Soldier No More

whatever that is—do you think Audley would change his mind for him! Not in a hundred years! Or Malcolm Thain—

not in a thousand years! That man couldn't recruit a drunkard for a piss-up in a brewery, I don't think—not if we really needed him.' Clinton wrinkled his nose in contempt.

'But you, Roche. . . you just might manage it.'

The train was in the station, but it was still moving, and it still might not stop.

'You're a bit of a dreamer, Roche. But you're also a soldier, and that's important, if you have to deal with David Audley, because whatever he may say about his military service—

however he may denigrate it, he's proud of it.'

Clinton was a strange man, thought Roche warily: not Oxbridge, even contemptuous of Oxbridge. But not unintellectual.

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'And you're a scholar too—and that's also important for Audley. He values scholarship.'

'Hardly a scholar, Colonel.' The devil was still talking. 'Not since Manchester. And not even then, not really.'

'But still close enough. And you left to become a soldier.'

Clinton smiled evilly. 'It should have happened to him—and you'll see that he knows how it happened.'

'How it happened? I was called up, that's how it happened!'

'I mean, how you got into Intelligence—a volunteer, not a pressed man.'

God! If they knew the truth about that!

'A scholar—but not Oxbridge . . . and he has his reasons for not loving Oxbridge . . . and a soldier,' continued Clinton smoothly. 'So you have the right profile of the pen and the sword . . . And you have one final attribute which neither Master Oliver nor Master Malcolm possess, more's the pity, I'm sorry to have to admit. Can you think what it is?'

The recollection of how he had really come to volunteer for that transfer from Signals to Intelligence was still unbalancing Roche: what the hell did he have that Latimer and Thain didn't, except that guilty secret?

'You'll send me back to Paris if I fail?' Clinton and Genghis Khan were brothers under the skin.

'Not to Paris. An ambitious young man can still be unhappy in comfort there. If you fail with Audley we'll bury you somewhere uncomfortable, Roche.'

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If he failed with Audley, and was relegated to counting paperclips in some backwater, then he'd never get away from either of them—until the Comrades decided to trade him for some minor advantage.

'But I don't think you'll fail. I think you can do the job,' said Clinton, almost amiably. 'And then you'll be Major Roche in London, I shouldn't wonder. 'And there is in London all that life can afford', as Dr Johnson said.' He nodded at Roche.

'So the incentive is a two-way one—'

Molieres, Beaumont, Roquepine, Monpazier, Lalinde—

All the same, that clever-stupid bastard Thompson had still got it wrong, thought Roche morosely. The study of the medieval bastides of Aquitaine might be outside Audley's special historical period, and even a perfectly reasonable subject for a student of French history to study in this particular area of all others, the more so as it was also an uncommonly congenial region as yet unspoiled by le tourisme.

Nevertheless, if bloody Thompson had only taken the trouble to ask, instead of using his initiative, he would have learnt that student-Captain Roche, the soi-disant soldier-scholar, was far better informed on the 16th and 17th centuries than the 13th and 14th, and on the French Wars of Religion than on their endless dynastic blood-lettings with the English in the Middle Ages.

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Roche rolled on his back and day-dreamed of the good old 16th century, when a chap could happily betray one side to the other, and change sides two or three times as commonsense dictated, and still be reckoned a man of honour if he timed his actions prudently.

That was his century, which he had studied most and enjoyed most; when there were two rival faiths, just like now, but with just enough elbow-room for the same man to make honest mistakes and learn from them without being damned, unlike now . . .

And his favourite century would have done well enough here, which had been debatable territory for the Catholics and Protestants just as it had been for the French and English in medieval days . . . well enough, or even better, remembering the Domme bastide where he'd lunched well, but not too wisely, only a few hours ago, which had been ingeniously seized from the Catholics by a famous Protestant commander who had then promptly changed sides and sold it back to its proper owners at a handsome profit to himself.

Those were the days! He could have prospered then, in those days. He could have served his own interest, and saved his own skin, and kept his self-respect as well. Whereas now . . .

Whereas now he was suspended between Clinton and Genghis Khan, and tied more tightly to each of them so that he could no longer even be sure where his best interest lay—

or even where his best chance of survival might be.

But he didn't want to think about them, because more dummy5

immediately there was Audley—

Only, before Audley, thanks to bloody Thompson, there was Villereal and Castillones and Montflanquin and Villefranche- du-Perigord and Domme and Beaumont and Monpazir and . . .