‘That’s right. On these terms, you come to me freely.
And you freely obey my orders. But you yourself take absolute responsibility for whatever you do, just as I take absolute responsibility for giving you the order to do it. So ... in effect, as of now, and probably for the first time in your life . . .
Fred had never felt more unfree in his life. ‘It seems a rather one-sided bargain. If I have to take the responsibility for –’
‘Not at all! If you believe you have a soul, then you dummy4
must admit the possibility that I have one also. And you can’t have my soul in order to excuse yourself –
that’s all.’
There was something very dodgey about this bargain.
But there was also a much more urgent question. ‘And what if I disagree with your orders?’
‘Then you must question them. I have no use for unquestioning obedience: that is for slaves – and well-trained animals.’
‘And soldiers.’
‘And soldiers. But you are no longer a soldier.’
‘I’m not?’ Fred looked down on himself, past his tarnished brasses and crumpled and muddy battledress trousers to his disgracefully dirty boots. It was true that he looked unsoldierly: he hadn’t looked as dishevelled as this since Italy. Or, at least, since Osios Konstandios. ‘Aren’t I?’
‘You still wear the uniform. But that’s only because it suits the time and the place. And me, of course.
Civilians don’t have much clout here in Germany. But that will change very soon. And when it does, then you will change.’
Fred looked up again. Things were already changing, but they were doing so far too fast, from a taken-for- granted present to an indefinite future which threatened to stretch even beyond the war’s far off and bloody end dummy4
in Japan sometime next year, if they were lucky.
‘So there are no King’s Regulations between us now,’
Clinton continued before he could speak. ‘And no Rules of War or Geneva Conventions either. Nothing but our bargain, freely entered into on both sides –
“bargain” is also your uncle’s word. But the exact word doesn’t matter so long as we both understand its meaning.’
‘But . . . I’m not sure that I do understand it.’ Fred’s voice sounded thick to his ears. ‘Whatever the word may be.’
‘In what respect do you not?’
Fred cleared his throat. ‘The war must end soon.’
‘Very soon.’ Clinton shook his head. ‘But
‘You have no Release Number any more – as of this moment.’
This time he wasn’t going to say that he didn’t understand. ‘But . . . you said I am “a free man”. How do I exercise my freedom?’
‘Very simply.’ Clinton undid the top button of his battledress blouse and drew a long buff-coloured envelope from his inside pocket. ‘This is my side of the bargain, major. It contains a special release from His dummy4
Majesty’s service, properly signed and officially stamped. Your demobilization papers, in fact – go on, major – take it!’
Fred’s right hand refused to move. Instead he felt his good fingers clench into a palm which was unaccountably sweating.
‘Go on – take it.’ Clinton sounded almost dismissive.
‘Have you got a pen?’
‘A pen – ?’ The envelope seemed to hang in the air between them.
‘It’s undated. So if there comes a day when you cannot obey my orders, then all you have to do is date it from that day. All my officers have a similar document –
except young David Audley of course.’
Of course? The words repeated themselves stupidly inside Fred’s brain. But, then, young Audley had said he was an exception to all the rules, of course.
‘The King hasn’t had his money’s worth out of that boy yet. And neither have I.’ Clinton paused. ‘But for the rest ... I have no uses for any man who has no use for me. For my work I need free men, nothing else will serve. Otherwise I cannot do the work and neither can they. And, also, I should very soon become a mirror-image of my enemy. And then the work would not be worth doing.’
The envelope was still in mid-air. And Fred was dummy4
remembering that old feeble joke, which he’d first heard in 1939, on Salisbury Plain, and thereafter at intervals, through bitter Italian winters and the last time in a gun-pit within sight of the Acropolis in Athens on Christmas Day (the real Christmas Day, not Scobiemas) –
