Soldier No More

"By whom?" Roche ignored the question of his own inadequacy.

"I do not know. To my shame, I failed to remark upon the coincidences until this morning. It... has been a long time, since the old days, m'sieur. I am not as suspicious as I once was."

Shit! thought Roche. It could hardly be the Comrades, or Genghis Khan would have told him so. Therefore it had to be ... whoever had attended to Miss Stephanides . . . and that dummy5

was frightening, even though Genghis Khan had promised to attend to them himself.

"A motor-cyclist, I think," said Galles. "Though I cannot see him at this moment."

Shit again! thought Roche. There were altogether too many faint motorcycle noises in his memory, from the last twenty-four hours back.

"Lose him, then," he commanded. This sort of thing, beyond a little checking before he made a carefully prepared contact, was out of his routine experience. He had never been a bloody cloak-and-dagger man.

"M'sieur . . . one does not lose a motor-cyclist—he has too many advantages. One kills motor-cyclists—nothing else will serve."

"Kills?"

"But yes! I killed one once—by accident, of course, you understand . . . on the blind corner before La Roque, it was ...

I braked to avoid a child who had run into the road—my cousin's little niece, it was—and there was a cement-lorry broken down on the other side of the road at that exact moment—the child ran out from behind it ... so there was nowhere the motor-cyclist could go—he was travelling too fast, of course—and nothing anyone could do. It was a tragic accident, with no one to blame except the victim himself, poor fellow."

Yes?"

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Galles shrugged. "Well... it will take me at least twenty-four hours to find another niece, and another cement-lorry, if that is what you want, M'sieur Roche."

Roche reviewed the situation. A single follower was there to follow and observe. And Genghis Khan himself had required him to lay on an observer for what he had in mind, whatever it was—a reliable observer. So one more trained observer couldn't do too much harm.

"We'll go on—and let him follow." Long-forgotten OCTU

training supported him: orders must always be given confidently, to encourage the other ranks' ill-founded belief that the officers know what is going on. "But I need a telephone at 6.15—I must report in before I see d'Auberon."

Galles gave him a searching look, as though to suggest that, however rusty and far-removed from tragic accidents he might be, he was too old a hand to cherish ill-founded beliefs.

"Go on, man!" He tried to meet the look arrogantly. "But just don't drive like a maniac any more. This is important, and I don't want to be part of any tragic accidents."

The look continued to search him. "Like that which befell Mademoiselle Meriel last night?"

The poor sod was as much in the dark about Steffy as everyone else, thought Roche. The years of peace since 'the old days' had not prepared him for a new generation of violence.

He shook his head. "I don't know about that. You think it dummy5

wasn't an accident?"

"The Police say that it was. But I do not think so."

Neither do I."

"Very well." Galles gave him another five seconds'-worth of doubt, and then reached under the dashboard. "M'sieur Audley sent this too, to introduce you to M'sieur d'Auberon."

Chases et Gens de la Dordogne et ses Pays, by Etienne d'Auberon. It was a rather slim, typically French rough-cut volume, rather dog-eared but unmarked by ownership—at a guess, Audley's own copy, because Audley would never bother to put his name in any book of his, it would be beneath his dignity.

He looked up Le Château du Cingle d'Enfer immediately in the index— ". . . high above the bend of the river, with the fertile river-plain on either side to supply it, which successive generations of d'Auberons terrorised to enable them to keep up the state of great barons..."

"A motor-cyclist," said Galles. "Or perhaps a motor-cyclist and an auto-cycliste—I think we have maybe united two separate tails into one now, m'sieur."

Roche looked up, and couldn't identify his surroundings.

"Where are we?" he demanded.

"Just coming into Laussel-Beynac. You wished for a telephone, and I have a cousin here—"

"A public telephone," said Roche quickly, moving to minimise unacceptable risks. "That's the regulation."

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Overhanging trees gave place to overhanging houses clinging to a steep hillside in the middle of nowhere.

"Over there," said Galles, pointing.

The telephone was beyond another 1914-18 Poilu, unsuitably overcoated and weighed down with equipment on the top of a marble plinth, standing guard aggressively on behalf of the men of Laussel-Beynac who had not come back from the Marne and the Aisne and the Somme to the Dordogne. He was, so far as Roche could recall, the same soldier who had presided over Neuville's dead enfants.

He tripped the switch in his memory to activate the number Genghis Khan had given him, from among the peach-boxes.

"David. For Johnnie." It seemed very strange indeed to think of Genghis Khan so innocently.

"Johnnie. For David—"

It wasn't Genghis Khan's voice, or any other voice that he could place. But it was Johnnie for David nevertheless.

He listened, and replaced the receiver without bothering to acknowledge, just letting ersatz- Johnnie cut him off.

Never again, Johnnie for David. That was the last time ever!

And now one other call—but at least Johnnie for David gave him strength for that—

"Hullo? Roche here."

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He held on, studying the stained copper-green-and-grey soldier, forever Mart pour la Patrie. No one was going to remember Captain Roche that way, by God!

"Roche?"

It was Thompson, and that made it easier. If God wasn't an Englishman or a Frenchman at least, He wasn't anti-Roche!

"Listen—you tell Stocker—"

"Hold on, old boy! You should have checked in this morning, you know! He's off-net at the moment, but he'll be back any time now. So call back in half an hour, and you'll get him, eh?" Thompson sounded a tiny bit rattled.

"I was busy this morning—and I can't wait now. Tell him I'm going in, to get what he wants—tell him that. Right?"

The bastide- fancier gobbled impotently for another rattled moment, and then took a grip of himself. "Do you want any back-up ... for whatever it is?"

"Can you get back-up to Laussel-Beynac in five minutes?"

Roche looked at his watch, almost happily.

"Where?"

"It doesn't matter. Our man down here is with me. Just tell the Major that. And I may not be able to call him again until tomorrow—you tell him that as well—" By tomorrow I'll be long gone to ground, with a leaf or two taken out of d'Auberon's book too "—right?"

"If you say so, old boy. But you sound a bit over-confident to me—"

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" Shit!" Roche wasn't sure whether he'd put down the phone before or after he'd pronounced his last farewell to Thompson, but it no longer mattered.

He retrieved Chases et Gens de la Dordogne etses Pays from the passenger's seat, and nodded encouragingly to Galles.

"It's okay. I'm cleared to go ahead. How far is it?"

"Three kilometres only." Galles glanced uneasily at his wing mirror. "Did they have any ideas about our followers?"

"Are they still there?" It would be as well to reassure the little Frenchman, even with lies, so that he could concentrate on seeing what he was required to see.

"I cannot see them. But they are there."

Not that what Galles saw, or didn't see, really mattered any longer either . . . But it would be better to go through with Genghis Khan's plan to the letter, just in case.

"I don't think we need worry too much about them." The memory of their meeting in Madame Peyrony's coach-house came to his rescue. "It's most likely the Americans keeping an eye on us, it seems. They won't try anything rough."

"No?" Galles sounded something less than disarmed by the forecast, possibly because of some wartime recollection of OSS roughness. "I hope you're right, m'sieur. But just in case ... if what you are doing is so important..."

Roche watched him swivel to rummage in a large metal tool-dummy5

box wedged behind him amongst a collection of jacks and crowbars and towing-ropes, finally to produce a sacking bundle secured with greasy twine.

"Good God, man!" He watched in horror as Galles produced an enormous military revolver and a tiny automatic pistol from the sacking. "We don't need those—we're not going to storm the château!"

"Here—" Galles offered him the little automatic, ignoring his reaction "—I will keep the man-stopper, you can put this in your pocket. It's only a Ruby—my cousin René brought it back from Spain in '38—it will do no one any harm, but it may make them think twice."

"Good God—no!" exclaimed Roche, hypnotised by the weapons. "We're not into that sort of thing!" He knew he had to make allowances for the vast arsenal of weaponry which defeat and occupation, not to mention well-supplied resistance, had distributed throughout France, but the casual appearance of small arms from a middle-aged mechanic's tool-box, from among the wrenches and screwdrivers, shook him nevertheless.

"Eh bien! So you suit yourself, m'sieur." Galles shrugged.

"But I choose rather to be safe than sorry."

He closed the sacking loosely over the weapons and placed the bundle at his feet. "So now . . . just what exactly is it that you wish me to do, eh'"

"Drive to the château—" Roche swallowed nervously, then dummy5

took hold of himself "—and drop me off in the parking area in front of the main gate ... do you know it?"

"Yes, m'sieur. The new parking area which M'sieur d'Auberon has had prepared for the tourists—there is building work in progress still or the gate-house—"

"That's right." Galles' information tallied with Genghis Khan's. "You wait for me there. That's all you have to do, mon vieux."

"It is . . . a pick-up?"

That was a perfect question, better even than he could have imagined "Yes. And we are picking up dynamite, I can tell you."

Galles touched the sacking with his toe. "Then we will make your pick-up, m'sieur—never fear!"

Roche used up the last three kilometres inside Chases et Gens.

Most obligingly (though no doubt by design, now that he intended to convert Le Château du Cingle d'Enfer into a tourist-trap, milking foreigners where his hobereaux ancestors had once composed the peasants out of their money), Etienne d'Auberon had included a plan of the château.

"... the outer courtyard, reached by way of a ruined gatehouse of formidable proportions, leads the visitor to a second and more attractive gateway, built in the dummy5

Renaissance style, bearing the family motto 'Soln in perfectum me attrahit' intertwined among delicate devices..."

So he had two gateways to pass—

". . . the interior of the château, soon to be opened to the public for the first time, comprises a succession of noble rooms, furnished with the everyday objects of life in the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries, including priceless tapestries, furniture and family portraits..."

Either the château had somehow escaped the excesses of the French Revolution, or the present owner was lying through his teeth! But here, once again, was illustrated that unrivalled ability of the French to triunph over adversity . . .

and he could only hope that his own diluted French blood would do the same for him.

"We are close, m'sieur."

Roche craned his neck to take in the view. They had left the last houses of Laussel-Beynac behind among the trees, and had twisted and turned in a series of hairpin bends to rise above a great cingle of the river, to bring into view the towers of the château ahead.

The last turn opened up the new parking area, bulldozed out from the hillside on the peasants' side of a great dry moat which had been cut across the limestone headland on which the castle itself had been built to command the river valley.

The medieval defences of the castle lay directly ahead, dummy5

wreathed in scaffolding, with a lorry in the foreground from which men were even now unloading bags of cement, and with the delicate conical towers of the Renaissance château he had glimpsed earlier rising in the background.

He was oddly reminded of The Old House, which was so absolutely different and so English, but which was the same for all that: possession of these things—Le Château du Cingle d'Enfer and The Old House at Steeple Horley—could twist some men out of true self-interest, just as any abstract ideas could delude others, like himself and Genghis Khan, who had no such things of their own, into other follies.

The distant sound of a motor-cycle, somewhere behind him in the trees on the twists and turns, recalled him to reality.

He picked up Choses et Gens and his own bastide nonsense, and walked round the Citroen to the driver's window.

"Just you keep your eye on that gateway. When I come out of there I don't want to hang about admiring the view—you understand?"

He didn't wait for Galles to acknowledge the instruction, but launched himself straightway towards the first gate.

" The visitor will observe the gun-ports, pierced low in the gateway by Jean d'Auberon, who died with 'obert de Montal at-the battle of Pavia in 1525 . . ."

He observed the gun-ports.

And he also observed the cement-bag carriers, who took no more note of him than the peach-box carriers outside dummy5

Neuville.

Under the shadow of the archway ahead—" rebuilt by Etienne III d'Auberon, who led the best shots in France in the hunt for the last wolf of the Dordogne, in 1774" —there was a pile of cement bags, laid away safe from any August rain, as Genghis Khan's man had said they would be.

He paused halfway down, out of sight of everyone, as though to adjust the tightness of one shoelace, and picked up the brief-case planted between the bags.

It was dusty with a fine powder of cement, and the key was in the lock. He turned the key and put it into his trouser pocket, dusted down the case with his hand, as he straightened up, and stepped out briskly into the light of the inner courtyard beyond.

It was only a matter of ten seconds, but he had it now— King, Cawdor, Glamis, all—he could turn round and run now!

He continued on towards the 'Solum perfectum me attrahit'

doorway, tucking the d'Auberon book and the bastide material more comfortably under his arm. A thing done right was a thing done well, Mrs Clarke had said.

There was a heavy bronze dolphin knocker on the great door.

He looked back across the courtyard and saw that the cement carriers were back on their job.

A small grill clicked open in the door, startling him.

"Captain David Roche—for M'sieur d'Auberon." He projected the password into the grill, slightly off-put by the pink scalp dummy5

which was all he could see through it. "M'sieur Audley has telephoned, I think?"

Heavy bolts echoed on the inside. Getting into the château, with all its ancient treasures and its more lethal post-Suez objets d'art, was not just for casual callers.

There were three steps forward, and then two steps down, over white Carennac marble into the hall, while the great door crashed shut behind him.

". . . and its greatest architectural beauty is the splendid Renaissance staircase, which comprises a superb transition between the spiral and the stair in flights, as at Montal. . ."

"If M'sieur le Capitaine will come this way?" The little bald man who had peered up at him through the grill, grey-coated and black-trousered, indicated a door to his left.

Roche regretted desperately that he had come so far, but he was trapped now beyond all thought of retreat.

". . . a succession of noble rooms. . ."

Here he was in one of them, complete with tapestries on one side, and a breath-taking view beyond the river on the other!

"M'sieur d'Auberon will attend you here shortly, M'sieur le Capitaine."

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The second door closed behind him.

Door—enormous windows, with five-mile views across the river—vast carved fireplace . . . and an immense faded tapestry picturing heavily-armed Renaissance Romans martyring naked Christians in ingenious ways. . .

But he hadn't come to admire d'Auberon's treasures. There was a huge oak table in the centre of the room, on heavily carved legs. He walked towards it quickly, first dumping the bastide notes and Choses et Gens on top, then tucking the brief-case down out of the way behind one of the legs, feeling for all the world like Stauffenberg planting his bomb under the table in the Fuehrer's bunker.

Only, unlike Stauffenberg, the moment he'd abandoned the brief-case he wanted to pick it up again. The thought of letting it out of his grasp even for a second left him desolate, clenching the empty hand which had relinquished it into a tight fist in a reflex against temptation.

He felt the temptation grow. It wasn't really necessary at all, this charade—he was still obeying Genghis Khan when the man's orders no longer mattered—when nothing mattered except the possession of that brief-case—

A sound outside the room straightened him up just as his hand started to unclench.

"Captain Roche?"

Roche turned slowly towards the sound.

"Captain Roche—what a pleasure! You are David Audley's dummy5

friend? Or, more accurately, Miss Baker's friend?"

He hadn't consciously tried to imagine what Etienne d'Auberon would be like, beyond vague instinctive images founded on what Lexy and Madame Peyrony had let slip, crossed with his own experience of superior Quai d'Orsay types.

"M'sieur d'Auberon." He mouthed some sort of reply, letting the Frenchman come towards him while moving only slightly himself so as to mask the brief-case more effectively.

"And staying with him, in the Tower? While on leave from Paris, he said?" D'Auberon's handshake was firm and dry, and neither too strong nor too weak, like the man himself.

Roche found himself recalling another of Bill Ballance's obiter dicta, on the Anglo-French love-hate complex: ' the best Frenchman is the one you can admire as an enemy if you can't have him as a friend' .

But meanwhile he had replied again, one half of his brain working automatically to make the necessary conversation along lines already planned while the other half tried to betray him.

"Ah, yes—our bastides. And there is nothing recent written on them in English? You are lucky David Audley hasn't thought of that. He is a most able historian . . . but then his interests are strictly Merovingian, aren't they?"

Far beneath the surface of the words Roche sensed the truth of what he already knew, that d'Auberon and Audley admired dummy5

each other in enmity, not as friends.

He replied once more, and saw d'Auberon smile, and the smile hurt him. For d'Auberon was another name in the list of his betrayals, as surely as if there had been a bomb in that brief-case. And if there was another thing that was sure, it was that this man would never be in the business of betraying anyone—Audley had been wrong even to imagine it as a possibility, and Genghis Khan had been right to reject the idea. He didn't know how he knew it, but he knew it.

More pleasantries and agonised conversation. And then d'Auberon's eye fell on Chases et Gens.

"I see you have my little book. Not a great work, I'm afraid—

it bears the stamp of too many official reports, without style. . . it is just another pile of facts, without interpretation." D'Auberon gestured round the room, and towards the window. "All this is beautiful. . . but what does it mean?"

The pretentiousness of the question surprised Roche: it seemed out of the man's character. But at last it broke the spell, enabling him to unite the two parts of his brain. What did it matter, what happened to a stranger, compared with what happened to him?

"I thought it was fascinating—how one of your ancestors led the king's huntsman to kill 'the Beast of Gevaudan'. . . and about the château itself, of course."

"Would you like to see the house? And then a glass of dummy5

something?"

The predictable responses hardened Roche's heart finally. He looked at his watch guiltily, to confirm that enough minutes had elapsed to run d'Auberon out of time. "That's very kind of you . . . but—most unfortunately—I am required to be back at the Tower. I merely wished to make myself known to you ... if perhaps you could provide me with some introductions—particularly in Monpazier and Villereal . . .

there's no hurry—" the words tumbled out as he scooped up the book and the bastide papers, blocking off d'Auberon's view of the table leg "—another time, perhaps?"

His bad manners creased a tiny frown on to d'Auberon's forehead. "Another time—of course, Captain."

It was a little more difficult to force the Frenchman into leading the way out, so that he could still mask the case, but he managed it with a mixture of English clumsiness and lack of savoir faire, and the genuine nervousness and reluctance he felt in abandoning the most precious object on earth.

In the end d'Auberon positively strode ahead, out into the entrance hall, irritated by his gaucheness, and Roche's last view of the room was agonisingly rewarded with the sight of the thing poking out from under the table like a sore thumb.

The little bald door-keeper was hovering in attendance at the entrance.

"I will see m'sieur out, Martin," said d'Auberon brusquely.

Roche hurried after him into the courtyard. "The trouble is, dummy5

you see . . . my car broke down by the river, where I was bathing with Lady Alexandra—" (another strike against d'Auberon was that he hadn't zeroed in on Lexy, as any sensible man should have done, and as her father and Madame Peyrony might well have intended; or was that a strike for him, damn it?) "—so I had to get a lift here . . . and that's why I'm so late, you see—"

"A lift?" D'Auberon was halfway across the courtyard already, eager to get rid of Captain Roche from the premises.

"With Lady Alexandra's garage man. He's waiting for me, to take me back to the Tower," said Roche breathlessly.

D'Auberon stopped alongside the pile of cement bags.

"What?"

I had to get a lift here." Roche feigned embarrassment. " Oh—

damn!"

What?" The vehemence of Roche's damn caught d'Auberon's attention. "What's the matter?"

"I'm an idiot!" Roche turned embarrassment to apology. "I've left my brief-case behind—with all my other stuff in—I put it down somewhere—" he looked around him helplessly, and finally back towards the door of the château "—it was by the table, I think—"

D'Auberon regarded him with a suggestion of weariness, which was then overtaken by good-mannered tolerance as Roche grimaced apologetically at him.

"I'm so sorry." The words put the matter beyond argument.

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"It is no matter. I will go and get it." D'Auberon shrugged and turned on his heel.

Roche's legs, still programmed by Genghis Khan, carried him on past the cement bags, into the light beyond the arched tunnel of the gate-house. The lorry had gone, and the parking area was empty except for the little grey Citroen. He could see Raymond Galles' face turned towards him.

He felt almost played out, but in the last minute of the game, when the team which was going to win was the one which forced itself to play harder. Facing Galles, he raised his hand across his stomach and damped down the man's expectations with a palm-down signal.

The light had lost its brightness, which he had first seen this morning dissipating the mist on the road from Neuville to Cahors. It was like the field where he had been sick the evening before, just in advance of Lexy's arrival. Now he felt sick again—sick with all the different prospects ahead of him, in which Lexy could never take part.

But really there were only two prospects; either d'Auberon would come back, or he wouldn't.

When he did—he had to think only of that— when he did, all that remained was to drive back to Audley, and fob him off with success. . .and that would win him another day, at the least—maybe more, since both sides trusted him, and when he didn't surface each would worry first about what the other one might have done to him, and by the time either of them started to smell a rat he'd be long gone to ground, and ready dummy5

to deal for his survival—

Long gone, Julie—

And long gone, Lexy—

And long gone, all the rest of them—the man on the beach in Japan and all his successors down to Genghis Khan; and the man in the British Embassy in Tokyo, and all his successors down to Sir Eustace Avery and Colonel Clinton; and David Audley and Etienne d'Auberon—and the hell with all of them!

No more self-pity, just self-interest and the future—no longer the past or the might-have-been, no more deluding himself with silly ideas—there was no more time for any of that—

In the stillness he heard the door under Solum perfectum me attrahit close again behind him in the distance, through the arched gate-house and the courtyard.

Raymond Galles, and whoever else was there to witness the transaction, was still watching him. And the only thing that worried him was the faintest suggestion of doubt which had been in d'Auberon's eyes as he turned away.

"Here you are, Captain Roche—one brief-case!"

Roche's left hand, feeling in his pocket among his loose change, closed over the key. It was the same case, and there hadn't been time for anyone to pick the lock, even if anyone had had reason to pick it.

His right hand took the case for Galles to see. He had entered the château without it, but now he was leaving with it— and dummy5

d'Auberon had given it to him.

The thing was done—and if anyone else was watching, it could only be Genghis Khan's man who had witnessed it, he decided. And that would just give him even more time.

"Just one thing—"

Another thing? He looked at d'Auberon questioningly, the case weighing down his arm to his side, but there was something else weighing down his mind at the same time.

"Why did you really come to see me, Captain Roche?"

"I beg your pardon?" He heard the lack of conviction in his own voice.

"It's simply that . . . I've never seen a man more nervous than you, Captain—underneath the polite civilities, that is."

D'Auberon smiled— half-smiled—at him. "But of course you don't have to tell me ... though you make me nervous too, because now I come to think of it, there is one man you remind me of: he despatched me into the Chausse Mejean in

'43, to work with the Bir Hakim maquis when things were bad

—and that only makes me more nervous."

"Why?" He knew what the other thing was: it had been there in the back of his mind ever since the plan had taken shape.

"Why? Well ... I think he thought the Germans were waiting for me. And so they were . . . but the drop went wrong—there was low cloud and we never saw the dropping zone, so I jumped almost blind, and broke my ankle five miles away, falling through a pigsty roof outside Brassac. A fortunate dummy5

disaster . . . but he didn't know that when I jumped, you see.”

Roche hardly heard him. He was trapped by his own knowledge of what the Comrades must do next.

Up until now they had had no incentive to do anything about Etienne d'Auberon, with his secret already safely in their possession; if anything, he was more useful to them alive than dead. But now ... it was always possible that sooner or later the British would get round to checking Captain Roche's story, just to be on the safe side, in spite of Galles' eye-witness account of the transfer. Then it would be his word against d'Auberon's, but even if they took his word there would always be a niggling doubt—and there would be no place for any niggling doubts in Sir Eustace Avery's operations.

"What is your work in Paris, Captain?" D'Auberon weakened enough to ask directly the question which must have been uppermost in his mind from the start.

Simply, they couldn't afford to leave the Frenchman alive now. They wouldn't do it today or tomorrow—they'd allow just enough time to allow Roche to win his spurs, but not a minute more—maybe the day after tomorrow, trusting that the French themselves would handle the problem of the other two copies. But they would do it.

"I shouldn't be here." He felt strangely relieved to hear his own voice. "I shouldn't be here . . . but we owe you."

"You owe me?" D'Auberon seemed puzzled.

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"Audley does, anyway." He'd promised not to mention Audley's role in this, but he hadn't promised anything else.

"From the war."

"Mon Dieu! He doesn't still remember that, does he!"

D'Auberon reacted as Audley had predicted he would do at the mention of his name.

"It doesn't matter. The fact is, the Russians know what you've got. So you'd best go to ground somewhere safe—at once."

"The Russians?" With the thirty-foot walls of his home behind him d'Auberon didn't appear scared.

But there was one sure way of changing that. "The KGB."

To his chagrin, he watched d'Auberon's face relax. "The KGB? My dear Captain Roche—the Russians are the least of my worries! There might be some people who could misunderstand the situation . . . owing to the nature of my work when I resigned . . . but not the Russians—not them, of all people, Captain."

Roche was already beginning to regret his idiotic moment of altruism. If the KGB didn't frighten the man, then nothing would.

D'Auberon was almost smiling. "Obviously, you've never read my report— obviously!''

His report? But if that was the encyphered part of the papers weighing him down now . . . then the Comrades would have broken it long since, with all the advanced Enigma machines they captured in '45.

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"But you came to warn me—and on your own initiative?" The suggestion of amusement was suddenly tempered by an even more humiliating cast of gratitude. "So . . . my people haven't ever told the British—in spite of everything?" In turn, gratitude became tempered by anger. "Even in spite of my resignation?" Roche held his tongue.

"Oh yes, Captain—that was also part of it. It was mostly Algeria, but it was also the matter of my report, which should not have been withheld from your people in the circumstances—not in any circumstances, in honour—no matter that your Government had so shamefully withdrawn from the Egyptian operation—so shamefully." He shook his head at Roche, the very incarnation of Bill Ballance's 'best Frenchman' sorrowing over a once-honourable enemy's declension into the role of dishonourable ally.

Roche wondered nervously about what Raymond Galles would be making of this exchange, even while not knowing what to make of it himself.

"So . . . it is still a matter of honour. But you have changed the rules now, Captain—because now it is I who owe you.

And if the Russians know everything, then it is only right that the British should know everything also, I think."

This was going to be something Genghis Khan hadn't told him, thought Roche. But then no bugger had told him everything, but mostly as little as possible. It was this old-fashioned Frenchman's weird sense of personal honour—and his own equally inexplicable rush-of-blood-to-the-head—

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which was going to blow the gaff.

"You see, Captain, I handled all the special material from Moscow last year, from spring to late autumn—it came through the diplomatic bag, it was judged too important for any other method—and also too important to pass directly to the British. Commandant Roux and I made a digest of it for them."

Good old Philippe! So that settled one outstanding problem very simply: Philippe had been the stage-manager.

"Then I was promoted, to take charge of our plans for the fortification of the Tunisian frontier, as a reward for my good work ..."

It had been promotion all round for the RIP beneficiaries of the 'special material' from Moscow, naturally—Eustace Avery and Etienne d'Auberon both!

"But then I started to think about it—all that had happened, and how it had gone wrong for us."

That was where Avery and d'Auberon had parted company, thought Roche grimly: Avery had capitalised on his good work, and d'Auberon had started to think about it. And now, one step ahead of the Frenchman's debt repayment, he knew what was coming.

"I managed to draw the file out—nobody had any reason to question that, as I'd written most of it myself."

Philippe Roux had been slow off the mark there.

"The truth is, Captain, we were 'taken for a ride', as the dummy5

Americans say. Everything we got from Moscow was correct—

it was genuine top-level material—but it was deliberately given to us to direct our policies in a particular direction, and we never questioned it. And, as a result, we gave the Russians a free hand in Central Europe . . . and ruined ourselves into the bargain. That was the report I wrote—you understand?"

Roche understood—he even understood more than d'Auberon was actually telling him. "So what happened then?"

The Frenchman shrugged. "It was not welcomed, I regret to say. . . And then there were other troubles, related to my new job."

I'll bet there were! thought Roche. Philippe—good old Philippe!— couldn't abolish the report once it had been written, but he would have made up for lost time in every other way, by God! Etienne d'Auberon was much too smart to be allowed to prosper: short of killing him, which would have made too many people suspicious at the time, he had to be discredited. He didn't want to hear any more— he wanted to get away from here, and think about what he knew now, which he hadn't known before—

"There's no need to tell your people all that, though."

D'Auberon looked at him a little uncertainly, as though the enormity of what he had let slip for honour's sake was beginning to come home to him. "Get them to analyse all the transcripts of the joint discussions—we gave them a lot of dummy5

what we got. If someone really good does that, then he should be able to reach the same conclusions as I did."

It had been a mistake to let the man live that first time, whatever the risk, thought Roche. Beyond all doubt now, the Comrades wouldn't make the same mistake twice. But there was no way of explaining it to him.

"I still think the KGB's interested in you," he compromised, paying as much of his new debt as he dared. "And you never know what they're up to."

D'Auberon shook his head. "What I know, Captain . . . they know that already—better than either of us, I fear."

Roche felt the woods at his back. In a couple of days' time d'Auberon would come out here to admire the progress of the restoration of his 'ruined gatehouse of formidable proportions', and some sharp-eyed, telescopic-sighted hireling would put an end to that illusion. But there was nothing more he could say to prevent it, without saying too much for his own good. "If you think so." He turned away, wanting to reach the Citroen, yet still aware of the weight of guilt in the brief-case.

A thought surfaced, as his hand touched the door handle, turning him round to face his brother-under-the-skin for the last time—they were both just as foolish really—nothing could be more foolish than the pair of them, but he couldn't let it go at that.

"Meriel Stephanides was killed in a car crash last night," he dummy5

threw the news across the widening distance between them.

"But it wasn't an accident—she was working for the Israelis."

D'Auberon could bloody well make what he liked out of that.

XVII

HE FELT THE shakes coming on just as they were passing the overburdened poilu on the war memorial in the square at Laussel-Beynac, so to give his hands something to do, he made a great production of producing the key and unlocking the brief-case on his knees.

"Well. . . let's see what we've got, then!" He riffled through the thick file of official French and the thinner folder of encyphered gibberish.

"That's it!" He relocked the case. "I didn't think he'd give it to us, but he did!"

Once he started to negotiate with the British, then they would take Galles to pieces bit by bit to reconstruct every detail of this journey, back over every word he'd said. But it didn't really matter now what they thought. Getting away was all that mattered—Genghis Khan's clever scheme had become as irrelevant as Avery's original intention. He no longer needed either of them—he was free of them both at last. All he had to do was think straight.

"Go back to the river," he ordered Galles. "I want to pick up my car."

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His hands were steadier now, clasping the brief-case to his chest.

All he had to do was think straight—

Item: If d'Auberon did go to ground, after that last flurry of half-truth, then that would do no harm—it would only give him more time;

Item: If he didn't go to ground, and the Comrades did what he was pretty damn sure they would do, then so much the better—it would give him all the time in the world!

(In retrospect, he still didn't know why he'd warned d'Auberon to start running, when he didn't need to do it, and it had been against his better judgement, and he didn't owe the man a damn thing; and yet—which was even more baffling—he didn't regret doing it. . .)

But— item—why was Genghis Khan so delighted—not merely resigned, but delighted—to surrender all this to Sir Eustace Avery?

Just to get Roche in position?

Shit! The question answered itself as soon as it was asked! Of course getting Roche inside was important. But it was knowing the nature of the gift—and knowing the nature of Sir Eustace Avery, that 'great survivor'— that had delighted Genghis Khan.

The Comrades weren't giving up anything important, after all, because d'Auberon's report had effectively destroyed the dummy5

value of the Moscow source for ever—because they could never be sure that word of it hadn't been leaked to the British.

Indeed, maybe it had . . . maybe that was why Sir Eustace was so desperate to get his hands on it as his own special possession?

Because it was still vitally important to him, of all people, as the proof that in reality the Russians had made a monkey of him—and that he'd made a monkey of the Prime Minister in turn, and got a knighthood for it as a reward!

Not even a 'great survivor' could survive that, if it got into hostile hands first. But in his own hands, with time to think and plan and shift responsibility . . . that was something else . . .

Maybe he was doing the man an injustice. But it didn't matter, because his reaction would be the same, either way, given his will to survive— and that was what Genghis Khan was counting on, to give him the edge on the head of the whole Avery operation, with Roche at the heart of it to monitor progress.

It wasn't bad—it was good.

Even, it was better than good—it was getting better and better and better, right up to the very best he could have imagined: with this he could make his own terms, and write his own ticket—with a little care, and a little time, and only a dummy5

little more luck, nothing could stop him.

(It had been a mistake to warn d'Auberon, and he regretted it now. But he would make no more such mistakes.) In fact, the only thing that could stop him was if Raymond Galles ran out of road.

"Steady on—you're driving like a maniac." He realised that his body, as well as his thoughts, had been rolling madly from side to side.

"We're still being followed. I don't like being followed." The time spent outside the chateau had evidently frayed the little Frenchman's nerves.

Roche peered around him. "This isn't the way we came. How close are we to the river?"

"We aren't going back to the river."

But I want to pick up my car, damn it."

"We're not going back there ... all alone there . . . if what you've got is so important. I am to look after you, and that is what I'm doing."

“What the hell d'you mean?"

"I mean, m'sieur, that it was unwise of you to receive that thing which you are holding ... to receive it with such pleasure ... in the open, for all to see." Galles twisted the wheel savagely. "Because ... if that is what you have been waiting for, then perhaps. . . that is what they are waiting for. . . I think."

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That made uncomfortable logic, because he still didn't know for sure who they were, or why they had been waiting, even though Genghis Khan had promised to attend to them. "So what are you doing?"

"I am taking you back to the Tower, where there are other people—first. . . . You will be safe there . . . and also, in that little car of yours you would never be able to get away from anyone, if it came to that." More irrefutable logic.

"And then?"

"And then, when it is dark, I will bring you the other car, which I have ready for you. Then you will have the necessary petrol and performance, if that is what you require."

Roche estimated his capabilities as a getaway driver. "But you said no one loses a motor-cyclist—"

"Also by then I shall have made certain preparations .... You may rest assured that you will not be followed far. And there will be a man with you, to guide you wherever you wish to go ... And there will be no motorcyclists." Galles pronounced the last word through his teeth. "I may be getting old—and I have been careless, to my shame ... but this is still my patch, m'sieur."

Was his patch? For once Roche's vocabulary faltered. Country

—piece of land—playing-field—home-ground—stamping ground— killing-ground— burial plot—?

Madame Peyrony had said almost the same thing. But whatever the word meant, it meant the same thing: that dummy5

strangers came into it at their peril, and that these strangers now were in line to discover something about les chases et gens de la Dordogne et ses pays which would never figure in any guidebook.

"He is hanging back now—I haven't lost him, but we are getting close to the Tower, so he thinks he knows where we are going," murmured Galles, steadied by the prospect of vengeance. "Around the next corner I will accelerate, and then I will stop quickly and you will get out quickly, and drop down out of sight even more quickly . . . and then I will be gone, and he will not be quite sure whether we have not been perhaps a little clever, to deceive him, one way or the other.

Because he knows now that I know he is behind me."

"He knows?"

"Oh yes—I have played this game before, I told you—he knows! It is like the old days ... so we will play a small trick on him from those days: when he turns the corner and sees neither you nor this vehicle by the roadside it is possible that he may think we have decided to make a run for it after all, eh?"

Now he sounded almost as though he was beginning to enjoy himself, thought Roche resentfully, more irritated than frightened by the unexpected requirement to take part in such cloak-and-dagger activity just when everything had at last begun to seem straightforward.

But so long as he needed the man it would be as well to humour his hankering after the excitement of the old days.

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"Very well."

"Good!" Galles dropped a gear unhurriedly as the little Citroen began to labour up the final incline on to the shoulder of the ridge. The view opened up at Roche's elbow, across the valley to the other side, which he had first glimpsed this morning in Audley's company; then the distant ridge opposite had risen out of the dawn mist and now it was sinking into evening blueness, with the first lights twinkling on it. It would be dark in less than an hour.

Galles turned the wheel slowly. "Be ready!"

The engine surged with a sudden burst of power just as Roche caught sight of the Tower ahead, standing alone in the open, slightly downhill to his left. It looked dark and untenanted under its conical hat of black tiles— perhaps Audley was waiting for him in the cottage—?

"Brace yourself—" the Frenchman held the wheel tightly with both hands "—I will return in one hour—or not more than two

—bonne chance, m'sieur—now!"

Roche had one hand on the door handle, with the other still clasping the brief-case to his chest, as Galles stood on his brakes. The truck's tyres slithered on the loose gravel at the side of the narrow road, and a tree sprouting out of a tangled blackberry bush flashed past his face.

The urgency of the whole procedure, rather than the idea behind it, threw him out of the vehicle. While he was still straightening up, before he could turn to slam the door, he dummy5

heard it snap shut behind him—his last impression had been of Galles reaching across after him—and the truck was moving again. He stopped thinking about it instantly, and concentrated only on making himself scarce in a few yards of ground which he had seen only once before in daylight, and never studied with that aim in view.

But Galles had known it well enough, and had allowed for that: the Tower was fifty yards away down the track, and the cottage itself another fifty or more, both in the open and too far off to be worth a second glance. But the blackberry tangle was thick and in full leaf.

Three strides forward and two—three—sideways carried him away and down from sight of the road, into the long grass behind it, in automatic obedience to instructions.

He held his breath, and for a moment heard the blood pounding in his ears . . . and then exhaled slowly . . . and heard only the already distant sound of the Citroen's engine fading into the trees down the road, halfway to the Château Peyrony already.

There was no other sound—no other sound within miles, by the absence of sound—least of all a bloody motor-cycle making up for lost time!

Roche counted off his heart-beats, through another minute, while regaining his breath. During the minute a sound did register . . . of a dog barking far away, angry at something—

something which was most likely a grey garagiste Citroen being driven too fast, with imaginary motor-cyclists in hot dummy5

pursuit.

He sat up behind the blackberry bush, feeling more angry with himself than with Galles—if they'd given him a superannuated old fool, living in the past on memories of outsmarting the Gestapo and the Milice, then what else could he expect? He could only hope that Audley and his cronies hadn't witnessed the whole charade.

Still no sound. He rose to his feet and brushed himself down irritably, observing that he had scuffed the knees of his clean slacks with grass stains.

Not a whisper of sound. The road was clear, and the woods on the other side of it dark and empty with that peculiar evening stillness which always presaged the awakening of the night-hunting creatures.

He sighed, and picked up the brief-case. Because of the Frenchman's imagination he had another hour to kill—and an unnecessary hour too, in Audley's awkward company . . .

and Audley, being Audley, would surely want to have a look inside the case!

Well... he could kill that idea stone-dead by pulling rank—

captain now, but major-to-be—because as yet Audley had no rank, he was still just a bloody civilian, nothing more.

He smiled to himself as he set off down the track. Not major-to-be, but major-never-to-be, thank God!

Also, the cottage was as dark as the Tower, even though Audley's ugly black Morris Cowley was parked outside it.

dummy5

With just a bit of luck, the man would be busy making his farewells to Madame Peyrony and the girls down the road, and he wouldn't have to bother with him at all. He would leave him high and dry, in the middle of another great British intelligence disaster—that would be good training for him, if it didn't put him off altogether—

The sound of the motor-cycle engine shattered his rosy dream into fragments.

It swung him round in disbelief, like a hand on his shoulder, and the dream-fragments flew together again into nightmare as he saw men behind him on the road, which had been empty a few seconds before—

The disbelief and the nightmare became real instantaneously as the sight-line between them met, and they saw that he had seen them.

He was right alongside the Tower, where the stone steps leading up to the door met the track, and the door itself—the heavy oak door—stood invitingly ajar, offering him protection as nothing else did, beyond any second thought.

His feet took off, every muscle and sinew springing them so that he hit the door with his shoulder to burst it inwards as though it had been closed against it—

The door crashed back into darkness— not quite darkness, but yellow light— faces and people and yellow light and darkness, which registered for an instant, utterly confused, dummy5

and then exploded into a chaos of ear-splitting noise— and he was falling into the chaos, with something soft under him

—

—yellow light flared up, screaming at him— and the thing under him was no longer soft, it was insanely alive, with its sharp nails raking his face across forehead and cheek, and nails then turning into fingers grabbing at his throat—

— the light and the noises meant nothing any more— the fingers were digging into him, sickening him with unexpected pain—

— he swept them aside— they were feeble, compared with his pain— and caught his own fingers into hair, twining them in it as he smashed the thing now in his hands on to the floor again and again— again and again and again— until there was a different feel about it, and the pain had gone from his neck, and what was under him was soft and boneless again

—

Words came into his head, through his own shuddering breath—

"The bolts—bolt the door!" The hoarse cry was cut off by a tremendous crash just behind him somewhere.

"I've done it!" Another voice—a boy's voice, shrill with fear, answered.

"Get away from it, Jilly—get away from it!"

The light wasn't light—it was orange fire flaring up from the dummy5

floor, from the ruin of a lamp—fire and acrid smoke swirling up, lighting and obscuring at the same time.

Another crash behind him—

"Get away from the door!" The voice lifted. "Now!"

Another crash. Then a pause, and a sharp crack-crack-crack

—

"Yes, David..."

The name roused Roche. "What?"

"Roche?"

Roche's scattered senses came back to him. "Audley?"

"Mike?" The vague presence behind the voice and the smoke and flame rose up into the semblance of a man crunching something broken under his feet. "Mike?"

"God damn— aw, shit—God damn—" the voice trailed off into a mixture of exasperation and anguish, unintelligibly.

"Lexy?"

Roche looked down at what lay beneath him, in sudden horror.

The flames illuminated a strange dark face, open-mouthed, eyes open but rolled back, with his fingers still entwined in the long black hair.

"Lexy?" said Audley again.

Another crash at the door—

"Don't worry about that—it'll take more than muscle to move it . ." Audley's voice levelled ". . . and bullets."

dummy5

Crack-crack-crack—the three paper-bags exploded again, the last one metallically, as though soft steel had splayed out against hard iron.

Roche pulled his hands away in horror from the thing he was still holding, the hair dragging at his fingers before it released them.

"You better do something about that goddamn lamp—or we'll choke if we don't burn," said the American thickly.

"Put the carpet on it," ordered Audley. "I'll get my torch—put the carpet on it, Mike!"

"Put the fucking carpet on it yourself—" the American's voice cracked. "—I'm hit—I'm hit, God damn it!"

"You're hit?"

"Christ, man! He squeezed off half his magazine—where the hell d'you think it went?" The voice came back, this time with the anger momentarily blotting out the pain. "Jesus Christ!"

"Roche!" Audley dismissed his friend from the reckoning.

But Roche was already moving—as much to get away from the thing underneath him: if he smothered the flames then he would smother the sight of that also.

The centre of the room was a shambles— the whole room was a shambles, with the human beings in it thrown to the wall by the sudden explosion of fire and violence. But he could see, by the flames themselves, that the lamp had fallen off the carpet on to the floorboards, spreading fire around it.

dummy5

It felt like an expensive carpet, but he ripped it up all the same and flopped it down on the fire, stamping fiercely on it to smother the flames.

Darkness enveloped him at once—the shattered bowl he could hear and feel under his feet must have been almost empty of paraffin to give up so easily. Then a beam of light blinded him. Typical Audley— not to fill the lamp—

Then the light left him, swinging round the room to pick out the American first.

He was backed up against the wine rack, sitting on the floor, covered with blood—

No, covered with wine, which had cascaded down on him from the smashed bottles behind him—his hair was plastered down with it, and his shirt was soaking with it.

He blinked in the beam, and lifted a hand still clutching an automatic pistol to shield his eyes. "Did I get the son-of-a-bitch? But I think he's broken my fucking arm—" the shielding pistol-holding hand moved across his body to touch his shoulder "—Christ! So he has!"

The torch swung back to Roche. "You took the other one, Roche—?"

Roche ceased stamping, but found himself beyond any sort of answer. If it was the other one he'd taken—he didn't know where, or why, or who even—then there was no answer to give—

The torch left him again, answered by his silence.

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"Jilly?"

"Yes, David." Jilly was leaning against the wall, by the door.

"Get Mike up the stairs—see what you can see outside, between you— but keep down and be careful. Okay?"

Roche cancelled out the lack of paraffin in the lamp: the big man was thinking for all of them, in an attempt to salvage something out of chaos.

"Okay, Jilly?" repeated Audley, projecting encouragement at the girl.

She stared into the torch beam. "Lexy, David—"

"I know. But you go with Mike, there's a good girl. Roche and I will see to Lexy."

Lexy?

Roche cast around in the darkness helplessly. There was the faintest light coming down the stairway from above, where the trap-door must be open. But it was only enough to indicate a pattern of the stairs where the wine rack ran up the wall beside its uppermost treads.

Lexy—

"Go on, Jilly." The voice and the torch both directed her from the door across the shambles, to where Mike Bradford was already raising himself up to meet her, with a mixture of grunts and curses.

Roche started to feel his way off the carpet, vaguely orientating himself into the quarter of the compass Audley dummy5

had left dark.

"Wait!" Audley hissed at him, while still directing the ill-matched couple up the lower half of the staircase, until they could see their way for themselves.

"All right, Roche." The torch at last into the forbidden quarter, on the edge of a glistening pool of wine.

Lady Alexandra had chosen a simple white dress in which to welcome back Captain Roche from his so-important duties.

But it wasn't all-white anymore.

Nor would Lady Alexandra ever again be the flawless English rose, matching those in her father's garden: an unaimed bullet or a flying splinter of glass had scored her cheek to the bone, masking half her face with blood.

"Oh God—Jesus Christ—what have I done?" whispered Roche, lifting her up into his arms. "What have I done?"

"You haven't done anything, man!" snapped Audley from above him. "Or not that wouldn't have been worse if you hadn't done anything—put her down—you're only making her bleed worse!"

The shortened beam had dropped from the face to the spreading patch of blood below her shoulder, which oozed freshly as Roche stared at it.

"Here—press that against it— hard—" Audley dropped a large silk handkerchief directly on to the mess "—I'll be back in a moment—press it down hard, man!"

The torch beam shifted again, more on Roche than the girl, dummy5

so that he looked up involuntarily into the light even as he pressed the handkerchief into a ball over the wound. Audley had wedged the thing into an entpty space in the rack, just at his eye-level.

"Audley? Where the hell have you gone?" The torch blinded him again, but as he opened his mouth to protest he felt the girl squirm under his hand.

" Ouch! Mind what you're doing—you're hurting me!" Her voice was surprisingly strong. "David! David!"

He couldn't reach the torch to free himself from its beam.

"It's all right, Lexy darling—just lie still."

"Then stop hurting me! . . . Golly! You do look a mess! What on earth have you been doing to yourself?" Doubt weakened the voice. "Your face is all bloody—!"

Roche was aware that his face was smarting. "I scratched myself on a bramble-bush— Lie still."

"No you didn't!" Doubt shifted to urgent certainty. "They came in—the men from the woods—I said they would! And they wanted you—they wanted something you'd got, I think. . . and they made us wait. There were two of them, David—where are they?"

He could hear Audley's feet on the staircase. "It's all right, Lexy. Just lie still, Lexy darling."

"No—it isn't all right—" Her voice weakened "—there were two of them—and they wanted it, whatever it is . . ."

Roche remembered the brief-case. It was out there dummy5

somewhere, in the shambles alongside the man whose head he had hammered into a pulp.

"She's conscious, is she?" Audley recovered his torch.

"Good."

But then he moved away into the smoky darkness, knocking clumsily on obstacles and crunching on debris.

"What are you doing?" cried Roche.

"I'm scavenging for weapons." The light searched the wreckage. "All we've got is Mike's gun, but there are two here somewhere. . .and the man you clobbered still has a full magazine . . . which is more than Mike has. . . Ah!"

He would see the brief-case.

"Now for the other one," murmured Audley. "Got it!"

"What the hell's happening?" said Roche.

"Yes. . . you may well ask!"Audley picked his way back. "It would seem . . . that we made a rather serious error of judgement somewhere along the line. . . a most regrettable error . . ."He knelt down beside Roche. "How is she?"

Roche looked down. Above the mask of blood her eyes were closed again, but he could feel her chest rising and falling under the pressure of the sodden handkerchief.

"Was there an exit wound? I don't think there was..." Audley stuffed a huge pistol into his waistband alongside a smaller one, and felt gingerly under the girl. "No . . . fortunately it was your man who had the cannon, and you were just too quick for him . . . but unfortunately we don't really know the dummy5

angle of entry, and that's what matters . . . Still, the Perownes all have constitutions like cart-horses—they bleed a lot, but they're notoriously difficult to kill off."

Roche stared at him speechlessly for a moment. "Damn you, Audley!"

Audley returned the stare. "Damn me if you like—but don't go soft on me, that's all. There are too many fellagha out there for that, and—"

"Fellagha?"

"That's right. Didn't you look at the man whose brains you beat out? There's a whole bloody faoudj of Algerian FLN out there—and they're not planning to go away empty-handed ...

I take it that you did get the thing from d'Auberon?"

"But—" Roche's brain whirled "—but it's got nothing to do with them!"

"You try telling them that! I did—when they came in to wait for you—and I got a clout across the face for my trouble."

Audley touched his cheek.

"But why, for Christ's sake?"

"For Christ's sake—not for Allah's sake—d'Auberon was working on the Morice Line plans when he resigned. And with the Israelis here, sniffing around him—man, they've put two and two together and made five, that's what they've done

—"

There might be some other people who could misunderstand the situation—the scales fell from Roche's eyes at last.

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A most regrettable error of judgement—there had indeed been that, and it had been his own as well as Audley's . . . and Genghis Khan's too—or maybe Genghis Khan had more likely realised exactly who had killed Steffy, but had reckoned on the Comrades' ability to rein in the Algerians—and had also misjudged that situation.

"But we can't piss around with politics—we haven't the time,"

said Audley harshly. "An hour from now—or less if they've already got the stuff to hand—they'll blow in that door with a bit of plastique. And then it's just routine house-clearing—a grenade first, then they'll be in down here . . . and then they'll fire through the floor up above with automatic pistols. It isn't difficult, house-clearing . . . I've seen it done, believe me ...

and half these fellagha have been trained in the French Army to do it, what's more. All they need is darkness, and they'll have that soon." In an hour from now Raymond Galles would come back. Or maybe two hours—and Galles wouldn't be expecting a pitched battle . . . Roche felt hope extinguish within him.

"Give them the bloody brief-case, then." The words tumbled out, but they were the right words. The girl in his arms was worth more than the brief-case.

"No." Audley's rejection was uncompromising. Roche's mouth dried up. "It isn't worth fighting for."

“It's worth fighting for."

Roche moved his arm slightly beneath Lexy's shoulders. If he dummy5

stood any chance of jumping Audley he'd have to put her down first, and he wanted to do that as gently as possible. .

But the movement betrayed him. Audley lifted the larger of the two pistols from his waistband quickly. "Don't be silly, Roche."

It seemed to Roche that he had been silly all his life, and it was a bitter pain inside him that now at last, when he had stopped being silly, he had fluffed the transformation.

But there was still one last chance to make amends. "It isn't worth anything." It was like the old soldiers said: no plan, however clever, survived its first encounter with real life.

"I've worked for the Russians for years, Audley—ever since Korea. D'Auberon didn't give me his papers— they did. They know all about them . . . they ran the whole thing from start to finish. They've only given them to me now because it suits them. Do you understand?" It was simpler than he had imagined.

"God bless my soul!" At another time, in another world, Audley's astonishment would have been comical. But now it was merely inconvenient.

"So you let me take it out. I can talk to them—I can tell them who I am . . . why I'm here. Right?"

The black hole of the pistol wavered, then steadied. "It won't do, Roche—I'm sorry, but it won't do!"

"Why not?"

"Because they won't believe you—that's why. Because you're dummy5

a European—because we've killed two of their comrades ... It won't even do if they believe you're KGB, because they don't trust the Russians either. What have the Russians ever done for them? At the best, they'll reckon we've given them something to delay them, while they look at it—and they'll take you apart to make sure. And they're good at that. . .

they've had plenty of practice, right from Roman times."

All that was the truth—he knew it from his own knowledge, from the last report he had submitted—

French and Algerian FLN perceptions of Russian involvement and policies, with regard to the present situation in Algeria—his own work was arguing against him!

But not quite—

"Well—at least it'll delay them. And Raymond Galles is coming back here sometime—in the next hour or two. At least it's a chance, Audley."

The black hole was still unwavering. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why should I believe you—if you're a traitor?" The pistol jerked. "You could be delaying me now—"

"I'm not a traitor any more—I've done with that!" Roche felt the pulse of life under his hand. But that wouldn't do for Audley, even if it was true: Audley needed something he could recognise. "I don't belong to either side now—I choose for myself, and I say I'll soldier no more, and to hell with both sides—and all the other sides too!"

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He looked into the pistol and the light, caring beyond calculation at last, finally free of everything which had bound him.

"All right." Audley's voice sounded strange. "But my way, not yours. Because whatever we do they won't leave us alive, even if we did give it to them."

"Your way?"

"There's a trap-door by the wall there—it's where the table is overturned. It leads down to a sort of cellar . . . the peasants who lived here years ago kept their chickens down there—

there's a little hatch in the wall... it lets out into a ditch—not much of a ditch, but there are a few bushes there, and some nettles . . . You squeeze out there, and keep down flat, and keep going... If they have got a man covering the back he'll be in the trees away to your right, but he won't be looking for anyone, because he can't know about the chicken-door . . .

Also, we'll be attracting their attention in the front—when you're ready to go we'll try to parley with them from up above. And if they think we're fool enough to trust them, that'll tempt them to delay, maybe."

"Parley?"

"That's right. They can't leave us alive, but if they can get in without making too much noise . . . and my French is bad enough to confuse them . . . You go out there—a hundred yards down the ditch should be far enough—and then run like hell to Madame Peyrony's—get the police."

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Roche's spirits lifted. "Yes—"

"But there's something else, then—" Audley offered him the pistol "—take it... and you'll need the torch too . . . just shift the table in front of me, and I'll take Lexy—that'll maybe give us some protection, if the worst comes to the worst. . . the something else is that you've got to come back, Roche."

"What?"

"To distract them. Because we'll be running out of time by then ... So you come back as close as you can, and make a noise—flash the torch, fire the gun, shout 'A moi, la Legion!'—

whatever you like, just so you distract them. You've got to win us time, man!"

With a terrible bleak self-knowledge, Roche knew that he wasn't quite done with treachery. Maybe here, with Lexy in his arms, and no choice . . . but not out there, in safety.

"Why don't you go?" He didn't want to put himself to the test. "You know the way."

The torch and the pistol were both thrust at him. "Don't argue

—a hundred yards' crawl, and then turn left—and run like hell. . . you can't miss it, as the Irishman said." Audley paused. "Besides which, I can't get through the chicken-door

—I'm too big. I was going to send you anyway, if you must know." Then he grunted half-derisively. "Don't argue, man—

it's the only chance we've got. Go on—be a soldier this one more time, and we'll call it quits."

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Under the trap door there was an undulating earth floor, dry and dusty . . . or maybe it was a thick layer of chaff and ancient chicken-droppings from the powdery texture of it, and the mixture of feathers in it, even though the smell had long gone.

He ploughed through the stuff, inches deep, towards the crude little door, following tracks already furrowed before him.

Could he really squeeze through that?

The detritus had been scooped away from it, to reveal its full size, and the rusty iron hinges had been oiled, but it still looked more like a chicken-door than a Roche-door.

He lifted up the latch, and then dowsed the torch before he eased it open, his hands trembling.

His head ached and the sweat poured down his face. He was long past thinking clearly, and nothing mattered any more: this wasn't how it was meant to be, but this was how it was

—

He reached above him, at full stretch, and rapped the butt of the pistol on the flooring. Then he eased the door wide.

Cold air wafted around him, cooling the sweat on his face. He could just make out the stalks of weeds and vegetation ahead, black against paler blue.

Then he heard someone shouting, far away but insistently: Audley was drawing their attention to the front, as he had promised to do. So it was now or never.

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He squeezed himself into the aperture, parting the weeds ahead of him as carefully and silently as he could with his hands, feeling his shoulders first compress, and then scrape, on the rough stone.

As his hips came through, and he knew that he was out and free, he held his breath. The shouting continued in the distance, only marginally louder than the beating of his own heart.

Through the weeds, and in between the thicker stems of some kind of bush . . . and then the shallow ditch opened up before him, half filled with coarse grass.

He wouldn't be able to stop that grass moving, yet it might not show above the top of the ditch, and the light was bad now—but was it bad enough?

Anyway, the man covering the back shouldn't be watching the ditch— they'd hardly have looked over the Tower expecting this sort of siege—

Siege? He examined the ditch again, and saw that although shallow it was wide—even wide enough to be the remains of a defensive moat round some petty hobereau's fortified manor, of which the Tower itself was the last relic. And the wideness encouraged him to make himself believe that it was deeper than it seemed.

He crawled—and crawled as he had been taught to crawl at OCTU, with the fear of Staff Sergeants above him.

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And at last stood up, and ran—

He had not the slightest idea where he was at first, but Audley had said turn left, and somehow the geography of the ridge came to him as he ran—it curved into a re-entrant, such as the army map-reading experts loved—until there at last, black-towered among the treetops, was the Château Peyrony.

The gloomy woods didn't frighten him now, he was too breathless to be frightened, but the door wouldn't let him in.

He banged on it—hammered on it, starting up echoes which the house had never heard before, and went on hammering.

"M'sieur!" The old crone was outraged even before she saw his appearance. " M'sieur—"

He pushed past her, taking the stairs two at a time, scattering the house-ghosts headlong.

The light was glowing under the door, exactly where he remembered it—there was no need to knock— she was expecting him— and not only because of the noise he had made, coming to her now— she had known all along that death was loose in her country—

"Madame—"

She didn't move, she didn't turn a hair and she didn't interrupt him as he spoke, until—

"Gaston! Put that thing down—at once!"

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Roche turned into the twin mouths of a shotgun, with his own pistol hanging uselessly at his side. The old man was breathing heavily—and, for God's sake, the old woman had something in her hand too, just behind him! Madame Peyrony stood up. "Angélique: you will telephone the Police and tell them that Algerian terrorists are attacking the Englishman's Tower—they must come this instant. Then, you will telephone M'sieur Galles with the same message. At once!"

"Oui, Madame." The old woman didn't turn a hair either—

she might just as well have received orders for supper. She simply vanished from the doorway.

In her place, with a scampering slither, a small boy appeared behind Gaston, wide-eyed and tousle-haired.

Roche drew in his breath. It was there, just as he had known it would be—the last treachery of all, deep inside him, where he had always known it would be, waiting for him.

He looked at Madame Peyrony. Nobody could do more, or more efficiently, than she was doing. And no one could blame him for waiting here with her for the distant sound of the police klaxon—he was only one man, and too far away from the Tower to get back there in time. Whatever happened now, there was nothing more that he could do.

"Yes, Captain?"

He could feel her read his mind, through every twist of his fears, right down to the bedrock of cowardice.

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"I must go back to the Tower—to . . . divert them," he said thickly. "I promised."

"Of course." She inclined her head graciously. "How many of them are there ... to be diverted?"

"I don't know." His mouth seemed full of pebbles. "But I must go now—at once."

"But of course." She nodded again. "So you must take the car

—that will divert them."

"The car?"

"Petit Gaston—" she threw the command past him "—you will start the car for M'sieur le Capitaine. At once—and then attend your grandfather!" She came back to Roche. "It is complicated to start, so I am informed, but the child will do that for you."

Roche was momentarily diverted by the scampering sound behind him, and then by the look on her face.

"You have a weapon." She nodded down at his hand. "So you must do your best—as you promised."

He looked at her speechlessly.

"Off you go then!" Her voice became an order. "And, for your information, Captain ... I have disliked that car for over twenty years—you understand?"

Roche went—it was as though he was moving in a dream—

down the staircase, across the hall—into a darkening world dummy5

eerily lit by light streaming out of the courtyard on the left of the door, which drew him towards it.

This wasn't how it was meant to be—

The Delaroche Royale was already alive and waiting for him, with huge headlights blazing, but only the faintest thrumming of the engine buried deep inside it.

The child swung out of the driver's seat, making way for him.

"How do I make it go?" He looked despairingly at the bank of instruments. "Where's the gear-lever?"

The child came up at his shoulder, standing on the running-board. "There is a switch— there—" he pointed "—and then m'sieur presses upon the accelerator pedal—down there—

and then the brake is off, and she goes—"

Roche snapped the switch and felt for the brake—the monster was already moving—there was no gear lever—

Christ!

The child dropped away. " Turn quickly, m'sieur!" he shrieked at Roche.

The wall on the other side of the courtyard was looming in the blazing light—Roche twisted the wheel in panic—his foot had hardly touched the accelerator pedal—the gateway of the courtyard came to meet him— but too fast, and it was far too narrow—

Something crashed ahead of him—scraped hideously alongside him— and then was lost behind. A whole wood of trees, sharply picked out in ranks by the searchlights, sprang dummy5

into view on either side of the car: it was a steep drive, by the angle of the car—but not by the way the monster breasted it, without effort.

Turn left, along the ridge—he had done something wrong, so that the engine was roaring at him now, angry at his stupidity

—

And he was going too fast, even though he didn't know why—

the slightest touch on the accelerator made the monster go mad—and he had to turn off, down the Tower drive, the moment the trees thinned—and they were thinning already—

Christ!

And— Christ!—there were figures dancing in the road—

scattering left and right—

The last temptation was the worst of all, because it was the least expected: he could put his foot down and drive for ever, and nothing this side of Hell could catch him!

But he swung the wheel to the left with all his might instinctively, and jammed his foot down on the brake without consciously weighing up the temptation— apt to make rash decisions underpressure would have to do as an epitaph.

The monster tried to turn in a civilised fashion, but its weight and the laws of motion were against it: it slithered, and the wheels locked, and it lost control of itself, as Roche himself had already done. Trees—a tree—and bushes, and black space

—and finally the Tower itself whirled in front of him, like a dummy5

newsreel. Then it crashed sideways into something solid, half throwing him out of the soft body-fitting seat.

The engine stalled, but the lights still searched out every detail of the Tower—every small unevenness and shadow, everything pale bright yellow or black—and the cottage way past it, trailing creeper and blank windows, and a man throwing himself down out of the door—

He rolled down sideways as the window starred and cracked and burst in on him, even as the noise of the automatic weapon caught up with the sound of the shattering windscreen.

Everything went dark around him—inky black, pitch dark, after the brightness. He fumbled for the pistol, which he remembered out of the past—he had put it on the seat, ready to hand, as he had entered the car. It wasn't there—he felt around for it—it wasn't there— it wasn't anywhere, and it was too late to go on searching for it.

The door on the driver's side had already burst open with the impact, so that his legs were sticking out of it; he pushed himself in the same direction, holding on to the wheel to enable him still to keep his balance as his feet felt the ground.

But then standing upright no longer seemed sensible: hit the ground was what the Staff Sergeant always shouted—

He dropped flat, willing the earth to open up. But it was hard as rock under him.

Silence.

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He lifted his head cautiously. It wasn't really night, he realised—not now that the bright light had been extinguished: it was almost night—there was a thick quilt of cloud high above him, illuminated by the moon far above the quilt... but he could still see too much, and could be seen too easily if he moved away from the shadow of the car.

The sudden sound of breaking glass broke the stillness. Then a sharper crack—the crack of a pistol—fixed the sound ahead and above: Audley had fired out of the high arrow-slit in the Tower, smashing the window first like the cowboys in the films.

Silence settled down again.

"You bastards down there!" An American voice rang thin but clear from above. "You just keep your goddamn heads down—

okay?"

Bradford was buying time—and he was buying it in the belief that the crash or the burst of fire which had blacked out the lights had finished off Roche's rescue attempt, and Roche himself with it.

As a diversion, he had started well, but he had screwed everything up after that—as usual, Roche summed himself up. Madame Peyrony would expect better of him than that.

And Lexy too—if the Perownes died hard, then what about the Roches?

Out here in the open he was lost anyway. As soon as one of the fellagha snaked up close enough ... it was only pure dummy5

accident that one of them hadn't spotted him already . . . and it was only a matter of time before his time ran out on him.

He had nothing to lose any more—he had had it all, but he had thrown it away, and for no reason that made sense now.

Silence.

But not silence: he could hear sounds building up all around him. They were moving in on him at last, and it was too late for heroics.

He pulled himself upright against the wing of the Delaroche.

He ought to do something, but he couldn't think of anything to do. It seemed a silly way to die, was all he could think.

"Oh . . . shit!" he said angrily to himself, but also to the world at large.

The spurt of flame registered in the ten-thousandth of the second before the impact of the bullet slammed him against the car.

A great light flowered in the sky above him—unearthly, as he expected it to be—but in a point of incandescence which reflected up to the clouds as well as down on the woods and the Tower and the car.

He stared at the light, somehow puzzled by it, and yet at the same time recognising it from out of the distant past.

A thunderclap burst vivid orange-red on the edge of the wood twenty yards away, silhouetting the man who had shot dummy5

him as it exploded—the impact of the sound hit him like a second bullet, pressing him back on the car a second time.

Pain and understanding came together, as a second mortar-bomb exploded to his left, on the far side of the road. With disembodied interest he remembered that a good mortar-man would have half-a-dozen bombs in the air before the first one hit the ground, and the best mortar-man in the French Army could probably do even better than that, even allowing for three-score-years-and-ten and only Little Gaston to help him—

As the third bomb landed a mixture of weakness and delayed instinct slid him down flat alongside the car. Its great bulk was comforting, and the darkness beneath it enticed him to try to roll under it. But for some reason his body at first refused to follow the idea.

And when it did, he fell into a great black hole with no bottom.

EPILOGUE:

Soldier no more

OVER THE LENGTH of days, once the light ceased to hurt his eyes, Roche became obsessed with the ceilings above him.

The first had a complex tracery of shadows, the design of which he could never quite unravel as it floated above him; dummy5

then there were dark bars which made him think of prisons, giving him terrible nightmares interspersed with faces, mixed up with a succession of confusing events. But after that there were several happy days, when a ceiling with interesting cracks and stains appeared above him, which he transformed into the islands and continents of a new world to be circumnavigated on voyages of discovery, with the far-off sounds of creaking masts and rigging, and the changes of watch in his ears to mark the passage of time.

Finally they pricked his arm to cancel consciousness, and he awoke to birdsong, and the knowledge of good and evil, and a plain white ceiling without shadow or blemish; and shortly after that he was allowed to look around, and then to sit up and see walls, and tree-tops through the window; and he was back in England again with a nurse to prove it, soft-voiced but business-like, plumping his pillows.

In fact, it was a very nice room, dazzling and well-furnished and airy. What he didn't like about it, which was different from the French rooms, was its absolute silence except for the bird-song, with none of the French bumps and bangs and distant traffic noises which he remembered in retrospect; from all which he deduced that they had him tucked away in one of their secret places; which didn't surprise him, now that he had failed to die on them, but also didn't reassure him.

And, having deduced that, he concluded then that there was dummy5

really no point in asking anything of his nurse, or of the basilisk sister who superintended her; and the doctors themselves were of course even more out of the question, whatever the question was. So he retreated into the wasteland within himself, knowing that he wasn't going anywhere, and that they would come when they were ready, which would be when he was ready, and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Only it was Audley who came; and, more surprisingly, he came alone, towards the end of an Indian summer's afternoon.

"Are you all right?" Audley mistook his surprise for weakness, by the inflexion he gave to the routine inquiry.

"I'm fine," said Roche. It occurred to him out of habit that he could spin out the game by pretending not to be fine, but he quickly dismissed the notion as ridiculous. He had nothing with which to play games any more, besides which there were things he wanted to know very badly which Audley of all people might actually tell him.

Or, at least, there was one askable thing, which protruded out of the oily surface of both his daydreams and his nightmares.

"How's Lady Alexandra?"

"Disgustingly healthy." Audley still smiled that lop-sided dummy5

smile, but there was something different about him nevertheless: part of it was greater self-assurance, in so far as that was possible, yet there was also something hesitant, which was new. But that might be because he wasn't used to sick-rooms; or it might just be in the confused eye of the beholder.

"Really?" He dropped the irrelevant thought to concentrate on the important one. "Honestly?"

"Really—honestly." Audley pulled up the chair. "I told you—

the Perownes are practically indestructible by conventional means—they're all built like Tiger tanks. In fact, she's even making the most out of her scar, Lexy is ... she tells all and sundry that she got it duelling at Heidelberg. In fact. . . I've got a letter from her for you somewhere—" but he made no move to produce the letter "—are you sure you're okay? The dragon-lady out there said I mustn't be too long ..."

So the letter had to be earned, and the game had to be played even here, after the final whistle.

"Honestly . . . I'm fine." Roche jibbed at the prospect, but he wanted the letter. "Sister says . . . 'we' have been very ill, but

'we' are on the mend. It's just that . . . 'we' expected someone . . . different." Roche opted for the truth, for want of anything better.

Audley regarded him doubtfully. "Ah . . . well, we have a special dispensation from above—a bit of the old influence-in-high-places, old boy. There will be somebody along to de-brief you formally in due course, naturally. But not yet."

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"De-brief me?" Roche wasn't surprised by Audley-with-influence-in-high-places. But he knew that self-confessed traitors weren't de-briefed, they were interrogated.

"Uh-huh." Audley fielded his doubts confidently. "Originally they were going to lock you up, and throw away the key. And they're not exactly well-disposed to you even now. . .

naturally. But things have changed." He made a Caliban-face.

"You'll have to resign your commission—and sign a lots of bits of paper . . . And you'll have to come clean on everything

— eh?"

For five seconds Roche was beyond astonishment, then for a moment he was in nowhere. And after that he recognised the familiar features of the wasteland, which were cratered like any battlefield, and full of slimy things which he'd already imagined.

Audley's face was scrubbed of emotion now. "You are prepared to come clean?"

"To betray everyone, you mean?" Roche could smell himself, washed and re-bandaged that morning, in preparation for this.

The scrubbed face changed to one of unconcealed interest.

"You really did mean it, did you—back in the Tower?

Nobody's side?"

That was something Roche was still working on, to be adjusted according to circumstances. But it had happened by degrees, and irregularly, and also irrationally; and he wasn't dummy5

at all sure that he could sustain it against the unexpected clemency which Audley appeared to be offering him.

But mercifully Audley didn't wait for him to resolve his dilemma. "Yes . . . well, as it happens, you don't have to worry too much about them . . . because by now they'll have run a mile in all directions—back to their Moscow dachas if they're lucky, I shouldn't wonder!"

Jean-Paul and Genghis Khan—

And Philippe? God! Philippe out of range of Paris didn't bear thinking about—that was greater punishment than Burgess and Maclean had had to bear, in swopping London for Moscow.

Audley nodded. "Yes . . . You see, Mike Bradford and I were a bit naughty really—we decided to re-write a bit of the script on our own account, after things went . . . not quite according to plan, you understand ..."

Things? But there had been so many things. "Things?"

"Mike did the actual work. Because he had the best contacts—

and also the CIA had seconded him to me, with a free hand, so it was no skin off his nose . . . But Fred Clinton agreed afterwards that it had its merits—putting it out that you'd worked for us all along, ever since Japan—sort of double-double, toil-and-trouble—and we had to do it quickly, to make it stick, for the maximum effect—do you see?"

Roche saw—or half-saw, with the fleeting image of every Comrade he had ever known, or ever half-known, running dummy5

for cover as the disinformation about him spread—not just Jean-Paul and Genghis Khan and Philippe— Christ!

Again, Audley read his expression. "That's right! Nothing like it since father drank the baby's milk, and made the baby suck a large Scotch—blood and confusion everywhere! And, what's more, your erstwhile employers will be having the most awful doubts about all their other doubles—from Cambridge and Oxford onwards.... If you were a ringer, then what about them, eh?"

Roche saw again, and saw more. Because if the Comrades had noticed that he had become increasingly twitchy, this would now only confirm their retrospective belief that he'd been setting them up for the final coup—which only Gaston's last mortar-bomb had dislocated, as well as peppering him with bits of metal.

"Right?" Audley continued to misread him. "Besides which, we also told Fred Clinton that you were dying. Which, to be honest, we thought you were when we pulled you out from under that extraordinary machine."

Roche lay back against his pillows, grateful for their support.

"And the virtue of that, from your point of view, is not only that they won't pursue you—because although they're rather down on traitors, they're curiously old-fashioned about patriots—but also Clinton himself will have to let you go now ... In fact, he'll probably have to give you a medal and a pension, to make it all stick. But that's cheap at the price, with what he's got—you and the d'Auberon papers!"

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Clinton?

You and the d'Auberon papers? Roche exercised the names weakly, trying to place them in the right order.

"The d'Auberon papers?"

"Them most of all. They were the whole point of the sodding operation— and you did a grand job of getting them! So it all came out right in the end, in spite of the unpleasantness at the Tower . . . which was all Clinton's fault, anyway—he was so bloody busy planting his rumours, it never occurred to him that the Algerians and the Israelis would pick up the wrong signals, and get stuck into poor old Etienne! But all's well that ends well, anyway."

Roche recalled Larimer's assessment of Audley. "But not for Miss Stephanides."

"Ah ..." Audley screwed up his expression ". . . now that was jolly strange, you know."

"Jolly strange?"

"Yes. The eighth deadly sin—in that French film about the seven deadly sins—remember?"

Roche set his teeth. "No."

"Suspicion—you must remember? To see sin where there is none? One of our occupational diseases too. We had the report a week ago—it really was a genuine accident. The poor girl always did drive too fast, and something important in that old car of hers broke." Audley waved his hand vaguely.

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"Besides which, some wretched Algerian the French interrogated said he thought you'd done it, and that was why they'd zeroed in on you—seeing you collect the brief-case merely clinched what they'd suspected was going to happen after that. Only they were convinced it was the Morice Line blueprint, of course."

"What did the French do?"

"They weren't frightfully amused. But by the time it dawned on them that there was something not quite kosher going on.

I'd swopped your bastide notes for the real stuff. And d'Auberon then insisted that he hadn't broken his agreement with them. . . which was nothing less than the truth, after all.

So all they were left with was a terrorist outrage against innocent tourists and a lot of nasty suspicions. The only real trouble we had was getting you out. . . they did rather want to take you to pieces to see what really made you tick. Or who made you tick. But your SHAPE status gave us the edge therein the end."

A hideous suspicion had been spreading inside Roche, much nastier than anything French security could have imagined.

"You knew. . . about me?"

"Oh yes—Clinton did. From way back."

"From way back?" The steadiness of his voice surprised him.

"From Japan onwards—it was the company you kept, you see. That's why you never got any decent jobs. . . only the ones where we were already compromised—or when we dummy5

wanted something passed on ... In fact, in a way, getting the d'Auberon stuff was the first really important job you were ever given. Clinton had to have it, but he knew Etienne would never give it up—not to us. But he also knew there had to be a copy snugged away in the KGB files in Paris. The trick was to get you to winkle it out—from them or d'Auberon, it didn't really matter which. But he reckoned you could do it—he's a lot like King Gaiseric of the Vandals, really. . . and in more ways than one, too." Audley smiled. "Sitting there, waiting for the winds to carry his fleet to the country that God desired to ruin, I mean. Only, like King Gaiseric, Fred Clinton was pretty damn sure which way the wind ought to blow, that's all."

It wasn't as bad as he'd expected, it was much worse. But he had to blank out the pain before it became unendurable in order to press his questions while Audley was willing to answer them. "I was set up—from the start?"

Audley nodded. "Very comprehensively. And he had all sorts of other things going to back you up—rumours dropped, bits of information available . . . people briefed to say the right things—"

The pain was unendurable. "People?"

"All sorts of people, yes—"

"Who?"

"Stocker . . . people you've never met . . . me, latterly." Audley shrugged. "Lots of people."

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"Major Ballance?" The thought of Bill despising him was horrible, yet not the unkindest cut because it was Bill's job to screw the enemy. But he couldn't bring himself to the worst straight away.

"I think he had the general task of looking after you—yes."

Audley seemed unaware of the damage he was doing.

Roche's chest itched under the bandages, with the wounds of every single mortar-bomb fragment registering individually.

He gritted his teeth. "Major ... Mr Willis?"

Audley frowned. "I think ... I think he was just ordered to answer your questions. But—"

"Jilly?" The itch was graduating to discomfort.

"No. She had her instructions, that's all. Only, about old Wimpy—"

"Colonel Stein?" Roche didn't much care about the Israeli, and Bradford must be career-CIA and didn't matter. But he still couldn't work himself to her. "Where was he?"

"At the Tower?" Audley shrugged again. "He was away somewhere taking his prehistoric pictures." He shook his head. "Davey's got nothing to do with intelligence—never has had, never will have. Davey takes pictures and flies planes.

He's just a very nice man, and a good friend of mine."

The discomfort became physical pain, joining the agony inside his head as he came to her at last. "Lady Alexandra?"

"Lexy?" Audley looked at him incredulously. "Oh, come on, man! Lexy couldn't keep a secret—or obey an instruction—if dummy5

her life depended on it! And you were an ultra secret—

Clinton couldn't take chances on you, for God's sake!"

The pain abated just when it was beginning to blur his vision.

Lexy didn't know—

"Besides which, Fred didn't dare give you everything on a plate. The whole aim was to let you come to your own conclusions, to work things out for yourself—to get at the truth in your own way—"

The truth?"

"Ninety per cent of it, yes! All the best lies are made up of truth—that's what makes them stick—nothing else will do ...

So almost everything you were given was true ... as well as almost everything you were allowed to find out—" Audley leaned forward, his face twisted into a curious expression, half sly and half shy "—the risk was that you'd see clear through to the other side. And that's why you had to be hindered as well as helped— right?"

"Hindered?" Roche was sweating with relief about Lexy.

" Side-tracked is better. That's why they gave you me to get your teeth into, don't you see?"

With an effort, Roche shook himself free of her. "You?"

Uh-huh. You see, Fred Clinton has these tame psychologists he sets great store by... and they said, after they'd had a bloody good look at you, that you had to be given something to divert your attention—like 'give him an interesting tree to study, and he won't see the wood itself, roughly. And I was dummy5

the tree." Audley's eyes narrowed. "So was I really interesting?"

"Interesting?" Roche lay back, and played for time. Audley had never really accounted for his presence here, ahead of the professional de-briefers. Nor, for that matter, was there any professional reason why he should pile up indiscretion on indiscretion like this . . . But, with Audley, there always had to be a reason.

"Just idle curiosity." Audley patted his pockets, as though looking for a cigarette or his pipe. But he didn't smoke.

"I'm sorry?" Roche plucked at the coverlet with his hand, trying to win another minute.

"I'm wondering if the head-shrinkers were right, that's all, Roche." He didn't smoke, and he was too casual, so the pocket-patting was to remind Roche about a certain letter.

"It's not really very important," said Audley. "I merely wondered what you'd dug up—if it was interesting."

So there it was. And of all the things that were not important, this was genuinely unimportant. But everyone had an Achilles-heel, even Audley . . . and even though he'd challenged the world by hanging a picture of it on the wall of his home for all to see, as though it didn't matter.

"I didn't have enough time to put you together," said Roche carefully. All the best lies were mostly truth, after all.

"No?" Audley only just failed to conceal his relief. "Well, that was part of the strategy, of course. Clinton wanted to keep dummy5

your people a bit off-balance all the time. That's why we stirred Mike Bradford into the pot."

Roche nodded. He could see now where he was safe. "And all that stuff about Antonia Palfrey? But that wasn't all moonshine, was it?"

"Well ..." Audley bridled. "Not quite all. Bradford's Hollywood people do want to dig her out—that's all above board and checkable."

"And Antonia Palfrey?" Roche could feel the ground firm under him: a lot of valuable effort, both his own and that of the Comrades, had been devoted to Miss Palfrey. "She's checkable too?"

Audley grimaced happily.

"So you really did write Princess in the Sunset!" Roche pretended to be not quite absolutely certain.

The grimace completed itself as Audley nodded. "But that's not for public consumption, Roche. Because after the publication of The Winds of God next spring Antonia Palfrey is going to fade away gracefully . . . but permanently. Is that understood?" Audley simulated grimness.

"I'm not really in a position to argue, am I?" Roche led him on.

"Not really." But Audley still hadn't got what he wanted. "But what else did you discover—that was interesting?"

They had come to it finally, thought Roche. "I discovered that your legal guardian—your former legal guardian . . .Willis—

dummy5

Wimpy?. . .that he can talk the hind leg off a donkey—that's what I discovered." He sighed. "But I couldn't understand much of what he was saying."

"No?"

"No." He shrugged painfully. If it meant so much to Audley, then the less said the better—as Wimpy himself would have put it! "I never did come close to realising that you were already working for Sir Eustace Avery, if that's what you want to know."

All the best lies were still mostly truth. And even the Comrades, with all their resources, had failed abysmally there, so he had no reason to feel ashamed.

"For Avery? Good God, man—I've never worked for him!"

Audley relaxed into derision. "You were sent to recruit me—

don't you remember?"

"What?" But he couldn't have been further deceived, surely?

"Are you all right?" Audley half rose from his chair. "Your dragon-lady nurse said I mustn't stay too long—?"

"No! Don't go . . ." Lies and truth swirled inextricably before him. "I think I'm just beginning to feel totally humiliated."

Audley perched himself on the edge of the chair. "But ... my dear chap—you don't need to feel that. It wasn't your fault—

the odds were stacked against you. Actually, you did rather well, all things considered."

"I mean ... I don't even understand what you're talking about any more." Roche looked down, and saw his hand shake on dummy5

the coverlet.

"And I mean you don't need to be humiliated. I've never worked for Avery."

There was no more time now than there had ever been to sort things out—lies from truth, doubt from certainty. "But you did work for the British?"

"Up to '46. But then I had this big row, like I told you. And you couldn't possibly know that I put things together differently after Cambridge—that was when I went to Clinton and asked to be taken back—"

Taken back? Taken back?

"—he was the only one I knew. And Archie Forbes sent me ...

But Clinton wouldn't have me—not then. He said the bad times were coming, and the service was compromised . . . 'let me tuck you away for a rainy day' was how he put it, for when he needed me, when the time was ripe. . .So he and Archie laid everything on after that—how I should refuse them in public, and how they'd stick the Russians on to me, to make matters worse, so they'd be sure I was fed up with both sides after what had happened in '46 . . . So I became a sort of

'sleeper-in-reverse'—that's how Archie put it... on a private feudal arrangement between them and me, with nothing in writing— they spread the word, and I went to ground, to wait the bugle-call. Do you see?"

Roche saw, but still didn't see.

"The trouble was, I needed money," said Audley. "In fact, I dummy5

needed it rather badly at the time, for my house as well as my expensive Cambridge tastes . . . Only they wouldn't give me the Cambridge fellowship I wanted— Clinton said it wouldn't pay well enough, but I rather suspect they thought that once I'd got it I'd never come back into Intelligence ... So he had this American friend of his—ex-OSS—who was a literary agent, and who owed him a favour from'45 . . . and I'd written this joke novel, just for fun, about Galla Placidia. So Mickey Tempest made me take out the jokes, and tighten up the dirty bits—and then he sold it for a bomb .... It was a bit embarrassing, what he did with it, but it did solve my cash-flow problems." This time Audley wasn't pretending. And—

Lord God!—he didn't have to pretend, either: what had happened was something unfair, which neither Clinton nor the Comrades could have allowed for—the perfect cover of a runaway best-seller! That must surely have disconcerted Clinton almost as much as it had deceived the Comrades, to loosen his grip on Audley . . .

"I must admit I've enjoyed all the money," said Audley simply. "Because I've done all the things I ever wanted to do ... to my home, and all that . . ." He shied away from what all that implied, which Roche wasn't meant to know. "But I haven't enjoyed trying to avoid being that damned woman Mickey thought up—she's someone I'm really going to enjoy killing off, you know." He twisted a smile of pure mischief at Roche. "But not until The Winds of God are blowing in the bookshops next spring . . . because the more independent I dummy5

am from Colonel F. J. Clinton, the more I shall like it, to be honest."

Audley being honest was something beyond Roche's imagination. But he could remember how he had relished his brief freedom from Genghis Khan, and the sense of no longer depending on anyone else, and that gave him a hint of what Audley's bank balance could do for another soldier-no-more.

And Clinton wouldn't like that much. And Clinton, Clinton, Clinton was what it all came back to with Audley—not d'Auberon, or even Avery . . .

"Clinton?"

Another chilly smile. "Now you're beginning to put it all together the right way! It was foxy Fred who picked up the whisper about d'Auberon's inconvenient report from his German friends in Gehlen in the spring— because they really do have a man in Moscow . . . or they did have, because they must have pulled him out after they leaked the Stalin denunciation before the Twentieth Congress to the Americans ... So Fred had the details, but what he needed was the real thing, because he had to have tangible proof—"

"Why?"

"My dear fellow! Avery was just getting the job he wanted—

the job he deserved—with him as Number Two Dogsbody . . .

which was what he didn't want. But Avery was king after Suez, and Fred couldn't screw him without d'Auberon's report

—and d'Auberon wouldn't give it to him . . . and that was dummy5

when he remembered me—and...you!"

Clinton, Clinton— Clinton!

"I was just finishing The Winds—and my real book, on Charles Mattel— down near Carcassone. And that's where I got the call at last, after six fat years—to go and settle on the Dordogne and renew my old wartime antipathy with Etienne, when we were supposed to be on the same side, more or less ... by which time I was so bloody fed up with fucking around, if he'd asked me to escalade the Château du Cingle d'Enfer single-handed I'd have tried it ... Instead of which I chatted up Madame Peyrony again, and bought the Tower for twice what it's worth—not on expenses, either—"

Truth.

And lies and lies and lies—

"You never did have a copy of d'Auberon's report?" Audley had already told him that twice over, but he wanted to hear him say it aloud just once.

"Christ! D'you think Etienne would have given it to me, of all people? That'd be the day!" The question hurt Audley. "I didn't even want you to talk to him—I thought that was where it would all go wrong . . . But Fred Clinton reckoned the KGB would be so mad-keen to plant the stuff on Eustace Avery that they wouldn't risk involving Etienne—not if they could get you promoted at the same time . . . What he said was that they were bound to take the risk, for the profit, so we could take the risk too, and then Avery's goose would be dummy5

cooked." The accuracy of Clinton's forecast seemed to hurt him as much as the original question. "So he was right—and I was wrong—okay?" Avery's goose.

Clinton had known all along that the d'Auberon papers were useless— except for the damage they would do to Avery. But Avery himself hadn't known that—any more than he'd known that Audley was already Clinton's man . . . 'on a private feudal arrangement'! "So what's happened to Avery?"

He resigned four days ago," said Audley.

All along Clinton had been gunning for Avery, and the Comrades had supplied him with the ammunition he needed.

"Full of honours, and with several succulent jobs on well-paid boards in the City," continued Audley. "But just in time, before they sacked the bugger . . . What did you expect?"

Roche tried hard to look wiser than he was. But of course it wouldn't be a bullet-behind-the-ear for Sir Eustace Avery, whatever it might be for Genghis Khan. It was Captain Roche who had had all the luck, even though he still didn't quite know why. .

"So we're under new management now: F. J. Clinton, sole proprietor— and Sir Frederick in the next New Year's Honours, if I'm any judge of the government's well-placed gratitude for hushing things up."

A lot could happen between the Queen's birthday and the New Year— Bill Ballance always used to say that.

"Which, to do him justice—and the government justice—is dummy5

fair enough. Because he'll be a damn good sole proprietor, not like Useless Eustace . . . And also because the bloody Russians need taking down a peg—which you of all people ought to understand, Major Roche—eh?"

Roche thought of the Comrades as Russians—not for the first time, but more clearly: Russians, not Comrades . . . not with their union of socialist republics, but with their groaning colonies stretching from Hungary to the deserts of Asia and the Himalayas, where Kipling had played his game once upon a time, and Audley had learnt Kipling's rules.

And he also recalled Genghis Khan's confidence, at the prospect of fooling the stupid British again: as much as anything—as much as F. J. Clinton's clever plans—that over-confidence had confounded the Russians. "You do, don't you?" Audley read his expression. "They've done so bloody well of late that they're chancing their arm too far for comfort

— that's what Clinton relied on. But some of the things they've been doing have been positively dangerous, and that was my best argument for not using you to play games with them—better that we should call a halt, and shut them up for a bit, so we can both catch our breath. Better to clear the board and start again from scratch."

That put the record straight, but it hurt nevertheless. "And that's why I'm getting off the hook, is it?"

"With a medal—and a disability pension, Major?" Audley's lip curled. "Free and clear? Don't be ungrateful, Major!!"

The Major twisted in the wound, and so did free and clear, dummy5

he might become the former, but even if he found a place to teach ê tre and avoir, and the kings and queens of England, he would never free himself from what he had been.

"But not just that." Audley stared at him for a moment, and then rose from the chair and moved towards the window.

Roche waited, watching Audley peer outwards and downwards at the lawns and flower-beds which he had never seen, which lay below the tree-scape he could see from his bed.

"Madame Peyrony sends her regards to you . . . Her regards, but no apologies for the mortar-barrage... I rather think she takes the view that if the Choosers of the Slain didn't have your name, then it's no business of hers. She's seen a lot of men die in her time, has Madame ..."

That was the truth, and maybe more so than Audley imagined.

"But she thinks well of you . . . Whereas I don't think I can go so far as that." Something below him seemed to have caught Audley's attention, from the way he craned his neck to observe it. "In my book a traitor is a traitor."

The broad back-row-of-the-scrum rugger-playing back gave away nothing.

"On the other hand a debt is also a debt."

Roche experienced a curious déja-vu feeling, but this time from inside the van, with his own wasps buzzing him.

"Because you did come back to us, at the Tower . . . and I dummy5

didn't think you would..."

He could feel the cobweb-touch of wasps on his hand, where it lay on the coverlet like an old man's, with the veins raised on it.

"If I could have squeezed out through that damned hole, then I would have . . . But I couldn't, so I didn't have any choice . . . But you had a choice," said Audley to the garden.

Roche realised that Audley was talking about a debt of his own, not something Major Roche had left unpaid behind him.

"Also you warned d'Auberon. And I know that because I phoned him later that night, to tell him to lie low . . . But you'd already warned him. And you didn't have to do that either . . ."

Roche felt light-headed. "But you don't like d'Auberon—"

"No . . . Or, more accurately, we don't like each other—there's too much history between us, ancient as well as modern . . .

And he's a most intractably honourable man, and he thinks I'm not. . . Perhaps he's right, too." The immense shoulders flexed under their width of expensive broadcloth. "Though, oddly enough, if he'd given me those wretched papers of his I'd never have turned them over to Fred Clinton—not in a thousand years..."

A thousand years?

It is knightly to keep faith— even after a thousand years!

Roche understood at last what he had never really believed dummy5

until now. And more than that—that Genghis Khan had been right, and Wimpy had been right too: that Clinton was recruiting trouble—that where he had acted from some irrational urge which he still didn't understand, this man's code of conduct was already chiselled in stone, for better or worse, regardless of intelligent self-interest.

And d'Auberon too?

So the French and Clinton—and the British—had both got their bad bargains, to screw up the commonsense order of things . . . the French already, and the British in due course, as Genghis Khan had forecast—

But he was getting his benefit now, against the odds, because of it. And that was the only thing that mattered now, never mind a thousand years!

Audley swung round. "You probably don't understand a word I'm saying. But it's of no consequence, it's purely a private matter between me and myself."

He looked at Roche, and dismissed him, and started past the foot of the bed, but then halted with his hand on the door-knob, and turned back.

"The trouble with you, Roche, is ... you've always been a victim—at least, right from the time that clever little Russian bitch fixed you up in Japan—and we've got a picture of her, large as life, in Dzerzhinsky Street three months after she drowned herself—Clinton has, anyway."

Beyond pain there was nothing. It wasn't very different from dummy5

falling under a Delaroche Royale: nothing couldn't hurt—

"But you weren't a victim that evening—you were all your own man. So if anyone comes to you now, and tries to change that, I've given you more than enough to put them down—

right?"

Nothing still couldn't hurt.

Audley almost turned away, into the doorway he had opened for himself, but then slipped his hand into his pocket before he could complete the turn.

"Don't let the buggers get you down, eh?" He flipped a letter on to the bed, beside Roche's hand.

Before he summoned up the strength to touch the letter, Roche saw that someone had already opened it for him. But that was to be expected.

It was funny about Julie: once it had been said out loud it was as though he had always known it, but had merely hidden it from himself as he had tried to hide so many other things. So the words had no echo: they were said and done with, leaving nothing more to say that he didn't already know.

My own dearest David—

There was a nice breathless Lexy-sound about her proposals for their future, even though she'd got him all wrong. But then so had Audley—and so had everyone.

Also ... it did rather look as though he was about to become a dummy5

victim again.

But this time round that didn't seem such an unhappy fate.

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