“He wasn’t at Dien-Bien-Phu?”
Adams shook his head. “No, but he was at plenty of other hot spots. He was up to his ears in it in Algeria. There was some talk of a girl. Moorish, I think. She was murdered by the F.L.N. and it had a big effect on him. He was badly wounded a day or two later.”
There followed a picture of Guyon half raised on a stretcher, his chest heavily bandaged, blood soaking through. The face was sunken, beyond pain, the eyes stared into an abyss of loneliness.
“There’s a lad who’s been through the fire,” Mallory said.
“And then some. Commander of the Legion of Honour, Croix de la Valeur Militaire and half a dozen mentions in dispatches. On top of that, he paints like an angel.”
“A man to be reckoned with.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
For the next twenty minutes they continued to sit there, discussing questions of time and place, some important tech-nical data and various other items, all of which were relevant to the success of the operation. When they finally returned to the office Adams sat behind his desk and nodded at a large and well-filled in-tray.
“Look at that lot,” he said with an expression of disgust. “God in heaven, but I’d trade places with you, Neil.”
Mallory grinned. “I wonder? Is there anything else?”
Adams shook his head. “Call in at the technical branch. They’ve got a rather neat line in transmitters for you. They’ll give you a call-sign, suitable code and so on. Come back in half an hour. I’ll have some identity papers and things ready, plus a rough outline of my little scheme to bring you and Mrs. Grant together.”
“Nowthat I look forward to,” Mallory said.
And the strange thing was that he really did. As he went along the corridor and descended the stairs to the technical branch the memory of her haunted him. Those strange eyes searching, looking for something.
He sighed heavily. Taking it all in all, it looked as if this whole affair could become really complicated.
CHAPTERFIVE PASSAGE BY NIGHT
“Foxhunter!Ahoy! Ahoy!Foxhunter!”
The boat lay at anchor fifty yards out from the beach, her cream and yellow hull a vivid splash of colour against thewhite cliffs of the cove. A small wind moved in from the sea, lifting the water across the shingle, and darkness was falling fast.
Anne Grant shivered slightly as a light drizzle drifted across her face. She was tired and hungry and her ankle had started to ache again. She opened her mouth to hail the boat a second time and Neil Mallory appeared on deck. He dropped over the stern into the dinghy and rowed towards her.
He was wearing knee-length rubber boots and when the prow of the fibre-glass dinghy ground on the wet shingle he stepped into the shallows and swung it round so that the stern was beached.
He held out his hand for the girl’s suitcase and smiled. “How do you feel?”
“All the better for being here,” she said. “It’s been a long day. I had a lot of running around to do.”
She was wearing a tweed suit with a narrow skirt and a sheepskin coat. He helped her into the stern seat, pushed off and rowed for the boat.
Anne took in the flared, raking bow and long, sloping deckhouse ofFoxhunter with a conscious pleasure. As she breathed deeply of the good sea air she smiled at Mallory.
“What do you think of her?”
“Foxhunter?”He nodded. “She’s a thoroughbred all right, but that’s still an awful lot of boat for two women to handle as a regular thing. How old is your sister-in-law?”
“Fiona is eighteen, whatever that proves. I think you underrate us.”
“What about the engines?” he said. “They’ll need looking after.”
“We’ve no worries there. Owen Morgan, who runs the hotel on the island, is a retired ship’s engineer. He’ll give us any help we need and there’s always Jagbir.”
“Who’s he?” Mallory said quickly, remembering that he wasn’t supposed to know.
“The General’s orderly. He was anaik in a Gurkha regiment. They’ve been together since the early days of the war. He hasn’t had what you would call a formal education, but he’s still the best cook I’ve ever come across, and he has an astonishing aptitude for anything mechanical.”