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The Ninth Circle was reserved respectively for traitors to their lords, their guests, their country and their kindred, but Roche couldn't remember in which order the levels were disposed, down to the great bottomless frozen lake far beneath the fires of Hell. But it did occur to him that—strictly speaking—he was now for the first time in a sort of limbo between all the circles and levels, since he was at last absolutely open-minded on the subject of betrayaclass="underline" he was prepared to betray either side, as the occasion and the advantage offered.
The lift shuddered again, and the doors slid open abruptly.
Roche was confronted by a sharp-faced woman of indeterminate age in prison-grey and pearls, against a backdrop of London roofscape.
"Captain Roche—I-am-so-sorry-you've-been-delayed-like-this," the woman greeted him insincerely. "Have you the documentation, Mr Cox?"
Cox, apparently struck dumb with awe at this apparition, offered her the blue card with Roche's photograph on it which he had collected, with Roche, from the porter in the entrance kiosk.
The woman compared Roche with his photograph, and clearly found the comparison unsatisfactory.
"This is supposed to be you, is it?" she admonished Roche, as though it was his fault that the photographer had failed.
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Roche was at a loss to think of any other way that he could prove he was himself when she abruptly reversed the card for him to see. It certainly didn't look like him, this fresh-faced subaltern—not like the wary (if not shifty) Roche who faced him in the shaving-mirror each morning.
He took another look at the picture. This was undoubtedly the Tokyo picture of 2/Lt (T/Capt) Roche. And, true enough, this Roche had been just twenty-one years of age, while looking all of eighteen, and the shaving-mirror Roche of this morning, six years of treason on, didn't look a day under forty.
He grinned at her uncertainly. "I was a lot younger then—
Korean War, and all that... 'A Roche by any other face', you might say, Miss—Mrs—?" He floundered deliberately, trying to take the war into her territory.
"Mrs Harlin, Captain Roche." She expelled the invader with a frown. "A Roche by any other face?"
He struggled to keep the grin in its trenches. "A joke, Mrs . . .
Harlin. Romeo and Juliet."
Macbeth would have been more appropriate, with false face must hide what the false heart doth know. But false face wasn't doing very well at the moment.
"Indeed?" Mrs Harlin had met jokers before, and their bones were whitening on the wire of her forward defences. "This photograph needs updating, Captain Roche."
Cox, shamed at last by the massacre of the innocent, coughed dummy5
politely by way of a diversion. "Do you wish me to remain, madam? Or will you ring for me?" he asked her humbly, without looking at Roche.
"Just do what the book says, Mr Cox."
"Thank you, madam," said Cox, taking two paces back smartly and thankfully into the lift, still without looking at Roche.
"Captain Roche, Sir Eustace," said Mrs Harlin.
Sir Eustace—Mr Avery that was, of the RIP sub-committee—
Sir Eustace was standing behind a huge desk, half-framed by the great gilded frame of the portrait-of-a-naval-officer behind him.
Roche thought: That must be the Sargent picture of 'Blinker'
Hall and if Avery's got that picture for his room then Bill Ballance and Jean-Paul are both right about the new group.
"David—"
Roche tore himself away from Admiral Hall's basilisk eye. It was Thain, the only man in Personnel Recruitment who had thought well of him after he'd fluffed half the tests in training.
"David—let me introduce you—Sir Eustace, this is David Roche, about whom you've been hearing so much these last few days."
Christ! Thain had come up in the world since PRT days, to be in this company, overlooked by Admiral Hall himself. But dummy5
that at least accounted for his own presence, even if 'hearing so much' could hardly ring true. Since his PRT debacle he'd been little more than a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, in spite of Thain's approval. So there really wasn't so much to hear about.
"Sir Eustace," he mumbled. But he had to do better than that
—here— now—by God! He had to shine—
"Colonel Clinton, David—"
Clinton was another new face, but the name rang faint warning bells: one glance at Colonel Clinton was two glances too many—the thought of Colonel Clinton hearing so much these last few days was blood-curdling.
Clinton smiled a terrible non-smile, far worse than Jean-Paul's bullet-in-the-back-of-the-neck grin. "Roche."
"Sir!" Roche did his best to make the word stand to attention for him.
"And St. John Latimer, of course," concluded Thain.
St. John— Sin-jun—Latimer was very young, and podgy with it; and languid, like an Oxford undergraduate who had strayed into the wrong party but was too idle to do anything about it.
"Latimer," said Roche.
"St.John Latimer," corrected St.John Latimer, swaying at Roche's faux pas.
Latimer—plain Latimer, damn it—was standing to the right dummy5
and slightly behind Colonel Clinton, in the creature-to-the-Duke position, so that was what he might very well be since he was too young to be here by right of experience and seniority. But he might also be some sort of catalyst, introduced to sting a reaction from the provincial and dull Captain Roche.
"Is that so?" Well, if they wanted a reaction, at least let it be a controlled one. "Jolly good!"
Like all good catalysts, Latimer showed no sign of change at this controlled Roche-reaction, he didn't seem even to have heard it.
"Yes . . ." It was Thain who produced the reaction, and it was a decidedly uneasy one. "Yes—well, I must be off now—" he gave Roche a glance which was more charged with doubt than encouragement, like a gladiatorial trainer delivering a novice into the arena "—subject to confirmation and—ah—
mutual agreement, David, you will be transferred from the Paris station to Sir Eustace's care ... on a temporary basis, of course—"
Sale or return—as the liquor store off-licence would have put it. Or suck-it-and-see, as Roche's old squadron sergeant-major more accurately would have pronounced.
"—Colonel Clinton will fill you in on the details."
The figure of speech was unfortunate after the memory of SSM Lark had been conjured up in Roche's memory: to be filled in at Shaiba Barracks involved the scattering of blood dummy5
and teeth in all directions.
"Sir Eustace—Colonel—" Thain looked at Latimer, who was examining the pattern on the carpet, and decided against including him in the general farewell. Perhaps he hadn't come up in the world, or not as far as the present company and venue had suggested; perhaps he had only been present to complete the formality of pushing the doomed Roche out on to the arena's sunlit ellipse of sand for the killing.
"Thank you, Malcolm. You've been a great help," said Sir Eustace with the easy insincerity of long experience. "I'm sorry you have to go . . ."
He wasn't sorry. And, what was worse, Thain wasn't sorry either.
"David—nice to see you again," Thain nodded.
He wasn't sorry because he expected Roche to fluff it again.
And maybe that had also been what Jean-Paul expected, except the possible benefit of his not fluffing it outweighed the attendant risk. What was more, his— Roche's—very presence here, win or lose, increased his value as a bargaining counter on the board. After this, for Jean-Paul, he would be worth trading in for some other advantage as he had never been before. He was on the way to becoming a blue chip.