Soldier No More

Madame?'

'You have done your homework on me.'

Well. . . here was a necessary lie, if not a life-and-death one: she would surely find the truth of the combined incompetence of the British and the Russians unflattering, if not unbelievable.

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'Not quite like the bastides, Madame.' Roche decided to outflank the lie with a compliment. 'Your defences are in better order.'

She accepted the statement with the ghost of a smile, but in silence. She wanted more than that.

'But I would be fascinated to know . . .' he let himself trail off deliberately. 'That is to say, I've never thought that I looked like a policeman— of any type.' He gave her a wry smile, as boyish as he could make it, backing his instinct that if she had a weakness it might be for a young ex-para, albeit an English ex-para and an in-some-sort policeman, who could take defeat like a gentleman, with good grace.

Again, the moment's stare in silence. 'On the face of it you don't, Captain. But also you remind me of someone, and in part it is because I see him in you, I think.' The ghost-smile remained, but now it haunted a sad memory. 'I think also . . .

perhaps I should not tell you.'

'Tell me.' Roche knew, with self-revealing eagerness, that if she told him this then she would withhold nothing. 'Please.'

'He was an enemy.' She weakened.

'A Frenchman?'

'No. A German, I think.'

'You . . . think?'

'He claimed to be a Surf Efrican. Perhaps he was, though he was not the Surf Efrican whose identity discs he had.'

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Roche frowned. 'A Surf—?'

'From Trekkersburg in the province of Natal. Pete—Pi-et—

Prinsloo was his name. Or not his name.'

South African! Her impeccable ear had picked up the original sound, and had retained it across the years.

'He was very young and very brave—to do what he was doing needed courage, even though he was our enemy. And handsome . . .' Her eyes glazed for an instant, then focussed sharply on Roche. 'You understand, Captain, that we ran an escape route through this place during the war?'

Roche nodded wordlessly.

'Of course—you know!' She nodded back. 'But what you do not know is how a good escape route works—not as a continuous road, but a series of independent links which do not touch each other, so that if one link is broken the others are still safe. And . . . and so the way to destroy the route is not to break it, but to introduce one of your men into it, to pass along it from link to link until the last one—and then ...'

She blinked at Roche. 'But perhaps you know all this?'

Roche said nothing.

'No matter. We were on our guard against such men—we had our methods too. And we could not afford to have any mercy on them, for the sake of our own lives as well as our work.' She gazed at Roche sadly. 'But he was beautiful, was Pi-et. He helped me cut—' she frowned '—no, prune is the word—prune the roses in the garden, by the wall near the dummy5

stables where the sun shines all the afternoon. And that is where he lies now, Captain—under the roses in the sunshine, whoever he is—whoever he was—under my beautiful roses.

Which is a good place for a brave man, do you not think—

even an enemy?'

Roche's backbone was made of ice. The Chateau Peyrony, with its garden planted so, was no place for double agents.

'You are shocked?' Madame Peyrony shook her head slowly.

'I should not have told you, do you see?'

He licked his lips. 'Only—' the word came out as a croak '—

only because I remind you of him, Madame. I wouldn't like you to think that I'm brave enough to qualify for your rose garden—I'm much too frightened for that honour.'

For an instant he was afraid that his nervousness had made him too flippant, but then she smiled—not a ghost-smile, but a genuine old-witch-smile of pleasure edged with a touch of malice.

'He was frightened also, Captain—courage without fear is a counterfeit louis d'or made of lead, with heads on both sides.

That is how you are both alike: you are both hunters who are also hunted, I think. That is what I see in you.'

God! thought Roche—after what Jilly had said that was more than disquieting, it was positively macabre! If she could see his fear in his face—if both of them could see it, or smell it, or somehow sense it with some sixth sense —then what had Genghis Khan and Clinton seen?

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