‘Aye, but this lassie was different,’ Jizzard explained. ‘She was mustard wi’ smallarms. Fired left-handed. Ye wouldnae believe how handy she was.’
That had been the clincher. The only female military personnel trained in smallarms were special-ops agents: Nolan had done the Grant-Taylor battle course, had passed with flying colours. And she was left-handed. Stocker had been certain it was Nolan even before Celia Blaney’s testimony had put the icing on the cake. ‘I thought I was dreaming at first, sir,’ she’d told him from her hospital bed. ‘Either that or I was dead and she was an angel – there she was among flying bullets, dressed up to the nines. She applied a field-dressing to my wound while they were still shooting, and I knew she had to be real.’
Stocker had decided to sit on the information for a while. From what Jizzard had told him, he guessed Nolan was suffering from some sort of disorientation: she was too loyal and dedicated to have joined up with a mob of traitors otherwise. If she recovered, though, she could still be a useful agent. With a twinge of conscience he remembered the bungled op in which she’d been used as bait for the spy Eisner the year before.
‘Captain Nolan, sir,’ the orderly said.
When she’d parted with Taylor that morning, Nolan hadn’t been entirely clear about what she was doing, or why she was doing it. It had been hard enough to persuade him that it was safe to wander around the city centre, especially after what had happened last time, when a chap claiming to be a journalist had photographed her holding a newspaper. Nolan was aware how winning she could be, though: on the Runefish op she’d influenced Rommel’s strategy by convincing the Abwehr that the false documents she was carrying were real. Compared with that, Taylor was a pushover.
Cairo lay under the ashlar skies of February: cavernous streets and squares faded into greyness under towering icebergs of cloud. The vendors were still out with their trays of oddments: the occasional group of off-duty Allied soldiers in battledress sauntered past. Since the Eighth Army had moved to Tunisia, though, the city had lost the hectic excitement of pre-Alamein days.
Before steeling herself to confront Stocker, Nolan walked down the Nile corniche, watching feluccas breasting bleak, pewter-coloured waters. The memory of those waters made her shiver.
She retained only broken images of the night she and Caine had plunged into them in an out-of-control taxi, driven, she thought, by Eisner himself. She hardly dared whisper Caine’s name now: the thought of him was like a festering wound. She had no idea if he were dead: he might easily have drowned that night. Even if he was alive, though, she felt she was no longer worthy of him. She’d debased herself by getting mixed up with Taylor and his crew. She might not have been in full control of her faculties, but it had happened, and there was no going back on it. And despite Taylor’s violence, she had to admit she felt a certain affection for him: he had none of Caine’s honour, but he was honest in his own roughshod way, and there was no denying that he’d taken care of her. Nolan wasn’t a flag-waver: she didn’t care much about institutions. She cared about people, about the individuals who mattered to her.
She was the daughter of an alcoholic home counties GP; the eldest of five children. When her parents had split up, dividing the kids between them, Betty had chosen to stay with her father: she’d dedicated her whole early life to looking after him and her younger brothers. He’d never abused her, but she’d had to suffer the drunken rages, the erratic behaviour, the brushes with the police, the self-recrimination, that went with his drinking. She’d managed it all, and survived, because she knew deep down that her father and brothers depended on her. It was during those years that she’d become accomplished at appearing to comply with the expectations of others, while preserving her own integrity. This, and her deep ability to empathize, had made her a superb actress.
Nolan loved music and dancing, children and animals. She was capable of utter dedication, but reserved a merciless hatred for those whom she felt had wronged her: she made no distinction between officers and other ranks. She could mix with bar-girls and royalty with equal ease. She was a skilled performer and could fit into a role without losing sight of herself: she wasn’t highly educated, but her mind was sharp – she was articulate, quick to grasp ideas and had a photographic memory. She knew that men found her attractive, yet she wasn’t conceited about her looks: in wartime Cairo any girl with one good eye and a pair of legs could have as many admirers as she pleased. She knew she was capable of manipulating men, but she used that ability only when there was no other option. Since her memory had returned, she’d become aware that she owed loyalty to her former comrades, but she also felt some commitment to Taylor and the deserters who’d helped her. Now she was intent on reporting to Field Security, knowing that she’d have to find some compromise way of serving them both.
Field Security HQ was located in an inconspicuous three-storey town house in Medan Sharif. For a long time she hovered on a street corner, trying to work out what she really wanted. Until recently, she’d felt at home with the deserter gang: Taylor’s latest escapade, though – when he’d shot the two FS operatives – had shaken her. The most horrifying thing was that, in retrospect, she’d realized she knew the wounded redhead. It was Stocker’s assistant, Celia Blaney, a placid, warm-hearted girl. She hoped to God that Blaney had pulled through.
In the two weeks since that incident, the MPs had clamped down on deserter gangs: they’d even raided the farm one night. Luckily, she and Taylor had moved to a safe house in the Delta by then, but it had been a close shave. Taylor had no doubt how they’d located the place. Jizzard. That Jock bastard sold us out.
A Redcap patrol-jeep cruised past: two NCOs with black armbands and scarlet cap-covers gawked at her. Nolan lowered her eyes. She’d deliberately worn a light jacket over a blouse and a sober grey skirt, but it hadn’t deterred the wolf whistles from Tommies on the corniche. If she was still here when the patrol returned, they’d almost certainly question her. She had nearly given up at that point. After all, she was a deserter: she’d taken part in armed hijack operations against her own side. That was treason: they could have her shot for that. Would they believe she’d lost her memory? They might. But they would also expect her to give up Taylor, and, whatever pressure they put her under, she wasn’t prepared to do it. She owed him too much. If he found out she’d handed herself in, of course, he’d consider it betrayal anyway. That couldn’t be helped: her conscience was too strong. Or was that just another excuse? Was it simply that, underneath it all, she was there to find out what had happened to Tom Caine?
Stocker looked up to meet the familiar little-girl-lost expression that he’d always considered Nolan’s most dangerous weapon. She was a mite worn around the eyes, perhaps, but otherwise as he remembered her – wavy blond hair, parted on the right, with the lush sweep over the left eye, the melting set of the lips, the cute overlap of the front teeth: the athletic curves that even the jacket and sensible skirt couldn’t hide.
‘Hello, Major,’ she said.
Stocker frowned: he hadn’t had time to decide how to play this, but made an instant decision to treat her with cold aloofness: he gave no sign of recognition. ‘Sit down,’ he said.
Nolan sat primly in the upright chair facing the desk. Stocker peered at her through his spectacles, watched her fingers held perfectly still in her lap. Cool, he thought. Calm and collected. Then he reminded himself that he was dealing with a woman capable of controlling her outward appearance. He whipped off his glasses, began polishing the lenses with a piece of four-by-two.
‘So the prodigal returns,’ he commented. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain why you have been absent without leave for the past four months?’
Nolan’s jadecoloured eyes moistened: Stocker was sure that she wanted to ask him about Caine.
He wasn’t going to play along – not yet.
‘Just answer the question.’
His voice was a whiplash, but Nolan didn’t flinch. ‘I was in a car accident,’ she s
aid slowly, ‘but of course, you knew that.’
‘Certainly I knew,’ Stocker said airily. ‘I was with you and Caine at Shepheard’s just before it happened. Like everyone else, though, I assumed you were dead. Since you obviously are not, I’d like to know why you have never reported back to duty.’
‘After the crash, all I remember is wandering through the streets, soaked to the skin, with no idea who I was or where I was going. I suppose the MPs might have picked me up, but they didn’t. Instead I was found by a gang of deserters. They took me in, looked after me. Since I couldn’t even remember my name or where I belonged, I stayed with them: I had nowhere else to go, you see – not as far as I was aware, anyway.’
Stocker snorted. ‘You lost your memory? You expect me to believe that?’
He felt himself pulled into Nolan’s eyes – the deep reefs of seawashed green. ‘What other explanation do you want?’ she said. ‘What possible reason would I have for not coming back, if I were in control of all my faculties?’
‘You abandoned your post, which means that you are a deserter too. You have been involved in armed hijackings, including an incident in which one of my sergeants was killed and my female assistant badly injured.’
Nolan flushed. ‘Celia?’ Her voice was a trickle, but Stocker heard genuine anxiety in it. ‘Is she going to be all right?’
‘She’s out of danger, if that’s what you mean, but it’s no thanks to you and your murderous friend. It was a nasty wound: she’d lost a lot of blood. She still hasn’t recovered.’
‘I didn’t shoot her, Major. Nor did I shoot the sergeant.’
Stocker tilted his head to one side, examined her face gravely. ‘Even if you didn’t, you certainly did hijack a lorry by … er … seducing … the driver. You stole a military jeep. Even if your shots missed, you’re still guilty.’
Nolan wiped her eyes with the corner of a handkerchief. ‘I wasn’t myself,’ she said. ‘I told you … I lost my memory.’
‘Very convenient. Also a rather difficult defence in a court-martial, when the defendant is a skilled actress.’
Nolan sat up straighter, put the handkerchief away, took a breath. ‘I was recruited by G(R) eighteen months ago, Major,’ she said stiffly. ‘I was trained at Ramlat David: parachuting, wireless transmitting, the works. Since then I’ve risked my life over and over. I spent eight days locked in a Cairo basement in handcuffs so that you could bag Johann Eisner. I volunteered to drop in behind Axis lines in Libya to warn … to warn … the Sandhog mission … that they had a traitor in their midst.’
Stocker noted that Nolan had deliberately avoided saying Caine’s name: his smile remained bloodless. ‘There’s no doubt that you’ve done some extraordinary things, but that’s ancient history. In war, people sometimes go off the rails.’
‘Does hijacking supply lorries and bumping off British troops sound like the sort of thing I’d do if I had the choice? I’d … forgotten … I was a serving officer. My memory only started to come back a couple of weeks ago. You must have seen shellshock victims suffering from disorientation before?’
‘Perhaps.’
There was silence for a moment. Nolan straightened her shoulders. ‘If that’s it, then, I’m ready to face a court-martial. I can tell you now, though, I’m not giving up names. Whatever those people are, they saved me.’
Stocker couldn’t hold back a flush of admiration. This was a woman whose capacity for self-sacrifice seemed endless – a woman you wanted on your side.
He steepled his fingers. ‘Let’s just suppose I accept your claim that you were not fully compos mentis. Would I be correct, then, in assuming that you remain loyal to His Majesty?’
‘Yes.’
‘So if I were to ask you to return to your life with the deserter gang, this time working for us, you’d have no conflict of loyalties.’
Nolan’s eyes widened: her eyebrows arched. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing: she didn’t know quite what sort of reception she’d been expecting, but certainly not this. ‘I’ve just told you, Major, that I –’
‘– That you won’t betray Taylor and the rest of the worthless scum?’ Stocker asked wryly. ‘No need. I know all about them already …’
He knew about Taylor? It made sense if he knew about her: informants’ tongues had been wagging: Jizzard.
Stocker stood up abruptly, as if seeking a relief from the tension. He picked up his pipe, stuck it in his mouth, took it out again. He turned to a large-scale map of the Delta on the wall behind him, tapped it with the stem of his pipe.
‘I’m after bigger fish than Taylor,’ he said. ‘Are you aware that deserter groups are now attacking fuel dumps, M/T parks – even airfields? Did you know that they are targeting Allied personnel? Did you know that they are thought to have abducted more than fifty young women over the past few weeks?’
He turned sharply on his heel, fixed her with an intimidating glare. ‘There are rumours that there’s a new big man in charge, a man who’s trying to stop gang rivalries and create a single organization, that these changes are emanating from him. Does the name Calvin mean anything to you?’
There was a pause as he and Nolan eyed each other. Stocker watched her hands fidgeting, saw a tiny muscle twitch beneath her ear. She looked down. ‘I’ve heard the name, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I’ve never met him – I don’t know where he’s based, or even if he really exists. I don’t know about sabotage attacks, but I do know there’s a new attitude. Killing Allied troops used to be taboo: not any more.’ Stocker clasped his hands behind his back, nodded with satisfaction: it was beginning to fall into place. ‘That’s a start, anyway. What about the kidnapping of women?’
Nolan hesitated, cleared her throat. ‘There are women living with the deserters,’ she began. ‘A few are AWOLs, most are Egyptian or Arab street-girls. I’ve heard rumours about kidnappings, though. Once, I saw ten or twelve women in the back of a 3-tonner who didn’t look like the usual types. I was told they were in transit, but nobody knew where to. Someone said they were being sent to Calvin. I can’t say if that’s true, but I know these women didn’t settle among the deserters. They just vanished.’
Stocker felt excitement gnawing at him: Nolan had provided the link he’d been hoping for: a possible connection between girl-trafficking and the new big boss. The Egyptian stepfather of the Nazi spy Johann Eisner, Idriss, was up to his neck in white-slaving: it might be coincidence, or it might not.
He sat down at his desk again, relaxed for the first time. ‘Does anyone know you came here?’ he enquired.
Nolan shook her head.
‘Do they know that you’ve recovered your memory?’
‘No.’
‘Then here’s your task. Go back to the deserters. Live as you did before, but find out if those kidnapped girls are really going to this Calvin. Find out where he’s based and who he is.’
‘That’s not going to be easy.’
‘I never said it would be easy: if an actress like you can’t do it, who can?’
‘What if I refuse?’
‘That is easy. You’ll be court-martialled for treason or murder, or both. I can’t guarantee that a plea of temporary insanity will be accepted.’
‘What’s to stop me agreeing then just vanishing into thin air?’
Stocker looked like a thoughtful ferret. ‘I’ll be watching you – and I’ll be sending backup. Someone who’ll be able to fit in easily among the deserters: you’ll be able to keep contact with me through her.’
‘Her? Who?’
‘When you see her, you’ll know.’
There was silence for a moment while Nolan considered it: she nodded almost imperceptibly, letting the blond wave fall over a moist green eye. Stocker hardly considered himself a ladies’ man, but he had to admit to himself that she looked incredibly attractive.
‘I want to ask you one thing, Major,’ she said croupily, ‘and I’d appreciate an honest answer.’
Stocker heaved his chair ba
ck awkwardly. Here it comes, he thought.
‘Where’s Tom Caine?’
Stocker took a breath: his eyes beneath the glasses were hard pins. ‘He didn’t survive the crash. Caine’s body was never found.’
25
Not long before midnight, the jeep copped a puncture on her front offside wheel. Quinnell brought her to a halt under a limestone cliff, ghostly in the moonlight: stunted camelthorn scrabbled out of the schist, and a fan of fine sand flowed from a wadi cut through the rock on their left. Fiske glowered at him, dark eyes baleful with shadows. ‘Now what?’ he demanded.
‘Now we fix it,’ Quinnell scoffed. ‘Unless you want to ride the rest of the way on a flat.’
‘Not wi’ this thing on the back,’ Jizzard said. For the past two hours he’d been crouched in the rear, trying vainly to avoid contact with the black box. The tremulous note in his voice was genuine terror, Quinnell thought.
‘All right, but pull off the road,’ Fiske said. ‘Drive up this wadi on the left.’
Quinnell started the engine and put her into gear: she bumped up the shaly creek-bed, trailing a long shadow from the waning moon: a nightowl scooped low over them with a whop of wings.
Jizzard ducked. ‘Bloody things,’ he hissed.
Soon, the wadi opened out into a wide ampthitheatre – a floor of brash pebble, palmetto scrub and halfa clumps, blackstone walls chiselled into canyons and corridors, devilled with dark alcoves and skirts of sand.
‘This will do,’ Fiske said.
Quinnell halted: Jizzard jumped out at once as if he couldn’t wait to get away from the black box. Quinnell got out the tool kit, started assembling the jack.
While Jizzard and Quinnell changed the tyre, Fiske looked on, smoking his pipe.
Jizzard went off to pee: Quinnell tightened the nuts with a spanner. ‘Make sure they’re good,’ Fiske told him. ‘I don’t want a wheel coming off at the wrong moment.’
Death or Glory III Page 16
