"And then?"
"And then, when it is dark, I will bring you the other car, which I have ready for you. Then you will have the necessary petrol and performance, if that is what you require."
Roche estimated his capabilities as a getaway driver. "But you said no one loses a motor-cyclist—"
"Also by then I shall have made certain preparations .... You may rest assured that you will not be followed far. And there will be a man with you, to guide you wherever you wish to go ... And there will be no motorcyclists." Galles pronounced the last word through his teeth. "I may be getting old—and I have been careless, to my shame ... but this is still my patch, m'sieur."
Was his patch? For once Roche's vocabulary faltered. Country
—piece of land—playing-field—home-ground—stamping ground— killing-ground— burial plot—?
Madame Peyrony had said almost the same thing. But whatever the word meant, it meant the same thing: that dummy5
strangers came into it at their peril, and that these strangers now were in line to discover something about les chases et gens de la Dordogne et ses pays which would never figure in any guidebook.
"He is hanging back now—I haven't lost him, but we are getting close to the Tower, so he thinks he knows where we are going," murmured Galles, steadied by the prospect of vengeance. "Around the next corner I will accelerate, and then I will stop quickly and you will get out quickly, and drop down out of sight even more quickly . . . and then I will be gone, and he will not be quite sure whether we have not been perhaps a little clever, to deceive him, one way or the other.
Because he knows now that I know he is behind me."
"He knows?"
"Oh yes—I have played this game before, I told you—he knows! It is like the old days ... so we will play a small trick on him from those days: when he turns the corner and sees neither you nor this vehicle by the roadside it is possible that he may think we have decided to make a run for it after all, eh?"
Now he sounded almost as though he was beginning to enjoy himself, thought Roche resentfully, more irritated than frightened by the unexpected requirement to take part in such cloak-and-dagger activity just when everything had at last begun to seem straightforward.
But so long as he needed the man it would be as well to humour his hankering after the excitement of the old days.
dummy5
"Very well."
"Good!" Galles dropped a gear unhurriedly as the little Citroen began to labour up the final incline on to the shoulder of the ridge. The view opened up at Roche's elbow, across the valley to the other side, which he had first glimpsed this morning in Audley's company; then the distant ridge opposite had risen out of the dawn mist and now it was sinking into evening blueness, with the first lights twinkling on it. It would be dark in less than an hour.
Galles turned the wheel slowly. "Be ready!"
The engine surged with a sudden burst of power just as Roche caught sight of the Tower ahead, standing alone in the open, slightly downhill to his left. It looked dark and untenanted under its conical hat of black tiles— perhaps Audley was waiting for him in the cottage—?
"Brace yourself—" the Frenchman held the wheel tightly with both hands "—I will return in one hour—or not more than two
—bonne chance, m'sieur—now!"
Roche had one hand on the door handle, with the other still clasping the brief-case to his chest, as Galles stood on his brakes. The truck's tyres slithered on the loose gravel at the side of the narrow road, and a tree sprouting out of a tangled blackberry bush flashed past his face.
The urgency of the whole procedure, rather than the idea behind it, threw him out of the vehicle. While he was still straightening up, before he could turn to slam the door, he dummy5
heard it snap shut behind him—his last impression had been of Galles reaching across after him—and the truck was moving again. He stopped thinking about it instantly, and concentrated only on making himself scarce in a few yards of ground which he had seen only once before in daylight, and never studied with that aim in view.
But Galles had known it well enough, and had allowed for that: the Tower was fifty yards away down the track, and the cottage itself another fifty or more, both in the open and too far off to be worth a second glance. But the blackberry tangle was thick and in full leaf.
Three strides forward and two—three—sideways carried him away and down from sight of the road, into the long grass behind it, in automatic obedience to instructions.
He held his breath, and for a moment heard the blood pounding in his ears . . . and then exhaled slowly . . . and heard only the already distant sound of the Citroen's engine fading into the trees down the road, halfway to the Château Peyrony already.
There was no other sound—no other sound within miles, by the absence of sound—least of all a bloody motor-cycle making up for lost time!
Roche counted off his heart-beats, through another minute, while regaining his breath. During the minute a sound did register . . . of a dog barking far away, angry at something—
something which was most likely a grey garagiste Citroen being driven too fast, with imaginary motor-cyclists in hot dummy5
pursuit.
He sat up behind the blackberry bush, feeling more angry with himself than with Galles—if they'd given him a superannuated old fool, living in the past on memories of outsmarting the Gestapo and the Milice, then what else could he expect? He could only hope that Audley and his cronies hadn't witnessed the whole charade.
Still no sound. He rose to his feet and brushed himself down irritably, observing that he had scuffed the knees of his clean slacks with grass stains.
Not a whisper of sound. The road was clear, and the woods on the other side of it dark and empty with that peculiar evening stillness which always presaged the awakening of the night-hunting creatures.
He sighed, and picked up the brief-case. Because of the Frenchman's imagination he had another hour to kill—and an unnecessary hour too, in Audley's awkward company . . .
and Audley, being Audley, would surely want to have a look inside the case!
Well... he could kill that idea stone-dead by pulling rank—
captain now, but major-to-be—because as yet Audley had no rank, he was still just a bloody civilian, nothing more.
He smiled to himself as he set off down the track. Not major-to-be, but major-never-to-be, thank God!
Also, the cottage was as dark as the Tower, even though Audley's ugly black Morris Cowley was parked outside it.
dummy5
With just a bit of luck, the man would be busy making his farewells to Madame Peyrony and the girls down the road, and he wouldn't have to bother with him at all. He would leave him high and dry, in the middle of another great British intelligence disaster—that would be good training for him, if it didn't put him off altogether—
The sound of the motor-cycle engine shattered his rosy dream into fragments.
It swung him round in disbelief, like a hand on his shoulder, and the dream-fragments flew together again into nightmare as he saw men behind him on the road, which had been empty a few seconds before—
The disbelief and the nightmare became real instantaneously as the sight-line between them met, and they saw that he had seen them.
He was right alongside the Tower, where the stone steps leading up to the door met the track, and the door itself—the heavy oak door—stood invitingly ajar, offering him protection as nothing else did, beyond any second thought.
His feet took off, every muscle and sinew springing them so that he hit the door with his shoulder to burst it inwards as though it had been closed against it—