A New Kind of War

come back to Fred. ‘So who is the traitor then, eh?’ He fumbled again with his webbing holster, unbuttoning the flap, then rubbing his hand down his leg again, as though his palm were already sweating. ‘But, of course, you don’t know, do you? Otherwise we wouldn’t be baiting the jolly old mouse-trap, of course!’ He squinted up the track, past the vehicles. ‘And I don’t even see the cheese yet, anyway . . .’ The squint cleared as he came back to Fred once more. ‘ Not the Crocodile – that would not only be too good to be true ... it would also be too confusing. Because no one can be such an absolute shit, and also a traitor: that just wouldn’t be fair! And the old Croc – he just isn’t... is he? Or, not compared with the unspeakable Johnnie – the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse – not him, surely – surely?’

‘No?’ He had to make light of it, just as Audley was trying to do, and for the very same sound military reason: because, to give it its proper due would be to make it something beyond bearing. ‘Why not, David?’

‘Too unbelievable, Fred.’ The boy came back like dummy4

lightning.‘And therefore too clever for comfort.’ Nod.

‘So . . . who – who – ?’ He frowned finally, turning the nod into a doubtful shake. ‘It doesn’t make sense, you know.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because everyone’s been so damned carefully chosen by Clinton, that’s why.’ The shake continued for a moment, then Audley grinned. ‘Except me, of course –

I was wished on him by my godfather last year, more or less as a favour, when he was suddenly short of a French-speaker. So I’m still here only on trial ... or more like sufferance. But the others ... he chose ’em.

And then he checked ‘em back to the cradle, so the story goes. No one forced ’em on him – and there’s no bloody “old boys’ network” from school and university with him, either. Or “ the jolly old regiment”, come to that – definitely not the Clinton style.‘

‘No?’ Anything about Brigadier Clinton interested Fred mightily. ‘You once said he likes . . . bankers, was it?’

‘He likes people with enough money not to be tempted by it. Doesn’t matter where it comes from – landed- gentry money, like Johnnie Carver-Hart’s, or a whisky distillery, like the Croc’s . . . “McCorquodale’s Highland Cream” –which is apparently so awful that it accounts for the Croc’s own preference for rum . . . and Kenworthy made his fortune from writing physics text-dummy4

books, so they say.’

‘But where does Clinton come from – himself? Do you know that?’

‘Don’t you know?’ Audley cocked an eye at him.

‘No . . . well, nobody knows the answer to that. No regimental background that anyone can discover – or the right school, or university . . . definitely not Eton and Sandhurst, or Eton and Trinity. More like some little grammar school somewhere, my godfather thinks.

And then into the army by some back-door, straight to the General List – “a self-made man”, you might call him.’

A self-made man, Fred thought of Clinton as he repeated the thought to himself: no class and no past. . . but also with no burden of preconceived and inbred prejudices or illusions, for or against those he had chosen?

‘But now he’s come a cropper, and no mistake!’

Audley spoke as though to himself. ‘Because if one of us – or one of them – has been on the other side all these months . . . Christ! That could mean his whole method of selection is up the bloody spout – if his Tenth Legion turns sour on him! Because – ’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Oh God – no!’

‘What – ?’ Fred stopped just as quickly as he saw the boy’s immense shoulders sag. Then he realized that Audley was looking directly past him, across the dummy4

meadow by the rocks and the lake. And in that very instant, the shoulders straightened again and Audley raised his arm in greeting.

‘HULLO THERE!’ Audley bellowed into the silence of the Teutoburg Forest. ‘Don’t you think you ought to turn round and have a look?’

Fred had to make himself turn, in the desolate knowledge that all this time Audley had been looking past him at someone else behind him, in the open meadow. And now, that this victory, even if they came out of it to tell the tale, would be a bitter one.

‘HULLO THERE, AMOS!’ Audley lowered his arm.

‘ Amos, Fred – ? Amos – ?’

As he stared, Fred didn’t want to believe it either.

‘Why not Amos?’

The silence came back for an instant. ‘I don’t believe it.’ Audley blinked at him. ‘Last night – no, the night before. . . it was Amos who made the plan to get Zeitzler out – he could have had him hit just as easily, as those grenades went off ... or whatever they were –

time-charges, were they? But, if that was a diversion, he could have done it, anyway – ’ Audley blinked again, and glanced quickly across the meadow again before coming back to him. ‘And even now ... it still doesn’t make sense.’

Fred watched Amos de Souza still ignore them as he dummy4

completed his scrutiny of the lake, and then the meadow, and finally the towering Exernsteine rocks.