A New Kind of War

‘You take Colonel Colbourne for a clown, do you, major?’

‘No, sir.’ Ordinarily he would have stopped there. But with this man, it was no good trying to say nothing: now, because he had already talked too much, he had to talk more. ‘Or, at least ... so far as the battle of the Teutoburg Forest is concerned . . . yes, I do.’ Instinct reinforced reason. ‘But successful barristers aren’t clowns . . . unless they want people to think they are – ’

that was an insight which hadn’t even occurred to him until this instant ‘ – and – ’ another insight hit him between the eyes, even more belatedly: a man like this wasn’t going to employ clowns to do his work. But he couldn’t say that – least of all when he still didn’t know what the work really was.

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‘And?’

Fred rejected ‘ and he has a DSO’, because a DSO

could mean everything or nothing very much. And the Brigadier himself had a DSO among his ribbons, anyway. But the Brigadier would never let him get away now. ‘Not after what I saw last night.’

‘Hmm – ’ The Brigadier didn’t move a muscle. ‘And just what did you see last night, major?’

Those last half-dozen words had been a mistake. But, once a man felt impelled to talk, then he inevitably made mistakes, even when he told the simple truth. In fact, even more so when he told the truth. So the Brigadier had caught him with an old trick – so to hell with the Brigadier!

‘I saw a man killed – an innocent man.’ Sod Brigadier Clinton – and all the rest of them! ‘I watched him die, actually.’

‘Innocent?’ The Brigadier’s head moved very slightly.

‘You knew him then?’

‘I never saw him before in my life.’ Steady! ‘But I believe he was chosen at random. Unlike “Corporal Keys”.’

‘Then he was killed at random. And you must have seen a good many men killed at random, major.’

‘In the war – yes. But – ’

This is war – ‘ The Brigadier caught his reply mid-air.

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’But I’m not going to argue philosophy with you. What else did you see?‘

The man was right. And he was also making the rules, anyway. ‘I thought I was in the middle of an over- elaborate, unnecessary, bodged-up . . . nonsense. But now I’m not so sure.’ Actually, they were back to original point-of-contact, before the Brigadier had become ‘friendly’. But he knew better now. ‘Do you want first thoughts, or second thoughts?’

‘I want the truth.’

Fred almost laughed. But then stopped an inch – or was it a mile? – short of it. Because he had had his ration of mistakes. ‘We went to take a man, from the American zone – out from under their noses. And a man they probably wanted too ... I don’t know ... but probably.’

He stopped there, not quite sure of himself. ‘No – not probably. They helped us, and they were going to double-cross us. Only we double-crossed them. Right?’

‘That pleases you?’

‘Yes. Rather to my surprise, it does, actually.’

‘Because your Greek friends have been double-crossing you, in Greece?’ There was the very smallest nuance of surprise in the Brigadier’s expression.

‘Notably your friend, Colonel Michaelides?’

That was mean – no matter how accurate. But at least it cleared the way for what Brigadier Clinton really dummy4

wanted in that ‘truth’ of his. ‘Partly that, I suppose . . .

but also partly because it’s comforting to be part of a double-cross which is itself double-crossed, but which still has a fail-safe extra built into it.’ Suddenly he knew what he wanted to say. ‘It’s rather like what happened to us in Italy once, along one particular stretch of road where we kept losing men – from booby traps.’

Brigadier Clinton stared at him. ‘Go on, major.’

Good men, Fred remembered. ‘But at least that had been the name of the game. There was this German –

German sapper officer . . . And their sappers were good, you know –’

‘I know.’ Clinton stopped him sharply. ‘They were all good, damn it! Don’t teach me to suck eggs, Major Fattorini: I’ve been sucking German eggs for eight years now. So I know the taste of them better than you do. Go on.’

‘Yes, sir –’ Eight years? But that was . . .1937–?

‘There was this German sapper . . . who was good with booby-traps – you were telling me – ?’ Clinton spaced each word from the other carefully.

‘Yes, sir.’ He would think about 1937 later. ‘At least, I think it was just this one man. Because when he set his booby-trap he always booby-trapped the actual trap.

But he knew we’d tumble to that, so he used to rig an dummy4