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SOLDIER NO
MORE
ANTHONY PRICE
PROLOGUE
Pyrexia of Unknown Origin
STARING AT THE blank ceiling above him, Roche knew exactly how poor bloody Adam had felt in the garden, stark naked and scared out of his wits.
But finally God cleared his throat to indicate that he had reached a decision.
"All right, you can put on your clothes, Captain Roche. And don't look so worried. There's absolutely nothing to be alarmed about—I'm not going to invalide you out, or anything drastic like that, if that's what you've been afraid of."
Despair filled Roche. Ever since they'd decided to refer him to God he'd been buoyed up by the hope that there might be dummy5
something rather seriously wrong with him, at least sufficiently for them to throw him out on the grounds of ill-health. To that end he had most scrupulously avoided taking the medication his French doctor had prescribed, and had done everything he had been told not to do. But he never did have any luck.
"Then what's wrong with me?" he said plaintively. "There is something wrong, damn it!"
"Oh yes . . . you've had a fever, but you're getting over that now, even if somewhat slowly .... What I meant is that there's nothing organically amiss. You're basically healthy." God reacted to his doubts by increasing his own air of reassurance. "You've had . . . and to some extent you still have . . . what my late distinguished predecessor in this job always diagnosed as 'a touch of the old PUO'."
"PUO?" Roche's spirits fell even lower. PUO sounded rather common, and not at all serious.
" 'Pyrexia of Unknown Origin'. But then he learnt most of his medicine in the Ypres salient in 1917 ... whereas I learnt most of mine with the Americans in Italy in '44. And they called it variously 'battle fatigue' or 'combat fatigue' when it came to causes, as opposed to symptoms." The reassurance became even blander. "I've seen much worse than you, Captain—
you've still got a lot of mileage in you, don't worry."
About a quarter of a mile, to the café-bar on the corner of the boulevard to be exact, thought Roche.
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God smiled at him. "Are you due for any leave?"
"Not until October."
"We'll change that." God took a piece of paper and uncapped his fountain pen. "What precisely is it that you do?"
Roche frowned. "I'm afraid I can't tell you that."
God continued to smile at him, while reaching down into a drawer in his desk. "My dear Captain Roche . . . you wouldn't have been referred to me if I hadn't been cleared to ask that question. I look over all you fellows from SHAPE and NATO, and the Embassy ... But to set your mind at rest—" he pushed what he'd taken from the drawer across the desk towards Roche "—will that suffice?"
Roche recognised the letter-head, and the rank on the identification folder positively overawed him. "Yes, sir."
"Not 'sir'. I left the red tabs behind in Italy." God replaced the authorisation and identity card in his desk. "The only difference in our relationship from the purely civilian is that I'm obliged to report on your state of health to London. But, as I say, you don't need to worry. Your case is by no means unique in these dark days. In fact, the first thing you've got to do is to stop worrying, Captain."
Worrying was what Roche was doing, and the ex-Brigadier had already exacerbated his worries by moving towards the causes of his patient's PUO.
"Yes, sir." There was only one thing for it: he had to confirm God's initial snap-diagnosis for the origin of his anxiety, even dummy5
if it was the reverse of the truth. "You're really not going to kick me out?"
"Perish the thought!" God regarded him benignly, then glanced down at the open folder at his elbow. "Sandhurst?"
"No, sir. National Service—regular commission after Korea."
“University?"
"Before National Service, sir."
"Just so . . ." The nod seemed to confirm the greater likelihood of PUO among graduates who had remained with the Colours than among Sandhurst career officers. "And now Military Intelligence here in Paris?"
“Yes, sir."
God looked up. "In the field?"
This was what Roche had feared, for it was easily checkable if it wasn't down there in front of him already. But fear had given him time to prepare for it.
"Not really, sir. Pretty damn desk-bound at the moment, actually. I'm a communications officer, mostly economic traffic related to military capabilities—that sort of stuff." He shrugged modestly. "There are specific additional assignments from time to time, naturally . . ." He left the implication of secret heroism unspoken between them.
"Such as?"
Roche thought of his latest report, on French perceptions of the extent of direct Soviet involvement in the supply of arms dummy5
to the FLN. But the answer to that, as supplied by Jean-Paul and cleared by the Russian military attaché as being suitable for transmission to the British, was that French intelligence correctly perceived direct Soviet involvement as negligible.
But that wouldn't quite do. "I'm currently working on sources of arms for the Algerian rebels, sir."
God nodded. "An assignment not without risk, that would be?"
Another modest shrug would do there. If he'd been set to look into the private arms sources, which was worth doing, it might well have been dangerous. But with Jean-Paul and the attaché to help him, the Soviet inquiry had been less hazardous than crossing the road.
"And they're working you hard, of course?"
Roche's two highly efficient squadron sergeant-majors handled nine-tenths of the communications work, and the only difficulty in the French Perceptions report had been in finding respectable sources to account for what Jean-Paul and Ivanov had told him, with his former French contacts mostly hostile to him since Suez.
"The French are a bit awkward these days, sir." He advanced the only truth he could think of with proper diffidence.
"Very true." God smiled understandingly. "And that's half the trouble with you people just at the moment. It's a matter of stress, and it happens to all of you .... You have to understand that you're only ordinary men, but you have to do dummy5
extraordinary things from time to time . . . and that exacts a correspondingly extraordinary price. That's what battle fatigue was: the overdrawing on men's emotional current accounts. You, Captain Roche . . . you are probably well-adjusted for normal withdrawals, but not for the contempt in which your French colleagues now hold the British, since the Suez business. In some people it manifests itself as boils—
one of the embassy secretaries has a splendid one on his bottom at this very moment. The poor fellow can hardly sit down to eat his dinner—"
The only Frenchman who frightened Roche was Jean-Paul, and he wasn't at all sure that Jean-Paul was actually French; and he still got most of what he needed from dear old Philippe Roux, anyway. It was the Comrades who sickened him.
"—but with you it's PUO, Captain. But I'm not going to pack you back to England, that would only scar you permanently.
If you run away now, you'll run away again." God picked up his fountain pen and wrote on his piece of paper. "Now. . .
I'm going to give you a month's leave—go and find the sun in the south somewhere, and laze in it—" he looked up again quickly "—I see you're not married . . .but have you got a girl-friend? If so, take her. . . if not—get one. Right?"
Roche was speechless.
"I'll give you a tonic—and take that too. But go easy on the alcohol—I want you mended, not drugged. Do you understand?"
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"Yes, sir." Roche needed a drink badly now.
"But stay in France. Your French is fluent, I take it?"
"Yes, sir." His fluent French, thought Roche, was probably why he was still here. "Why France?"