Soldier No More

'Darling—it's easy!' chuckled Jilly. 'You've just been reading all about Galla Placidia and her Visigoths—just lie back and imagine you're her, being possessed by a great big hairy dummy5

barbarian!'

Roche let the river take him away.

VIII

EVEN WITHOUT BENEFIT of Thompson, Roche could see at a glance that Neuville belied its name: it was a lovely little honey-coloured bastide which hadn't been a 'new town' since the 13th century judging by the look of medieval gateway and surviving walls.

But Lady Alexandra allowed him no time to admire Alphonse de Poitiers' original defences.

'Do you really do something hush-hush, David?' It was a question she'd been working up to for ten kilometres.

So he was ready for it. 'Frightfully hush-hush, Lady Alexandra. And also frightfully dull.' And he also had his own question waiting for this opportunity. 'Do you really take part in orgies in the Tower, Lady Alexandra?' he inquired politely.

'Oh—phooey!'

'Is that yes—or no?' He manoeuvred the Volkswagen through the gateway. 'Where do I go from here?'

'Straight ahead to the square. You can park there, and it's quite near La Goulard's shop.'

He drove on slowly. 'Was that yes ... or no?'

Lady Alexandra sniffed. 'It was yes. But I bet your job isn't as dummy5

dull as our orgies.'

'Sounds a funny sort of orgy.'

'You can say that again! You just wait and see—park over there, under the trees.' She pointed. 'And now you can help me do my shopping.'

The prospect of the orgy certainly didn't seem to inspire her in the way he would have expected, and from the sound of her voice the shopping wasn't very popular with her either.

He looked at his watch. 'Sorry, but I've got to make a phone-call. Where's the public call-box?'

'A phone-call?'

He shrugged and smiled at her. 'One of the penalties of being hush-hush, Lady Alexandra. I have to let them know where I am each night.' He put his finger to his lips. 'Top secret.'

'Oh— you!! I suppose you're calling your girl-friend, more like!'

That had done the trick. 'No. But they pass the information on to her, as a matter of courtesy.'

'Okay! I asked for it!' Her vague smile returned. 'The phone's somewhere down there, beyond the war memorial, by the Post Office place . . . and La Goulard's shop is back that way—come and bail me out of there when you've finished being top secret—'

Roche felt the accumulated warmth of the day rising off the dummy5

cobbles under foot as he made his way past the heroic bronze Poilu of 1914, whom some fool had placed on the spot where the revolting peasants of 1637 had been broken on the wheel, according to Thompson, and with fine disregard for the way the monument spoilt the view of the medieval arcade nearby.

If he put his foot wrong now, he would be broken on some other wheel, but less publicly.

Yet he had no choice, he had to give Genghis Khan Lady Alexandra and the Misses Baker and Stephanides, not to mention the Israeli and the American, because he needed all he could get about them, and quickly.

The Comrades were obviously the best bet for all of them; their records were better and much more extensive than anything the British were likely to have. Indeed, the very fact that the British had supplied him with so little information, which they bloody-well ought to have known in advance with Galles down here, was proof of their incompetence.

Indeed . . . maybe the Comrades already had useful messages for him, which would help him to put the right questions to the British, to make them think all the better of him, as well as helping him forward.

The thought brightened him: that, after all, was the way he had planned it all—

He didn't recognise the voice on the other end of the line, but he hadn't expected to. All he had hoped for was the correct dummy5

recognition sign and the 'clear' word to go with it, to indicate that it was safe to go ahead.

Any messages?

No, there were no messages. Had he made contact with the client yet?

Roche decided to hold that one back for the moment. Instead he inquired rather brusquely whether anyone was watching over him.

Why did he want to know that?

Because the other side was probably watching him too—he deliberately didn't elaborate on that possibility; it covered Raymond Galles if they knew about him, but if they didn't then there was no percentage in mentioning him at this stage

—and he didn't want heavy-footed Comrades falling over them, or leaving their pug-marks for all to see.

There was a pause while the voice consulted higher authority at its elbow, and then an assurance that he had nothing to worry about on that score, he was on his own until he called for back-up, or until higher authority decided