The Conduct of Major Maxim by Gavin Lyall

Author:Gavin Lyall [Lyall, Gavin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: thriller

Chapter 15

The doctor had been and gone by the time Maxim reached the little cottage on the hillside above Caswell's father-in-law's garage. Maxim suspected that the cottage belonged to the old man, too, and went with the job. He wondered how long Jim would stand that.

"Said he's doing very well," Caswell reported. "Gave him some more shots, his temperature's well down. Told me to keep himstill for a couple of days. "

"Is he awake now?"

"Yes, he's listening to the radio. I'll shift the telly in there for him tomorrow, that might keep him quiet."

"Has he heard about the one in the hospital?"

"Yes. It doesn't seem to bother him."

"Well…" But did they want it to bother him? Blagg's touching faith that Maxim would save him from murder charges in two countries might at least mean that he would stay where he was and do nothing – for once. Caswell led the way.

Blagg was lying flat on his back but bulging out of a small single bed that itself crowded the tiny room. It was all very cottagey, the uneven walls papered with a tiny flower pattern and all filled with an odd green light reflected in from the hillside that sloped up just outside the window. Blagg pulled out the radio earpiece and struggled to sit up.

"Lie still, you stupid little man!" Caswell thundered, all sergeant again. Blagg relaxed sheepishly.

For a couple of minutes they made sickbed small talk while Maxim tried to decide just how Blagg was. The right side of his face was a mass of scratches, there was a sticking plaster on his ear, and his chest was heavily bandaged, but even in that sickly light he seemed bright-eyed and calm. Best of all, hewas talking long sentences without a hint of breathlessness. Maxim was fit enough himself but, he thought wistfully, there's no medicine like being only twenty-five.

"Is this the first time you've copped one?" he asked.

"Nah, I got one in Armagh. Smack in the arse, but it was probably just about spent. Bloody funny that was, for everybody else. Have you, sir?"

"Years back, out in the Gulf." Maxim touched the outside of his right thigh; through the thin cotton trousers he could trace the hardedged crater that had come close to killing him, out in the desert hours from real medical aid. Instead, it had only taken away six months of his life – at a critical point that just might have foreclosed on his promotion hopes. If, of course, he still had any. Well, as they said, why didy oujoin the Army if you can't take a joke?

"One thing," Blagg said; "I'm lucky I don't smoke." He grinned slyly at Caswell, who had already twice taken out and then put away his cigarettes.

"Right, then," Maxim called the meeting to order. "I've talked to Six, and somebody in the Foreign Office. I'm sorry it took all this to get them out into the open – as far as they've come. They've said they'll do what they can for you, and I believe them.

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