And that made his own betrayal of Jean-Paul even better sense, as a pre-emptive strike, to mix the very latest Israeli jargon with that of the Stock Exchange. More than ever, he dummy5
had to do well now simply to keep ahead of them—both of them—until he could bargain on his own account.
The door closed behind Thain.
"Now then, David—sit down—" Sir Eustace indicated the central chair in front of his enormous desk.
Roche sat down.
There was a file on Sir Eustace's blotter, which he pushed forward into the sphere of influence within Roche's reach.
Roche made no attempt to pick up the file, let alone touch it, never mind open it. Instinct was in charge now, preventing him from breaking the taboos.
"We've got another David for you, in there," said Sir Eustace.
"Audley," said Colonel Clinton. "David Audley."
"David Longsdon Audley," said St.John Latimer.
"We want him," said Clinton.
Roche stared at him. "He's one of theirs?"
"He's one of nobody's," said Clinton. "But we want him to work for us. And you are going to get him for us, Roche."
II
"IT'LL TAKE ABOUT an hour, maybe," said the mechanic.
Roche frowned. "An hour?"
"I'm on the pumps as well, see . . ." The mechanic sized him up. "And then I got to find the right parts."
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"What parts?" Roche hadn't intended to argue the toss, but with what he'd most carefully done to the engine not an hour before, half an hour's work was a generous estimate, and no replacements were necessary. "What parts?"
"Ah . . . well ..." The mechanic blinked uneasily. "There's this bracket, for a start—" he reached into the engine and wrenched fiercely at something out of sight "—you didn't ought to go round with it like that, it'll let you down when you're miles from anywhere." He shook his head. "An' it's a fiddling old job, too . . . maybe three-quarters of an hour, say?"
Roche realised that he had miscalculated. He had concentrated on the necessary time element, but had not allowed for time being someone else's profit.
"You've got the parts?" he capitulated.
"Oh yes, sir." The mechanic relaxed. "It's only I dunno where to put my hand on 'em right off. But I've got 'em, don't you worry."
"Hmm ..." Roche looked at his watch. "It's simply that I've this important business engagement and I don't want to be too late. So if you can hurry it up as best you can . . ." He left the possibility of extra reward implicit in the plea.
"Half-hour, sir," said the mechanic cheerfully, recognising a sucker. "There ain't much traffic today, so it should be quiet on the pumps, with a bit of luck."
"Can I use your phone?"
dummy5
" 'Elp yourself, sir. In the office—"
Roche dialled the number he'd been given, and a woman answered.
"Roche for Major Stocker ..." Stocker was new to him too.
They were all new to him, apart from Thain, who was unlikely to appear again. It was like making a fresh start, in a new job, as a new person . . . with a new personality which he could adjust according to need as he went along.
"Roche here, sir. The car they gave me has broken down—I'm phoning from a garage just outside Leatherhead—yes, sir, Leatherhead—" he didn't say which side, but even if the Major offered to come and collect him the distance was nicely calculated.
The Major didn't offer.
"The man says three-quarters of an hour, but I don't think it'll be as much, sir ... Yes, sir, I'll ginger him up—I'll be with you as soon as I can, sir."
He didn't like the sound of the Major. But then he had never liked the sound of majors, who always seemed to exist in a limbo, either embittered with the failure of their hopes or hungry for the promotion almost within their grasp.
Still, that was a good job well done: he had his half-hour now, and a generous half-hour too, all correct and accounted for and accountable, and above all innocent. The rest depended on others, and on their correct observance of the routine.
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He sauntered across the forecourt towards the workshop feeling reassured, if not happy. It might all be routine, and the Comrades were always sticklers for routine. Yet the effort involved even in this routine, and the precautions they had taken in communicating with him, made him feel important, and more important than he had felt for years. And if the feeling was a secret one, like the rich man's pleasure in stolen masterpieces in his hidden gallery, then that was a small price to pay for the enjoyment of it.
The mechanic withdrew his head from the raised bonnet and bobbed encouragingly at him.
"Found the right bracket, sir—just the job!" He plunged his head back quickly, before Roche could question him or God could strike him down for bearing false witness against the British Motor Corporation.
Roche nodded uselessly at his back, and continued his aimless saunter, back on to the forecourt, slowly past the pumps, to the very edge of the highway.
He glanced down the road incuriously, and then looked at his watch, hunching himself momentarily against the chill wind of a failed English August. He wished that he hadn't given up smoking, but perhaps the new Roche would start smoking again. He had given up cigarettes because Julie didn't like them, and had started drinking instead; and it had been Jean-Paul who was always cautioning him to give up drinking, or almost, because he was drinking too much and too often. But the new Roche owed allegiance to neither Julie nor Jean-dummy5
Paul, only to himself; and although the new Roche now also frowned on drink, which warped the judgement, cigarettes only sapped top physical performance . . . and the ability to run away was no longer an essential requirement, with what he had in mind for himself.
Meanwhile, he let himself seem to notice the church on the other side of the road for the first time. It was a very ordinary sort of church, old but not ancient, with a squat spire only a few feet above the roof and a lych-gate entrance to the churchyard. A dozen yards along from the lych-gate there was the opening of a narrow track which appeared to skirt the churchyard wall, leading to the rear of the church. In the opening of the track a dark-green Morris Minor van was parked, with an overhanging extending ladder fixed to its roof, from the end of which a scrap of red rag hung as a warning. A nondescript man in blue overalls, with a cigarette end in his mouth and a Daily Sketch in his hands, leaned against the van, the very model of a modern British workman as portrayed in the cinema and the Tory newspapers, reality imitating the art.
Or not, as the case may be, decided Roche, having already noted the man as he had coaxed the car into the garage and observing now that there was no one else in view—maybe art imitating reality imitating art. And it was time to find out.
He took a last look at the garage workshop, waited for a lorry to pass, and then strolled across the road to a point midway between the lych-gate and the track.
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Somewhat to his disappointment the man gave no sign of interest in him beyond the briefest blank-eyed glance over the top of his paper.
Roche paused irresolutely for a moment, looking up and down the empty road again. Then his confidence reasserted itself, on the basis that he had nothing to fear.
If he was wrong about the man, it didn't matter. And if he was right, whether the man turned out to be his contact or a mere look-out, it had been foolish to expect anything else: if he was the look-out then he, Roche, was the one person on earth who wasn't worth a second glance; and if he was the contact then the empty roadside was the last place on earth for a comradely embrace and the exchange of confidences. It made him positively ashamed of the new Roche's naivete; the old Roche, that veteran of a hundred successfully clandestine meetings, would never have let his imagination set him off so prematurely.