Concerned as he was with the mission, Smith felt a faint stirring of lust. Since he had left London he had not had a woman and the ‘ladies of the night’ were easier than some decent woman you had to make promises to and woo with flowers and chocolates before anything happened. Ever since he ‘had’ his first woman in the backroom of a pub in Harrow at the age of 15, he had usually found his satisfaction with whores. After all, what other woman would enter into a relationship with a man who was likely to sail away and be killed the next day at the drop of a hat? That was the only kind of pleasure a sea-going matelot could get. It was either that or rum and sodomy; and he took no pleasure in either of those.
‘Fancy a little bit, sailor?’ the voice was definitely not from that part of the world. ‘Give you a good time… honest.’ He turned. A strikingly pretty girl stood there, dressed in a rabbit-skin coat, her bonnet set at a cocky angle, her eyes blue and challenging and, he couldn’t help thinking, very intelligent. She smiled up at him, winningly. ‘Wouldn’t cost you more than a quid… and I’m good.’ She thrust out her small breasts provocatively.
He returned her smile. ‘I’m sure you are, dear. But I’m in a hurry.’
‘I’ve never heard of a sailor who’s too busy to have a fuck.’
Smith stopped in his tracks, shocked. He had never heard a woman, even a common prostitute, use that word before. ‘What did you say?’
‘You heard,’ she said, seemingly enjoying the effect she had had and repeated the sentence. ‘Now then, are you still too busy? I can do things to you and for you that’ll make yer eyes pop right out of yer head.’
Smith could not resist the temptation. No woman had ever spoken to him like that, not even the French whores in Paris on the day the war had ended, and he and the rest of the flotilla had gone on a bender which had lasted a whole week. ‘All right then. Where do you live?’
‘Not far from here. Just off the Hendon Road. And you can call me Lucie.’ He thrust a pound at her.
‘Not yet, duckie,’ she said cheerfully, thrusting it back at him. ‘You’ve not had it, have you? Besides you might want to pay me a little bit extra.’ She lowered her voice and fluttered her eyelashes, ‘for special services rendered.’
‘Why… why…’ he spluttered, but she did not give him a chance to finish his question. Instead she thrust her arm through his cheerfully and said, ‘Come on, sailor boy. Let’s not waste time. You know we working girls have got to keep at it, if you know what I mean.’ She winked at him cheekily.
‘You’re not your usual merchant marine type,’ she said cheerfully as they turned into one of the mean streets that led off from Hendon and housed those who worked on the docks across the broad main road.
‘What do you mean?’ Suddenly the alarm bells began to sound.
‘You talk too posh!’
‘So do you,’ he said challengingly, realising that he was walking into another trap. Since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, most of the local dockers had been radicalised. They went on strike at the drop of a hat and had refused to load ships heading for Russia at the time of the British intervention there. The local regiment, the Yorkshire Regiment, had actually mutinied rather than serve in that unhappy country! Now here he was with this woman right in the midst of what was called ‘Red country’. With his free hand he felt carefully in his pocket until he found what he sought. The feel of that hard cold metal was suddenly very comforting.
‘Well, we ladies of the streets are not all uneducated,’ she said after a while, obviously weighing her words. ‘Circumstances make us into what we are.’ She grinned at him cheekily again. ‘Besides I do love a good fuck!’
There it was again, that word. Now Smith was certain she was no common whore. She had been sent to trap him. He felt a cold finger of fear trace its way down the small of his back.
They turned into an alleyway, cluttered with battered trashcans and smelling strongly of cat urine. A slattern woman in a man’s cap, with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, eyed the two of them with undisguised hostility. From inside the little terrace house came the wail of a baby. ‘Hold yer bloody gob,’ the woman snarled without turning round.
‘I have no drawers on – always ready for action,’ the whore said. ‘Feel.’ She took his hand and pressed it to her crotch. He could feel the pubic hair through the thin material of her dress. His sense of fear was offset again by lust. He told himself that he had never met a woman like this before.
They stopped outside a mean-looking house with dirty curtains pulled close over all the windows. She tugged out the key which she kept suspended around her neck with a piece of string and opened the door. His nostrils were assailed by a stale smell, as if the place had been empty a long time. It was icy cold, too. He shivered and she chuckled and said, ‘Don’t worry, sailor boy, I’ll soon warm you up. Come on. Up the stairs, be a good chap.’
He followed her, noting the delightful curves of her naked bottom beneath the thin material of her dress. He swallowed hard. He was a damned fool, he knew, but you were meant to take chances in life, especially when you were young.
She opened the door to the bedroom. It was bare save for a high brass bedstead and a ewer and pitcher of water on the table next to the bed. She unpinned her bonnet and flung it on the table before flopping down on the bed. It creaked and sagged noisily. ‘The workshop,’ she announced and rolled up her skirt. Her legs were long and shapely, clad in sheer silk stockings which were held up by French lace garters in mauve. Unconsciously he noticed that they seemed expensive for a pound-a-go whore. She spread her legs and rubbed the dark thatch of her pubes suggestively.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you are well equipped, sailor boy. But I don’t think that even you can get it in from there. On to the bed with you.’
Smith felt himself rising, his fears vanishing. He took off his coat and cap and knelt on the bed. Her hands reached out for him and she said with that cheeky grin of hers, ‘Oh, aren’t we just the naughty boy now. Getting all excited like that. You’ll have me blushing in half a mo.’
He grinned. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever blush again—’ He stopped short. There was no mistaking it. Something had definitely squeaked behind him. Lust vanished as soon as it had come. Quick as lightning he rolled off the bed and hit the floor hard. In that same instant the rubber club slammed down to where his head had been a moment before and a big burly man in merchant marine uniform fell on top of the girl, cursing – in German!
* * *
‘Totally, absolutely unexpected,’ C said over the phone. ‘Skipper of an old North Sea tub, the John Good, registered in Bremerhaven, one of the first German vessels to start plying between Germany and England since we lifted our blockade of the Huns. The woman’s German, too. Brought up here, interned during the war, just recently released.’ C paused at the other end of the line. ‘Now she’s going back inside again,’ he added grimly. ‘But let it be a lesson to you, young Common Smith. Avoid the ladies of the night. Indeed don’t trust anyone any more.’
‘Yessir,’ Smith said in a hangdog sort of fashion. ‘But what do you make of it?’
‘Don’t know yet. Our people in Hull haven’t got through questioning the pair of them. They’re not principals, of course, just people hired for the job.’
‘But who hired them then, sir?’ Smith persisted, mind racing. First an attack by someone in the employ of the Reds. Now apparently the Huns were on to this business too. It was all very confusing, though a little voice at the back of his mind said joyfully, ‘But it’s damned exciting, as well, Smithie!’
‘Don’t know yet, as I’ve just said. The skipper is a surly brute and the – er – fallen lady is leading our chaps one hell of a dance.’
Smith nodded in silent agreement. She would.
‘But whoever they are working for, you can bet your bottom dollar on this, Smith: there’s money behind it and the Huns know something’s afoot. That’s why they wanted to tag you. So now, Smith, you’v
e got both the Reds and Huns on your tail.’ He chuckled heartily at the other end of the line. ‘I think my only advice to you, Common Smith is to get yourself and your HMS Swordfish out of Hull ASAP…’ Suddenly his voice became very formal. ‘God speed, Smith,’ he barked, as if he were back on the quarterdeck of the dreadnought he had commanded before the war. ‘And remember – ENGLAND EXPECTS!’
Five
A thick fog was swirling over the Elbe. Ideal, Per Kersten told himself, as he led the others cautiously down the towing path to where the barges were moored. The previous day there had been a pitched battle between monarchists and social democrats in Hamburg down the river and there were rumours of another putsch by the army. All extra police and soldiers had been drafted to the great Elbe city. Now, as far as his group of Eider Danes had been able to find out, the Elbe area, indeed the whole of rural Schleswig-Holstein, had been virtually cleared of troops and police. This was their chance to steal the barges with their deadly cargoes. Now or never.
There were still a handful of guards, however. Per knew that. It was their task to check the traffic coming up and down the Elbe, and also guard the barge harbour below at Lauenburg. But he hoped the noise the engines of the old tug made, when it started to proceed under the railway bridge heading downstream towards Hamburg, would hide the noise the barge engines made in the fog.
The tug was a regular on the river, an ancient smoke-belching paddle steamer from the turn of the century. It towed barges to the mouth of the Elbe, then turned and churned its way to Hamburg to fetch a new load. Day in, day out, month in, month out, year in, year out. The locals scoffed, the old tub had been originally used by Noah himself to transport his menagerie to safety – that was before it had its noisy old engine fitted. Per grinned at the sudden thought; then he was serious again. It wouldn’t be long now before the grandly named ‘Grossherzogin von Schleswig-Holstein’ made her appearance.
Quickly his men, all fervent patriots working for the reunification of Schleswig-Holstein north of the River Eider with their beloved Denmark, went to work. Anchors were raised. Lines were cut. Men seized the wheels. Lookouts took over the bows. Slowly, without power, relying on the current and their own intimate knowledge of the Elbe, the three barges began to drift into the channel, moving quietly by the other moored barges, shrouded in fog, heading for the railway bridge.
Per Kersten bit his bottom lip nervously, casting anxious glances at the barely seen bridge, hoping and praying that the remaining guards had taken shelter from the wet dripping fog in the little red-and-white-striped guardhouse at the far end of the railway bridge. Down below, the men tending the engines tensed, too. Once the Herzogin hove into sight, belching smoke and with those thunderous engines of hers going all out and drowning all other sound, they would start up. Then it would be too late for those on the bridge to do anything. Their telephone line had been cut already.
The minutes ticked by with leaden slowness. Per Kersten knew the Prussians would show no mercy if they caught him. It would be a charge of Hochverrat – high treason – and that carried the death penalty. But he knew he had to do it. Anything which hurt the German Republic benefited the Eider Danes. Besides, McIntyre had promised him a large sum of money in gold marks. It would come in very handy for their propaganda campaign up north against the oppressors of the Danish minority, which was not even allowed to have its own schools teaching in Danish.
In the distance, now concealed by the fog and muted, he could hear the first faint thundering of the Herzogin. He looked at his wristwatch. She was dead on time. In five minutes she would be passing under the bridge. Again he flashed a look up at it. Nothing stirred. He nodded his head in unconscious approval. Things were all going to plan. He licked lips which were suddenly dry with inner tension. In a minute he would give the order to start. That would be the moment of highest danger.
The roar, the swish of the paddles stirring the river water, the great hush every time the Herzogin let off steam. The noise was getting louder by the minute, even though it was muffled somewhat by the fog. Per waited no longer. He gave the signal. Below in the wheelhouse, the tense plotter pressed the button. A throaty cough. A blast of black smoke from the exhaust. The engine started up. It was followed immediately by that of the barge behind them and then the one behind that. They were moving forwards and up above them on the bridge still nothing stirred.
Per Kersten breathed a little sigh of relief. They were getting away with it. The Herzogin was drowning out any noise they made. The bridge was almost directly above now. If anyone looked down, they’d be sitting ducks. Still the expected cry of rage, alarm, the challenge did not come.
Abruptly there she was – the Herzogin – swinging round the bend in the river on the other side of the Lauenburg in fine form, pistons going full out, huge wheels churning up the water in a white fury, black smoke pouring from her ancient stack. According to the custom of the river, going upstream, they would have to be on the right. Thus, Per at the helm in the leading barge began to steer in that direction, straining his eyes in the fog which seemed to have grown thicker since they had started their own engines. Behind him the other two did the same. Again Per flashed a look up at the guardroom. Still nothing stirred.
Now they were directly under the bridge, the network of girders casting a criss-cross of black shadows on the billowing fog. To their front, following the correct procedure, the Herzogin thundered on, moving closer to the far bank where the little medieval houses looked down on the river from the cliff top. Everything, Per told himself, seemed to be going to plan. Five more minutes, ten at the most, and they would be gone, vanished into the fog.
Suddenly, startlingly, the siren of the Herzogin shrilled. Caught completely off guard, the tension already electric, Per jumped. The skipper of the Herzogin had spotted the three barges coming almost noiselessly out of the fog and seemingly had hit the buzzer of the siren instinctively. Perhaps he thought the barge skippers could not see the massive bulk of the Herzogin.
Now the damage had been done. Up on the bridge fifty yards above them, Per Kersten could hear the clatter of heavy, nailed boots running. A searchlight clicked on. Someone shouted an order in a harsh East Prussian accent. ‘Halt… halt… wer da? Stehenbleiben!’ A whole flurry of excited commands, challenges, orders rang out, as, with a sinking heart, Per Kersten realised that they were in trouble – serious trouble – now.
‘Take over the wheel, Lars!’ Per yelled to the nearest Eider Dane. He pulled the big Mauser from its wooden holster and with trembling, sweating fingers fitted it to the holster so that it formed a kind of miniature rifle. The Prussian swine weren’t going to take him alive. He was going to fight back.
The East Prussian voice rang out once more. ‘Stop those barges,’ it commanded. ‘Stop… or I fire at once!’
* * *
‘Damn and blast, that’s torn it,’ McIntyre cursed from his hiding place in the shadows, where the road from Artlenburg ran up towards the bridge and on to Lauenburg. ‘The blighters have been spotted.’ Suddenly a stab of scarlet flame lit up the rolling fog. The guards on the bridge were firing at the barges passing below.
Sitting next to him in the old Opel, with its engine already running, a very nervous Dietz said urgently, ‘They’ve got a machine gun. I’ve seen it. We’d better be gone while there is still time, sir.’
‘Damn that for a tale.’ McIntyre snorted, his Celtic blood beginning to boil. He remembered those patrols on Vimy Ridge in 1917, out in no-man’s-land with a handful of volunteers – ‘Tiger patrols’, they called them. Then to succeed you needed a combination of anger, daring and the element of surprise. He felt those elements were present now. The Huns were totally preoccupied with what was going on below. He could tell that from the angry snap-and-crackle of small-arms fighting going on some two hundred yards away.
He made up his mind. ‘Dietz, get ready for a bit of a scrap.’
‘What, sir?’
‘You heard me. Drive like the devil
for that bridge and leave the rest to me. Just concentrate on getting us across it in one piece. Now you windy bugger, get cracking!’
The little German ex-deserter was more afraid of his boss than the unknown Germans on the bridge. He knew McIntyre’s unpredictable temper. Besides he was slowly becoming a millionaire with the British Army goods he was selling on the German black market, where a woman would sell her body for five Woodbines and that of her mother for another five. He thrust home first gear and let out the clutch. The old car jerked forwards. Next moment they were out of their hiding place and heading up through the fog towards the sounds of battle…
* * *
It was almost impossible to aim correctly at that angle. But Per could see a man staggering forwards with the tripod of the heavy machine gun. He had to knock him out before the others could set up the barrel of the weapon. If he didn’t, they’d be slaughtered. He said a silent prayer and pulled the trigger. The slug howled off the stanchion just next to the German’s head. He shouted an oath and fell to his knees. But next minute he was up again and staggering forwards once more under his load, followed by the gunners, laden with the barrel and heavy belts of ammunition. ‘Shit… shit…!’ Per cursed furiously in Danish. He fired again. One of the gunners, the one draped in belts of ammunition and carrying two boxes with more bullets, slammed to his knees and then sprawled forwards on his face, dead.
But by now the other two were already frantically screwing the barrel onto the tripod and another soldier was running to grab the ammunition lying on the bridge, while an officer was bellowing madly, ‘Los, Männer… Los verdammt!’
Furiously Per loosed off a whole magazine at the machine-gun team. But they seemed to bear a charmed life. Slugs howled off the steel girders all about them. Suddenly the miniature rifle clicked. He had run out of bullets! Fumbling desperately, he began fitting a new magazine, as the roar of a speeding car grew ever louder.
The Baltic Run Page 5