they've had plenty of practice, right from Roman times."
All that was the truth—he knew it from his own knowledge, from the last report he had submitted—
French and Algerian FLN perceptions of Russian involvement and policies, with regard to the present situation in Algeria—his own work was arguing against him!
But not quite—
"Well—at least it'll delay them. And Raymond Galles is coming back here sometime—in the next hour or two. At least it's a chance, Audley."
The black hole was still unwavering. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why should I believe you—if you're a traitor?" The pistol jerked. "You could be delaying me now—"
"I'm not a traitor any more—I've done with that!" Roche felt the pulse of life under his hand. But that wouldn't do for Audley, even if it was true: Audley needed something he could recognise. "I don't belong to either side now—I choose for myself, and I say I'll soldier no more, and to hell with both sides—and all the other sides too!"
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He looked into the pistol and the light, caring beyond calculation at last, finally free of everything which had bound him.
"All right." Audley's voice sounded strange. "But my way, not yours. Because whatever we do they won't leave us alive, even if we did give it to them."
"Your way?"
"There's a trap-door by the wall there—it's where the table is overturned. It leads down to a sort of cellar . . . the peasants who lived here years ago kept their chickens down there—
there's a little hatch in the wall... it lets out into a ditch—not much of a ditch, but there are a few bushes there, and some nettles . . . You squeeze out there, and keep down flat, and keep going... If they have got a man covering the back he'll be in the trees away to your right, but he won't be looking for anyone, because he can't know about the chicken-door . . .
Also, we'll be attracting their attention in the front—when you're ready to go we'll try to parley with them from up above. And if they think we're fool enough to trust them, that'll tempt them to delay, maybe."
"Parley?"
"That's right. They can't leave us alive, but if they can get in without making too much noise . . . and my French is bad enough to confuse them . . . You go out there—a hundred yards down the ditch should be far enough—and then run like hell to Madame Peyrony's—get the police."
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Roche's spirits lifted. "Yes—"
"But there's something else, then—" Audley offered him the pistol "—take it... and you'll need the torch too . . . just shift the table in front of me, and I'll take Lexy—that'll maybe give us some protection, if the worst comes to the worst. . . the something else is that you've got to come back, Roche."
"What?"
"To distract them. Because we'll be running out of time by then ... So you come back as close as you can, and make a noise—flash the torch, fire the gun, shout 'A moi, la Legion!'—
whatever you like, just so you distract them. You've got to win us time, man!"
With a terrible bleak self-knowledge, Roche knew that he wasn't quite done with treachery. Maybe here, with Lexy in his arms, and no choice . . . but not out there, in safety.
"Why don't you go?" He didn't want to put himself to the test. "You know the way."
The torch and the pistol were both thrust at him. "Don't argue
—a hundred yards' crawl, and then turn left—and run like hell. . . you can't miss it, as the Irishman said." Audley paused. "Besides which, I can't get through the chicken-door
—I'm too big. I was going to send you anyway, if you must know." Then he grunted half-derisively. "Don't argue, man—
it's the only chance we've got. Go on—be a soldier this one more time, and we'll call it quits."
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Under the trap door there was an undulating earth floor, dry and dusty . . . or maybe it was a thick layer of chaff and ancient chicken-droppings from the powdery texture of it, and the mixture of feathers in it, even though the smell had long gone.
He ploughed through the stuff, inches deep, towards the crude little door, following tracks already furrowed before him.
Could he really squeeze through that?
The detritus had been scooped away from it, to reveal its full size, and the rusty iron hinges had been oiled, but it still looked more like a chicken-door than a Roche-door.
He lifted up the latch, and then dowsed the torch before he eased it open, his hands trembling.
His head ached and the sweat poured down his face. He was long past thinking clearly, and nothing mattered any more: this wasn't how it was meant to be, but this was how it was
—
He reached above him, at full stretch, and rapped the butt of the pistol on the flooring. Then he eased the door wide.
Cold air wafted around him, cooling the sweat on his face. He could just make out the stalks of weeds and vegetation ahead, black against paler blue.
Then he heard someone shouting, far away but insistently: Audley was drawing their attention to the front, as he had promised to do. So it was now or never.
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He squeezed himself into the aperture, parting the weeds ahead of him as carefully and silently as he could with his hands, feeling his shoulders first compress, and then scrape, on the rough stone.
As his hips came through, and he knew that he was out and free, he held his breath. The shouting continued in the distance, only marginally louder than the beating of his own heart.
Through the weeds, and in between the thicker stems of some kind of bush . . . and then the shallow ditch opened up before him, half filled with coarse grass.
He wouldn't be able to stop that grass moving, yet it might not show above the top of the ditch, and the light was bad now—but was it bad enough?
Anyway, the man covering the back shouldn't be watching the ditch— they'd hardly have looked over the Tower expecting this sort of siege—
Siege? He examined the ditch again, and saw that although shallow it was wide—even wide enough to be the remains of a defensive moat round some petty hobereau's fortified manor, of which the Tower itself was the last relic. And the wideness encouraged him to make himself believe that it was deeper than it seemed.
He crawled—and crawled as he had been taught to crawl at OCTU, with the fear of Staff Sergeants above him.
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And at last stood up, and ran—
He had not the slightest idea where he was at first, but Audley had said turn left, and somehow the geography of the ridge came to him as he ran—it curved into a re-entrant, such as the army map-reading experts loved—until there at last, black-towered among the treetops, was the Château Peyrony.
The gloomy woods didn't frighten him now, he was too breathless to be frightened, but the door wouldn't let him in.
He banged on it—hammered on it, starting up echoes which the house had never heard before, and went on hammering.
"M'sieur!" The old crone was outraged even before she saw his appearance. " M'sieur—"
He pushed past her, taking the stairs two at a time, scattering the house-ghosts headlong.
The light was glowing under the door, exactly where he remembered it—there was no need to knock— she was expecting him— and not only because of the noise he had made, coming to her now— she had known all along that death was loose in her country—
"Madame—"
She didn't move, she didn't turn a hair and she didn't interrupt him as he spoke, until—