Other Paths to Glory (28 page)

As he stared into Ollivier’s face he felt their roles had been reversed: the rabbit had become the weasel.

‘Jarras asked the foreman if there was anything else down there. The man said “What do you want? We can let you have a complete German if you like, we found seventy of the poor sods intact”. It was all there - weapons, equipment, men - everything.’

‘And in our case one man in particular,’ murmured Audley, ‘Second Lieutenant Harry Bellamy of the Rifle Brigade - your ‘H.J.V.B.’ and our Harry -
I
saw young Harry, with his beaver on, His misses on his thighs, bravely arm
‘
d
-
and that’s how someone found our Harry, armed with a Charles Lancaster shotgun.’

Ollivier shook his head in wonderment, looking from one to the other of them.

‘And you’ve deduced this from a single weapon - a single weapon? It could have come from a hundred different places - from anywhere in France.’

‘Oh no it couldn’t, Ted old buddy,’ Audley shook his head. ‘That gun meant something to Emerson, and I wouldn’t mind betting it wasn’t the only thing he was shown - identity tags, personal belongings enough to tie the gun to the owner and tip him off where the owner might be. Enough to make him think of tunnels under Hameau Ridge, anyway. Tunnels someone else had found again. He didn’t have time to check his theory out here, but he started checking it as soon as he got back to England … By which time the killers were already after him.’

‘But still there is no proof-‘

‘Proof? Are you crazy?’ Now Audley was puzzled. ‘Man, I don’t know what your special rules for neutral houses are, but I know damn well that one strong suspicion of insecurity is enough to put Bouillet Wood or anywhere else in quarantine - and you know it too. And if you won’t act on it, then the only thing left for me is to put a call through to Gensoul in Paris and I’m going to tell him Bouillet Wood’s at risk and Ted Ollivier has gone round the twist.’

He shook his head sorrowfully.

‘I haven’t got any choice - and nor have you, old buddy. No choice at all.’

Ollivier looked at them, then half turned away, his shoulders drooping.

‘No choice …’

He echoed the two words softly.

‘No choice at all…
Sorel!
’

There was a quick, dry rasp of leather against PVC, punctuated by a sharp click, and the policeman’s machine-pistol was suddenly covering them all.

‘Easy now,’ said Ollivier, looking directly at Mitchell as though he was the unknown quantity among them. ‘Just stand quite still. Captain.’

Mitchell glanced at Audley.

‘I said “quite still”, Captain. Just look at me, not at anyone else.’ Ollivier began to circle to the left, the policeman moving with him.

‘I never carry a gun, you know that,’ said Audley in a flat voice. ‘Neither does Lefevre.’

‘I - know…’ Ollivier patted Audley’s coat gently. ‘But - never … is a big word … Now you. Captain - fortunately - your uniform fits - very snugly … Good enough … Now, mademoiselle, your bag if you please - thank you … Just the one little pistol, I think - yes … So now you can all relax.’

He retraced his route, to stand beside the policeman.

‘No choice. I’m glad you said that, my David, because I want you to believe me when I say that what I am doing fills me with sorrow. I want you to understand that although I have no choice I shall never cease to regret this necessity.’

‘ “Never” is a big word,’ murmured Audley. ‘But in this case I think you may be right.’

‘You thought I was “round the twist”? My poor David - c’est une grande habilete que de savoir cacher son habilete - La Rochefoucauld should have warned you, eh?’ Ollivier nodded. ‘Let’s say your mind was on other things, as I intended it should be. I didn’t think it could be done, but I had to be sure.’

‘And if it could be done I could do it?’

Audley paused.

‘No, that’s not quite right, is it? If it could be done it had to be done through me because you could rely on me to bring the answer straight back to you.’

The big man pivotted towards Mitchell, admonishing him with a finger.

‘Now there’s a lesson for you, Paul: in this business you must never let anything make you behave predictably, least of all friendship.’

‘Friendship?’

Ollivier’s lips twisted in a half-smile.

‘Say rather I knew you never could resist a problem, David. Particularly one that didn’t concern you.’

‘We all make mistakes. Even you.’

‘
Vraiment.
I have made two serious ones.’

‘You let Bellamy’s shotgun slip through your hand - I take it that was the first one?’

‘I employed
canaille
with itchy fingers, you might put it like that. It never occurred to me that Turco would explore the galleries and find something of value.’

‘Turco?’

Nikki spoke for the first time, so huskily that the name was hardly more than a whisper.

Ollivier nodded.

‘Yes, mademoiselle. Turco was mine. And it was Turco who offered the gun to Jarras - the gun, a gold cigarette case and a gold hip flask, among other things.’

He glanced at Audley.

‘You were quite right. All conveniently inscribed with the same initials. There was even a letter in the cigarette case the young officer had written the day before he died. Chapter and verse, one might say. Unfortunately Turco did not understand what it all meant, only what it might be worth -and Jarras could not afford his price.’

‘And so he offered it to Emerson?’

‘Jarras knew Emerson was here. He thought at least he would find it interesting, so he led Turco to believe the rich Englishman might buy it.’

Audley nodded. ‘But in fact he was only interested in where it came from, eh?’

Provenance.

Ollivier looked at him in silence for a moment.

‘He offered one hundred francs for the letter - and a thousand francs for a mark on his map to show where it had been found. That was when Turco started to worry about what he had done. So he took the map - he had enough wit to say that he did not know exactly where it had come from, but he would try to find out.’

‘But instead he tried to sell the gun somewhere else?’

‘He was taking it to a dealer in Amiens when the Surveillance du Territoire spotted him. He lost the gun and the map - he was carrying the other objects in his pockets.’

Audley grunted.

‘And then the cat was out of the bag, because they reported straight to Gensoul, I take it … And your second error?’

Ollivier pointed at Mitchell.

‘You found another military expert who knew Emerson well. Our information was that there was only one, the young man Mitchell.’

‘Whom you had killed.’

‘With regret. But in war there are always casualties, civilians as well as soldiers.’

‘But whose war, Ted?’ Audley’s voice roughened. ‘Whose war?’

Whose War?
A sudden hideous understanding gripped Mitchell as he stared at them, from Audley to Ollivier to the policeman to Nikki. And to Nikki, her face as white as the chalk of the Somme, most of all - Nikki who was now disarmed and lined up with them, not with Ollivier and the man with the gun.

‘France’s, of course - ‘

‘Liar!’ Nikki’s eyes blazed. ‘Traitor!’

‘You are a child - ‘

‘But not a traitor. You - ‘

‘ - A child in a very old world. A very old, very wicked world.’ Ollivier’s voice deepened. ‘You can be forgiven for not understanding it.’

‘It is a neutral house. We have given our word - we have a solemn undertaking, I understand that.’

‘Save your breath, mademoiselle,’ said Audley. ‘This has nothing to do with France and nothing to do with honour. France doesn’t need to use characters like Turco - the late Turco, I presume, since he seems to have moved into the past tense. Another war casualty?’

He considered Ollivier silently for a moment.

‘In fact I’d guess Turco was that farm labourer of Paul’s, the one who got himself blown up so conveniently in Rattlesnake Ravine yesterday. Two birds with one stone again.’

Nikki frowned at him.

‘Two birds?’

‘Yes… Turco couldn’t be trusted any more. But they couldn’t just kill him and leave him lying around in case his body was identified, and if he was established as a farm worker he couldn’t just disappear off the ridge without questions being asked. By blowing him up they solved both those problems -and they flushed us out into the open too, come to that.
Three
birds.’

He nodded at Nikki.

‘He always was a shrewd operator, your boss. Ex-boss.’

Ollivier gave Audley a cold little smile.

‘And you were always a good guesser, my David.’

‘One of the best, old buddy. Give me a start and I’ll guess you right the way back to Moscow … or Peking … or one or two other less well-known places, depending on who’s meeting at Bouillet Wood tomorrow afternoon. And depending on what you’ve set up for them.’

The bogus policeman stirred uneasily.

‘
Patron, il se fait tard -
‘

Ollivier raised his hand.

‘
Oui
…
And for you, my David, too late.’

Audley regarded him coolly.

‘Getting rid of us is going to cramp your style, Ted.’

‘You think so?’

‘I surely do.’ Audley shook his head slowly. ‘If we’re not out and about bright and early tomorrow morning there are sure to be questions asked, and you won’t have the right answers. And if .you’ve another tragic accident - another three tragic accidents - in mind, I don’t honestly think anyone would swallow that, do you?’

Ollivier studied Audley intently. For one congealing instant of time they were like two men turned to stone by the same Gorgon image of failure. Then the big Englishman gestured so abruptly that the bogus policeman’s machine-pistol jerked towards him by reflex action.

‘Christ, Ted - it won’t work any more, whatever you’ve cooked up, don’t you see? There are too many things that can go wrong now.’

Audley’s thumb jabbed vaguely over his shoulder.

‘Jack Butler’s out there, so is Hugh Roskill - they’re not fools - ‘

Oh God! thought Mitchell despairingly. Hugh Roskill was in Paris and Colonel Butler was on his way back to England. All this coolness, this confidence, was nothing but the purest bluff, the last bid for time in a game already lost.

‘You say you’re sorry, and I believe you, Ted,’ Audley’s voice changed gear to a matching regret. ‘I can’t think you ever wanted to do what you’re doing - 1 think you’ve got a death-wish. That’s why you called me in: not because you wanted to succeed, but because you wanted to fail. But it doesn’t have to be fatal - for either of us. There’s still time to get out.’

‘Time?’ Ollivier’s face relaxed slowly. ‘A good try - but you’re wrong, David: I shall succeed. And with just a very little luck I shall survive too.’

‘But what will you have achieved? A bit more chaos in the world - is that what you want?’

The bitterness in Audley’s words smelt of defeat.

‘When we’ve both spent half our lives trying to prevent it?’

Ollivier’s smile returned.

‘That’s exactly right: half our lives and a little more chaos. Only this time perhaps more than a little.’

‘Why? For Christ’s sake, why?’

The Frenchman shrugged.

‘Because our way is wrong.’

‘And their way is right?’

‘Who is “they”?’

Ollivier cocked his head on one side.

‘When we were young there was “us” and “them” but now we are all the same - all “them” and all wrong … When I realised that, I knew I had spent my life trying to repair something not worth repairing. So I have stopped being a repair man: now I am in the business of demolition. I am putting a match to the fire from which the phoenix may rise.’

Audley stared at Ollivier in blank disbelief.

‘It looks more like a vulture from where I’m standing.’

Ollivier accepted the jibe tolerantly.

‘It’s all in the mind, my David - a little adjustment, no more. But unfortunately I don’t have time to adjust you to reality.’

‘Not in a million years, old buddy,’

Audley’s moment of bitterness had passed very quickly, to be replaced by what Mitchell guessed was a false unconcern.

‘But in the meantime do we get to know how you plan to demolish a summit meeting? Or do we go straight on to the casualty list?’

‘My dear David!’

Ollivier raised his hands in a gesture of surprise.

‘That I should be so so crude, so barbarous … when it is quite unnecessary. It is enough that you are taken out of circulation for a few hours.’

‘I’m most relieved to hear it.’

‘And I am most disappointed that you should need to be reassured. If you -‘ Ollivier glanced at Mitchell and Nikki in turn ‘ - if you are all sensible, you have nothing to fear. A little inconvenience for a little while, no more than that, I promise you.’

He smiled at Mitchell.

‘And you, Captain, will be more interested than inconvenienced.’

‘I will be?’

Mitchell attempted to sound as casual as Audley had done.

‘Undoubtedly. You’ve been so very clever already, after all to deduce the existence of my tunnel from so little. Would it not interest you to learn that you are standing five metres from its entrance?’

WOULD IT SURPRISE YOU?

Mitchell looked around the barn slowly. It didn’t surprise him, now he knew it, that there was a tunnel entrance somewhere in Bouilletcourt Farm; if there were tunnels running the length of the ridge, from Bouillet village to the wood, from the wood to the Prussian Redoubt, and from the redoubt back to the ravine, then there would certainly have been shafts down to them from the strongpoint in the farm.

That was not surprising, it was obvious; and equally it was obvious that any surviving entrance could not be in the open, where it would be too well-known if time and weather hadn’t called it in. Only under cover could such an entrance survive and remain secret, and the farm buildings provided the only cover within a mile of the house in the wood.

But it was not obvious here in the barn, because the barn was completely empty; around him were four blank walls, windowless and broken only by the postern at his back and a pair of heavy double-doors at the opposite end. Thick ropes of ancient cobwebs sagged across the rough brickwork and the plank floor beneath him was scuffed and scarred with years of hard usage. Cobwebs and dirt were the barn’s only visible contents.