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Page 72.

“I can’t imagine what she sees in that guy.”

“Yeah, well you know how it is. Host country nationals.” That was the old byword from a hundred training films—never raise an eyebrow no matter what the Host Country Nationals do or say. If they offer you a drink of something that smells like shoe polish mixed with goat urine, kindly thank them and demur, saying you are of a religious denomination that prohibits...well, all sorts of rubbish like that. Tim and Stan both laughed.

“Seriously,” Stan said, “I’ve got it figured out. She’s a spy. She’s been letting this geek violate her in return for some information that she needs.”

“To sink our ships,” Tim said thickly, not liking where the conversation was heading.

“To shink our sips, but there has to be a reason,” the lovelorn Stanley mooned. “Don’t you get it, Tim? See what I mean? Here is my chance to tell Lord Humbug to fuck off and go tend his tulips and be thankful I didn’t turn him in, and at the same time I tell her I can save her if she’ll only let me.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure that out as I go along.”

“Stan, you are insane.”

“I am Napoleon, leading my armies. I trust my fate. I will prevail.”

“He died on an island halfway to the South Pole.”

“I’m a lot younger. I have a long time left.”

“You go on the wagon tomorrow, you hear?” Tim couldn’t help laughing. “I swear, unrequited love has turned your brain to porridge.” He added: “So why does she have to betray her country?”

“I don’t know. Figure it out. She needs money to save the family castle.”

“And you can help her more than he can.”

“Just get me there, Tim. I’ll figure out what to do. First, I need her love and cooperation. Love conquers all. She’ll see the logic immediately and surrender to my charms.”

They came to a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, just as Tim had expected. Two narrow roads—flanked on either side by hedges, which contained fragments of ancient walls—met at a little turnabout. On a metal post were several enameled signs: Lyme Canter, Lyme Wendell, Less Lyme, Upper Lyme, but no Ledding Lyme. “Now what?”

“We find a cop and ask directions.”

“Okay; it’s nearly ten thirty. I think all cops are in bed by ten in this country.”

“An old Civil Warden then. They are always on duty.”

“Right. Here we go.” Off they sped, Tim picking the most likely target, which happened to be Less Lyme. His worst fear was that they’d be sent back and forth from one Lyme to another, always by some well-meaning soul who insisted that the correct Lyme was ‘just that way over that hill there.’

Not only did they not find anyone to ask for directions, but Tim found they were driving in large circles and getting low on gas. The same landmarks began to whirl past with tiresome regularity: a certain large tree, a hedge with a hole in it, a small tan car parked at an odd angle before a stone church, a village in which several shop lights still burned behind locked doors. Fog rolled silently through the opaque air. They passed the unhelpful crossroads several times. Stan was out of liquor and beginning to sober up, though he complained of a low, nagging headache.

The fog was really starting to roll in now, bringing an eerie silence. The men had the windows down, and the echoes of the motor rattled back and forth through pastures and orchards.

“That church back there,” Tim said. He tortured the car through a six-point turn on the narrow road and drove back.

“We’ve been by it a dozen times,” Stan agreed. He half hung out the window, head, shoulders, one arm. “We’ve got to find her!”

Tim was on the verge of calling a halt to the adventure and driving home, when they rolled up the gravel path before the Church of England parish church of Ledding Lyme.

Tim cut the engine and they sat in silence.

In the silence, the little car parked nearby was making eerie clicking and popping sounds. “Cooling down,” Tim said. “Been driven recently.”

“Damn,” Stan said. “I could have sworn I heard her say to meet him in a town called Ledding Lyme.”

“Well, it’s not a town, and it’s not Ledding Lyme,” Tim said, “but we found it. No Claire.”

“Yes, but what is that in the car over there?” Stan asked, pointing. He still hung half out the window.

Tim looked at the oddly parked little tan car, which seemed to have exceptionally smeared windows. “Let’s get out and stretch our legs.” With Tim in the lead, they stepped out on the gravel. Tim left the parking lights on.

Footsteps crunching, they walked across the front portal, to the edge of a little copse of trees, where the car sat with its windshield glinting with reflected amber light in the darkness. The car was a rather plebeian Leyland.

“What’s that inside?” Stan asked. He’d begun trembling.

Tim felt a knot in his stomach. He leaned in close and rubbed water off the window. “Stan!” he said, seeing a twisted shape inside.

Stan came running around the front of the car. “There’s a man inside!”

“It’s them,” Tim said. He tried to pull the door open, but it was locked. Inside were two bodies, and they weren’t moving.

“Oh God!” Stan shrieked. “It’s him! Admiral Todd! Then that must be her!”