Soldier No More (21 page)

Outside, in the sunlight, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

The heat which bounced up around him off the cobbles of the little square didn’t warm him at all, it was repelled by the great block of ice inside him.

The more he thought about his situation, the worse it became. Because if Meriel Stephanides was … what she was … then it would be prudent to assume that the American, Michael Bradford, wasn’t what he seemed to be, but something much more dangerous.

He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run away to.

Lady Alexandra was standing beside his Volkswagen, waiting for him. She saw him, and waved energetically. He waved back automatically, glad that she couldn’t see his face from that distance. He had all of a hundred yards in which to rebuild a happy holiday smile on it.

“ON—BUGGER
!!
Now Jilly’s bloody egg’s broken!” Lexy stabbed at the frying pan, as though it had let her down deliberately. “And of course I’ve got everything wrong—I should have done her bacon first, shouldn’t I! Oh well, not to worry—she’s probably still in the bath—go and see if she’s still in the bath, David darling, and if she is then tell her to stay there—“

Roche blinked at Lady Alexandra, and tried to reconcile what he knew with what he was seeing, and opened his mouth and shut it again without speaking.

“And has Steffy come back yet? I think I’ll throw this egg away and start again—I think I’ll throw the bloody lot away and start again! I hope to God the chips are still hot… or at least warm—is she still in the bath?”

Roche swallowed. From the way she moved … or rather, from the way different parts of her moved under the dress, he could swear that she wasn’t wearing anything under it.

“—I don’t mean go
literally
and see whether she’s still in the bath—I mean, you
can
…
because there isn’t any lock on the door, I broke it yesterday—but all you have to do is listen through the wall by your ear, that’s all—don’t lean too hard, or it’ll fall down—“

Roche felt the wall tremble against his ear. It was paper-thin, and he could hear Jilly-washing-sounds distinctly through it. He nodded speechlessly at Lady Alexandra.

“Well, that’s all right! Just tell her to go on soaking—tell her there’s no hurry—right?”

Roche observed also that Lady Alexandra’s face was dirty again, with a black mark down the side of her nose on to her cheek which was presumably a legacy from when she had stoked the boiler for Jilly’s bath, after emerging from her own.

She had stoked the boiler, and she had cooked his supper and her own, and she was cooking Jilly’s supper—the Lexy Special—in that exquisite dress, which must surely smell more of bacon fat and chips than Chanel by now—

(And the Lexy Special was a horrific greasy memory of hunger stemmed, but not satisfied: broken eggs, frazzled bacon and fried bread exploding into fragments, and limp chips congealed into inseparable lumps—
ugh!)

He turned to the partition wall. “Jilly?”

“I can hear you.
I
heard.” Jilly shouted. “Tell her just egg-and-bacon, no chips … And tell her not to incinerate the bacon.”

Lexy was already smiling cheerfully at him when he turned back to her. “I heard too! They’re all just unappreciative of my culinary efforts— all except David Audley, he never complains—he’s a gentleman, like you, David!”

“He never complains—“ Jilly’s voice, deadpan as Genghis Khan’s, came through the wall beside Roche’s ear, faint but clear “—because his taste has been … institutionalised … by public school… and the Army … and Cambridge … so he doesn’t know any better.” Splash, splash. “His stomach… is permanently … disadvantaged.”

“
Jealousy
—“ shouted Lexy “—will get you nowhere!” She grinned her great wide-mouthed happy smile at Roche. “Would you like some more chips? Steffy’ll never finish this lot now.”

“Steffy … knows … better!” Splash, splash.

“
Shut-up
!” Lexy scraped the frying pan into the bucket beside her. “Would you like seconds, David darling?”

God! Perish the thought!

“No, I’m fine,” said Roche hastily. “But… where’s Steffy?”

Lexy waved the kitchen spatula, scattering fat over the top of the stove. “Oh, God only knows! She’s always going off on her own somewhere or other. We think she’s got a boyfriend tucked away—or one of her poor bloody authors she’s galvanising into a masterpiece, maybe … but she won’t say, she just swans off into the blue and that’s that …
Not
to be trusted, our Steffy—
definitely
not to be trusted! And that’s Mike’s opinion too. He says she’s
a
femme
fatale
.”

That was very true, thought Roche; it was even so true that it hurt. And it wasn’t surprising that Bradford, the American, thought so, either; because in this operation, whatever it involved, there was no reason why the Americans and the Israelis should be on the same side.

“Darling—why don’t you go out and see if you can spot her
en route
? If you walk up to the corner you can see for miles—but get yourself another drink first, we’ve still got bags of duty-free gin in those huge bottles we bought on the boat…”

Roche retired gratefully up the drive from the cottage, ginless but glad to be out of the kitchen, where the air was blue with burnt fat and treachery. Because in this operation …

Ever since Suez the Americans had been bad friends with the Israelis, even though more in pique and sorrow than anger … and the way things had been going since Suez last year, they’d soon be co-operating again—at least so long as the Russians called the tune in Egypt.

Yet the key to everything was still Audley: and if he could find that key before the Americans and the Israelis did—

But in his case it wasn’t a case of
if
: he had to find it, or else—

He stared out over the blue-hazed landscape, across the rolling hills and forests and enclaves of cultivated land, and saw none of it.

The stakes weren’t any higher, because for him they had been at the limit from the beginning, from the moment he had decided to defect again if he could see a way to do so.

But now they were inescapable, because the bets were on the table—if he failed, then the Comrades would never forgive him this time. Only now the game was more complicated, with the Americans and the Israelites in it, with stakes of their own, and as yet he didn’t even know why they were playing. And not to know
that
was very frightening. And the CIA, with all its unlimited resources, was even more frightening. And Mossad, with its limited resources but unlimited ruthlessness, was even more frightening still.

It made him feel sick to his stomach, and he couldn’t control the sickness, so that before he knew what he was doing he was throwing up the Lexy Special into the stubble of the field at his feet.

For a moment he was bent double, swaying dizzily, his vision blurred with tears. Then he managed to steady himself, his hands on his knees, as he vomited again helplessly—he had lost his supper, and now his lunch was coming up.

He focussed on the stubble again, and found that he had instinctively lurched a few yards away from the disgusting mess, to an unfouled piece of ground. Among the dead stalks at his feet there was a fresh green plant growing, its tendrils snaking out from a fissure in the dry earth. He frowned at it, unable to identify the plant—there was another similar one a few yards away, and another beyond that, and another … they were in a line stretching down the hillside towards the road, and there were others dotted over the field, apparently growing haphazardly, but actually in other lines like this one.

They were young vines, of course. This cornfield had once been a vineyard, a little irregularly-shaped vineyard high on the ridge, penned in by woodland on three sides and by the road up from which he had climbed on the fourth; yet although the vines had been grubbed up, their deepest roots had escaped the plough and had endured the temporary conquest of the land by the corn to sprout again, unconquerable.

Well … Roche bent down to take the tender shoot at his feet into his hand… well,
he would beat the bastards yet, somehow; he would use them, and he would play them against each other
—
Genghis Khan against Clinton, and Clinton against Genghis Khan, and both against the Americans and the Israelis
…
and in the end he would
go over to whichever of them looked like winning, whichever of them could best offer him safety and amnesty and oblivion, it didn
’
t matter which
—
only survival mattered
!

“David!”

Lexy was striding up the hillside towards him.

“Any sign of her yet?” She paused for a moment, turning to survey the landscape below her, hands on hips, a splendid Amazon of a girl, Hippolyta to the life. “Drat the girl! This is absolutely typical—just typical!”

Roche chose a non-committal grunt as a reply. From their vantage point he could see the road twisting down into the valley, and there was plainly no sign of
Mossad
on it.

But he ought to pretend he’d been looking at something. “I was looking at these vines, coming up through the stubble …”

“Oh … yes!” Lexy’s face was slightly flushed, and the dirty mark had enlarged itself. She looked as though she’d just got out of bed. “Tragedy, isn’t it—corn instead of wine! But typical Peyrony avarice, we think … though she says she can’t get the labour—all her boys have
g
one off—
“
she transmuted the words from BBC English into the aristocratic
gawn orf
“—gawn orf to the army, to get themselves killed in Algeria, she says. But we think it’s the price of corn—I say, darling … you’re as white as a sheet!”

Roche was about to say that it must be something he’d eaten, but realised just in time that he would thereby be condemning the Lexy Special for what it surely was.

“You must have caught a touch of the sun, darling,” said Lexy solicitously.

“Yes, I think I must have done,” agreed Roche, who had never caught a touch of the sun in his life. “Mad dogs and Englishmen, and all that…” Maybe he had, though: a little sun and a lot of terror, and a Lexy Special: that was surely enough to turn the strongest stomach.

“Well, then—it doesn’t matter about Steffy bedding down with her mysterious boyfriend for extra time! You can’t possibly go to the orgy like this, David—“ Lexy’s solicitude was positively enthusiastic “—Jilly can go on her own, and I’ll stay and mop your fevered brow,” she beamed at him.

“Ah… no—no, I must go,” said Roche quickly. Whatever Lexy had in mind—ministering genuinely, or even something much more attractive, he had to go to the orgy. In another life the opportunity would have been irresistible, but this life left no room for self-indulgence. “I have to go. And I’m okay now, anyway.”

Lexy appeared crest-fallen. “But, David darling… it’ll be so
boring—
if
you’re feeling a bit fragile … I mean, David—David Audley—spouting endlessly on—on barbarians and things … on history, and Arabs, and Russians, and … and on whatever comes into his head … and they’ll all get drunker and drunker … and I shall go to sleep, and my mouth will fall open and I shall
snore
horribly—and Jilly and Steffy will become even more intelligent … and then you’ll never speak to me again, and I shall be
desolate!
”

Lexy had cooked her own goose. In that other life … but this life belonged to David Audley, and especially David Audley drunk and talkative—that was a particular Audley he needed for his collection, and perhaps even the final one he required to complete the set. Even if he’d been half-dead he couldn’t have missed such a chance.

“Lexy, I’m sorry. But I’ve got to sleep somewhere eventually, remember. And I am okay now, really.” He grinned at her. “I don’t want to be a bother, either.”

“Oh—phooey!” She rejected the grin. “The trouble with nice men is, they always have to be noble and unselfish and brave, damn it!”

“I’m not being any of those. I’m only being logical.” And the trouble with women, thought Roche, was that (all except Julie) they were none of those things. “Besides which, Jilly said Madame Peyrony wouldn’t like me to hang around you three ladies.”

“Huh! That’s just where you’re wrong! We’ve just had a message from the old witch about you—La Goutard’s already been on the phone and La Peyrony is desperate to meet the young English colonel—“

“I’m not a colonel, for God’s sake! I’m only a captain—“

“Well, she made you a colonel, so you jolly well have to stay promoted while you’re here … And I made you a paratroop colonel too, with a chestful of medals—“

“But—“

“But nothing! Those two old witches have both got nephews serving with the
paras
in Algeria, under some colonel or other who appears to be a cross between Napoleon and Joan of Arc, the way they talk about him … so she’s promoted you and I’ve—what’s the word Father uses?—seconded?— I’ve given you a parachute, anyway,” she shrugged, utterly unabashed. “So you’ll have to jump now, when you meet La Peyrony.”

Roche regarded her reproachfully. “You didn’t have to make me a paratroop colonel—that’s overdoing it a bit.”

“Not at all! ‘Never tell a little fib if you have to lie’, Father always says. Tell a whopper and make a proper job of it’—that’s what he says.” Lexy brushed at her hair, and then turned the gesture into a vague, unrepentant wave. “You’re lucky I didn’t make you a general—French
para
generals jump with their men, Etienne says.”

“Etienne?”

“A friend of David’s—Etienne d’Auberon—or d’Auberon-Something-Something, terribly aristocratic … I mean, not like me, but
really
aristocratic, like from St. Louis and the Crusades, and all that…” Lexy turned the vague wave into an even vaguer sweep, as though ‘all that’ included the ownership of everything in sight, with the appropriate feudal rights and privileges. “A
French
friend of David’s,” she added unnecessarily. “Anyway, you’ll probably meet him tonight, if you’re set on going to the Tower. He often turns up … mostly to argue with David about the Hundred Years’ War, so far as I can make out …” she trailed off, apparently losing the thread of her own butterfly monologue.