Soldier No More (48 page)

“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 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—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 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 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 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 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 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 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
, 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 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.