Soldier No More

'I know he's here, for one thing,' he played for time, blessing the miles of telephone wire separating him from Stocker-in-the-flesh. The fact that d'Auberon was here, not half-a-dozen miles from Audley—and from all the rest of them, and not least himself—was all he really did know for sure. But try as he would, he still couldn't even place the man's name, never mind which particular Algerian row had sparked his resignation. The hijacking of Ben Bella from the Moroccan air liner on General Beaufre's order had caused a flurry of such resignations, but the date didn't quite fit. The oil discoveries or the building of the Morice Line were much better bets—

'Come on, man!' snapped Stocker. 'What else d'you know?'

Not how but what, thought Roche. 'Well, naturally I know what he was doing, Major,' he said dismissively, as though to dummy5

state the obvious.

'But you weren't in Paris then, Roche.'

Wasn't I? The months flashed before Roche's eyes. Except for the odd weekend— except for the long, boring communications course and his long leave which had together caused him to miss the whole ghastly excitement of the Suez crisis—

God! It wasn't Algeria at all— it was Suez!

'But I made up for lost time when I got back, naturally.'

'Those meetings had nothing to do with your work, Roche.'

What meetings?

'No, they didn't, I agree. And of course I don't know everything that went on in them ... I only know what I heard.'

What meetings, for Christ's sake?

'You never reported what you heard,' said Stocker accusingly. 'Why not?'

What meetings had gone on during Suez? He'd been out of circulation for the best part of three months, sweating and fretting on the communications and instructional courses, and then on leave. There would have been dozens of meetings, political and military, during that last desperate revival of the moribund Entente Cordiale, attended by all the ghosts of 1914 and 1939 as well as everyone from Eden and Mollet downwards! But they had all been dust and ashes by dummy5

the time he had returned—ashes still hot with recriminations against perfidious Albion which he hadn't dared to rake over.

'Why not?' Stocker snapped the question at him again.

The quick answer to that was 'It had nothing to do with my work, like you said, Major', but the thought of Suez cautioned Roche against facetious answers. That wound was too raw, and too much pride and too many reputations had been lost over it, for that sort of reply.

'It was just gossip, sir—bazaar gossip . . . after-dinner coffee stuff. I didn't rate it.'

'Gossip be damned! I should have thought any suggestion of a leak from the RIP sub-committee was worth reporting, gossip or not.'

Lord God! thought Roche, thunderstruck. The RIP sub-committee! Sir Eustace Avery's own sub-committee!

'Well?' Stocker poked the question down the line fiercely.

'Sir?' But what was the question? And, whatever the question was, how was he going to answer it?

RIP.

'Well?'

Requiescat in pace.

Roche swallowed. 'Yes, sir. It was ... in retrospect... it was an error of judgement, I admit. But it was just gossip.'

Rest in peace—

'Of course it was an error. I don't mean that.' Stocker clearly dummy5

wasn't going to let him rest in peace. 'What do you know about it, is what I mean—what d'you know about it?'

Roche's flesh crawled. That was the precise question Jean-Paul had asked him when he'd finally got back to Paris last December, just before Christmas, when it was all over—

'What do you know about it?'

'The what?'

'The RIP sub-committee.'

'What's that? I've never heard of it.'

'Then start hearing about it. Whatever you hear, we want to know. Start earning your keep, Captain Roche —'

He hated Christmas, not because of the memory of Christmas Past, or even of the bleak image of Christmas- to-come, but because of his annual thought of Christmas-might-have-been—all the Julie-Christmasses that would never be, which made the food stick in his throat and the drinks taste of wormwood at the parties.

But this time it was earn your keep, Captain Roche—