The sergeant had been slowly and wretchedly shaking his head. ‘I just daren’t risk it, your grace,’ he said hoarsely.
Alexander was prepared for this. He stared grimly at the man with his eyes dilated; he had practised this many a time in front of a mirror and knew it made him look alarming, even a little mad. Without averting his gaze he picked up the handset of the intercom on the table between them and stabbed his finger in the direction of the row of call-buttons. Then he waited.
‘Valentine, it’s Alexander. Is the Colonel still there?’ He looked fixedly at the ceiling fifteen metres above them while he listened, or appeared to listen. After half a minute he spoke a single word of thanks, hung up, glanced at his wrist-dial and stared at the sergeant again, this time with the corners of his mouth slightly down-turned. Another pause followed. At last he said, in a heavy, dismal tone, ‘Two hours. They think,’ and slowly put his hands on his hips. ‘What do you suppose will happen to you then?’
If the sergeant had been brighter, if Alexander had done the expected and raved at him, if he could have counted on his own officer to support him, if anything to justify the security procedures, anything in the least out of the way had ever happened to him or even been heard of since before he was born, above all perhaps if he had been trained as thoroughly to insist on the strictest observance of standing orders in all circumstances as he had been trained to do what officers told him to do, he might have held out. As it was, he hesitated for only a moment or two before saying,
‘Very well, your honour – about turn, if you please. You too, corporal.’
So at least the intruders never learned the secret combination they now had no need of.
A quarter of an hour later they were trundling a loaded handcart back the way they had come. These eighty metres or so were the most dangerous of all their journey: their cargo was covered with a waterproof sheet, but a cart meant stores, and hereabouts they could only have been security stores, and security stores on the move were seen rarely enough and never without a heavy escort. One piece of inquisitiveness would have been too much, but there was none; they emerged safely into the gloomy daylight and made their way towards the horses, the metal wheels clattering over the grassy irregularities in the ground.
As they approached, Lomov peered at them and past them under lowered brows, blinking. ‘Sir, who was that with you just now, as you came out?’
‘With us? With me?’
‘With you, sir. That man.’
‘What man?’
‘After a few paces he turned round and went back into the house. I saw him.’
Lyubimov started to speak but Alexander shushed him. ‘What did he look like, Lomov? Was he one of us?’
‘No, sir. He was… He was a civilian.’
‘What else? How was he dressed? Was he an English servant? A gardener?’
‘He was a civilian, your honour. I only saw him for a moment.’
‘You saw nothing, you stupid rookie,’ said Lyubimov with good-natured contempt. ‘Where have you hidden the bottle?’
Lomov was still looking rather oddly at Alexander. ‘Are you all right, sir? Are you well?’
‘Fuck your mother!’ snarled Alexander, his considerate, protective manner vanished. ‘Don’t try and play games with me, you son of a whore, or I’ll break your back. Now shut your mouth and get this stuff loaded.’
It was soon done, a projectile-launcher and its mounting on the near side of each pack-saddle, the projectiles themselves with their red-painted nose-cones in bandoliers on the off. With Polly already ridden hard that day, Alexander had taken his orderly’s horse, in effect his own second mount, a big stallion (black, needless to say) with nothing of the mare’s kind temperament, but he was a good straight mover and had plenty of heart. Earlier, there had been an emotional farewell to Polly at the troop lines; not that Alexander had any settled expectation of not seeing her again, or of anything else, but one never knew, and it sounded good.
Down to the main gate they moved in file: Alexander, Lyubimov, Lomov. Little Lomov was possessed by excitement, also by fear, beyond that by a deeper, more unreasoning fear, by dread. Even considering the state of the light, he had been able to make out remarkably little about whoever it was had walked those half-dozen metres out of the house and then back again. He had had a brief impression of extreme thinness and a great many teeth. Perhaps the other two had failed to notice the stranger because he had not in fact drawn level with them, had followed them to tell them or ask them something, thought better of it and removed himself. Perhaps. Lomov tried to forget it.
Thunder, much nearer now, crackled round the sky behind them. They were going to get soaked to the skin very soon, he thought to himself; the light cape each man carried attached to the rear of his saddle would be poor protection against the kind of downpour that impended. As he glanced about him at the grazing horses, the hurrying or strolling groups of men and the assortment of buildings that housed them, he could not believe he was about to leave the place that was all he had known of home for the past three years, very likely never to return. No doubt that disbelief was the cause of his almost total lack of regret at the prospect. Or it might have been the excitement. That seemed real enough. He was riding off on an operation that had been only sketchily described to him, and even parts of that description he found obscure. Other parts, however, had been quite plain, plain enough to justify moderate fear in anyone of moderate prudence, and Lomov easily fitted into that class. On the other hand, he felt that until a moment ago the whole of his life (he was twenty-three) had been spent passing time, getting through the day, waiting for something to start. Well, something had started now. If he had felt any differently, he would not have been where he was at this moment. How Lyubimov felt was another matter altogether. He was unpredictable. A good soldier, Lyubimov, a good NCO and a good friend, but inclined to be unpredictable. Impulsive, too.
They clattered through the gateway, across the road and on to the broad verge, riding east. Alexander ordered a trot. Just afterwards, thunder came from almost overhead and with the utmost abruptness; the noise was like the ripping of an enormous sheet of canvas. All the horses started violently and Lyubimov’s pack-horse reared for a second or two; not having the reassuring presence of a man on his back, he could hardly be blamed. Still no rain fell, though the light was getting worse all the time. They had rounded a bend and gone about a kilometre when Alexander swung his right arm in an over-arm bowling motion – ‘Follow me’; a spoken order would not have been heard for the thunder, now continual. He put his horse into a gallop and easily cleared the low fence into a large field of pasture. As soon as the others had completed the jump he gave the signal to halt, then the one to dismount. Leading his horse he walked over to Lyubimov. For what was to follow, words would be preferable if they could be heard at all.
‘Put up One!’ he shouted.
‘Put up One, sir.’ Lyubimov turned away to his pack-saddle.
‘Direction west six!’
This time there was no acknowledgement.
‘Direction west six, you pig!’
Turning his head so that he spoke half over his shoulder, Lyubimov bawled, ‘The regiment’s thereabouts, sir. Is that the target?’
Most of the reply was drowned in thunder, but its drift was clear: the order was to be obeyed and no questions asked. There was a short pause. Lightning flashed ceaselessly over the surrounding fields. Then Lyubimov swung round holding his pistol pointed at Alexander’s middle. Next he depressed a stud in front of the trigger-guard, thus switching from single-shot fire to automatic and by the action threatening not to kill or maim but to rend apart; Alexander understood that well enough. Finally Lyubimov shouted,