It felt like an expensive carpet, but he ripped it up all the same and flopped it down on the fire, stamping fiercely on it to smother the flames.
Darkness enveloped him at once—the shattered bowl he could hear and feel under his feet must have been almost empty of paraffin to give up so easily. Then a beam of light blinded him. Typical Audley—not to fill the lamp—
Then the light left him, swinging round the room to pick out the American first.
He was backed up against the wine rack, sitting on the floor, covered with blood—
No, covered with wine, which had cascaded down on him from the smashed bottles behind him—his hair was plastered down with it, and his shirt was soaking with it.
He blinked in the beam, and lifted a hand still clutching an automatic pistol to shield his eyes. “Did I get the son-of-a-bitch? But I think he’s broken my fucking arm—“ the shielding pistol-holding hand moved across his body to touch his shoulder “—Christ! So he has!”
The torch swung back to Roche. “You took the other one, Roche—?”
Roche ceased stamping, but found himself beyond any sort of answer. If it was the other one he’d taken—he didn’t know where, or why, or who even—then there was no answer to give—
The torch left him again, answered by his silence.
“Jilly?”
“Yes, David.” Jilly was leaning against the wall, by the door.
“Get Mike up the stairs—see what you can see outside, between you— but keep down and be careful. Okay?”
Roche cancelled out the lack of paraffin in the lamp: the big man was thinking for all of them, in an attempt to salvage something out of chaos.
“Okay, Jilly?” repeated Audley, projecting encouragement at the girl.
She stared into the torch beam. “Lexy, David—“
“I know. But you go with Mike, there’s a good girl. Roche and I will see to Lexy.”
Lexy?
Roche cast around in the darkness helplessly. There was the faintest light coming down the stairway from above, where the trap-door must be open. But it was only enough to indicate a pattern of the stairs where the wine rack ran up the wall beside its uppermost treads.
Lexy—
“Go on, Jilly.” The voice and the torch both directed her from the door across the shambles, to where Mike Bradford was already raising himself up to meet her, with a mixture of grunts and curses.
Roche started to feel his way off the carpet, vaguely orientating himself into the quarter of the compass Audley had left dark.
“Wait!” Audley hissed at him, while still directing the ill-matched couple up the lower half of the staircase, until they could see their way for themselves.
“All right, Roche.” The torch at last into the forbidden quarter, on the edge of a glistening pool of wine.
Lady Alexandra had chosen a simple white dress in which to welcome back Captain Roche from his so-important duties. But it wasn’t all-white anymore.
Nor would Lady Alexandra ever again be the flawless English rose, matching those in her father’s garden: an unaimed bullet or a flying splinter of glass had scored her cheek to the bone, masking half her face with blood.
“Oh God—Jesus Christ—what have I done?” whispered Roche, lifting her up into his arms. “What have I done?”
“You haven’t done anything, man!” snapped Audley from above him. “Or not that wouldn’t have been worse if you hadn’t done anything—put her down—you’re only making her bleed worse!”
The shortened beam had dropped from the face to the spreading patch of blood below her shoulder, which oozed freshly as Roche stared at it.
“Here—press that against it—hard—“ Audley dropped a large silk handkerchief directly on to the mess “—I’ll be back in a moment—press it down hard, man!”
The torch beam shifted again, more on Roche than the girl, so that he looked up involuntarily into the light even as he pressed the handkerchief into a ball over the wound. Audley had wedged the thing into an entpty space in the rack, just at his eye-level.
“Audley? Where the hell have you gone?” The torch blinded him again, but as he opened his mouth to protest he felt the girl squirm under his hand.
“Ouch! Mind what you’re doing—you’re hurting me!” Her voice was surprisingly strong. “David! David!”
He couldn’t reach the torch to free himself from its beam. “It’s all right, Lexy darling—just lie still.”
“Then stop hurting me! … Golly! You do look a mess! What on earth have you been doing to yourself?” Doubt weakened the voice. “Your face is all bloody—!”
Roche was aware that his face was smarting. “I scratched myself on a bramble-bush—Lie still.”
“No you didn’t!” Doubt shifted to urgent certainty. “They came in—the men from the woods—I said they would! And they wanted you—they wanted something you’d got, I think… and they made us wait. There were two of them, David—where are they?”
He could hear Audley’s feet on the staircase. “It’s all right, Lexy. Just lie still, Lexy darling.”
“No—it isn’t all right—“ Her voice weakened “—there were two of them—and they wanted it, whatever it is …”
Roche remembered the brief-case. It was out there somewhere, in the shambles alongside the man whose head he had hammered into a pulp.
“She’s conscious, is she?” Audley recovered his torch. “Good.”
But then he moved away into the smoky darkness, knocking clumsily on obstacles and crunching on debris.
“What are you doing?” cried Roche.
“I’m scavenging for weapons.” The light searched the wreckage. “All we’ve got is Mike’s gun, but there are two here somewhere…and the man you clobbered still has a full magazine … which is more than Mike has… Ah!”
He would see the brief-case.
“Now for the other one,” murmured Audley. “Got it!”
“What the hell’s happening?” said Roche.
“Yes… you may well ask!”Audley picked his way back. “It would seem … that we made a rather serious error of judgement somewhere along the line… a most regrettable error …”He knelt down beside Roche. “How is she?”
Roche looked down. Above the mask of blood her eyes were closed again, but he could feel her chest rising and falling under the pressure of the sodden handkerchief.
“Was there an exit wound? I don’t think there was…” Audley stuffed a huge pistol into his waistband alongside a smaller one, and felt gingerly under the girl. “No … fortunately it was your man who had the cannon, and you were just too quick for him … but unfortunately we don’t really know the angle of entry, and that’s what matters … Still, the Perownes all have constitutions like cart-horses—they bleed a lot, but they’re notoriously difficult to kill off.”
Roche stared at him speechlessly for a moment. “Damn you, Audley!”
Audley returned the stare. “Damn me if you like—but don’t go soft on me, that’s all. There are too many fellagha out there for that, and—“
“Fellagha?”
“That’s right. Didn’t you look at the man whose brains you beat out? There’s a whole bloody faoudj of Algerian FLN out there—and they’re not planning to go away empty-handed … I take it that you did get the thing from d’Auberon?”
“But—“ Roche’s brain whirled “—but it’s got nothing to do with them!”
“You try telling them that! I did—when they came in to wait for you—and I got a clout across the face for my trouble.” Audley touched his cheek.
“But why, for Christ’s sake?”
“For Christ’s sake—not for Allah’s sake—d’Auberon was working on the Morice Line plans when he resigned. And with the Israelis here, sniffing around him—man, they’ve put two and two together and made five, that’s what they’ve done—“
There might be some other people who could misunderstand the situation—the scales fell from Roche’s eyes at last.
<
br /> A most regrettable error of judgement—there had indeed been that, and it had been his own as well as Audley’s … and Genghis Khan’s too—or maybe Genghis Khan had more likely realised exactly who had killed Steffy, but had reckoned on the Comrades’ ability to rein in the Algerians—and had also misjudged that situation.
“But we can’t piss around with politics—we haven’t the time,” said Audley harshly. “An hour from now—or less if they’ve already got the stuff to hand—they’ll blow in that door with a bit of plastique. And then it’s just routine house-clearing—a grenade first, then they’ll be in down here … and then they’ll fire through the floor up above with automatic pistols. It isn’t difficult, house-clearing … I’ve seen it done, believe me … and half these fellagha have been trained in the French Army to do it, what’s more. All they need is darkness, and they’ll have that soon.” In an hour from now Raymond Galles would come back. Or maybe two hours—and Galles wouldn’t be expecting a pitched battle … Roche felt hope extinguish within him.
“Give them the bloody brief-case, then.” The words tumbled out, but they were the right words. The girl in his arms was worth more than the brief-case.
“No.” Audley’s rejection was uncompromising. Roche’s mouth dried up. “It isn’t worth fighting for.”
“It’s worth fighting for.”
Roche moved his arm slightly beneath Lexy’s shoulders. If he stood any chance of jumping Audley he’d have to put her down first, and he wanted to do that as gently as possible. .
But the movement betrayed him. Audley lifted the larger of the two pistols from his waistband quickly. “Don’t be silly, Roche.”
It seemed to Roche that he had been silly all his life, and it was a bitter pain inside him that now at last, when he had stopped being silly, he had fluffed the transformation.
But there was still one last chance to make amends. “It isn’t worth anything.” It was like the old soldiers said: no plan, however clever, survived its first encounter with real life. “I’ve worked for the Russians for years, Audley—ever since Korea. D’Auberon didn’t give me his papers—they did. They know all about them … they ran the whole thing from start to finish. They’ve only given them to me now because it suits them. Do you understand?” It was simpler than he had imagined.
“God bless my soul!” At another time, in another world, Audley’s astonishment would have been comical. But now it was merely inconvenient.
“So you let me take it out. I can talk to them—I can tell them who I am … why I’m here. Right?”
The black hole of the pistol wavered, then steadied. “It won’t do, Roche—I’m sorry, but it won’t do!”
“Why not?”
“Because they won’t believe you—that’s why. Because you’re a European—because we’ve killed two of their comrades … It won’t even do if they believe you’re KGB, because they don’t trust the Russians either. What have the Russians ever done for them? At the best, they’ll reckon we’ve given them something to delay them, while they look at it—and they’ll take you apart to make sure. And they’re good at that… they’ve had plenty of practice, right from Roman times.”
All that was the truth—he knew it from his own knowledge, from the last report he had submitted—
French and Algerian FLN perceptions of Russian involvement and policies, with regard to the present situation in Algeria—his own work was arguing against him!
But not quite—
“Well—at least it’ll delay them. And Raymond Galles is coming back here sometime—in the next hour or two. At least it’s a chance, Audley.”
The black hole was still unwavering. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why should I believe you—if you’re a traitor?” The pistol jerked. “You could be delaying me now—“
“I’m not a traitor any more—I’ve done with that!” Roche felt the pulse of life under his hand. But that wouldn’t do for Audley, even if it was true: Audley needed something he could recognise. “I don’t belong to either side now—I choose for myself, and I say I’ll soldier no more, and to hell with both sides—and all the other sides too!”
He looked into the pistol and the light, caring beyond calculation at last, finally free of everything which had bound him.
“All right.” Audley’s voice sounded strange. “But my way, not yours. Because whatever we do they won’t leave us alive, even if we did give it to them.”
“Your way?”
“There’s a trap-door by the wall there—it’s where the table is overturned. It leads down to a sort of cellar … the peasants who lived here years ago kept their chickens down there—there’s a little hatch in the wall… it lets out into a ditch—not much of a ditch, but there are a few bushes there, and some nettles … You squeeze out there, and keep down flat, and keep going… If they have got a man covering the back he’ll be in the trees away to your right, but he won’t be looking for anyone, because he can’t know about the chicken-door … Also, we’ll be attracting their attention in the front—when you’re ready to go we’ll try to parley with them from up above. And if they think we’re fool enough to trust them, that’ll tempt them to delay, maybe.”
“Parley?”
“That’s right. They can’t leave us alive, but if they can get in without making too much noise … and my French is bad enough to confuse them … You go out there—a hundred yards down the ditch should be far enough—and then run like hell to Madame Peyrony’s—get the police.”
Roche’s spirits lifted. “Yes—“
“But there’s something else, then—“ Audley offered him the pistol “—take it… and you’ll need the torch too … just shift the table in front of me, and I’ll take Lexy—that’ll maybe give us some protection, if the worst comes to the worst… the something else is that you’ve got to come back, Roche.”
“What?”
“To distract them. Because we’ll be running out of time by then … So you come back as close as you can, and make a noise—flash the torch, fire the gun, shout ‘A moi, la Legion!’—whatever you like, just so you distract them. You’ve got to win us time, man!”
With a terrible bleak self-knowledge, Roche knew that he wasn’t quite done with treachery. Maybe here, with Lexy in his arms, and no choice … but not out there, in safety.
“Why don’t you go?” He didn’t want to put himself to the test. “You know the way.”
The torch and the pistol were both thrust at him. “Don’t argue—a hundred yards’ crawl, and then turn left—and run like hell… you can’t miss it, as the Irishman said.” Audley paused. “Besides which, I can’t get through the chicken-door—I’m too big. I was going to send you anyway, if you must know.” Then he grunted half-derisively. “Don’t argue, man—it’s the only chance we’ve got. Go on—be a soldier this one more time, and we’ll call it quits.”
Under the trap door there was an undulating earth floor, dry and dusty … or maybe it was a thick layer of chaff and ancient chicken-droppings from the powdery texture of it, and the mixture of feathers in it, even though the smell had long gone.
He ploughed through the stuff, inches deep, towards the crude little door, following tracks already furrowed before him.
Could he really squeeze through that?
The detritus had been scooped away from it, to reveal its full size, and the rusty iron hinges had been oiled, but it still looked more like a chicken-door than a Roche-door.
He lifted up the latch, and then dowsed the torch before he eased it open, his hands trembling.
His head ached and the sweat poured down his face. He was long past thinking clearly, and nothing mattered any more: this wasn’t how it was meant to be, but this was how it was—
He reached above him, at full stretch, and rapped the butt of the pistol on the flooring. Then he eased the door wide.
Cold air wafted around him, cooling the sweat on his face. He could just make out the stalks of weeds and vegetati
on ahead, black against paler blue.
Then he heard someone shouting, far away but insistently: Audley was drawing their attention to the front, as he had promised to do. So it was now or never.
He squeezed himself into the aperture, parting the weeds ahead of him as carefully and silently as he could with his hands, feeling his shoulders first compress, and then scrape, on the rough stone.
As his hips came through, and he knew that he was out and free, he held his breath. The shouting continued in the distance, only marginally louder than the beating of his own heart.
Through the weeds, and in between the thicker stems of some kind of bush … and then the shallow ditch opened up before him, half filled with coarse grass.
He wouldn’t be able to stop that grass moving, yet it might not show above the top of the ditch, and the light was bad now—but was it bad enough?
Anyway, the man covering the back shouldn’t be watching the ditch— they’d hardly have looked over the Tower expecting this sort of siege—
Siege? He examined the ditch again, and saw that although shallow it was wide—even wide enough to be the remains of a defensive moat round some petty hobereau’s fortified manor, of which the Tower itself was the last relic. And the wideness encouraged him to make himself believe that it was deeper than it seemed.
He crawled—and crawled as he had been taught to crawl at OCTU, with the fear of Staff Sergeants above him.
And at last stood up, and ran—
He had not the slightest idea where he was at first, but Audley had said turn left, and somehow the geography of the ridge came to him as he ran—it curved into a re-entrant, such as the army map-reading experts loved—until there at last, black-towered among the treetops, was the Château Peyrony.
The gloomy woods didn’t frighten him now, he was too breathless to be frightened, but the door wouldn’t let him in.
He banged on it—hammered on it, starting up echoes which the house had never heard before, and went on hammering.
“M’sieur!” The old crone was outraged even before she saw his appearance. “M’sieur—“
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