Kenworthy –
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He didn’t want to think of any of them now, but they wouldn’t let him go – ‘ All the others have been eliminated. And, the very devil of it is, that I can’t believe that any of those men would betray me either.
But that only means that I’m making a mistake: that I’m making pictures which I want to see, Fattorini –
Fred . . . So now we have to play for high stakes.
Because I need all these men for the future, when the stakes may become even higher — because all of them are marked for promotion – ’
But not Audley, of course!
The bathroom was huge, and its plumbing was antediluvian as well as foreign: this wasn’t the servants’ floor, but it was obviously for the less important guests. (Although he wasn’t a less important guest in Schwartzenburg Castle; he was just a late-comer – later than Colbourne, de Souza, The Crocodile, The Alligator, Johnnie Carver-Hart, Professor Kenworthy and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, right the way down to Lieutenant (temporary Captain) David Audley – )
Audley had been wrong about the water: Trooper Leighton had done his best with it, so that the shaving-water in its antique silver bucket was more than warm, and even the bath-water was tepid.
Audley —
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He stopped there, staring at himself in the mirror with the lather on his face and a new blade in his razor, as a new thought occurred to him –
‘But. . . Audley, yes: I took him on last year, in France.
And only temporarily, to repay a debt and because there was no one else I could get who spoke fluent French at short notice . . . which he does do, although with a perfectly execrable accent . . . It was his godfather who gave him to me, to save him getting killed, like all the other subalterns in his regiment were doing, in the bocage there . . . And I nearly got killed myself, actually — in a quite different operation from this, mark you . . . out of which I picked up several other useful men who are now obligated to me –
Sergeant Devenish and Driver Hewitt among them, as it happens. But that’s another story – the irony now is that Audley is the only one we can trust . . . because I didn’t pick him!’
He saw another story in the mirror suddenly, in his own eyes – ‘ Of course, afterwards I checked him all the way back – as I have checked you . . . And the others, so I thought. . . But no matter! He did well in France. So . . . I kept him on. Because he’s also going to be a useful man one day, when he matures – because inside that great hulking overgrown subaltern’s body there just may be that extra thing that we need, and which is going to be in short supply in our business dummy4
after the war, I fear – ’
There was also another story there, Fred saw much too late, but which Audley had seen before him, albeit only just: of two officers on a Greek hillside, the English one (or the Anglo-Scottish-Italian one!) innocently and accidentally, but the Greek-Cypriot bravely and deliberately in the execution of his duty – was that it?
And, if there was . . . then was there more than that, with no blind chance dictating events, all the way back to Frederick Clinton and Uncle Luke long ago? Was that it – ? Had Kyriakos deliberately tested him under stress, to bring him to Osios Konstandinos at Clinton’s bidding?
He rasped the razor across his cheek, suddenly certain that he was hungry for more than his Old English breakfast. But he wouldn’t think of that now: he would think of David Audley –
‘But he’s too young for this: it’s always a mistake to give a man’s work to boys – even lucky ones, like our young David. Because he lost several of his nine lives in Normandy, before I ever caught up with him. And then I took several more of them, through my own stupidity, I’m sorry to say. So, although you can use him now – and trust him . . . I’d be obliged if you could return him to me intact if you can, major!’
Fred examined his face carefully for missed stubble.
With his uniform so well-pressed, and everything else dummy4
so well-polished and blancoed, he needed to look his best this day.
‘But his survival isn’t tomorrow’s objective, major.
And neither is yours. Because what I now need above all else is a name —’
He made his way back to the room, blindly and automatically, and put on his wrist-watch first, while stark naked, as he always did when he had been able to wash properly first. And then put on the clean change-of-clothes which Trooper Leighton had brought with the same thought he also always had when that added luxury had been available: that, if possible, one should always go into action with clean underwear.
‘What I want is the name of the traitor in my camp, and nothing else. And then I want him alive. Because we’ve got work to do now – ’
In the final analysis, thought Fred as he turned his shoulder to the long mirror on the wall to admire his new badge of rank, if he failed, or if he found the work uncongenial, he could use that envelope with major’s crowns on his shoulders, anyway!
‘ Listen, Fred. Something happened yesterday a long way from here, in
