Free Soldier No More by Anthony Price Page B

now.”
    And yet in a way that was the answer, thought Roche. He was here asking these questions of this man because he had been directed to do so, not for any reason of his own.
    “Come on. Or I shall begin to suspect you’re busy putting lies together for me,”said Wimpy silkily. “And I might find that… discouraging.”
    There was no more time. “It isn’t that. I’m not sure how far I can trust you, that’s all.” Damn it! It was gone now.
    Wimpy smiled again, a winner’s smile. “I don’t think you’ve a lot of choice—do you? As the Good Book says, you just have to cast your bread on the waters.”
    “All right.” It was time to cut his losses. “You could say ‘the child is father of the man’, for a start.”
    “ You could say it.” Wimpy’s face closed up. “ I would say … that a child has many fathers.” He paused for a moment, then gestured towards the rugger pitch. “There’s one father, if you like. Certainly one of David Audley’s fathers, I’d say.”
    Roche looked at him questioningly.
    “Yes …” Wimpy nodded. “ ‘Audley spent a cold and quiet afternoon at full-back’—I believe that was his first appearance in print at his prep school, in the school mag at St. George’s, the first time he played for the school, in the under-twelves.”
    “And you taught him rugger there?”
    “I had a hand in his education. But at St. George’s the essence was not so much the games master as the headmaster, to whom certain forms of play in rugby football were a form of Christianity, or otherwise ethical behaviour— it was unchristian to tackle high … not because it was dangerous, but because it was ineffective … running straight was the same—you were in trouble with the Head if you didn’t tackle low, or run straight, or fall on the ball when the other forwards were advancing, or do these various things, because that was the moral, decent, ethical thing to do.”
    “You taught David Audley at St. George’s and here at Immingham?”
    Roche rallied.
    “So I did. David Audley came up from his prep school with a scholarship … in the same year, the same term. We were new boys together, yes.” He grinned at Roche, as though the memory had mellowed him.
    “Okay, then.” Roche grinned back. “But what I’m going to tell you is classified. I wouldn’t want my boss to hear about it.”
    Wimpy acknowledged the confidence with a single nod. “Understood. And I wouldn’t want you to think that anything I may say to you as a result is because Fred Clinton has twisted my arm—far from it! Whatever I tell you now is for my young David’s sake. Because it’s time he did a proper job of work—time he matched his racket to balls worthy of him … time he did something difficult , instead of wasting himself on mere scholarship—which is for him quite ridiculous … And all of which, of course, the egregious Clinton is relying on—with me as well as David. And that’s the whole difference between us, between the goats and the poor bloody sheep: we both know how people tick, but he knows how to make them jump as well. So … what is this that’s so frightfully classified, then?”
    The man was no fool. Through all the verbiage and side-tracking he held to his primary objectives, one after another.
    Roche watched him narrowly. “You know David Audley worked for intelligence at the end of the war?”
    “For Clinton?”
    “Or someone like him—yes.”
    Wimpy nodded. “I didn’t know. But it doesn’t surprise me one bit. Not one bit.”
    No fool, and perhaps more than that, thought Roche, observing the little schoolmaster’s deadpan reaction. Viewed from the spectators’ stand, the connection between Clinton and the once-upon-a-time Major Willis had seemed a remarkable slice of luck in the process of gathering information about David Audley. But from the players’ point of view such happy coincidences could never be accepted on their face value until every suspicious