Band of Brothers
Page 20
He’d told him all about her: including the fact he thought she would go back into what she called ‘the field’, meaning German-occupied France—and that the prospect scared him witless. That he thought—from some things she’d said or nearly said, and questions she’d evaded—that she’d been through some particularly harrowing experience in the course of her last deployment, got away somehow but still had nightmares about it. As she had—night before this last one. He hadn’t mentioned that to Stack, of course; only that she seemed to have some compulsion to go back and he wished to God he knew how to dissuade her.
‘You can’t. If that’s her job, and she’s set on doing it. No more than she could stop you going to sea.’
He’d shrugged. ‘It’s a point, but the comparison’s not all that close.’
‘You say it scares you witless. That’s the beef, eh?’ There’d been a sneer in his tone. ‘How about her? How about bloody thousands of ’em—wives of bomber crews for instance, think they’re not bloody terrified?’
Ring her tonight.
(And see Monkey as soon as he gets in, warn him off. If it came out later that they’d all been there—well, Bob could be induced to understand, he wasn’t stupid.)
A long way from it.
Ben had been remembering snatches of Rosie’s pillow-talk the other night, murmured exchanges in the dusty-smelling dark, that old four-poster. Two things she’d tried to explain, in a drowsy, shorthand kind of way. The first was that in her job now she was helping with the briefing—‘preparation’ was the word she’d used—of agents who were on the point of going in: while clearly—as things stood at this moment—not going back in herself. She’d asked simply, Why aren’t I? How can I look them in the face, wish them good luck and bloody well stay put?
The other was an image in her memory of a girl-agent on a beach in Brittany who’d been on her way in when Rosie had been coming out. This other girl—she was tall, Rosie had said—gaunt-looking, was the impression she’d had—on the beach in the dark of a moonless night and keeping herself to herself, needing to be alone to fight her own fears—even panic. Which was something Rosie had understood completely. She’d told him, with her arms tight round his neck in that infinitely kinder, softer darkness: ‘I’m that girl, Ben. She’s me.’
(He’d been there too, on that beach, but she’d forgotten this and in any case it was hardly relevant.)
Stack had been right—in his own blunt fashion: Rosie most likely would go back into France. And if she did, you’d just have to live with it. In hope and prayer—and a lot of the time, for sure, in bloody anguish. But you didn’t have to give up on it yet. Once she makes her mind up—if she does—OK, accept it, grin and bloody bear it, help her. Knowing how it scares her. ‘Terrifies’ would be a better word. In the night, that nightmare. And Rosie all alone: about as much alone, in her line of work, as it’s possible to be. So go on trying, don’t give up before you have to. Try…
Stirring: stretching. Glancing at the deckwatch. Waking up to the fact it was time to check the position and course again, perhaps amend the ETA. Then maybe take a look up top. Barclay was up there; Stack had gone down to visit the wounded. He stubbed out a cigarette, swung round to focus on the figures in the windows of the QH box. Time now, 0508. And it was all right. ETA 0730, no change. He went up into the dawn light: less ‘light’ than a polish on grey, tumbling sea. A cold, hard beginning to the day. Barclay was in the skipper’s starboard forward corner, Harper still at the wheel. Ben put his glasses up and found the land—the Downs—in black silhouette between streaky, paling sky and lower obscurity where Newhaven had to be. Seeing the port in his mind’s eye, and the ambulances waiting on the quayside; as likely as not the same ones that would have been there yesterday morning to meet Roddy King’s unit. Training on across the bow: he was looking for Beachy Head now. Thinking of the ambulances, and wondering how a bookmaker might set the odds for or against any individual’s long-term survival, in this racket. Reminding himself then—just as he found the high right-hand edge he’d been searching for—that in his own case it wouldn’t be such a big deal either way unless Rosie came through too.
ALSO OUT NOW
Manhunt
The first in an unputdownable series of explosive thrillers featuring Agent Paul Richter… In the intelligence world, it hurts when a senior officer goes bad. When that senior officer can’t be identified, it hurts even more. With the security of Britain's most secret files at stake, and trust a commodity in short supply, a deception operation must flush out the traitor. Paul Richter, an unemployed ex-Naval aviator, is the unwitting and ultimately expendable bait in the trap. But as the net closes e, a Russian intelligence officer flees Moscow and her evidence points the finger of suspicion in a very different direction… With time running out, and nobody to trust, Richter finds himself battling both the British security establishment and teams of Russian assassins with orders to kill him, and the woman he’s trying to protect. For readers of James Patterson, Will Jordan and Chris Ryan, the Agent Paul Richter series is intense, visceral and totally unmissable.
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First published in the United Kingdom in 1996 by Little, Brown
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
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Copyright © Alexander Fullerton, 1996
The moral right of Alexander Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911591450
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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