Free Solo (Aka the Cretan Lover) (v5) by Jack Higgins Page B

Royal Avenue, the base for the city centre regiment and billet for five hundred soldiers.
    He stared down at the signal in his hand blankly and the young staff officer who had brought it from HQ, shuffled uncomfortably.
    'The GOC has asked me to offer his sincere condolences. A terrible business. He's authorized your onward transportation to London by first available flight.'
    Morgan frowned. 'That's very kind of him. But what about Operation Motorman?'
    'Your duties will be assigned to someone else, Colonel. Orders from the Minister of Defence.'
    'Then I'd better start packing.'
    Somewhere in the distance there was the dull crump of an explosion and the rattle of machine-gun fire. The young officer started in alarm.
    'Nothing to worry about,' Asa Morgan told him. 'Belfast night sounds, that's all,' and he walked out.
    Steeple Durham was in Essex, not far from the Black-water river. Marsh country, creeks, long grass stirring to change colour constantly as if brushed by an invisible presence, the gurgle of water everywhere. An alien world inhabited mainly by the birds. Curlew and redshank and brent geese coming south from Siberia to winter on the fiats.
    The village was a tiny, scattered community, Saxon in origin, and the crypt of the church was that early at least, although the rest was Norman.
    Francis Wood was working in the cemetery, cutting the grass verges with an old handmower, when the silver sports car drew up at the gate and Asa Morgan got out. He wore slacks, a dark blue polo-neck sweater and a brown leather bomber jacket.
    'Hello, Francis,' he said.
    Francis Wood looked across at the Carrera Targa. 'Still got the Porsche, I see.'
    'Nothing else to spend my money on. I keep on the flat in Gresham Place. There's a basement garage there. It's very convenient.'
    Rooks lifted out of the beech trees above their heads calling angrily. Wood said, 'I'm sorry, Asa. More than I could ever say.'
    'When's the funeral?'
    'Tomorrow afternoon. Two-thirty.'
    'Are you officiating?'
    'Unless you have any objection.'
    'Don't be stupid, Francis. How's Helen taking it?'
    'She hasn't broken down yet, if that's what you mean. If you'd like to see her, you'll find her on the dyke, painting. I'd tread very softly, if I were you.'
    'Why?'
    'Surely they explained the peculiar circumstances of Megan's death?'
    'She was killed by a hit and run driver.'
    'There was rather more to it than that, Asa.'
    Morgan gazed at him blankly. 'Then you'd better tell me about it, hadn't you?'
    Morgan followed the path through the lych gate, round the grey stone rectory with its pantile roof, and took the track along the dyke towards the estuary. He could see her from a long way off, seated at her easel, wearing the old military trenchcoat he'd bought the year they got married.
    She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of his approach, then carried on painting. He stood behind her for a while without saying anything. It was a water-colour, of course, her favourite medium. A view of the marsh and the sea and a grey sky full of rain beyond, that was very fine indeed.
    'You get better.'
    'Hello, Asa.'
    He sat on a grass bank to one side of her, smoking, and she kept on painting, not looking at him once.
    'How was Belfast?'
    'Not too good.'
    'I'm glad,' she said. 'You deserve each other.'
    He said calmly, 'I used to think that phrase had a particular application where we were concerned.'
    'No, Asa, whatever eke I may have deserved in this life I never earned you.'
    'I never pretended to be anything other than I was.'
    'We went to bed together on our wedding night and I woke up in the morning with a stranger. Every rotten little war they came up with, you were the first to volunteer. Cyprus, Borneo, Aden, the Oman and now that butcher's shop across the Irish Sea.'
    'That's what they pay me for. You knew what you were taking on.'
    She was angry now. 'Like hell I did. Certainly not Cyprus and the things you did there for Ferguson.'
    'Another kind of soldiering,