“… a succession of noble rooms…”
Here he was in one of them, complete with tapestries on one side, and a breath-taking view beyond the river on the other!
“M’sieur d’Auberon will attend you here shortly, M’sieur le Capitaine.”
The second door closed behind him.
Door—enormous windows, with five-mile views across the river—vast carved fireplace … and an immense faded tapestry picturing heavily-armed Renaissance Romans martyring naked Christians in ingenious ways…
But he hadn’t come to admire d’Auberon’s treasures. There was a huge oak table in the centre of the room, on heavily carved legs. He walked towards it quickly, first dumping the bastide notes and Choses et Gens on top, then tucking the brief-case down out of the way behind one of the legs, feeling for all the world like Stauffenberg planting his bomb under the table in the Fuehrer’s bunker.
Only, unlike Stauffenberg, the moment he’d abandoned the brief-case he wanted to pick it up again. The thought of letting it out of his grasp even for a second left him desolate, clenching the empty hand which had relinquished it into a tight fist in a reflex against temptation.
He felt the temptation grow. It wasn’t really necessary at all, this charade—he was still obeying Genghis Khan when the man’s orders no longer mattered—when nothing mattered except the possession of that brief-case—
A sound outside the room straightened him up just as his hand started to unclench.
“Captain Roche?”
Roche turned slowly towards the sound.
“Captain Roche—what a pleasure! You are David Audley’s friend? Or, more accurately, Miss Baker’s friend?”
He hadn’t consciously tried to imagine what Etienne d’Auberon would be like, beyond vague instinctive images founded on what Lexy and Madame Peyrony had let slip, crossed with his own experience of superior Quai d’Orsay types.
“M’sieur d’Auberon.” He mouthed some sort of reply, letting the Frenchman come towards him while moving only slightly himself so as to mask the brief-case more effectively.
“And staying with him, in the Tower? While on leave from Paris, he said?” D’Auberon’s handshake was firm and dry, and neither too strong nor too weak, like the man himself. Roche found himself recalling another of Bill Ballance’s obiter dicta, on the Anglo-French love-hate complex: ‘the best Frenchman is the one you can admire as an enemy if you can’t have him as a friend’.
But meanwhile he had replied again, one half of his brain working automatically to make the necessary conversation along lines already planned while the other half tried to betray him.
“Ah, yes—our bastides. And there is nothing recent written on them in English? You are lucky David Audley hasn’t thought of that. He is a most able historian … but then his interests are strictly Merovingian, aren’t they?”
Far beneath the surface of the words Roche sensed the truth of what he already knew, that d’Auberon and Audley admired each other in enmity, not as friends.
He replied once more, and saw d’Auberon smile, and the smile hurt him. For d’Auberon was another name in the list of his betrayals, as surely as if there had been a bomb in that brief-case. And if there was another thing that was sure, it was that this man would never be in the business of betraying anyone—Audley had been wrong even to imagine it as a possibility, and Genghis Khan had been right to reject the idea. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he knew it.
More pleasantries and agonised conversation. And then d’Auberon’s eye fell on Chases et Gens.
“I see you have my little book. Not a great work, I’m afraid—it bears the stamp of too many official reports, without style… it is just another pile of facts, without interpretation.” D’Auberon gestured round the room, and towards the window. “All this is beautiful… but what does it mean?”
The pretentiousness of the question surprised Roche: it seemed out of the man’s character. But at last it broke the spell, enabling him to unite the two parts of his brain. What did it matter, what happened to a stranger, compared with what happened to him?
“I thought it was fascinating—how one of your ancestors led the king’s huntsman to kill ‘the Beast of Gevaudan’… and about the château itself, of course.”
“Would you like to see the house? And then a glass of something?”
The predictable responses hardened Roche’s heart finally. He looked at his watch guiltily, to confirm that enough minutes had elapsed to run d’Auberon out of time. “That’s very kind of you … but—most unfortunately—I am required to be back at the Tower. I merely wished to make myself known to you … if perhaps you could provide me with some introductions—particularly in Monpazier and Villereal … there’s no hurry—“ the words tumbled out as he scooped up the book and the bastide papers, blocking off d’Auberon’s view of the table leg “—another time, perhaps?”
His bad manners creased a tiny frown on to d’Auberon’s forehead. “Another time—of course, Captain.”
It was a little more difficult to force the Frenchman into leading the way out, so that he could still mask the case, but he managed it with a mixture of English clumsiness and lack of savoir faire, and the genuine nervousness and reluctance he felt in abandoning the most precious object on earth.
In the end d’Auberon positively strode ahead, out into the entrance hall, irritated by his gaucheness, and Roche’s last view of the room was agonisingly rewarded with the sight of the thing poking out from under the table like a sore thumb.
The little bald door-keeper was hovering in attendance at the entrance.
“I will see m’sieur out, Martin,” said d’Auberon brusquely.
Roche hurried after him into the courtyard. “The trouble is, you see … my car broke down by the river, where I was bathing with Lady Alexandra—“ (another strike against d’Auberon was that he hadn’t zeroed in on Lexy, as any sensible man should have done, and as her father and Madame Peyrony might well have intended; or was that a strike for him, damn it?) “—so I had to get a lift here … and that’s why I’m so late, you see—“
“A lift?” D’Auberon was halfway across the courtyard already, eager to get rid of Captain Roche from the premises.
“With Lady Alexandra’s garage man. He’s waiting for me, to take me back to the Tower,” said Roche breathlessly.
D’Auberon stopped alongside the pile of cement bags. “What?”
I had to get a lift here.” Roche feigned embarrassment. “Oh—damn!”
What?” The vehemence of Roche’s damn caught d’Auberon’s attention. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m an idiot!” Roche turned embarrassment to apology. “I’ve left my brief-case behind—with all my other stuff in—I put it down somewhere—“ he looked around him helplessly, and finally back towards the door of the château “—it was by the table, I think—“
D’Auberon regarded him with a suggestion of weariness, which was then overtaken by good-mannered tolerance as Roche grimaced apologetically at him.
“I’m so sorry.” The words put the matter beyond argument. “It is no matter. I will go and get it.” D’Auberon shrugged and turned on his heel.
Roche’s legs, still programmed by Genghis Khan, carried him on past the cement bags, into the light beyond the arched tunnel of the gate-house. The lorry had gone, and the parking area was empty except for the little grey Citroen. He could see Raymond Galles’ face turned towards him.
He felt almost played out, but in the last minute of the game, when the team which was going to win was the one which forced itself to play harder. Facing Galles, he raised his hand across his stomach and damped down the man’s expectations with a palm-down signal.
The light had lost its brightness, which he had first seen this morning dissipating the mist on the road from Neuville to Cahors. It was like the field where he had been sick the evening before, just in advance of Lexy’s arrival. Now he felt sick again—sick with all the different prospects ahead
of him, in which Lexy could never take part.
But really there were only two prospects; either d’Auberon would come back, or he wouldn’t.
When he did—he had to think only of that—when he did, all that remained was to drive back to Audley, and fob him off with success…and that would win him another day, at the least—maybe more, since both sides trusted him, and when he didn’t surface each would worry first about what the other one might have done to him, and by the time either of them started to smell a rat he’d be long gone to ground, and ready to deal for his survival—
Long gone, Julie—
And long gone, Lexy—
And long gone, all the rest of them—the man on the beach in Japan and all his successors down to Genghis Khan; and the man in the British Embassy in Tokyo, and all his successors down to Sir Eustace Avery and Colonel Clinton; and David Audley and Etienne d’Auberon—and the hell with all of them!
No more self-pity, just self-interest and the future—no longer the past or the might-have-been, no more deluding himself with silly ideas—there was no more time for any of that—
In the stillness he heard the door under Solum perfectum me attrahit close again behind him in the distance, through the arched gate-house and the courtyard.
Raymond Galles, and whoever else was there to witness the transaction, was still watching him. And the only thing that worried him was the faintest suggestion of doubt which had been in d’Auberon’s eyes as he turned away.
“Here you are, Captain Roche—one brief-case!”
Roche’s left hand, feeling in his pocket among his loose change, closed over the key. It was the same case, and there hadn’t been time for anyone to pick the lock, even if anyone had had reason to pick it.
His right hand took the case for Galles to see. He had entered the château without it, but now he was leaving with it—and d’Auberon had given it to him.
The thing was done—and if anyone else was watching, it could only be Genghis Khan’s man who had witnessed it, he decided. And that would just give him even more time.
“Just one thing—“
Another thing? He looked at d’Auberon questioningly, the case weighing down his arm to his side, but there was something else weighing down his mind at the same time.
“Why did you really come to see me, Captain Roche?”
“I beg your pardon?” He heard the lack of conviction in his own voice.
“It’s simply that … I’ve never seen a man more nervous than you, Captain—underneath the polite civilities, that is.” D’Auberon smiled— half-smiled—at him. “But of course you don’t have to tell me … though you make me nervous too, because now I come to think of it, there is one man you remind me of: he despatched me into the Chausse Mejean in ‘43, to work with the Bir Hakim maquis when things were bad—and that only makes me more nervous.”
“Why?” He knew what the other thing was: it had been there in the back of his mind ever since the plan had taken shape.
“Why? Well … I think he thought the Germans were waiting for me. And so they were … but the drop went wrong—there was low cloud and we never saw the dropping zone, so I jumped almost blind, and broke my ankle five miles away, falling through a pigsty roof outside Brassac. A fortunate disaster … but he didn’t know that when I jumped, you see.”
Roche hardly heard him. He was trapped by his own knowledge of what the Comrades must do next.
Up until now they had had no incentive to do anything about Etienne d’Auberon, with his secret already safely in their possession; if anything, he was more useful to them alive than dead. But now … it was always possible that sooner or later the British would get round to checking Captain Roche’s story, just to be on the safe side, in spite of Galles’ eye-witness account of the transfer. Then it would be his word against d’Auberon’s, but even if they took his word there would always be a niggling doubt—and there would be no place for any niggling doubts in Sir Eustace Avery’s operations.
“What is your work in Paris, Captain?” D’Auberon weakened enough to ask directly the question which must have been uppermost in his mind from the start.
Simply, they couldn’t afford to leave the Frenchman alive now. They wouldn’t do it today or tomorrow—they’d allow just enough time to allow Roche to win his spurs, but not a minute more—maybe the day after tomorrow, trusting that the French themselves would handle the problem of the other two copies. But they would do it.
“I shouldn’t be here.” He felt strangely relieved to hear his own voice. “I shouldn’t be here … but we owe you.”
“You owe me?” D’Auberon seemed puzzled.
“Audley does, anyway.” He’d promised not to mention Audley’s role in this, but he hadn’t promised anything else. “From the war.”
“Mon Dieu! He doesn’t still remember that, does he!” D’Auberon reacted as Audley had predicted he would do at the mention of his name.
“It doesn’t matter. The fact is, the Russians know what you’ve got. So you’d best go to ground somewhere safe—at once.”
“The Russians?” With the thirty-foot walls of his home behind him d’Auberon didn’t appear scared.
But there was one sure way of changing that. “The KGB.”
To his chagrin, he watched d’Auberon’s face relax. “The KGB? My dear Captain Roche—the Russians are the least of my worries! There might be some people who could misunderstand the situation … owing to the nature of my work when I resigned … but not the Russians—not them, of all people, Captain.”
Roche was already beginning to regret his idiotic moment of altruism. If the KGB didn’t frighten the man, then nothing would.
D’Auberon was almost smiling. “Obviously, you’ve never read my report— obviously!”
His report? But if that was the encyphered part of the papers weighing him down now … then the Comrades would have broken it long since, with all the advanced Enigma machines they captured in ‘45.
“But you came to warn me—and on your own initiative?” The suggestion of amusement was suddenly tempered by an even more humiliating cast of gratitude. “So … my people haven’t ever told the British—in spite of everything?” In turn, gratitude became tempered by anger. “Even in spite of my resignation?” Roche held his tongue.
“Oh yes, Captain—that was also part of it. It was mostly Algeria, but it was also the matter of my report, which should not have been withheld from your people in the circumstances—not in any circumstances, in honour—no matter that your Government had so shamefully withdrawn from the Egyptian operation—so shamefully.” He shook his head at Roche, the very incarnation of Bill Ballance’s ‘best Frenchman’ sorrowing over a once-honourable enemy’s declension into the role of dishonourable ally.
Roche wondered nervously about what Raymond Galles would be making of this exchange, even while not knowing what to make of it himself.
“So … it is still a matter of honour. But you have changed the rules now, Captain—because now it is I who owe you. And if the Russians know everything, then it is only right that the British should know everything also, I think.”
This was going to be something Genghis Khan hadn’t told him, thought Roche. But then no bugger had told him everything, but mostly as little as possible. It was this old-fashioned Frenchman’s weird sense of personal honour—and his own equally inexplicable rush-of-blood-to-the-head— which was going to blow the gaff.
“You see, Captain, I handled all the special material from Moscow last year, from spring to late autumn—it came through the diplomatic bag, it was judged too important for any other method—and also too important to pass directly to the British. Commandant Roux and I made a digest of it for them.”
Good old Philippe! So that settled one outstanding problem very simply: Philippe had been the stage-manager.
“Then I was promoted, to take charge of our plans for the fortification of the Tunisian frontier, as a reward for my good work …”
It had
been promotion all round for the RIP beneficiaries of the ‘special material’ from Moscow, naturally—Eustace Avery and Etienne d’Auberon both!
“But then I started to think about it—all that had happened, and how it had gone wrong for us.”
That was where Avery and d’Auberon had parted company, thought Roche grimly: Avery had capitalised on his good work, and d’Auberon had started to think about it. And now, one step ahead of the Frenchman’s debt repayment, he knew what was coming.
“I managed to draw the file out—nobody had any reason to question that, as I’d written most of it myself.”
Philippe Roux had been slow off the mark there.
“The truth is, Captain, we were ‘taken for a ride’, as the Americans say. Everything we got from Moscow was correct—it was genuine top-level material—but it was deliberately given to us to direct our policies in a particular direction, and we never questioned it. And, as a result, we gave the Russians a free hand in Central Europe … and ruined ourselves into the bargain. That was the report I wrote—you understand?”
Roche understood—he even understood more than d’Auberon was actually telling him. “So what happened then?”
The Frenchman shrugged. “It was not welcomed, I regret to say… And then there were other troubles, related to my new job.”
I’ll bet there were! thought Roche. Philippe—good old Philippe!— couldn’t abolish the report once it had been written, but he would have made up for lost time in every other way, by God! Etienne d’Auberon was much too smart to be allowed to prosper: short of killing him, which would have made too many people suspicious at the time, he had to be discredited. He didn’t want to hear any more—he wanted to get away from here, and think about what he knew now, which he hadn’t known before—
“There’s no need to tell your people all that, though.” D’Auberon looked at him a little uncertainly, as though the enormity of what he had let slip for honour’s sake was beginning to come home to him. “Get them to analyse all the transcripts of the joint discussions—we gave them a lot of what we got. If someone really good does that, then he should be able to reach the same conclusions as I did.”
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