(1995) By Any Name (23 page)

‘To get us out of our nice warm barracks and make us run around like blue-arsed flies in this fucking, freezing wilderness… ’

‘Call yourselves soldiers! You lot are worse than a load of bleeding fishwives. You’re here to do a fucking job not stand by gossiping.’

‘Stopped for a piss, sergeant.’

‘Then bloody well get on with it.’

‘Quick as it will come, sergeant. It doesn’t like the cold.’

‘Bloody Cockneys. You’re all comedians.’

The sound of water trickling against stone came from somewhere above them, followed by the stampeding of hooves as sheep charged down the pen.

West waited for one of the soldiers to notice that the sheep beneath the make-shift repair to the wall hadn’t bolted with the rest, but the crunch of boots on snow resumed and the voices grew fainter.

Elizabeth’s eyes, wide, fearful, focused on his.

‘You all right?’ he mouthed, barely articulating the words.

She nodded.

‘Keep the blankets around you.’ Digging the toes of his boots into the ground he pushed himself upwards, towards the point where the tin ended and the crumbling walls began. He peered out of a crack alongside the carcase of the sheep. The world had been overlaid by a thick, white quilt, but he’d been wrong about the weather. The sky was full of snow, and small flurries were still falling, specks he knew would soon turn to full-bodied flakes. But the soldiers had moved on. He could see the outlines of their grey boots and gloves and white snow suits trudging up towards the summit of Corn Du. He moved back down alongside Elizabeth.

‘You cold?’

‘Since you moved,’ she admitted, through blue and chattering lips.

He slid back into the position he’d occupied all night and wrapped his arms around her.

‘How come you’re not freezing?’

‘Trained to cope. At least I think so,’ he qualified.

‘After last night, one thing’s certain. You have to be an army officer. No one but an officer could have barked commands the way you did.’

‘And, which army do you think I’m likely to be an officer in?’ he asked softly, suspecting that no officer worthy of the name, would manoeuvre himself, much less an innocent woman, into the position he had engineered them into; hiding out on a freezing snow-clad mountainside with only a sheet of tin and three dead sheep to protect them from the elements and their pursuers. It was bad enough he was here, but Elizabeth – he’d only met her for the first time three days ago, and in that time he’d taken her captive at gunpoint, gagged and tied her – yet here she was, prepared to believe in him to the extent of endangering her own life.

‘The military angle gives us something to work on the next time I hypnotise you.’ Her teeth were chattering. Her body was only warm where it touched his; the rest of her was chilled to the marrow. When she tried to uncurl her fingers, they moved infinitely slowly and stiffly, like plants turning towards the light.

‘What I can’t understand is how they knew we were in Brecon?’ he murmured.

‘The photographs,’ she reminded him. ‘We left them on the bed.’

‘They covered all of Wales.’

‘I removed the Brecon file from the box.’

‘The photographs you showed me were of the town. They surrounded one particular flat.’

‘Perhaps someone saw us there, someone who knew we’d been asking questions about the place in the pub.’

‘We kept the curtains drawn when we were there.’

‘I was seen walking into the place. Our faces were on every news broadcast, and in every newspaper.’

‘I looked into every face in that pub and I would have sworn that none of them identified us.’

‘Perhaps one of them was as good as keeping his reactions to himself as you are, and followed us.’

‘It’s academic now we’re in this bloody awful position, with no supplies, the wrong clothes and no survival gear.’ He pinched a finger of snow from beneath the sheet of iron with his thumb and forefinger and rubbed the tip of her frozen nose with it. ‘You should have another sip of brandy.’

‘I’d prefer to crawl outside and visit the Ladies’

room.’

‘With what’s outside, the Ladies’ room has to be in here.’

‘With you lying here. You have to be joking?’

‘You move out and we’ll be picked up in minutes.

This spot can be seen for miles, especially from the road. Here,’ he handed her a couple of plastic bags.

‘Don’t mix one product with another,’ he warned. ‘If you do the bag will explode, and they’ll sniff us out.’

‘How in hell do you know that?’

‘I just know it. In order to spare your blushes, I’ll retreat to the drawing room.’ He wriggled out of the blankets wincing as his jean clad knees hit the frozen ground. He continued to push himself upwards on his elbows towards the dead sheep. Its body was as cold and hard as the ground it was lying on.

Crawling past the woolly face with its frosting of iced blood, he peered outside. There were a few stunted, misshapen trees in the centre of the pen. They didn’t afford much cover, but they were better than nothing, and as such, worth remembering. The night had been unpleasant, a day spent in these conditions without food, and only snow to serve as drinking water, wouldn’t be much better. As soon as darkness fell he would move on for Elizabeth’s sake. He doubted she could take much more.

He scanned the hillsides and the horizon as far as he could see. In the distance tiny, matchbox cars rolled along the Libanus road, but for how much longer? The snow was falling thicker and heavier. But no matter how heavily it fell, he doubted it would slow the army’s four wheeled drive vehicles.

‘I’m through.’

He turned, her face seemed bluer than before and damp.

‘What have you been doing?’

‘Washing in snow.’

‘Here,’ he wriggled back down on to the blankets, and held out his arms. ‘Get as close to me as you can.’

‘Intimate strangers.’

‘I’m the only radiator in this mansion.’

‘And I’m very grateful for the use of your body, believe me.’ She stole close to him, while he re-arranged the blankets, tucking their edges around both of them. For the first time she noticed his eyes, dark, hollowed, ringed by shadows. ‘You’ve been awake all night.’ It was a statement not a question.

‘Someone had to stand guard.’

‘Let me take over for a couple of hours.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You’ve had about one night’s sleep in the last three. I doubt even superman could survive on that for long.’

‘I’ll sleep tonight’

‘If we stay here we’ll freeze and starve to death.’

‘I know, that’s why I intend to move out as soon as it gets dark. If you’re the praying sort, I suggest you put in a word for another cloudy night.’

‘If you stay awake you’re not going to be in fit condition to move out.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s midday now. I’ll wake you when it gets dark.’

‘Or the second you hear a noise?’

‘I promise.’

‘You have the gun I gave you?’

‘I can’t reach it, I don’t know how to use it, and I’m not sure I would, if I did.’ She looked at the machine gun tucked alongside them. ‘I’ll wake you if I think trouble’s coming.’

‘And when it gets dark.’ His eyes were already closing at the suggestion of sleep. Grabbing a handful of hay from the edge of the shelter he pushed it beneath the blanket at his head, and retrieved the bottle of brandy. ‘Take a drink, but go easy,’ he handed it to her. ‘I almost forgot this.’ He pulled half a bar of the thick dark chocolate from inside his vest where he’d stowed it when he’d changed in the office.

‘Breakfast.’ He snapped a piece off, pushing the rest back inside his shirt he handed her the square.

‘You’re not breakfasting?’

‘I haven’t slept yet. Be careful when you touch the guns. There’s a silencer on the Browning, but it’s a semi-automatic, all you have to do is squeeze the trigger mechanism for it to fire.’

‘I told you I’ll wake you if anyone comes.’

‘Take it just in case I jerk the mechanism in my sleep.’ He thrust it at her. Wrapping himself and the machine gun in the blanket they shared, he pulled her close. She lay quietly on her stomach, her side pressed against his chest, listening to his slow measured breathing, feeling the pounding of his heart against her rib-cage as she concentrated on the tiny slit of light that gave a door jamb view of the outside world.

Within seconds he relaxed against her, and she knew he slept.

‘No sightings, sir.’

‘This is preposterous. The man has to be somewhere; he couldn’t have disappeared off the face of the earth.’ Simmonds carried a mug of tea into the room they had requisitioned as a Command Cell in the Storey Arms Youth Hostel.

‘I thought your regiment trained for operations over this sort of terrain?’ Needing a scapegoat, Lieutenant-Colonel Heddingham looked at Chaloner.

‘We do, sir,’ Chaloner answered.

‘You knew within minutes that he’d jumped. Your officers and men were escorting that ambulance… ’

‘Our target obviously knows these hills.

Apparently better than we do.’ Chaloner moved to the window and looked out at the falling snow that had covered the slushy tyre tracks in the car park. ‘He’s obviously gone to ground. Built himself a hide, perhaps even an igloo. We know he has brandy and blankets. He’s holing up somewhere.’

‘In this? Rubbish,’ Heddingham dismissed.

'He must have slipped through your cordon last night,’ Simmonds added.

‘A rabbit couldn’t have slipped through that cordon.’ Chaloner remained calm, controlled, all the more authoritative for his lack of emotion.

‘It’s a vast area… ’

‘Which he has to travel the same as us, and he doesn’t have the advantage of our equipment, helicopters and four wheeled drive vehicles.’

‘While you two stand here arguing. I have to return to London and face the committee and the minister.

What do I tell them?’ Heddingham demanded.

‘That we have him cornered in a hide and it’s simply a matter of time before we put our hands on him. That’s if you are prepared to allow me to run this search without interference, sir,’ Chaloner replied.

‘Or,’ the colonel looked to Simmonds, ‘he’s out of the area and on his way to God knows where?’

‘No cars were reported stolen within twenty miles of this area last night,’ Chaloner pointed out.

‘That we know about,’ Simmonds broke in. ‘He could have flagged one down, killed the driver… ’

‘Where are you suggesting he flagged down this car? We had road blocks set up within ten minutes of him and Dr Santer jumping from that ambulance. We monitored the journey and destination of every car that travelled the Brecon-Merthyr road last night.’

‘He could have done it in the first ten minutes.’

‘Not without us seeing him.’ Chaloner crossed to the map and studied it.

‘Every road, every hill, every empty building for miles checked out, and we still come up with precisely nothing!’ Heddingham hit the table with his fist, rattling the tea mugs and splashing their contents over the maps and plans spread out over the surface.

‘Lieutenant-Colonel, sir,’ a private marched into the room. ‘Your helicopter is ready.’

Heddingham looked from Simmonds to Chaloner.

‘I’m in charge of this operation, and I’m the one getting the flak because we haven’t caught our quarry.

You,’ he pointed to Chaloner, ‘pull your men out of this area and concentrate on covering a wider circle.

Twenty to fifty miles from the central point at which he jumped.’

‘But, sir… ’

‘We’ve played it your way long enough, Chaloner, and come up with precisely nothing. Simmonds, set up liaison meetings with all the police forces in Wales, and contact the ones in England. Let’s extend the net.’

‘Sir,’ Simmonds smiled triumphantly. ‘Just one more thing before you go, sir.’

‘Make it brief, Major.’ Heddingham lifted his overcoat from the rack and removed the gloves from its pocket.

‘Should we be unable to contact you, sir, who is in charge of this operation in your absence?’

‘You make every effort to contact me.’

‘That is understood, sir.’

‘In the unlikely eventuality I am unavailable; we’ll have to trust to your judgement, Major Simmonds.

Chaloner.’ Heddingham acknowledged the captain before walking out through the door.

Simmonds turned to the map after Heddingham left the building. ‘Shouldn’t you be redeploying the search parties, Chaloner?’

The afternoon wore on, endless, tedious, cold and silent. The hush that had descended over the hills was so absolute, Elizabeth almost panicked over a buzzing she eventually recognized as originating in her mind.

She stared at the slender margin of light beneath the tin and reflected the only differences between this shrouded silence and the grave was her degree of consciousness, the glimmer of light, and West’s warm presence.

She could just make out a distant corner of road. A thin black ribbon in a world of blinding marshmallow white, where, from time to time, wheels turned, churning up a filthy spray. The gap wasn’t large enough for her to make out the vehicles, only their wheels. Occasionally she heard the whirr of helicopter blades, but none hovered directly overheard and although West opened his eyes at the rumbles, he closed them as soon as the sounds grew fainter.

He slept uneasily, occasionally mumbling in his sleep. She tried to decipher his words and failed. Was he speaking in another language? Arabic perhaps?

The seeds of doubt grew as the day wore on. In an effort to quell her suspicions she listed all of West’s positive attributes.

Despite all his threats, he’d never shown any signs of undue violence. He was an expert at disarming people and rendering them unconscious, but she hadn’t seen him kill, or hurt anyone needlessly. He hadn’t exhibited any sign of enjoying the power he’d wielded over her, and even last night when he had tried to make love to her, he could have easily overpowered her, but one protest had been enough to stop him.

He wasn’t a rapist – but apart from his personality which she sensed to be inherently and morally good, there was something else – something that went deeper than their doctor/patient relationship. An affinity? Like-minded friendship? She tried not to analyze it too closely.