Hewitt.
dummy4
‘What do you mean, “shut up”?’ Audley only remained quelled for that single moment before erupting again.
‘Your own orders – ’
‘The devil with my own orders!’ snapped de Souza.
‘But if you want an order, then I’ll give you one now: you go down by the end of the lake, where you can see round the rocks, and keep a sharp eye on the woods there. And if you see anything move, you come back and tell me. Understood?’
The boy rolled an eye at Fred, while his right hand massaged his leg nervously on the edge of his webbing holster. ‘W-w-w –’
‘Did you not hear my order, Captain Audley?’ De Souza’s voice had lost its sharpness: now it was menacingly soft.
Fred remembered his own orders. ‘Do as the adjutant says, David.’
Audley seemed to struggle with himself for an instant, then the hand stopped massaging and slapped the leg irritably. ‘Oh . . .
Okay, okay!’ he swung on his heel, shaking his head and growling to himself as he stamped heavily away, kicking angrily at tufts of grass as he went, like a schoolboy. It was good acting if it was an act, thought Fred. And now he must match it with one of his own.
‘What the blazes are you playing at, Amos?’ In fact, he dummy4
only needed to imagine himself in the real military world to strike the right note of outrage. ‘This is my show, not yours.’
‘Yes.’ De Souza looked around again. ‘This place gives me the shivers, you know. Always has done, and always will.’ He sniffed. ‘Maybe Colbourne’s right – ’
He looked Fred in the eye ‘ – a bad place for honest soldiers, maybe?’
The flesh up Fred’s back crawled with a million tiny insect-feet because of this shared insight. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘My duty, I hope.’ The sardonic glint was back, with the old self-mocking Amos-voice. ‘David was right, of course – I’m disobeying my orders as well as complicating yours and his.’ He turned lazily to watch Audley place- kicking another piece of grass. ‘He often is right, actually. But it does him no good. But . . . he’s a good lad ... maybe.’
‘Maybe?’ The curious emphasis de Souza had placed on the word startled him.
‘Yes.’ De Souza came back to him. ‘Aren’t you happier for my presence, then?’
‘Why should I be happier?’
De Souza nodded. ‘After the night before last?’
‘The night before last?’ He didn’t have to think hard to recall those beastly images. But he had to remember dummy4
who he was supposed to be. ‘We got our man the night before last. And the other side got the wrong one.’
‘Did they?’ De Souza stared up the path. ‘I wonder, now.’
Fred followed the man’s stare. The RSM had dismissed Audley’s men, and was now standing alone at the top of the track, studying the circumference of his world in a series of jerky movements, as though his head were fixed immovably on his neck.
‘Almost everything we’ve done in the past hasn’t gone right,’ said de Souza softly. ‘We’ve found men who couldn’t help us much – and we’ve lost the ones who could. But this time we were very clever, and we got our man. But, what I’ve been thinking is ... perhaps that was what someone intended we should do. And that makes you very vulnerable in this place this morning – if it’s true. So today I have taken certain extra precautions, without orders.’
A cold hand squeezed Fred’s guts. ‘Is that why – ’ But then the sharp
‘
scorned any further explanation of a completed order.
‘Thank you, Mr Levin.’ De Souza accepted this information.
‘Arrgh-hmm!’ The RSM cleared his throat formally, dummy4
but did not withdraw.
‘Yes, Mr Levin?’ De Souza interpreted this signal interrogatively.
‘
Fred looked up the path. From where the RSM had stood he would have had a good clear view.
‘Arrgh-hmm!’ The RSM cleared his throat again.
