Soldier No More Read online

  “Latimer is one of the new recruits,” said Genghis Khan. “Eton, then Merton College and All Souls at Oxford—a very gifted young man—we would like to know very much how they recruited him … perhaps also a very nasty young man …”)

  “A tricky blighter, then,” said Latimer. “Arrogant, selfish, indisciplined, bloody-minded, ruthless, cunning—take your pick.” He stared into space as he listed David Longsdon Audley’s virtues, at a point above Roche’s head.

  “Brilliant,” supplemented Sir Eustace. “Brave.”

  Roche achieved a surreptitious sidelong look at Colonel Clinton, and was rewarded with a fleeting vision of Clinton observing Oliver St.John Latimer in an unguarded moment.

  “Clever—I’ll grant you clever,” begrudged Latimer.

  “A First at Cambridge,” murmured Sir Eustace. “An Open Scholarship when he was seventeen—the Hebden Prize—and a First after the war.”

  “Anyone can get a First at Cambridge,” said Latimer disparagingly. “It isn’t difficult.”

  “And a doctorate,” said Sir Eustace.

  Latimer sniffed. “On a singularly obscure aspect of Byzantine religious history. Which I also strongly suspect he cribbed from an even more obscure untranslated Arabic thesis on the subject … I know of a chap who did exactly the same with a Ph.D on Richard Hooker— all out of an untranslated German book …But — clever, I’ll grant you, yes!”

  David Longsdon Audley…

  Educated: Miss Anthea Grant’s Kindergarten, 1930-33; St. George’s Preparatory School for Boys, Buckland, 1933-38; St. Martin’s School, Immingham, Hampshire, 1938-42; War Service (see below); Rylands College, Cambridge, 1946-49 (Open Scholarship in History, 1942; Hebden Prizewinner, 1948; 1st Class Honours, 1949; Ph.D., 1953).

  “And brave.” Sir Eustace allowed the hint of a sharper edge into his voice, almost as though he was deliberately taking a cut at Latimer.

  “Ah … well, I wouldn’t like to set myself up as an authority there, Eustace,” said Latimer off-handedly, as impervious to the cut as a rhinoceros to the brush of a thornbush. “They didn’t give him any pretty ribbons, but that doesn’t prove anything, I suppose — medals being no more than a lottery. But no doubt a gallant officer.”

  War Service (Immingham School OTC, 1938-42) Army, 1942-46 (conscripted); OCTU, Mons Barracks, Aldershot, 1943; 21 Lt, Royal West Sussex Dragoons, 1943; 15th Armoured Division, 2nd Army, Normandy, July-August 1944; Lt. September 1944, attached Intelligence Corps; T/Capt., February 1945; demobilised, Oct 1946.

  “Wasn’t it the Duke of Wellington who asked to be preserved from ‘gallant officers’?” Latimer cast a lazy glance in Colonel Clinton’s direction. “I suppose military bravery is in the nature of a communal activity — the urge to conform multiplied by the bloodlust of the hunting-field, would you say, Fred?”

  Clinton shrugged. “I’m not an authority on it either, Latimer. I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

  “But he was a cavalryman of some sort, wasn’t he?”

  “He served in an armoured regiment, if that’s what you mean,” said Clinton evenly.

  “The Royal … something Dragoons …?”

  “West Sussex. He was with them in Normandy.”

  “But not for long, if I remember correctly?”

  Was this being staged for his benefit, Roche wondered — or did they always spar like this?

  “They didn’t last long. They were practically wiped out in the bocage country, south of Caumont.” Clinton paused. “If I remember correctly.”

  “In the best British cavalry tradition,” agreed Latimer. “It was a smart regiment, I take it?”

  “It was a good yeomanry regiment,” said Clinton icily.

  “That’s what I mean—sons of the local squires in pretty uniforms—gold braid and magenta-coloured breeches, and all that.”

  Magenta was their colour, yes.”

  “How ghastly! Doesn’t go with anything, magenta—I should know, because it’s my old college colour too,” murmured Latimer. “And it was after that debacle you met him first, wasn’t it, Fred?”

  Suddenly Roche began to watch them both much more carefully.

  “Briefly,” said Clinton, equally briefly.

  “Yes. And that’s where the book of words starts to become rather sketchy,” nodded Latimer.

  So it wasn’t for his benefit—they were fencing with unbuttoned foils, decided Roche.

  Latimer had done his homework on Audley, no matter what he pretended—even down to knowing that the regimental colour of the Royal West Sussex Dragoons was magenta, which was a dead giveaway to the depth of his research. But, nevertheless, there was still a lot that he didn’t know about Audley—and therefore a lot that wasn’t in the file—for which, even for any unconsidered titbit an irritated Colonel Clinton might let slip, Latimer was now unashamedly fishing.

  But, much more to the point, 2/Lt Audley had met Clinton in 1944, and although obviously still very young had been involved in intelligence work thereafter.

  So … they didn’t just want Audley as a recruit—they wanted him back.

  “So then he went to work for you,” confirmed Latimer obligingly.

  “Not for me,” Clinton shook his head.

  “For us, then.” Latimer waited for a moment or two. Then, when it became clear that Clinton wasn’t going to elaborate on that piece of negative intelligence, he turned to Sir Eustace. “What exactly did he do? Beyond causing a lot of trouble to a lot of people, if I read between the lines correctly?”

  Sir Eustace smiled almost genially, as though he didn’t want to offend Latimer. “It isn’t really grist to our mill any more, Oliver. It’s all water under the bridge—‘in another country, and besides the wench is dead’, and all that.”

  “You mean—still classified?” Smiles didn’t fool Latimer.

  “If you like. But also unimportant now. You’ve seen his fitness reports.”

  “Unfitness reports, more like,” amended Latimer. “Oh yes, I’ve seen them. And I’ve talked to Archie Forbes at Cambridge too, and he pretty much confirmed them. Arrogant, selfish, indisciplined, bloody-minded, ruthless and cunning.”

  “He’s matured since then, Oliver.”

  “Or hardened.”

  “So much the better.” Sir Eustace’s voice roughened. “At all events, Oliver—and David—I want him. And I want him quickly.”

  Latimer gave Roche a quizzical look, almost as though he was seeing him for the first time. “Well, you’re welcome to him. But I say he’s a tricky blighter—“

  “So he worked for them.” Genghis Khan did not appear either particularly surprised by the news, or embarrassed by the fact that it was news. “And then left them.”

  “And you’ve got no record of him?” Roche made no effort to conceal his disappointment.

  “Nothing?”

  “The inquiry into our records is in progress. But now I will inquire more urgently, since we know there is something to look for. Do not despair.”

  “I’m not despairing. I just expected more help, that’s all—if it’s so important.”

  “It is important.” Genghis Khan’s fractional nod was, by the standard of his immobility, a wild gesture of agreement on that, Roche supposed. “It is so important that it is all the more important for us not to rush in to help you, I think. We must help you with caution, is better.”

  That sounded very much like all aid short of actual help, thought Roche bleakly. Between Sir Eustace’s I want him quickly and Genghis Khan’s we must help you with caution and St. John Latimer’s he’s a tricky blighter, not to mention his private plans, he was already in over his head, and he hadn’t even started.

  “And above all you must be cautious,” Genghis Khan compounded the situation. “At least until we know what they want, there must be no risk taken, no slightest risk.”

  “They want Audley, damn it—we know what they want,” snapped Roche.

  “Sir Eustace Avery wants Audley.” Genghis K
han stared at him un-blinkingly. “But Oliver Saint-John Latimer does not want Audley—“

  “Sinjun. It’s pronounced Sinjun, not ‘Saint-John’,” said Roche. “Sinjun Latimer.”

  Genghis Khan blinked just once, like a lizard. “He sees Audley as a rival. And it is also perhaps that Avery intends him to be a rival… But that is not enough, there must be more … And there is Clinton. There is always Clinton—he must be considered.”

  More?”

  Genghis Khan ignored him. “To go to such trouble for one man. There must be more—there will be more.”

  He was having difficulty adjusting his thought-processes to the limitations of a decadent fascist-capitalist society, that was it. Recalling Audley’s Russian equivalent to the colours would not have presented such problems. “I don’t see why.” Arguing back was risky, but if there was something else behind the man’s certainty he needed to know it. “They think he’ll maybe play hard to get, that’s all. He worked for them during the war, and they approached him again a few years ago, but he turned them down flat. They think I can do better.”

  The lizard-blink was repeated. “Why you?”

  Roche decided not to be insulted. “I have what they call ‘a sympathetic profile’ apparently. It seems we both read history at university.” He could see that sympathetic profiles and history both left Genghis Khan unmoved. “And I have a high security clearance.”

  That did the trick: Genghis Khan smiled, or almost smiled, and Roche wished he hadn’t. It was more like the corpse-grin out of an Asiatic burial mound in which the khan presided over his circle of slaughtered slaves and horses.

  But mercifully it lasted only for a moment. “So you have been cleared to approach this man Audley … But that changes nothing. What matters is why they need him so urgently—that is what we want to know.”

  “It may be what you want to know. But if I don’t find out a lot more about Audley than there is in the bloody file we’ll never get that far,” said Roche bitterly. “So I hope to God Major Stocker knows what he’s about better than you do! Because if I fail—“

  “If you fail?” Genghis Khan shook his head slowly at Roche. “If you fail Sir Eustace Avery will not retain your services?”

  Roche’s guts knotted. “It’s possible.”

  “Then I think you would be well-advised not to fail, David Roche,” said Genghis Khan.

  “I mean, what sort of man he is—what makes him tick?” he pressed Major Stocker. “You must have some ideas about him, more than what’s in the file?”

  Major Stocker pursed his lips. “Not really, no—I haven’t actually met him, you know. I’ve just assembled the facts.”

  Stocker was Clinton’s man, so it seemed, and there was nothing very unnatural about that. In peacetime, you made the best with what you could get, and what soldiers could get usually consisted of other soldiers. He himself, although he was hardly a reassuring example of the process, was another instance of it, out of the additional factor of conscription and the accident of the Korean War. But he could have wished for the Audley file to have been assembled by someone more like Latimer.

  “Seems a pretty ordinary enough chap on the face of it,” Major Stocker struggled with his inclination to stay inside the safe defences of the facts in spite of Roche’s appeal to him to crawl out into the no-man’s-land of opinion.

  “On the face of it?”

  “Yes … That’s to say, prep school, public school, then in the war— decent regiment until they pulled him out of the line—“ Stocker made Audley’s attachment to Intelligence sound like victimisation, with Audley more sinned against than sinning “—doesn’t look as though he fitted in awfully well there, but he did his time.”

  No remission for good behaviour?”

  “What?”

  “They kept him on right to the end—October ‘46. And the university term starts in October. I seem to recall chaps getting special release in my day,” said Roche politely, to make up for his lapse into facetiousness.

  “Nothing unusual about that, if he was on a job. His fitness assessments were pretty damning, certainly—looks like maybe someone had it in for him for something he’d done.”

  “You don’t know what he’d done—what he’d been doing?”

  “Yes … that is, no.” Stocker shook his head. “I put in a request on a ‘Need to Know’ basis, but it was denied. I was told that it wasn’t relevant.”

  “Is that unusual, in your experience?”

  “Oh yes—quite usual. They hold on to that sort of thing as long as they can, as a matter of course. But in this case Colonel Clinton also turned down my request. He said there was no need for me to know.”

  “You went to Clinton after your request had been denied?”

  “Naturally.” Stocker regarded him candidly. “I never take the first no as the final answer …. But, at any rate, Audley made up for all that at university—he’s bright, no doubt about that. Not popular, but very bright. Good at games … rugger mostly, almost first-class at that, but not quite. Club level—helped to found a local club on his home territory—funny name—“

  “The Visigoths.”

  “That’s right—it’s in the file … they won the Wessex League in ‘54 … and the usual squash and fives, at college level, nothing special.”

  “Clubbable, in fact?” Audley did seem a depressingly normal public school product—school, regiment, university, work-and-games, mens sana in corpore sano. Apart, that was, from St. John Latimer’s assessment.

  Stocker was looking at him, and Stocker hadn’t answered. Perhaps he hadn’t heard?

  “Clubbable?” Perhaps Stocker was unacquainted with the word.

  “Joins in, plays the game, and all that?”

  “Yes.” Stocker continued to look at him. “Yes and no.”

  “What d’you mean—‘yes and no’?”

  Stocker considered his contradictory answer. “I rather think I mean ‘no’, actually.”

  Roche waited for the Major to elaborate the contradiction.

  “You know … we don’t know where his money comes from?” Stocker went off at a surprising tangent.

  “The file said ‘private means’,” said Roche, deciding not to press the Major on that ‘yes-and-no-meaning-no’ on the assumption that he would come back to it in his own good time.

  “Yes—that’s what they are—private.” Stocker nodded. “They’re so damn private we don’t know what they are, or where they are, or where they come from.”

  Audley was living in France at the moment, in the south near Cahors. But before that he had been on the move constantly, through Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey, and even in the Middle East, only returning to England at carefully spaced tax-evasive intervals. And while it wasn’t the sort of life-style that necessarily needed vast resources, its funding could be made very difficult to check, and with only a little ingenuity too.

  “He’s officially domiciled in Switzerland,” continued Stocker. “But I’ve half an idea the money is in Lebanon. The difficulty is that Colonel Clinton doesn’t want him alerted that anyone is sniffing around, so we’re having to move very slowly. So slowly as to be practically stationary.”

  Roche frowned. “But I thought his money was inherited? Wasn’t his father well off?”

  Stocker shook his head. “Just a façade. Or … there must have been money there at some time, but by the time the father was killed early in the war it had nearly all gone. The flat in London went in ‘39, and most of the land had already been sold by then. There was the house … it isn’t so big actually, but it’s very old and it is rather nice … but even that was in a very poor state of repair, and the father was dickering to sell that too. He was posted to France just as he was about to sign on the dotted line.”

  That was in 1940?”

  “That’s right. He was killed just before Dunkirk.”

  And the mother died before that.”

  “Yes. She died when Audley was very small. But fortunate
ly for him she’d taken out an education insurance policy for him, otherwise the house would have had to go. It was that tight.” Stocker paused. “But since then he’s had the house repaired, and he’s even bought back some of the land. So he’s picked up quite a lot of hard cash from somewhere, that’s for sure.”

  “He writes books though, doesn’t he? And articles for magazines?”

  History books—and learned magazines.” Stocker wrinkled up his nose at culture. “And I doubt there’s much profit in the early Middle Ages. You’ve seen the list of his works?”

  Roche nodded. “Hardly best-sellers, I agree.”

  “Best-sellers? You couldn’t rent a council allotment with The Influence of Islamic Doctrines on Iconoclasm in 8th Century Byzantium. He bought two hundred acres of Sussex farmland last year.”

  “So he makes his money some other way.” The more Roche thought about Audley’s finances, the less he liked leaving such loose ends untied behind him. Stocker’s facts had merely whetted his appetite for opinions the Major seemed incapable of giving. “There are still ways of making quick money if you’re clever. And he’s clever.”

  “Meaning dishonest?”

  Stocker regarded him dispassionately. “Very well, I’ll go on digging. But I can’t promise quick results there.”

  Roche sighed. “So what are you promising me … sir?”

  Stocker nodded out of the bar towards the dining room. “Lunch first.”

  And then?”

  “Half-an-hour’s drive. We should reach Immingham just after the pub closes.”

  “Immingham?”

  St. Martin’s School, Immingham, 1938-42 …

  “That’s right. You want to know what sort of man Audley is. Wasn’t it Wordsworth who said ‘the child is father of the man’, eh?” Stocker looked at his watch. “If that’s true, then I think there’s someone at Immingham who may be able to help you, Captain Roche.”

  IV

  THE RUGGER POSTS of the St. Martin’s School, Immingham, 1st XV pitch stood tall and very white against their backcloth of Sussex landscape, on a vivid green field of late summer grass, dwarfing the two figures beside them.