Galles grinned at Roche, and the grin was repeated in his reflection in the deep polish of the maroon-coloured cellulose of the bonnet. Viewed along the line of the bonnet he appeared to be a long way off, and there wasn't a speck of dust on the gleaming expanse of metal between him and Roche, though the cobwebs trailed from the naked electric bulb above him and festooned the carriage behind him.
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"Ah—M'sieur Roche!" Galles bobbed his head and disappeared again, to reappear eventually at the far—furthest
—end of the car ahead of him, still grinning hugely.
"And well-met, beside my beauty!" Galles touched the bonnet of the car lightly, and then instantly produced a snow-white rag from his back pocket to erase the touch. "Beside your namesake, one might say!"
"My namesake?" Roche goggled from Galles to the Beauty, and back to Galles again.
"You do not know? But Roche is a good French name—and yet also a common one, I grant you . . . But she— she is not common, you will grant me that, eh?"
Roche blinked at him, and then edged sideways to get a sight on the curious chromium-plated (or silver-plated?) object on the top of the radiator. It looked a bit like the iceberg that had ripped open the Titanic, in size as well as shape, with an ornate 'D' imprinted on it for some unfathomable reason by the collision.
"It's not a ... Daimler—" that was obviously a stupid guess, though! ". . . or a Delage, maybe?" he hazarded.
"Delarge— pouf! Daimler— phuttt!" Raymond Galles lifted his right forearm, with two fingers extended on its hand, and struck the crook of the arm a rabbit-punch with his left hand.
"Rolls-Royce!"
It clearly wasn't a Rolls-Royce, from that gesture of ultimate dummy5
contempt as well as the absence of the Rolls-Royce emblem, apart from the iceberg 'D'.
Roche wasn't willing to try again. And Galles was bursting to tell him, anyway.
"A Delaroche—a Delaroche Royale!!" said Galles triumphantly.
And Roche wasn't going to say 'Never heard of it', either.
Galles very nearly touched the Delaroche again, but thought better of it at the last moment.
"Only three Royales were made. The first was for King Zog of Albania, as a gift from an American mining company—that was destroyed by Italian bombers in 1939." Galles' face twisted with the memory of the bomb-bursts. "The second was fragmented by German bombers in 1940—in the factory, while a minor modification was in progress—it was the property of the Prince de Coutrai ..." the twist suggested this time that Galles held the Prince personally responsible for hazarding his Royale unnecessarily in the face of the enemy
". . .I salvaged the remains myself, and transported them to this very place, together with the pilot of a Blenheim bomber
—a flight-lieutenant of the Royal New Zealand Air Force by the name of Robinson, who is now a librarian in the city of Auckland." He nodded at Roche. "I remember that because he was my first allied aviator—it was in 1941—and the first to set foot in the Chateau Peyrony. Flight-Lieutenant Ashiballe Robinson—"
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Ashiballe?
" Arrrchee for short—''
Archibald!
"And here—my beauty—" once more the almost-touch, but not quite "—is the third and last and only Delaroche Royale in the whole world." The little Frenchman beamed at Roche.
"And that is a good omen for us both, m'sieur—a French Delaroche greets an English Roche, eh?"
Oh— shit, thought Roche. Time was ticking away, and he still had to submit to Madame Peyrony, and here he was, snarled up with a monstrous vintage French car and its enthusiastic garagiste and locateur des voitures, for Christ's sake!
But he smiled nevertheless. "She's a beauty, m'sieur." Pause—
one-two-three! "But you have an urgent message for me, I believe?"
"But yes. . ."Galles peered past him. "Mademoiselle?"
"Waiting for me out in the yard."
"Ah! It was permitted that I make contact with you through her, you understand?" Galles's expression became serious, as if to reassure him that he had not approached Jilly casually, and Roche instantly regretted his impatience. Rather than scorn the little man's enthusiasm for the big car, which was in itself possibly no more than a cover for being here now, he ought to remember that Galles had been fighting Nazis—real fascists— when he himself had been working for his grammar school entrance.
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"Of course, M'sieur Galles."
"Very well, m'sieur. You are to telephone Paris as soon as conveniently possible."
"There's a phone in the house, I believe—"
"More urgently, there is an American whom you are likely to meet, by name Bradford—"
"Mike Bradford. He's staying with Audley, yes?" Roche produced a polite frown. "A writer of some sort?"
"You've met him already?"
"No, just heard about him. He's a writer?"
"Of some sort—yes, m'sieur. And, it is thought, an agent of some sort also, of the American CIA."
Roche deepened the frown. "What the devil is a CIA man doing here? He can't be interested in Audley, surely?"
Galles shrugged. "If we are interested in Audley . . .?"
"No." Roche shook his head. But perhaps now was the time to start playing both ends against the middle. "There's also an Israeli staying with him, an old RAF pilot—Stein. Do you know anything about him?"
"No, m'sieur. He was not mentioned. Only Bradford."
So the British didn't know about Meriel Stephanides. If they were on to Bradford, they would not have missed her if they'd known about her, now that they'd finally got round to warning him about the opposition. But there was nothing particularly surprising about their not knowing something dummy5
that the Comrades knew only too well, he reflected sadly; and, to be fair, the Comrades hadn't performed so well either, having 'lost' Steffy until he'd given them her location, and never having properly 'found' Bradford's Category 'A'
status.
But Galles was frowning at him, as though there was something he was in two minds about saying.
"Yes, m'sieur?" he pushed the Frenchman gently.
"I don't know ..." Galles shook his head ". . . but there is one that I have—how shall I say it?—not reservations, not suspicions about. . . but . . . a feeling from the old times."
"About Stein—the Israeli?" Roche pushed harder, and deliberately in the wrong direction. He realised that he wanted the Frenchman to say d'Auberon something-something, to save him from having to do so.
"No, m'sieur. I refer to the beautiful one, that Milady—
Mademoiselle Lexy—speaks of as 'Steffee'."
"Meriel Stephanides?"
Galles nodded. "Mademoiselle Stephanides—yes. But I have no reason . . . except that there is this feeling from the old times, in the war, when no reason was often good reason."
Roche nodded back at him. "I understand." And bully for you, Raymond Galles! "You know she's a Cypriot? Or Anglo-Cypriot, anyway?"
"Ah! And you have troubles in Cyprus—as we have in Algeria?"
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Roche nodded again. "And Israeli intelligence is very strong there . . . You may be right—I'll see what Paris thinks about her. . ." He gave Galles his own version of the in-two-minds frown.
"Yes, m'sieur?" The Frenchman picked up the signal.
"I have a name for you also—and also with no reason. A French name."
"M'sieur?"
Here I go then! "Etienne?"
"Etienne?"
"He's a friend of Audley's, and he comes from an old local family—a distinguished family—"
Galles's eyes widened.
"—and he left the government service recently, I gather. Do you know of such a person?" Roche concentrated his soul into an expression of honest curiosity.