you do, eh?"
Obviously—he had to. "Yes, sir. I think they're blown."
"Have you talked about it with your contact?"
There was no escape. He had to have a source, and the source had to be Philippe. And, no matter with what regret, the choice between the careers of Commandant Roux and Captain Roche was no choice at all.
"In—in a roundabout sort of way, Sir Eustace." In a very roundabout way, actually. Because it had been British dummy5
security, not French, that they had been talking roundabout, in effect.
"And what did he say?"
Au revoir, Philippe. "He said ... he said that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Or words to that effect."
"What words?"
Roche rocked on his chair. "He asked me if we knew yet who'd tipped off Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, among other things." There was no denying Philippe had said that, even if the context had been subtly different.
"Who is your contact? Is he reliable?" Sir Eustace frowned down at the file, and finding nothing there, frowned up.
"I've no reason to think not." But he had to go, nevertheless.
Because now that the possibility of a leak had been aired, then the possible unreliability of Philippe Roux not only demonstrated his own shrewdness but also accounted for any small leakages which might otherwise now be traceable back to David Roche. So—adieu, Philippe. "But..."
"Yes?"
"I don't know. I've just got a bad feeling about him. Nothing I could put my finger on—just a feeling." The feeling was guilt, but in his present scale of priorities Roche thought he could handle it.
"Who—" Sir Eustace broke off as he caught the expression on Colonel Clinton's face. "Yes, Fred? You think David has made his point?"
dummy5
The corner of Colonel Clinton's mouth had twitched, but not with anything approaching amusement judging by the expression on the rest of his face.
"He's made his point right enough." Clinton nodded. "But I was thinking of Roux, as a matter of fact."
"Roux?"
"His contact—their liaison man. Philippe Roux."
"You know him?"
"Not personally. But he was in Berlin about three years back, before my time. And he was on Gehlen's Red List then as a probable KGB contact."
"That is good," said Genghis Khan. "He gave you Roux—and he gave you Gehlen."
"Damn it—I gave him Roux!" The thought of Philippe Roux being no better than David Roche—and not only no better, but also not so good professionally speaking, if the West Germans had penetrated his cover— had been somehow shocking as well as disturbing. He had had Philippe down as true blue.
"So you gave him only what he already knew, and in all innocence. And now you have told me, and I know—and that is good too," Genghis Khan nodded approvingly. "And, what is more, I will do nothing about it, I assure you. Roux must take his chances—you are more important than Roux, David."
dummy5
That was highly reassuring, but he couldn't help looking at Genghis Khan interrogatively nevertheless.
"Clinton trusts you. He gave you Gehlen—and he has been with the Gehlen Organisation for the last two years, liaising with them." Genghis Khan nodded again. "So he gave you Roux, and he didn't need to—and that is even more pleasing."
Roche wished that Genghis Khan could show his pleasure more obviously, but the face was still as expressionless as a waxwork.
"I rather got the impression he didn't like me much."
"Liking is not necessary. In any case, it is not you he dislikes, it is Sir Eustace Avery—and the man Latimer, he will be disliked too. I would guess that you are their choice, and they are thrusting you on Clinton. But at least he is disposed to make the best of you."
The way Genghis Khan was talking, estimating the likes and dislikes of the British top brass, suggested that he himself was above half-way up the ladder. And it also suggested that Genghis Khan had decided to emulate Colonel Clinton in trusting the eminently trustworthy David Roche with his confidences. And that happy state of affairs had to be capitalised on while it lasted, to help him play both sides against the middle as required. "I think you'd better explain that—'thrusting me on Clinton'." On second hearing it didn't sound so flattering, either. "Why do they dislike each other?
dummy5
Just what is happening?"
The pebble-eyes bored into him. "What is happening. . . what is happening is that they are each survivors of the great disaster which has befallen your service in recent years. Do you understand?"
"No. Not really. Tell me."
Genghis Khan looked at his watch. "There is not time, not now. It is enough that they are two of the survivors—Clinton has survived because he was absent at the right time, so he was lucky. . . or perhaps he was prudent, perhaps it would be safer to assume that—and Avery has survived because he was also lucky, but in a different way . . . and because he has the right connections—because he is a political animal and not a pure professional like Clinton—indeed, he is a great survivor . . . And that is also why they dislike each other."
It was going above Roche's head, but Genghis Khan was right: they were running hard on time.
"So now they must build again, with what they have—"
Genghis Khan looked hard at him "—and what they can get."
And what they have is me, thought Roche, and that's one measure of the disaster, by God!
"You obviously have some special qualifications they need, I am thinking," said Genghis Khan speculatively, "to get them what they want."
What they want.
"So now I think you'd better tell me about this man Audley,"
dummy5
said Genghis Khan.
III
"No, ROCHE, I cannot tell you anything about this fellow Audley that isn't in the file," said Major Stocker brusquely.
"What I know is in the file."
Major Stocker wore a Royal Artillery tie beneath a face which was weathered like a block of Blenheim stone cruelly exposed to the elements over several centuries.
"What I know is in the file," repeated Major Stocker, as though to pre-empt any feeble Roche-protest, "because I compiled the file."
And Major Stocker also frightened Roche in the same way as Colonel Clinton had done; perhaps not quite so much, allowing for rank, but almost as much because—according to Genghis Khan's informed guess—he was Clinton's creature, and had therefore been quarried from the same hard strata.
Yet, nevertheless, he didn't frighten Roche quite as much as Genghis Khan had done, and that made all the difference.
"But there must be something—"
"Of course there's something, man!" They had had two minutes together, but already Stocker had no time for Roche, that was plain: Captain Roche in Major Stocker's battery would have led a dog's life. "That's why you're here, damn it!"
"I mean, something you know that isn't in the file—about dummy5
what sort of man he is—damn it!" Fear hardened Roche into resistance.
What sort of man he is: David Longsdon Audley—
Oliver St.John Latimer didn't like David Longsdon Audley—
had never met him, had never sat the same exams, had never packed down in the same scrum (the idea of Oliver St.John Latimer stripe-jerseyed for a game of rugger was beyond imagination), never eaten in the same mess (the idea of Oliver St.John Latimer crammed into the same tank was equally beyond imagination)—but Oliver St.John Latimer didn't like David Longsdon Audley, and that was a fact if not a fact in the file. Because he'd said so. "He's a tricky blighter, if you ask me," said Oliver St.John Latimer, eyeing Sir Eustace Avery coolly, equal to equal, and then David Roche pityingly, superior to inferior.
"Latimer is one of the new recruits," said Genghis Khan.
"Eton, then Merton College and All Souls at Oxford—a very gifted young man—we would like to know very much how they recruited him . . . perhaps also a very nasty young man . . .")