Soldier No More

he needed it.

But had he made contact yet?

No—but things were going according to plan. There was this woman—

'Baker—Gillian Baker . . . she's with the Foreign Office, a straight civil servant, just doing what she's told —'

The way he felt about Jilly, with the memory of the slender feel of her and the smell of her hair, he wasn't going to dummy5

suggest otherwise. They would check up on her anyway—they would assume she wasn't straight, and if she wasn't, and if her cover wasn't good enough, then it was hard luck on her and better that he should know about it —but that was the least and the most he could do for her in return for that memory.

And Lexy—Lady Alexandra Perowne . . . P-E-R-O-W-N-E ...

the General's daughter, and the daughter of the Regiment, Audley's old regiment, no problem there—

And Steffy—Meriel Stephanides . . . S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-D-E-S . . . they liked names because names were facts, and easy to check—Steffy, friend of Lexy, no problem there either—

'The names I want checked as quickly as possible are Stein—

S-T-E-I-N . . . David . . . and Bradford—'

He repeated what little Jilly had told him in the river, but also Genghis Khan's own words about the dangers of asking too many questions in the wrong places.

'—I don't want anyone alerted that we're interested in these people, remember. I think it's very unlikely that they're not what they seem. It's just ... if we've got anything on record about them already, I'd like to know. Then I can get the British working on them for me. Right?'

Again the voice paused for consultation, and Roche wondered idly whether it was Jean-Paul making the decisions, because he had been his controller in France, or whether Genghis Khan had taken over regardless of station dummy5

boundaries. On balance he decided that it would be Genghis Khan, because the penetration of Sir Eustace Avery's new group was his baby, and also because this was an important operation and he was the senior of the two, at a guess.

Then the voice came back, deferring to him as before. They would check at their end, here in France, and that would be only a matter of minutes. The checks in Tel Aviv and Washington would take longer, but if he would call back in an hour they would be able to tell him when that information should be available.

Roche felt positively euphoric, almost Napoleonic then: he had never been treated like this before, with this whole huge communications apparatus at his beck and call. It hadn't occurred to him that they would go as far as Israel and the United States at the drop of a couple of names, falling over themselves to be helpful without his asking. And that. . . that could mean only one thing—his knowledge of how slow and bureaucratic they were normally, British and Russians alike, to clear such decisions, and how grudging they were in general with communications time for such inquiries, and how much more grudging in particular with small fry like himself... all that triangulated his position exactly, beyond reasonable doubt.

Jean-Paul had told him, and Genghis Khan had told him, and he had told himself over and over again, and yet had never quite believed it in his heart-of-hearts—and Sir Eustace Avery had also told him, and so had Colonel Clinton, and he dummy5

still hadn't quite believed them, either. But here at last was the practical proof of it, demonstrated dramatically in a form he could appreciate—in man-hours of communication time at the peak period of routine transmissions when all the day's general material was scheduled, they were clearing the way for his slightest whim, unasked!

He glanced at his watch, trying to calculate how long Lexy would be. Not that it mattered, he could stall her with any cock-and-bull story and she would probably be slow anyway, and they had plenty of time, and the longer he had to pick her brains (what there were of them) the better. He could spare them an hour, no sweat—

'Not an hour, I can't hold on that long here.' Roche smiled into the mouthpiece. Let the bastards sweat a bit for past slights, and more recent ones too—Jean-Paul and Genghis Khan, it didn't matter whom, in conceding the importance of this assignment they had still treated him with tjje identical thinly-veiled contempt, like aristocrats with a pools winner.

So let the bastards sweat! 'Half an hour at the outside, that's all I can spare without compromising my position. So I'll call back in thirty minutes—right?'

Another pause, and this time he savoured every petty second of it, while they sweated out his ultimatum.

'Very well—half an hour.' Click.

He returned to Lexy happily then, basking in his new self-dummy5

importance.

Contrary to his expectations, she had almost finished her shopping expedition. But one earful of her atrocious dog-French, which she delivered unselfconsciously to the little swarthy Frenchman who bobbed attendance on her, confirmed Roche's guess that her success was due more to French gallantry than to any proficiency she might have with the language after umpteen years of expensive private education.

'Can I be of assistance?' Roche hastened to offer his own expertise, to impress her.

'Dear David—thank you—but no, I'm doing fine. They don't understand a word I say, but they're so sweet and helpful ...'

Lexy flashed a dazzling smile at the little Frenchman, who glowed appreciation back up at her from shoulder level, oblivious of the sour expression on the face of Madame, his wife, in the background.

'I've just got to buy the wine—' Lexy transferred a piece of the smile to Roche, exerting the same sexual force in his direction unconsciously '—you can advise me there. It's all just red or white, sweet or dry, to me. Father's tried to teach me what's what, but ever since I opened a bottle of his Chateau Something-Somewhere for an old