Gunner Kelly Read online

  “No time for a proper tour … Another day, maybe …” Audley’s voice was casual. “It’s a good cautionary tale, really—the story of the tank, right from the beginning … Ploughshares into swords, to start with, you might say.”

  Benedikt looked at him. “Ploughshares?”

  “Oh, yes …” The big man gestured vaguely to his left, towards the anti-clockwise beginnings of the fully-fledged leviathans lined up on his right. “The caterpillar track began its life as a bit of agricultural machinery, anyway—‘to boldly plough where no horse had ploughed before’, that sort of thing.” His voice was still casual, but there was something in his face which hinted to Benedikt that the Statute of Limitations on bad memories hadn’t altogether run out, whatever had been said to the contrary. “But it put paid to the cavalry charger much more comprehensively than to the farm-horse and the plough-ox—there are plenty of quadrupeds still at work in the fields in third-world countries well-equipped with tanks. Like I said, a cautionary tale—a matter of human priorities … Or, ‘How many armoured divisions has the Pope got?’, as Stalin said—was it Stalin?” He twisted a lop-sided smile, unsmiling, at Benedikt. “But our priority is over there—” he pointed “—past the DD-Sherman with its skirts right up, over by the Tunisian Tiger. Okay?”

  Benedikt nodded, and followed the Englishman dumbly into the labyrinth. One thing was certain, he thought: if there ever was another day for him here, it would not be David Audley who presided over it. For some reason—perhaps to get rid of those juvenile spies without argument—it suited the man to set up a rendezvous here. But the place was still too painful for any casual visit.

  But now Audley was moving purposefully ahead of him down the aisle, ignoring his surroundings. Only when he was half-way down the hangar, level with a cross-aisle, did he pause for Benedikt to catch up.

  “We are meeting someone?” The question sounded foolish, but he qualified it by looking about him at the other visitors thronging the museum. So far as he could observe they consisted mostly of family groups, with the fathers showing off their knowledge to their sons and the bored mothers more concerned with the whereabouts of stragglers.

  “Trust me.” Audley answered without answering, moving down the side-aisle. “That’s my old tank, the Cromwell. Would have been good in the desert in ‘42 … bloody death-trap in the Normandy bocage in ’44—not too safe against your old Mark IVs, and suicide against those big sods over there … unless you could find one all by itself and get in a shot from the rear… which I certainly never did.”

  Audley was nodding down another aisle, directly ahead of him, at a sinister desert-yellow Tiger facing them.

  “Head-on—that’s not the way to say ‘hullo’ to a Tiger.” Audley shivered. “One of your chaps—a bright lad named Wittmann—bagged a whole squadron of London Yeomanry outside Villers Bocage with just this one Tiger of his, so we were told. And apparently he’d already got over a hundred Russian tanks on his score-card—he must have been the Richthofen of his team. ”He eyed the Tiger silently for a moment. “They used to start up with a sort of cough … quite distinctive. Once heard, never forgotten, but not wanted to be heard again—”

  “Hullo there, David.” The voice which cut off Audley’s reverie came from behind them. “Telling how David slew Goliath?”

  Benedikt turned towards the voice.

  “Why—hullo, friendly cousin!” Audley greeted the newcomer with cheerful innocence. “Good to see you.”

  “A pleasure shared, as always.” Smooth black hair, thin moustache … swarthy, almost Mexican complexion … and the dark eyes were fixed on Benedikt, appraising him frankly. “You have a friend, I see.” The voice, by contrast, was mid-Atlantic rather than trans-Atlantic, educated American.

  “A friend and colleague,” Audley corrected him smoothly. “Allied colleague.”

  “Is that so?” The American continued to scrutinise Benedikt. “But additional to our deal, maybe?”

  Audley gave a tiny shrug. “Additionally necessary, say. But I have thrown in a little more to balance him. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

  “Hell—I’m sure I won’t, at that!” The American flashed white teeth at the Englishman. “It’s just that my … acquaintance back there may not find your allied friend and colleague so easy to take on board, that’s all—no offence, allied friend and colleague.” He gave Benedikt a share of the teeth. “Just … I get this feeling he already wishes he didn’t owe me so many favours.”

  “He’s nervous, you mean?” Audley contrived to mix innocence and satisfaction in the question. “But not on account of me, surely?”

  The American considered Audley coolly. “On account of you … maybe a little. He doesn’t know you as well as I do, I guess.” He paused. “On account of what he’s gotten for you … about which, because of our agreement, I have not as yet inquired, you understand … on account of that, I think he now knows something he’d rather not know.”

  “Ah!” Audley’s satisfaction increased. “That’s good.”

  “Good isn’t his word for it. In fact, it took all my powers of persuasion to get him down here today. It seems he’s conceived a sudden urge to visit his second cousin in Boston—an overwhelming urge to be somewhere else for the time being—to get away from it all… You know the feeling?”

  “I know the feeling.” Audley smiled. “So you’ll just have to use your charm—or whatever—again, won’t you?”

  Another cool look. “Seems that way.”

  “Which would bring benefits all round, remember.”

  “All round?”

  “To you and me all round. It’s all waiting for you at the usual place, what you want—plus the bonus on behalf of my colleague here. All pure and unadulterated.”

  The American came to his decision. “Okay, David. You can have him. Half an hour, no more—and don’t frighten him if you can help it, he’s not a bad guy. Just give me a minute to convince him.”

  “Agreed. I’ll be sweetness and light itself.”

  “And I get this too … whatever it is … in due course?”

  “If it concerns you—yes.”

  “Fair enough.” The American acknowledged Benedikt. “Watch yourself with this English gentleman, friendly ally. Auf Wiedersehen.” He nodded finally at Audley. “See you, David.”

  Benedikt watched the man disappear among the tanks, then he looked at Audley.

  “CIA?” It felt like the first thing he had said in hours.

  “At its best.”

  Benedikt digested that. Praise from Audley was worth remembering. “He knew me.”

  “Of course—he would. It’s his business to know you. He just met you face to face a week or two before he expected to, that’s all.” Audley grinned. “Sorry about all that horse-trading. You inhibited us both, rather.”

  Horse-trading was how Audley operated, Benedikt remembered. “You have a special relationship?”

  “Of a sort … when it’s in our respective national interests. Otherwise we have this old-fashioned gentleman’s agreement about declarations of war preceding hostilities. Short of that we play dead straight with each other, which makes for much greater efficiency as well as simplicity. And we trade on that basis.”

  “You gave him something—?”

  “That’s right.” Audley caught the expression on his face. “Nothing out of our files—nothing like that … Something of mine … I have these private Israeli contacts, and they want the Americans to know something. But they don’t want it to come from them directly, for the record. Only … not everything they’ve given him is strictly kosher, so I’ve given him good value on my own account.”

  Benedikt glanced round, but couldn’t see anyone answering to his imagination. “Value for what?” The front runner in the race was obvious. “Gunner Kelly?”

  “Gunner Kelly.” Audley double-checked on his own account. “I’ve given you some of it, and you must have put more of it together by now …”

&n
bsp; “The bomb was for Kelly.” He studied a middle-aged man who was loitering near the panel bearing the Tiger’s biography. But then the man’s family joined him. “He knows who was responsible, and he has some way of communicating with him, to get him to try again. Only this time he’ll be ready for him.” Now there was another possibility: a good-looking young man in a beautifully-cut lightweight suit had joined the family group, but was not part of it.

  “Correct.” Audley pointed suddenly towards the Tiger’s turret. “See that gouge on the trunnion there? That was made by an anti-tank shot … six-pounder AP, most likely …” He waited until the young man had sauntered past them, to disappear beyond a neighbouring Mark V Panther in the direction of the armoured car hall. “Go on.”

  Benedikt stared at him. “Is it really vengeance that he wants? What does he really want?”

  “Yes …” Audley met his gaze for a moment, then let his glance wander again. “That is the heart of the matter: what is he really up to?”

  There was still no likely prospect in sight, only one harassed mother being dragged by one small boy while trying vainly to keep two others in view simultaneously.

  “What did he tell the people in the Chase?” Benedikt fended off one of the small boys who was about to collide with him. “Miss Becky? And Blackie Nabb … and Old Cecil?”

  “And others. Wally Grant and Ron Turnbull, the two main tenant farmers. And Ken Tailor, who runs the shop. And Mike Kramer at the garage up on the road and Dave and Rachel in the Bells.” Audley nodded. “He started with them … the ones with the influence.”

  “What did he say?”

  Audley thought for a time without replying. “Yes … I’ve told you how they all felt about the Old General—the Squire … their Squire.” He looked at Benedikt candidly. “I’ve never come across anything quite like it before. I’ve heard about it—I’ve read about it … but I didn’t think it still existed.” He half-smiled. “It’s like stumbling on a secret valley and finding an extinct animal grazing peacefully there … Or a mythical beast, even—a unicorn, maybe?”

  “But this unicorn has a sharp horn.”

  “Oh yes! And sharp hoofs to kick with, and teeth to bite with. Unicorns were only gentle with virgins.” The half-smile faded. “He told them at least some of the truth, it seems—perhaps he told them all of it that could be told. That’s what he says, anyway.”

  Benedikt waited. There were two youths in jeans passing by, with two little painted girls, oblivious of everything but each other.

  “He said it was all his fault—that the bomb was for him. He admitted that straight off. His fault. But not deliberately his fault—not expected … and not deserved, either—”

  “Not deserved?” Benedikt frowned.

  Audley held up a finger. “I’ll come back to that. What he said was that there’d been someone hunting him for a long time, trying to get the crossed wires on him—that he’d been running for a long time before he’d come to Duntisbury Chase. And even then he hadn’t come for the job the Squire had advertised—‘Man Friday wanted, ex-gunner preferred’—he’d simply remembered his officer from long ago, when killing was in fashion, and he’d only come for advice. ‘In a tight corner, the Squire always knew what to do’, was what he remembered.”

  So what followed had been inevitable, thought Benedikt. At least, inevitable, the Old General being the man he had been. “So he got the job instead?”

  “Not instead—because, more likely. The Chase was off the beaten track … no one comes to Duntisbury Royal, it isn’t on the way to anywhere. And what the job entailed didn’t involve going anywhere, either… So four years, he’s been here …and the first three of them he didn’t step further than Kramer’s garage, to take the Old General’s car for its occasional service. It was only the last few months he’d driven the old boy to Salisbury and Bournemouth, to his tailor and his wine merchant, and such like … Between them, they reckoned the trail must have gone cold … Or, it wouldn’t likely be very hot in Salisbury or Bournemouth.”

  Benedikt thought of the cathedral and its quiet close, with its old houses and cool green grass; and Bournemouth was the seaside town to which elderly English gentlefolk retired on their pensions and their dividends. Bombs and snipers belonged in neither of them.

  “ ‘Sanctuary’—that was Kelly’s word for it: ‘He gave me sanctuary’, he told them—Becky and the rest. ‘And now I’ve killed him for it, as sure as if I’d set that bomb meself.’ ”

  They should have known better, the Old General and Gunner Kelly between them, thought Benedikt—that there was no place safe from sudden death if defenders were not vigilant— not the bishop’s Salisbury, not the pensioners’ Bournemouth … and not peaceful Duntisbury Royal either—there was the Fighting Man to remind him of that.

  No safe place … He looked round again, and saw that for the first time they were quite alone beside the Tiger. It must be getting near to the museum’s lunchtime closure.

  “So now the Squire was dead, and he was still a target. Which meant it was time for him to start running again.”

  “Why was he a target?”

  “All in good time, my dear chap. I’m telling it to you how he told it to them. He could run again—nothing easier. He had his pension from the army, he could have that sent anywhere. And he had his savings, and four years’ wages that he’d hardly touched—he could run a long way on that, and maybe even far enough this time.”

  Still no one. The American must be having difficulty persuading his contact that Audley could be trusted.

  “But this time was different. He wasn’t going to run this time. There was a score to settle this time.” Audley paused.

  “He’d been lying low in the Chase, working that out. Those that were after him would reckon he’d run already, but when he was ready he had a way of letting them know where he was. And then when they came he was going to repay them in their own coin. He owed that for the Squire. What happened afterwards was no matter. But, also because of the Squire, he owed them in the Chase the telling of what he was going to do. That was all.”

  All? thought Benedikt, lining up what he had observed of the people of the Chase as well as what he had been told about them, and then adding Gunner Kelly to it. Because then, all was what it wasn’t: it wasn’t an end, it could only be—and had been—merely a beginning.

  So he could jump the next question, having the answer to it, and go on to the more interesting one that followed it.

  “He knew they’d insist on helping him?” As he spoke he saw that Audley had been watching him. “He calculated it?”

  The big Englishman relaxed slightly. “Right. No proof… but… right.”

  “Do they know?” He thought of Blackie Nabb handling the police at the ford. “They are not stupid, all of them.”

  “You’re dead right they’re not stupid, all of them!” Audley spoke feelingly. “But Kelly is a remarkable man, you know.”

  “A man of many voices?” He remembered the previous night’s events.

  Audley smiled. “You’ve encountered that, have you?”

  “The question is … how many of his tongues are forked …?” He did not find it easy to smile back. The roles Gunner Kelly was playing ranged too widely for that: he could be the ultimately loyal soldier, devoted to the avenging of his liege-lord’s murder at the risk of his own life, and therefore not too scrupulous about manipulating others who owed the same service. But he could also be a clever man planning to end a long pursuit by using others to destroy his pursuers.

  “I agree.” Audley nodded. “The trouble is … he is a great performer—but is he really that good? Because they aren’t stupid—you’re right … but at the same time they’re not professionals.” He turned the nod into a slow shake. “In his place … he’s taking one hell of a risk … in his place I’d run, you know.”

  But run from what? thought Benedikt: that was still the final question. “Who wants him dead?”

  “Yes. That’
s where we have a problem, I’m afraid.” Audley rubbed his chin as though in doubt. “A real problem …”

  “He is an Irishman.” That ought to simplify matters, and was surely not to be ignored when it came to killing. With an Englishman, or a German, the possibilities were too numerous to make mere nationality significant; with an Italian, even though the Red Brigades were as good as beaten, there was now the Bulgarian connection as well as the Mafia and the terrorists of the far right. But with Irishmen, as with Basques and Corsicans and Palestinians, there was a single starting point nine times out of ten, no matter how it splintered afterwards.

  “But only of a sort.” Audley studied him. “If I may say so without offence, you continental Europeans don’t understand the Irish at all, you know.”

  “And you British do?” Even at the risk of offence, he couldn’t let that pass. “Forgive me for not being able to see the evidence for that.”

  Audley smiled. “Oh … culturally, perhaps you have some inkling of them. I’m not decrying what the cultivated German tourist observes, even though he probably relishes romantic notions of the pre-urban society …just as you are inclined to see Britain in somewhat idyllic Dickensian terms—”

  “Now you are patronising me, Dr Audley—”

  “Then I’m sorry! But I don’t mean to, I assure you. Would it help if I admitted that the British have no worthwhile insights at all about foreigners? You at least see something—we see nothing at all… It’s the curse of insularity … No matter how many millions of us go abroad, we’re still the most cretinously ignorant nation in Europe—I admit it.” He smiled again, disarmingly. “And I admit quoting your Nobel prize-winner Boll—Heinrich Boll—at you. But at least I didn’t suggest he lived in Ireland for tax reasons—you must admit that, Benedikt.”