Soldier No More (42 page)

He picked up
Choses et Gens
and his own
bastide
nonsense, and walked round the Citroen to the driver’s window.

“Just you keep your eye on that gateway. When I come out of there I don’t want to hang about admiring the view—you understand?”

He didn’t wait for Galles to acknowledge the instruction, but launched himself straightway towards the first gate.

“
The visitor will observe the gun-ports, pierced lo
w in the gateway by Jean d
’
Auberon, who died with
‘
obert de Montal at-the battle of Pavia in 1525
…
”

He observed the gun-ports.

And he also observed the cement-bag carriers, who took no more note of him than the peach-box carriers outside Neuville.

Under the shadow of the archway ahead—“
rebuilt by Etienne III d
’
Auberon, who led the best shots in France in the hunt for the last wolf of the Dordogne, in 1774
”
—there was a pile of cement bags, laid away safe from any August rain, as Genghis Khan’s man had said they would be.

He paused halfway down, out of sight of everyone, as though to adjust the tightness of one shoelace, and picked up the brief-case planted between the bags.

It was dusty with a fine powder of cement, and the key was in the lock. He turned the key and put it into his trouser pocket, dusted down the case with his hand, as he straightened up, and stepped out briskly into the light of the inner courtyard beyond.

It was only a matter of ten seconds, but he had it now—
King, Cawdor, Glamis,
all
—he could turn round and run now!

He continued on towards the ‘Solum perfectum me attrahit’ doorway, tucking the d’Auberon book and the
bastide
material more comfortably under his arm. A thing done right was a thing done well, Mrs Clarke had said.

There was a heavy bronze dolphin knocker on the great door. He looked back across the courtyard and saw that the cement carriers were back on their job.

A small grill clicked open in the door, startling him.

“Captain David Roche—for M’sieur d’Auberon.” He projected the password into the grill, slightly off-put by the pink scalp which was all he could see through it. “M’sieur Audley has telephoned, I think?”

Heavy bolts echoed on the inside. Getting into the château, with all its ancient treasures and its more lethal post-Suez
objets d
’
art
, was not just for casual callers.

There were three steps forward, and then two steps down, over white Carennac marble into the hall, while the great door crashed shut behind him.

“…
and its greatest architectur
al beauty is the splendid Renaissance staircase, which comprises a superb transition between the spiral and the stair in flights, as at Montal
…
”

“If M’sieur le Capitaine will come this way?” The little bald man who had peered up at him through the grill, grey-coated and black-trousered, indicated a door to his left.

Roche regretted desperately that he had come so far, but he was trapped now beyond all thought of retreat.

“…
a succession of noble rooms
…
”

Here he was in one of them, complete with tapestries on one side, and a breath-taking view beyond the river on the other!

“M’sieur d’Auberon will attend you here shortly, M’sieur le Capitaine.”

The second door closed behind him.

Door—enormous windows, with five-mile views across the river—vast carved fireplace … and an immense faded tapestry picturing heavily-armed Renaissance Romans martyring naked Christians in ingenious ways…

But he hadn’t come to admire d’Auberon’s treasures. There was a huge oak table in the centre of the room, on heavily carved legs. He walked towards it quickly, first dumping the
bastide
notes and
Choses et Gens
on top, then tucking the brief-case down out of the way behind one of the legs, feeling for all the world like Stauffenberg planting his bomb under the table in the Fuehrer’s bunker.

Only, unlike Stauffenberg, the moment he’d abandoned the brief-case he wanted to pick it up again. The thought of letting it out of his grasp even for a second left him desolate, clenching the empty hand which had relinquished it into a tight fist in a reflex against temptation.

He felt the temptation grow. It wasn’t really necessary at all, this charade—he was still obeying Genghis Khan when the man’s orders no longer mattered—when nothing mattered except the possession of that brief-case—

A sound outside the room straightened him up just as his hand started to unclench.

“Captain Roche?”

Roche turned slowly towards the sound.

“Captain Roche—what a pleasure! You are David Audley’s friend? Or, more accurately, Miss Baker’s friend?”

He hadn’t consciously tried to imagine what Etienne d’Auberon would be like, beyond vague instinctive images founded on what Lexy and Madame Peyrony had let slip, crossed with his own experience of superior Quai d’Orsay types.

“M’sieur d’Auberon.” He mouthed some sort of reply, letting the Frenchman come towards him while moving only slightly himself so as to mask the brief-case more effectively.

“And staying with him, in the Tower? While on leave from Paris, he said?” D’Auberon’s handshake was firm and dry, and neither too strong nor too weak, like the man himself. Roche found himself recalling another of Bill Ballance’s
obiter dicta
, on the Anglo-French love-hate complex: ‘
the best Frenchman is the one you can admire as an enemy if
you can
’
t have him as a friend
’
.

But meanwhile he had replied again, one half of his brain working automatically to make the necessary conversation along lines already planned while the other half tried to betray him.

“Ah, yes—our
bastides
. And there is nothing recent written on them in English? You are lucky David Audley hasn’t thought of that. He is a most able historian … but then his interests are strictly Merovingian, aren’t they?”

Far beneath the surface of the words Roche sensed the truth of what he already knew, that d’Auberon and Audley admired each other in enmity, not as friends.

He replied once more, and saw d’Auberon smile, and the smile hurt him. For
d
’
Auberon
was another name in the list of his betrayals, as surely as if there had been a bomb in that brief-case. And if there was another thing that was sure, it was that this man would never be in the business of betraying anyone—Audley had been wrong even to imagine it as a possibility, and Genghis Khan had been right to reject the idea. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew it.

More pleasantries and agonised conversation. And then d’Auberon’s eye fell on
Chases et Gens
.

“I see you have my little book.
Not
a great work, I’m afraid—it bears the stamp of too many official reports, without style… it is just another pile of facts, without interpretation.” D’Auberon gestured round the room, and towards the window. “All this is beautiful… but what does it mean?”

The pretentiousness of the question surprised Roche: it seemed out of the man’s character. But at last it broke the spell, enabling him to unite the two parts of his brain. What did it matter, what happened to a stranger, compared with what happened to him?

“I thought it was fascinating—how one of your ancestors led the king’s huntsman to kill ‘the Beast of Gevaudan’… and about the château itself, of course.”

“Would you like to see the house? And then a glass of something?”

The predictable responses hardened Roche’s heart finally. He looked at his watch guiltily, to confirm that enough minutes had elapsed to run d’Auberon out of time. “That’s very kind of you … but—most unfortunately—I am required to be back at the Tower. I merely wished to make myself known to you … if perhaps you could provide me with some introductions—particularly in Monpazier and Villereal … there’s no hurry—“ the words tumbled out as he scooped up the book and the
bastide
papers, blocking off d’Auberon’s view of the table leg “—another time, perhaps?”

His bad manners creased a tiny frown on to d’Auberon’s forehead. “Another time—of course, Captain.”

It was a little more difficult to force the Frenchman into leading the way out, so that he could still mask the case, but he managed it with a mixture of English clumsiness and lack of
savoir faire
, and the genuine nervousness and reluctance he felt in abandoning the most precious object on earth.

In the end d’Auberon positively strode ahead, out into the entrance hall, irritated by his gaucheness, and Roche’s last view of the room was agonisingly rewarded with the sight of the thing poking out from under the table like a sore thumb.

The little bald door-keeper was hovering in attendance at the entrance.

“I will see m’sieur out, Martin,” said d’Auberon brusquely.

Roche hurried after him into the courtyard. “The trouble is, you see … my car broke down by the river, where I was bathing with Lady Alexandra—“ (another strike against d’Auberon was that he hadn’t zeroed in on Lexy, as any sensible man should have done, and as her father and Madame Peyrony might well have intended; or was that a strike
for
him, damn it?) “—so I had to get a lift here … and that’s why I’m so late, you see—“

“A lift?” D’Auberon was halfway across the courtyard already, eager to get rid of Captain Roche from the premises.

“With Lady Alexandra’s garage man. He’s waiting for me, to take me back to the Tower,” said Roche breathlessly.

D’Auberon stopped alongside the pile of cement bags. “What?”

I had to get a lift here.” Roche feigned embarrassment. “
Oh
—
damn
!”

What?” The vehemence of Roche’s
damn
caught d’Auberon’s attention. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m an idiot!” Roche turned embarrassment to apology. “I’ve left my brief-case behind—with all my other stuff in—I put it down somewhere—“ he looked around him helplessly, and finally back towards the door of the château “—it was by the table, I think—“

D’Auberon regarded him with a suggestion of weariness, which was then overtaken by good-mannered tolerance as Roche grimaced apologetically at him.

“I’m so sorry.” The words put the matter beyond argument. “It is no matter. I will go and get it.” D’Auberon shrugged and turned on his heel.

Roche’s legs, still programmed by Genghis Khan, carried him on past the cement bags, into the light beyond the arched tunnel of the gate-house. The lorry had gone, and the parking area was empty except for the little grey Citroen. He could see Raymond Galles’ face turned towards him.

He felt almost played out, but in the last minute of the game, when the team which was going to win was the one which forced itself to play harder. Facing Galles, he raised his hand across his stomach and damped down the man’s expectations with a palm-down signal.

The light had lost its brightness, which he had first seen this morning dissipating the mist on the road from Neuville to Cahors. It was like the field where he had been sick the evening before, just in advance of Lexy’s arrival. Now he felt sick again—sick with all the different prospects ahead of him, in which Lexy could never take part.

But really there were only two prospects; either d’Auberon would come back, or he wouldn’t.

When he did—he had to think only of that—
when
he did, all that remained was to drive back to Audley, and fob him off with success…and that would win him another day, at the least—maybe more, since both sides trusted him, and when he didn’t surface each would worry first about what the other one might have done to him, and by the time either of them started to smell a rat he’d be long gone to ground, and ready to deal for his survival—

Long gone, Julie
—

And
long gone, Lexy
—

And
long gone
, all the rest of them—the man on the beach in Japan and all his successors down to Genghis Khan; and the man in the British Embassy in Tokyo, and all his successors down to Sir Eustace Avery and Colonel Clinton; and David Audley and Etienne d’Auberon—and the hell with all of them!

No more self-pity, just self-interest and the future—no longer the past or the might-have-been, no more deluding himself with silly ideas—there was no more time for any of that—

In the stillness he heard the door under
Solum perfectum me attrahit
close again behind him in the distance, through the arched gate-house and the courtyard.

Raymond Galles, and whoever else was there to witness the transaction, was still watching him. And the only thing that worried him was the faintest suggestion of doubt which had been in d’Auberon’s eyes as he turned away.

“Here you are, Captain Roche—one brief-case!”

Roche’s left hand, feeling in his pocket among his loose change, closed over the key. It was the same case, and there hadn’t been time for anyone to pick the lock, even if anyone had had reason to pick it.

His right hand took the case for Galles to see. He had entered the château without it, but now he was leaving with it—
and d
’
Auberon had given it to him
.

The thing was done—and if anyone else was watching, it could only be Genghis Khan’s man who had witnessed it, he decided. And that would just give him even more time.

“Just one thing—“

Another thing? He looked at d’Auberon questioningly, the case weighing down his arm to his side, but there was something else weighing down his mind at the same time.

“Why did you really come to see me, Captain Roche?”

“I beg your pardon?” He heard the lack of conviction in his own voice.

“It’s simply that … I’ve never seen a man more nervous than you, Captain—underneath the polite civilities, that is.” D’Auberon smiled— half-smiled—at him. “But of course you don’t have to tell me … though you make me nervous too, because now I come to think of it, there is one man you remind me of: he despatched me into the Chausse Mejean in ‘43, to work with the Bir Hakim maquis when things were bad—and that only makes me more nervous.”