A New Kind of War (11 page)

‘Fattorini, my dear fellow—’ Major de Souza came out of the shadows on his right, round the room’s only other piece of furniture, which Fred had missed at first glance ‘—glad you could join us. Good of you to come.’

‘Sir.’ A trick of upwards-thrown light from one of the lamps distorted de Souza’s features unnaturally, almost diabolically. And Fred still couldn’t shake off the memory of what he had seen the man doing the last and only time they had met. And … a
filing cabinet, for God’s sake
! he thought, as he fumbled inside his tunic for his documentation.

‘Oh—never mind that! We can do the paperwork later.’

In the midst of all his paperwork, de Souza scorned the formalities, holding out his hand in friendship. ‘“Frederick”—? David there says I should address you as “Fred”. But I can’t possibly do that. Because … apart from the fact that I once had a cocker spaniel who answered to that name—albeit a most intelligent and affectionate beast … because, apart from that, we are accustomed to refer to our sovereign lord and master, the Brigadier, as “Fred” … so that would only be to confuse matters quite unbearably.’ He smiled devilishly. ‘So henceforth you are “Freddie”—is that acceptable?’

He had to accept the hand, even though he knew what that hand had done once, and therefore must have done many times. And he also had to answer the man coolly and confidently, if he wasn’t to be despised. ‘Anything, so long as it isn’t “Fatty”, which I had to answer to all the way through prep school—perfectly acceptable, sir.’

‘“Amos”, Freddie. We’re all equals here.’ De Souza’s grip was firm and dry and strong—the best sort of handshake. ‘All, that is, except this young whippersnapper, temporary Captain Audley.’ The hand relaxed its grip. ‘Talking of whom … have you dealt with those transport problems, young David? Are the drivers properly briefed?’

‘All except Hughie, Amos.’ Audley was quite unabashed. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, go and attend to him.’ Beneath the lazy drawl there was a sharp reef of concern. ‘I want no mistakes tonight—no unfortunate accidents, like last time: Apart from which … I have a strong suspicion that our Fred himself may very well materialize out of the darkness up on the
limes romanorum
tonight. So we wouldn’t want anything less than maximum effort, would we, now? Eh, Captain Audley?’

There was a fractional pause before Audley replied. ‘It w-wasn’t my fault last time. It was the Croc who fucked things up, if you ask me, Amos—’

‘But I’m not asking you, David. I am just making sure that you do not … as you put it so delicately … “fuck things up” this time. Right?’

Audley rocked slightly on his heels. ‘Yes, Amos.’

‘Thank you, David.’ Amos de Souza acknowledged the boy’s surrender quite deliberately, without mercy. ‘Now … Freddie … we’re due in the mess in fifteen minutes, and Colonel Colbourne is a stickler for punctuality. But he expected you here earlier, so I’d better wheel you in to him right away, without more ado—right?’ He turned back to his desk for a moment, and a tiny beam of lamplight glinted on the rosette on his Military Cross ribbon: MC and bar and the desert ribbon established Major de Souza as a sharp-end soldier in the past, whatever malignant fate had condemned him to do in Greece in the more recent past, and whatever he was doing in Germany now. Then he looked sideways, without straightening up, towards Audley. ‘I thought you were going back to your horse-lines, dear boy—what’s keeping you?’

Audley stood his ground. ‘I w-w-w-was … j-j- just thinking, Amos —’

‘J-just thinking?’ De Souza straightened up. ‘Now, that’s half your trouble, young David: “j-just thinking”—eh?’ Then he shook his head. ‘All right! What have you been j-just thinking, then? Share the wisdom of the ages with us—go on!’

Audley opened his mouth, and then closed it as though he was nerving himself to control his stutter.

Major de Souza turned back to his desk, selecting a thin file from a pile of thicker ones before returning to Audley. ‘But now you’ve thought better of it? Which is probably j-just as well. Go—to the horse-lines, dear boy. You’ll be much safer doing your duty there.’

The young man drew a deep breath, which seemed to make him even bigger than he was. ‘You should tell him about the Colonel, Amos.’

‘Tell him what?’

Another breath. ‘That he’s a looney.’

Major de Souza looked at Audley for a long moment, and as the moment lengthened and with bitter experience of his own adjutants taking their job seriously, Fred braced himself for an explosion. But the young man stood his ground, to the credit of his courage if not his intelligence, or his obstinacy if not his courage.

Then de Souza smiled, and shook his head, and finally laughed softly. ‘David, David, David … How many times do I have to tell you, dear boy … that we’re all loonies here. If we weren’t loonies, we wouldn’t be here.’ He favoured Fred with a cynical twist of the lip. ‘So you go back to your horse-lines, David … and make sure all our transport is ready to move on H-Hour, like a good dragoon. Because we don’t want any slip-ups this time. So …
move, Captain Audley.’

Audley moved. And Fred thought, as the hobnails on the young man’s boots scraped and skittered on the stone floor, that he would also have moved after that order from the adjutant. Particularly this adjutant.

‘Now then Freddie—’ Major de Souza indicated the open doorway, out of which Audley had vanished ‘—shall we go then?’

Fred let himself be shepherded out of the office, into the gathering gloom of the cloister.

‘To your left.’ But then de Souza closed the door behind him, and locked it carefully, turning a key-on-a-chain in a heavy padlock as Fred waited for him. And, as he waited, he drew into his nose a faint savoury cooking smell, which must have drifted from somewhere round the colonnaded square, because the steady downpour still glinted in the open space in its centre, and that would have damped down such smells.

‘He’s a good boy, is David.’ De Souza pointed their direction. ‘Very bright … if he lives, he’ll go far, as they say … but quite out of his depth, I’m afraid.’

‘Yes?’ For a man who was supposed to know what he was about, Fred still felt nonplussed.

‘Too young—far too young.’ De Souza led the way. ‘Fred—
Fred
, our lord and master … he should never have lumbered us with him. And Colonel Colbourne shouldn’t have accepted him.’ He stopped abruptly outside another door, and rapped his knuckles on it. This is men’s work. And boys aren’t up to it, no matter how bright they are—‘

‘
Come!’
A high voice, almost querulous, invited them from the other side of the door.

‘A great pity, really.’ De Souza ignored the voice, staring at Fred in the light of a hurricane lamp hanging on a bracket on one of the pillars of the colonnade. This’ll spoil him. Because he can’t really understand what he’s doing. He’s got a scholarship waiting up at Cambridge. So … he’s done his regimental bit, in Normandy … so they should have let go of him.‘ He grasped the doorhandle. ’A pity—a great pity—‘

‘Wait!’ There were so many questions which Fred couldn’t ask now that he didn’t know what to ask. He only knew that he didn’t want to go straight into that room.

‘What?’ De Souza stared at him.

‘
Come
!’ The invitation was repeated.

A useless question surfaced. ‘What is this place?’

‘Huh! It’s a Roman fort.’ De Souza didn’t seem surprised. ‘A Roman auxiliary fort on the
limes
, in the Taunus, rebuilt by a rich German in the nineteenth century. The last unit to occupy this place, before us, was
Cohors IV Britannorum Equitata
, in the second century after the birth of Christ. Which makes us the second British contingent up here, on the Taunus. Which is probably why we’re here now, actually—’ The doorhandle rattled, and de Souza let go of it, and the door began to open.

‘Who’s that?’ The voice came out of the gap, still high-pitched, but irritated now.

‘It’s Amos, sir.’ De Souza stood back from the door. ‘Major Fattorini has just arrived. I’ve got him with me.’

The door opened wide, and de Souza sprang to attention and saluted as it did so. So Fred did the same, but not so smartly, because the Colonel was stark naked.

‘Whisper-whisper-whisper—
huh
!’ The Colonel waved a large sponge at them with his saluting hand, dripping water all round him. ‘What were you whispering about, Amos?’

‘I wasn’t whispering, sir.’ De Souza addressed his naked CO with cool deference. ‘I was merely explaining to Major Fattorini that this is a Roman fort.’

‘Yes?’ Colonel Colbourne lowered his sponge and peered at Fred. ‘Doesn’t he know a Roman fort when he sees one, then?’

‘I was explaining that the last British unit to be billeted here was
Cohors IV Equitata
.’ De Souza avoided answering this lunatic question with what Fred suspected was well-oiled adroitness.

The Colonel dropped Fred in preference for de Souza, raising his left arm and sponging his armpit as he did so. ‘There’s too much whispering going on, Amos. Whenever I come round a corner there are other ranks and NCOs whispering as though they’re bargaining with each other—as though they’re
selling
things … which they probably are. And I don’t like it. And I won’t have it. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’ De Souza paused. ‘I’ll tell them to speak up.’ He paused again. ‘So that we can hear what they’re selling. Right, sir.’

‘Good.’ The Colonel dropped de Souza this time. ‘Major Fattorini—I know your aunt’s sister … Aunt-by-marriage, that would be?’ He began to sponge the lower part of his body absently. ‘An Armstrong—your aunt?’

Major de Souza kicked Fred’s leg quite painfully under cover of the shadows.

‘Yes, sir.’ The pain concentrated his mind. ‘My mother is an Armstrong.’

‘That’s right.’ Colonel Colbourne turned back to de Souza, shifting his weight so that he could sponge between his legs. ‘I know full well what they’re up to. And I know there’s precious little we can do about it—corrupt, and corrupted, they are—it’s the same with all armies of occupation—even though Mr Levin and I have hand picked them. And it’ll get worse before it gets better—if it ever does get better. But at least we can fire a shot over their heads … So you can post Sergeant Devenish, for a start. And see that it’s a Far East posting, too. That’ll frighten ’em, by God!‘

‘No sir.’ De Souza stood his ground. ‘Devenish is a good man.’

‘Tcha! I know he’s a good man—I chose him. But he’s also a whisperer. And Alec McCorquodale has complained about him.’

‘He also speaks tolerable German, sir. We need him.’

‘Huh! It’s because he speaks German that he’s up to no good!’ Colbourne waved the sponge ‘—Oh, all right—post someone else. They’re all corrupt, so anyone will do.’ He looked at Fred suddenly. ‘Lydia Ferguson
nee
Armstrong—your mother’s sister?’ He sniffed. ‘A decent, respectable woman … but married to a wastrel husband. I handled her divorce. A dirty business, divorce always is. Give me a good murder any day.’ He invited Fred into his room with his sponge. ‘Come in, Freddie, come in!’

Fred thought:
Audley was bloody-right
!

And then he thought:
If I have Audley to thank for this posting
… or
whoever it may be
…
then Colonel Colbourne may soon have another murderer to defend before long, by Christ
!

‘NOW THEN
, Freddie—’ The Colonel turned his back on them as he spoke, and stepped into a battered hip-bath ‘—if you’ll allow me to complete my ablutions, eh?’ He bent down to dunk his sponge in the water.

‘Yes, sir.’ Faced with his commanding officer’s white buttocks, Fred chose to study the room instead, although there was little enough to study: it was much the same as the adjutant’s office, with its single unnaturally high-up latticed window, and apart from the hip-bath its sole contents consisted of a camp-bed with the Colonel’s clothing neatly laid out on it, and a battered metal trunk on which a pressure-lamp hissed away softly. So the Colonel clearly wasn’t a believer in creature comforts, he thought disconsolately.

‘So you’re a friend of young Audley’s—is that the case?’ The Colonel gyrated under a cascade of water squeezed from his sponge.

‘No, sir.’ That was not the case in more senses than one at this precise moment. ‘He was at school with my younger brother, I believe.’

‘Mmmm. But you are acquainted with him, are you not?’ The Colonel stepped out of the hip-bath on to the cold stone floor without a hint of hesitation, into a large puddle which he must have left when he’d gone to investigate the whisperers outside his door.

‘I have met him once.’ The atmosphere in the room was cold and dank, to match its musty, unoccupied smell. And Fred suspected that it was a cold bath which the Colonel was enjoying so inhumanly.

‘Just once?’ The Colonel pointed to the camp-bed. ‘Would you be so good as to hand me that towel?’

‘Yes.’ The towel was rough as sandpaper.

‘In Greece? Thank you.’ The Colonel began to towel himself vigorously. ‘In Greece?’

‘Yes.’ If, as Driver Hewitt and the Colonel himself had suggested, Colonel Colbourne had practised law before the war, then this was a cross-examination, he began to suspect. But why?

‘Good.’ The Colonel nodded in de Souza’s direction. ‘Any friend of young Audley’s might be one too many for us—eh, Amos?’

For a moment de Souza didn’t answer. ‘Sir?’ He paused for a second, almost as though he hadn’t heard the question. ‘Captain Audley does his job well, sir. He’s just somewhat younger than the rest of us, that’s all.’

‘Huh!’ Colbourne folded his towel carefully and placed it on the edge of his hip-bath. ‘But you are a friend of Colonel Michaelides, are you not?’

The question came out of the gloom unexpectedly, just as Fred was watching the towel slide down the side of the bath into the water. ‘Sir—? Yes … I am a friend of Colonel Michaelides.’ It was a cross-examination. But the cross-examiner knew too-damn-many answers to his questions already. So it was time to have all his wits around him. And his wits’ first requirement was that he must counter-question. ‘Are you a friend of Colonel Michaelides, sir?’