‘Did you ask the Americans to stop me?’
‘No, it must have been them. It’s how it works in old man Baker’s factories. He compartmentalizes: keeps people and their tasks in separate boxes. The person making the bullets in one part of the factory doesn’t need to know about someone rifling gun barrels in another. The parts only come together in the gun.’
‘I’m not sure that I understand . . .’
‘Power, old boy,’ That was James. ‘Keep what the individual knows to the minimum, but know the whole picture yourself. No one can challenge you then, and you get to do whatever you like, because no one else knows enough to do it better.’
‘. . . which is why he told the Yanks to stop you, but didn’t tell me. It wasn’t about not telling you, it was about not telling me. So that I couldn’t disagree with him, or learn enough to start worrying at it, and work out what’s what. Do you see that now?’ Cliff.
‘Maybe.’ I didn’t respond immediately; then, ‘Two more questions.’
‘No promises.’
‘OK. How did they get to the Yanks?’
‘Probably through that Captain that Addie is shagging. I don’t think that he’s done much flying since he took up with the old lady. He probably knew someone who knew someone, and so on. All of a sudden the Yankee police all over Paris are falling over themselves to lock you up.’
‘. . . and does Grace know that someone’s chasing after her to get her back?’
‘Almost certainly. Someone must have tipped her the wink. That’s why she’s on the move all the time.’
‘Does she know it’s me?’
‘That’s another question. And a particularly stupid one. You said two questions.’ I let that hang, and Cliff eventually said, ‘. . . anyway, I don’t know that. This all seemed so simple when I waved you off. How did I get to be hiding in a bomb hole in Germany explaining myself to you?’
He sounded tired. Almost as tired as James’s old street map looked. James glanced up, folded it and said, ‘See that spectacularly large heap of masonry over there?’ He gestured vaguely to the north-west. ‘That once could have been a main telephone exchange.’
The Scottish soldier said, ‘There must be two or three cellar doors around it. There’s folk under there: I’ve seen civilians diving in and out.’
I borrowed his helmet, and cautiously poked my head over the lip of our crater. No one shot at me. The heap of rubble was about fifty yards away: a mixture of brick and stone the shape of the long barrows you can still see in Wiltshire, but about a hundred times that size. The original building must have been as big as the Bank of England. There was another bomb hole just this side of it. I couldn’t hear any fighting. They must have run out of shells for their Bofors, or were saving them for afters. When I slid down, and gave the Scottie back his helmet, I told James, ‘Fifty-yard sprint, to another crater just alongside it.’
Cliff had put his pistol away, and had been prodding the ground thoughtfully with a three-foot length of half-inch piping he’d pulled from the crater wall. He said, ‘. . . and if they’ve a Bren zeroed on the space between we won’t get halfway. I have a better idea.’ He had finished tying a grubby white handkerchief at the end of the pipe. Then he stood up, and was immediately head and shoulders up, with his flag hanging limply above him. ‘Let me get halfway before you follow.’
James wasn’t that stupid. He let him get to the rim of the next bomb hole before he moved us. The Scottie came with us. We crouched, and moved fast. I asked him, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Alan. Sanderson. Gordons.’
‘I’m Charlie, and that’s James and Cliff. We don’t belong to anything.’
James turned for a half-pace, and gave him a nod. A Sunday stroll.
Our new pal asked, ‘What’s the matter with your army, sir? D’y’ hae no use for ranks?’
I explained, ‘It’s the work they do. Sometimes things get mixed up. I’m just along for the ride.’
‘That’s my first mistake then, sir. I thought that they were looking to you for their orders.’
‘We are,’ James told him. ‘Charlie just hasn’t worked that out yet.’
There was a foot of water in the bottom of the new hole. Cliff was up at the face of the crater. The heap of brick intruded into one side of it: I suppose that the water was burst main pipe – it looked clean enough.
‘What I want to know before I get my boots wet,’ James told us, ‘is what that bloody horrible rustling sound is. Sounds like rats.’
That’s when I noticed it myself. It was the noise that your boots make when you kick your way along gutters full of dried leaves in autumn. I bent to the bricks to listen, and then I heard them. Voices. The murmur of many voices. We needed a breather anyway, and I hadn’t actually worked out what I intended to do – stroll down the cellar steps, and ask if anyone knew Ingrid Knier – always remembering to spell it with a K.
I asked Cliff, ‘Whose baby did Grace have then? It wasn’t mine, or any of my lot. We came along too late.’
‘That leaves an American flyer, and the old man, doesn’t it?’
‘And once they worked out Grace might have had her stepfather’s baby, they changed their minds about getting her back? I wonder if they ever played Happy Families when she was a kid?’
When Cliff eventually responded he asked, ‘What are you thinking now?’
‘I was thinking What a cock-up. Sir.’
Cliff sniffed. So did James. It was probably some public school coded message.
Alan said, ‘There’s still no shooting,’ and, ‘I can see one of those cellar doors from here. It’s one
