Jamie tried a smile, but it was too painful, and he had a feeling that shaking his head would be worse.
Milligan got the message and nodded sympathetically. ‘Well, if anything does come to mind . . .’ He asked for a description of the attacker, which Jamie gave him, and left.
Jamie asked the nurse to prop him up in a sitting position and he and Gail talked about his trip to Switzerland – postponed – and the other appointments she’d have to cancel. ‘I thought you might need this.’ Gail handed over his antiquated leather briefcase. When she had gone, he opened it and pulled out the journal.
It was only when he had it in his hands that he realized just how specific it was.
VII
THE BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY Force which landed in France lost thirty thousand men defending Dunkirk. Lieutenant Matthew Sinclair had come close to losing his sanity. Matthew recorded his landing on British soil in a flat, laconic single sentence that was followed by one of the now familiar gaps. The next entry revealed that, while Winston Churchill was exhorting his countrymen to fight on the beaches and the landing grounds, the journal’s author had been lying in a hospital bed not dissimilar to the one presently occupied by his grandson.
After a short leave spent with his parents in Kidderminster, in the summer of 1940 Matthew was posted back to his battalion at a bleak training camp somewhere in the Midlands. The 1st Royal Berkshires had ceased to exist as a fighting unit and all Lieutenant Sinclair’s energy was devoted to reforging it. It was exhausting work, with few opportunities for relaxation, but during that time something wonderful happened. Matthew Sinclair fell in love.
Now the journal transformed from a record of military life to the diary of a love affair. The girl’s name was never mentioned, but Matthew’s heart soared and his prose soared with it as he attempted to articulate the strength of first his attraction, then his affection and finally – and when he read some of the entries Jamie found himself blushing – their mutual passion.
The intensity of Matthew’s love grew so powerful that it was painful for Jamie to relive, and he had to skip over the next few entries. Then, at some point in the late spring of 1941, it vanished. What was more, it vanished in a flurry of violence, the ferocity of which was still evident in the ragged edges of pages torn from the spine of the journal. Jamie found himself mirroring the pain Matthew must have felt in that moment when his fingers had brutally removed the evidence of the final months of the affair. The next entry might have provided some kind of explanation, but it had been written by a man either drunk to the brink of insensibility or distressed beyond despair. Words had not been written, they had been smashed into the page, only to be scored out with enough force to tear through the three following pages, or smudged by some liquid whose origin Jamie could only guess at. But if the words were unreadable, the emotion Matthew Sinclair was expressing in his savage frenzy was clear. Hatred. A murderous unquenchable, all-consuming hunger for revenge.
Two days later he had requested a transfer to the Commandos.
The Commando special service brigades were born out of Churchill’s impatience at being unable to retaliate at the Nazis poised on France’s Channel coast. Thousands of men from the remnant saved at Dunkirk volunteered for the chance to get their own back and by 1941 the unfit and the unsuitable had been weeded out at secret camps in the Highlands by the toughest training regime in the British army. Now they were an élite service, ready to fulfil the prime minister’s vow to ‘set Europe ablaze’ and the perfect haven for a man bent on bloody murder or getting himself killed. Yet Matthew’s time with the Commandos was short-lived and characterized by frustration, self-pity and heavy drinking that was evident in the number of pages stained by the bottom of a glass. Whilst Matthew fretted to get at the enemy, Churchill limited Commando incursions to pinprick operations for which he was never chosen. By August his patience had run out and he volunteered for a new and untried outfit called the Special Air Service, then operating in North Africa. Jamie had the impression Matthew’s superiors were glad to see him go. You had to be even crazier to volunteer for the SAS than the Commandos.
Disappointingly, it rapidly became clear that his secretive new employers were a great deal more stringent about diary keeping than the regulars. Between August 1941 and October 1944 the journal contained a single entry – a cryptic reminder, at the end of 1943, for an appointment:
M suggests meeting at Baker Street re: Jedburgh after I’ve knocked the sand from my boots. 10 a.m. Sounds interesting.
The war ground towards its inevitable end, with the Nazis squeezed between the twin jaws of the Allied forces and the Red Army. Now the regular entries resumed. Lieutenant Sinclair had been promoted to captain and placed on light duties as a liaison officer in northern Holland, and then in Germany where his fluency in the language would have been invaluable. No mention of Stan, but Jamie had an image of him looming in the background, a permanent reminder that war was no laughing matter. He flicked over the following pages until he reached the entry for 1 May 1945.
News of Hitler’s death came through this morning when we were close to Leipzig, where we are working with Patton’s Third Army. There is a feeling that it is all over and that we will soon be going home. I suffer it as much as anyone, but I must ensure the men don’t drop their guard. It would be stupid to get yourself killed now, after all we’ve been through.
Jamie lay back and closed his eyes. Reading the journal had affected him like no other book had. When he’d started, it had been in the hope that it would bring him closer to the grandfather he’d never truly known. Yet he found he still had more questions than answers. There was anger, too, real anger, at the true scale of their deceit. He knew it was selfish, but he felt that Matthew and his mother had not only robbed him of a hero, but of a father figure who might have shaped his identity in a different way, perhaps even changed the course of his life. Each individual is unique, but they are as much the products of their upbringing and childhood influences as they are of their DNA. What type of man would he have become if he’d known his grandfather had won the Military Cross? It would have given him something to look up to, perhaps made him strive harder. He would have approached challenges in a different way. He knew now he could have beaten the South African who had given him a battering in the boxing ring if only he’d known how much aggression he was truly capable of. His rejection of Sandhurst had been partly, maybe mostly, because he didn’t think it was his kind of thing. But it was his kind of thing. Soldiering was in his blood. If they had only shown him the journal when he was eighteen he wouldn’t have become the frustrated failure he feared, deep down, he really was.
Just as maddening were the questions that remained unanswered. The gaps that persisted in his knowledge were as wide as those in the entries in the book. Was it only fatigue that caused the breakdown at Dunkirk? What had happened during the three years of silence in the SAS? What had ended the love affair that promised so much? And what was the significance of the Baker Street entry? He knew those questions would continue to haunt him. In some ways, he wished he’d never found the journal. Life had been simpler before he’d opened the blue leather covers. Lost in thought, he flicked over the next page.
2 May 1945 As the German army began to collapse in front of us I was summoned to Major Fitzpatrick and briefed for one final mission . . .
VIII
‘YOU CALL YOURSELF professionals? I could have picked a child from the street to do a better job.’ The figure behind the desk stared at the two men in a way that made them feel as if he was sizing up their organs for a transplant. They called themselves Campbell and McKenzie, but their closest contact with Scotland had been through the mouth of a whisky bottle. McKenzie raised a hand to gingerly touch his bruised nose, but dropped it when he noticed the pale lips tighten in the unlined, expressionless face. It was a face that might have belonged to an albino, but for the eyes, which were points of lifeless pewter. When you looked again you realized that the odd colouri
ng of the skin was less a matter of pigment than of a life lived in permanent shadow. Despite the setback at the target house the two men regarded themselves capable of handling any situation that could be resolved by force, but from the first they had sensed something in this man that made them wary. A dangerous stillness that took them back to days in South Armagh. Days when shadowy men whose abilities they’d learned to respect appeared from nowhere for operations that resulted only in clean kills. The leaden eyes pinned them remorselessly as the pale man continued in a deliberate, faintly accented English. ‘This was to be a discreet, low-profile operation with minimal disturbance to the house and no – I repeat, no – violence. Yet what do I read on the police computer? A man we may require to cultivate is assaulted and taken to hospital with concussion. The property ransacked and overrun with investigators – now wondering why someone would go to so much trouble without stealing a single item. Any fool would have understood the need to take a few pieces of jewellery or the television set.’
‘He hit Mac and—’ Campbell, the man who had brained Jamie with his grandfather’s ceramic tea caddy, was silenced by a raised hand.
‘That is of no consequence now. What matters is that you will stay within reach of the grandson, but not so close that he might be alerted. If the journal exists, the chances are that this Jamie Saintclair now has it. For the moment, we will maintain electronic surveillance. When the opportunity arises you will enter his apartment and his office and carry out a search. Do you believe you can achieve that, gentlemen . . . discreetly and without violence?’
The question was delivered softly, but the unspoken threat was clear. The two men nodded.
‘Then we’ll say no more for the moment.’
When they left, he stared at the door for a long time. Not quite sure. It might be better to be safe than to take the chance. He picked up a secure satellite phone from the desk and punched a speed-dial button. It was answered after two rings.
‘Well?’
‘I think it may have been a mistake not to bring in our own team.’
The man at the other end gave a faint snort of irritation. ‘We talked about that. The risks outweighed the advantages.’
‘Perhaps we are pushing forward too quickly and too hard,’ the pale man persisted. ‘We have waited a long time for this opportunity. What is another few months, even years, when balanced against the possible rewards?’
They had also talked about that, and he knew bringing up the subject would annoy the other man. Old men were always in a hurry, trying to make up for the time they had wasted in their youth and fearful that their next breath might be their last. Ever ready to snatch at opportunities. He was different. He had been taught patience from the day he was born, groomed to take advantage of the chance that might be about to present itself.
His listener chose to ignore the question. ‘What are your specific concerns about these men, Frederick?’
The younger man smiled, amused by the use of his work name. Their dealings were conducted by single-use satellite phones using software that scrambled their voices, but the employment of the name was still a threat and they both knew it. ‘They were recommended to me by a security company on the basis of their local knowledge and past record. I fear their talents may have been exaggerated.’
‘They dealt with the old Pole discreetly enough.’
‘That is true, but I questioned them again about Saintclair’s grandfather. Campbell claimed it was an accident, but I think there may be more to it than that. They knew how vital he was to the operation. They knew he was an old man. They should have treated him with more caution. Either they were careless or they overstepped the mark. Campbell says he squirmed free as they were taking him upstairs. Perhaps that is true and perhaps it is not, but the fact is it should never have happened.’
‘Do you believe lasting damage has been done?’
‘No,’ Frederick admitted. ‘The police are treating it as a household accident and are not linking it to the burglary. There is no reason Saintclair should be alerted.’
‘But?’
‘But perhaps Mr Campbell and Mr McKenzie should be given a demonstration of the consequences of any further mistakes.’
The shortest of pauses. ‘Arrange it.’ Despite the scrambler, he could hear the grim smile in the other man’s voice. ‘What is your feeling about the journal?’
Frederick frowned, annoyed by the question. He didn’t deal in feelings. He dealt in facts. That was what made him different from the other man. For the moment, he was the junior, but there was no telling when that might change. ‘If,’ he placed heavy emphasis on the word, ‘the journal exists, then Saintclair is the way to get to it.’
‘Very well.’ Were the words followed by a period of hesitation, or merely contemplation? ‘As long as Saintclair is useful to us I want him protected. Once we have what we want, get rid of him.’
IX
JAMIE’S HEART QUICKENED. He was closing in on Operation Equity.
I have a great deal of respect for Fitzpatrick. He has led three Jedburgh operations in France and Holland, and I know only too well the kind of strength, physical and mental, that is required to survive that kind of test. Still, it is difficult to describe the loathing I felt for him at that moment.
For weeks we have been swanning around Germany in the wake of the Allied spearhead, strong-arming German mayors and interrogating hundreds of suspect men and women. Strange that not one of them had ever been a Nazi, in a country where the majority of people who weren’t Nazis ended up in the awful concentration camps we’ve liberated. After Belsen my German tastes like vomit in my mouth. We still lose a few men to ambushes and accidents, but we regard this holiday from the war as just recompense for our earlier efforts, which were considerable. Compared to Malestroit and Arnhem this was a picnic.
Frowning, Jamie tapped the word ‘Jedburgh’ into the laptop Gail had brought to the hospital. Pages and pages on a quaint historic market town in the Scottish Borders. Puzzled, he added the word ‘operations’ . . . and was invited into a deadly new world.
Jedburgh was the code name for small teams of highly skilled clandestine soldiers, operated by the Special Operations Executive and the American OSS, who were dropped by parachute into Occupied France prior to the D-Day invasion. This also explained the reference to the meeting in Baker Street – the location of SOE headquarters. Unlike SOE’s undercover agents, the first priority of the Jedburghs, normally a three-man unit composed of experienced special forces soldiers from the United States, Britain and the host country, was not to gather information or carry out sabotage. Instead, their primary purpose was to liaise with local resistance movements and provide guidance, training and access to weapons. Sometimes this would involve a few dozen men, but in one well-recorded case, in Brittany, more than a thousand resisters supported by Jedburgh teams and a squadron of French SAS, had fought an entire German regiment to a standstill.
Now Jamie knew how Matthew had been employed after he returned from North Africa. He could only imagine the strain of hiding for weeks on end behind enemy lines, under the constant threat of betrayal or discovery. The Jeds dropped in uniform, but that meant little after Hitler’s ‘Commando Order’ in October 1942, which sentenced captured Allied raiders to death without trial. The war had almost run its course, but now they had a new and unwanted mission to complete.
Fitz at least had the grace to look embarrassed when he handed over our orders. Two three-man teams, codenames Dietrich and Edgar, commanded by Captain Matthew Sinclair, will proceed south-west to a given map reference, where they will be issued with further orders. This mission, Operation Equity, is to be treated with the utmost secrecy – which I took as the greatest insult of all, since I have been operating in the utmost secrecy for the last four years. I should tell him I am the wrong man for this job. That I am burned out and numb, and that I welcome the numbness because it protects me from the man I have become. The war has drained me of all humanity. I feel li
ke a boxer at the end of a fifteen-round contest. I have nothing more to give.
What is war? War is chaos and stupidity as the norm; hunger as a constant companion; death – non-judgemental, arbitrary, messy death – ever-present and around every corner; a callous disregard for life or the living, ingrained so deep a more religious man would call it evil. And of course hatred. Hatred for the people who made you like this, hatred for the enemy who wants to kill you, hatred for the bovine civilians too stupid to run away, hatred for the mines and the bombs and the bullets and the shells and the flame-throwers, that will castrate, mutilate, eviscerate or incinerate, just state your preference. Oh, yes, you can hate an inanimate object, just as you can hate the dead for making you kill them. You hate the tanks and the planes and the guns, as long as they are the other side’s tanks and planes and guns. You very quickly learn to love your own tanks and planes and guns in the same way you love the soft, red Saxon earth that crumbles beneath your entrenching tool to give you sanctuary, right up to the moment it buries you alive. You hate the trees, for giving shelter to the enemy and for those great, jagged, TNT-propelled splinters that can tear out a man’s eyes or his throat. You hate the birds for giving away your position. You hate the weather, in all its many forms, because heat and thirst can kill you just the same as damp and cold. You hate your friends, because you know they are going to die all too soon. But most of all you hate yourself.
The Doomsday Testament Page 6