"See you in the morning," Helen told her.
As the door closed behind her, Gallagher said, "She doesn't suspect anything, does she?"
"No, and I want it to stay that way, for her own good, as much as anyone else's."
"IVe just had Savaiy on the phone. They got through to London. Someone will be with us by Thursday."
She turned quickly. "Are you certain?"
"As much as I can be. How is the good colonel?"
"Still feverish. George saw him this afternoon. He seems satisfied. He's trying him on this penicillin stuff."
"I'm surprised Savaiy was in so early. Thy must have made the run this afternoon."
"They did," she said. "Taking advantage of the fog again. Most of the officers have turned up here within the past hour."
"Most?"
"Two dead. Bohlen and Wendel. Two of the ships were attacked by Hurricanes."
At that moment, the green baize door leading to the dining room opened and Guido Orsini came in. He was wearing his best uniform, his hair still damp from the shower, and looked rather dashing. He wore the Italian Medal for Military Valor in gold, a medal equivalent to the British Victoria Cross and very rarely awarded. On his left breast he also wore an Iron Cross First Class.
Gallagher said in English, "Still in one piece are you? Hear you had a bad time."
"It could have been worse," Guido told him. "They're all sitting in there doing their conspicuous mourning bit." He put a bag he was carrying on the table. "Dozen bottles of Sancerre there from Granville."
"You're a good boy," she said.
"So I believe. Don't you think I also look rattier beautiful tonight?"
"Very possibly." He was mocking her as usual, she knew that. "Now move to one side while I dish up the food."
Guido inched open the serving hatch to the dining room and whispered to Gallagher. "Sean, come and look at this."
The hall was paneled in oak, darkly magnificent, and the long oaken table down the center could accommodate twenty-five. There were only eight in there now, all naval officers, seated at various places. In each gap, where someone was missing, a lighted candle stood at the plate. There were six such candles, each representing a member of the mess who had died in action. The atmosphere was funereal to say the least.
"They have to make everything into a Shakespearean tragedy," Orsini said. "It's really very boring. If it wasn't for Helen's cooking I'd go elsewhere. I discovered a remarkably good black-market restaurant in St. Aubin's Bay the other night. Amazing what one got and without coupons."
"Now that is interesting," Gallagher said. "Tell me more."
As Mrs. Moon and her two assistants worked on Sarah, the fat woman talked incessantly. "We been everywhere. Den-ham, Elstree, Pinewood. I do all Miss Margaret Lockwood's makeup and Mr. James Mason. Oh, and I've worked with Mr. Coward. Now he was a gentleman."
When Sarah came out from under the dryer, she couldn't believe what she saw. Her dark hair was now a golden blond, and they'd marcelled it tight against her face. Now, Mrs. Moon started with the makeup, plucking hairs from the eyebrows painfully then lining them into two thin streaks.
"Plenty of rouge, dear. A little too much, if you know what I mean, and lots of lipstick. Everything just a little overdone, that's what we want. Now, what do you think?"
Sarah sat looking into the mirror. It was the face of a stranger. Who am I? she thought. Did Sarah Drayton ever exist at all?
"Well try one of the dresses. Of course, the underwear and every individual item will be of French origin, but you only need the dress at the moment, just for the effect."
It was black satin, very tight and rather short. She helped Sarah into it and zipped it at the back. "It certainly helps your breasts along, dear. They look very good."
"I don't know about that, I can't breathe." Sarah pulled on a pair of high-heeled shoes and looked at herself in the mirror. She giggled. "I look the most awful tart."
"Well, that is the idea, love. Now go and see what the brigadier thinks."
Munro and Carter were still sitting by the fire when she went in, talking in low tones. Sarah said, "No one told me my name."
"Anne-Marie Latour," Carter said automatically and then looked up. "Good God!" he said.
Munro was far more positive. "I like it. Like it very much indeed." Sarah pirouetted. "Yes, they'll go for you in the German officers' club in St. Helier."
"Or in the Army and Navy in London, I should have thought," Carter said dryly.
The door opened and Martineau entered. She turned to face him, hands on hips in a deliberate challenge. "Well?" she demanded.
"Well, what?"
"Oh, damn you." She was cross enough to stamp a foot. "You're the most infuriating man I've ever met. Is there a village near here with a pub?" ù
"Yes."
"Will you take me for a drink?"
"Like that?"
"You mean I don't look nice enough?"
"Actually, you transcend all Mrs. Moon's efforts. You couldn't be a tart if you tried, brat. I'll see you in the hall in fifteen minutes," and he turned and went out.
There was a spring fete on in the village in aid of war charities. Stalls and sideshows on the village green and a couple of old-fashioned roundabouts. Sarah wore a coat over the dress and hung onto his arm. She was obviously enjoying herself as they moved through the noisy and good-humored crowd.
There was a tent marked Fortunes-Gypsy Sara. "Sara without the H," he said. "Let's give it a try."
"All right," he said, humoring her.
Surprisingly, the woman inside had dispensed with the usual gypsy trappings, the headscarf and the earrings. She was about forty with a sallow face, neat black hair and wore a smart gabardine suit. She took the girl's hand. "Just you, lady, or your gentleman as well?"
"But he isn't my gentleman," she protested.
"He'll never belong to anyone else, never know another woman."
She took a deep breath as if trying to clear her head, and Martineau said, "Now let's hear the good news."
She handed a tarot pack to Sarah, folded her own hands over Sarah's, then shuffled the pack several times and extracted three cards.
The first was Fortitude, a young woman grasping the jaws of a lion. "There is an opportunity to put an important plan into action if one will take risks," Gypsy Sara said.
The next card was the Star, a naked girl kneeling by a pool. "I see flre and water, mingling at the same time. A contradiction and yet you come through both unscathed."
Sarah turned to Martineau. "I had that last month at the Cromwell. Incendiary bombs on the nurses' quarters and water everywhere from the flre hoses."
The third card was the Hanged Man. The woman said,
"He will not change however long he hangs in the tree. He cannot alter the mirror image, however much he fears it. You must journey on alone. Adversity will always be your strength. You will find love only by not seeking it, that is the lesson you must learn."
Sarah said to Martineau, "Now you."
Gypsy Sara gathered up the cards. "There is nothing I can tell the gentleman that he does not know already."
"Best thing IVe heard since the Brothers Grimm." Martineau pushed a pound across the table and stood up. "Let's go."
"Are you angry?" Sarah demanded as they pushed through the crowd to the village pub.
"Why should I be?"
"It was only a bit of fun. Nothing to be taken seriously."
"Oh, but I take everything seriously," he assured her.
The bar was crowded but they managed to find a couple of seats in the corner by the fire, and he ordered her a shandy and had a scotch for himself. "Well, what do you think of it so far?" he asked.
"Rather more interesting than the wards at the Cromwell."
"In other circumstances you'd be trained for about six weeks," he said. "The Scottish Highlands to toughen you up. Courses in unarmed combat and so on. Twelve ways of killing someone with your bare hands."
"That sounds very gruesome."
"But effective. I remember one of our agents, a journalist in civilian life, who stopped going into pubs when he was home. He was afraid to get into an argument because of what he might do."
"Can you do that sort of thing?" she asked him.
"Anybody can be taught to do it. It's brains that's important in this game."
There were three soldiers in khaki battle dress at the bar, an older man who was a sergeant and a couple of privates. Hard young men who kept laughing, heads together, as they looked across at Martineau. When he went to replenish the drinks, one of them deliberately jogged his arm as he turned from the bar, spilling a little scotch.
"You want to be more careful, mate," the youth told him.
"If you say so." Martineau smiled cheerfully, and the sergeant put a hand on the youth's sleeve and muttered something.
When he sat down Sarah said, "Jack Carter tells me you knew Freud."
"Yes, I last saw him in London in nineteen thirty-nine just before he died."
"Do you agree with psychoanalysis?"
"Everything coming down to sex? God knows, old Sig-mund had enough problems in that direction himself. He was once doing a lecture tour in the States with Jung and told him one day that he kept dreaming of prostitutes. Jung simply asked him why he didn't do something about it. Freud was terribly shocked. 'But I'm a married man,' he said."
She laughed helplessly. "That's marvelous."
"Talking of great minds, I used to have dealings with Bertrand Russell, who liked the ladies more than somewhat, which he justified by his strongly held personal belief that you couldn't get to know a woman properly until you'd slept with her."
"That doesn't sound very philosophical to me," she said.
"On the contrary."
She got up and excused herself. "I'll be back in a minute."
As she went out to the cloakroom the three soldiers watched her go, then glanced at Martineau, and there was a burst of laughter. As she returned, the young soldier who had bumped Martineau at the bar grabbed her arm. She struggled to pull away and Martineau was on his feet and pushing through the crowd to her side.
"That's enough."
"Who the hell are you, her father?" the boy demanded.
Martineau took him by the wrist, applying leverage in the way the instructor had shown him on the silent killing course at Arisaig in Scotland in the early days. The boy grimaced in pain. The sergeant said, "Leave off. He didn't mean any harm. Just a bit of fun."
"Yes, I can see that."
As he took her back to the table she said, "That was quick."
"When I feel, I act. I'm a very existentialist person."
"Existentialist?" She frowned. "I don't understand."
"Oh, a new perspective to things a friend of mine's come
' up with. A French writer called Jean-Paul Sartre. When I was on the run in Paris three years ago I holed up at his apartment for a couple of weeks. He's involved with the
Resistance."
"But what does it mean?"
"Oh, lots of things. The bit I like is the suggestion that you should create values for yourself through action and by living each moment to the full."
"Is that how you've got yourself through the last four years?"
"Something like that. Sartre just put it into words for me." He helped her into her coat. "Let's go."
It was dark outside, music and merriment drifting from the direction of the fair, although most of the stands were already closed because of the blackout regulations. They started across the deserted car park to where Martineau had left the car, and there was a sound of running footsteps. He turned as the two young soldiers ran up. The sergeant emerged on the porch at the rear of the pub and stood watching.
"Now then," the young soldier who'd caused the scene at the bar said. "You and me aren't finished yet. You need to be taught a lesson."
"Is that a fact?" Martineau demanded, and as the youth moved in, swinging a punch, he caught the wrist, twisted it up and around, locking the shoulder. The soldier cried out as the muscle tore. The other soldier gave a cry of alarm and recoiled as Martineau dropped his friend on the ground and the sergeant ran forward angrily.
"You bastard!" he said.
"Not me, you for letting it happen." Martineau had his identity card out. "I think you'd better look at that."
