Free Cold Harbour by Jack Higgins Page B

way, and that isn’t possible.”
    “Isn’t it?” He opened a drawer, took out a cigar and clipped the end carefully with a penknife. “Your aunt had a chauffeur. A man called Dissard.”
    “René Dissard,” she said. “Of course. He’s served the family all his life.”
    “He worked with Anne-Marie. He was her right hand. He’s in the next room now.”
    She stared at him in astonishment. “René? Here? But I don’t understand.”
    “He was supposed to drive your sister to St. Maurice, then accompany her to Paris by train. In reality, he was to go to ground with the local Resistance unit in that area while she was flown out to wait for her return. When they radioed the news of what had happened, we sent in another plane to pick him up on the following night.”
    “May I see him?”
    “Of course.”
    Craig Osbourne opened the far door and she stood up and crossed to join him. It was a small study lined with books, blackout curtains drawn. There were a couple of armchairs on either side of a gas fire and not much else—except René Dissard.
    He stood up slowly, the same old René, totally unchanged, one of the eternal figures from childhood that always seemed to have been there. Small, broad-shouldered under the cord jacket, iron-grey hair and beard, the scar on the right cheek disappearing under the black patch, evidence of the wound that had cost him an eye as a young soldier at Verdun.
    “René? Is it you?”
    He recoiled, for a moment the same fear there that she had seen in her father’s, as if the dead walked, but he recovered quickly.
    “Mademoiselle Genevieve. It is so wonderful to see you.”
    His hands were shaking and she held them tight. “My aunt is well?”
    “As may be expected in the circumstances.” He shrugged. “The Boche. You must understand that things are very different at the Château these days.” He hesitated. “This is very terrible, this thing which has taken place.”
    It was as if something clicked inside her head, a reality to things now, because of him. “You know what they want me to do, René?”
    “Oui, Mamselle.”
    “You think I should do it?”
    “It would complete what she started,” he said gravely. “There would be less sense of waste.”
    She nodded, turned, brushed past Craig Osbourne and went back into the other room.
    “All right?” Munro said.
    And then a sudden revulsion hit her. It wasn’t that she was afraid; simply that something in her protested totally at being manipulated in this way.
    “No, it damn well isn’t,” she said. “I’ve already got a job, thank you very much, Brigadier. I’m in the business of saving lives when I can.”
    “Strangely enough, so are we, but if that’s how you feel.” He shrugged and turned to Osbourne. “You’d better take her to Hampstead and get this whole thing wrapped up.”
    She said, “Hampstead? What nonsense are you trying to pull now?”
    He looked up, a mild surprise on his face. “Your sister’s personal effects. There are a few in our possession which will be handed over to you. A document or two to sign, just for the records, and you can forget this whole sorry business. Naturally, the Official Secrets Act will apply in full to all or any part of the conversation we’ve had here this evening.”
    He opened a file, picked up a pen as if dismissing her. She turned, thoroughly angry now, walked past Osbourne and went out.
    THE HOUSE IN Hampstead was a late Georgian affair in a couple of acres of ground with high walls and a metal gate which was opened by a man in a peaked cap and some sort of blue uniform. A board on the gate said Rosedene NursingHome. She couldn’t see much of the garden because of the dark. When Craig led the way up the steps to the front door, he carried a flashlight in his hand. He pulled on an old-fashioned bell chain and they waited.
    She heard footsteps approaching. There was the rattle of a chain, the sound of a bolt being withdrawn. The door opened, to reveal a