Send for the Saint (22 page)

Nobbins studied Instrood and was conscious again of the similarities between them. Yet there was a difference, too — the important difference between self-confidence and uncertainty, success and failure, a difference that could somehow give the prisoner a moral advantage over his gaoler.

“You’re finished, Instrood,” he said, as if reciting a formula. “Those days are over for you now. Why not make it easy for yourself?”

“You mean easy for you. But why should I? Time’s on my side.”

“No cooperation, then?” Nobbins said mechanically.

“Voluntary? No.”

“But you’ll crack, sooner or later.”

“Every man does, when the real treatment begins.” Instrood shrugged. “Oh yes, I’ll crack — in the end.”

“But not till it’s too late?”

“Exactly. Not till agents have been replaced, lines of communication changed … I’ll crack all right. But not yet. And you won’t be the man to do it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“You’re a loser,” Instrood said more gently. “I can tell. Remember, I was like you, once. I was a loser. Time was, I wouldn’t have said boo to a goose. And they, these people” — he looked with distaste around the shabby office — “they never valued me, never appreciated me for what I was worth. But the Chinese did. They gave me power, gave me room to develop! The Chinese made me what I am today!”

And there was something very strong and sure and tough about Instrood as he leaned forward and flicked the switches of the two lamps on the desk so that his own face was flooded again with their dazzling light.

“Now I expect you’ll be anxious to get on to the nasty stuff — Mr Nobbins,” he said; and he settled back into the chair, with contempt registering in his features as before.

13
“All right, carry on, Corporal.” The Saint barked out the order with military crispness.

“Sir,” said Rockham, saluting smartly. Then to the men: “Squad — fall in!”

It was Friday morning — the last rehearsal for their afternoon mission.

“All right, lads.” Rockham was once again the calm commanding officer, his Corporal’s uniform notwithstanding. “This is the final check. For today’s fun and games you’ve got to look as Scottish as haggis.”

His gaze roamed over the line of men, their tartan trews and their tunics immaculately pressed, their rifles held parallel, their boots identically gleaming, their Tam o’Shanters identically angled.

To Lembick he said: “Satisfied with all the details?”

“The Lowland Lights themselves would be proud of them, sir.”

“There’ll be no room for mistakes, Lembick.”

“You can rely on me.”

They arrived at Worplesford Cross three quarters of an hour later, Rockham and the Saint travelling in the jeep and the others in the three-tonner which had also been decorated with a small square of the Regiment’s distinctive tartan on the front fender. It took the Saint and Rockham another half hour to erect the diversion signs reading
WORPLESFORD VILLAGE AND BRAIZEDOWN
— TEMPORARY ROUTE
at four strategically chosen junctions, ending up with the last sign at Worplesford Cross itself.

“That’ll give ‘em a pleasant little round tour,” Rockham said with satisfaction.

The men and vehicles were well hidden under cover of a sparse wood near the junction when presently the real McCoy roared into view. The fake Lowlanders watched the jeep and lorry — bearing that same tartan patch — slow down at the sign, hesitate, then turn off exactly as they were supposed to do.

Rockham started the jeep, and the Saint heard the lorry’s engine clatter into life behind them.

And then they saw Ruth Barnaby’s car.

Ruth was driving. Beside her sat Lembick, with his revolver trained on her.

Lembick gestured with the gun, and she stopped and got out. He grabbed her by one arm and marched her to the jeep.

“Look what I found. In the trees further along.”

“The young lady who works at the Bull, isn’t it?” Rockham stroked his chin impassively.

The Saint’s pulses, and his thoughts, were racing, but outwardly he wore the sort of expression Rockham might have expected Gascott to be wearing — interested, concerned, but not personally involved.

“The little bitch had us under observation,” Lembick said.

“Did she, now?” said Rockham thoughtfully.

“And she was in contact with somebody, on a small portable radio.”

“That’s worse.” Simon could almost hear the motors humming efficiently in Rockham’s brain as he weighed the possibilities dispassionately. “Did you catch her before the real Lowlanders went off at a tangent, or after?”

“Just before.”

“So she won’t have reported the switch to whoever it was.” He turned his cold clear eyes on her. “I wonder if we’ve time to persuade her to — confide in us.” She returned his stare with a defiant toss of the head. “No, perhaps not … But we’ll need to decide quickly whether to proceed with the job. What do you think, Gascott?”

“I say go on,” Simon rasped. “I’d lay ten to one she’s working for your client.” He barely gave the girl a glance. “Inspecting his contractors on the job!”

Lembick stabbed a sudden accusing forefinger at him.

“Cawber saw him at the pub!” he snapped triumphantly. “During the cross-country race. He stopped to go to the loo. Or so we’remeant to think! But I know what Ithink. I think he’s in with her. This whole thing stinks of a set-up! I say abort!”

“I’m getting pretty tired of these accusations,” the Saint said, bristling. “Let’s get on with the job.”

Rockham switched his calm level glance back and forth between them.

“Difficult,” he said after a pause. “But on balance — we go on.” Suddenly he was totally decisive. “Put her in the back of the truck, Lembick. And tell Cawber to stay with her in the truck at the other end and keep her out of sight. I dare say we can manage with one man less in the platoon — and I never did find him a very convincing Scot. Now let’s get rolling.”

With a last murderous glance at the Saint, Lembick dragged her off.

Rockham spoke only once during the two-mile drive to Braizedown Hall.

He said blandly: “Exercise, I believe, is usually dehydrating. Or do you have a weak bladder? Anyhow, why didn’t you just stop behind any tree?”

“It wasn’t my bladder, it was my bowels,” Simon said bluntly, seeing no better answer, and conscious of Rockham’s pistol holster against his hip. “Something I must have had to eat at your health farm. But I guess Lembick will never be happy till he can hang something on me.”

Rockham’s silence seemed to accept the explanation, at least for the moment, but the Saint had an uncomfortable feeling that his act had taken a funambulist turn and that the rope was wearing perilously thin.

There were two sentries on the gate at Braizedown, paratroopers wearing the RP armband. They saluted and let the jeep and truck through to park in front of the guard hut, behind the similar vehicles of the outgoing Paras platoon. The main body of the Paras themselves were standing in loose formation along one side of the drive.

Captain Yates came across to the jeep as Rockham and the Saint got out.

Simon saluted smartly, and Yates returned the salute of his equal in rank.

“C Platoon, B Company, Second Battalion Lowland Light Infantry,” Simon said briskly. “One officer, twenty-eight men, reporting for guard duty.”

“Trust the Lowland Lights to be regimental about it,” Yates smiled. “We’re inclined to take things a bit more casually, I’m afraid.” He handed the Saint a millboard. “Send a couple of men to relieve the guard on the prisoner, sign here, and he’s all yours.”

The uniformed mercenaries of The Squad had already poured from the back of the truck and assembled loosely, facing the Paras across the drive. The Saint called to two of them.

“Ewan, McAnn — up to the house. Relieve the guard on the prisoner. Take the jeep.”

Simon searched Yates’ features, and thought he saw a flicker of uneasiness pass over that phlegmatic face. He wondered how much he knew.

As the Saint figured it, Ruth would have been in contact by radio either with Yates himself or, perhaps, with Pelton. But either way, she had been interrupted before the switch — so no one could be certain that a switch had beenmade yet. Unless the Paras had got together with the real Lowlanders earlier, so that they’d recognise them when the time came. But somehow he didn’t see that as very likely, knowing Pelton’s established preference for confiding as little as possible to as few people as possible. How much had he told Yates — if anything?

As the two men he had detailed to relieve the guard on Instrood jumped into the jeep and drove off up the short driveway, the Saint turned to Rockham.

“All right, Corporal. Fall in the men.”

The two squads came to attention under the orders of their respective NCO’s.

“Piper!” called the Saint, hiding his profound unenthusiasm for this act in the proceedings; and Lembick obediently appeared with the bagpipes.

Simon made his inspection of the outgoing guard as cursory as he could, while the pipes skirled out behind him in an ear-torturing dirge.

Yates crossed to inspect the new guard. He eyed the first man. Then his gaze swept along the rank, and back.

The men were lined up just as in their drills — trews and tunics immaculate, boots gleaming, rifles in perfect alignment, Tam o’Shanters neatly aslant over the left ear.

Yates looked again at the man in front of him — at his hat. And then, with a furrow of puzzlement creasing his brow, he half-turned his head to look questioningly at the Saint.

At his headgear.

“The Tammies!” Yates shouted suddenly. “Lowland Lights slant ‘em to the right! You’re phonies!”

So whether Yates had been tipped off or not, apparently Lembick, the reliable expert on Scottish military traditions, had goofed it.

And both of those were possible eventualities on which the Saint had not been tipped off. He had only his instincts and his reflexes to cue him.

Rockham had his revolver out and was swinging it around to point at Yates before the Paras Captain had finished speaking. The Saint hurled himself at Rockham just as his finger tightened in the trigger, knocking him sideways to the ground, and the bullet whistled by Yates’s ear.

“Yates — I’m Templar — with you!” Simon called to him, as the Squad men raised their rifles.

“Scatter, men!” Yates yelled. “Fire at will! But not at the Captain!”

Both groups of uniformed men scattered. Simon ducked behind the Paras’ jeep as the shots rang out from both sides; and then fluently cursing the tardiness of Pelton’s reinforcements, he worked his way around towards the back of their lorry. Between there and the Squad’s own lorry was a twenty-foot gap.

He put his head down and sprinted those few yards; but someone must have been watching, because a bullet lifted the Tam o’Shanter clean off his head and he felt the deadly passing breath of two more. Then he reached the lorry, and thankfully took cover on the side of it away from the shooting.

He knew Ruth was still in that truck with Cawber. Assuming Pelton’s reinforcements did eventually arrive, there was no telling how Cawber would react. He might try to use the girl as a shield or hostage to save his own skin; or he might panic and shoot her. And as there was something the Saint wanted to say to her before anything too final happened to her, the first task he had set himself now was to get her away from Cawber.

His guess was that Cawber would have moved right to the back of the truck when the shooting started, and would be craning his neck, peeping around the far side ofthe tailboard, to watch the action.

And the Saint’s guess was right, as he saw when he peered cautiously around the truck’s rear end from his own safe side. Cawber was sitting so that he could watch the battle without serious risk of getting his head blown off and still keep tabs on Ruth. He had her gripped by the arm, and the fingers of his other hand were curled loosely around the trigger of a Sten gun.

He glanced aside and, for one fragmentary instant, saw the man he knew as Gascott, and saw the automatic that was levelled at his own heart.

And the Saint shot him dead, without hesitation and without remorse, before he could even move.

“Thank you,” Ruth said calmly.

Simon had no time to compliment her on her sangfroid. He unhitched the tailgate of the truck and helped her down; and then he said:
“I’m making a run for the house. You’d better come along too. You know the layout.”

As an afterthought, he hauled himself up into the back of the truck. Cawber’s fingers had tightened on the Sten gun in his death spasm. Simon prised them open, wrenched the gun from that involuntary grip, and thrust it into the girl’s hands.

“You’d better have this — just in case. I’m sure you know how to use it.”

They took a roundabout route, skirting some trees, and zigzagging their way from one truck’s shelter to the next. The shots were still stuttering out, with the two sides having scattered rapidly behind the available cover.

When they stopped for a short breather, she said: “You’re thinking of Instrood?”

He nodded.

“Not that it’s likely that anyone’ll have harmed him. But that’s not a chance we should take. And I saw Rockham heading this way.”

They saw some fallen men, and once the Saint pointed savagely and gripped the girl’s arm.

“Look at those poor bastards! A couple of Yates’s men — and they look like goners. What the hell does Pelton think he’s playing at?” he blazed.

She shrugged, as if to say that Pelton’s ways were mysterious, and not for mere mortals to question; and the Saint’s mouth set in a still harder line as they ran on towards the gaunt grey structure that was the house.

Further on he pointed again at two more prone figures, this time in the Lowlanders’ uniform
“The two men I detailed to relieve the guard on Instrood,” he said. “I wonder what happened to the two Paras they were relieving.”

They approached the house cautiously, from the rear. The Saint kicked open the back door while they stood as well clear as they could of anything that might come through it. Nothing did, and they were about to go in, when suddenly she clutched at his arm, dragging him aside a a split second before the crack of a shot.