chair beside the telegraph table.
He reconsidered anxiously all his previous arguments for leaving
Wally Hendry in charge of the camp, but once again decided that it was
safe. He couldn't do much harm.
Unless, unless, Shermaine! No, it was impossible. Not with forty loyal
gendarmes to protect her.
He started to think about Shermaine and the future.
There was a year's mercenary captain's pay accumulated in the
Credit Banque Suisse at Zurich. He made the conversion from francs to
pounds - about two and a half thousand.
Two years' operating capital, so they could have a holiday before he
started working again. They could take a chalet up in the mountains,
there should be good snow this time of the year.
Bruce grinned. Snow that crunched like sugar, and a twelve-inch-thick
eiderdown on the bed at night.
Life had purpose and direction again.
'What you're laughing at, boss?' asked Ruffy.
'I was thinking about a bed.'
'Yeah? That's a good thing to think about. You start there, you're born
there, you spend most of your life in it, you have plenty of fun in it,
and if you're lucky you die there.
How's it for a beer?' The telegraph came to life at Bruce's elbow. He
turned to it quickly.
'Curry - Franklyn,' it clattered. Bruce could imagine the wiry,
red-faced little man at the other end. Ex-major in the third brigade of
the Legion. A prime mover in the O. A.S with a sizeable price still on
his head from the De Gaulle assassination attempt.
'Franklyn - Curry,' Bruce tapped back. 'Train unserviceable.
Motorized transport stranded without fuel. Port Reprieve road. Map
reference approx-' He read the numbers off the sheet on which he had
noted them.
There was a long pause, then: 'Is U. M.C. property in your hands?'
The question was delicately phrased.
'Affirmative,' Bruce assured him.
'Await air-drop at your position soonest. Out.'
'Message understood. Out.' Bruce straightened from the telegraph and
sighed
with relief.
'That's that, Ruffy. They'll drop gas to us from one of the
Dakotas. Probably tomorrow morning.' He looked at his wristwatch.
'Twenty to one, let's get back.' Bruce hummed softly, watching the
double tracks ahead of him, guiding the Ford with a light touch on the
wheel.
He was contented. It was all over. Tomorrow the fuel would drop from the
Dakota under those yellow parachutes.
(He must lay out the smudge signals this evening.) And ten hours later
they would be back in Elisabethville.
A few words with Carl Engelbrecht would fix seats for Shermaine and
himself on one of the outward-bound Daks.
Then Switzerland, and the chalet with icicles hanging from the eaves. A
