Soldier No More

Shit! thought Roche. It could hardly be the Comrades, or Genghis Khan would have told him so. Therefore it had to be ... whoever had attended to Miss Stephanides . . . and that dummy5

was frightening, even though Genghis Khan had promised to attend to them himself.

'A motor-cyclist, I think,' said Galles. 'Though I cannot see him at this moment.'

Shit again! thought Roche. There were altogether too many faint motorcycle noises in his memory, from the last twenty-four hours back.

'Lose him, then,' he commanded. This sort of thing, beyond a little checking before he made a carefully prepared contact, was out of his routine experience. He had never been a bloody cloak-and-dagger man.

'M'sieur . . . one does not lose a motor-cyclist—he has too many advantages. One kills motor-cyclists—nothing else will serve.'

'Kills?'

'But yes! I killed one once—by accident, of course, you understand . . . on the blind corner before La Roque, it was ...

I braked to avoid a child who had run into the road—my cousin's little niece, it was—and there was a cement- lorry broken down on the other side of the road at that exact moment—the child ran out from behind it ... so there was nowhere the motor-cyclist could go—he was travelling too fast, of course—and nothing anyone could do. It was a tragic accident, with no one to blame except the victim himself, poor fellow.'

Yes?'

dummy5

Galles shrugged. 'Well... it will take me at least twenty-four hours to find another niece, and another cement- lorry, if that is what you want, M'sieur Roche.'

Roche reviewed the situation. A single follower was there to follow and observe. And Genghis Khan himself had required him to lay on an observer for what he had in mind, whatever it was—a reliable observer. So one more trained observer couldn't do too much harm.

'We'll go on—and let him follow.' Long-forgotten OCTU

training supported him: orders must always be given confidently, to encourage the other ranks' ill-founded belief that the officers know what is going on. 'But I need a telephone at 6.15—I must report in before I see d'Auberon.'

Galles gave him a searching look, as though to suggest that, however rusty and far-removed from tragic accidents he might be, he was too old a hand to cherish ill-founded beliefs.

'Go on, man!' He tried to meet the look arrogantly. 'But just don't drive like a maniac any more. This is important, and I don't want to be part of any tragic accidents.'

The look continued to search him. 'Like that which befell Mademoiselle Meriel last night?'

The poor sod was as much in the dark about Steffy as everyone else, thought Roche. The years of peace since 'the old days' had not prepared him for a new generation of violence.

He shook his head. 'I don't know about that. You think it dummy5

wasn't an accident?'

'The Police say that it was. But I do not think so.'

Neither do I.'

'Very well.' Galles gave him another five seconds'-worth of doubt, and then reached under the dashboard. 'M'sieur Audley sent this too, to introduce you to M'sieur d'Auberon.'

Chases et Gens de la Dordogne et ses Pays, by Etienne d'Auberon. It was a rather slim, typically French rough-cut volume, rather dog-eared but unmarked by ownership—at a guess, Audley's own copy, because Audley would never bother to put his name in any book of his, it would be beneath his dignity.

He looked up Le Chateau du Cingle d'Enfer immediately in the index— '. . . high above the bend of the river, with the fertile river-plain on either side to supply it, which successive generations of d'Auberons terrorised to enable them to keep up the state of great barons...'

'A motor-cyclist,' said Galles. 'Or perhaps a motor-cyclist and an auto-cycliste—I think we have maybe united two separate tails into one now, m'sieur.'

Roche looked up, and couldn't identify his surroundings.

'Where are we?' he demanded.

'Just coming into Laussel-Beynac. You wished for a telephone, and I have a cousin here—'

'A public telephone,' said Roche quickly, moving to minimise unacceptable risks. 'That's the regulation.'

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Overhanging trees gave place to overhanging houses clinging to a steep hillside in the middle of nowhere.

'Over there,' said Galles, pointing.

The telephone was beyond another 1914-18 Poilu, unsuitably overcoated and weighed down with equipment on the top of a marble plinth, standing guard aggressively on behalf of the men of Laussel-Beynac who had not come back from the Marne and the Aisne and the Somme to the Dordogne. He was, so far as Roche could recall, the same soldier who had presided over Neuville's dead enfants.

He tripped the switch in his memory to activate the number Genghis Khan had given him, from among the peach-boxes.

'David. For Johnnie.' It seemed very strange indeed to think of Genghis Khan so innocently.