Soldier No More (43 page)

“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.”

It had been a mistake to let the man live that first time, whatever the risk, thought Roche. Beyond all doubt now, the Comrades wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. But there was no way of explaining it to him.

“I still think the KGB’s interested in you,” he compromised, paying as much of his new debt as he dared. “And you never know what they’re up to.”

D’Auberon shook his head. “What I know, Captain … they know that already—better than either of us, I fear.”

Roche felt the woods at his back. In a couple of days’ time d’Auberon would come out here to admire the progress of the restoration of his ‘ruined gatehouse of formidable proportions’, and some sharp-eyed, telescopic-sighted hireling would put an end to that illusion. But there was nothing more he could say to prevent it, without saying too much for his own good. “If you think so.” He turned away, wanting to reach the Citroen, yet still aware of the weight of guilt in the brief-case.

A thought surfaced, as his hand touched the door handle, turning him round to face his brother-under-the-skin for the last time—they were both just as foolish really—nothing could be more foolish than the pair of them, but he couldn’t let it go at that.

“Meriel Stephanides was killed in a car crash last night,” he threw the news across the widening distance between them. “But it wasn’t an accident—she was working for the Israelis.”

D’Auberon could bloody well make what he liked out of that.

HE FELT THE
shakes coming on just as they were passing the overburdened poilu on the war memorial in the square at Laussel-Beynac, so to give his hands something to do, he made a great production of producing the key and unlocking the brief-case on his knees.

“Well… let’s see what we’ve got, then!” He riffled through the thick file of official French and the thinner folder of encyphered gibberish.

“That’s it!” He relocked the case. “I didn’t think he’d give it to us, but he did!”

Once he started to negotiate with the British, then they would take Galles to pieces bit by bit to reconstruct every detail of this journey, back over every word he’d said. But it didn’t really matter now what they thought. Getting away was all that mattered—Genghis Khan’s clever scheme had become as irrelevant as Avery’s original intention. He no longer needed either of them—he was free of them both at last. All he had to do was think straight.

“Go back to the river,” he ordered Galles. “I want to pick up my car.”

His hands were steadier now, clasping the brief-case to his chest.

All he had to do was think straight—

Item
: If d’Auberon did go to ground, after that last flurry of half-truth, then that would do no harm—it would only give him more time;

Item
: If he didn’t go to ground, and the Comrades did what he was pretty damn sure they would do, then so much the better—it would give him all the time in the world!

(In retrospect, he still didn’t know why he’d warned d’Auberon to start running, when he didn’t need to do it, and it had been against his better judgement, and he didn’t owe the man a damn thing; and yet—which was even more baffling—he didn’t regret doing it…)

But—
item
—why was Genghis Khan so delighted—not merely resigned, but delighted—to surrender all this to Sir Eustace Avery?

Just to get Roche in position?

Shit! The question answered itself as soon as it was asked! Of course getting Roche inside was important. But it was knowing the nature of the gift—and knowing the nature of Sir Eustace Avery, that ‘great survivor’— that had delighted Genghis Khan.

The Comrades weren’t giving up anything important, after all, because d’Auberon’s report had effectively destroyed the value of the Moscow source for ever—because they could never be sure that word of it hadn’t been leaked to the British.

Indeed,
maybe it had
…
maybe
that
was why Sir Eustace was so desperate to get his hands on it as his own special possession?

Because it was still vitally important to
him
, of all people, as the proof that in reality the Russians had made a monkey of him—and that he’d made a monkey of the Prime Minister in turn, and got a knighthood for it as a reward!

Not even a ‘great survivor’ could survive that, if it got into hostile hands first. But in his own hands, with time to think and plan and shift responsibility … that was something else …

Maybe he was doing the man an injustice. But it didn’t matter, because his reaction would be the same, either way, given his will to survive—
and that was what Genghis Khan was counting on, to give him the edge on the
head of the whole Avery operation, with Roche at the he
art of it to monitor progress.

It wasn’t bad—it was good.

Even, it was better than good—it was getting better and better and better, right up to the very best he could have imagined: with this he could make his own terms, and write his own ticket—with a little care, and a little time, and only a little more luck, nothing could stop him.

(It had been a mistake to warn d’Auberon, and he regretted it now. But he would make no more such mistakes.)

In fact, the only thing that could stop him was if Raymond Galles ran out of road.

“Steady on—you’re driving like a maniac.” He realised that his body, as well as his thoughts, had been rolling madly from side to side.

“We’re still being followed. I don’t like being followed.” The time spent outside the chateau had evidently frayed the little Frenchman’s nerves.

Roche peered around him. “This isn’t the way we came. How close are we to the river?”

“We aren’t going back to the river.”

But I want to pick up my car, damn it.”

“We’re not going back there … all alone there … if what you’ve got is so important. I am to look after you, and that is what I’m doing.”

“What the hell d’you mean?”

“I mean, m’sieur, that it was unwise of you to receive that thing which you are holding … to receive it with such pleasure … in the open, for all to see.” Galles twisted the wheel savagely. “Because … if that is what you have been waiting for, then perhaps… that is what
they
are waiting for… I think.”

That made uncomfortable logic, because he still didn’t know for sure who
they
were, or why they had been waiting, even though Genghis Khan had promised to attend to
them
. “So what are you doing?”

“I am taking you back to the Tower, where there are other people—first… . You will be safe there … and also, in that little car of yours you would never be able to get away from anyone, if it came to that.” More irrefutable logic.