Soldier No More

mistakes.) In fact, the only thing that could stop him was if Raymond Galles ran out of road.

'Steady on—you're driving like a maniac.' He realised that his body, as well as his thoughts, had been rolling madly from side to side.

'We're still being followed. I don't like being followed.' The time spent outside the chateau had evidently frayed the little Frenchman's nerves.

Roche peered around him. 'This isn't the way we came. How close are we to the river?'

'We aren't going back to the river.'

But I want to pick up my car, damn it.'

'We're not going back there ... all alone there . . . if what you've got is so important. I am to look after you, and that is what I'm doing.'

“What the hell d'you mean?'

'I mean, m'sieur, that it was unwise of you to receive that thing which you are holding ... to receive it with such pleasure ... in the open, for all to see.' Galles twisted the wheel savagely. 'Because ... if that is what you have been waiting for, then perhaps. . . that is what they are waiting for. . . I think.'

dummy5

That made uncomfortable logic, because he still didn't know for sure who they were, or why they had been waiting, even though Genghis Khan had promised to attend to them. 'So what are you doing?'

'I am taking you back to the Tower, where there are other people—first. . . . You will be safe there . . . and also, in that little car of yours you would never be able to get away from anyone, if it came to that.' More irrefutable logic.

'And then?'

'And then, when it is dark, I will bring you the other car, which I have ready for you. Then you will have the necessary petrol and performance, if that is what you require.'

Roche estimated his capabilities as a getaway driver. 'But you said no one loses a motor-cyclist—'

'Also by then I shall have made certain preparations .... You may rest assured that you will not be followed far. And there will be a man with you, to guide you wherever you wish to go ... And there will be no motorcyclists.' Galles pronounced the last word through his teeth. 'I may be getting old—and I have been careless, to my shame ... but this is still my patch, m'sieur.'

Was his patch? For once Roche's vocabulary faltered. Country

—piece of land—playing-field—home-ground—stamping ground— killing-ground— burial plot—?

Madame Peyrony had said almost the same thing. But whatever the word meant, it meant the same thing: that dummy5

strangers came into it at their peril, and that these strangers now were in line to discover something about les chases et gens de la Dordogne et ses pays which would never figure in any guidebook.

'He is hanging back now—I haven't lost him, but we are getting close to the Tower, so he thinks he knows where we are going,' murmured Galles, steadied by the prospect of vengeance. 'Around the next corner I will accelerate, and then I will stop quickly and you will get out quickly, and drop down out of sight even more quickly . . . and then I will be gone, and he will not be quite sure whether we have not been perhaps a little clever, to deceive him, one way or the other.

Because he knows now that I know he is behind me.'

'He knows?'

'Oh yes—I have played this game before, I told you—he knows! It is like the old days ... so we will play a small trick on him from those days: when he turns the corner and sees neither you nor this vehicle by the roadside it is possible that he may think we have decided to make a run for it after all, eh?'

Now he sounded almost as though he was beginning to enjoy himself, thought Roche resentfully, more irritated than frightened by the unexpected requirement to take part in such cloak-and-dagger activity just when everything had at last begun to seem straightforward.

But so long as he needed the man it would be as well to humour his hankering after the excitement of the old days.

dummy5

'Very well.'

'Good!' Galles dropped a gear unhurriedly as the little Citroen began to labour up the final incline on to the shoulder of the ridge. The view opened up at Roche's elbow, across the valley to the other side, which he had first glimpsed this morning in Audley's company; then the distant ridge opposite had risen out of the dawn mist and now it was sinking into evening blueness, with the first lights twinkling on it. It would be dark in less than an hour.

Galles turned the wheel slowly. 'Be ready!'

The engine surged with a sudden burst of power just as Roche caught sight of the Tower ahead, standing alone in the open, slightly downhill to his left. It looked dark and untenanted under its conical hat of black tiles— perhaps Audley was waiting for him in the cottage—?

'Brace yourself—' the Frenchman held the wheel tightly with both hands '—I will return in one hour—or not more than two

—bonne chance, m'sieur—now!'

Roche had one hand on the door handle, with the other still clasping the brief-case to his chest, as Galles stood on his brakes. The truck's tyres slithered on the loose gravel at the side of the narrow road, and a tree sprouting out of a tangled blackberry bush flashed past his face.