The audience tittered: Nolan smiled, showing her deliciously assymetrical front teeth. The GOC let go her hand. Just then, he caught sight of Sears-Beach, standing unsteadily at Stirling’s elbow. The major was capless and dishevelled, his nose bleeding, his blouse stained with mucus and gore. Monty bore down on him indignantly. ‘You, Major,’ he piped. ‘How dare you turn out in public in that state? Look at you: drunk, and it’s not even ten o’clock. An absolute disgrace.’
Sears-Beach spluttered, eyes starting, lips curled back from coypu teeth. ‘Sir,’ he slurred. ‘Sir, I’m Major Sears-Beach, deputy provost mar—–’
‘Provost?’ the GOC yelled. ‘Is this the way the provost behaves? Brawling? Falling over? Drunk in public by ten o’clock? Look at me: I neither drink nor smoke, and I am a hundred per cent fit. By Jiminy, I’m going to talk to your OC. If you’re not a buckshee private on the front line by this time tomorrow, I’m a Dutchman.’ He swept a thin hand expansively towards Caine and Nolan. ‘You ought to take a leaf out of their book, Major. Those are real soldiers: see that girl who looks as if she couldn’t punch her way out of a paper bag? Just won the bar to her GC. While you HQ wallahs are hanging around in bars, drinking till you fall over, some people are out there at the sharp end, having a crack at the Hun …’
‘But, sir –’
‘Don’t But sir me, Major. Get out of it. Now. And don’t let me ever see you in that state again.’
Shaking visibly, Sears-Beach picked up his cap and stick, stuck the cap on his head. He saluted the GOC with a tremulous hand and stumbled off into the night.
After Montgomery and the others had departed, Caine and Nolan lingered in the street for a few moments with Copeland and Brunetto. ‘What will you do now?’ Nolan asked the Italian girl.
Brunetto shrugged her lean, mobile shoulders. ‘There might be place for me in your intelligence,’ she pouted. ‘If they can get over me being Itie, that is. Mr Stocker, he say he help.’
She hugged Nolan, then grabbed Caine and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘You save me,’ she whispered, tears coursing down her cheeks. ‘You and Harry and Betty and the others. I repay you some day. I never forget.’
Embarrassed, Caine glanced at Copeland: he was surprised to see that the sergeant’s normally deadpan features were heavy with emotion.
‘That goes for me, too, skipper,’ Cope said in a choky voice. ‘I owe you one.’
‘You owe me nothing, Harry. Just let’s thank Allah we’re still alive.’
Caine and Nolan strolled arm in arm across the square to the taxi rank, where cabs and gharries came and went and a long dogsleg of officers and girls stood in line. They were about to resign themselves to the back of the queue when a battered cab pulled up beside them. The driver wound down the window: in the darkness, Caine caught a glimpse of weathered dark skin, a ragged handlebar moustache, deeparch sockets holding darker eyes. The man had a prominent belly and wore a patched coat over a pyjamacloth gallabiya and a woollen hat pulled down across his ears. He looked like a Nile boatman or an illiterate fellah. ‘Get in,’ the driver said in a cracked voice. ‘Quick. You wait for queue to finish, you wait one hour.’
Caine hesitated. They were already getting disapproving glances from others stuck in the queue. ‘Get in,’ the fellah repeated. ‘I give you cheap. I have five children, no food.’
Caine glanced at the man’s pot belly and wondered wryly when he’d last gone hungry. Then he opened the door for Nolan, got in after her. For a moment they sat there, holding hands, locked in each other’s gaze.
‘Where you go?’ the driver snapped.
Caine couldn’t tear his gaze away from Nolan’s deepmelt eyes. ‘To your flat?’ he whispered.
She nodded, giving him the dreamy, faraway look that always sent a hot flush down his spine. He told the driver her address in Garden City. ‘Do you know it?’ he enquired.
Johann Eisner edged the taxi jerkily out into the stream of traffic and accelerated, weaving between horsecabs and handcarts. He changed to second, blinked at Caine’s reflection in the rearview mirror. ‘Know it?’ he repeated softly, running the tip of his tongue along the horsehair moustache. ‘Oh yes, sir. I know it well.’
Death or Glory II: The Flaming Sword: The Flaming Sword Page 37