Hard Knocks (39 page)

“Well well, Major, to what do I owe the pleasure?” he said, aiming for a light casual note and just failing to carry it off.

Gilby stood and stared at him for a while, not trying to mask his distaste. “Venko’s coming,” he said, “but I’m sure you knew that already, seeing as you’ve been supplying him with the armaments to attack us.”

Rebanks waved a tired hand in the Major’s direction, as though he’d heard all this before and was bored with it. “Yeah well,” he drawled, “at least his credit was good.”

Gilby’s features locked down tight. He took a quick step forwards and backhanded Rebanks across the face, hard enough to send his former weapons’ handling instructor reeling.

And all of a sudden the atmosphere in that cramped cell had changed. I found myself parachuted in on the side of the interrogators and I didn’t like the view from there.

I moved in, put my hand on Gilby’s arm. “Valentine,” I murmured, deliberately using his first name, trying to humanise him. “This isn’t helping.”

For a second Gilby looked at me with that film of madness covering his eyes, then it lifted. He blinked a couple of times, came back to himself, rolled the tension out of his neck.

Rebanks checked out the inside of his mouth with his tongue and dabbed a couple of finger ends at his cheekbone. It had started to swell, but the blow hadn’t broken the skin. He was shaken, clearly, but still defiant.

“Since when did you start taking orders from a girl?” he jeered.

“Considering Charlie was the one who caught you in the act,” Sean told him, eyes narrowed, “I’d watch your tone if I were you.”

Rebanks swung his gaze back to me and I read part hatred, part fear there. The desire to be in a room alone with me for a short period of time was both an urgent desire and a phobia, all rolled into one.

“Why did you do it, mate?” Figgis broke in then, sounding saddened rather than angry.

Rebanks leaned back, aware he had his chance of an audience, and looked round the gathered faces. It was only me he avoided eye contact with. “The money, of course,” he said. When nobody responded to that he laughed. “Come on, we were all of us sick to the back teeth of the pay cheques bouncing every month.” He threw a disparaging look in Gilby’s direction. “Whatever else the army trained you for, Major, it certainly wasn’t accountancy.”

The Major’s face darkened again, but this time he didn’t make any moves towards him.

Rebanks eyed him for a moment, as if waiting to be sure before he continued. “I have contacts who can supply just about whatever you could wish for in the armaments line. That’s my job,” he said, almost boastful now. “And when you have those kinds of contacts, people get to know about it. I was approached by a buyer who wanted PM-98s. He offered good money to supply them, modified with heavier springs, and I took it, that’s all. I’d have been a fool not to. I didn’t ask any questions.”

“What about when Venko’s lot jumped us in the forest?” Figgis demanded.

“They might not have been the same guns,” Rebanks protested. “I mean, why the hell would a guy with Gregor Venko’s connections need to come to a comparatively small-time player like me for weapons. It didn’t make sense.”

“The heavier springs would make the weapons handle hollowpoint ammo with less chance of misfeeds,” Sean pointed out quiely. “Did that not ring any bells?”

Rebanks shrugged, in itself an admission.

“Blakemore knew they were Venko’s men, as soon as they jumped us,” I said, recalling his vicious words to the driver of the Peugeot. “Is that why you ran him off the road? Because he was getting too close to finding out about your little deals?”

Rebanks looked at me blankly for a second, then laughed. Really laughed, letting his head go back carelessly against the stonework behind him. He rubbed at it, rueful. “Wow,” he said at last. “I would have put you down as closer to being a redhead than a blonde, Charlie. But coming out with crap like that, are you sure you don’t dye your hair?”

He sat forwards then, let his eyes drift slyly across Gilby’s men. “Oh I can tell you who killed old Blakemore and I can tell you why,” he said. “But what’s it worth to you to know?”

Gilby let out an annoyed breath, little more than a hissing puff down his nostrils. “Don’t you know the penalties for gunrunning, Mr Rebanks?” he rapped.

“No,” Rebanks said, shaking his head, insolent. “But tell me, Major, are they worse than the ones for armed kidnapping?”

He let that one drift for a moment. In the confines of that dirty cell I could hear each man breathing.

“All right, Mr Rebanks,” Gilby said through his teeth. “What do you want?”

Rebanks never got to state his terms. I barely caught the flash of movement out of the corner of my eye as someone made a dash for the doorway. There was a scuffle behind me. By the time I’d turned, O’Neill was on the floor, thrashing about with Sean’s knee firmly planted in the middle of his back.

Sean looked up and nodded briefly to Figgis. “Nice moves,” he said.

Figgis gave him a faint smile as he uncoiled that long body back into its normal inoffensive mode. Todd was fast enough himself, but he was left just gaping at the pair of them.

Gilby watched O’Neill’s struggles impassively, then turned back to Rebanks. “Well,” he said, “I suppose we won’t be needing your help in this matter after all, Mr Rebanks.” He tried to keep the smugness out of his tone, but couldn’t quite manage it. To Sean he said, “Get him up.”

Sean stood, yanking the Irishman to his feet, seeming totally unconcerned by the other man’s weight and exertions. At one point O’Neill managed to get an arm loose and took a savage swing at Sean’s head.

Sean ducked out of the way almost negligently, hooked both O’Neill’s arms up behind him and locked him tight. He applied just enough pressure on the joints so that O’Neill had to rise up on his toes to try and lessen it. Sean kept him there, teetering.

Gilby frowned at his man. “Why?” he said. “What the hell had Blakemore done to you?”

O’Neill just glared at him, the scar twisting his face into a sneer.

I stepped forwards. “I think I can help you here,” I said. I took the Swiss Army knife out of my pocket and folded out its largest blade. For a second as I approached, O’Neill’s eyes bulged and he renewed his struggles, nearly popping a shoulder out in the process.

“Don’t be an arsehole, O’Neill,” I said mildly, and cut his military style green jumper in two straight up the centre. I put the knife away and unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it wide open. He was one of those men with a distinct hollow at his breastbone. The skin covering it was pale and he was visibly sweating.

Below his ribs on the left-hand side – the same side where Elsa had been shot, I noticed – was a large square of white dressing, held in place with strips of surgical tape. I looked straight into O’Neill’s eyes as I reached for it, saw the dismay there as it came away from his ribcage with a faint rip.

Underneath was nothing. No wound, no blood. Just unmarred, smooth, clear skin.

I glanced down at the dressing. It was clean.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who’s not a team player,” I murmured, then turned and dumped the wad of dressing into Gilby’s hand. He was staring backwards and forwards from me to O’Neill.

“But he was wounded,” he said, confusion making his voice blank. “I saw him—”

“He faked it,” I said. “It wasn’t hard. He has to fake something very similar on every course during the night shoot. Blakemore knew that he’d panicked under fire and bottled out, and he was threatening to tell. That’s how you were compromised, Major. That’s how Kirk was shot.” As I said this last part I met Sean’s gaze.
That’s it
, I thought.
Now the job really
is
over. But where do we go from here?

Gilby looked at O’Neill, and saw the truth of what I’d just said written in the other man’s face. He gestured to Sean, unable to speak over the top of his disgust.

Sean released O’Neill, throwing him contemptuously onto the camp bed next to Rebanks. The Irishman bounced against the wall and huddled into the corner.

I looked at Todd and Figgis. Their faces held much the same expression, not of shock, but of recognition. They were going back over the same events, viewing them in the same new light, as the depth and scale of O’Neill’s betrayal hit them.

“Congratulations, Major,” Rebanks said then, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “If you lock all of us away down here, who’s going to fight your battles for you?”

“I’d rather have a handful of good men than a battalion of rotten cowards,” Gilby shot back. He turned for the door, then paused and added grimly, “Besides, Mr Rebanks, if Gregor Venko does carry out his threat to slaughter every one of us, I’ll make it my last mission in this life to personally make sure both you and Mr O’Neill are included.”

Gilby gathered the students and the rest of the Manor staff together in the dining hall to deliver the bad news. He took to the dais, with Figgis and Todd flanking him, seemingly unaware of how lonely a figure he presented up there.

Sean preferred to stay down on the main floor, hitching a hip onto one of the window ledges, watching the reactions from the ground. I leaned against the wall off to one side of him. Close enough, but still keeping my distance.

I felt rather than saw him turn his head to study me, but I refused to meet his eyes. I’d said what I had to, for better or worse. It wasn’t up to me to push him for a response. Besides, we had other more pressing things to worry about right now.

I checked the time on the clock on the wall high above the Major’s head. It read nine thirty-two. Just over twelve hours to go before Venko’s invasion.

Perhaps Gilby was aware of the shortening of time, also. He spelled it all out for them in brief, clipped sentences. Somehow, the situation sounded so much more desperate laid out that way, with no attempt to soften the blows he was delivering.

At first there was a kind of uncertain astonishment, teetering almost on the edge of laughter. As though this was all part of the course and their reactions were being monitored towards a final graduation mark. It was only as the Major ploughed on, relentless, that the gradual realisation spread.

The cooks and domestic staff didn’t need much convincing. They’d already experienced first-hand a taster of the kind of treatment they could expect from Gregor Venko’s army. I caught their nervous glances and knew there wouldn’t be many who’d have the stomach for a second run.

When the Major wound up his short speech by extending an offer to leave immediately to anyone who wanted it, for a moment there was a silence brimmed with shock. People shuffled uncomfortably in their seats, began making surreptitious eye contact with their neighbours. Desperate to leave, nevertheless nobody wanted to be the one whose nerve was first to break.

Eventually, one of the cooks stood up, truculent as he unknotted his apron and dumped it firmly on his chair. His exit broke the surface tension. More people rose, students and staff alike, gathering momentum with mass. By the time the movement slowed, only a pathetically small group remained resolutely in their chairs.

The big Welshman Craddock had stayed put, but he probably would have done the same if you’d told him nuclear war had just been declared. He just had that kind of placid nature. Michael Hofmann was another, his face blank as he rolled slowly through some inner thought process. Maybe the realisation of the danger he was in was just taking a long time to reach his brain. Romundstad was hunched forwards, looking poised for flight as though he might change his mind at any moment, but he stayed in his seat.

There were two surprises. Declan Lloyd was one of them. He was lounging back in his chair putting on a good show of airy lack of concern, with only the jerky swinging of his casually crossed foot to call him a liar.

The other unexpected volunteer was Ronnie. He was the sole member of the domestic staff who’d stood his ground. The Major’s gaze tracked slowly across everyone, showing neither approval nor disappointment at their decisions. He nodded once, briefly, to those who’d elected to stay.

“Thank you,” he said with quiet dignity. Then he shifted his attention to the others, told them to pack their stuff and take one of the trucks into Einsbaden village. “Although you may like to consider a fallback position,” he warned, almost taking delight in trying to make them squirm. “One somewhat further away from the front line, as it were.”

We who’d elected to stay sat and watched as they filed out. Mostly they didn’t look at us or, if they did, it was with a pitying disbelief. We were mad, their thoughts clearly said. We didn’t stand a hope in hell.

Maybe they were right.

The door closed behind the last of them, echoing slightly as if on an empty room.

Gilby and the two instructors stepped down from the dais, coming to sit among us. The sudden breakdown in formality showed a nice common touch on his part. It gathered us to the cause.

The Major needed all his communication skills once he started to outline the situation in more detail. He didn’t make it sound any better than it had done in broad strokes.