Hugh finished the sentence for him,'… from behind. Not in front. In other words…'
Tommy stepped in,'… an assassination and not a fight. A sneak-attack, not a confrontation. With a stiletto. Interesting.'
'Precisely,' Hugh said, with a small laugh.
'Good news, as I said. Lincoln Scott may be many things, but he doesn't seem like some sort of lurking back-stabber.'
Pryce nodded, listening.
'And there's one other rather intriguing aspect of this style of killing.'
'What's that?' Tommy asked.
'It is the exact same method of silencing a man that is taught by His Majesty's Commando Brigades. Neat. Quiet.
Effective. Fast. And, by extrapolation, perhaps taught by your
American counterparts in the Rangers. Or elsewhere in your more clandestine services.'
'How do you know that, Phillip?'
The older man hesitated before replying.
'I'm afraid I have some education in commando techniques.'
Tommy stopped, staring at the frail barrister.
'Phillip, I can't really see you as a commando.' He laughed as he spoke, but when Pryce turned toward him, the laugh faded, for he saw his friend's face had fallen, graying even in the sunlight, stricken with a hurt that seemed to reverberate from deep within.
'Not me,' Pryce said, choking slightly.
'My son.'
'You have a son?' Tommy asked.
'Phillip,' Hugh chimed in, 'you never said anything-' Pryce raised his hand to stop the other men's questions. For an instant the older man seemed so pale that he was almost translucent. His skin had turned a pasty, fish like color. At the same time, he took a step toward them, but he staggered as he came forward, and both Tommy and Hugh reached out, as if to grasp him. Again he held up his hand, and then, abruptly, Pryce simply sat down in the dust of the perimeter path. He looked up sorrowfully at the two fliers, and said slowly, painfully,
'My dear boys. Dear Tommy and Hugh. I'm sorry.
I had a son. Phillip Junior.'
Tears were pushing at the crinkled edges of the wing commander's eyes.
His voice seemed like leather cracking under tension. Between the tears that started to slide down his cheeks, Pryce smiled, as if this great sadness within him was also, oddly, amusing.
'I suppose, Hugh, he's the reason I'm here, now' Hugh bent over toward his friend.
'Phillip, please…'
Pryce shook his head.
'No, no. Jolly well should have told you lads the truth months ago.
But kept it all bottled up, you know. Stiff upper lip. Carry on and all that. Didn't want to be more of a burden than I already am…'
'You're not a burden,' Tommy said. He and Hugh dropped to the ground and sat next to their friend, who started to speak as his eyes traveled beyond the wire, out toward the world beyond.
'Well, my Elizabeth died at the start of the Blitz. I'd asked her to go to the country, but she was stubborn. Delightfully so, you know, truly that was why I loved her. She was fearless and she wasn't for a moment going to allow some little Austrian corporal to run her out of her home, no matter how many damn bombers he sent over. So I told her when the sirens sounded, to make her way to the underground, but she sometimes preferred to sit out the raids in the basement.
The house took a five-hundred-pounder straight on. At least she didn't suffer…'
'Phillip, you don't have to…' Hugh said, but the older man simply smiled and shook his head.
'So then there was just Phillip Junior and myself. And he'd already enlisted, you see. Nineteen years old, and a commissioned officer in the Black Watch. All kilts and pipes swirling with that screeching noise that the Scots call music, claymores, and tradition. His mother, you see, she was a Scot, and I think he thought he owed it to her. The Black Watch, Clan Fergus, and Clan McDiarmid. Hard men all. They were trained as commandos, fought at Dieppe and St. Nazaire, and Phillip Junior would come home on leave and show me some of the more exotic techniques he'd been educated with, including how to silence a sentry which was precisely what we've run into here. He used to say that their instructor, this wiry little red-haired Scot you could hardly understand his brogue was so thick, would always end his lectures on killing with the phrase: 'Gentlemen, remember: Always be neat.'
Phillip Junior loved that.
'Be neat,' he'd say, as I cut us some beef for dinner. And then he'd laugh. Great laughter, boys. He had a huge, unrestricted bellow of a laugh. It would simply stir up like a volcano and burst forth. He loved to laugh. Playing rugger during his public school days, he'd be grinning and laughing even with blood dripping from his nose. I thought when his mother was killed that he would no longer take such joy in life, but even with that sadness weighing on him, he was still irrepressible. He loved every breath he took. Delighted in it. And he, in turn, was loved. Not just by me, his dull and doting dad, of course, but by his chums at school, and all the young ladies at socials, and then by the men he commanded, because all of them knew him to be guileless and brilliant and dependable. A child becoming a man.
He seemed to grow larger with every minute, and I was in awe of what the world held out for him.'
Pryce took a deep breath.
'They had a rule, you know, in the commandos. Behind Kraut lines, if you were wounded, you were left behind. A nasty rule, that. But essential, I suppose. The group is always more important than the individual. The target and the assignment are more important than any one man. Any one life.'
Pryce choked on the words.
'But you know,' he continued, 'that simply wasn't my boy's style. No.
Not Phillip Junior. Too loyal, I suppose. A friend would never abandon a friend, no matter how awful things appeared, and that's what he was. A friend to all.'
Hugh was gazing through the wire. He had a faraway look in his eyes, almost as if he could just make out the prairies of his home, just beyond the sentinel trees at the edge of the Bavarian forest.
'What happened, Phillip?' he asked quietly.
'His captain took three rounds in the leg, just tore it all to hell, you know, and Phillip wouldn't leave him. North Africa, you see. Not terribly far from Tobruk, in that great mess of things Rommel and Montgomery made. So my Phillip carried his commander ten miles through that damnably hot desert with the Afrika Korps everywhere around them, right up on his back, the captain threatening to shoot himself every mile of the way, ordering Phillip to leave him behind, but of course Phillip wouldn't. They walked all day and most of the night and they were only two hundred yards from British lines, and he finally handed over the captain to a couple of the other men. There were German patrols working everywhere in the night, the lines were so fluid, you didn't really know who was friend and who was foe. Very dangerous.
Possible to get shot by either side, you see. So, he sent the team ahead, carrying the captain, and he stayed behind to cover their retreat, last man with the Bren gun and some grenades. Told them all he'd be right along in a shake or two. The others made it home.
Phillip didn't. Don't know exactly what happened.
Missing in action, you understand, not even officially dead, but of course I know the truth. I got a letter from the captain. Nice fellow. An Oxford don, actually, read the classics and taught some Latin and Greek before the war. He told me that there had been explosions and machine-gun fire from the spot where Phillip had set up his rear guard He told me that Phillip must have fought desperately hard against all the odds, because the firing went on for some time, furiously, more than enough time for the rest of his team to reach safety.
That was Phillip, wouldn't you know. He would gladly have traded his life for those of the
