Soldier No More

road last night—' Roche ducked to avoid the wasp '—she broke her neck, apparently.'

'Were there any witnesses?'

That wasn't the right question. 'No.'

'What do the police say?'

That wasn't the right question either. 'They're not confiding in me. They told Miss Baker it was an accident. The car went off the road and she broke her neck. That's all I know.'

'Good! And you haven't reported to Clinton yet?'

The drift of the wrong questions was plain enough. What Genghis Khan wanted was time, not his trusted man's opinions.

'No, not yet. I haven't reported to anyone yet—except you.'

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He shaded his eyes against the glare, and looked intently at nothing. He had given himself a breathing space, but it had been Genghis Khan who had used it to better purpose.

He scrunched away from the van again, glancing over his shoulder at imaginary strangers.

If Genghis Khan knew who had killed Steffy then the Comrades must know about d'Auberon. It was still inexplicable that they hadn't known long ago, but they must know now, and that was why Genghis Khan was here in person.

He reached the far side of the gateway. The children had disappeared, presumably in pursuit of the dog, and there was still nothing else in sight.

He turned round. The immediate question was . . . did the Comrades rate the d'Auberon papers as more important than placing Captain Roche in Sir Eustace Avery's new group? If they did, then Captain Roche would be well-advised to cash in the chips he already possessed, in the hope that they might be enough to buy him safety with the British.

He eyed the van speculatively. Whatever happened to the d'Auberon papers, he could bring Audley in, that was no problem; but then, because Audley wanted to come back, that would hardly count in his favour in any reckoning.

Genghis Khan, on the other hand, might be worth quite a lot; and even Jean-Paul, betrayed to the British, could be traded off to the French in exchange for a bit of badly-needed goodwill.

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Yet, viewed dispassionately, even together they hardly outweighed half a dozen years' high treason—or insufficiently to ensure that Avery and Clinton wouldn't condemn him to the certain death of remaining in post in Paris as their treble traitor, untrusted and expendable.

In fact, as things stood, if he couldn't deliver those damned d'Auberon papers to the British, then he might be even more well-advised to remain a loyal Comrade, at least for the time being, until another opportunity presented itself. . .

True or false? It only took an instant to test the possibility, and feel it crumble. Over the last few days he had committed himself in his heart too far and too absolutely to turn around again. And he could never go back to where he'd started because the wasting disease within him was very close now to the point where it would become plainly visible to everyone.

Already Jilly and Madame Peyrony had both sensed something wrong, and—

He was aware suddenly that something had cut through the concentration of his fear, just when it was shaking his knees.

It wasn't a sound, it was a movement: it was the van beside him rocking on its springs as its balance changed. And then, following almost instantaneously on the movement, it was also a sound—

Genghis Khan was swearing—explosively, and in Russian—

or maybe it was in Polish, or in some black language unknown to civilised man, or in no language at all, except dummy5

that it was also in the universal language of pain.

Genghis Khan had been stung!

The van steadied and the oaths carried no echo: five seconds or less encompassed the whole disturbance inside it.

But the earth had turned in those five seconds, shrinking the van back from the Joseph Stalin tank it had been in Roche's imagination to just a van again, rather battered and rusty, with worn tyres which left only smooth tracks in the dust; and, in the reduction of the van, the man within it had been diminished also to human proportions.

'Are you okay in there?' Roche inquired. Grunt. Roche hoped devoutly that the sting had been on the tip of Genghis Khan's index finger, where the concentration of nerves would ensure the greatest discomfort. And at the same time he wished the stinging wasp its escape in the darkness, and a safe flight home.

'The point is, things have changed rather, down here, since I last spoke to you.' He listened to his own voice critically, and was satisfied with it. 'Also . . . I'm beginning to get the impression that you haven't been as helpful as you said you'd be. It's bad enough to be put through the hoop by Sir Eustace Avery and Colonel Clinton, but at least they hinted they were testing me. I did think you were on my side.'

Still no reply. But he had burnt his boats now, and that gave dummy5

him bloody-mindedness, if not confidence.

'You told me about Miss Stephanides. And about Bradford and Stein. But you somehow omitted to tell me about Etienne d'Auberon. Or have you never heard of him?'

'Don't be clever with me, Roche. It doesn't suit you.' A few moments earlier that would have stopped him in his tracks.

And maybe it wasn't bloody-mindedness any more than it was real confidence— maybe it was the nerveless