Soldier No More

seconds, David darling?'

God! Perish the thought!

dummy5

'No, I'm fine,' said Roche hastily. 'But. . . where's Steffy?'

Lexy waved the kitchen spatula, scattering fat over the top of the stove. 'Oh, God only knows! She's always going off on her own somewhere or other. We think she's got a boyfriend tucked away—or one of her poor bloody authors she's galvanising into a masterpiece, maybe . . . but she won't say, she just swans off into the blue and that's that . . . Not to be trusted, our Steffy— definitely not to be trusted! And that's Mike's opinion too. He says she's a femme fatale.'

That was very true, thought Roche; it was even so true that it hurt. And it wasn't surprising that Bradford, the American, thought so, either; because in this operation, whatever it involved, there was no reason why the Americans and the Israelis should be on the same side.

'Darling—why don't you go out and see if you can spot her en route? If you walk up to the corner you can see for miles—but get yourself another drink first, we've still got bags of duty-free gin in those huge bottles we bought on the boat...'

Roche retired gratefully up the drive from the cottage, ginless but glad to be out of the kitchen, where the air was blue with burnt fat and treachery. Because in this operation . . .

Ever since Suez the Americans had been bad friends with the Israelis, even though more in pique and sorrow than anger . . . and the way things had been going since Suez last dummy5

year, they'd soon be co-operating again—at least so long as the Russians called the tune in Egypt.

Yet the key to everything was still Audley: and if he could find that key before the Americans and the Israelis did—

But in his case it wasn't a case of if: he had to find it, or else—

He stared out over the blue-hazed landscape, across the rolling hills and forests and enclaves of cultivated land, and saw none of it.

The stakes weren't any higher, because for him they had been at the limit from the beginning, from the moment he had decided to defect again if he could see a way to do so.

But now they were inescapable, because the bets were on the table—if he failed, then the Comrades would never forgive him this time. Only now the game was more complicated, with the Americans and the Israelites in it, with stakes of their own, and as yet he didn't even know why they were playing. And not to know that was very frightening. And the CIA, with all its unlimited resources, was even more frightening. And Mossad, with its limited resources but unlimited ruthlessness, was even more frightening still.

It made him feel sick to his stomach, and he couldn't control the sickness, so that before he knew what he was doing he was throwing up the Lexy Special into the stubble of the field at his feet.

For a moment he was bent double, swaying dizzily, his vision blurred with tears. Then he managed to steady himself, his dummy5

hands on his knees, as he vomited again helplessly—he had lost his supper, and now his lunch was coming up.

He focussed on the stubble again, and found that he had instinctively lurched a few yards away from the disgusting mess, to an unfouled piece of ground. Among the dead stalks at his feet there was a fresh green plant growing, its tendrils snaking out from a fissure in the dry earth. He frowned at it, unable to identify the plant—there was another similar one a few yards away, and another beyond that, and another . . .

they were in a line stretching down the hillside towards the road, and there were others dotted over the field, apparently growing haphazardly, but actually in other lines like this one.

They were young vines, of course. This cornfield had once been a vineyard, a little irregularly-shaped vineyard high on the ridge, penned in by woodland on three sides and by the road up from which he had climbed on the fourth; yet although the vines had been grubbed up, their deepest roots had escaped the plough and had endured the temporary conquest of the land by the corn to sprout again, unconquerable.

Well . . . Roche bent down to take the tender shoot at his feet into his hand. . . well, he would beat the bastards yet, somehow; he would use them, and he would play them against each other— Genghis Khan against Clinton, and Clinton against Genghis Khan, and both against the Americans and the Israelis . . . and in the end he would go over to whichever of them looked like winning, whichever of dummy5

them could best offer him safety and amnesty and oblivion, it didn't matter which— only survival mattered!

'David!'

Lexy was striding up the hillside towards him.

'Any sign of her yet?' She paused for a moment, turning to survey the landscape below her, hands on hips, a splendid Amazon of a girl, Hippolyta to the life. 'Drat the girl! This is absolutely typical—just typical!'

Roche chose a non-committal grunt as a reply. From their vantage point he could see the road twisting down into the valley, and there was plainly no sign of Mossad on it.

But he ought to pretend he'd been looking at something. 'I was looking at these vines, coming up through the stubble ...'

'Oh . . . yes!' Lexy's face was slightly flushed, and the dirty mark had enlarged itself. She looked as though she'd just got out of bed. 'Tragedy, isn't it—corn instead of wine! But typical Peyrony avarice, we think . . . though she says she can't get the labour—all her boys have gone off—' she transmuted the words from BBC English into the aristocratic gawn orf '—gawn orf to the army, to get themselves killed in Algeria, she says. But we think it's the price of corn—I say, darling . . . you're as white as a sheet!'

Roche was about to say that it must be something he'd eaten, but realised just in time that he would thereby be condemning the Lexy Special for what it surely was.