Nerida. The scent of her was strong in his nostrils and he reached out and pulled her down, crushing his lips against hers. Her body was soft and yielding and when she swung on to her back her mouth answered sweet as honey. He opened his eyes and Fiona Grant smiled lazily up at him.

“Now what brought that on?”

He leaned on one elbow for a moment and rubbed a hand across his eyes. Tut it down to the sea air. I’m sorry.”

Tin not.”

“Then you should be.” He pulled her to her feet. “Didn’t you tell me you were expected for lunch?”

She held on to his hand. “Come back with me. I’d like you to meet the General.”

“Some other time. I’ve arranged to eat at the hotel.”

She turned from him like a hurt child. He restrained a strong impulse to take her in his arms, reminded himself strongly that he had work to do – important work – and walked away. When he reached the top of the rise he hesitated and turned reluctantly.

She was standing where he had left her, head drooping, something touchingly despondent about her. The strong sunlight, streaming through the thin cotton of her dress, outlined her firm young thighs perfectly.

“Damn her!” he said softly to himself. “She might as well have nothing on.”

He sighed heavily and went back down the slope.

Mallory lay on his bunk in Foxhunter watching the blue smoke from his cigarette twist and swirl in the current from the air-conditioner. He’d had an excellent meal at the hotel in company with Owen Morgan, but there had been no sign of the Frenchman.

His mind went back again to his meeting with Hamish Grant at the house on the cliffs. There had been method behind the old man’s bullying, of that he was certain. He had been a soldier himself for too long to subscribe to the opinion that all generals were rather stupid, dull-witted blimps who spent their time either needlessly sending men to their deaths or over-indulging at the table.

Behind the worn, leather-coloured face, the half-blind eyes, was a will of iron and a first-rate brain. Iron Grant, who had force-marched his division through the hell that was the Qattara Depression rather than surrender to Rommel, who had led the way down the ramp of the first landing craft to hit Sword Beach on D-Day, was an adversary to be reckoned with by any standards.

And then there was his daughter-in-law. Mallory closed his eyes, trying to picture her face. There was a calmness about her, a sureness that he found disturbing. Even on the wharf at Southampton she had not seemed afraid. It was as if life had done its worst, could do no more. As if nothing could ever really hurt her again. It came to him quite suddenly that she must have loved her husband very much and he was aware of a vague, irrational jealousy.

He heard no sound and yet it was as if a wind had passed over his face and every muscle came alive and singing, ready for instant action. The lower step of the companionway creaked and he reached for the butt of the revolver under his pillow.

“No need, my friend,” Raoul Guyon said quietly.

As Mallory opened his eyes, the young Frenchman dropped on to the opposite bunk and produced a packet of cigarettes.

“We missed you at lunch,” Mallory said. “What happened?”

Guyon shrugged. “Something came up. You know how it is?”

“I certainly do. There’s grass on your jacket.”

“A fine day for lying on one’s back and contemplating heaven,” Guyon said brazenly.

“Not when there’s a job to be done.” Mallory opened a cupboard under the bunk, took out a bottle of whisky and two glasses and set them on the table. “Business and pleasure don’t mix.”

“On occasion, I’m happy to say that they do. Am I not supposed to be a fun-loving young artist on vacation?” Guyon poured himself a generous measure of whisky and raised his glass. “Sante.”

Slim-hipped, lean and sinewy, Raoul Guyon possessed that strange quality to be found in the airborne troops of every country, a kind of arrogant self-sufficiency bred of the hazards of the calling. While unaware of this in himself, he recognised it at once in the Englishman, but there was more than that. Much more. Mallory was the same strange mixture of soldier and monk, of man-of-action and mystic, that he had seen in the great paratroop colonels in Algiers. Men like Philippe de Beaumont. Strange, wild, half-mad fanatics, marred by their experiences in the Viet prison camps, for the time controlling the destiny of a great nation.

But Mallory also had passed through the fire of a Communist prison camp and, like Philippe de Beaumont, he had tried to put into practise those lessons hard learned from his Chinese taskmasters and with the same disastrous result.

Mallory lit a cigarette and leaned back against the bulkhead. “How good is your skin-diving?”

Guyon shrugged. “I know what I’m doing. A little out of practice, that’s all.”

“Anne Grant wants me to take her out over the reef this afternoon. She’s brought a couple of aquamobiles back from the mainland. Wants to try them out. I thought if you asked Fiona nicely you might get yourself invited.”

“As a matter of fact, I already have. All part of my business-cum-pleasure activities.”

“You don’t waste much time.” Mallory grinned. “We’ll see how things look. We can make a full-scale reconnaissance later tonight.”

"You really think there may be something in this business?”

Mallory shrugged. “I wouldn’t like to say. As I was bringing the boat in this morning something damned big passed us underwater. Anne Grant said it was a shark. Apparently they’re pretty common round here.”

“Do you think it’s worth reporting?”

Mallory shook his head. “My boss is interested in facts, not possibilities. I’ve signalled my arrival and nothing more.” He opened the cupboard again, took out what was apparently a small transistor radio and held it up. “Amazing what they can do with electronics these days. There are three motor torpedo boats based on St. Helier now, supposed to be on shallow-water exercises. If I give them the word they’ll be in here like a shot.”

“What’s the signal?”

“Their codeword is Leviathan. When we need them we simply signal Code Four. That’s all that’s needed.”

Mallory put the set in a drawer in the table and Guyon helped himself to more whisky. “I was in touch with my own people before I left Guernsey this morning. They’ve drawn a complete blank where L’Alouette is concerned. It’s creating something of a situation.”

“What in the hell are the O.A.S. trying to prove?” Mallory said. “This sort of thing isn’t going to get them anywhere in the long run.”

“Desperate men seek desperate remedies. Eight times since 1960 either the O.A.S. or the G.N.R. have conspired to kill de Gaulle. They came closest last month when they ambushed his car on the way to Villacoublay Airport. They picked the leader of that little affair up only last week.”

“So this latest business is to prove to people they’re still a force to be reckoned with?”

“More than that. That they have a long arm which can reach out to punish those who oppose them. This isn’t the first member of the judiciary to be assassinated. At this rate there will soon be no one willing to be connected with the trials of O.A.S. members, especially when to take part carries an automatic death sentence.”

“What about Bouvier?”

“He was public prosecutor at a military tribunal which only last month tried six members of the O.A.S. Two were sentenced to death. His execution was stage-managed to have the maximum dramatic effect and the government can’t hope to keep it secret beyond the end of the week.”

“Which doesn’t give us long to handle things here.” Mallory frowned. “Have you ever met de Beaumont personally?”

“Only as one of the crowd. He was a member of the original Committee of Public Safety which brought de Gaulle back to power. When it became obvious that the General wouldn’t play along with his dream of an integrated Algeria he fell to plotting, or so we think.”