Soldier No More

touch, nevertheless!

Roche smiled. 'Well, he's a big fellow, so they say. I expect he caught our man at a disadvantage, anyway.'

Sniff. 'Our man was a woman.'

Well! Well. . . maybe Oliver St.John Latimer did have it right, at that! And add unchivalrous and eccentric to all those other attributes into the bargain!

'I see what you mean by 'strange',' agreed Roche carefully. It was also rather strange that Genghis Khan should have told all this in such detail, unless he'd calculated that nothing but dummy5

the truth would serve to warn Roche himself of the perils that lay ahead. 'I'll make a point of not going boating with him.'

'When he travelled in the Middle East—he has travelled extensively in the course of ... historical research—' Genghis Khan brushed aside Roche's levity '—he made it a practice to visit the ministries of police to explain that he had served with British Intelligence during the war in Europe, but was no longer a serving officer. He did this in Egypt and Syria and Jordan and the Lebanon.'

Well again! Now . . . that was what Genghis Khan had really meant by 'strange', not the Cam punting episode at all! And it was strange, by God! (It was not in the least strange that Genghis Khan knew about it: the Comrades had all those police ministries sewn up tightly, for sure, and it wouldn't have needed any circumspection to throw up that information, for even surer!)

But, of course, neither those ministries nor the Comrades would have taken such a disclaimer on its face value; rather, it would have put them on their mettle.

And yet, obviously, all consequent investigations had proved negative— obviously, not only because if it hadn't been so he wouldn't be here now, trying to recall this strange man to the colours, but also because if there had been anything to unearth, the combined efforts of half a dozen middle eastern security departments and those of the Comrades would have done it by now.

And yet it was still strange ... or, it would be still so if dummy5

everything about the man wasn't of a piece with it. In fact, with everything going against him, Audley appeared to have achieved classic nothing known status.

'So he's clean, then?'

'Until now,' agreed Genghis Khan.

'Of course. As soon as I meet him he goes into Category 'A', naturally.'

'I don't mean that—wait!' Genghis Khan abruptly cut off further inquiry.

Roche squinted down the sunlit street. He could see his Volkswagen, but there was still no Lady Alexandra beside it to force him to break contact before he had discovered what sort of relationship she had had with the CIA.

'Very well.' The phone reclaimed him. 'The woman Charnpeney-Perowne is confirmed Category 'C'. But you are right—it is a bureaucratic nonsense nevertheless.'

Roche's morale went down and up in quick succession.

'What the hell does that mean?'

'She had a close contact. A known agent in their trade delegation in London, and then in New York. It is of no significance whatsoever—you can discount it.'

'A close contact?'

'The contact was in bed. He has since left their service.'

Genghis Khan sounded as though he would have sounded angry if he had ever allowed himself the luxury of sounding dummy5

anything recognisable. 'We have wasted too much time on her. Subject, Stephanides, Meriel Aspasia, British passport; daughter of Nikos Stephanides, of Cypriot-Jewish extraction, hotel- keeper, London, known agent Sherut Yediot 1945-48, Mossad 1948 onwards; daughter known agent Mossad 1953

onwards, operating Cambridge and London Metropolitan area, present cover literary agent, Liddell Carver Associates

—'

Christ!

'—active, inform Central Records movements priority urgent, ends.'

Christ! thought Roche again numbly. Not Greek or Anglo-Greek, but Greek-Cypriot Jewish. And not just Greek-Cypriot Jewish, but Mossad. And not merely Mossad, but second-generation Mossad, the daughter of a man who'd been an Israeli agent even before Israel had existed. And not just second generation Mossad, but active, inform Central Records movements priority urgent—which meant a top-flight agent whose every movement had to be reported double quick to Central Records so that the Comrades in the field could be warned of trouble before it enveloped them.

He swallowed as much of that as he could. 'Well, she's here.'

'Where—exactly?'

'I don't know, exactly. She's staying with Miss Baker and Lady Alexandra ... in a cottage owned by a Madame Peyrony, a few kilometres outside Neuville, where I'm phoning from.

dummy5

But I haven't been there yet.' It was occurring to Roche belatedly that he was the Comrade in this particular field, and nobody had warned him that Meriel Stephanides was already busy ploughing the field up.