He shook his head. "I don't know about that. You think it dummy5
wasn't an accident?"
"The Police say that it was. But I do not think so."
Neither do I."
"Very well." Galles gave him another five seconds'-worth of doubt, and then reached under the dashboard. "M'sieur Audley sent this too, to introduce you to M'sieur d'Auberon."
Chases et Gens de la Dordogne et ses Pays, by Etienne d'Auberon. It was a rather slim, typically French rough-cut volume, rather dog-eared but unmarked by ownership—at a guess, Audley's own copy, because Audley would never bother to put his name in any book of his, it would be beneath his dignity.
He looked up Le Château du Cingle d'Enfer immediately in the index— ". . . high above the bend of the river, with the fertile river-plain on either side to supply it, which successive generations of d'Auberons terrorised to enable them to keep up the state of great barons..."
"A motor-cyclist," said Galles. "Or perhaps a motor-cyclist and an auto-cycliste—I think we have maybe united two separate tails into one now, m'sieur."
Roche looked up, and couldn't identify his surroundings.
"Where are we?" he demanded.
"Just coming into Laussel-Beynac. You wished for a telephone, and I have a cousin here—"
"A public telephone," said Roche quickly, moving to minimise unacceptable risks. "That's the regulation."
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Overhanging trees gave place to overhanging houses clinging to a steep hillside in the middle of nowhere.
"Over there," said Galles, pointing.
The telephone was beyond another 1914-18 Poilu, unsuitably overcoated and weighed down with equipment on the top of a marble plinth, standing guard aggressively on behalf of the men of Laussel-Beynac who had not come back from the Marne and the Aisne and the Somme to the Dordogne. He was, so far as Roche could recall, the same soldier who had presided over Neuville's dead enfants.
He tripped the switch in his memory to activate the number Genghis Khan had given him, from among the peach-boxes.
"David. For Johnnie." It seemed very strange indeed to think of Genghis Khan so innocently.
"Johnnie. For David—"
It wasn't Genghis Khan's voice, or any other voice that he could place. But it was Johnnie for David nevertheless.
He listened, and replaced the receiver without bothering to acknowledge, just letting ersatz- Johnnie cut him off.
Never again, Johnnie for David. That was the last time ever!
And now one other call—but at least Johnnie for David gave him strength for that—
"Hullo? Roche here."
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He held on, studying the stained copper-green-and-grey soldier, forever Mart pour la Patrie. No one was going to remember Captain Roche that way, by God!
"Roche?"
It was Thompson, and that made it easier. If God wasn't an Englishman or a Frenchman at least, He wasn't anti-Roche!
"Listen—you tell Stocker—"
"Hold on, old boy! You should have checked in this morning, you know! He's off-net at the moment, but he'll be back any time now. So call back in half an hour, and you'll get him, eh?" Thompson sounded a tiny bit rattled.
"I was busy this morning—and I can't wait now. Tell him I'm going in, to get what he wants—tell him that. Right?"
The bastide- fancier gobbled impotently for another rattled moment, and then took a grip of himself. "Do you want any back-up ... for whatever it is?"
"Can you get back-up to Laussel-Beynac in five minutes?"
Roche looked at his watch, almost happily.
"Where?"
"It doesn't matter. Our man down here is with me. Just tell the Major that. And I may not be able to call him again until tomorrow—you tell him that as well—" By tomorrow I'll be long gone to ground, with a leaf or two taken out of d'Auberon's book too "—right?"
"If you say so, old boy. But you sound a bit over-confident to me—"
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" Shit!" Roche wasn't sure whether he'd put down the phone before or after he'd pronounced his last farewell to Thompson, but it no longer mattered.
He retrieved Chases et Gens de la Dordogne etses Pays from the passenger's seat, and nodded encouragingly to Galles.
"It's okay. I'm cleared to go ahead. How far is it?"
"Three kilometres only." Galles glanced uneasily at his wing mirror. "Did they have any ideas about our followers?"
"Are they still there?" It would be as well to reassure the little Frenchman, even with lies, so that he could concentrate on seeing what he was required to see.
"I cannot see them. But they are there."
Not that what Galles saw, or didn't see, really mattered any longer either . . . But it would be better to go through with Genghis Khan's plan to the letter, just in case.
"I don't think we need worry too much about them." The memory of their meeting in Madame Peyrony's coach-house came to his rescue. "It's most likely the Americans keeping an eye on us, it seems. They won't try anything rough."
"No?" Galles sounded something less than disarmed by the forecast, possibly because of some wartime recollection of OSS roughness. "I hope you're right, m'sieur. But just in case ... if what you are doing is so important..."
Roche watched him swivel to rummage in a large metal tool-dummy5
box wedged behind him amongst a collection of jacks and crowbars and towing-ropes, finally to produce a sacking bundle secured with greasy twine.
"Good God, man!" He watched in horror as Galles produced an enormous military revolver and a tiny automatic pistol from the sacking. "We don't need those—we're not going to storm the château!"
"Here—" Galles offered him the little automatic, ignoring his reaction "—I will keep the man-stopper, you can put this in your pocket. It's only a Ruby—my cousin René brought it back from Spain in '38—it will do no one any harm, but it may make them think twice."
"Good God—no!" exclaimed Roche, hypnotised by the weapons. "We're not into that sort of thing!" He knew he had to make allowances for the vast arsenal of weaponry which defeat and occupation, not to mention well-supplied resistance, had distributed throughout France, but the casual appearance of small arms from a middle-aged mechanic's tool-box, from among the wrenches and screwdrivers, shook him nevertheless.
"Eh bien! So you suit yourself, m'sieur." Galles shrugged.
"But I choose rather to be safe than sorry."
He closed the sacking loosely over the weapons and placed the bundle at his feet. "So now . . . just what exactly is it that you wish me to do, eh'"
"Drive to the château—" Roche swallowed nervously, then dummy5
took hold of himself "—and drop me off in the parking area in front of the main gate ... do you know it?"
"Yes, m'sieur. The new parking area which M'sieur d'Auberon has had prepared for the tourists—there is building work in progress still or the gate-house—"
"That's right." Galles' information tallied with Genghis Khan's. "You wait for me there. That's all you have to do, mon vieux."
"It is . . . a pick-up?"
That was a perfect question, better even than he could have imagined "Yes. And we are picking up dynamite, I can tell you."
Galles touched the sacking with his toe. "Then we will make your pick-up, m'sieur—never fear!"
Roche used up the last three kilometres inside Chases et Gens.
Most obligingly (though no doubt by design, now that he intended to convert Le Château du Cingle d'Enfer into a tourist-trap, milking foreigners where his hobereaux ancestors had once composed the peasants out of their money), Etienne d'Auberon had included a plan of the château.