‘Goodbye, sir—’ The Cortina’s movement sloughed off its proud owner, but not quite ‘—don’t forget what I told you about the hand-brake—
the hand-brake, sir—
’
They were moving. And there was a surge of 2-litre power under his foot now, and a clear road ahead and behind, for the time being.
Audley muttered again. And then sneezed again, and blew his nose again, to demonstrate that his cold was much worse this morning, as well as his temper.
Tom put his foot down, listening to the sound of the engine above the other assorted rattles from all sorts of places around him, inside and outside and underneath ‘the good runner’.
‘If there’s one thing I hate—’ Audley managed to speak at last, and with cold concentration ‘—or two things … or maybe even
three
things—’ A paroxysm of sneezes engulfed all the things he hated.
Still nothing behind. Which was reassuring, even if it also shamed Tom a little for all the proper precautions he had wished on the poor old bugger this morning, before and after their hasty breakfast.
‘What do you hate, David?’ Still nothing. And what made him feel worse was that he felt better himself: better after last night (which had been better than better); and better because there still wasn’t anything behind, as they climbed up on to the high shoulder of Cherwell Down, into open moorland, where anything behind would be nakedly following; and best of all (although that was treacherous to Willy, to think it best), because he had always wanted to see Mountsorrel—(to hell with them all—Jaggard and Audley, Panin and his po-faced Minder … even, almost, with Willy herself!)—
he had always wanted to see Mountsorrel
! ‘What do you hate, David?’
Audley emitted a growling sound, half hate and half common head-cold. ‘I hate Ford Cortinas—and particularly two-tone brown Cortinas!’
Now
that
, thought Tom happily, was
irrational
, in the circumstances. ‘Two-tone Cortinas, David?’ There was nothing behind, for a mile or more.
‘My wife bought one once, fourth-hand—’ Audley caught himself suddenly, as though he realized at last what a fool he was making of himself. ‘Damn it, Tom! What the hell are we supposed to be doing at the moment?’
That was fair enough. ‘We’re just taking precautions, David. That’s all.’ But he mustn’t sympathize with Audley too much. ‘What other things do you hate?’
‘Huh!’ Audley was getting back his cool, in spite of his cold. ‘I’m too old to enjoy your precautions—if that’s what you mean by all this bloody cloak-and-dagger business.’
Should he count ‘cloak-and-dagger’ as Things Two and Three? ‘But I’m your Minder—remember, David?’
‘Remember?’ The old man slumped down resignedly. ‘How could I forget?’ He sniffed against the cold. ‘Although it’s a bloody long time since I’ve been professionally-minded … But no—I remember … ’ Then he gestured towards the battered dashboard, with its gaping hole where the radio had been. ‘This is a precaution, is it?’
They came to the cross-roads on the top. ‘This is a different car. The one we had yesterday was in the hotel car park all night. So I couldn’t watch it absolutely.’
So I was busy last night—okay
? ‘So now we’ve got a clean car.’
Grunt. ‘Metaphorically speaking.’ Grunt—
sneeze—
Poor old bugger! ‘It was the first place that offered cars for hire, David.’
End of sneeze. ‘So you’re into not trusting anyone, then? Even here?’ Audley considered his handkerchief with distaste, much as he had surveyed the Cortina. ‘Or do you know something I don’t know?’
He mustn’t think ‘
Poor old bugger
’ again. ‘We’re meeting Panin this morning—“in the open”, like he wants … And someone took a shot at you yesterday, David—and you didn’t think that was
his
doing, I know. But that doesn’t matter, because if it wasn’t him then it was someone else … In fact, I’d rather it bloody-well
was
him—at least we’d know it then, wouldn’t we!’ He put his foot down again, and began to think better of the garage man in spite of the body-rattles. ‘But, in any case, there’s also poor Basil Cole to bear in mind:
somebody
knows too damn much—you said so yourself. So a bit of cloak-and-dagger is fair enough. Okay?’
Audley said nothing for a few seconds. Then he
harumphed
chestily, and fumbled again for his handkerchief, and finally blew his nose again. ‘You’re saying someone—
somebody—
may have bugged that big black monster of yours last night? To keep tabs on us today? Someone—
somebody—
who managed to follow us all the way to the Green Man last night?’ He paused, to let the memory of the M4/M5 drive speak for him. ‘Like Superman, perhaps?’
It was time to poach Audley to rights. But it might be as well to do it circumspectly. ‘It could have been bugged when I left it outside Basil Cole’s house last evening, David—they could have been watching and waiting for us … So I was careless there: we should have changed horses somewhere down the line yesterday, instead of here … just in case.’ And now was the time to frighten him. ‘Or … alternatively … ’
He didn’t have to drive far before Audley cracked. ‘Alternatively—?’
They were already coming off the high moor, down into one of those ancient valleys where prehistoric men had grubbed a living of sorts: and, in the case of this particular valley, where Gilbert of Mountsorrel had briefly been king of his castle in King Stephen’s short days.
‘Come clean, Tom, damn you!’ snapped Audley.
Tom frowned at the long downhill road ahead. They had come back too quickly to Audley’s ‘
Do you know something I don’t know
?’ when he had thought he’d headed the old man off the question. ‘Come clean—?’
‘Huh! Or as clean as you know how, anyway!’ Audley shifted, to fix a direct eye on him. ‘Last night you were pissed off … You didn’t know what the hell was happening, Tom—
I
know the signs … because
I
have been there before myself—in no-man’s-land, with one hand tied behind my back, and one foot in a bucket, and some silly fool to look after …
I have been there, so I recognize the symptoms
… so don’t fuck me around, eh?’
This was bad, thought Tom: once again, he had underestimated the man, and he needed more time to sort out the
how
and the
why
. ‘What—?’
‘I said—’ Audley stopped suddenly as the road narrowed and fell away steeply between high earth-banks. ‘Watch your speed, man, watch your speed!’
Tom was already doing just that, with the garage man’s warning about the brakes suddenly ringing in his ear. The old car could certainly show a clean pair of rear wheels to its peers on the straight, he had established. But it wasn’t good running he had to worry about now, it was good stopping. And, from the way he was tensed up in the passenger’s seat, Audley was sharing his fears.
Slowly, under insistent pumping of the foot-brake, the car agreed to decrease its speed to the point where he could enlist the gears to help him. ‘I’m sorry, David. I was thinking of other things.’
‘So was I.’ Audley sniffed and hugged himself. ‘This bloody
bocage—
it always gives me the creeps.’
‘“Bocage”?’ Then Tom remembered Audley’s ancient history as a teenage yeomanry tank-commander in 1944, and seized on it gratefully. ‘You mean, this is like Normandy, is it?’
Audley didn’t reply, but sat hunched up and silent until Tom himself recalled out of his subconscious the long lines of graves in the Polish war cemetery on the road from Caen to Falaise, so many of which marked the last resting place of tank crewmen who had died half a continent away from home, for their country’s freedom and in vain.
‘Yes—’ Audley sat up suddenly ‘—yes and no. Like and unlike.’ Sniff. ‘Funny thing, memory: it goes away for years. Then it comes back.’ He sniffed again, and turned towards Tom. ‘Now, young Thomas Arkenshaw …
alternatively
, you said. And,
alternatively
…
someone didn’t need to follow us yesterday because that someone already knew where we were going, hey?’
Tom nodded. Over the next ridge, then Mountsorrel would be somewhere down the other side, to the left. ‘It’s possible.’
‘Yes,’ Audley agreed harshly. ‘Our side knew. And Nikolai Andrievich’s side knew. And neither of those sides can be trusted, for a start. But there’s more to you this morning than that deplorable truth. Which, for another start, wouldn’t cheer you up—’
‘David!’ Old memories of blazing tanks, more often British and Polish than German in the
bloody
bocage, had given Tom more time, and more time advised him to come clean. Or, at least, fairly clean. ‘Let me—’
‘No!’ Audley cut him off. ‘Don’t attempt to deny it—or explain it … at least until I have finished thinking aloud, anyway.’ Sniff. ‘Yesterday you were unhappy … and, as you have admitted, somewhat careless. Today, you are happy, but careful … And you refused to talk business until we were away from the Green Man and in a safe—huh!
relatively
safe—car, in the middle of nowhere. Right?’
Tom managed to open his mouth, but Audley forestalled him. ‘And I do not think—I do not
believe—
that your happiness is simply the product of youth and a good night’s sleep.’ A handkerchief appeared from nowhere and the old man blew his nose on it. ‘Whereas I had a dreadful night, full of fly-blown nightmares … But that is because I have heard the chimes at midnight too often, and now I like to have my own true woman within reach beside me, and my own true mattress beneath me … But now the fresh air has blown the cobwebs from my brain and I can see clearly again.’ The old man balled up the damp handkerchief and stuffed it into the pocket of his pale expensive raincoat, and flourished a fresh one from another pocket. ‘So—I tell you this only for your dear mother’s sake—so if you are about to deceive me, I caution you to do it well. Because, for her sake, I have decided to trust you this morning until I think you are playing me false. But then,
also
for her sake, I will pack you back to that pen-pushing paper-hanger Frobisher, and you can make your peace with him as best you can.’ Audley wiped his face with the fresh handkerchief. ‘Is that crystal clear, now?’
They breasted the new ridge, and Tom caught a glimpse of heather-dark moorland away to his left, with its sharply treeless skyline under the rain-clouds. But he knew that he couldn’t see so far into Audley in spite of Jaggard’s calculations and the man’s own admissions—even in spite of that once-upon-a-time special relationship with Mamusia. Because Audley had his own true woman now; and, anyway, Audley was also not to be trusted, in his own right.
‘Crystal clear, David.’ And yet, in spite of that mistrust (and perhaps because of Mamusia; but more, perhaps, because he had never met anyone in the service like this strange, garrulous, dangerous old man), he felt himself drawn to him, and into the game. ‘If I double-cross you, then you’ll shop me. Right?’
‘Hmm … ’ For the first time, Audley was taking notice of his surroundings. ‘Just tell me one thing then, Tom—’
‘One thing?’ They were going down again. But this time he had the right low gear in advance; because, although he could see nothing as the high Devon
bocage
banks reared up again on each side, he knew that Mountsorrel must be down there somewhere, just ahead and to the left, on its own spit of land above the ancient river crossing.
‘Yes.’ Audley’s tone was casual, but his big hands were squeezing each other nervously on his lap, again as though his
bocage-memories
of well-sited German 88s and lurking
panzerfaust
infantry had returned with the earth-banks. ‘One simple question to start off with, anyway. Now that we know where we stand, as it were.’
The road twisted, and then straightened again so that Tom could see clear down to the parapets of a narrow little stone bridge at the bottom of the hill. So there had to be an opening of some sort on the left before that. ‘Go on, David.’
‘Yes.’ The hands continued to work. ‘Just where the devil are we going?’
‘Ah!’ There was a gap ahead, in the high bank on the left; and although it looked small … and it was unsignposted (but then Mountsorrel wasn’t National Trust, of course) … it was the only gap he could discern in this last hundred yards, before the bridge. ‘
Ah!
’ He pumped the foot-brake furiously, debating whether to overshoot and then back up the hill rather than attempt the turning on his first run. ‘
Here
, as it happens, is where we’re going … I think—’
The hell with it
! he thought, swinging the wheel.
The old car creaked in every metal bone and sinew, and canted over dangerously as it slithered in slow motion into a sharp left-hand turn, so that for a moment he feared that it would slam broadside into the bank which rose up again on the lower side of the entrance. But, by the grace of God, it accepted his change of direction, and then stalled in a final protest.
‘Indeed?’ Audley had lurched against him, swearing under his breath, as they had taken the turn. But now his voice was only mildly incredulous. ‘And
where
, pray, is
here
, Tom?’
He might well ask, thought Tom, surveying the unpromising vista up the muddy rutted track ahead between future luxuriant banks of stinging nettles.
‘That is to say—‘ Audley amended his question suddenly ’—does Panin know how to get to Bodger’s Farm?‘
‘Bodger’s Farm?’ Tom followed Audley’s pointing finger. On the passenger’s side, on the wreck of a five-bar gate propped against two oil drums, a crudely-painted board bore that legend.
‘Is this where you wanted to go?’ inquired Audley politely. ‘And, if it is, will he be able to get here?’
Tom’s confidence weakened. But then long experience of similar places reanimated it. ‘He has my Ordnance Survey map with the rendezvous marked. I gave it to his escort this morning, before breakfast.’
‘His escort? His
minder
, you mean?’ Audley grinned wolfishly at him. ‘What was he like?’