'Yes. I don't know about Avery—
'I'm afraid you'll have to do the work—I insist you don't mention my name, in fact . . . that might well turn him against you. But I'll tell you what to say. Okay?'
It wasn't an occasion for caution. 'Okay.'
“Okay. So we have our deal: if we succeed I'm in, if we fail I shall work for Mike Bradford, who will undoubtedly pay me better. Heads—I win . . . tails—I don't lose. That's the sort of deal I like, old boy.'
among other defects. But that would be Avery's problem in the future, if there was one.
'So what's your plan, Audley?' Clinton and Avery were both welcome to this bastard, thought Roche.
'My plan? All you have to do is to make him an offer he can't refuse.' The smile was pure Hyde now. 'If the KGB isn't here yet it soon will be, and that's our lever. If he gives the stuff to us, we'll let them know we've got it— and we'll get the French off his back. That won't be difficult. And if he won't play, we'll feed him to the KGB.'
The bastard! 'Straight blackmail, you mean?'
'Blackmail?' Mr Hyde continued to smile. 'My dear chap, we're saving his life for him!'
BATTLE:
XV
ROCHE ARRIVED AT the southern gateway of Neuville exactly on time.
Below him, the old military road along which help or trouble had marched to Neuville from Cahors ran away into the farmland, empty except for two children playing in the dust dummy5
with a dog and a ball. The first flush of morning had passed, and the sun was rising fast into its cloudless sky. God was in His heaven, and Jilly Baker was at Les Eyzies, or Le Bugue, or wherever the formalities of death had to be transacted, with Davey Stein along for moral support; and Lexy was still in her bath, for all the good bathing would do her; and Audley was packing, ready for whichever master he would be serving tomorrow, in London or Hollywood, and grunting instructions for the maintenance of the cottage to Bradford, who was staying on to continue his quest (or not, as the case might be, according to which of those masters Audley finally served . . .).
There was positively nothing he could see to make him nervous, and the children's voices grew fainter as their ball drew them away into the country, so he sauntered from one side of the gateway to the other, recalling the cold summer wind on the garage forecourt in Sussex, opposite Genghis Khan's church.
The van arrived five minutes later, drawing in close beside the left-hand bastion of the gateway.
Still remembering Sussex, Roche watched it half-hopefully, half-fearfully, out of the corner of his eye, only to have his half-hopes swiftly dashed as its occupants unloaded boxes of fresh peaches from the rear, each carrying an armful through the gateway into the town, with no more than the typical glance at him which the working peasant reserved for the idle dummy5
foreign tourist, of boredom lightly iced with envy.
Five more minutes dragged by, then the two men returned to exchange empty boxes for fresh ones. Roche's half-fears began to strengthen at their inconvenient presence, which must surely account for the delay in Genghis Khan's appearance. At the best of times the moment of contact was charged with doubt and uncertainty, but here in the open, with miles of countryside below him and a hundred upper-storey windows watching him over the old wall, the dangers were multiplied.
He turned away from them to scan the street again, aware of a prickle of sweat under his shirt which was not caused by the sun's warmth on his back. But this time, as he moved to give them a wider berth, the elder of the two peasants detoured to pass round him, his face half-obscured by the peach-boxes.
'The van,' half the mouth whispered.
Beneath the three-quarter rolled-up canvas flap at the back, the interior of the van looked hot and dark, and still full of peach-boxes. Several wasps were already buzzing above the lowered tail-board, attracted by the scent of the peaches and working up their courage to leave the safety of the sunlight.
'Look away—don't look in here,' said Genghis Khan's voice out of the boxes and the darkness. 'Look towards the country.'
Roche looked away quickly, down the Cahors road and over dummy5
the children, to the fields which the medieval Neuvillians had once tilled when they had been frontier farmers.
'If you can hear me, don't nod—just say so. You understand?' Roche almost nodded. Every night they had returned to the security of their walls, those old farmers, like the earliest colonists of the Americas. That was how
'Yes,' he addressed the fields. He hadn't realised until now how deliberately the place had been sited; but, of course, Alphonse de Poitiers had taken the high ground for his new town, like any good commander.
'From time to time, walk away, as though you are still waiting for someone . . . And if you see anything you don't like, walk away and don't come back. You understand?'
Again Roche very nearly nodded. It was an unnatural way of conversing, almost like talking to an incubus within him, which was whispering inside his head.
'Yes.' With an effort of will he drove out the dark thought, to join Alphonse de Poitiers. 'I understand.'
