“What? Clinton knows?” The surprise in the muffled voice was balm to Roche’s soul. The thing was working—Genghis Khan could be tweaked into a human reaction, he wasn’t invincible: Aëtius, when he saw the sun shimmer on the lance-points of the Gothic army coming to his aid must have felt like this!
“He didn’t want to make it too easy for me. It’s a test for me—“ Caution quickly counter-balanced confidence: it was Steffy about whom he needed to know, not the source of Audley’s wealth “—at least, it was until things started going wrong, anyway.”
“Too easy?” To Roche’s disappointment, Genghis Khan shrugged aside things going wrong. “Why too easy?”
“Audley wants to come back, he only had to be asked in the right way. I think Clinton knew that—that was never the real thing they were after.” He weakened slightly, remembering Genghis Khan’s interpretation of the assignment. “You were right there.”
“You are sure about Audley?” Genghis Khan also brushed off the olive branch.
“Of course I’m sure.” Nothing less than certainty would do for Genghis Khan, even if nothing would ever be certain about David Audley.
Only wasp-buzzing came from the darkness and peach-boxes. It was high time to walk away, and make like a tourist waiting for his girl-friend, but he couldn’t leave it at that now, he had to qualify it somehow.
“That’s my reading of him, anyway. I’d need much more time to tie it up—and professional advice. But we haven’t got any more time,” he snapped.
“But you are prepared to stake your life on it?”
So that was what he was doing: One must always risk one’s life, or one’s soul, or one’s peace—or some little thing!
“I know he’s bloody bored, and that’s a fact!” said Roche bitterly, from the heart.
“Bored? “The incubus-voice relaxed. “Ah, yes! Bored…”
Roche sensed that he had to keep the initiative. “But what I want to know is … what happened to Meriel Stephanides,” he snapped at the bastide-fields.
“Where is she now?” There was a harsh edge to Genghis Khan’s voice. “Have you lost track of her?”
He didn’t know about Steffy! The realisation jolted Roche that the Comrades were as criminally incompetent as the British.
“She’s dead, damn it!” He needed time to think, and there was one very simple and overdue way of taking it.
He moved away from the van, towards the bastion on the far side of the arched gateway. The street was still empty, and the dog had got the children’s ball at last, with which it was joyfully baiting them as they screamed at him to give it back.
Just an accident after all? Or if not an accident, and not the Comrades… then who!
The sun blinded him for a moment, and he felt another long trickle of sweat run down his back again under his shirt…
And if Genghis Khan didn’t know, then how much else didn’t he know? And how much were events pushing him, as Roche himself felt pushed by them, to make assumptions, and to act, and to take risks which would normally be rated as unacceptable?
“Are you there?” Genghis Khan’s voice was back to normal. “How did she die?”
A wasp zoomed out of the darkness, gorged on peach-juice and flying somewhat erratically. “Her car ran off the road last night—“ Roche ducked to avoid the wasp “—she broke her neck, apparently.”
“Were there any witnesses?”
That wasn’t the right question. “No.”
“What do the police say?”
That wasn’t the right question either. “They’re not confiding in me. They told Miss Baker it was an accident. The car went off the road and she broke her neck. That’s all I know.”
“Good! And you haven’t reported to Clinton yet?”
The drift of the wrong questions was plain enough. What Genghis Khan wanted was time, not his trusted man’s opinions.
“No, not yet. I haven’t reported to anyone yet—except you.” He shaded his eyes against the glare, and looked intently at nothing. He had given himself a breathing space, but it had been Genghis Khan who had used it to better purpose.
He scrunched away from the van again, glancing over his shoulder at imaginary strangers.
If Genghis Khan knew who had killed Steffy then the Comrades must know about d’Auberon. It was still inexplicable that they hadn’t known long ago, but they must know now, and that was why Genghis Khan was here in person.
He reached the far side of the gateway. The children had disappeared, presumably in pursuit of the dog, and there was still nothing else in sight.
He turned round. The immediate question was … did the Comrades rate the d’Auberon papers as more important than placing Captain Roche in Sir Eustace Avery’s new group? If they did, then Captain Roche would be well-advised to cash in the chips he already possessed, in the hope that they might be enough to buy him safety with the British.
He eyed the van speculatively. Whatever happened to the d’Auberon papers, he could bring Audley in, that was no problem; but then, because Audley wanted to come back, that would hardly count in his favour in any reckoning. Genghis Khan, on the other hand, might be worth quite a lot; and even Jean-Paul, betrayed to the British, could be traded off to the French in exchange for a bit of badly-needed goodwill.
Yet, viewed dispassionately, even together they hardly outweighed half a dozen years’ high treason—or insufficiently to ensure that Avery and Clinton wouldn’t condemn him to the certain death of remaining in post in Paris as their treble traitor, untrusted and expendable.
In fact, as things stood, if he couldn’t deliver those damned d’Auberon papers to the British, then he might be even more well-advised to remain a loyal Comrade, at least for the time being, until another opportunity presented itself…
True or false? It only took an instant to test the possibility, and feel it crumble. Over the last few days he had committed himself in his heart too far and too absolutely to turn around again. And he could never go back to where he’d started because the wasting disease within him was very close now to the point where it would become plainly visible to everyone. Already Jilly and Madame Peyrony had both sensed something wrong, and—
He was aware suddenly that something had cut through the concentration of his fear, just when it was shaking his knees.
It wasn’t a sound, it was a movement: it was the van beside him rocking on its springs as its balance changed. And then, following almost instantaneously on the movement, it was also a sound—
Genghis Khan was swearing—explosively, and in Russian—or maybe it was in Polish, or in some black language unknown to civilised man, or in no language at all, except that it was also in the universal language of pain.
Genghis Khan had been stung!
The van steadied and the oaths carried no echo: five seconds or less encompassed the whole disturbance inside it.
But the earth had turned in those five seconds, shrinking the van back from the Joseph Stalin tank it had been in Roche’s imagination to just a van again, rather battered and rusty, with worn tyres which left only smooth tracks in the dust; and, in the reduction of the van, the man within it had been diminished also to human proportions.
“Are you okay in there?” Roche inquired. Grunt. Roche hoped devoutly that the sting had been on the tip of Genghis Khan’s index finger, where the concentration of nerves would ensure the greatest discomfort. And at the same time he wished the stinging wasp its escape in the darkness, and a safe flight home.
“The point is, things have changed rather, down here, since I last spoke to you.” He listened to his own voice critically, and was satisfied with it. “Also … I’m beginning to get the impression that you haven’t been as helpful as you said you’d be. It’s bad enough to be put through the hoop by Sir Eustace Avery and Colonel Clinton, but at least they hinted they were testing me. I did think you were on my side.”
Still no reply. But he had burnt his boats now, and that gave him bloody-mindedness, if n
ot confidence.
“You told me about Miss Stephanides. And about Bradford and Stein. But you somehow omitted to tell me about Etienne d’Auberon. Or have you never heard of him?”
“Don’t be clever with me, Roche. It doesn’t suit you.” A few moments earlier that would have stopped him in his tracks. And maybe it wasn’t bloody-mindedness any more than it was real confidence— maybe it was the nerveless desperation which lay on the other side of cowardice, long after courage had been exhausted.
“It may not suit me. But you’re sitting snug in there—“ he mustn’t laugh at his own joke “—and I’m out here in the open. And if I’m not clever I’m going to end up in the Tower of London—or somewhere less picturesque. And that suits me even less.”
“What do you know about’d’Auberon?” This time there was no delay.
“I know what Sir Eustace Avery wants me to know.” Roche fished unashamedly for more information. “Do you still want me to go ahead?”
Genghis Khan digested the question in silence, while Roche observed the two children and the dog reappear in the distance.
“Do you still want me to go ahead?” Roche sharpened his voice to emphasise the question. If Genghis Khan had any lingering doubts about his loyalty, that ought to put them finally at rest: it was exactly the sort of question a loyal Comrade should ask, offering a willingness to fail the British, and lose his chances of promotion, on the Comrades’ behalf.
“Avery and Clinton expect the man Audley to obtain one of the copies d’Auberon took … of certain documents—that is correct?” Once again Genghis Khan bypassed half a dozen of the questions Roche had expected.
“That’s right.” So the Comrades did know all about d’Auberon—but were considerably less well-informed about Audley!
“What makes them so sure that he can do this for them?” It was slightly disconcerting to hear genuine uncertainty in the man’s voice.
“Yes… well, there’s a bit of a problem there.” But at least the questions were coming in the right sequence this time. “It was going to be easy, they thought—“
Easy?”
So they thought. But maybe it wouldn’t have been so easy, at that.”
“How—easy?” Genghis Khan brushed aside Roche’s doubts. “What was he going to do?”
“He was just going to get them out of his bank—or wherever they were—and hand them over.”
“Audley?”
“That’s right. In return for letting him back into the service—with promotion backdated, and all that … That was what they were banking on all along, of course … But I’m inclined to think it wouldn’t have been quite as straightforward as that—“
“Audley had one of the copies?” Genghis Khan was still struggling with information which plainly astonished him.
Well—so much the better! An astonished Genghis Khan was almost as vulnerable as a wasp-stung one.
“You didn’t know that? He owed d’Auberon a big favour, from back in ‘44, during the war—d’Auberon saved his life apparently, and this was the repayment … And that’s why it might have been difficult, getting him to sell the man out to the British. I think it could have been done… strictly in d’Auberon’s best interest, you know, now that the cat’s out of the bag.” It struck Roche as ironic that the arguments he might have used on Audley were almost identical with those Audley was proposing for d’Auberon. “It might have worked.” It might have worked with Audley, anyway; but the very fact Audley wanted him to do the dirty work with d’Auberon, with no mention of his part in the plan, cast further doubt on it now. “You didn’t know Audley had a copy, then?”
He listened to his own words, and they were still exactly the right mixture of arrogance and obsequiousness.
“What has he done with the documents?” It was to Genghis Khan’s credit that his voice was back in neutral so quickly.
“He’s given them back—d’Auberon asked for them. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t think I was intended to be in on the d’Auberon part of the operation—I suspect they were going to get Audley to London, and then pop the question to him there. But someone’s been talking, and the British had to accelerate things … and I was here, on the spot… But they were still just a few hours too late, as it turned out. That’s my reading of what’s happened—especially after Meriel Stephanides ran out of road.”
At once, and quite naturally, the question he had left behind appeared in front of him again, like an open goal-mouth rewarded to him by attacking play. “Which reminds me … you never did get round to filling me in on that little matter, did you? Or do I have to settle for a tragic accident?”
The children were back on the road again, chasing the dog, which still had the ball clenched between its jaws.
“Well?” In this changed situation the man’s silence emboldened him to press his advantage. “I can’t stand here forever like a spare prick, old boy. Either brief me or de-brief me, or let me go and try my luck with Clinton’s man—he’ll be a damned sight more forthcoming than you are, I hope.”
The dog dropped the ball between its paws and taunted the children noisily. At least it was enjoying the game more than the man in the van..
“He-gave-it-back?” Genghis Khan spaced the words with doubt.
“D’Auberon asked for it back. So he gave it back.” Roche shrugged at the children. “What’s so surprising about that?”
“You’re sure he had it?” Doubt still nagged at Genghis Khan. “He wasn’t bluffing?”
“Why the hell should he be bluffing?” Roche decided to become irritable. “Clinton’s man said he had it—that was what they were banking on, I told you. And he certainly knew all about it, because he’d looked at it—“
“He’d looked at it?”
“Oh—come on!” He let the irritation flare into anger. “This is Audley we’re talking about—not a bloody Sunday School teacher! Do you seriously think a nosey bastard like Audley could resist looking at it? Of course he bloody-well did!” Roche was no longer frightened: Genghis Khan stung into any sort of emotion was thereby further diminished. “That is the point—what sort of man Audley is … that’s what Avery and Clinton set me to find out, because everything else was plain sailing, they thought— they thought he wanted to come back, and they were right … and they knew he had the d’Auberon papers, even though they didn’t know time was running out on them … But they also knew from past experience that Audley’s a difficult and contradictory bastard, and if they sent down someone stupid to make the contact—like the time before—then he just might get bloody-minded again, out of sheer perversity …”
There were children’s cries in one ear, and only the wasps’ endless buzzing in the other.
“He’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde character, that’s why. It was Dr Jekyll who took the papers, because he owed d’Auberon a debt he had to repay, as a matter of honour… and it was Mr Hyde who looked at them, to protect himself— and to see how valuable they were.”
“What did he make of them?” Genghis Khan slashed the question at him instantly.
“He thought they were ancient history. But I think Clinton was right—he would have done a deal with us. Mr Hyde would have out-voted Dr Jekyll.” It occurred to Roche belatedly that Genghis Khan might not know Jekyll and Hyde from Laurel and Hardy; he was probably an illiterate sod.
“Yes. Clinton …Clinton…” Genghis Khan was speaking to himself, nodding to himself in the darkness in there, whispering the name of the man whom he saw as his real adversary.
“That’s right,” Roche encouraged him. “Audley was the key—Clinton knew that.” If Genghis Khan fancied he understood Clinton, his own stock-in-trade was understanding Audley, and he must press that advantage to the full. “Maybe he still is the key.”
“What do you mean? If he no longer has the documents—?”
“Yes…But without them I’m never going to get on to the Eighth Floor, alongside Clinton. Turning in Audley won’t be enough by itsel
f—I’d guess that Sir Eustace Avery has set his heart on getting those papers, and he’s not the man to reward failure. Nor is Clinton.” This was a language Genghis Khan understood only too well, not least because his own superiors spoke it even more implacably; and in another moment, after Roche had hooked them both together, he would understand it even better.
“So?” Genghis Khan accepted the cold logic so far.
“So this is where I need your help, old boy. And rather quickly, I suspect. Because if I can get my hands on d’Auberon’s little nest egg, then we win hands down—I can make a copy of them for you and I get my promotion to where you want me to be. But if I can’t, then I’m pretty damn sure someone else soon will. And then we shall both be in trouble, I think—eh?”
He was aware, as he delivered the final threat, which was barbed to lodge irremovably in Genghis Khan’s soul, that he was raising his voice against all the competing noises—the dog (which had at last lost the ball), and the children, and the wasps, and the awakening town itself.
“Audley’s got a plan, you see,” said Roche. “Only I don’t think it will work. What I need to know is whether you can maybe make it work.”
“Audley has a plan? What plan?”
Roche drew a breath. “Oh … just a simple little mixture of bluff and bribery. He’s a ruthless bastard, Audley is: now Dr Jekyll has paid his debt, Mr Hyde is in charge.”
“Go on.”
Roche decided to try again. “Just who did kill Miss Stephanides, by the way?”
The dog and the children had gone again. Only the wasps, his friends and allies, buzzed on regardless.
“I do not know for sure. I can guess, but I do not know, David.”
The ‘David’ surprised Roche. “Then guess for me.”
“No. There is no time for guessing. It will be attended to—be satisfied with that. Go on.”
Roche was past arguing. Also, there was a horrible thought rising inside him, like a bloated corpse which had freed itself from the weight of his illusions about the British: it was only Steffy’s death which gave substance to Audley’s bluff, and if the Comrades weren’t responsible for that, could it be that Clinton—?
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