A New Kind of War (38 page)

Fred remembered his own orders. ‘Do as the adjutant says, David.’

Audley seemed to struggle with himself for an instant, then the hand stopped massaging and slapped the leg irritably. ‘Oh …
shit!
Mine not to reason why again! Okay, okay!’ he swung on his heel, shaking his head and growling to himself as he stamped heavily away, kicking angrily at tufts of grass as he went, like a schoolboy. It was good acting if it was an act, thought Fred. And now he must match it with one of his own.

‘What the blazes are you playing at, Amos?’ In fact, he only needed to imagine himself in the real military world to strike the right note of outrage. ‘This is my show, not yours.’

‘Yes.’ De Souza looked around again. ‘This place gives me the shivers, you know. Always has done, and always will.’ He sniffed. ‘Maybe Colbourne’s right—’ He looked Fred in the eye ‘—a bad place for honest soldiers, maybe?’

The flesh up Fred’s back crawled with a million tiny insect-feet because of this shared insight. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘My duty, I hope.’ The sardonic glint was back, with the old self-mocking Amos-voice. ‘David was right, of course—I’m disobeying my orders as well as complicating yours and his.’ He turned lazily to watch Audley place-kicking another piece of grass. ‘He often is right, actually. But it does him no good. But … he’s a good lad … maybe.’

‘Maybe?’ The curious emphasis de Souza had placed on the word startled him.

‘Yes.’ De Souza came back to him. ‘Aren’t you happier for my presence, then?’

‘Why should I be happier?’

De Souza nodded. ‘After the night before last?’

‘The night before last?’ He didn’t have to think hard to recall those beastly images. But he had to remember who he was supposed to be. ‘We got our man the night before last. And the other side got the wrong one.’

‘Did they?’ De Souza stared up the path. ‘I wonder, now.’

Fred followed the man’s stare. The RSM had dismissed Audley’s men, and was now standing alone at the top of the track, studying the circumference of his world in a series of jerky movements, as though his head were fixed immovably on his neck.

‘Almost everything we’ve done in the past hasn’t gone right,’ said de Souza softly. ‘We’ve found men who couldn’t help us much—and we’ve lost the ones who could. But this time we were very clever, and we got our man. But, what I’ve been thinking is … perhaps that was what someone intended we should do. And that makes you very vulnerable in this place this morning—if it’s true. So today I have taken certain extra precautions, without orders.’

A cold hand squeezed Fred’s guts. ‘Is that why—’ But then the sharp
snap-crunch
of the RSM’s hobnailed boots on the broken road surface silenced him.

‘
Sah!
’ Having stamped himself to attention, the RSM scorned any further explanation of a completed order.

‘Thank you, Mr Levin.’ De Souza accepted this information.

‘Arrgh-hmm!’ The RSM cleared his throat formally, but did not withdraw.

‘Yes, Mr Levin?’ De Souza interpreted this signal interrogatively.

‘
Sah!
There are two persons now approaching in the distance—
civilian
persons—upon the roadway, from the direction of Detmold. German civilians, I take them to be, by their dress.’ Faint disapproval crept into the RSM’s voice, as though tatterdemalion natives really had no right to disturb the British Liberation Army in its lawful business in the Teutoburgerwald this grey August morning. ‘They appear to be in no hurry …
sah
.’

Fred looked up the path. From where the RSM had stood he would have had a good clear view.

‘Arrgh-hmm!’ The RSM cleared his throat again. ‘Shall I now attend to Captain Audley … sah?’

‘Attend?’ Fred’s attention snapped back to de Souza. ‘What d’you mean “attend”?’

‘Do that, Mr Levin.’ De Souza nodded. ‘Disarm him and bring him up here.’

‘
Sah.’
The RSM stamped a backward pace before moving forward again.

‘What the blazes—?’ Fred didn’t need to act any part.

‘Merely a precaution.’ De Souza raised a soothing hand. ‘You can rely on the RSM to be as civil as the circumstances permit. He has his orders. And young David is used to obeying him … And there’ll be a gun on him now if he isn’t quite what we’ve taken him to be, all these months.’

Fred stared at the RSM’s fast-receding ramrod back. Typically, the RSM carried an issue-Sten, rather than the more exotic foreign weapon.

‘I hope I’m wrong, Major Fattorini. But if I’m not … then it has to be someone inside the unit,’ murmured de Souza. ‘I’ve known something wasn’t right … oh, for a long time, I suppose.’ He sighed. ‘But … it goes against the grain, rather. Because they are all Clinton’s picked men, after all.’

The cold hand inside Fred squeezed even harder. If Audley was
right
about Amos de Souza … then things were going
wrong
before they had a chance to do so in a way Clinton had intended them to do, and in a manner which neither of them had foreseen. But he still couldn’t be sure of that, so he must still play the game.

‘All except Audley.’ He turned deliberately back to de Souza.

‘All except Audley.’ But de Souza echoed him without nodding. ‘Except that I don’t think he’s our man, actually. Even though he fits well enough—and he’s a smart boy, I would agree.’

‘He fits … well enough?’ Watching de Souza was more important than watching the boy’s humiliation. ‘All the way from Greece, you mean?’

‘Yes. And he’s a bit too thick with the man Schild, who is really a most equivocal character.’ De Souza’s voice tightened. ‘And whose whereabouts I do not at this precise moment know, as it happens.’

‘But … isn’t Otto Schild the Colonel’s man?’ A faint echo of Schild’s Teutoburg song came nastily to mind.

‘In a sense—yes. But he’s also not what he seems, the RSM says.’

‘I thought he was … a butcher—a civilian butcher—?’

‘A butcher, maybe. But Mr Levin thinks not a civilian one.’

Colbourne, thought Fred. And this was his place
—
the Externsteine
! ‘Where is the Colonel this morning?’

De Souza’s lip curled slightly. ‘He’s seeing a man about a plane—an RAF spotter-plane, at Gutersloh—to try and spot Roman marching camps east and south-east of here. Which I gather was your idea, major?’ The lip tightened. ‘I lent him my driver, as a matter of fact. Just to make sure.’

Everything was going wrong—one way or the other. ‘And … the other officers—M’Corquodale? Kenworthy—?’ De Souza looked past him suddenly, up the tracks again. ‘Don’t worry, major. The RSM has this place well staked-out, by arrangement with the Military Police and our local Fusilier battalion. So your civilians have got in easily enough. But they won’t get out unless you are accompanying them, believe me—’ He straightened up perceptibly. ‘And now here they are, anyway. So I take it you’d rather I withdrew somewhat, while you have your little chat? Would that make you feel more at ease?’

Not de Souza
? Fred could no longer make his mind up there; only, although he experienced a certain amount of satisfaction about that, it was instantly swallowed up by the realization that, if he was innocent, then Amos had nevertheless very likely ruined Clinton’s plans with his over-intelligent innocence, by scaring off whoever
wasn’t
innocent with his unscheduled precautions.

‘That might be advisable, Amos.’ His mind raced ahead, trying to predict how their unknown traitor might adjust to this new situation. In such a last resort, all that was left was an ambush on the way back to Schwartzenburg Castle—which had always been a dangerous possibility in the back of Clinton’s mind. ‘The sooner we’re away from here, the better.’

Amos de Souza nodded. ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ He glanced around quickly. ‘This is a damn stupid spot for a meeting. I don’t know what’s got into the Brigadier today—it isn’t like him … ’ He came back to Fred. And nodded again. ‘But don’t worry. Because Mr Levin and I will watch your backs here as best we can. And Mr Levin has arranged a sufficient escort to pick you up just down the road to take Number 16 back safely after that.’

‘Yes?’ That was the final irony: Amos had thought everything through, to amend his superior’s defective planning. And
not de Souza
was certain now, since he would hardly have needed to do as much, even apart from this otherwise risky warning, if he had been the traitor. ‘Well … thank you.’

‘Okay.’ Amos looked over his shoulder, at the fast-approaching figures of David Audley and the RSM. ‘And Audley—?’

Audley’s outraged voice arrived before Fred could answer. ‘
Fred
—’

‘Hold on, David.’ He was simultaneously aware of the two Germans hovering discreetly, and of the RSM behind Audley, just as discreetly trying to hide whatever he had used to disarm the boy. And of Audley himself, his ugly features aflame with anger and humiliation.

‘
But, Fred
—
’
The outrage became almost plaintive.

‘Shut up, David.’ At least Audley’s face wasn’t white with fear, as his own might have been: it was ugly with rage! ‘Thank you, Amos—Mr Levin … But you stay here, David.’

‘Right-o.’ Amos accepted his dismissal with a good grace. ‘Come on, Mr Levin—let’s admire the view for a moment, eh?’

Audley watched them for another moment, his mouth working. Then he returned to Fred. ‘B-b-Woody Mr L-L-
Levin
…
has t-taken my fff—’

‘Yes, I know.’ Fred had had just enough warning to nip the stuttering fuse before it became an explosive shout, so that he could turn towards the Germans. ‘Herr Zeitzler—’ No! That was wrong! ‘—
Professor Zeitzler
—
’ He felt under-rehearsed in matters of greeting ‘—good morning, sir!’

Professor Zeitzler was less humiliatingly dressed (or, as he had been, half-dressed, undressed, and then uniformed) than the night before last. But he was still tall and very thin, and even with his spectacles safely on his nose he was still very far from happy.

‘Herr Major.’ The eyes behind the spectacles were wide with uncertainty; which was reasonable enough in the circumstances, even if ‘Herr Major’ had been a captain the last time they’d met.

‘I’m glad you were able to come, sir.’ Somehow, it wasn’t so hard to be polite to the man: he was, after all, ‘a decent chap’ (in Audley’s own words, from long ago); yet it wasn’t just that—or even because, if the man had never been an ally, he had also never truly been an enemy; it was just that he was what he looked like—just another middle-aged academic pacifist in a mad world, fallen among soldiers. And that made it easier to pity him, even as Fred turned at last to the cause of all the trouble. ‘And you, sir.’

‘Herr Major.’ The Cause of All the Trouble gave him a formal little bow. But with it there was a look of understanding and resignation which turned Fred’s pity back on himself.

‘But … there were to be two officers only.’ Professor Zeitzler’s expression was less fearful now, after such politeness. ‘It was promised, sir—only yourself, and the … the large young officer.’

‘An added precaution.’
Sod you
! thought Fred with sudden brutality.
You’ve done your job now
—
it’s only Number 16 that matters now
! So he concentrated on Number 16. ‘There are dangers, you understand, sir.’

‘I understand.’ Number 16 didn’t nod, but there was a strained greyness in his complexion and a wariness in his eyes which had nothing to do with any of the more recent privations of defeat: Fred had seen such masks before, on the faces of infantrymen who had been too long in the line.

‘But it is not as was arranged—not as was
promised
.’ Zeitzler looked at his friend as he emphasized the word before coming back to Fred. ‘A word of honour was given—by a senior British officer. And I—’

‘Hush, Ernst.’ Number 16 cut Zeitzler off softly. ‘If a word was given, then it was given. If it is to be broken … then it will be broken. We have already talked of that possibility. And I have made my choice, just as this officer has done.’ As he spoke, he never for one instant took his eyes off Fred; and, although not one of his words was stressed more than another, their challenge was plain enough.

So here was the first test
, thought Fred.
And it was as searching as the Brigadier had warned him it would be, by God
!

‘You are free to go, sir. If you wish to do so.’ The enormity of the lie thickened his tongue inside his mouth as he committed himself finally to the acceptance of the truth about himself, which Clinton had apparently known before he did. ‘My superior’s word of honour is the same as mine.’

Again that terrible hint of pity, almost sardonic now. Then I ask your pardon—shall I do that?‘

Did he know? Or had he mistaken those half-strangled words for honest outrage
? Fred questioned himself desperately for an instant. ‘I think you’d do better to remember what happened the night before last, sir.’ He flicked a glance at Zeitzler. ‘I’m sure your friend has told you about that—?’

‘Indeed he has.’ Still the man studied him. ‘The Russians want me, just as you want me. So they do not want you to have me … even though all these desires are foolish, of course—foolish beyond belief! For I am too much behind the times now. And especially since yesterday’s news—yesterday’s terrible news, Herr Major.’ He nodded. ‘Yes, I have heard of what has happened in Japan: it was on the wireless last night.’

Fred swallowed. ‘That’s not for me to comment on, sir. I am here merely to make you an offer. Which you have the right to refuse.’ He submitted to the man’s scrutiny for another long moment. ‘We have no demands to make on you. We merely wish to take you into protective custody for a time.’ The closer he got to something like the truth, the better he felt, and the firmer became the voice—his own voice—that he heard. ‘In due course, when we judge it to be safe, we will arrange for you to be accepted by the university of your choice. Or any other establishment—’ He had got it exactly right ‘—in Germany, or in England. But there is another consideration to be made in that choice, it’s only fair to add, sir.’