Soldier No More (40 page)

“Now that’s a bloody-David-bloody-Audley-thought! Not good for nothing—just good for bloody-screwing!” She burnt him up with a scowl. “So you can keep your thoughts, bloody-David-bloody-Captain
Roche
—I wouldn’t buy one of them if you paid me!”

Before he could reply, she had slumped herself back on the towel, presenting only pink shoulders and tangled half-dried blonde thatch in an uncompromising rejection.

Roche stared at her for a moment, and then gave up. He hadn’t intended to offend her, but he had also screwed his own chances nevertheless. But then he had never had any luck, and that was the story of his life.

He frowned past her at the river, where the sun caught the ripples on the same stretch of broken water in which he had sported with all three of them yesterday—Lexy and Jilly and Steffy—when the world was young.

He could never do that again, never with Steffy and never with the same water, they had gone down to the sea together.

When it came to
screwing
, nobody had ever screwed anyone more thoroughly than the Comrades had screwed the British and the French, by Christ!

Hypnotised by the rippling light on the water, he put together the d’Auberon papers at last—

It wasn’t just that the Comrades had known about d’Auberon and his precious documents all along, and hadn’t worried about them at all—about the alleged traitor in their midst, who had fed back to Paris every thought the Kremlin had had, through Hungary and Suez, and every word of it nothing but the truth, checkable and double-checkable from every other Anglo-French intelligence source.

Of course they hadn’t been worried! Not about
that
. What they
had
been worried about, regardless of the British and the French …was the truth of those reports about the undercurrents of dissent which had been swelling ever more fiercely in their Eastern European colonies—through East Germany, still disaffected from the Berlin riots, through Poland, where patriotism and religion were inextinguishable, to Hungary, which had been primed to explode any minute by the irreversible tide of hatred even among good Comrades of the appalling Rakosi regime. And not the men in the Kremlin alone, by God! Even dear old Bill Ballance—red-nosed, superannuated, indiscreet, but always well-informed—even Bill had been worried—

“Have another drink—to your next report on the incidence of scurvy in the French Mediterranean Fleet, say? The Froggies may hate us now—and the Yanks may distrust us even more than before—and the rest of the world may despise us for being a third-rate bunch of paper-hangers … but I can play Dr Pangloss to your Candide, young David, for this is still the best of all possible worlds, and I feared very much that it wasn’t going to be—I was very worried that it wouldn’t be!”

“What d’you mean, Bill?”

“I mean, young David, that we are alive and drinking, and not taking part in the Third World War—Leibnitz was right, and Voltaire was wrong. So I shall retire and teach metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology in my old age, like Pangloss. Because, for our sins, we have been delivered from war and pestilence and famine—but chiefly war.”

“War?”

“Ah—but of course you’ve been away, on that smart course of yours—so you missed all the fun. Suez saved us, young David—Suez and Hungary together! So it was all for the best in this best-of-all-possible-worlds.”

“How, for God’s sake, Bill?”

“Why, very simply, dear boy. If there hadn’t been any Suez—if Hungary had blown up when everything was sweetness and light between us and the Americans—us and the French and the Americans … with what those CIA fellows were up to in Budapest—Christ! It could have been Poland in ‘39 again!… . Instead of which we took our chance at Suez, and offended the Yanks … and left the Russians a free hand in Hungary, thank God! But it was much too close for comfort, the Third World War. Much too close!”

“Over Hungary, Bill? Not over Suez?”

“Who’d want to die for Suez? Not the Russians. But they would have fought us over Hungary, no question—it’s the one thing they’re bound to fight over, to hold that frontier of theirs in the West, come hell or high water—that’s why I was so bloody worried, young David. Because I’ve done my share, and I want to see old age and come safe home. And now at least I’ll see peace in my time—“

Yet even shrewd old Bill had only seen the half of it, through the rose-tinted spectacles of a grateful survivor.

He had seen it all as a marvellous slice of luck—the Joint Russian Intentions and Policy sub-committee feeding back the vital and authentic information which had nerved the British and the French to chance their arm in Egypt in the certain knowledge that the Russians would only bark, and not bite, because of what was happening in Eastern Europe …which, in turn, was happening precisely at the time of an American presidential election.

But it hadn’t been a slice of luck at all, it had been stage-managed from start to finish.

Because, turned round, it was Suez and the collapse of the Western alliance—however temporarily—which had been perfectly timed for the Russians, giving them the free hand they needed to bring the East Europeans to heel…

Even, now he thought about the final bungling efforts of Rakosi to suppress dissent… even
that
could have been stage-managed to coincide with Suez—turning the inevitable explosion into a controlled blast.

They
’
d all been set up
—
the British and the French and the Americans
…
and the poor bloody Hungarians, who had been shot down in the streets by the thousand,
most of all
!

“David…”

“Yes?” He didn’t raise his head to look at her this time, because the thing was still continuing inside his brain, like a film which refused to end after the denouement.

“I’m sorry, David. I shot off my big mouth again.” That wasn’t the end of it: he was part of it now—part of the continuation of the screwing process.

No wonder Genghis Khan was so pleased, and so determined to help Captain Roche to do his duty: he wouldn’t only be placing the said Captain Roche—Major Roche to be—right inside Sir Eustace Avery’s operation as a trusted officer who had proved his worth,
he would also be planting a source of deliberately-leaked information at the highest level, an unimpeachable source as proved and trusted as the new Major himself
!

The possibilities were endless—and irresistible—

“David…”

Damn the girl! Just as he was getting into his stride!

He raised his head and looked at her, and melted again immediately. And after all, he could afford to melt, for he had it all now, with the crowning opportunity of making a deal with the British which they couldn’t resist either.

“Lexy?”

At least … he had it all if Genghis Khan and Audley now did their different jobs right. That thought brought him down to earth again with a bump.

“You’re angry with me. I can see it in your face. But I don’t blame you—I shot my stupid mouth off.” She stared at him contritely. “I told you I was stupid.”

“I’m not angry.” That wasn’t what she’d seen in his face: it was the face of treachery-in-doubt that she’d seen, poor kid. “And you’re not stupid.” And anyway… there was no reason why both men shouldn’t do their jobs right: they each had sufficient incentive, by God!

“You looked black as thunder.”

“I was thinking dark thoughts, that’s why. But not about you.” Once again, she relaxed his over-stretched nerves. And, in preparation for what was to come, they needed relaxing. “I couldn’t think dark thoughts about you.”

“What sort of thoughts—damn! I’m doing it again, aren’t I!”

“Doing what?” He surrendered to the game.

“Sowing ideas. And I usually reap—or rape, as David Audley says— where I sow. But I’m tired of reaping and raping, even though I can’t seem to stop sowing. So don’t let’s bother with thoughts, David darling.”

“No bother. Sad, maybe … but no bother—my thoughts about you.”

“Sad?”

“Unattainable, let’s say.” Because he had just been thinking of Bill Ballance, who had left half his right hand by the roadside between Nijme-gen and Arnhem in ‘44, the war came to his rescue. “Speaking as a soldier … a bridge too far—or several bridges, possibly.”

Me? Unattainable?” Her eyes widened.

Her humility irritated him. It hadn’t been the loss of Julie which had brought him to this pass—he could have lost her in any one of a hundred ways, and still not been vulnerable to the Comrades’ offer after her death …. It was the
waste
of Julie which had been unforgivable—it was for that he had wasted his own life in an empty and foolish protest.

A ball splashed into the water, a yard from where he lay, where a sluggish back-current from the fierce flow in the centre caught it, turning it slowly.

A small boy, thin and brown as an Indian, tripped across the stones on small feet which made light of discomfort, to retrieve it. The boy picked up the ball and looked shyly at Roche. “Pardon, m’sieur!” Roche nodded dismissively.

“M’sieur—la-bas—“ the boy spoke breathlessly, nodding towards the trees on the bank beyond the expanse of stones on the flood-plain of the river and trying to keep his voice down to an urgent whisper at the same time “—M’sieur Galles vous attend!”

Roche stared back at him for a moment, observing that he held the ball one-handed now to keep whatever coin Galles had given him safe.

He nodded again, but solemnly this time, to keep the great secret between them intact, so that the coin would be fairly earned.

The boy looked back at him for another moment, huge-eyed with surprise that he hadn’t immediately followed the direction of the nod, and then scampered away across the stones.

Roche looked at his watch on the towel beside him, and then slid it back on to his wrist. It was later than he had imagined, and he was glad of that because time had dragged on him, ticking away too slowly to H-Hour. Training and racial memory from a thousand battles in which he had never fought had prepared him for action at dawn, but never for combat over an early evening drink. But in the end God disposed the minute of the hour, and for the purposes of this great battle Genghis Khan was God, with Audley and Raymond Galles attending to the details in all innocence.

But he had to do it right: custom decreed that, and with Lexy there, almost at arm’s-length, custom and inclination both—and even something more than that, maybe even Audley’s Kipling-bred, self-denying honour. He looked at his watch again, and still didn’t look at the trees on the bank—he didn’t need to look at them, he knew Galles was there waiting for him—but looked instead at Lexy.

The unattainable
Lady Alexandra Mary Henriett
a Champeney-Perowne
, pink-and-blonde in her unsuitable scarlet bikini: she had heard what the little boy had said to him in that childish treble whisper, which mocked the secrecy he had been trying to achieve for half-a-crown in francs. Probably she had already looked where the boy had nodded, and she wasn’t stupid, no matter what she said.

She didn’t know—couldn’t know the tenth of it, never mind the half of it. But it didn’t matter now, whatever she guessed, or didn’t guess, because he had nothing to lose now, anyway.

The last thought armoured him against any reaction she could have against what he was about to say, because he was at last truly angry with her.

He raised himself up on the towel.

“I’ve got to go—I’ve got work to do. You go back to the Tower—don’t worry about my car, I’ll collect it later—you go back and tell Audley I’m getting what he wants, and he’s to wait for me there. Do you understand?”

Yes, David.” She sat up to match him, hair every-which-way, and busting-out-all-over-like-June, and cornered by realities she couldn’t possibly comprehend; but neither subservient, nor concerned to vex him with silly questions about anything—least of all about herself.

“Your trouble, Lady Alexandra, is that you’re selling yourself
cheap
, to clever bastards like Audley—and cheapskates like me. What you want to do is to sell yourself
dear
, to someone who understands your true value, damn it—if you want to be dear to anyone, then force the price up … be as expensive as you really are, Lady Alexandra!”

He turned from her, grabbed his clothes and headed for the gap in the trees, beyond the parked cars, towards which the little boy had nodded.

There was no one there, but he saw the little grey corrugated Citroen parked just off the track further down, near the main road, yet half-hidden by bushes.

So Galles was at pains not to advertise himself more than necessary now. But perhaps that was understandable, after what had happened to Miss Stephanides last night.

He looked at his watch again, trying to judge minutes against distances. As usual on such occasions, time was behaving erratically: it had gone slowly at first, and then it had speeded up while Lexy had taken his mind off it. But it was still too early for his final contact with Genghis Khan, and that was what mattered. Unless and until he could be sure that the man had superimposed his own plan on Audley’s, he had to take things easily.

So … trousers first, and then socks and shoes … because a man without trousers couldn’t face the world, and a man without shoes couldn’t run away from it.

Then shirt and tie: shirt to make him respectable, tie to add formality, because a man in a Royal Signals tie was ready for anything and anywhere, even Le Château du Cingle d’Enfer.

He slung his coat over his shoulder, feeling the comforting weight of passport and wallet (a man with those could run faster and further), tucked his
bastide-
book
and notes under his arm, and advanced in Full Service Marching Order towards the Citroen.

The engine was already running.

He bent down to the window. “What’s all the hurry?”

Galles scowled at him. “Get in the car, m’sieur.”

The little Citroen eased forward slowly, protesting at the potholes on the track, laboured up the incline on to the road, and then slammed him back in the seat as it accelerated away.