The Leader

by Guy Walters

  ‘We’ve tracked down the owner of the car Armstrong was driving.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It belongs to a Captain Richard Collyer of Logan House.’

  ‘And who, pray, is Captain Richard Collyer of Logan House?’

  ‘We’re establishing that at the moment, sir.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Stranraer Police Station.’

  ‘So who’s working on him? Your people or the police?’

  ‘Our people, sir.’

  ‘Good. Keep it that way. Let’s not be . . . too easy on this Collyer. He’s bound to be some old army chum of Armstrong. Any family?’

  ‘A wife and two daughters.’

  ‘Lookers?’

  ‘Er . . . I’m sorry, sir. I . . . I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Well, it’s quite simple, are they good-looking?’

  ‘Uh, I really don’t know, sir.’

  ‘All right, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, if Collyer doesn’t play ball, then sweat it out of the women. Let your men enjoy themselves, Ousby – understand?’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’

  ‘A sort of perk if you like.’

  ‘Yes, sir – I am following you.’

  ‘Good, good. And what of Armstrong?’

  ‘No news, I’m afraid. The trail appears to have gone temporarily cold.’

  ‘Cold, Sir Roger – I’m not so sure I like cold. Brrr!’

  ‘We’ll get him soon – every station, every road in the North-West is crawling both with my men and with the regular police. He won’t get far.’

  ‘I hope not, Sir Roger.’

  The line went dead in Sir Roger’s ear. He was getting used to it.

  * * *

  Armstrong had no need to feign sleep, for Fraser had nodded off as soon as they had sat down in their compartment. For a while, he read the papers, learning that seventy-five per cent of crime in urban areas was committed by immigrants – especially the Jews, apparently. He raised one eyebrow at the revelation that the Leader’s wife had had a new rose named after her (Rosa dianamosleyiana) and both eyebrows when he saw that the Leader himself was shortly to visit Hitler in Germany. Armstrong also read of his own escape, finding it grimly amusing that apparently he had seriously assaulted a camp guard during his bid for freedom. Such a lie meant that the camp authorities had not discovered the tunnel, which gave Paddy and Wigan a chance. Tomorrow’s newspapers would doubtless make even more entertaining reading.

  Just as Armstrong was putting the papers to one side, a small news item at the bottom of the front page of Action caught his eye. He snatched up the paper and read it quickly, then read it again slowly. This was it, he thought, putting the paper back down on the seat, this was the trigger he needed. There was no doubt that it was a bold idea, but if it worked, it would work spectacularly. The more he turned the plan over in his head, the more it appealed. It would strike at the very core of the regime, deal it a knock-out blow. It would be risky, but then he had no choice. Anyway, why shouldn’t it work? There was a chance that his framework was still in place, good men ready to spring into action as soon as Major-General Clifford broadcast the codeword from London. If it came off, then the conspirators could take control of the country within no more than three or four hours, perhaps less. It seemed fantastic, but the more he considered it, the better the idea became. He would attempt to contact General Galwey as soon as he was in London, as well as looking for Craven’s wife.

  He glanced over at the sleeping Fraser, and then up at the luggage rack above his head. There was the briefcase, its contents still a mystery. Now was the time to take it to the lavatory and open it. Armstrong stood up quietly, reached for the case, and slipped out into the corridor. Outside, a young couple were having an earnest conversation, a conversation that was clearly making the woman upset. As Armstrong squeezed past them, they fell silent, and Armstrong could have sworn that they both inhaled sharply when they saw his uniform. Did they fear it? Or respect it? It didn’t matter. All he wanted to do was to eradicate its presence from the streets, make Britain British again.

  Armstrong shut himself in the lavatory and closed the seat, laying the briefcase on top of it. With a small pocket-knife he had acquired from Richard, he forced open the catch with some difficulty, fearing at first that the blade would snap. But it held firm, and with a satisfying click the catch snapped back against the leather. Armstrong paused before opening the lid, taking time to disabuse himself of a slight sense of apprehension. It was not going to be a bomb, he told himself – just get on and open it.

  The briefcase contained a large green file, along with a few odds and ends such as a lighter and a small pack of playing cards. The front of the file was marked: ‘Supremely Confidential – for HMSSP station heads only’. Armstrong undid the small red bow on the side.

  It took him no more than a few seconds to realise what he was flicking through. There was page after page of directives, orders, reports, studies, costings, graphs and maps, all of which were concerned with just one topic, ‘The Reassignment of the Jewish Workforce’. Armstrong breathed out heavily. It looked as though Mosley meant to get every Jew in the country to live and work in what were described as ‘resettlement camps’.

  By concentrating the Jews in resettlement camps, we shall fulfil the following aims:

  That the Jews become – finally – an economic unit that is of BENEFIT to the country.

  That the deleterious effects of Jewish culture and commerce are removed from the cities and towns of our great land.

  A welcome disenfranchisement of the Jews from the political process.

  The destruction of the twin threats posed by International Finance and Bolshevism to this country.

  The German people have shown us the lead. Now it is time to pursue an equally rigorous course of action as regards the question of the Jews.

  Armstrong closed the file. It was madness, but yet here it was, written in a hybrid mixture of the language of the bigoted demagogue and that of the rational civil servant. He tied up the small red bow and placed the file back in the briefcase. In a way, he wished it had been a bomb.

  * * *

  In late August 1892, James Armstrong, only a few weeks old, set sail from Southampton for India with his mother. There, his mother married the man Armstrong was to regard as his father until his eighteenth birthday. Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Armstrong of the 8th Gurkha Rifles was a good man, and although he brought up his adopted son strictly, he indulged him in a way that many men of his generation – he was already forty when Armstrong was born – would have thought abominable. James was allowed to join his parents at the dinner table, he was allowed to make friends with Indians, he was not sent back to England but schooled by an elderly tutor, a Mr John Dyson.

  When his father sat him down that hot June evening in 1910, Armstrong was expecting a lecture about the dynamics of human reproduction, a subject in which he was well versed, as he – along with many others – had experienced the intimate company of a Miss Elizabeth Morgan, a friend of the CO’s daughter. Armstrong remembered that his father’s voice had been clear and measured – he had obviously spent the past eighteen years preparing what he was about to say.

  ‘I have to tell you, James,’ he began, ‘that as you will become an adult in the next few years, it is best that you know I am not your real father.’

  The light was fading, and the two men were sitting on the veranda drinking large glasses of cold beer. His father was in his full mess kit, which seemed to creak every time he adjusted his position. Armstrong looked over to the hills, watching the sun’s glow turn their dusty slopes a deep orangey-red. He was too shocked to speak. His father continued, eyeing him intently.

  ‘Your mother and I believe that it is only fair you should know the truth about who you are. There are some who would not tell their children such a thing, but we both think it right that an individual should know who he is.’

  ‘So who . . . who am I?’

  His fat
her proceeded to tell him that his mother had had an ‘accident’ – something that was far more commonplace, he said, than many people supposed. James was not to think worse of his mother because of this; it only showed that she was human. His father told him that he had always loved his mother, even though she had once turned down an offer of marriage from him. The rejection had sent him out to India, where he immersed himself in soldiering. Over the next few years,, he had had little time or opportunity for female company, and when he discovered from a mutual friend that Armstrong’s mother had fallen pregnant, he wrote to her, asking her once again to marry him. James was not to think that his mother had made the approach; it had come purely from his father. He had wanted to save her the disgrace of bringing up a child out of wedlock, and yes, he admitted with the trace of a smile, if that was the only way in which to win her, then so be it. He loved James’s mother very deeply, and he loved James as if he was his own true son. He would understand if James found the whole thing shocking, would understand if James rejected him, would quite appreciate it if James went to England to seek out his real father. But for him, James was his son, and nothing was going to change that.

  Armstrong looked at his father, and noticed a tear roll down his left cheek. That tear told him all he wanted to know – that he was loved by a man who cared for him more than his real father, whoever he was.

  He stood up, his father looking up at him expectantly. James smiled to reassure him.

  ‘Just so I know,’ said James, ‘what is his name?’

  His father told him. The name meant nothing, as he should have known it would. Armstrong resolved then and there that he did not want to know anything more about the man. He knew he would not find love there, so what was the point of searching?

  ‘I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have asked,’ he said, seeing the pain his father was in. ‘Please don’t worry. You will always be my father. What you did for my mother and me was the most honourable thing imaginable.’

  James bent down and softly placed a kiss on his father’s forehead.

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ he whispered.

  ‘Thank you,’ his father whispered back.

  Neither of them had noticed James’s mother watching them from inside, her face set in an expression somewhere between joy and grief. It looked as though it had gone well, more than well. Such a good young man, she thought, so unlike his real father, so much more like his adopted one.

  Armstrong’s father was delighted when his son joined the regiment’s second battalion as a second lieutenant in the August of 1911. Towards the end of that year, James was attached to the first battalion in a campaign against the Abors in north-eastern India. It was near the village of Kebang that he was to do his father proud. For years afterwards, Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong would read a certain passage from the regimental history every night before going to sleep:

  No sign of hostile Abors was seen until 7th November, and it was not until 19th November that any resistance was met with. ‘J’ Company had proceeded beyond the camp site as escort to the General Officer Commanding when they were fired on, and found they were under a hidden line of stockades which blocked the steep path. Fire was at once opened on the stockade, and reinforcements ordered up from camp by telephone. A small party under Lieutenants J. H. Armstrong and T. P. Smith and Subadur Parbir Rekhbahadur was sent to outflank the enemy’s right. Under a hail of arrows, and the discharge of stone chutes, the party succeeded in reaching the top stockade. Charging with kukris drawn, they cleared the stockade, and, enfilading the lower stockade, forced the Abors to retire. In hand-to-hand fighting, Subadur Parbir, who had displayed great gallantry throughout, closed with one of the Abors, and they rolled down the cliff fighting hard until Lieutenant Armstrong was able to shoot the Abor. Lieutenant Armstrong was Mentioned in Dispatches. The Subadur received the IOM. The GOC received a graze on his hand from an arrow.

  Not only did he have a son, but he had a hero for a son. It was as if God was confirming that James was really his, and not that other man’s. But his son’s real test was to come in the trenches in France, the horrors of which neither man was able to anticipate.

  Promoted to captain, Armstrong said goodbye to his parents on 21 August 1914. Along with seven other British officers, seventeen Gurkha officers, and 735 other ranks, he marched from his base at Lansdowne to the port of Karachi, where he and the second battalion embarked on the BISS Erinpura. He was not to know it at the time, but he would never go back to India, and he would never again see the man he called his father.

  Chapter Six

  Friends in Need

  THE KING AND Mrs Simpson were married on 3 June 1937. It was not a full state occasion – pomp and ceremony were to be saved for 12 October, the Coronation. Mosley had promised his King that that would be a grand affair which would unite not just the country, but also Europe, as the leaders of all its nations – including of course Hitler and Mussolini – would be invited. It would combine the best elements of the new world of fascism, Mosley said, with the best elements of the old – order, stability and tradition. Another political bonus was that Britain would now have an American queen, which, in Mosley’s words, created ‘a strong link between two divergent outlooks in different civilisations’.

  The wedding, which was held at the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace, was attended by some two hundred dignatories – a small affair by royal standards. The groom’s mother, Queen Mary, was adamant that she would not attend, especially as the Chapel Royal was where she and the late King George V had married in 1893. However, almost literally dragged there by her son Bertie and his wife Princess Elizabeth, the old Queen suffered the ceremony in foul-tempered silence, and refused to offer her best wishes to the bride and groom.

  The King and his new Queen were taken the short distance back to Buckingham Palace in a horse-drawn carriage. The crowds that had gathered, such as they were, consisted largely of those who had been ‘invited’ to attend. They were issued with flags that bore a picture of the royal couple, flags that were waved reluctantly. Blackshirts in amongst the crowds ensured that a cheer went up as the couple went past, but there was the occasional brave boo.

  Mosley had wanted the newly-weds to be taken by open-top car, to reflect the new-found modernity of the House of Windsor, but the King told him that carriages were for weddings, and cars for treaties. Mosley relented, but he had his way with a fly-past over the Mall by the Royal Air Force, who showed off twenty-seven of their new all-black Spitfires and Hurricanes, sporting the RAF roundel on one wing, the lightning flash on the other. The fighters flew in a formation that made up the letters ‘E’ and ‘W’, a touch that was regarded by the new Queen as being ‘swell’.

  The honeymoon was spent in the United States and Canada, where the royal couple were greeted by genuinely ecstatic crowds, especially in the Queen’s home town of Baltimore. There, the populace waved and applauded with far more vigour than was shown in the Mall on their wedding day. The King had wanted the honeymoon to be low-key, but the Queen had insisted that they take America by storm. This was her triumph, her moment of glory; this was her showing her fellow countrymen that a twice-divorced Baltimore girl had become the Queen of Britain.

  Afterwards, they spent a pleasant week at the King’s ranch in Alberta, although Wallis, missing being lionised by cheering crowds, quickly grew bored. They had planned a fortnight at the ranch, but the Queen insisted that they cut short the honeymoon and return to London. She could not face another week talking about cattle, and that, David, was that.

  * * *

  The train pulled into Euston at quarter past seven. Apart from being asked for his ticket – even the conductor was wearing a Party armband – Armstrong had encountered no officialdom as the train made its way south via Wigan, Crewe and Watford Junction. Thankfully, Fraser slept for the most part, but they did have one lengthy conversation about the immigration problem, in which Fraser expressed the view that the Jews could be ‘dumped in a marsh or a de
sert somewhere and hunt tigers with the niggers’ for all he cared. Before he had opened the briefcase, Armstrong might have dismissed such views as merely the rantings of a bigot. But he now knew that words such as those constituted the policy of His Majesty’s Government, a blueprint for an action that was to take place against hundreds of thousands of people. This was more than just uniforms and lightning flashes; this was a whole new way of thinking, a new way of marshalling humanity. It was repellent, evil. If Mosley and the fascists were all about ‘action’, as the title of one of their newspapers suggested, then that was what they were going to get.

  Armstrong stepped on to the platform with Fraser.

  ‘We don’t want to miss the curfew,’ the Scotsman grinned, looking at his watch, ‘or us wee boys will be in trouble.’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Armstrong as they walked towards the end of the platform.

  ‘Which way are ye headed?’

  Armstrong didn’t reply, because up ahead he could see a queue forming, a queue that was having to file slowly past a selection of policemen and men in trenchcoats – HMSSP.

  ‘I said, which way are ye headed?’

  ‘Hmm? Sorry? Oh, yes, Marylebone,’ said Armstrong, remembering from out of nowhere that it was the station that served High Wycombe. ‘I’ll be lucky to make my train though.’

  Fraser too had noticed the queue.

  ‘Must be looking for that bugger Armstrong,’ he said. ‘Although if he’s got this far then I’ll take me hat off to him.’

  ‘So would I,’ said Armstrong. ‘It certainly would be quite an achievement!’

  Under different circumstances he would have found the situation comic, but as they approached the back of the queue Armstrong was frantically working out how to slip past the cordon. Pretend to have forgotten something on the train? No – that would look too suspicious, even to Fraser. Hope for a repeat of Carlisle and pray that the police would allow a couple of Blackshirts to walk past unchecked? Chancy, far too chancy. What then? What?