Other Paths to Glory (22 page)

It was very quiet in the wood, with not a sound from its thousands of dead soldiers, British and German.

‘So then they set up the neutral houses. If two countries have a problem, they just approach any third party for the key to a neutral house. No publicity, no TV, no questions asked - permanent top security guaranteed at head-of-state level. All the latest anti-bugging devices and experts from all sides can spot-check them at any time as a matter of routine. They’ve been in operation for five years now without a hitch.’

‘They?’

‘No names, no pack-drill, Paul. There are a dozen safe houses in half a dozen countries - maybe.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘That this was a neutral house? For sure, not until a moment ago. It’s a new one on me.’

‘But you guessed?’

Audley flashed a glance at Ollivier, then shrugged.

‘France is a popular country for meetings - got a reputation for fair dealing, I can’t think why. Maybe because the cops have got things screwed down tight. But Americans met the North Vietnamese here - maybe right here - long before the Paris talks started. They’ve met the Russians too, and the Chinese. The Israelis have met the Egyptians three times in France to my certain knowledge … And the specification fitted like a glove.’

‘Specification?’

‘The place is just right. Biggish house, but not too big. Screened from direct sight. Impossible to approach without being seen. Off the beaten track - strangers in these villages stand out like sore thumbs, and there’s no tourist traffic - but not too far off. Close to the Paris motorway, and the major junction with the Brussels-Liege-Aachen motorway is just south of Bapaume. Close enough to the Channel! And I’d guess there’s a helicopter pad behind the house somewhere. Made for the job, the whole place.’

There was that little field in the middle of the wood just north of the house, where he had once found all the British and German cartridges, Mitchell remembered, his mind staggering under the implications of the situation. Because he still didn’t know what Audley and Butler did - although he now seemed to have joined them, for God’s sake! - he hadn’t known what to expect. They had always seemed more like cops than robbers, defenders of the peace and security of the realm, but what he had never suspected was the rarified level at which they operated: the ultimate level of secret summit meetings.

He realised he was staring at Audley - and clear through him - just the way Audley had in the past stared at him.

‘I understand - more or less.’

‘Good.’ Audley swung towards Ollivier. ‘You’ve got a meeting here and the security angle’s going sour on you - is that it?’

‘We think something’s up - ‘ Ollivier began cautiously.

‘Oh, come on, Ted - how many bodies do I have to produce to make you talk? What about last night, come to that? Was that an accident, then?’

Ollivier smiled wryly.

‘Oddly enough, David, it looks very much as if it
was
an accident.’

‘To whom?’

‘A Spanish farm worker. They employ them on the farms hereabouts, have done for years. This man was a - a scavenger of old war material. He sold what he found. His employer had warned him before that he was living on borrowed time, but it seems he was foolish.’

‘You’d vetted him?’

‘We have vetted everyone who was not born and bred on the ridge - and some of those who were, also.’ There was an edge of exasperation in Ollivier’s tone. ‘Do you want to teach us our business, eh?’

Audley rubbed his chin, staring at the tall Frenchman in silence.

‘But you called me in, Ted. Why did you do that?’

‘Because you I can trust, my friend,’ replied Ollivier simply. ‘I know you will not go shooting your mouth off - I know you will keep your counsel, and mine if need be … I trust you.’

‘I’m touched,’ Audley murmured. ‘Relatively touched, anyway.’

‘Relatively?’

‘Relatively … Gensoul insisted you made contact with Perfidious Albion about Emerson, and I was your best bet. That’s fair enough - so relatively touched, yes.’

‘As a matter of fact, you were all my own idea.’

‘Indeed!’

Audley missed his step, scuffing his shoes in the carpet of fallen leaves.

‘Then you really must be in a hole, Ted.’

‘Not a hole. Maybe a quandary - an impasse.’

‘Sounds like a hole to me.’

The silence was broken suddenly by distant barking. The dogs with eyes as big as soup-plates were hungry, probably.

‘A few days since - ago - one of our agents, a man of the Surveillance du Territoire, spotted someone he knew … not far from here. A known terrorist.’

‘Someone I know?’ asked Audley.

Ollivier shook his head.

‘I would think not. The man is a former Pied-Noir known as Turco. But you would know the type very well, I’ve no doubt - you have them in Ireland now.’

That was one for Nikki, thought Mitchell, keeping his eyes down.

‘Political? Or non-political?’

‘Non-political.’

Mitchell looked at Audley.

‘Is there such a thing as a non-political Irishman?’

Audley returned the look, unsmiling.

‘What he means is an old-fashioned psychopath. When the going gets nasty and most of the genuine patriots have been killed or captured - or had enough - the scum comes into its own. They don’t find the dirty jobs unpleasant, the psychos don’t. They like ‘em.’

He turned back to Ollivier.

‘A hit man?’

The Frenchman nodded.

‘Then you’ve got trouble. What did your agent do?’

‘It was in a village near Amiens - Querrieu - they were both in cars. Our man turned round and followed him, but Turco’s no fool and he must have been on the look-out -‘

‘Which clinches it. So the following turned into chasing?’

Audley cocked his head on one side.

‘And - let me guess - someone’s car got itself blown up, maybe?’

Ollivier gave an exasperated grunt, squaring up to Audley.

‘The devil with it! How much do you really know?’

‘Unfortunately just that. Whose car was it?’

‘Turco’s - he ran out of road on the edge of town.’

‘So Turco is no longer with us?’

‘Regrettably - most regrettably - he is.’ Ollivier spread his hands eloquently. ‘Our agent was approaching the car when it exploded - another few metres and he would have been caught by it himself. He was disconcerted - ‘

‘Disconcerted? I don’t wonder!’

Ollivier shrugged.

‘Well… he assumed Turco was still inside. By the time he learned otherwise it was too late.’

‘Hmm ..’ Audley nodded to himself. ‘What sort of explosion was it - bomb or petrol?’

‘Our experts say there were explosives in the car. The explosion set off the petrol.’

Audley’s head continued to bob. ‘I see … so Turco crashed his car and then blew it up, resourceful fellow - two birds with one grenade, so to speak.’

‘Two birds?’

‘That’s right. He caused a diversion to cover his escape and he reckoned on destroying whatever was in the car, which he didn’t have time to take with him. Right, Ted?’

Ollivier regarded Audley with a suspicious frown.

‘You still aren’t being straight with me, my friend, are you? Just how much do you know?’

‘Only what you’ve told me - and I’m having to work damned hard for that.’

The frown graduated to a scowl which creased Ollivier’s face into crumpled brown wrapping paper.

‘Come on, my David -
perfide Albion
is right! - I didn’t say there was anything in the car. You said it.’

Audley stared back at his friend with one eyebrow insultingly raised.

‘But you didn’t say I had to act stupid - I know you prefer
stupide Albion,
but we can’t always oblige you, no matter how much we try.’

The eyebrow came down and the voice levelled.

‘Man - you sent us a charred map of the Somme battlefield. A German map, but Lefevre identified it in five seconds flat. A map we captured in 1916, and I give you one bottle of fine cognac to a pint of lukewarm beer that it had “Charles Emerson” on it and you got it out of Turco’s car … and if you trust me, how about damn well showing it, eh?’

Mitchell caught a glimpse of Nikki’s face beyond the Frenchman’s, and wondered whether his own bore the same look of fascinated and inadequately concealed amusement. Obviously Audley and Ollivier were men out the same mould, and nobody, superiors or inferiors, treated them with the same outspokenness as that with which they treated each other. They were probing each other and playing to their little gallery at the same time, and vastly enjoying themselves into the bargain: big, clever children entranced with their game because short of war it was the most exciting game of all.

The barking in the distance reached an angry crescendo, then cracked into frightening yelping and trailed off through whimpering into silence.

‘The map, of course!’ Ollivier’s face uncreased. ‘It is I who am getting slow in my old age.’

‘Too suspicious, certainly. If you’d just come clean for one minute we could do business.’

‘Business?’ Ollivier seemed surprised by the word. ‘What business has your country got in this?’

‘I told you - three dead bodies. Dead Englishmen, and killed in England too - they make it our business, Ted. We’d like to balance our books with a dead Frenchman or two, maybe.’

‘A somewhat… insular viewpoint under the circumstances, if I may say so.’

‘You may say so. But screw your circumstances,
mon ami,
’
said Audley lightly. ‘The map was in the car, but Turco could have taken it with him without much sweat I should have thought. So was there something else he couldn’t take, then?’

‘The map was in the trunk - how do you say it in English, the boot? - in the boot of the car, and it was blown clear. But you are right, there was something else in there. A weapon.’

‘Surprise, surprise.’

‘An unusual weapon.’

‘Let me guess again. Something to knock down a visiting helicopter, like our Rapier and Blowtorch - or a Redeye - ?’

‘Nothing like that.’

‘Not that new Czech sniper’s SLR?’

Ollivier shook his head.

‘You’ll never guess, not in a million years. Does the names Charles Lancaster mean anything to you?’

‘Charles - Lancaster? Who - ?’

‘Who and what. You are not devotee
of la chasse,
clearly.’

The Frenchman lifted an imaginary rifle, traversing it at the undergrowth just ahead.

‘Poufl Poufl Two pheasants for the pot - ‘

‘A shotgun.’

‘A shotgun exactly. But not just any shotgun. The Rolls-Royce of shotguns. And this was a most special of the most special.’

‘A custom-built job.’

Ollivier nodded.

‘We took it to a gunsmith in Paris. It was only slightly damaged in the explosion, and still he almost wept. He said the English guns were the finest in the world, and a Charles Lancaster was the best of the finest, better than Purdey or anyone.’

‘He identified it?’

‘Identified? He knew it straight away - it seems there was a Lancaster patent trigger, single action - the recoil from the right barrel cocks for the left - ‘

‘I’m sorry. I meant did he know whose gun it was - you said “special of the special”.’

‘Ah, I see what you mean. He could not, no, but it was a gun made for one man, one of a pair of guns. It had the initials “H.J.V.B.” in silver on the stock and it was numbered “Two” on the top of the barrel flat.’

‘And valuable, I suppose?’

Mitchell circled unobtrusively to get a better view of Audley’s face, warned equally by the shallowness of the question - it was a useless, fatuous question, utterly extraordinary under the circumstances - as by the lack of excitement in the voice. And the big man’s expression only confirmed his suspicion: the one thing he wasn’t going to admit here and now was that officers of the 2.9th Rifles had carried shotguns into battle.

Ollivier shrugged.

‘A matched pair of them now, in good condition - not less than 30,000 francs, possibly a lot more. It is hard to be precise with such things.’

Audley went through an elaborate process of mental arithmetic, staring casually at Mitchell as he did so.

‘That would be, say, £2,500 in real money … was it brand new?’

‘No, it was not. The gunsmith dated it to the turn of this century. About 1903 he estimated.

‘Practically a museum piece,’ said Audley. ‘Not that it matters either way. The obvious thing to do now is to cancel the meeting here. It doesn’t matter who’s coming - get them to some other neutral house of yours.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Nonsense! If somebody’s got something planned for this place it’s the only sensible thing to do.’

‘And admit that we cannot guarantee security in the heart of our own country? That we can spend tens of millions on the latest equipment, and one glimpse of one piece of scum throws us into a panic?’ Ollivier’s tone hardened. ‘If we did that just once there would be no neutral houses - anywhere.’

‘So you ignore Turco?’

‘No. The wasps buzz round the jampot - naturally. So we seal down the lid tighter while we look for the wasps’ nest.’

‘We?’

Ollivier wagged his finger at Audley.

‘You didn’t come over here just to talk to me, my David. You had your plan of action too.’

‘True. And naturally you want to know what it is.’

‘Naturally I
must
know what it is. Without that you can have no plan any more, only the next boat from Calais.’

‘Well that’s laying it on the line, certainly.’ Audley eyed the Frenchman dispassionately. ‘We tell all or we get the bum’s rush, eh?’

‘Most regrettably - yes.’ Ollivier smiled. ‘I cannot have you stirring the wasps’ nest upon your own - we might both get stung. But I might be prepared to let you help me look for it.’

Audley considered the proposition, slowly nodding to himself.

‘Fair enough, Ted. You’ve got yourself a deal,’ he said decisively.

‘
So?
’

‘So we find out for you why Charles Emerson had to die. And in return you make sure his killers are paid in full?’

‘
D
‘
accord.
’
Ollivier held out his hand. ‘You and Captain Lefevre will report to me, and to me only, through Mademoiselle MacMahon. Trust nobody else - your side or mine. We trust only each other.’