Soldier No More (36 page)

He replaced everything very carefully into the semi-confusion in which he had found it, the topmost file,
Town plans of Hippo Regius, Carthage, Leptis Magna, Ostia Antica, Rome
—
c.500
, slightly askew. A trained man would know it had all been picked over, and there were innumerable precautionary traps Audley could have set to betray such tampering at a glance if he was of a mind to be suspicious. But it didn’t really matter now, because now and at last Audley himself was next on the agenda, and after that he would take it for granted that Captain Roche had pried around his work-room during the night.

He looked round the room one last time, more out of habit than necessity after that last thought. If he had still been working for one side or the other, for Genghis Khan or Sir Eustace Avery, perhaps Audley wouldn’t have been next—perhaps the burden of responsibility would have driven him to consult with at least one of them first… and not Genghis Khan, because by now he would already be on the way to their rendezvous. But
now
he was working for himself, and instinct ordered him to keep one jump ahead of both of them.

His eye came round, past the open trapdoor and the arrow-slit embrasures, over the piles of books and the card-index boxes which he had just closed, to the work-table with its files—
Town plans of Hippo Regius, Carthage
—to the window on the world of junipers-and-scrub-oaks-in-the-mist—

The juniper tree moved!

Or … it didn’t move—it couldn’t move—but it widened first on one side, then on the other, as David Audley passed in front of it, striding across the rough pasture. Even as Roche watched, the mist started to swallow him.

Now
? Roche thought.
Why not now
? And then thought simplified into action.

The morning chill hit his cheeks, then filled his mouth and throat and lungs as he drew it in. It surprised him that it could be so cold, where he had seen huge yellow butterflies and hovering humming-bird hawk moths busy with the buddleia outside Lexy’s cottage in the late afternoon of yesterday. But—
now
, while instinct and morning courage were in alliance—
now
he had no time for butterflies and buddleias and hawk moths—

At this level, cheated of the bird’s-eye view from the tower window, he was no longer sure which juniper tree was the right one, on which to orientate himself.

“Audley!” he raised his voice into the silence of the morning.

The stillness closed back quickly on the sound, damping it down without an echo, like a pebble thrown into mud on the edge of a pond, sending out no ripples beyond its fall.

Roche drew in his breath to try again.

“Hullo there!” The answering words came faintly to him, more distant and at a much more acute angle as though Audley had zig-zagged back on himself, against the fall of the ridge. “Hullo!”

“My dear fellow!” Audley loomed up ahead of him out of the mist as he brushed through the fringe of scrub oaks. “You’re up early!”

He watched Roche advance the last few steps. “Couldn’t you sleep?” He shook his head at his own question. “Of course, it wasn’t a night for untroubled sleep after … what happened, I agree—a
bad
night tor everyone, I’m afraid. Worse for us, but bad enough for you too.” He shook his head again. “Steffy …” he sighed, and steadied his scrutiny of Roche, “But you didn’t know her, of course.”

“I did meet her—briefly.” Roche didn’t want to talk about Meriel Stephanides. “Just briefly, down by the river, with Lady Alexandra and Miss Baker yesterday …”

“You did?” Audley nodded politely, without the least interest in the information. “What a waste … what a damn waste—that’s all I can think of, you know.”

“Yes.” He had to turn the conversation from Steffy. “You didn’t sleep either, then?”

“Me? Oh … I’m always up early.” Audley started to move again, waving downhill into the mist. “First job of the day is to collect the bread and croissants for breakfast. Old Fauvet’s boy leaves it in a box down by the road at the bottom—I save him the journey and get my morning exercise while my house-guests are lapped in swinish slumber.” He shrugged. “No point in changing the routine.”

“No.”
Now
. “About last night…”

“Last night?” Audley frowned at him sideways. “What about last night?”

Roche searched for a moment for his opening gambit, and found Lexy offering it to him, generous as ever. “Do you remember what Lady Alexandra said—about me.” He kept in step with Audley. “Well, she was … right.”

“She often is. She’s a clever little girl… or clever big girl, I should say … in her own peculiar way,” agreed Audley unconcernedly.

“You remember what she said?”

Audley grimaced at him. “Yes … well, to be honest,
no
. I have this bad habit of not always listening to what Lexy says, you see.”

There was no help for it, he had to bite the bullet. “I work for British Intelligence, Dr Audley.”

Audley continued walking, not looking at him, almost as though he hadn’t heard. But he had heard.

“Yes,” he said finally, this time almost as though merely agreeing with a statement of the obvious. “You have the stretched look of some of the field men I once knew … or maybe over-stretched, from being too long in the field—
some foreign field, that is forever England
. That’s what stretched them.”

Roche shivered involuntarily at such a deliberate foot-fall on his grave, but before he could react to it Audley turned towards him.

“My dear fellow! Forgive me—I shouldn’t have said that, to you of all people!” He raised his hand to forestall a reply. “And when I should be grateful, too! Quite unpardonable!”

“Grateful?” Roche stumbled on a tussock, almost measuring his length.

“That’s right.” Audley caught his arm to steady him. “Aren’t you about to tell me that you’ll put in a good word for me up above, with your controller—or whatever they call them now? That I’m ready and willing? That I’ve seen the error of my ways? That they won’t ever again have recourse to Section Nine—or Section Ten, or whatever it is today?”

“Section Nine?” managed Roche.

“Or whatever. It was Section Nine in the 1914
Manual of Military Law
I inherited. Of course, they never actually threw it at me, not in ‘46… but it was an awful thing I did—they must have felt like M’Turk did in
Stalky
, when Colonel Dabney’s keeper took a shot at the vixen: ‘It’s the ruin of good feelin’ among neighbours—it’s worse than murder’. And quite right too, they were, that’s the pity of it.”

Somehow the opening Roche had expected seemed to be eluding him. “But I don’t see what was so terrible, about refusing in the way you did—“

“You don’t? Then you damn well ought to!” Audley had no mercy on himself. “It was the moment of truth, and I fluffed it. It’s … it’s like the specimen charge in the back of the
Manual
, for Section Nine:
The accused, Captain D. L. Aud
ley
—name, rank, number and regiment… how do the words go?—is
charged with, when on active service, disobeying a lawful order given personally to him by his superior officer in the execution of his office
—I think I’ve left out something about ‘disobeying in such a manner as to show a wilful defiance of authority’…”

“But you didn’t disobey anyone—you refused to come back in, that’s all,” interrupted Roche quickly.

“I refused in ‘51.” Audley raised a finger. “I disobeyed in a wilfully defiant manner in ‘46 …
when personally ordered to take up his rifle and fall in did not do so, saying
‘
You may do what you please, I will soldier no more
’
—and that’s exactly what I told them … I’ll
soldier no
more!” Audley threw him another of his characteristic half-bitter, half-mocking smiles. “For them—the unpardonable crime. So don’t waste your time with me, old boy,” concluded Audley. “I’m out. And that’s that.”

No,” said Roche. “You’re quite wrong.”

Audley looked at him again, sidelong, one eyebrow raised, which seemed to split his expression into two, half of it curious to know why he was wrong, the other half contemptuous of that possibility.

“They want you back,” said Roche. “That’s why I’m here.”

The raised eyebrow dropped back into position, but otherwise the man’s face suddenly became blank, as though shutters had been lowered behind his eyes.

“They want you back,” repeated Roche.

Audley took two or three more paces, and then stopped so abruptly that Roche’s own stride carried him on down the hillside for two more, and he had to check himself and swing round.

“Oh yes?” said Audley, and his voice was as blank as his expression. “Third time lucky.” Roche was reminded of what Oliver St. John Latimer had said about Audley; and then it occurred to him that although he had been thinking of the man in Jekyll-and-Hyde terms, perhaps only now was he witnessing the true Hyde metamorphosis. “Oh yes?” Audley looked through him.

Latimer was right, yet he mustn’t let that daunt him. It was the Hyde-Audley he wanted, not the Jekyll-Audley or the self-pitying show-off from last night.

But he couldn’t afford to jolly the Hyde-Audley—that had been an error. He must take the whip to the Hyde-Audley. “Does the name Avery mean anything to you?”

Avery?”

“Sir Eustace Avery.”

Audley shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

Clinton, then?”

Audley studied him for a long moment, then he relaxed his mouth into some sort of smile. Stage Two with Audley would be when he realised that to show no expression at all might be identified as a sign of weakness, and although he couldn’t control his eyes he could do something with his lips.

“Colonel-Frederick-Clinton.” Audley worked on his face to give it back to Jekyll. As with Genghis Khan, that name wasn’t just ringing one bell, but a tocsin strong enough to shake the bell-tower. “Yes, I remember him. He was one of the organ-grinders … and I was one of the monkeys. I remember him—yes. “Audley nodded. “I remember him…rather well.”

Good. Now—“

“You are one of his monkeys, is that it?”

This wouldn’t do at all, to have Audley remembering the dark past when he should be rejoicing in the happy present and the exciting future.

“There’s a new department being formed, Audley. I’m here to offer you a place in it. A
senior
place. In fact—“

“
You… are
saying that
he
…
wants
me… back?
”

“Sir Eustace Avery—“

“Bugger Sir Eustace-bloody-A very!
Clinton
wants me back?” It had been a mistake to let the big man get above him on the hillside; with the extra couple of inches he had on the level he towered over Roche now. Roche set his teeth. “I told you. There’s a new department starting up—“

Bugger the new department too! You asked me if I remembered Colonel Frederick Clinton—Colonel Frederick
J. Clinton—J for Joseph— Joseph of the coat-of-many-colours, that’s what I remember. So … why does he
want
me
?”

The trouble with that, thought Roche, was that it was a very fair question. “He scares you, does he?” He recalled Genghis Khan’s sarcasm.

“Yes. He does.” Audley brushed the gambit aside.

“You’ve changed your tune since last night. If I recollect correctly—“

“No! I haven’t moved an inch. Last night Mahomet wanted to go to the mountain. But now the mountain has come to Mahomet. And Mahomet mistrusts miracles, Captain Roche—that’s all.”

Roche lost his last doubts about David Audley, and about Clinton and Avery at the same time. Last night had made it a little too easy, like another miracle—which he also ought to have mistrusted. But Clinton had known, even in knowing that Audley was wide-open for recruitment, that it wouldn’t be so easy.

“Or, shall we say …” Audley started, and then trailed off “… shall we say that I’m beginning to put things together? Things … and people?”

Now that he thought about it, Roche understood that Audley was running exactly true to form, and that any other reaction would have been out of character. So what he would expect in return was the authentic crack of Clinton’s whip. Nothing else would do.

“We want the papers d’Auberon gave you for safe-keeping, naturally.”

“Of course!” Audley’s smile acknowledged. “And that’s my dowry, isn’t it? I sell you ‘Tienne—my old friend ‘Tienne—you know all about him,
naturally
!”

Roche nodded. The truth was that he didn’t know enough about any of them for safety, but there was no time left for the normal precautions, only for half-truth and bluff. “Naturally.”

“You know he saved my bacon?” Audley came back to him from miles I away. “You know … I was stuck in the middle of France in ‘44—and wet behind the ears, and hotter than a chestnut in a charcoal brazier … But ‘Tienne helped to get me out,
via
the good Madame Peyrony and her private army. Only I suppose you know all about that too, of course … God only knows how, but it’s the sort of thing Colonel Frederick J. Clinton would know,
naturally
.”

Roche said nothing. They were far off the script now, with the news that Audley owed d’Auberon this old debt of honour. And yet, even if Clinton hadn’t known about it, it was a reasonable deduction that Audley had to owe the man something, to be entrusted with that life insurance.

Audley was frowning at him. “Only Clinton reckons I’d sell him out for a nice cosy job, organ-grinding …” he watched Roche narrowly for a moment, and then smiled—“A nicely-calculated temptation … but unfortunately an academic exercise now.”

The big man’s sudden brightness struck a chill in Roche. “What d’you mean?”

“What do I mean!” Audley beamed at him. “I mean, my dear fellow, that for once Colonel Frederick J. Clinton has miscalculated. It’s very sad really—here he is … or here you are … offering me marriage—remarriage—with the old firm, and my past crimes forgotten … and maybe it is just possible that I might have sold dear old ‘Tienne down the river in the process—who knows?” The smile became icy. “But I must refuse—that’s what I mean, Roche. Because I haven’t got what you want.”