Lord, another telecom recruit — same words, same voice! 'I hope you can. Are you in command here?'
The soldier shifted position slightly, peering past Audley, first at the Porsche and then at the plebeian Vauxhall behind it. 'No, sir.' He came back to Audley, frowning slightly. 'We are moving, sir. You will not be delayed on the road. We are moving.' He started to turn away.
'Wait!' Audley heard his own long-disused army snap-of-command voice crack. But before he could start to feel foolish at the sound of it (as he had so often done all those years ago, when he had also played soldiers' games, as a lamb in wolf's clothing) he saw with relief that it still worked: the TA man stopped in mid-turn, stiffening automatically with the Pavlovian response of the regular soldier rather than a part-time amateur.
'That's better.' The old army habit of bloody-mindedness-in-dummy1
uncertainty came back to him as the soldier faced him again, expressionless now — still more like a regular. But that, perhaps, was what he had once been. 'Now — I demand to see your officer. At once, man.'
The soldier's expression didn't change, but the one hand which was visible beside his combat jacket clenched into a fist. 'That is not possible.'
'No?' Audley was aware that he was wet, and getting wetter all the time. But he was also soaked in genuine bloody-mindedness now, as he reached inside his jacket for his identification warrant. 'Well, you will damn-well make it possible.' He thrust the card at the soldier's face. 'Right.'
The soldier blinked at the thing for a moment. Then his lips began to spell out its contents, with word-by-word slowness until the sound of a car-door opening made him look up, past Audley.
'David — ' Mitchell came into view ' — what the hell are you up to?'
'I am enlisting the Army.' He decided to enlist the ancient jargon as well. 'It's called 'Aid to the Civil Power', Dr Mitchell.' The phrase curiously re-animated a memory from the most distant past, much more than half-a-lifetime away, of a boring lecture at OCTU on military law, in which the equally bored lecturer had merely repeated what Officer Cadet Audley had read in the relevant pamphlet; but which, he had to admit to himself, had mostly contemplated workers' unrest, and nothing like the presence of General dummy1
Lukianov and his Arab (or IRA) associates in a very different age of the world.
'What for?' Mitchell wiped the rain from his face.
'To re-garrison Maerdy Castle and this area, pending an outbreak of glasnost and perestroika, Dr Mitchell — ' As he spoke he threw the words at the British Telecom supervisor/
ex-regular. And then, from the gratifying effect they had, decided to go further ' — until the Russians help us in this matter . . . with Lukianov still at large, Dr Mitchell... we must help ourselves.'
That stopped Mitchell in his tracks as effectively as it had done the TA man, who was still gaping at him in astonishment, with all the metal fillings in his teeth showing. And, in the poor devil's defence, the only truly memorable thing that the OCTU lecturer had said (off the record) was that whenever the Civil Power turned to the Army for help the best place to be was somewhere else, preferably as far away as possible, because the Army always got the blame for the disaster which inevitably followed, as night follows day.
But now he was Civil Power himself.
'Don't just stand there, man.' He snapped the card away from in front of the unfortunate man's nose. 'You've read the words: I am authorized to call for assistance from members of Her Majesty's Forces as well as the civil police. And that includes you. And that is what I am now doing. So ... go and dummy1
get your officer — on the double!'
The TA man had closed his mouth. But his jaw was set firm now and for a moment Audley was aware of a battle of wills being fought in silence. And he couldn't let that continue.
'Did you hear — '
'Yes.' The man almost spat the word, without any polite
'sir' accompanying it this time. So, for a guess, that anonymous combat jacket concealed sergeant's stripes, if not actually the sacred insignia of the unit's squadron sergeant-major, who was unaccustomed to such bullying, either military or civilian — and least of all in front of one of his junior NCOs whose pale face was a picture of astonishment framed in the window of the truck beside them.
'David — ' As the hypothetical sar'-major turned away, breaking into splashing double-time as ordered, Mitchell pulled him away towards the rear of the truck ' — David, have you gone crazy?'
Had he gone crazy? 'No. I'm simply obeying Charlie Renshaw's orders.'
