The Hour of the Donkey

But they hadn't found him.

But—

Think—

They hadn't found him, but they hadn't given up looking for him. In fact, the bastards had even invented some false atrocity story to encourage other nearby units to join the hunt

—he could just imagine how that would have redoubled his own vigilance, if the roles had been reversed, and he had been fed a similar story.

But once more they'd been lucky—and damned lucky, too!—

to fall into the hands of a German officer who clearly didn't like the SS and didn't particularly dislike the British ... at least sufficiently to give them the benefit of the doubt, and pack them off out of harm's way to the custody of this brass-hat friend of his—

No! He was being simple again, and not thinking logically at all. German colonels didn't disobey orders on the grounds of their personal likes and dislikes. This Colonel hadn't shot them out of hand —or sent them back to the SS, which amounted to the same thing—not because he was an officer and a gentleman, who didn't do such things, but because he had believed Wimpy and had disbelieved the thugs on his own side.

But why?

Bastable stared up at the stained canvas, and discovered to his surprise that the answer was staring back at him, and it dummy4

was simple.

He had always been suspicious of people who were clever, because they often turned out to be too clever for everyone's good, including their own. Only this time he was grateful for the too-cleverness of the SS (whatever 'SS' stood for, but it did have the right hissing snake-in-the-grass sound about it, anyway), which had had precisely the opposite effect from the one they had intended.

Simply—once Wimpy had challenged the German Colonel with a genuine atrocity which he could go and see for himself, and an atrocity committed by the SS too, then the Colonel had quite reasonably deduced that that was the real reason why the SS was so hell-bent on eliminating Captain W. M. Willis.

Obviously— simply— Captain W. M. Willis knew too much—

had seen too much—and had escaped to bear witness to it.

Which was the exact truth.

Except, it wasn't an atrocity that Captain Willis had seen.

And it hadn't been Captain Willis who had seen it.

The truck was slowing down, and there were other sounds outside it, of other engines labouring in low gear.

Bastable resolutely blocked the noises out of his mind. There wasn't anything he could do about his predicament at the moment now, if there ever had been. But at least he could still think for himself, and he was aware that he was not yet satisfied with his thoughts. Somehow, he hadn't got it right dummy4

yet; or, he had got it right as far as it went, but somewhere along the line of thought he'd missed the point; because soring out what had happened wasn't really important—it was the why before the what, that was the point he had missed, somehow—

The truck stopped with a jolt.

He back-tracked feverishly. He had worked out why the German Colonel had disobeyed his orders, which was because duty was one thing but conniving with a bunch of gangsters to cover up murder was another—and that had to be right, because if the Colonel had known what was really at stake, what Captain W. M. Willis had really seen, and why the SS wanted him so badly, his duty would have been inescapable.

So he had not known—the SS hadn't told him.

'Are you okay, old boy?'

Bastable screwed his eyes tighter.

'Harry?'

Why hadn't they told him?

'Harry!'

All the other whys didn't matter compared with this one.

Bastable opened his eyes. Wimpy was leaning over him, wearing his worried-doctor face, as well he might: and he was staring into Harry Bastable's face as plainly as the truth wa.s staring into it.

dummy4

The SS hadn't told the Colonel the truth because the truth was too important.

'I'm fine,' said Bastable.

And too secret. Too secret and too important.

So important that they had destroyed the Prince Regent's Own South Downs Fusiliers and were still pursuing its survivors with murderous lies to preserve that secret.

He had come to it at last, what he ought to have realized straight away, but had been too full of revenge and