WHEN WE REACHED the villa, Hoffer hadn’t returned. Rosa disappeared to take a bath which was exactly what I wanted to do, but Burke seemed to come to life again.
“You’d better have some coffee and a shower before Hoffer comes back,” I told him. “If he sees you like this he’ll start worrying about his investment.”
It had an effect of sorts. “To hell with Hoffer. He needs me and he bloody well knows it. Now let’s have words. I want to know what you found up there today.”
I humoured him to the extent of following him out through the lounge to the terrace. Piet and Legrande were sitting at a table playing cards, a bottle of something between them.
Piet jumped to his feet at once as Burke arrived, that inner glow on his face again. “Thank God!” Legrande said. “It’s been as lively as a graveyard around here today. When do we see some action?”
“Soon enough.” Burke found time to smile at Piet and squeezed his arm. “Bring us some coffee, there’s a good lad, and we’ll get down to business.”
Piet went out on the double and Burke took his chair, put the tray with its bottles and glasses on the floor and looked up at me. “All right, Stacey, let’s have it.”
I unfolded the map Cerda had given me and spread it across the table. First of all I went through my conversation with the
Legrande looked glum. Having served with a colonial parachute regiment in Indo-China, and later, Algeria, he’d as much experience of that kind of thing as Burke and probably more.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “A night drop into country like that is asking for it. All we need is for one of us to break a leg and we’re in real trouble.”
“It’s the only way,” I said. “Otherwise we might as well pack our bags and go home.”
“Stacey’s right,” Burke said briskly. “We’ve no choice. Now, let’s get down to the details.”
I stood up. “You’ll have to manage without me. I’m going out.”
He looked at me with a frown. “Don’t be absurd. We’ve got to get this thing organised.”
“That’s your job. You’re supposed to be in charge. I spent a long, hot afternoon sorting the situation out for you while you lay flat on your back tanked up to the ears.”
I found myself leaning on the table, caught in our first public confrontation. It was as if Piet and Legrande weren’t there – as if we were quite alone. There was a slight puzzled frown on his face, something close to pain in his eyes.
He wanted to ask me why, I knew that. Instead, he said quietly, “All right, Stacey, if that’s the way you want it.”
He went back to examining the map and I straightened. Legrande looked completely mystified, but Piet’s face was white and angry. I ignored them both and went out.
I showered, then pulled on my old bathrobe and went back into the bedroom, towelling my hair. At that precise moment, the door opened and Piet Jaeger came in.
He slammed it shut and glared at me. “What in the hell are you playing at? You shamed him in front of all of us, the man who’s done more for you than anyone else in the world.”
“I’ll tell you what he did for me,” I said. “He taught me three things. To shoot my enemy from cover instead of face to face, to kill, not to wound, and that a bullet in the back is to be preferred to one from the front. Quite an education. Oh, there have been one or two other items in between, but those are the salient features.”
“You owe him everything.” Piet was almost beside himself. “He saved you twice. We said no walking wounded at Lagona, but when the chips were down and you got it in the leg, what did he do?”
“So he made them carry me out. I’d love to know why.”
“You rotten bastard.” His South African accent had noticeably thickened. “He’s worth three of you any day of the week. You aren’t fit to walk in his shadow.”
In a way I was sorry for him. I suppose a lot of his anger came down to plain jealousy. He loved Burke, I realized that now, and had probably always suffered me in silence. I had been with Burke from the beginning and he was right – by all the rules I should have been given a bullet in the head, the mercenary law to save me from falling into the hands of the
“Go on, get out of it,” I said. “Go and smooth his wrinkled brow or whatever you do together in the night watches.”
He swung hard, the kind of punch that would have knocked my head from my shoulders had it landed. I made sure it didn’t, allowing myself to roll backwards across the bed. I didn’t fancy my chances in any kind of fair fight. He hadn’t been in jail lately so he was fitter than I was and had a two stone advantage in weight.
He scrambled across the bed, trying to get at me, got caught up in the sheets and fell on his face. I kicked him in the head which didn’t accomplish much as I was bare-footed, but it shook him for a moment and by the time he was on his feet I had the Smith and Wesson in my hand.
“By God, I’ll have you now, Wyatt.”
He plunged forward and I shot the lobe off his left ear. He screamed like a woman and his hand went to the side of his head as blood spurted. He stared at me in horror and then the door burst open and Legrande appeared. A second later, he was pulled out of the way and Burke entered, the Browning in his hand.
He got between us fast, I’ll say that for him. “For God’s sake, what’s going on here?”
“You’d better get your bloody lover boy out of it if you want to keep him in one piece,” I said. “This time I only nicked him. I’d be just as happy to make it two in the belly and he can take his own sweet time about dying.”
A good ninety per cent of my anger was simulated and I even allowed my gun hand to shake a little. The total effect on Burke was remarkable. The skin tightened across the cheekbones, something stirred in his eyes and for a moment, hate looked out at me. I think it was then, at that precise moment, that I knew we were finally finished. That whatever had been between us was dust and ashes.
He allowed the Browning to drop to his side, turned and took Piet by the arm. “Better let me have a look at that for you.”
They left without a word. Legrande hesitated and said slowly, “Look, Stacey, maybe we should have words.”
I’d never seen him look so troubled. “Go on, get out of it,” I said. “I’m sick to death of the lot of you.”
I gave him a shove into the corridor and slammed the door. I had a hard job keeping my laughter down.
It was only later, alone in the silence, that I discovered that my hand really had begun to shake. I threw the Smith and Wesson on to the bed and dressed quickly.
I’d hung on to the keys of the Fiat and when I went down to the courtyard it was still there. As I climbed behind the wheel Legrande arrived and opened the other door.
“I’ve got to talk to you, Stacey. I don’t know which way I’m pointing.”
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t be welcome where I’m going.”
“As far as the village then. There’s a cafe there. We could have a drink.”
“Suit yourself, but I can’t give you long.”
He scrambled in and I drove away. He lit one of his eternal Gauloise and sat back, an expression of settled gloom on his hard, peasant face. He looked more like a Basque than anything else, which wasn’t surprising as he came from a village just over the border from Andorra.
He was a close man, one of the most efficient killers I have ever known, but not, I think, by instinct. He was not a cruel man by nature and I had seen him carry a child through twenty miles of the worst country in the Congo rather than leave it to die. He was a product of his time more than anything. A member of the Resistance during the war, he had killed his first man at the age of fourteen. Later had come the years of bloody conflict in the swamps of Indo-China, the humiliation of Dien Bien Phu followed by a Viet prison camp.
Men like him who had been through the fire swore that it would never happen again. They read Mao Tse-tung on guerrilla warfare and went to Algeria and fought the same kind of war against the same faceless enemy, fighting fire with fire, only to find, at the end, a greater humiliation than ever. Legrande had come down on the side of the
