It didn’t matter—what mattered was what was obvious: Jilly’s guess that d’Auberon had ‘beans’ to spill had been right, but she hadn’t taken the guess to its logical conclusion … which was that those beans had to be in a can somewhere safe, rigged to spill in the event of d’Auberon’s untimely demise. It was so obvious that Stocker hadn’t bothered to add that two-and-two for Roche’s benefit.
“No, sir.” But now other twos-and-twos presented themselves in a natural progression, following that obvious one, plus what Bill Ballance had said at Christmas: it would be the name of the inside man—it must be that, nothing else fitted so well, nothing was more likely to arouse such greed. That name would be worth almost any risk.
Any new department, starting out secure but in the cold, needed something hot to get things moving; and Avery of all people would have desired to get his hands on d’Auberon’s can of beans, because Avery of all people would know its value—it had already turned him into Sir Eustace when his colleagues were being demoted or passed over or bowler-hatted. If he could lay his hands on the one intelligence source that was accurate and secure and came from the very top in the Kremlin, then he could write his own ticket in both London and Paris—the poor bloody French wouldn’t have any choice, knowing that the perfidious British would shop them otherwise.
“Now, listen here, Roche—“
Roche could feel his heart thump in his chest, not with fear and simple arithmetic but with the multiplication of excitement at last: not Avery—not Sir-bloody-Eustace—but he himself—poor-bloody-Roche—could write his ticket with that name anywhere in the world, from Washington to Moscow and back—
“… this is why we have to get Audley …”
Audley! He had forgotten Audley!
“… because we have good reason to believe that he can supply us with the d’Auberon material.”
Audley!
“…we had originally intended for you to bring him back to us first, and then to take it off him as a bonus …”
The red flare cooled instantly into icy determination, all Roche’s anger chilled into bitterness by Stacker’s crude lie. Perhaps they did want Audley, he seemed a natural candidate, sure enough; but what he had was what they really wanted, he was just the bonus. And Roche himself had originally been cast as the recruiter, not to be trusted with the important work and not to be given the full credit and the proper reward.
“… but now we can’t wait, Roche.”
They couldn’t wait because they hadn’t bargained on the arrival of the Americans, let alone the Israelis, on the scene ahead of them—probably ahead of them because Mossad and the CIA had also heard of Audley’s peculiar virtue, and had moved more quickly to exploit it. “You understand?”
He was expected to understand about the Israelis and the Americans. What he didn’t understand was why they were still so confident he could achieve all this. But Stocker would surely tell him that before long; and, more than that, any minute now he’d be offering back-up, with this sort of opposition.
“Yes, sir,” said Roche.
“I’ll get down to you as soon as I can. Not tomorrow … I have things to do up here … but maybe the day after. Galles will look after you, anyway.”
That wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting—Stocker the day after tomorrow … and what use was Galles? He wasn’t even sure that the Frenchman was still trustworthy, never mind capable.
But Clinton had said he had been very carefully chosen, and oddly enough that was easier to believe now than it had ever been before: quite simply, d’Auberon’s ‘material’ was too important to be allowed to slip through their hands if there was the slightest chance of getting it—it was worth risking someone good in fact.
“There’s just one thing, sir.” There was no way now that he could ask those questions and get a useful answer. But there was another question which could be answered. “You said you’ve got ‘good reason’ to rely on Audley—that he can obtain d’Auberon’s … material. How d’you know that?”
Stocker was silent for a moment. “Mmm … ‘how’—I’m sorry, Roche, the ‘how’ is off limits to you. All you need to know is that he’s our man. But if you want to know why he is, I can give you that—because I was about to give it to you anyway.”
The fine distinctions of the answer seemed almost indistinguishable to Roche.
“Can’t you guess, man?” Stocker teased him. “I should have thought it was obvious enough, in all conscience.”
Obvious enough?
All the emphasis was on Audley, not d’Auberon. It had been Audley, Audley, Audley… and then not d’Auberon, but ‘d’Auberon’s material’— Audley, Audley, Audley—and d’Auberon’s material—and ‘good reason’, and ‘he can get it’, and ‘he’s our man’, and in the end certainty?
“He’s got it already—is that it?” The question had answered itself before he had whispered it into the mouthpiece: it would never have been enough for d’Auberon to hide away his can of beans in some safe deposit to which he had access, because Bureau 24 had ways of making people give such things up—ways the Gestapo had taught the French, plus all the refinements of cruelty Indo-China and Algeria had added. So the can would have to be at one remove from the owner, out of his hands and to be handed over only under certain controlled conditions of safety, back to him and no one else. That was what he, Roche, would do in the same dangerous position— nothing else would combine self-preservation with security.
“Bravo!” exclaimed Stocker.
But the catch was, thought Roche bleakly, you needed a friend you could trust, willing to shoulder the risk for you.
“So now you know,” said Stocker encouragingly.
Now he knew.
He knew that d’Auberon had such a friend, and that it was his job to engineer the betrayal of that friendship to save his own skin.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It’s not going to be easy.”
It wasn’t going to be easy, even though Sir Eustace Avery had chosen better than he knew—had chosen a real expert on betrayal, with a more urgent incentive than mere promotion to spur him on.
“I’ll think of a way though,” he murmured.
That was, Genghis Khan would think of a way, he thought grimly.
SKIRMISHING
The Orgy in the Tower
XIII
“BARBARIANS,” SAID AUDLEY, perching himself on the stool.
“But Steffy’s not here yet,” said Lexy. “We can’t start without her. And what about ‘Tienne?”
“Lexy doesn’t want to start at all,” murmured Jilly. “She’s playing for time.”
“Lexy’s just saying that Steffy isn’t here,” said Lexy. “But if Jilly doesn’t shut up Lexy will say something nasty.”
“Etienne won’t be coming. But I agree Steffy isn’t here,” said Audley. “So our guest will take her place.” He raised his glass towards Roche. “You are hereby summoned to this orgy, Captain Roche. Your attendance is requested and required, no longer as a mere onlooker, but as a participant, with all the rights and privileges and duties appertaining thereto. Ave, Roche!”
Until that moment Roche had been in two minds about the soft light diffused by the paraffin lamp on the low table between them, for it veiled his expression no less than everyone else’s. But now he wished that he could distinguish more of Audley than the man’s voice and words revealed to him.
“Now come on, David—fair’s fair.” Stein stirred lazily on his nest of cushions beside the wine-rack. “He may not want to be summoned. He may prefer to on-look.”
“Or he may just think we’re crazy.” Bradford’s contribution came from behind the bottles on the table; all Roche could see was his dark head shake agreement.
“And he could be right there,” said Lexy. “Some orgy!”
“He doesn’t have to play, surely?” said Stein.
“You can’t turn him out into the night if he doesn’t.” The American’s dark curls shook again. “The laws of hos
pitality forbid it—we took him in on your behalf.”
But it wasn’t the laws of hospitality which mattered here, in this weird place, thought Roche: it was play—he doesn’t have to play—which was the operative word—Jilly had said as much—
“He may want… he may prefer … he may think.” Audley ranged his glass from one to the other, the lamp reflecting twin points of light like bright animal-eyes in his spectacles and throwing a huge shadow on the wall behind him. “He may even be right. But he will play, nevertheless.”
“Why?” snapped Lexy. “Why should he?”
“Because I say so. And I am in the chair tonight. So I make the rules.”
“You just have to argue with him—you have to debate the subject, whatever it is.”
“What subject?”
“Whatever it is. We take it in turns, and he picks our brains. With Davey— David Stein—it was paleolithic art, with Mike Bradford it was the Great American Novel, and what Hollywood does to it… and with me it was the aftermath of the Korean War.”
“It all sounds a bit juvenile.”
“So it does—yes, you’re right… a bit juvenile… It is.”
“And they put up with it—Stein and… the American—what’s his name?”
“Mike Bradford? Yes, they do. I think they quite enjoy it, to be honest. You see, they’re the same really—they all missed out on that—the juvenile bit. What they call now ‘the teenage’, don’t they?”
“Missed out? How?”
“It’s just a theory of mine. They grew up in the war, or just before—and as a result they missed out on something we had. Something we took for granted.”
“What was that?”
“I don’t know, quite… They grew up too quickly, perhaps. Or they had to grow up, rather. Because they were at war when they should have been at college.”
“But they all came through.”
“That’s right. Maybe they felt guilty about that—maybe they’re too serious—or too frivolous—because ofthat… I told you—I don’t know. All I know—all I think—is that you shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t behave quite normally, because they don’t know how to. Because they don’t have the same rules as we do, that’s all.”
What rules do they have, then?”
“Don’t ask me—I don’t know! ‘Give us back our teenage’, perhaps. Only we can’t—and they know it. It’s just my theory. But…”
“But what?”
“Well… we were sitting in the Tower the first evening, the six of us, and … we’d been drinking… and I said, ‘we’d better get back, otherwise La Peyrony will think we’re engaged in an orgy’, or something like that. And David said—David Audley said—‘ That’s a jolly good idea’. And I said I’d be damned if I was going to hand over my body to the three of them, just to spite La Peyrony…”
“Yes?”
“And then he said—I’ll never forget what he said, because suddenly he was dead serious, and he didn’t say what I expected him to say—he said ‘Damn your body, Jilly—it’s a perfectly good body, but I prefer Lexy’s, it’s more pneumatic and more my size, as well as being more available—but bodies are two-a-penny these days, and have been ever since ‘39 … it’s your mind I want to get into—if you can open that to me you can hold a penny tight between your knees for as long as you like!’ And … that’s how it all started, anyway.”
“Is that agreed and understood?” said Audley. “That I am in the chair tonight?”
“In the chair?” Jilly echoed him inquiringly, mock-innocently. “But if you fall out of the chair are you still in it, David?”
That might be an explanation of the slight slur in Audley’s voice, for all that the grammar and the syntax were still clear enough. But Roche had never heard that voice before, and so could not judge the degree of slur against previous experience, even if the rugger players of Cahors were as alcoholically inclined as their English counterparts.
“In—or on—or out—or off … or under or beside … I am still in it tonight, until cock-crow or the wine runs out, whichever comes first,” said Audley defiantly. “And I say that he’s summoned—and he plays. Right?”
Still he didn’t look at Roche, and still Roche couldn’t decide whether or not the faint slur was public-school-and-army-drawl or a sign that the speaker was loaded over the Plimsoll line. But it didn’t matter, because Roche would play now whatever the game was—because now he had the chance of playing for what he needed to win the real game.
“He plays!” He lifted his glass towards Audley. “Moriturus te saluto!”
“And a classicist too, by God! Bravo!” Audley’s teeth also caught the lamplight. “Fill the man’s glass again, Lexy … The wine of Cahors, Roche—they sent Cahors wine to Rome in classical times, did you know that?”
“I’m not a classicist. Just a soldier.”
“Huh!” murmured Lexy, tipping the bottle inexpertly.
“But not merely a soldier—if I heard a-right?” Audley cocked his head.
“I told you … he’s a sort of historian,”said Lexy vaguely. “Bastides and things…”
“So you did!” Audley wasn’t letting go. “University?”
“Manchester,” said Roche.
“A good school of history,” Audley nodded patronisingly.
“I’m afraid barbarians are a bit out of my line, though.” Roche swallowed his pride. “Not my specialist field.”
“That’s what they all say.” The Israeli spoke across the table to the American. “ ‘Not my field’. He’s a historian right enough!”
“It all depends on what you mean by ‘barbarians’, as Professor Joad would have said,” interposed Jilly. “We have to define our terms first.”
“Latin—barbarus, barbari—a stranger, a foreigner … anyone not a Roman or a Greek.” The Israeli’s voice carried an edge of bitterness. “ ‘Jews need not apply’, even though they lived in cities before Rome and Athens were villages of mud huts.”
“Oh, come now—that’s a bit hard on the Romans,” said Audley. “Roman citizenship spread wider than the mud hut circuit. The Jews were just … difficult, let’s say.”
“I hear tell they still are,” said Bradford from the floor.
Stein swept a glance over them, the light catching the surprising gold of his hair—the crazy contrast of the blond Jew and the dark, swarthy American, whose identities Roche had immediately confused, struck him again.
“Yes?” inquired Audley politely, yet insultingly. It was a game, Roche reminded himself. At the moment they were playing to bait each other with their opening moves.
“I’d say you’ve got a lot to learn,” said Stein mildly. “We haven’t half started yet.”
“Yeah…” The American’s dark head nodded. “I also hear tell you’re in with the French on the nuclear testing site at Reggane in the Sahara, so you don’t need to labour the point.”
“I agree all this is barbarous” said Jilly. “But I don’t see how it connects with barbarians.”
“Quite right, dear.” Audley bowed in Jilly’s direction. “We have digressed—and just as Stein very properly related the barbari to Hillard and Botting!”
“Hillard and who?” The American reached for one of the bottles on the table.
“Botting, Bradford, Botting. Or maybe North and Hillard. Or A. H. Davis, MA, of revered memory. And if you were in receipt of their royalties—if you could write that sort of best-seller you’d be living high on the hog in Monte Carlo, swilling Château Latour with a bevy of starlets.”
“What? Botting? North … ? What have they written?”
“Oh, sanctissima simplicitas—you are a rude barbarian if ever there was one, Bradford! Tell him, Stein.”
The target had switched from the Israeli to the American, thought Roche: that was the way they worked, not all for one and one for all, but all in turn against each.
“A. H. Davis!” murmured Stein. “There was a man for you—a great author!”
Stein ignored him, looking round the shadowy audience in the Tower at everyone else and settling finally on Roche himself. “You know A. H. Davis forecast it all—1914 and 1939? He was unbeatable on the Germans: ‘They regard it feeble and stupid to get by the sweat of their brow what they can take by spilling their blood’! How’s that, eh?”
“It was Tacitus who said that, actually,” Audley disagreed. “In his Germania.”
“But Davis quoted him deliberately. And that’s what history is all about—putting it all together,” said Stein passionately. “By God! Do you remember that ratty little friend of yours at school, selling us all the classics after Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia? Williams—Williamson? He was always quoting A. H. Davis at us!”
“For God’s sake, one of you tell me—who’s Botting?” said Bradford irritably.
“He was a schoolmaster,” snapped Audley, turning towards the American. “They all wrote Latin text-books—Latin and Greek— Latin Prose Composition and Greek Unseens and Graduated Latin Selections.”
“Best-sellers?”
“Too bloody right! My Hillard and Botting was the fifteenth impression of the seventh edition, dated 1930. Can you beat that with any of your novels, old boy?” said Audley nastily.
Jilly gave another of her characterislic attention-drawing sniffs. “Or can you, David?”
“Yes—well, that wouldn’t be difficult” Audley took the jibe well. “There simply isn’t much popular enthusiasm for medieval history these days.”
Roche decided to be interested. “That’s what you’re working on now?”
Audley nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Here?”
“Yes. I’m putting Ihe final touches to the sequel to my worst-selling book on the defeat of the Arabs by the Byzantines in Ihe 8th century. This one is set at the other end of the Mediterranean. Here, in fact—early Carolingian France.”
Soldier No More Page 23