Hunter was able to recognize without difficulty the opening moments of one of those long delays, rendered absolutely featureless by the impossibility of forecasting how as well as when they will end, which make up so much of Service life. He waited until the smoke had cleared enough to give him a view of the blackish and reddish patch of earth where the tank had been, folded and furrowed as if an oversized plow with a very blunt colter had been briefly at it. Then he went back down the ridge and got into his jeep and drove it to the assembly point.
Here there was a scene of some animation. One party of men under a sergeant was arriving, another leaving. The morale of both parties seemed closely similar to that of the one Hunter had met on the road. Two walkie-talkie sets were in simultaneous operation; a third was being dismembered by a couple of signalers. A motorcyclist was trying to start his machine. Somebody was backing his jeep out of the line of transport, hooting at a group who stood in his path. A helicopter rose from behind the ridge, where it had presumably been sheltering while the shot was taken, and began to approach. Another appeared farther off.
At the center of all this was Leonard, sweating a great deal, talking to two NCOs in alternation, walking jerkily from one of the functioning walkie-talkies to the other, finally running to his car and shouting into his microphone.
When the helicopters had landed and things were a little calmer, Hunter went up to Ross-Donaldson, who looked interested but not involved.
'Whence all the panic?'
'It's an obvious case of group emotion and the force of the example of authority working in push-pull. The Services afford an almost uniquely favorable environment for this effect. Evidently, it's by no means confined to our own era. There's been a series on historic paraneurotic debacles in the Military Quarterly, beginning with the failure of that Athenian night-operation on the heights above Syracuse.'
Hunter lit a cigarette. 'What went wrong this time?'
'Leonard was expecting this Best person to arrive in the vicinity for purposes of espionage, supposedly. I expect you know about that.'
'I did hear something, yes.'
'Everybody seems to have done. Well, Best hasn't arrived. According to Leonard he should have been spotted something like two hours ago. So he's got to be found, it appears. For which purpose men are being taken out of the cordon and the defense detachment and grouped for a sweep. A simple enough concept, you'd have thought, but unexpectedly intractable in practice.'
'I see he's getting the whirlybirds on to it,' said Hunter, nodding in the direction of Leonard, who was talking and gesticulating to the helicopter pilots.
'Quite useless. Over most of the exercise area the cover's good enough for even an inexperienced solitary man to hide from the air. The only exception is this valley-which incidentally looks like an infilled glacial lake, wouldn't you agree?-and its immediate approaches, and if he'd got so far he'd have been picked up by ground observation. Would you care for a hand of piquet?'
'Very much.'
They went over to Ross-Donaldson's jeep, which proved to be carrying a number of supernumerary stores. Within a short time two folding chairs in moss-colored canvas and unvarnished wood, a small card-table and a green and white golfing umbrella with an extending shaft had been unloaded and erected. They took their seats. Ross-Donaldson brought out two new packs of cards from his haversack and unsealed them.
'This is nice,' said Hunter.
'I'm glad you like it. Champagne?'
'Thank you.'
At a nod from his master, Ross-Donaldson's batman went and fetched from the jeep a metal cylinder about the size of an eight-inch naval shell, and two silver tankards. The cylinder turned out to be a thermos container and to have in it a very well-chilled magnum of Krug 1955. This was opened and poured.
'Mm,' said Ross-Donaldson, sipping. 'Perhaps a little too cold.'
'It seems just right to me.'
'Well, the situation will improve if we merely replace the lid lightly on it instead of clamping it down. Shall we just play a short game and then see how matters stand? I shouldn't like to predict how long it'll take Leonard and his comitadji to carry out their evolutions. Cut.'
'They've only got a bit over a mile to walk once they start, haven't they? It shouldn't take them all night. What do you think, a florin a point?'
'Right. It's rather broken country, though, and he hasn't really got enough men for the job, so he'll have to zig-zag them. Leaving one.'
'If you ask me,' said Hunter abstractedly, 'Best has slipped back through the cordon. Or if he hasn't already, he won't have much trouble doing it now, with the cordon thinned down to give Leonard his sweep party. Point of five.'
'Not good. My feeling exactly. Do you think this Best really is a spy? You know him better than anybody, I suppose.'
'Tierce to a knave. I simply couldn't say. Brian certainly seems to think so.'
'Not good. How much is that worth, in your view?'
Hunter hesitated. 'Oh, quite a lot. He strikes me as pretty competent.'
'I've known you to treat him as if you thought he was a bit of a joke.'
'Only as a man. I don't expect a Security officer to make much of a score as regards ordinary intelligence and so on.'
'Don't you? I see. What else have you got?'
'Sorry. Three knaves. But I don't know much about Security.'
