Gunner Kelly

by Anthony Price

  “Today,” corrected Kelly. “Today—promised, they are, and he’ll be there at eight-thirty to collect them … And then we’ll be ready for anything, begod, sir!”

  “But…” Miss Becky blinked at Benedikt “… but then the warning went off, and that was the Red Alert, and Michael went out to check it—we weren’t expecting it so soon, of course, but he wouldn’t let me go—”

  “Aaargh! And isn’t that the truth!” Kelly came to her rescue. “Would I be lettin‘ her go—orders or no orders? Ye weren’t here, an’ it was dark as the pit—”

  “Kelly …” Audley’s voice turned dangerous. “Don’t you dare play the bloody stage Irishman with me!”

  “So to hell with that!” Kelly cut back at him in a new voice, different from all its predecessors. “He was in the trap and I wanted to have a look at him—so what? I know what I’m looking for better than you do, Dr Audley.”

  Audley looked down over his big broken nose at the Irishman. “So you do, Mr Kelly—so you do. And what did you find, then? Someone you knew?”

  The face-in-the-crowd was inscrutable, as anonymous as ever, but the eyes glittered with dislike. “No, Dr Audley—only someone you so kindly let me see from afar this afternoon, I grant you that. But it was a justifiable risk, nevertheless.”

  “It was not a justifiable risk—it was unnecessary.”

  Kelly shrugged. “Not in my judgement.”

  “And since when has your judgement been worth a brass farthing?” Audley looked at Benedikt suddenly. “Do you know him?”

  “No, sir.” Kelly squirmed uncomfortably. “But you were right about him, sir.”

  “I was?” Audley continued to study Benedikt. “What has he told you?”

  “He hasn’t told us anything. But now I’ve seen him close up … He’s good … But I know the type.”

  “What type?” Audley returned to Kelly.

  “Never a civil servant. Soldier or policeman—soldier for choice… I’ve seen enough of them in my time. Regular soldiering marks a man—I don’t care whose army. And I’ve seen his type before—it’s an obstinate look, they have, even when you’ve got the bastards at gunpoint—I know that look, sir!”

  Miss Becky stirred. “Michael—David—”

  Audley’s expression changed. “Yes, Becky?”

  “He does wear contact lenses—he admitted that … I mean … he’s wearing them now, you see.”

  Audley shook his head. “Doesn’t mean a thing, my dear. Or rather … it does mean quite a lot, to put it another way: it means exceptional attention to detail, as you would expect of him. It means he’s good, as Kelly says.” He turned the look on Benedikt, but with a suggestion of sympathy. “You had bad luck there, I’m afraid. My wife wears contact lenses, and I’ve watched her with them a thousand times. I made her wear them—as a matter of fact, I’ve tried wearing them myself, but I could never really get to terms with them … But I know all about them, anyway … And there’s a particular way some people touch the area under the eye, instead of wiping the eye—my wife does it, and so do you, and it’s as good as a nod to me … It’s a game I play—identifying people who wear them. You can even change eye-colour with them. But you’d know that, of course.” He shook his head. “Still … belt and brace is one thing, but contact lenses and spectacles is another, Hauptmann Schneider. Bad luck, you had there.”

  Bad luck—Hauptmann Schneider—

  For a moment no one spoke, then Miss Becky said “Haupt—?” cutting the rank off into a hiccup of surprise.

  “Captain,” translated Audley. “Captain Benedikt Schneider, formerly of the Army of the Federal Republic … more recently of Grenzschutzgruppe 9, and now of the NATO Anti-Terrorist Liaison Group of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, attached to the West German Embassy in London as of next week.”

  “Holy Mother of God!” said Kelly. “Grenzschutzgruppe 9!”

  Miss Becky frowned at him. “Grenzschutz—who are they, Michael?”

  “GSG 9, for short—I read about them in the Mirror a while back, Madam—what the Germans call their SAS—the real hard boys.” Kelly shook his head. “I think we caught the wrong tiger, Madam.”

  VI

  IN DAYLIGHT, finishing his breakfast coffee on the terrace, Benedikt could understand even better how Gunner Kelly had felt the night before. The broad sweep of the manor lawn, wide between thick plantations of woodland on either side of it, rose gently to the ridge itself, without any intervening obstacle: the splendid view, which had surely delighted generations of the Maxwell family, would be no less satisfactory downwards from the crest, almost a thousand metres distant, to delight any well-trained and properly-equipped marksman, day or night; while from the edges of those woods, for those who first looked where they put their feet, even a tiro could hardly miss his mark.

  The clunk of the postern door latch, which he had heard for the second time when the nervous servant-girl had ushered him on to the terrace, sounded behind him.

  He held his gaze on the ridge deliberately. Nerves were for servant-girls and Thomas Wiesehöfer, not for Benedikt Schneider: that at least he must pretend, now that he could be something like himself.

  “Captain Schneider—good morning.”

  It was Audley behind him—and that was good, for with Audley he knew more nearly where he was.

  He turned slowly. “Good morning, Dr Audley.”

  “Was the English breakfast to your taste?” Audley inclined his head politely, and then smiled. “But then perhaps your mother has accustomed you to it?”

  I know all about you, Captain Schneider, that was the first signal.

  “It was excellent.” Coolly, then. “But my mother never locked my bedroom door, even when I was a child. Is that an English custom with guests?”

  “No. But it’s a custom to protect them from accidents, and last night there were some very trigger-happy characters around.” Audley gestured towards the ridge. “You were admiring the view?”

  “I was, yes … But I was also remembering that last night Mr Kelly did not do the same. He regarded it as unsafe, as I recall. And so, I think, did you?”

  “So I did—quite right!” Audley raised his hand again, indicating the stone steps in front of them, down which Benedikt had stumbled not many hours before with a gun in his back. “Shall we take a stroll? The view from up above, across the valley, is much more interesting … So I did, indeed. But not this morning—and not for us at any time, I’m sure.”

  Benedikt mounted the steps. Far above, on the very skyline, the sheep which grazed the ridge scattered suddenly, catching his eye with their panic. A moment later a horseman appeared, and then another. They reined in together and conferred for a few seconds, then split left and right.

  “The Dawn Patrol,” murmured Audley at his side. “By autumn the Duntisbury Hunt should be in excellent shape, the exercise the horses are getting.”

  They walked in silence for a time, until they came to a curious open grassy ditch which divided off the well-cut manor lawn from the rougher sheep-cropped pasture of the ridge. The upper side of it sloped gently, but the manor side was revetted vertically with stone to form a sunken wall protecting the garden without breaking the clear view from below.

  Another sniper’s post, thought Benedikt, running his eye along the trench until he reached its junction with the highest point of the wood on their left. But then he caught a glimpse of movement under the trees—

  “It’s all right,” said Audley soothingly. “It’s ‘one of ours’, as they say. And we are not the target, as I say.”

  Benedikt turned towards him. “But Mr Kelly is?”

  “Ah …” Audley stared back the way they had come. “This will do well enough. We’d see more if we went higher, but you can get some idea of it from here.”

  The rise of the lawn was greater than Benedikt had expected it to be. Beyond the manor house below, he could see the roofs of Duntisbury Royal peeping from among the village trees, with the squat church tower to th
eir left marking the position of the Roman villa field on the edge of the inadequate River Addle.

  “Peaceful little place, isn’t it?” Audley invited him to disagree.

  “I did not find it so last night,” Benedikt obliged him.

  “No. But then you did rather invite trouble—like Mr King in Colonel Dabney’s covers … Do you read Kipling?” Audley raised a mild eyebrow inquiringly. “No … I suppose not … But what am I to do with you, then?”

  Now they had come to it. “I do not see that there is anything that you can do with me, Dr Audley—if you know me so well—?”

  “Oh, I do, Captain Schneider, I do. And it’s a good report I have of you, too: good soldier, good officer … good son, good Christian … good German, I suppose one might say, even.” He looked sidelong at Benedikt. “But you know what we used to say about good Germans in the old days? Your distinguished father would know—he was a damn good German, if ever there was one!”

  “My father?” Audley’s private source, whatever or whoever it was, was also a damn good one. “He would be delighted to hear himself described as ‘distinguished’, I am sure, Dr Audley.”

  “ ‘David’—do call me ‘David’. It’s so much harder to sound offensive with Christian names, don’t you think? So may I call you ‘Benedikt’?” Audley hardly waited for a reply. “He certainly is—and was—distinguished … Distinguished scholar now, and distinguished soldier once upon a time … An anti-tank gunner, I believe? Eighty-eights in the desert, with the goth Light? I must say I’m extremely glad I was never in his sights!”

  Benedikt realised the condition of the ‘good Germans’ to whom Audley had been referring, which would be the same for ’good Englishmen‘—and ’good Indians‘—down history, and which was hardly reassuring now.

  “The trouble is, Benedikt, that now I appear to be in your sights. And I’m afraid that I must insist on your telling me why, without more ado,” concluded Audley.

  “Insist?”

  Audley gave a little shrug.

  “Or else … what?” Benedikt did not like being leaned on. “If you keep me here I shall be missed—and there will be those who will come to look for me. You can depend on that … David.”

  “My dear fellow! They may look—” Audley swept a hand over the valley “—it may not seem so very big, but it hid one German in it for fifteen centuries … Also the people here are good at digging deep holes, as you discovered last night. And if that sounds rather barbarous … there is one thing I’d perhaps better explain which you must bear in mind.”

  “And that is?” He sensed that Audley was not so much threatening, whatever he sounded like, as softening him up to make a deal—which might well be what Colonel Butler had intended all along. Yet whatever he could get for free he might as well get. “And that is?”

  “The Old General—‘the Squire’, interchangeably, as they call him … They really did love him … He seems to have been a good man in the oldest and best sense of the word—a man of instinctive … ‘goodness’ is the only word for it: there simply wasn’t badness in him—rather the way some men are utterly brave because they simply don’t know how to be cowardly, like the rest of us … I met men like that in the war—I’m sure there were lots of Germans just like them—they generally get a lot of other people killed without intending to, in my experience—but the completely good people are much rarer, and nicer … though it seems, from what is happening here, that they can produce the same unfortunate result …” He shook his head sadly. “But they really did love him. And now they’re very angry indeed, because Gunner Kelly has undertaken to bring the Old General’s killer—or killers—back here, so they’ve got something to focus their anger on.”

  “How is he bringing them back?”

  “He won’t say. All he’ll say is that he was the real target of that bomb, so he has the contacts—”

  “He was?” Benedikt simulated astonishment.

  “That’s right. And he won’t explain that either—it’ll only make them targets as well, he says. And—” Audley stopped as he registered the change in Benedikt’s demeanour. “What’s the matter?”

  “If Mr Kelly was the target…” Things were going very well indeed: they could hardly go better. “… that changes everything, Dr—David!”

  “Changes everything—how?”

  “Why I am here.” Apologetic sincerity was the proper note to strike. “You have been frank with me. I must return the compliment.”

  “That would be nice, I agree.” Cautious relief, slightly coloured by disbelief, was returned to him.

  “It was because of the Old General. We were not satisfied with the progress of your investigations.”

  “You—?” Audley frowned. “I don’t see what business the Bundesnachrichtendienst has with the Old General?”

  Benedikt betrayed slight embarrassment. “The bomb was of an Irish make … but you appear convinced that it was not the work of the IRA. And he was certainly not a logical Irish target.”

  “So?”

  “So he was a former second-in-command of the British Army of the Rhine, with special responsibility for missile deployment in liaison with the Americans.”

  “So he was. And Count von Gneisenau was second-in-command to Blücher at Waterloo—and Flavius Vespasianus commanded the Second Legion—so what?”

  Benedikt frowned. “So—?”

  “It was a hell of a long time ago. Fifteen years? More, maybe …”

  “But he was once a prime target for assassination—”

  “Oh—come on, man! Once upon a time—maybe … But the Russians … whatever their faults, they’re not vindictive about elderly generals.”

  “Not the Russians, Dr Audley. Our own Red Army Faction, rather.”

  “You’re pulling my leg! They were in nappies when he was in uniform. And you’ve got them more or less buttoned up, anyway—”

  “That is the point, Dr Audley—”

  “David, please.”

  “David… The survivors are looking for soft targets, to make headlines to show they aren’t finished. And … they have a reciprocal arrangement with the Irish National Liberation Army, to help each other at need.” Benedikt spread his hands. “We thought it just might be worth checking out, in case … And—I am sorry, David—but when I saw you down here yesterday … I was wrong—I acknowledge that now … But when I saw you, I thought I might take another look, to see what the British were up to. I did not think you would . ..,. tumble upon me so quickly.” He gave Audley a bitter smile. “And I did not expect a big hole in the ground, either.” He pointed at the sentry on the corner of the wood. “Or him.”

  Audley grinned suddenly. “Yes … I can imagine that. Although, oddly enough, it seems to come quite naturally to them. I suppose it’s because they’ve been hunting things hereabouts since the beginning of time—wolves and deer and foxes and rabbits … and each other after dark often enough, playing gamekeepers and the poachers.” He nodded at Benedikt. “If they’d had any man-traps still in working order it probably wouldn’t have been a hole you’d have stepped into last night, by God!” Just as suddenly as it had appeared, the grin vanished. “Or if Kelly had had his way there might have been fire-hardened stakes in it. Believe me, you weren’t altogether unlucky.”

  Benedikt shivered in spite of himself. But now he had everything. “Then I must be glad you were here after all, in spite of what I did because of you … But … I am sorry to have caused you such trouble unnecessarily.”

  “No trouble, my dear fellow! You tested our defences, actually.” Audley studied him. “So now you want to go home, I suppose?”

  Exactly right! “I … I rather think I am in your way now, perhaps?” He mustn’t seem too eager though. “But if there is anything I can do … to make amends?”

  “Yes …” Audley continued to study him. “Well … as a matter of fact, perhaps there is something, you know.”

  Damn! “Yes?” Damn!

  “It’s rather
awkward, really … You see, Benedikt, I’m here … as it were … unofficially, you might say … In fact, you would say — unofficially.”

  “What?”

  “Yes.” Audley looked uncomfortable. “I’m on leave, actually.”

  Benedikt stared at him for a moment, then looked round the Chase — from ridge to ridge, then down the Addle valley — and finally back to Audley. “God in heaven! Then this — ?”

  “Is unofficial too. Nobody knows about it except us.” Audley paused. “You see, Benedikt, I came here as a favour … to a young friend … to stop Becky making a fool of herself.”

  He really was getting everything now, thought Benedikt. But he must look worried, not satisfied.

  Audley waved a hand. “Oh … I could have stopped this easily enough. Just one word to the Police would have done that. But that wouldn’t have stopped Becky and Gunner Kelly trying again — and trying somewhere where the odds were more against them.” He shook his head. “And it wouldn’t have answered any questions about Gunner Kelly, either.”

  “Gunner Kelly?” Now a frown of concentration.

  “He’d have vanished. And he knows well how to vanish, I very much suspect. England or Ireland … and he can pass as English.” Audley looked at his watch. “And then we’d never know.”

  Curiosity? But it was more than that.

  “Let’s start slowly back … I have an appointment soon—an outing planned, in fact. And I’d like you to come along with me.”

  What? “You would like me … ?”

  “You’ll see some fine Dorset countryside—Hardy country too … you know, they never did really approve of him—it was the divorce, of course, that stuck in their respectable throats … and Badbury Rings, under their big Dorset sky if the clouds are right … and other things—you’ll enjoy it, I promise you.”

  There was more to this than a jaunt in the country. And whether he would enjoy it was another matter also.

  “Or, to put it another way … they don’t trust you, and they don’t altogether trust me either, out of their sight—maybe Becky does, but Kelly and the rest don’t… And if I let you go they’ll trust me even less, and I wouldn’t like that, with all the effort I’ve put in.”