The Brigadier’s pale blue eyes were intent. ‘You don’t hate him, though?’
‘Hate him?’ Silly question – strangely silly question!
‘Christ – yes! I hated his guts! If I’d caught him I’d have made him walk back along the other side of the road, along the verge we hadn’t cleared!’ Silly question
– ? ‘Then he stopped playing games with us – maybe he was trying something new, and his hand slipped ...
is what I’ve always hoped . . . But we were fair game: it was him against us, with the extra traps – the riflemen who set off the first traps were your random victims, Brigadier. It was us he was after – ’ He blinked suddenly, aware that he had almost lost the thread of his own anecdote ‘ – what I mean is ... it’s a nice change to be setting the trap, not having to defuse the bloody thing. We never got a chance to do that in Italy.’ Now he was aware that his mouth was twitching, too. ‘And fortunately . . . very fortunately . . . I moved to Bailey bridges before his successor arrived. Because I might have been caught by the next particular variation.’
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‘Yes.’ The intentness misted up suddenly. ‘But it was a bridge that got you in the end, wasn’t it? The Volturno bridge was it – the eighth wonder of the world?’
Fred was conscious of his hand for the first time that day. ‘You know a lot about me.’ He amended the question to a statement as he spoke.
‘I know everything about you, major. Except how your hand is today – how is it?’
‘It’s okay. Almost as good as new.’ Thinking about the damn thing always made it ache. ‘It does most things adequately.’
‘You’ve learnt to point with your left hand?’
The bastard really did know everything, right down to that one particular crooked index finger. ‘I use my right hand to point round corners, actually. It does that very well.’
‘Good.’ Clinton accepted the tart reply without offence. ‘I have an acquaintance in the gunners who maintains that all sapper officers are mad: Would you agree with that?’
It sounded like an exam question. ‘I have an acquaintance – no, a friend . . . who says that gunners are people who have just enough maths to pass School Certificate –just enough. If they were cleverer they’d have become sappers. But they aren’t – ’ Damn! he thought suddenly, as he realized that he’d missed the dummy4
correct answer – the required answer? Was there time –
‘Actually, he didn’t say “mad” – he said “stark staring mad”.’ Clinton smiled his terrible thin-lipped smile again.
But that was obliging of him, thought Fred: it offered that second chance on a plate. ‘Then I have the necessary qualification for joining this unit, obviously.
Apart from my banking connection, that is ...
Everyone’s been telling me, ever since I arrived, that everyone else is stark staring mad – or stark raving mad . . . everyone from Colonel Colbourne himself downwards . . .’ He had gone too far – ?
‘Downwards to young Audley? Your fellow spy?’
Something inhibited Fred from shopping young Audley, whose own big mouth caused him enough trouble as it was. ‘Captain Audley is an exception to the rule, I rather think.’
‘ “In more ways than one”?’ Clinton quoted the young man’s words cruelly. ‘He’s certainly poor, I grant you.
But that comes of having a father addicted to fast women and slow horses before the war, which has mortgaged him to the hilt. Although we can’t blame him for that, poor boy. Any more than we can praise you for your great expectations, major.’
For the first time Fred crossed the man’s stare with one of his own with a sense of steel sliding against steel, dummy4
even though he knew it was anger and not courage which animated him. ‘Oh no?’
‘Oh yes, major – I also know all about Captain Audley.
And all about Colonel Augustus Colbourne. And all his other officers. Which I should know, because each one of them has been hand-picked by me – each one, including you, major.’ He paused. ‘Or perhaps not quite all. And there’s the rub.’
The coldness of those final words utterly extinguished Fred’s anger: from fancying himself as a duellist he saw himself for the rabbit he was.
‘Now – straight questions and short answers, major.
You’ve talked to young Audley. And you’ve travelled with Driver Hewitt. And neither of them possesses the gift of silence . . . though Audley’s still young enough to learn, I hope. But between them they must have told you what they think TRR-2 is doing, eh?’
Kyriakos had given him the answer to that one, long ago and long before Audley or Hewitt had talked. ‘You are man-hunters.’
‘Don’t say “you” – say “we”. What sort of men do we hunt?’
‘Germans.’ But then what the devil were they doing in Greece on the Eve of Scobiemas? So that answer wasn’t quite adequate. And then he remembered the group picture Audley had shown him – and, much dummy4
more vividly, ‘Corporal Keys’ inability with a simple uniform. ’Civilians – scientists – ?‘ But then he remembered the heavily-laden lorry. ’But also machinery, too – equipment.‘ But then he thought also of what Audley had said. ’But that may be a cover. Is it?‘
‘Partially. But not wholly. And, in fact, our chief cover has been Colonel Colbourne’s celebrated obsession with him – ’ Clinton pointed upwards ‘ – and with the final resting place of General Quinctilius Varus and the men of the XVIIth, XVIIIth and XIXth Roman Legions . . . whose bones are most likely scattered over many square miles of the Teutoburgerwald.’
‘And they – the Americans – actually believed that?’
‘For a time, perhaps. They, the Americans. And also they, the French. And they, the Russians, major.
Because it happens to be a real obsession of Colbourne’s – an obsession in an otherwise extremely clever and well-balanced man. And one shared by a great many otherwise clever and well-balanced German professors and scholars down the years, also.
But there’s nothing strange in obsessions, major – a lot of us have them. And at least Colbourne’s is an innocent one, which doesn’t hurt anyone.’
Coming from such a cold fish, that was a surprisingly warm defence. Or maybe there was more to Brigadier Clinton than met the eye? ‘It just makes them – us – a dummy4
laughing-stock – ? But that was what you wanted, of course!’
‘Yes.’ Clinton looked up at Hermann for a moment, who was safely frozen in stone, before coming back to Fred. ‘Except that it didn’t require Augustus Colbourne’s private obsession to make a laughing-stock of us. Us, the British. Because we were that already, in this particular field of operations.’
Lucky Hermann! ‘We were – ?’
‘And not just among our loyal allies. Among the Germans, too – perhaps among them, above all ... our defeated enemies, major. The only difference is that their laughter must be bitter as well as incredulous, watching us make such fools of ourselves.’
That was what the Crocodile had said. But he hadn’t really understood it then, and he didn’t now. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘Yes – of course.’ Clinton cocked an eye at him.
‘You’ve been too busy disporting yourself happily at Vouliagmeni beach with Colonel Michaelides’ cast-off mistresses.’ The eye became knowing. ‘I know all about you, major’, it reminded him. ‘Well, we haven’t had much time for that in Germany. Because we’ve been discovering just how clever the Germans really were, major, you see.’