Free The military philosophers by Anthony Powell

quite recovered from the phase, reported by Pennistone, of feeling the only hope of getting the thing properly done would be to fly to Persia and himself arrange it singlehanded.
    ‘The civilian elements are now definitely coming out, sir?’
    ‘Anders insisted – no doubt rightly – but the women and children will not make the operation any easier.’
    There had been controversy about these camp-followers who had managed to exist in the wake of the army, largely on its shared rations. At first it had seemed they might have to stay behind.
    ‘Some of the boys are old enough to be trained as cadets. The CIGS himself noted that point on the paper with approval.’
    Finn’s telephone bell rang.
    ‘Ask him to come up,’ he said. ‘It’s Asbjornsen. We’ll return to the evacuation later, Nicholas. I shall have to keep Asbjornsen from talking too much, as Colonel Chu is due in less than twenty minutes. Did I tell you Chu’s latest after his six months’ course at Sandhurst?’
    The Chinese military attaché, well known for the demanding nature of his requests, had just completed an attachment as cadet to the Royal Military College.
    ‘Chu enjoyed the RMC so much he wants to go to Eton.’
    ‘He could see Windsor Castle at the same time, though the state apartments are probably not open.’
    ‘Good God,’ said Finn. ‘He doesn’t just want to visit the place – he hopes to attend the school as a pupil.’
    ‘He’s a shade old, sir.’
    ‘I told him thirty-eight is regarded as too mature in this country to be still at school. It was no good. All he said was “I can make myself young.”
    Finn sighed.
    ‘I wish I could,’ he said.
    Sometimes the military attachés dispirited him. Chu’s unreasonableness seemed to have achieved that. General Asbjornsen arrived in the room. Tall, like General Lebedev, not much given to laughter, he always reminded me of Monsieur Ørn, the long craggy Norwegian, who had been at La Grenadière when, as a boy, I had stayed with the Leroys in Touraine. He shook hands with Finn and myself gravely. I withdrew to our room. Corporal Curtis had again increased the pile of stuff on the desk. I was still going through this when Pennistone returned from the Titian.
    ‘What on earth were you about, David, minuting Blackhead please amplify ?’
    ‘Has it upset him?’
    ‘Beyond description.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘What were your reasons?’
    ‘Renan says complication is anterior to simplicity. I thought Blackhead would make an interesting experiment for trying out that theory.’
    ‘We can only pray Renan was right.’
    ‘Renan would find prayer charming, but ineffectual. Did you see Q (Ops.)?’
    Pennistone went through the points I had cleared with Finn.
    ‘Look,Nick,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be able to collect the Klnisaszewski Report tomorrow afternoon, as there’s another meeting about the evacuation. Will you get it? Nothing whatever required, except to receive it from the Polish officer on duty.’
    The Klnisaszewski Report was one of those items of Intelligence that fell, as such items sometimes do, in a no-man’s-land between normal official channels and those secret services so cautiously handled by Finn. Even Finn saw no harm in our trafficking in this particular exchange of information, which the Operational and ‘Country’ sections liked to see. For some internal reason, the Polish branch concerned preferred to hand over the report direct, rather than present it, in the normal manner, through the Second Bureau of their GHQ. Pennistone, as it happened, always collected the Klnisaszewski Report, though merely, in the division of our duties, because he had fallen into the habit of doing so.
    ‘Here’s the address,’ he said. ‘It’s the north side of the Park. We might discuss some of these evacuation points further at lunch.’
    The following day I arranged to collect the report in the afternoon. When I went down to the staff entrance and shouted for our driver, the