me."

"My dear man—think away by all means. But we're just rather surprised that your friend Major Davies didn't bother to tell you, that's all," said Roskill airily.

"He didn't have the chance, is why," said Mosby. "He—"

"Yes? He—what?"

Mosby stared at him. "You sound as though you know."

"Know what?"

"What Davies was going to tell me—about Badon. The way you spoke."

"But of course we know. What I'm trying to ascertain now is what you know. Or, to put it rather more charitably, I'm trying hard to believe that you're half as innocent as you seem."

Mosby's panic button was jammed in the 'on' position and the red lights in his brain flickered like a firework display. The British knew what Davies had been up to. Just like that: they knew, and it looked as though they had known for some time.

He scrabbled desperately in his memory. But only the old bookseller's taped voice came back to him: I told him if it was true it was a great discovery. And he said 'And a great load of trouble, too' . And then Schreiner's voice, leaving no room for misunderstanding: If there's trouble you are strictly on your own… what matters is the CIA remains uninvolved.

Roskill looked at him hopefully. "Well, do any answers occur to you now, Captain?"

"Answers?" All the possible avenues of action opened up before Mosby briefly, and then the gates closed on all but one. "For God's sake, you must have the answers. All I've got now is questions."

Roskill shrugged. "Very well. If that's the way you want to play it…"

"I'm not playing anything any way. I just—"

"Of course you're not." Roskill lifted the phone at his elbow and dialled a single number. "You're just—

hullo, sir… Yes, I'm ready now… No, he hasn't… No, I don't…" He smiled at Mosby "Yes, he is—and I've got an abscess starting under my first molar to prove it… Quite so, sir— yes. I think he's a good dentist. And I also think he's a good liar."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

X

AN IMMENSE MARBLE fireplace, surmounted by an equally huge carved coat-of-arms, dominated the drawing room. But neither of the two men who stood in front of it were dwarfed by their setting: Audley, exuding his Ozymandias aura, looked as though he owned the place, and the man beside him, though half a head shorter, looked as though he owned Audley.

Mosby's eyes strayed back for a second to the coat-of-arms, which was held aloft by two winged dragons breathing heraldic fire. So that made four dragons all told, he reckoned dispassionately. Four dragons versus one dentist.

Roskill appeared at his shoulder.

Five dragons. Even Sir Lancelot might have baulked at those odds. And on an empty stomach too.

"Good afternoon, Captain Sheldon," said Audley's owner politely. "My name's Clinton…"

The empty stomach caved in on itself: the Number One Dragon himself.

"Mr Clinton," Mosby was aware that he sounded nervous, but this was one time when the dentist and the CIA man were in perfect accord. "Hullo, David."

"Sir Frederick Clinton," murmured Roskill in his ear.

"Sir Frederick…" Mosby repeated the name mechanically.

"Sit down, Captain." Sir Frederick waved towards the settee. "Make yourself comfortable. Then we can discuss what we're going to do with you."

Mosby sank on to the cushions. The softness caught him by surprise: he sank and sank until he felt he was being engulfed, while the three Englishmen settled themselves into wing-chairs from which they could look down on him. If this was an example of British psychological warfare it was plain that they were dirty fighters.

"Good…" Sir Frederick interlaced his fingers across his stomach. "Now tell me, Captain—just for the record—are you or are you not an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency?"

"Am I— what!" Mosby struggled to raise himself from the settee's embrace.

"Are you CIA?" asked Audley in a tone only a little less mild than Sir Frederick's.

With an effort Mosby levered himself to the edge of the cushion. Even though this had the effect of bringing his knees up awkwardly under his chin it was a slightly less demoralising posture nevertheless.

"You have to be crazy. Why the hell should I be CIA?"

"Meaning, I take it, that you're not?" Sir Frederick nodded. "Which is in accord with what the CIA itself says."

"The CIA?" Mosby blinked with bewilderment.

"Which is what they would say under the circumstances, of course," said Roskill in his bored voice.

"You called the CIA—about me?" Mosby said in a strangled voice. "Just like that? Oh, brother!"

"Don't distress yourself, Captain—at least, not on their account," said Sir Frederick. "They gave you a clean bill of health."

"Oh, sure. I'll be clean all the way back to the States when my commanding officer hears about this."

Mosby gave Roskill a bitter look. "Some gentleman's agreement."

Sir Frederick looked at Roskill questioningly. "What gentleman's ageement?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"He seems more worried about his C.O. than about us, sir," explained Roskill. "He likes it here, apparently."

"Correction— liked" said Mosby. "And I'm beginning to get tired of being pushed around for no reason."

"When you haven't done anything wrong?"

"That's dead right." Mosby looked from one to the other. "Look, so I was searching for the site of Badon Hill—I admit it. But it isn't any crime. You can't hold me for just looking."

"I wouldn't bet on that," said Roskill. "We've a lot of old laws you never heard of, not to mention the new anti-terrorist regulations."

"Anti-terrorist? I'm not a goddamn terrorist."

"Of course you aren't," said Sir Frederick soothingly. "You were simply looking for Badon and your search led you to Billy Bullitt."

"That's… right," Mosby's suspicion that Bullitt was the cause of his difficulties hardened. He pointed towards Audley. "It was David found him though. Until yesterday afternoon I'd never even heard of him."

"Indeed?"

"Sure. Though now I come to think of it, it was Sir Thomas Gracey told us about him. Wasn't that so, David?"

Audley regarded him impassively.

"Strange you'd never heard of him, when you were both looking for Mons Badonicus," said Sir Frederick. "Did Major Davies never mention him, then?"

Mosby frowned. "Huh?"

"Obviously not. And by the same token I presume he never mentioned the Novgorod Bede?"

Jesus! Was there anything they didn't know? thought Mosby despairingly. The common sense cancelled despair: there had to be more in this than mere cat-and-mouse cruelty. Sir Frederick Clinton was too important to waste his time merely putting the boot into the CIA, no matter it was a recognised international sport.

"The Novgorod Bede? I never heard of it."

"He never mentioned it?"

"No, he didn't."

"He doesn't seem to have told you very much, your friend."

"Well… not about what he was doing." This was treacherous ground. "We just talked about Arthurian history in general. I never knew for sure he was really on to something until after he was killed."

"So you didn't know he'd discovered the site of Mons Badonicus?"

Mosby shook his head cautiously. "I still don't know that for sure. It was—well, it was just an inference from what he told my wife… plus the stuff he left behind with us."

"The evidence—yes. We'd very much like to examine that, Captain."

"Help yourself. It's in the trunk of my car." Mosby raised a mental prayer that Howard Morris's ground-bait—lifted from a dozen obscure museum collections—was as authentic —and as untraceable—as he had claimed it was.

"Ah, I don't mean what you showed David. You mentioned some other material… bones, and so forth.

Could we send someone to collect that?"

Even more treacherous ground: the other material existed strictly in Howard Morris's ingenious Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

imagination. So they had to be stalled—'

"Sure. Only I'd have to go with them— I've stored it next to my surgery on the base. I'd only just started examining it."

It was the best he could do, but it was pretty thin. The truth was, however good his own cover, the Davies part of his story had never been designed to be tested to destruction by the British themselves.

Already the hairline cracks in it were beginning to show.

But the man Roskill's words on the phone to Sir Frederick— I think he's a good liar— meant that those cracks were still suspicions, not certainties; and there were limits to how far the British could go with a serving officer in the USAF, no matter what they suspected he might be, particularly if they really had checked up with the Station Chief in London. In fact, the worst they could do was to ship him home as an undesirable, and that still gave him a margin of time to play with.

Except that margin was a wasting asset, he sensed that as he felt their eyes on him. And the only thing to do with a wasting asset was play it to the limit; attack was not just his last line of defence left, but his plain duty.

He stared back at Sir Frederick. "Now come on, Mr—Sir Frederick—it's time someone answered some of my questions. Like why I'm supposed to be a liar—and a CIA man—for for a start. And what the hell I'm supposed to have done that's so awful."

The Number One Dragon smiled thinly at him. "And where Mons Badonicus is?"

"And that too, yes. Did he really find it?"

"Is that all?"

Mosby thought for a moment. "I'd like to see my wife."

The Dragon nodded. "Well, that I can certainly do." He extended the nod to Roskill. "Hugh, would you ask Mrs Fitzgibbon to bring Mrs Sheldon along here as soon as she's through. And you might see if they can manage a cup of tea for us at the same time."

And cucumber sandwiches, Mosby thought irrelevantly, looking at his watch. It was already past five; he wondered if anyone had bothered to tell Billy Bullitt that his American guests, like Miss Otis, wouldn't be keeping their engagement with him.

"Well, David?" Sir Frederick switched to Audley. "What do you think now?"

Audley's pale eyes flicked over Mosby, giving no hint of what was behind them. "I haven't changed.

What doesn't make sense can't be right."

"As your old Latin master used to say… I know—

'Est summum nefas fallere,

Deceit is gross impiety.'

David sets great store by the observations of his long-defunct Latin master, Captain Sheldon… Do you know where we are now?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Do you know the name of this place?"

"No, I don't. Your men forgot to tell me."

"Weren't you curious about it?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Mosby shrugged. "I guess I was relieved—just so it wasn't a police station. So what's special about it?"

"If I tell you it could delay your departure somewhat. Would that bother you?"

"Depends how long the delay could be." Mosby looked around the room. "I can think of worse places to be… delayed in."

Again that thin smile. "It's where you wanted to be."

"Where I wanted to be? I don't get you."

"Camelot."

"Cam—" Mosby frowned. "There's no such place."

"There was no such place." Sir Frederick shook his head. "So one place is as good as another, and this place is as good as any. If King Arthur is alive anywhere he lives here, you might say."

"You're still not getting through to me."

"I'm not?"

" Est summum nefas fallere," murmured Audley.

Sir Frederick laughed. "There—now David doesn't believe you!"

Mosby gave Audley an angry glance. "Frankly, I don't give a damn. I'm not interested in Camelot and I wasn't looking for it. Camelot and Badon Hill are two plain different things— which David knows damn well."

"Of course," agreed Sir Frederick soothingly. "But Billy Bullitt and Badon are not two plain different things, you would agree I'm sure."

"Billy Bullitt?" Involuntarily Mosby found himself looking up at the coat-of-arms. "You mean this is—"

"Red dragon of the Britons, white dragon of the Saxons," Sir Frederick nodded. "The College of Heralds let old Professor Bullitt have them as—ah—'supporters', I think is the correct term, in 1928 when he quartered the Imberham arms of his mother's family. And you can see what they let him have in the bottom left quarter, eh?"

Mosby examined what looked like a shaggy dog, but was obviously a heraldic bear.

"Up until 1924 this was Imberham Manor. But that was the year he published his famous 'Britain in the Dark Ages', and he renamed the manor in honour of his obsession. So you might say that Billy Bullitt grew up in Camelot."

"And he's been looking for the Holy Grail ever since," murmured Audley. "Or his own version of it."

"Following in grandfather's footsteps, naturally. Right down to grandfather's motto, which you will observe just below the shield—'What I seek, I know'. Apparently a line from Matthew Arnold's

'Memorial Verses': All this I bear, for what I seek, I know. The College of Heralds enjoyed the 'bear' pun, heraldic sense of humour being what it is."

"Is that a fact?" Mosby overlaid his unease with feigned interest. The last time someone had taken for granted his ability to equate bears with King Arthur had been in the hall at St Veryan's, and the someone had been Howard Morris. It made him wonder, if the British knew so much about what was going on, whether they were not also well aware of Operation Bear. "And does this mean I'm going to get to talk to Group Captain Bullitt after all?"

"If you still want to talk to him. And always supposing he wants to talk to you."

Mosby cocked his head on one side. "Why shouldn't he want to talk to me? Is Badon Hill some kind of top secret, maybe?"

"That's the general idea—you're catching on at last, Captain." Sir Frederick nodded. "Plus the fact that Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

he's taken rather strongly against the CIA—doesn't care for you at all at the moment."

Mosby stiffened. "But I'm not CIA, for God's sake—I thought we'd got that straight."

"We only have your word for that."

"And their word too," Mosby played his deuce with all the confidence of a man convinced he had an ace. "Isn't that worth anything? I thought your security people worked hand in hand with ours—?" He broke off lamely as he saw the expression on Sir Frederick's face. "Uh-huh—I get it… Blood isn't thicker than water any more…" He spread his hands helplessly. "Well, then there's no way I can prove I'm not what I'm not, I guess. Except if I was I suppose I'd have some smart way of proving that I wasn't."

Sir Frederick turned towards Audley. "Well, David. Over to you."

Audley considered Mosby silently for five seconds before speaking. "I told you: I'd need time. And you say we haven't any."

"Today's Thursday. The deadline is midday Friday for Sunday—and that was a personal favour to me."

Whose deadline?

"Not even with a D-Notice?" Audley shook his head, rejecting his own question before it had been answered. "No, that wouldn't hold them this time. You couldn't make it stick."

"I wouldn't even try. The Government wouldn't wear it if I did—we'd be tarred with the same brush, and so would they. They wouldn't wear it, and they'd be right: we'd just be trying to hold the lid down, and it would blow us to kingdom come. If not in our own press, then for sure in the foreign press—including the American. They'd make a meal of it."

The two Englishmen gazed at each other, oblivious of Mosby.

Finally Sir Frederick nodded. "So it's your way or no way at all."

"I get whatever I need?"

"Just ask. If anyone talks back to you refer them to me. I shall be on the end of a phone."

"And they're both mine?" Audley pointed to Mosby.

"Hey! What is this?" exclaimed Mosby.

"They are yours until midday tomorrow." Sir Frederick turned to Mosby. "As of this moment, Captain Sheldon, you and your wife are in the absolute charge of Dr Audley. What he says, you will listen to.

What he orders, you will do."

"Like hell I will!"

"I agree, though I would place the emphasis differently: like hell you will." Sir Frederick's tone was still conversational, as though he was clarifying a minor point of semantics. But that figured easily enough, because big dragons like Sir Frederick Clinton didn't have to breathe fire to get their own way; with them a glance was as good as a roasting.

"That sounds like a threat."

"A threat? My dear Sheldon, I don't need to threaten you. The situation you are in threatens you. You maintain that you don't know what is happening, that you are innocent… and as it happens I do not believe you—I believe you are a most absolute and accomplished liar… but your innocence or guilt are now completely irrelevant—"

"Well, it damn well isn't to me! You can't—"

Sir Frederick raised his hand. "Please hear me out, Captain. It is for your own good, I do assure you…

You see, if you are a CIA operative you are in very great trouble at this moment—the biggest you are Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

ever likely to be in this side of the Iron Curtain. But if you are what you claim to be you are almost certainly in even greater trouble, both you and your wife."

Mosby stared at him. "Greater—? I don't understand."

"David will explain to you. And then he will require your co-operation." Sir Frederick paused to let the words sink in. "And I want you to give him that co-operation as though your life and your liberty depended on it. Because they do, Captain—yours and your wife's."

"Our lives?"

"If you are innocent." Sir Frederick nodded. "And your liberty if you are guilty."

"Guilty of what, for God's sake?"

"That again David will tell you. But look at it this way, if you like, Captain: you approached him two days ago and asked him to help you. And that's just what he's going to do… And a few minutes ago you offered Squadron Leader Roskill a deal—a gentleman's agreement. So now if David offers you another deal… my advice to you is take it. Because you'll never get a better offer."

Mosby felt his cheek muscles tighten uncontrollably. Maybe that passage between the two of them a few moments before had been for his sole benefit— the Government wouldn't wear it … it would blow us to kingdom come—as part of the psychological process of scaring the bejasus out of him. But now he had a gut feeling that it hadn't been at all, and that Clinton was here not so much to see him as for an emergency briefing with Audley, his Number Four top trouble-shooter. Which meant that beneath the Ivy League urbanity the British were running even more shit-scared and desperate than the Americans.

Jesus! And what made that worse was that the British knew why they were running—

Sir Frederick's eyes were on him—the Big Dragon's eyes that burned little dragons into crisps.

"Well, Sheldon?"

He could almost feel the heat.

"Okay. Whatever you want. Just so you protect my wife."

"We shall try to protect you both… By that I take it you still deny any connection with your CIA people?"

No choice. Even with Shirley at risk, no choice.

"It's the truth. But since you all think I'm a liar I guess there's not much point saying so."

"Not all of us." Sir Frederick stood up. "David over there believes you, for one."

"David?" Mosby looked at Audley in surprise. "Well—that's great."

Great like a gift-wrapped time-bomb.

"Convenient, certainly." Sir Frederick nodded to Audley before turning finally back to Mosby as he began to move towards the door. "Make the most of it, Sheldon, that's all. Good afternoon to you."

Mosby watched the door close. For the second time in one day he'd been badly frightened, but each time he'd been too busy—or too stupid—to realise the extent of the danger until it had passed.

"Phew!" he breathed out gratefully. There was nothing to be gained from trying to hide what must be pretty damn obvious.

Audley settled himself more comfortably in his chair. "He had you rattled, then?"

"You can say that again." Mosby studied the big Englishman. It was almost like he too was relieved to see Clinton's back, though that could hardly be due to fear—more likely he just had no taste for playing second fiddle. "Top brass always makes me rattle… And he's your boss, eh?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"You could say so."

"And that makes you—" Mosby clamped his mouth shut as though he'd thought better of what he'd been about to say.

"Makes me what?"

Mosby shook his head. "Just… I was remembering your wife said you worked for the Government, that's all."

"Does it worry you?"

"Not so you believe I'm telling the truth. Was that on the level?"

"I chose not to believe you work for the CIA, if that's what you mean."

"It'll sure do for a start. But do I get to ask why?" Mosby grinned nervously. "Or you could tell me why everyone else thinks the opposite, I don't mind which, so I get some sort of answer."

"But of course." Audley sounded positively amiable now, almost friendly. "To take the uncharitable view first, quite simply—they were expecting you."

"Me?"

"You meaning the CIA… Let me put it another way: if you were a policeman and a rich man came to you and said he thought he was about to be burgled, what would you do?"

"Well, if I was a cop… I guess I'd stake out his place—is that what you want me to say?"

"Exactly. And then when a stranger turns up—a stranger with the wrong sort of accent, carrying a sack and a set of house-breaking tools—you'd be inclined to take that uncharitable view, I rather think.

Wouldn't you?"

Mosby frowned. "Sure. But—"

Audley cut him off. "I know what you're going to say: if the burglar arrived in company with a detective superintendent—and if he could prove the detective himself had suggested they should visit the rich man's house in the first place? Is that it?"

"Something like, I guess."

"Then you could have a bent copper, or a stupid one. So it was fortunate for me that I checked up with my police station first, otherwise I might be in quite a spot now." This time there was no amusement in Audley's smile, and some of the friendliness had drained from his voice. "But I did check. And so the official view is that the CIA was perhaps trying to be a little too clever for its own good."

Mosby cursed Howard Morris and Schreiner both for so grossly miscalculating Audley's reaction. How could they have been so hopelessly off beam, though?

"The official view? But not yours?"

"No, not mine. I knew the CIA has its little moments of weakness, but I can't see my old friend Howard Morris dropping a clanger like that. He knows me much too well."

It was macabre, the way Audley's mind had travelled along the same line, to the same destination. And the wrong one, too.

"Howard—?"

"Morris. CIA Field Control, UK. Quite a sharp fellow. He'd never have sent his burglar to me—unless he wanted me to know about the burglary…"

Unless? The word pumped Mosby's heart painfully. It wasn't possible, it surely wasn't possible, that Shirley and he had been deliberately sacrificed to stir up the British. That had been a contingency, but not the objective. And yet unless was there now, squeezing his chest—

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"… which is just about the last thing in the world that he'd be wanting at this moment," Audley continued reflectively. "Which means you aren't his burglar "

"But I'm still a burglar?" It was no sweat to sound puzzled.

"Oh, yes—you are a burglar. I've no doubt about that."

Mosby nodded. "Uh-huh? And just what am I supposed to be stealing?"

"Why, Mons Badonicus, of course, Captain Sheldon—or may I call you Mosby? It fits your character better."

"It does? Well, be my guest. You can call me William Clarke Quantrill or John Wilkes Booth for all I care, just so you tell me how I can steal a battlefield, that's all."

"By finding it."

"That's no crime."

Audley pursed his lips. "Now there you're wrong. In most civilised countries 'stealing by finding' is a crime. If your Confederate ancestor had made away with that Yankee payroll he happened to find behind the lines…"

"But a battlefield isn't a payroll."

"This isn't just any battlefield. This is an extra special one—King Arthur's greatest victory, no less.

Knowledge like that could be worth more than a Yankee payroll. Not only could be—but is."

Audley's sudden conversion to King Arthur was curious, to say the least, thought Mosby. But if he really believed that money was the objective then it was time to let a little honest avarice show through.

"You really think so?" He looked at the Englishman sidelong.

"I know so. In fact one of the ironies of your position, Mosby, is that you don't seem to know just how valuable it is. It's so valuable it's already killed four men, and maybe as many as seven."

" Killed—?" Mosby's mind reeled at the arithmetic: Davies and his navigator—the airman Sergeant Gallagher had phoned him about… that made three. And if the British knew about Thickset and Tall and Thin… Jesus! But even that only made five.

"And destroyed a four million dollar aircraft," added Audley. "Or whatever the going price of a Phantom is these days."

"You can't mean it!" Mosby whispered.

"But I do mean it." Audley focussed on a point midway between them. "It's rather like an old Richard Widmark film I saw years ago, when I was still going to the cinema… What was it—'Panic in the Streets' its title was, I think.

All the police in this seaport—New Orleans, somewhere like that—were hunting this petty thief, so the other criminals thought he had pulled off a big job of some sort and they hunted him too. Only the truth was he had the plague—the Black Death. Which is what Mons Badonicus would have been for you, Mosby… If you'd found it on your own it would have killed you, almost certainly."

There was a clatter of tea-cups beyond the door to the hall.

"That's the second irony," said Audley. "And the third one is that you never really needed to look for Mons Badonicus at all: it was right under your feet all the time."

Mosby looked at his feet.

"Not here, man, not here—Wodden."

Wodden?

"Wodden equals Mons Badonicus," said Audley. "You've got our battle under the new runway Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

extension, so far as we can make out."

The door opened behind Mosby.

"Tea up," said Roskill. "And one American wife, undamaged, as per specification."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

XI

THE AMERICAN WIFE certainly appeared undamaged; indeed, with every hair in place right down to the two artfully arranged tendrils curling on her cheeks, she looked as though she'd just stepped out of a beauty salon. Which could mean that the female of the British dragon species was less daunting than the male, even allowing for the fact that Shirley would have seemed just as edible to him on the tilting boat-deck of the Titanic.

Which, when he thought about it, was how the floor of Camelot House felt now.

She stared at him from the doorway. "You okay, honey?"

"I'm fine."

Fine meaning unsinkable.

"You look a bit peaky. I guess you know they think you're some kind of spy, huh?" She moved to one side to let a diminutive grey-uniformed maid push in the tea-trolley, fixing Audley with a hostile frown which remained on target like a gyroscopically-controlled cannon.

"David doesn't think so," said Mosby.

"He doesn't?" She assimilated the information without blinking. "Well, I should think not… Some spy!"

Hostility for Audley was replaced by derision for absent idiots.

"He thinks I'm a burglar."

"A—what?" The frown came back on target. 'What has he burgled? The plans of the Round Table and the formula for getting the Sword out of the Stone?" Mosby winced at the Arthurian reminder— under the new runway extension at Wodden—but before he could react the little maid came towards him with a tray.

"With milk?"

Small upturned nose, frizzy blonde hair and that famous sensual gap between the large upper incisors reinforced by a trim little body in the well-cut grey uniform. Only the candid brown eyes belied the general impression of childish sexiness.

"Thank you."

What the hell was he doing, fancying the hired help when the ship was sinking under him?

"And sugar, Captain Sheldon?"

He did a double-take. The voice was wrong and the manner was wrong and the uniform was too well cut to be a uniform. Plus, above all, no mere maid would know his name… But she still looked no more than eighteen.

She smiled into his confusion. "My name's Fitzgibbon, Captain. I'm the 'they' your wife was talking about."

He added ten years to his estimate, thought still against the visual evidence. Perhaps the British were recruiting them straight from High School now.

"Pleased to meet you all, Mrs Fitzgibbon—and no sugar, thank you," he heard himself drawl in his best Virginian. "I'm sorry to disappoint you… by not being a CIA man, that is."

"That's quite all right, Captain. I was only asking a routine question."

"Routine fiddlesticks," said Shirley. "And she wanted to know more about Di Davies than about you, Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

honey."

"And were you able to satisfy her, Mrs Sheldon?" asked Audley.

"Seeing as how I hardly knew the man, the whole thing was a waste of time. He was my husband's friend, not mine."

Audley looked towards Mrs Fitzgibbon. "Well, Frances?"

"I agree… Except I'd go further: I very much doubt that Mrs Sheldon ever met Major Davies, beyond perhaps saying 'good morning' to him."

"That's ridiculous!" snapped Shirley.

"She knows her cover story perfectly," continued Frances Fitzgibbon. "She is extremely resourceful in blocking questions beyond it. I would think it unlikely that anything she has told me will conflict seriously with what her husband may have told you. Not so far, anyway— But I don't think the story would stand up to separate in-depth interrogation. Either they didn't have time to put it together in total detail, or they never expected it to be professionally tested."

"Or they are amateurs," said Audley.

Frances Fitzgibbon considered Shirley for a moment. "If she is, she's a natural."

Mosby could feel the water-tight bulkheads beneath him giving way one after another. If he was going to save anything from this disaster, never mind Shirley's skin and his own, it would be from a lifeboat. It was time to abandon the ship.

"Is everyone going crazy?" said Shirley. "I just don't understand what's—"

"Shut up, honey," said Mosby in a flat voice.

"What?" she rounded on him. "Are you going to stand there and—"

"I said 'shut up'. So shut up." Mosby stared round him with what he hoped was the air of a defiant trapped rat. His eyes met Hugh Roskill's over a steaming teacup. "And don't drink that tea, Squadron Leader—it'll blow your abscess through your jaw."

Roskill lowered his cup as hurriedly as if he had smelt bitter almonds in it. "Damnation! I'd clean forgotten." He grinned at Mosby. "Thanks, Sheldon."

"Think nothing of it. I guess I'm a better dentist than I am a burglar." He shrugged at Audley. "I should have stuck to teeth."

Audley nodded slowly. "You didn't really know Davies, did you? Not as a friend."

"Not really. I just fixed his teeth."

Shirley drew in a sharp breath. "Mose—what are you saying?"

"I'm letting it go, honey. It's gotten too rich for us—and too dangerous."

"Too dangerous?"

"David says it's already killed a bunch of guys."

"Killed?" Shirley's voice cracked. "I don't understand."

"Neither do I. But he's not kidding. And it wouldn't be any use to us if he was. Because he already knows where Badon is: it's under the goddamn runway at Wodden, that's where it is. Right—under—the

—goddamn—runway."

"Runway extension," corrected Audley.

"The runway extension." Mosby loaded the words with bitterness and kept his eyes on Shirley. "Davies must have talked to someone else after all."

Shirley licked her lips. "It can't be—you said it was a hill. Badon Hill."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"But it is a hill," said Roskill. "The whole of RAF Wodden is high ground: it's a plateau. And the western spur slopes up to the highest point, where the old windmill used to be—Windmill Knob, they used to call it. They demolished it in 1940, when the RAF moved in, but the foundations were still there in the grass when I was training there twelve years ago."

But not there any more, thought Mosby with growing dismay. The whole of the western end had been thoroughly levelled, bulldozed and landscaped like a pool table, and the spoil spread far and wide into every undulation of the main ridge.

If Badon had been there—

"And you never suspected it was on the base?" Roskill sounded almost sympathetic. "You didn't—"

"Let it be, Hugh," said Audley. "There's no need to probe the wound now."

It took every bit of Mosby's self-restraint not to look at Audley in surprise. This was the exact moment to probe the wound, while it was raw and painful; and ever since the drift of Audley's new scenario had become clear he had been feverishly constructing his role in it as a greedy little interloper who had planned to cash in on accidental knowledge of the dead pilot's discovery. Yet now Audley was deliberately passing up his best chance of quizzing him.

"The only thing I would like to know," said Audley casually, as though it was an afterthought, "is how you acquired the Badon artefacts—just for the record."

Mosby felt almost relieved at getting one of the key questions after all, no matter how awkward; it reassured him that Audley was still running to form.

"Yeah… well, what I told you wasn't so far off the real thing…" He shrugged. If you have to make up a story quickly, keep it simple and don't bother about the loose ends. Let the other guy try and tie them up for you— he knows that the truth is untidy. "He asked me to look after them for him. I got this storeroom behind my surgery—"

"Although he hardly knew you?" cut in Frances Fitzgibbon.

"Not 'although', but 'because'," said Audley. "Davies chose Mosby because he didn't know him. And because there's nothing suspicious about visiting a dentist. If there had been we'd have one very dead dentist by now."

"What do you mean—dead dentist?" Shirley had entirely abandoned her Scarlett O'Hara characterisation for a more classical one: this was Lady Macbeth frightened and beginning to crack under the pressure of unforeseen disasters.

"Exactly what I say, I'm afraid, Mrs Sheldon. The fact is, you've both had a very narrow escape. If Davies had really confided in you—or if you had started looking for Badon in the right place, then the odds against your survival would have been very high. But he didn't, and you didn't… which is why you are here safe and sound now."

"But—but we haven't done anything wrong!" Shirley wailed. "Not really."

"So your husband keeps telling me. But then neither had Major Davies—really. Nor that young navigator of his—Captain—what was his name?"

"Collier," said Roskill.

"Collier. He hadn't done anything at all, poor fellow. He certainly didn't deserve to be eliminated."

"That was an accident—they crashed in the sea."

"And very conveniently, too. You've no idea how many convenient deaths have occurred just recently.

Deaths and disappearances… Let me have the photographs, Hugh. It's time for a bit of positive co-Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

operation."

Roskill snapped open a black briefcase and withdrew a square buff-coloured envelope from it.

"Thank you." Audley in turn slipped out a collection of photographs of different sizes from the envelope, shuffling them like cards into what was presumably the desired sequence. "Now I want you both to have a look at these… Mosby first, then Mrs Sheldon… and I'd like you to try to identify them. I'm afraid one or two of them aren't awfully clear, and a couple aren't very nice to look at, either, but I'll warn you about them in advance. Just do your best."

He handed Mosby a photograph.

It was a typical USAF mug-shot of a typical American service face, right down to the stern, Defender of Liberty expression, even if the crew-cut and the uniform hadn't placed identification beyond doubt. Four days ago he would hardly have been able to tell this one from a hundred others whose jaws he knew better than their features.

"This is Di Davies," said Mosby.

Audley put his finger to his lips. "Let your wife see them first, if you don't mind. Pass it on."

Mosby handed the mug-shot to Shirley.

Another picture. This one for sure he wouldn't have known until four days ago, mug-shot though it was.

"This one's Di Davies," agreed Shirley. "But this other one… I've seen him around, but I don't know his name."

"Captain Collier," said Mosby. "He'd only been over here a few weeks."

"Now a nasty one," said Audley gently. "Be prepared, Mrs Sheldon."

A dead face, slack and blankly staring nowhere. Someone had attempted to arrange it into a more or less life-like appearance, but there was obviously something very wrong with the left side of the head.

Shirley shuddered and drew in a quick breath. "I've never seen him before in my life."

"Nor me," Mosby shook his head.

"I think possibly you have, but maybe not," said Audley. "His name is—or was—Pennebaker. He was an airman on the base at Wodden. Shot himself a couple of days ago."

"He shot himself?"

"Well, that's what we're required to believe. But our forensic people have their doubts… They think he was helped, you might say. And I'm very much inclined to believe them." He paused. "Now here's an interesting one."

The photograph was bigger, but not nearly so well focussed—a blown-up fragment of a larger unposed snapshot, maybe—

Hell and damnation!

"Ah! I see that one rings a bell," said Audley happily. "Let your wife have a look, there's a good chap."

Shirley stared. "Why, isn't that Harry what's-his-name— the Public Relations guy?"

"Finsterwald," said Mosby. "Is he—dead?"

"Why, I saw him only three-four days back in the BX," said Shirley. She looked from Mosby to Audley.

"Do you mean to say he's dead too?"

Audley raised a hand. "Just look at the pictures, Mrs Sheldon. We'll get to the captions in due time."

Another picture. This time Mosby was ready for anything, but the black face staring over his shoulder was totally new to him.

There followed more black faces, snapped at a variety of angles, and judging from the background detail Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

with a telescopic lens. By the time they reached Calvin Merriwether's portrayal of sullen emptiness the fact was pretty well established that to Captain and Mrs Mosby Sheldon, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, all coloured men looked alike; which the British could hardly quarrel with, since they obviously had had the same difficulty.

The hopeful sign about all the pictures—and about Harry's too—was that they were taken from life, unlike the Pennebaker shot. But the deduction from that was that the British were on to the pair of them, even if they hadn't yet established any connection with their captives.

Audley offered him another picture. "Another nasty one."

It was of another dead face—not so horrible as that of the airman, but with the same lifeless stare… yet quite unlike anything he had so far been shown: the wrinkled features of old age beneath an untidy halo of white hair—

Oh, God! Mosby thought with sickening certainty, recalling Merriwether's admiration. ' He's a great old guy' .

James Barkham, old-fashioned bookseller.

"I'm sure I never met him," said Shirley firmly.

Mosby shook his head. "He's new to me too."

Audley nodded. "Only two more."

The permutations of what he had said earlier raced through Mosby's brain. Four killed—they had seen four dead men already. Maybe seven—but they had already seen two possibles, and another two would make eight. So it didn't add up.

He gazed into the face of Tall and Thin. Sickeningly, it bore the same smile as it had done in its last minute of life in St Swithun's Churchyard a few hours earlier.

"No," he said.

Shirley looked. "Same here—no."

And then Thickset, his own victim.

He was calm now. The stakes were altogether too high for panic.

"No. Never seen him before either. Sorry." He watched Audley as he passed the photo to Shirley. "I guess we've not helped very much."

"I didn't expect miracles."

"Were they all—have they all been killed?"

Audley shook his head. "Not all. You've seen four dead men—you'll have worked out which they were, of course. Plus two missing and two killers."

"Killers?" Mosby set his teeth. "Murderers?"

"The presumption is overwhelming, yes."

Mosby pointed to the picture in Shirley's hand. "You mean —that guy and the other one?"

"No. Those are two of our men who haven't reported in. The killers are your comrade Captain Finsterwald and his coloured associate, whom we haven't yet identified."

Mosby gaped at him. "Harry Finsterwald? You can't be serious!"

"Why not, Captain Sheldon?" asked Frances Fitzgibbon.

Mosby stared at her. "Harry Finsterwald? Hell—he's in Base Public Relations, not Murder Incorporated.

He's just a dumb son-of-a-bitch with an expensive smile."

"That's right." Shirley nodded. "He maybe fancies himself as a lady-killer—at the Cobra Squadron Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Fourth of July party I had to fight him off in the parking lot—"

"You never told me that," said Mosby hotly.

"Honey, I don't tell you every time someone gets fresh with me. You'd only get your teeth knocked in."

"Harry Finsterwald—" Audley broke in "—is not Harry Finsterwald."

"Huh?" Mosby and Shirley turned towards him simultaneously.

"His name is Harry Feiner," said Frances Fitzgibbon. "And he's a veteran CIA operative—Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, all the way down to Singapore. Counter-insurgency expert, Special Operations Unit commander, counter-intelligence strongarm man—you name it, he's been it. We know him from Singapore, no mistake."

"Though we didn't know he was here in Britain until yesterday, apparently," said Audley, looking at Roskill.

"Well, he's not on the embassy list, for heaven's sake," said Roskill defensively. "And they've got nearly ninety on it already, it's one of the biggest single overseas posts. We just can't keep track of all the extras they've brought in outside London, we just don't have the manpower—at least, not to watch our own bloody allies."

"Bloody allies is right," murmured Frances Fitzgibbon.

"He's a CIA man?" said Mosby. "Harry Finsterwald?"

"Harry Feiner, Captain." Frances Fitzgibbon corrected him with the air of a little schoolmarm trying to straighten out a big stupid pupil. "We caught up with him yesterday when we were inquiring into the death of the man who supplied Major Davies with his books, an old man named Barkham."

"You mean he was murdered—that old man?" said Shirley.

"It looked like natural causes, Mrs Sheldon. But now we're not so sure… What we are sure of, from what his assistant says, is that Mr Barkham was visited by Harry Feiner and a coloured man several days ago. And they were checking up to find out how much Major Davies told him."

"And whatever it was, it was too much," said Roskill.

"So we put two men on to Feiner this morning, and those two men are now missing," said Frances Fitzgibbon.

The late afternoon sun slanted in through the tall windows, blazing on the legs of a suit of armour which stood sentinel on one side of the door—

And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot

—reminding Mosby of the lines he had learnt so recently in his role of Arthurian enthusiast. And reminding him also, more terrifyingly, that it was the same sun which had shone so brightly on the bodies of the two British security men in the churchyard.

Nightmares in daylight were bad; and nightmares in sunlight were worse. But worst of all were nightmares that weren't nightmares at all, but reality.

"You know, I do think he's beginning to catch on," said Roskill. "He looks quite sick."

"Well, I'm still lost," said Shirley huskily. "Because you just can't mean that the CIA's going round murdering people—innocent people."

"Why not, Mrs Sheldon?" asked Frances.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Why, we simply don't do that sort of thing."

"Not in Vietnam?"

"In Vietnam?" Shirley floundered beautifully. "But this isn't Vietnam—this is England." She looked around her as though for confirmation. "This is England."

And it could hardly be more England than right here, thought Mosby bitterly: Camelot House, in the midst of its green parkland. The heart and capital of King Arthur's Avalon.

"It's England," Frances nodded. "And it's a foreign country, just like Vietnam. Where Harry Feiner cut his teeth, among other things."

"I don't believe it," said Shirley obstinately. "And I won't believe it. We're on the same side—we're allies. And I don't mean like in Vietnam, either. That was different."

"It certainly was—for the Vietnamese."

"Your politics are beginning to show, Olga dear," said Roskill lightly.

"Olga?" Shirley frowned. "I thought it was Frances?"

"Ah, but haven't you noticed the striking resemblance to Olga Korbut? The shape and size—the delicate sense of balance? The swift karate chop?"

"Children—children!" Audley intervened. "What Mrs Fitzgibbon means, Mrs Sheldon, is simply that the CIA is concerned with the welfare of the United States. There's nothing in their so-called 1947 Charter about being kind to foreigners—and nor should there be. National security won't run in tandem with international relations—they trip each other up."

"Doesn't run awfully well with the Ten Commandments either, and that's a fact," said Roskill.

"Whatever Olga thinks."

"Don't paraphrase Lenin at me," Frances snapped back.

"Wasn't thinking of Lenin—it was Allen Dulles, who ran the CIA when you were playing with your dolls. 'Obedience to a higher loyalty' was what he called it." Roskill nodded amiably to Shirley.

"Meaning, you can fight as dirty as you like if it's for your country."

" 'My country, right or wrong'," murmured Mosby.

"That's what it used to amount to, you're right. Nice convenient double standards all round—Germans bomb Coventry, that's terror bombing, we bomb Hamburg, that's area bombing. They have wicked U-boats, we have brave submarines— life was a great deal simpler in the old days. But not any more, because now it works the other way round."

"How d'you mean?"

"Because we have the U-boats now, and they have the submarines, my dear fellow."

Mosby looked suitably puzzled.

"What he means," said Audley, "is that if the Russians— the KGB, that is—play dirty, no one takes much notice. But if the CIA plays dirty and gets caught, then there's likely to be a major scandal. You only have to look at the headlines over here, never mind in the United States. And exactly the same applies to… us… if we play dirty."

"Which leaves us both with the Eleventh Commandment— 'Thou shalt not be found out—or else',"

added Roskill. "Which the CIA has jolly well transgressed with a vengeance over Badon Hill, unfortunately."

Mosby fought to keep his puzzled expression steady. For beyond the fear for himself and Shirley, and the helplessness and loneliness of their position, there was forming a terrible doubt. It was no longer a Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

question of how the British could have gotten everything ass-about-face, but supposing they hadn't?

"Let me get you straight—" Shirley spoke more harshly now, as though the same doubt had proved too strong for the Lady Macbeth interpretation "—you are really asking us to believe that our own Secret Service would not only kill—murder—some old man, some innocent old man… and maybe two of your people… but Americans too? Our own servicemen? You're asking us to believe that!"

"The evidence is circumstantial." Audley stared at her silently for a moment. "But that's the way it looks."

"In the cause of a higher loyalty," said Frances.

"Higher loyalty my fanny!" snapped Shirley.

Roskill started to laugh.

"You think that's funny?" Shirley rounded on him fiercely. "It's all a big joke—killing people? You have to be sick."

"I'm sorry, really I am." Roskill looked contrite. "But I wasn't laughing at you, and it isn't funny. It was just the look on Olga's face when you said 'fanny'."

"Huh?"

Mosby cleared his throat. "It isn't the same part of the body in English as it is in American, honey."

"It isn't? Well, what is—?" She stopped suddenly and blushed to the roots of her hair. It was the first time Mosby had ever seen her blush.

"You were saying, Mrs Sheldon?" said Audley gently.

"I think I know what my wife was going to say—" began Mosby.

"It's okay, Mose," said Shirley. "If that's playing dirty I can take it. I guess they won't take any notice of what I say anyway, but I'm still going to say it. And it's this: if you think we're the sort of people who'd kill a dog just to hush up that we've maybe accidentally messed up a piece of ground where somebody fought a battle a million years ago, then you aren't only crazy—you really do have to be sick. And you can laugh at that if you like."

Atta girl, thought Mosby fondly. Not a Stephen Decatur patriot, nor even a Sam Smith one, but a pure John Paul Jones— I have not yet begun to fight—even with the ship sinking under her.

"I agree with you, Mrs Sheldon," said Audley. "But, alas, it doesn't happen that way. With the KGB

certainly, but not with you Americans, nor with us British. With us both it happens by slow degree, not by wicked intention."

"I don't get you."

"I don't expect you to. Take Vietnam, for instance, about which Mrs Fitzgibbon is so very sure… No, Frances. Your view is far too simplistic… I happen to believe that Kennedy and Johnson were both great presidents. And what's more, fundamentally honest men too, both of them. But by degrees they got into

—Vietnam. And My Lai, and all the rest of it.

"And Watergate too, to make a more practical example… It wasn't the original crime—the stupid little break-in—that wasn't even necessary. Somebody simply had a higher loyalty on a much lower level, that's all—somebody took a bad decision on a lower level, and somebody else took another bad decision on a slightly less lower level. And after that one thing led straight to another, and brought the whole house down."

"But the rottenness at the top was the measure of the rottenness at the bottom, David," said Frances Fitzgibbon.

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Simplistic again. Your rottenness at the top brought the boys back home from Vietnam, Frances. Your rottenness gave Henry Kissinger his chance… But that's all a matter of opinion, and ours is a problem of fact. We have a much more important crisis here and now to resolve—which matters to Britain as well as America."

"Which is?" said Mosby.

"Which is that the CIA in Britain is in jeopardy, and with it the whole of the American presence here.

And that means in Europe. And that means the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. And that means the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks." Audley pointed at Shirley. "All because of your little piece of ground where somebody maybe once fought a battle —are the stakes high enough for you now, Mrs Sheldon?

Are they enough to kill a dog for?"

Mosby was astonished at the Englishman's vehemence: it was like discovering that in reality the game of cricket was played not for the sake of the game, but to the death.

"I don't understand," said Shirley.

"No?" Audley's tone was brutal now. "Well, I'll tell you. Destroying the site of Mons Badonicus would have been a bit of damn bad publicity for you—for the United States. People care about things like that nowadays, and some of them care passionately even. In fact even I care, and I'm one of your dirty trick players. Because a country's past is the sum of its present, or should be, and I happen to love my country

—even enough to have some of those higher loyalties of Allen Dulles's. Not for England, or Wales, or Scotland, but for Britain."

"But we don't—" Shirley began.

"No, honey," said Mosby, "let him have his say."

Audley looked at them for a moment. "Every year thousands of ancient sites are destroyed—half the time without anyone even knowing. We've even got an organisation called 'Rescue' which tries to save them, or at least to record them, before the damned motorways cut through them—or the runway extensions. This year the Government's given Rescue over a million pounds, when we're flat broke—

that's the measure of it. People care.

"And Badon isn't just another Roman villa, another mediaeval pottery. Badon's King Arthur—the lost battle. Nine-tenths of the people have never heard of it, but they've all heard of Arthur. So for a start, it isn't just a piece of ground, do you understand that, Mrs Sheldon?"

Mosby stuck his jaw out. "Okay, Audley. We both understand what it is."

"Good. But your General Ellsworth didn't understand."

"General Ellsworth?"

"That's right. 'Build the runway' he says. And that was the first bad decision, because at that point you could have saved the whole thing. Wodden isn't the only base surplus to RAF requirements by any means, if you want longer runways."

"General Ellsworth said that?"

"He said it. And then when they'd bulldozed Windmill Knob flat and the thing started to blow up in his face, the CIA made another bad decision. They said cover up."

He looked at Mosby expectantly, but this time Mosby had nothing to say. General Ellsworth?

Audley shook his head. "If they'd come to us instead, we couldn't have stopped the bad publicity. Not by then, anyway. But we could have taken Ellsworth's head on a plate, and we could have just about survived it one way or another. Only someone in the State Department must have realised how bad the Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

publicity would be—someone who knew his Arthurian history, for all I know. Someone who could see the headlines and thought he couldn't handle them. So Davies had to have his big mouth shut for good."

"And bingo!" murmured Roskill. "Watergate!"

"Only the name will be 'Wodden' in future," said Frances.

"Or 'Badon', more likely," said Roskill.

Audley silenced them with a look. "And that was the dirty job the CIA had given to them: cover it all up.

Bury it."

For five seconds—ten seconds—nobody spoke. It was as though the last two words had told the whole story.

Then Shirley spoke: "How can you be so sure that's the way it was? You said it was—circumstantial?"

"It's more than that. I wish to God it wasn't, otherwise we'd still have a chance of smothering it. And don't think I wouldn't if I could, Mrs Sheldon."

She stared at him. "But—but Badon's been destroyed. And Davies is dead. I know it's—horrible. But he is dead."

"But Billy Bullitt isn't," said Audley.

"And we can't shut his mouth, Mrs Sheldon," said Frances. "Because he's already opened it."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

XII

MOSBY SQUINTED AT the villainous typescript. If British Intelligence couldn't rise to anything better than this for its top secret documents then it was small wonder that they were about to preside over the biggest Anglo-American debacle since the Boston Tea Party.

"I am sorry about the typing," said Frances Fitzgibbon. "It's absolutely accurate—my shorthand's one hundred per cent. But I don't get much typing practise, and it was a rackety old machine—I had to put in all the g's by hand, as you can see."

"Excuses, excuses—and qui's'excuse,'s'accuse," said Roskill. "There you are, Mrs Sheldon—I've given you a slightly better copy than your lord and master… If that typewriter was good enough for Billy Bullitt's grandfather, little Olga, it ought to be good enough for you. And his thrifty use of old worn-out carbon-paper matches our thrifty use of you as a tape-recorder. If the Civil Estimates chaps knew how we operate, they'd sleep a lot sounder after lunch."

There were nine or ten closely typed pages, Mosby estimated, but no indication of what they contained by way of title—

" This country has lost nothing but its honour, and having lost that has lost everything—"

What the hell?

He looked up to find Audley's eyes on him.

"I want you to read just the first page, to show you what we're up against," said Audley. "Then you can skip the next few pages and go straight to the meaty part. But that first page to start with, please."

"What is it?" asked Shirley.

"It's Billy Bullitt's credo," said Frances. "And it also explains why he's going to evict the CIA from Britain—and how he intends to do it. That's all."

Mosby bent over Page One—

"This country has lost nothing but its honour, and having lost that has lost everything. Fifty million people, the people who stood alone against Hitler. The people who broke the German Army in the '14-'18 War, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Philip of Spain, who produced Shakespeare, Newton, Penicillin, Radar—"

He looked up at Audley again.

"You must go on reading," said Audley flatly.

"Radar, the Hovercraft. Not that we are a super-race, far from it. We are a mongrel race.

Nor because we have coal and oil if we had the courage to win it. A mongrel race, as I said: an amalgam of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans—imagination, staying power, restlessness, pragmatism—and the waves of refugees and immigrants, French Protestants, German Jews—and Africans and Asiatics too. I am no racist, as some foolish young people want to think—I'd as soon see a daughter of mine, if I had one, married to the best of my Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Arab levies than to the worst of the young fools I saw at Oxford. But we have no honour left.

No honour. Perhaps it comes from losing the best in the two wars. And the loss of empire.

But we won the wars, perhaps that is the trouble, for it has happened before—Gildas told the same story, of course. And I have watched this happening for thirty years, but for most of the time without understanding. That it's not the winning that matters, but the fighting for something. Strange that I fought for so many causes— other people's causes—and never understood that until quite recently, in Arabia. It was there I began to under-stand, and I remembered my childhood, here in Camelot. My grandfather understood, he glimpsed it—

Rex quondam rexque futurus—what it has always meant. It is no accident that the British have endlessly pursued Rex quondam rexque futurus, the Present and Future King.

However vague the understanding, the instinct was true. And the Grail legend is never truer than now: the Fisher-king lies wounded unto death in the magic castle in the wasteland. The Grail-knight reaches the castle and asks a certain question. The king is healed and the wasteland blossoms…"

"The Fisher-king and the Grail-knight—for God's sake!" Mosby scowled at Audley. "Does it really go on like that?"

"For five or six pages."

"More than that," said Frances. "There's a page on what he calls 'the historicity of Arthur', and another on the influence of Arthur on British history—plus why Henry II had a grandson named Arthur and Henry VII's eldest son was named Arthur. And the Korean War and the TSR-2 get mixed up in it too at one point. And it all adds ug to how finding Mons Badonicus and proving Arthur won it will give Britain back her honour."

"Well, then…" Mosby looked to Audley for confirmation. "… He's crazy."

"Of course. Not certifiable—but crazy." Audley nodded. "But up until a few days ago he was also harmless, and now he's most definitely not. Thanks to the CIA… So what page do we turn to, Frances?"

"Halfway down page eight. It's marked with a pencil cross."

A pencil cross—

"I first met Major David 'Dai' Davies at Woodhenge, which I was visiting in connection with other studies I was making at the time. He was measuring a burial mound. I asked him what he was doing, and he explained he was looking for Mons Badonicus. I told him that he was almost certainly far to the south of the most promising search area, that I myself had explored the Chilterns and the general line of the Icknield Way north-eastwards of the Thames as being a strong possibility, and that I had only recently returned to the belief that the western end of the Berkshire Downs was the likeliest site. To my surprise he disagreed firmly, though courteously. It soon became clear to me not only that he believed Badon to be in the Salisbury region, but that he was in possession of some information or evidence to confirm this belief—"

Mosby looked up at Frances. "Either this is not verbatim, or he's taken a turn for the better."

"It's word for word, Captain."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Well, it reads like an official statement."

"There's a reason for that," said Audley. "This wasn't the first time he dictated this part of the statement.

Go on and you'll find out."

"confirm this belief. This intrigued me a great deal, the more so after I had discovered that he was extremely well-informed about all aspects of Arthurian studies. I accordingly invited him to Camelot for dinner."

"Not so crazy after all, maybe," said Mosby. "Being crazy doesn't mean not being shrewd," agreed Audley. "He's all of that, Billy Bullitt is."

"It was during this first evening that I learnt he was a USAF pilot, flying PR Phantoms in the NATO Order of Battle. In fact, our combat experience overlapped, and although of different front-line generations we had much in common. And not only as concerned flying, for although a third generation American, he was also the grandson of a Welsh coal miner who had emigrated over 50 years earlier. Hence his Christian name and its Welsh diminutive 'Dai'—"

"So it's 'Dai' with an 'a', not D-I," said Mosby.

"Of course. 'Dai Davies' is as Welsh as 'Paddy O'Reilly' is Irish. Which could account for his interest in Arthur, of course."

"—and his interest in Arthurian Britain. I pressed him on the subject of the battle's location, but he was reticent about it. Also, while promising to keep in touch with me he insisted that I should never contact him at the base. Before he left I supplied him with one of my blank physical relief maps of the district, having first ringed all potential Badon sites for him. He stated his intention of viewing these from the air. He visited me on three subsequent occasions. It was on the first of these that he asked me about the Novgorod manuscript of Bede's 'Historia Ecclesiastica' and I was able to show him my grandfather's copy of Bishop Harper's 'Russian Missionary Letters', from which he made notes. Shortly after the third visit he phoned me in a state of great excitement. He said he had found Badon, but that he would not be able to see me until he had completed his exchange duty with the RAF in Germany. I awaited his return also in a state of excitement. On the 5th of this month he phoned me again. This time he was in a state of extreme agitation and rage. He informed me that promises made to him by a certain USAF general officer, by name Ellsworth, had been broken, as a result of which the site of Badon, or at least its cenotaph and grave pits, had been totally desecrated. He explained to me in detail the circumstances leading to his identification of Mons Badonicus as Windmill Knob at Wodden. He further informed me that he had been 'grilled' and cautioned by a CIA officer, and that he was now confined to base pending transfer to South-East Asia. He had told this officer that he intended nevertheless to 'blow this thing wide open'. Although he had not revealed my involvement he said he relied on me to support him in this, and that his navigator, Captain Collier, who Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

was a witness to many of these events, would be bringing me evidence of his discovery after the next day's training mission had been completed. In the event Captain Collier did not visit me, and I learnt from Press reports of the loss of a Phantom aircraft on a routine training flight. I made further inquiries in connection with the information Major Davies had given me, and these confirmed certain suspicions of mine that a monstrous crime, or series of crimes, had been committed by, or with the connivance of, the American CIA. Full details of this are now with the editor of a certain newspaper. Two further copies are in places of safety with my instructions as to their publication in the event of my death or unexplained disappearance."

The final lines swam before Mosby's eyes. A certain newspaper.

Their deadline is midday Friday for Sunday. Two further copies in places of safety.

"And what does the CIA say to this?" Shirley's voice was absolutely steady. "And our State Department?"

"We haven't approached them."

"You haven't approached them?" Incredulity now. "Don't they have a say?"

"What can they say?"

"Well, they can deny it for a start."

"Of course they'll deny it. They'll say there's not one single word of truth in it. Major Davies never found Badon Hill and Badon Hill isn't Windmill Knob. So General Ellsworth never promised him the bulldozers wouldn't move in until the archaeologists had excavated it thoroughly. And Davies wasn't being posted to South-East Asia. He just crashed by accident—and took Captain Collier with him. Why would the CIA want to grill him? No reason at all-just a pack of lies made up by Group Captain William Lancelot Bullitt, DSO, DFC."

Audley paused. "And James Barkham died in his sleep, like an old man should—or if he didn't, then it was some wicked relative who wanted to inherit his bookshop. And our two men who followed Feiner haven't come to any harm —they've just lost their way and they haven't got tuppence between them for a phone call, that's all. And Airman Pennebaker was just playing with this pistol of his, and it just went off by accident—"

Where the hell did Airman Pennebaker fit in? thought Mosby desperately. Where the hell did any of them fit in? "And Asher Klaverinsky never went for a swim. He just dropped out of circulation. Or maybe he didn't like it in Tel Aviv as much as Gorky. He was homesick, perhaps." "Who on earth is—

Asher Klaverinsky?" said Mosby. "He's the man who stole the Novgorod Bede, Captain—Mosby. But then he never met Major Davies anyway, did he? There's not one single piece of evidence that he did—

except in Billy Bullitt's fevered imagination. He just imagined the deal they made. Or perhaps it was Major Davies's fevered imagination. Or they cooked it up between them, just to cause trouble."

"What d'you mean—he stole the Novgorod Bede?" "Just exactly that. He was working on its restoration when he finally got his emigration permit, and he reckoned the Russians owed him something for taking all his possessions and his money in exchange for letting him go. So he pretended he'd sent it on to Moscow for further specialist work, but in fact he smuggled it out with him. They probably don't even know they've lost it yet, the way they do things."

"But—" Mosby stopped, realising that he wasn't supposed to know that there was nothing of interest Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

about Badon in the Novgorod Bede. And that nobody had stolen it.

"But what is there in it? In the Bede text—absolutely nothing. Just a straightforward early eighth century Bede, just like the Leningrad one. Only when Asher Klaverinsky got down to looking at it carefully he noticed that the Preface started about four inches down the page—that's four inches of wasted sheepskin before the dedication to 'the Most Glorious King Ceolwulf. And he then noticed that those four inches were rougher than the rest of the page, which meant that they'd probably been scraped clean and re-chalked. Which in turn meant that the page had been written on before, and then cleaned and re-used, because parchment was enormously expensive—it was a common practice in those days. So he popped the page under ultra-violet light, and you'll never guess what he got instead." Audley nodded to Roskill.

"Give him the first sheet, Hugh."

Roskill handed Mosby a typed sheet of paper —

… usque ad a??um obse?.?io?s Bad????? mentis qui p??pe Sord'n?? host?um ex D?r??v??

a ?r?ur? habetur novi???ma????? ????? de furci???ris…

"Which may not be very clear to you and me, but seems clear enough to the experts. Sheet Two, if you please, Hugh—"

… usque ad annum obsessionis Badonici montis qui prope Sord'num hostium ex Durnovaria Arturo habetur nossissi-maeque ferme de furciferis…

Mosby stared hypnotically at the word Arturo.

"The free translation of which, more or less," continued Audley, taking the third sheet into his own hands, "reads as follows :… until the year of the siege of the enemy hosts from Dorchester-on-Thames by Arthur at Badon Hill, which is near Salisbury… They aren't absolutely sure about Dorchester-on-Thames, because they only know its Saxon name. So they've worked on a comparison with Roman Dorchester in Dorset. And technically 'Sord'num' is the monkish abbreviation for Sorviodunum, which is Sarum, just outside Salisbury. But historically and militarily the whole thing fits rather well then, with the Saxon army coming down the Icknield Way right from Cambridgeshire, picking up men as they moved along from one stronghold after another right to Dorchester, their big base on the Thames— and then striking at the main British army in the south and biting off more than they could chew." He looked at Mosby. "Can you identify the passage—the original passage, that is?"

He was deliberately ignoring the real dynamite, thought Mosby. The dynamite which blew the thing far higher than Badon by itself could ever do.

"I guess it has to be Gildas the Wise."

"Good man! Gildas it is—the end of Chapter XXV, only with seven new words. And of course, that fits too: the monks of Jarrow obviously had a copy of Gildas to make their own copies from, because Bede used it. And their copy had something like that Cambridge gloss in it—the one everybody ignores as corrupt. And so it was. But not quite."

"Plus Arthur," said Mosby.

Audley drew a deep breath. "Plus Arthur. You've put your ringer on what really matters. And what ties Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

our hands completely."

"What d'you mean?" said Shirley. "I thought it was Badon that was driving everyone crazy."

"Uh-huh." Mosby shook his head wearily. "Badon's a big thing—just knowing where it was will change a lot of history books. But they always knew it existed. Arthur is the real blockbuster: the first absolutely conclusive historical proof that puts him squarely on the historical map. Not somebody everyone wants to believe in, but a real person. Right there in—"

He stopped as the full significance hit him. He stared at Audley with the beginning of panic stirring in him. "You have got the Novgorod Bede—or the Israelis have?"

"No."

The question dried up in Mosby's mouth.

"Klaverinsky apparently went for a swim, and never came back," said Audley. "His rooms were ransacked—Billy Bullitt checked with an Israeli air force general he knows, who checked with the police. Nothing was stolen. Except what they didn't know was there."

That was the final pay-off: suddenly everything clicked into place in Mosby's brain, like the tumblers of a time-lock which no one had been able to pick until too late.

It was all a con. The KGB hadn't been planning any action against the USAF in Britain. That had just been the come-on to get them stirred up. The thing had been planned against the CIA itself from the start

—the ultimate dirty trick. And everything they'd done had only helped to make it dirtier—and deadlier.

Operation Bear had already been completed.

"So there's no evidence?" said Shirley. "No evidence at all," agreed Audley.

"Then it's just Billy Bullitt's word against the CIA's?" Her voice started strongly, but the confidence began to fade from it as she spoke.

"That's right, honey," said Mosby. "Just the word of a man who'll be believed—and who's telling the whole goddamn truth—against a bunch of people who'll never be believed in a million years. And no proof."

"What d'you mean, he's telling the truth?"

"Telling the truth—telling the truth, that's what I mean. Bullitt is telling the truth: every damn thing that's been fed to him he's telling truthfully. And there's nothing on earth we can do to prove otherwise.

In fact every bit of circumstantial evidence—every death, every fact—says we've got to be lying in our teeth."

"My God!" said Audley in an appalled voice. " My God!"

"What's the matter, David?" said Frances Fitzgibbon.

Audley stared at Mosby. "You are the CIA, aren't you?"

"What the hell did you think we were?"

"Mose!" Shirley cried. "Are you crazy?"

"Crazy? I'm not crazy—I've become sane, honey. We've been suckered—led right up the garden.

Framed." He swung back towards Audley. "Who the hell did you think we were? You never bought that cock-eyed story I told you this afternoon? Not in a pig's eye!"

Audley blinked at him, every bit as embarrassed as Shirley had been earlier. "I have to admit it, Captain Sheldon. Until nearly midday today I thought you were just a dentist interested in Arthurian history. I didn't know anything else— I've been on leave for four months."

"And after you'd talked to your boss?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Audley shrugged helplessly. "Maybe CIA… but maybe KGB."

"What?" Mosby felt an insane urge to laugh. "How could I be KGB?"

"We knew they were sniffing around—one of their better-known London men met Airman Pennebaker in London on Saturday. Only we didn't know where Pennebaker came from until his body turned up two days ago."

"And then you thought we'd killed him? Oh, brother! I'll bet you just thought that—another home run for the CIA! And he was the guy that knocked out Davies, too. Man! They really fed it to you, just like they fed it to us… so you thought my function was to make sure the British got in on the act, whether they liked it or not. So you'd get tarred with the same brush—wasn't that the phrase?" "What's that?" Shirley said cautiously. "The British just don't want to be involved, honey," said Mosby. "If the CIA is playing dirty tricks and cover-ups in Britain, and the MI5 was thought to be helping them—that really would be curtains for them too, as well as us. Once their Parliamentary left-wing got hold of that, it'd be Watergate for them too. And even the Conservatives would never forgive them for helping to re-bury King Arthur into the bargain."

"Why the blazes didn't you tell us what you were doing?" said Roskill suddenly.

"Why the blazes didn't you tell us?" said Mosby. "Because we weren't doing anything, for heaven's sakes. We were just trying to find out what was going on."

"And so were we. I tell you—we've both been suckered. It was all laid on before we knew what was happening. They just had one or two witnesses to remove after they'd played their part—like the poor old man Barkham. So now we can never disprove anything."

"And our two men," said Frances harshly. "The coldblooded bastards."

Mosby swallowed. "Yeah, I guess them too." "Plus one of their own people. And Asher Klaverinsky,"

said Roskill. "No one can say they're not thorough bastards." "I have my doubts about Klaverinsky now.

I rather think he may have lived to fight another day. We only have Major Davies's word for what he had to say, and we can hardly rely on that."

"And… that?" Frances Fitzgibbon pointed to the sheet of paper Mosby still clutched.

"The Novgorod Bede?" Audley shook his head. "I don't think we're ever going to know the truth about that now—whether it really did contain those extra words, or whether some clever devil thought the whole thing up. They just can't afford to tell us, so it will have to stay stolen."

"Probably never left Comrade Panin's bookshelf," said Mosby.

"Panin?" Audley frowned at him. "You don't mean Nikolai Andrievich Panin?"

"That's the comrade. D'you know him?"

"Panin!" Audley closed his eyes and struck his forehead. "Of course I know him—Panin… Well, there's our clever devil, anyway. An archaeologist and a historian—this would be right up his street… How long have you known he was in on it?"

"We had word months ago he was dreaming up something against us. That's why we've been watching out for trouble."

"I see…" Audley seemed almost relieved. "And of course he calculated you would—yes, of course he would. It's exactly the way he works: starting something, and then letting the other side do all the work for him. And we did it for him."

"We?" said Shirley sharply. "You mean you're still on our side?" She looked at Frances. "I thought we were the foreigners?"

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

"Oh, you are, Mrs Sheldon." Audley smiled lopsidedly. "But we still need you to defend us—in your own interest, maybe, but we still need you. And so does Western Europe, however badly it may treat you. We need each other, and so long as we do there isn't really a 'your' side and a 'my' side, but only an

'our' side—not when it comes to standing up to Soviet Russia. Not so long as people like me remember Hungary and Czechoslovakia, anyway. Or Warsaw in 1944."

For a moment Shirley seemed tongue-tied. Then she shook her head. "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm very much afraid that there isn't much we can do now—except tell your version and hope someone will believe you."

"But that isn't going to be good enough, you think?"

"I'm pretty certain it won't be."

Mosby frowned. "But Sir Frederick said 'your way was the only way left'. What way was that?"

"I was going to expose you to Billy Bullitt as a possible KGB agent. I was going to pull your story to pieces—right from the unbelievable coincidence of meeting me on that beach. That's why I took the trouble to tell you so much— I didn't want you to be able to show too much surprise at anything, I wanted you to know too much, just in case you were innocent."

"And what did you hope to achieve by that?" "Just enough doubt in his mind to delay him releasing the story. I wasn't trying for an acquittal, just a stay of execution."

"You mean you were playing for time?" said Shirley. "That's right. Time to dig a lot deeper." "So you can still play for time, you can still dig—we'll help you. We'll play KGB agents for you, and the UK

station will do whatever you want."

Audley shook his head. "But I don't want to dig anyrrfore, Mrs Sheldon. I'm afraid of what I'll find, frankly." Mosby thought again of St Swithun's churchyard. "What do you mean—afraid?" said Shirley.

"I mean we don't even know that we've found all of Panin's traps yet. Knowing him, I think it's possible there are a lot more of them still, and they may be designed to catch us—us meaning the British." He gazed at Shirley sadly. "Because, you see, we're not quite caught yet. You are—the CIA is—but we can still survive by throwing you to the wolves. And the fact that we haven't done so yet is the greatest proof I can give you that blood is still thicker than water." "But—it wouldn't be true."

"Truth is what we can prove—and in this case what we dare to try and prove. But as it is you don't even have to be proved guilty—you just have to be thought guilty, and that'll be enough."

Shirley looked at Mosby. "There has to be another way—there has to be a weakness in their operation."

"There is," said Frances Fitzgibbon. "There's still one weakness left."

"What is it?" said Shirley.

"Billy Bullitt."

They stared at her.

"Why is he a weakness?" said Mosby.

"Because he can still change his mind. He can still withdraw the article—and everything they've done hinges on that. If he says 'publish' they've got everything. But if he says 'don't publish' they've got nothing."

Shirley looked around her. "Why, then you've got to make him change his mind."

"Do you think we haven't tried?" said Roskill. "Do you think we haven't begged him—just to hold off for a week? Sir Frederick practically went down on his knees. And all the old blighter said was he was Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

sorry to see that MI5 was working hand in glove with the CIA, against the national interest."

"But it isn't against the national interest. Why—David said—"

"That's just David," said Frances. "Billy Bullitt says he understands if the Americans were thrown out of Britain things would be rough."

"More than rough, by God!"

"And more than rough," the little face lifted. "But he says it could be the making of us, having to stand on our own feet. Even being forced to lead Western Europe, which he thinks we can. He says we've been alone before—and not just in 1940. He says we were alone long before that, when the Romans left us to the Anglo-Saxons in King Arthur's time. And then we damn nearly won—we would have won if we hadn't thrown away Badon Hill."

Gildas.

And more than Gildas—Arthur himself. Both lined up in an obstinate old fighter's imagination against giving in to reason.

Bullitt would never believe them, no matter what evidence they brought him, because he didn't want to believe them.

It was a question of forcing his countrymen to regain their honour by standing alone, as they had once stood, in the hope that this time they wouldn't fail.

Not Gildas. Just Arthur.

Rex quondam rexque juturus—that wasn't a dream to Billy Bullitt, it was a promise.

"How is he a weakness, then?" Mosby couldn't keep the despair out of his voice. "He'll never give in—

not even if we threatened to kill him if he didn't."

"But the Russians can't be sure of that," said Frances. "They're reckoning on it, but they can't be sure."

"Well, they'd be better off if he was dead, then," said Mosby. "That way, with how he's got it fixed, nothing could stop the story breaking—'fact, it's a wonder they haven't knocked him off already."

"Perhaps they don't know he's given the story to the Press," said Shirley.

"Oh, they know all right." Audley shook his head as he spoke. "Our information is that Fleet Street is already buzzing with the big scandal one of the Sundays has got itself. They even know it has something to do with archaeology."

"How's that?"

"Because the word is that the fee is going to Rescue— £20,000 the rumour is. Which with Fleet Street the way it is, is big money. So—big scandal… Oh, they know sure enough."

"Does he realise he's in danger?"

Audley smiled grimly. "Of course he does. He doesn't underrate the ability of the CIA to trace Major Davies back to him—I told you, he was just waiting for you to turn up on his doorstep. That's why he made his mini-statement to us: he wanted to get the record straight before it happened."

"Before—" Mosby frowned, "—before what happened?"

"Before he gave you the opportunity to complete your wicked crime. Part of the deal he's made with the newspaper is that he gives them a filmed interview they can sell to television—a joint BBC-ITV offer, they have to make. They've filmed him in his library already and he's taping a commentary for the location shots at this very moment."

"Location shots?"

"That's right. At 10.00 a.m. tomorrow morning Billy Bullitt will be striding up Liddington Hill in Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Wiltshire—in his famous red shirt and combat hat—to tell the world where he thought King Arthur's greatest battle was fought, and why. And why he now knows he was wrong. And at 3.00 p.m.—

supposing he's still alive—he'll stride up to Windmill Knob, or as near as your barbed wire will let him

—"

"You're joking!"

"I wish to God I was, but I'm not. And what's more he doesn't want us around under any circumstances.

Protection here he'll accept, but no protection tomorrow morning at Liddington Hill."

"But it'll be—suicidal. That'll be open country there."

"True. But then he has a strong sense of the dramatic, and people have been shooting at him off and on for the last thirty-six years without hitting him."

"Not these sort of people. Doesn't he realise that?"

"Actually, he does. He pretends he doesn't, but I do believe he thinks tomorrow is the day."

"Then he's absolutely insane. He doesn't even need to do it—he doesn't have to prove anything."

Audley was silent for a moment. "Now there… I think you're wrong. Prove something is exactly what he needs to do. He knows that if he is killed that really will prove his case—particularly if they get his death on film. But I don't think even that is the deciding factor with him, not now. It's much more a matter of honour… he's going to prove honour is worth dying for. This is his version of the old Ordeal by Battle, the great Arthurian ideal."

"Insane," echoed Shirley. "It's insane."

"Of course it is. Honour doesn't make anything true—it's a mere convention. One of the very best Arthurian tales is about a knight who came to realise that—not Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad, but a bad knight named Sir Aglovale, who learnt the hard way. But Billy Bullitt is so steeped in conventional Arthurian morality that Ordeal by Battle comes quite naturally to him."

"I just don't understand you," said Shirley. "You're talking double-dutch."

"No, Mrs Sheldon, you wouldn't understand. Because it's one of the better sides of women that they respect life more than men do… But let me put it this way: you remember what the New Testament says

— 'All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword'. Now does that sound like a threat to you?"

"Of course. If you kill you must expect to be killed."

"Exactly. But to a chivalrous knight it wasn't a threat at all—it was a marvellous promise. In fact, it was the one thing that made Christianity worth having: no horrible toothless old age, no long-drawn-out agony in a smelly bed—just a good, clean death in the prime of life, and then straight to Heaven, or Valhalla, or wherever.

"Which is exactly the way Bullitt sees it now. He knows he's had the best of his life—there's even a possibility it's running out on him, because it's rumoured he saw a heart specialist last year sometime, though we don't yet know which one. But in any case he appears to be ready to collect on that promise, so the risk simply doesn't worry him. If anything it makes the whole business more attractive: it's as though he's challenging us—his life to prove his case. And that makes it a matter of honour."

Roskill heaved a sigh. "And that's why we're beaten."

Mosby stared at the great coat-of-arms, with its fiery dragon supporters. He wondered whether there had ever been a Sheldon coat-of-arms. It was a pity William Lancelot Bullitt couldn't wear full armour on Liddington—

The Sheldon coat-of-arms?

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

Everybody had a coat-of-arms if you went back far enough.

"No."

"What d'you mean 'no'?" said Roskill. "I meant—" Mosby swung towards Audley, "—screw Billy Bullitt's honour. What about my honour?"

"Your honour?"

"Sure. My honour—and the honour of the CIA."

"The honour of the CIA?" Frances Fitzgibbon laughed.

Mosby looked at them. "Sure. Do you have to be British to have honour? Is it something lesser mortals can't have?"

"But—"

"Hush!" said Audley. "Go on, Captain Sheldon."

"Okay. You said it was a straight challenge. He thinks we're a bunch of assassins and murderers. Okay—

then I accept the challenge. I say we're not."

"But how do you accept it?" said Frances. "Do you want to fight him?"

"No. I accept it the way he accepted it. And if he's a man of honour then he can't refuse me first go."

"First go at what?"

"At Liddington Hill. I'll wear the red shirt—I'll wear the combat hat. And I'll prove the truth." Mosby pointed at Audley. "And you catch the guy that pulls the trigger."

"Mose—"

"Shut up, honey. I'm challenging Billy Bullitt to his Ordeal by Battle. And he can't refuse me."

"What d'you mean—he can't refuse you? Why not?"

"Because that's the way the game is played. And once I accept his way of playing it then I take precedence over him because it's my honour that's at stake more than his. So if David's right about the way he thinks he has no choice in the matter."

Shirley stared at him unbelievingly. "But Mose—if David's also right about the KGB—" She stopped.

"Then you get shot." Frances Fitzgibbon had no scruples about completing the sentence. "And if Bullitt's right about the CIA you also get shot."

"But he isn't right. So then David can scoop up their hit man—in that open country it shouldn't be too difficult." Mosby nodded at Audley. "He was probably fixing to try that anyway, and I can make it nice and easy for him by being just where he wants me to be. And then Billy Bullitt can see for himself who's really gunning for him, which is going to make him think twice about blowing the whistle on us."

"But you'll still be shot," Frances was frowning now, as perplexed as Shirley.

Mosby continued to look at Audley. "Well—do I get my challenge delivered or not?"

For a moment Audley said nothing. Then he nodded slowly. "You realise that he won't be bluffed? That he'll take you at your face value?"

"Of course. It won't work any other way."

Again Audley was silent for a second or two. "And you realise I can't guarantee to cover you? If I keep my men away from the hill so as not to scare them off they'll be bound to get a clear shot—you realise that?"

"Sure." Mosby nodded. "I'm counting on it."

"Very well. You've got yourself a deal, Captain Sheldon." Audley's voice was almost non-committal, but Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

he watched Mosby shrewdly. "What else do you want?"

"He wants his head examining," said Shirley sharply. She squared up to Mosby. "Mosby Sheldon, have you gone entirely out of your mind? What in hell's name are you playing at?"

It was nice to be noticed at last, thought Mosby—even when being noticed didn't matter any more.

"I'm not playing, honey. Or maybe I am at that: it's an old Arthurian game, carrying someone else's shield in to battle. Malory's full of knights doing that in good causes, on the level."

She shook her head helplessly. "Mosby—you can't. You just can't." She put her hand on his arm.

"I can." He smiled at her happily. "Don't fret, honey. Good knights aren't allowed to get killed in good causes. The book says so. Leastways, not if they remember to put on their magic armour."

Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

XIII

BUT OF COURSE they did get killed, Mosby thought for the hundredth time as he opened the car door.

Good causes, bad causes, they were all the same to bullets.

And Bullitts?

That was one symptom: irritatingly inconsequential thoughts and an even more annoying inability to concentrate on those important matters which still concerned him.

Not that there were many of them now—that was another of the mental symptoms. What had once seemed important was now no longer important. Or perhaps just in abeyance. What was still in the future mattered little when the future was a matter of very considerable doubt.

Matters, mattered, matter. All ugly words.

"Are you all right?" asked the camera man.

If he was a camera man. He certainly had a camera, so that made him a camera man whether he was or not. Making a movie entitled Le Morte de Mosby.

They that take the sword… Except that wasn't strictly correct. They that take the Mothers' Union banner, that was correct.

"Sure. It's just this goddamn bullet-proof vest. I just can't bend so good."

The best vest money could buy, as recommended by the British Army in Northern Ireland. And not really a patrol vest, either, but a custom-built job for look-outs in exposed positions favoured by IRA snipers. The last word in safety first, but with disadvantages, the man said—

"It's made for a direct hit. Anything short of an anti-tank shell, and you've got a chance—a very good chance. Though we can never be sure, naturally—"

Great!

"And, of course, we're only protecting your chest plus the upper abdomen. We could do more, but you'd hardly be able to move, and I gather you've got to do some walking."

Mosby looked up the hillside. Walking was right.

"What you've got to pray for is a professional—a natural marksman who's prepared to take that extra second if he needs to. Sometimes the amateurs try for the head-shot. Or they squeeze off in a panic and miss altogether—"

Can a miss altogether be bad?

"Which can be very serious with some of these very high velocity weapons. Tear your bloody arm off without even hitting you, they can. Just a near miss is enough."

Yes, a miss altogether can be bad.

"But you'll probably have a professional—"

Trying to cheer me up now.

"—so my advice to you is move nice and slowly. Let him hit you where he's been taught to hit you.

Then you'll just have a sore chest next morning, take my word for it."

What—no dissatisfied clients? Obviously not.

As he stepped out on to the side of the road Mosby realised that nice and slowly was the only way he was going to be able to move. Under his red shirt the bullet-proof vest weighed a ton, or seemed to, and Anthony Price - Our man in camelot

he was already sweating… Though maybe that was just good honest fear.

But Billy Bullitt was no youngster, so that didn't matter too much. With his combat hat pulled well down and his tinted glasses—and the target shirt—he would do well enough at a distance.

He was already used to the two physical symptoms he had noticed, the dry mouth and the tightness of his calf muscles. He had experienced them from the moment of getting up. The cup of hot tea had hardly moistened his mouth and the exercise of behaving normally, of walking to the bathroom and then down to breakfast as though it was any other morning of his life, hadn't eased the muscles.