David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

‘As you say,’ Hugh said. ‘The war still goes on. The enemy is still out there.’

‘This dealer,’ Dillen said. ‘Where is he?’

‘He lives incognito in London,’ Rebecca said. ‘But I know where.’

‘Right.’ Dillen looked at her. ‘But we aren’t going there without IMU security this time.’

‘Okay,’ Rebecca said quietly. ‘This does frighten me.’ She got up and walked over to the table, looking again at the drawing of the two people holding hands, the little girl between them and the swastika above. She brought the back of one hand to her mouth, and Dillen could see she was swallowing hard. Hugh saw too, and put his hand on her arm. ‘I’ve always wanted to find her again, you know,’ he said quietly. ‘To find out what happened to her.’

‘The girl with the harp,’ Rebecca whispered, sniffing and wiping her eyes. ‘I wish I could hear her play.’

‘It was her,’ he said, his voice faltering, reaching for Rebecca’s hand. ‘Not really Peter, or me, but her. If she hadn’t made that drawing, perhaps some awful horror would have been unleashed.’ He withdrew his hand, and got up, lurching slightly, steadying himself. Dillen looked at him with concern. Hugh suddenly looked terribly tired, and for the first time Dillen saw him as an old man. Perhaps they should not have put him through the inquisition like this. But Hugh had wanted it. Hugh looked at his watch, and cleared his throat. ‘Thirteen hundred hours, on the dot. If you go right now, you might just make the fifteen twenty to Paddington. Otherwise you wait another forty-three minutes.’

Dillen gave him a tired smile. ‘Ever the old soldier, Hugh.’

‘And the old schoolmaster. When I retired, I swore I’d never be enslaved to the clock again. But at my age, you also realize that time is of the essence. When you’ve still got work to do.’

Rebecca turned, and hugged him. ‘You loved Peter, didn’t you?’

Hugh stood stiffly for a second, then relaxed and put his arms round her. ‘I’m still there, you know. Sometimes it’s as if the war is like the moment before death, a moment one is forever living. And it’s the old cliche. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. Peter’s forever young. I apologize for being so emotional earlier. Shameful, really. I’m tougher than that, you know. It’s just that recently, in the past few years, there have been a few moments. The armour’s coming off. Old age, I suppose. I do wonder what Peter would have thought of me now. He the eternal youth, me the shuffling old man.’

‘You might have to be tough again, Hugh,’ Dillen said. ‘We’re all being drawn back to that place. Maybe to confront the gates of hell once more.’

Hugh let go of Rebecca, then held out his hands, palms upward. ‘Sometimes, when it’s cold and I close my hands, I feel the crackle of frozen blood on my palm. I felt that once in the Ardennes. Other men’s blood, not mine. When it’s warm, I smell it. The blood of the men I’ve killed. You don’t need to worry about me when I stand there, in front of those gates. I’ve been there for years.’

Dillen got up. Rebecca put on her fleece, and slung her pack over her shoulder. Dillen zipped up his Gore-Tex jacket and picked up his laptop bag. Hugh went over to the door. ‘You’ll get a taxi to Temple Meads station?’

‘We’ll walk.’ Dillen slung his bag on his shoulder. ‘I was telling Rebecca on the way up about my time here as a schoolboy. I haven’t seen the place for years. And we might just have time to pop into the Llandowger Trow for a quick drink before catching the train. I want Rebecca to see where Robert Louis Stevenson set the opening scene of Treasure Island. The docks are still a place where you can step into the past. And I’m sure a few Howards have set off on high-seas adventures from there before now.’

Hugh put his hand on Dillen’s shoulder. ‘It’s been good to see you here again, James. Always good. Let’s hope that what we’ve been talking about is all ancient history. A closed book, for you two, if not for me.’ He turned to Rebecca, and put his other hand on her shoulder. ‘And you, Rebecca Howard, daughter of my friends Jack and Elizabeth. I was very fond of your mother too, you know. She came here with Jack once, sat just where you did. Seeing you, it was as if I were seeing her again. She’ll be with you for ever, you know. It’s not just your dad who will look after you. My home is your home. Any time.’

Rebecca’s eyes welled up, and she embraced him again. ‘I’ll come back. You can count on it. For the hot chocolate.’

Hugh stepped over and opened the door for them, then paused. ‘When I was a schoolboy, a famous general named Sir Ian Hamilton came to unveil our war memorial. He’d been commander during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. He’d known the terrible beauty of war, its seduction, from soldiering in the heyday of the British Empire. When heroes still seemed possible, when wars were not yet world wars. He was steeped in the classics, in Homer, and when he sat in his ship off Gallipoli, he wrote of his troops in Homeric terms, as if when they went over the top into a storm of lead they were men of Mycenae before the walls of Troy. History has reviled him for it, but he was only using the words he knew, the metaphors, the similes drummed into him as a boy studying Homer. And maybe, sitting there with Gallipoli and Troy in his sights, he saw the truth. More than three hundred old boys from my school died in that war. Hamilton stood before us and told us they had hoped to kill war. I’ll always remember that. They had hoped to kill war. That’s what we were doing too, you know, Peter and I and all the countless others. But since then, I’ve come to realize a truth, perhaps the truth that Hamilton saw. The flames of war were ignited in Troy three thousand years before, not in burning ships and pyres of dead heroes, but in the flaming citadel, in women and children lit like torches. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. We can never kill war. All we can do is contain it, know it’s there but keep the horror boxed away, like that bunker in the forest, like the monster within us that is so easily unleashed, the monster I feel inside me every time I open and close my hands. And fighting that war is no longer a job just for soldiers. It’s for all of us.’

‘Roger that,’ Rebecca murmured.

Hugh grinned, and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Now where have I heard that before? You are a chip off the old block. And now enough of this. It’s time for you to go. And time for me to get cracking with that translation.’ He looked at Dillen, a twinkle in his eye. ‘Onwards and upwards, James.’

Dillen looked at him. What would the future now hold, for Hugh, for Rebecca, for all of them? He put his hand on Hugh’s shoulder, feeling the sinewy toughness, but the frailty too. It was their old parting expression. He could not imagine coming here and not hearing it. He smiled broadly. ‘Onwards and upwards, Hugh.’

T he man stood in the corner of the room, fidgeting with his fingers, watching the scene unfolding in front of him. Another man, heavy-set and middle-aged, was sitting on a wooden chair in the centre of the room, sweating profusely, his a few strands of the centre of the room, sweating profusely, his few strands of hair plastered to his forehead. He was wearing faded army surplus trousers and an artist’s smock, smeared with coloured chalk. His legs were strapped to the chair legs and his chest and upper arms to the chair back, leaving his forearms hanging loose. A piece of duct tape had been slapped over his mouth, and his eyes were darting about, terrified, imploring, at the man in the corner and the other man standing in front of the chair, then out of the window, over the river Thames towards the Houses of Parliament and the grey sky.