by Thomas Wood
I needed to make sure that I was successful this time. I wasn’t sure that my nerves could take another operation into France after the guilt that was eating away at my insides, like a damp rot from within. I was guilty of murdering so many, and if I got this one wrong, then there would be many more faceless lives on my conscience. At least if I did get this one wrong, there was a strong chance that I would end up dead myself, something which, if it hadn’t been the knowledge of how crippling my brother’s death had been to my parents, I would have quite welcomed now.
I walked, inanely for another ten or so miles, before I decided to put my MI9-produced identity cards to the test. Hopping on a bus, with a bored looking German corporal in situ, I perched myself upon a battered, brown leather seat and tried to make myself as comfortable as possible. Now was my time to try and get some much-needed rest, even if it was with my head bouncing upon the glass window.
The headache that had seeped in over the last few hours acted only as a precursor to the recurrent nightmare that continued to linger over me, as a constant pain in every aspect of my life.
Nevertheless, I fell asleep, succumbing to the predictable scene that would be played out in my parent’s kitchen.
6
I knew where Joseph lived, thanks once again to Louis, who had pointed out where Joseph’s parents had lived before they had passed away some years ago now. Joseph apparently lived there on his own, with no other family members to speak of who might have wanted to stake a claim on the quite idyllic little cottage on the outskirts of the small village.
I imagined that it was quite a nice place to live, in peacetime anyway, and resolved to find myself somewhere similar after the war that I could retire to, in England of course. After the war was over, I never wanted to set foot in France ever again.
Sitting on a bench in the small graveyard attached to the grand church that dominated the skyline of this quaint French village, I had a grand, sweeping view of the main street, that passed by shops and cafes, before starting to run towards the more rural fields and farms that was only about a ten-minute walk from my resting point.
From where I was sat, the graveyard sloped downwards gently, before hitting the perimeter wall of the church’s boundary, which led straight out onto the main drag. Joseph’s house was about thirty yards or so away from the wall, on the opposite side of the street and just over to the right, back towards the village ever so slightly.
From here, I would be able to see anyone going in or out of that picturesque abode that Joseph called home.
The surrounding fields were gorgeous, sweeping upwards to the horizon from the back of his house, the village sited in a shallow valley almost, the fields on either side of it sloping to the sky, which funnelled a breeze straight through the village every time you walked around it.
I ogled at the contrasting greens and yellows, as the trees that marked the edge of the village gave way to the vibrant yellows of the field, dominated by the Rapeseed that I had come to associate with the Kentish fields.
It made me feel quite at home perched on that bench, as I dreamily thought about the hours that I had spent getting deliberately lost in amongst those fields, disorientating myself quite a few times, with the sole purpose of challenging my own abilities to see if I could make it home before tea time.
For a moment, as the marble-white clouds, adorned with a greying underbelly, glided gracefully over the silky blue sky, I completely forgot that I was in an enemy occupied land. For those few fleeting, perfect moments, I was enjoying the peacefulness of nature.
I began to long for peace again, when the threat of being blasted by a bomb or strung up by an evil enemy was no longer there. But then I slowly came to the realisation that peace wasn’t simply the cessation of war, it wasn’t just the laying down of weapons and being able to die of old age.
Peace, to me in that moment, was being able to obtain the serenity of my mind that I had possessed as a child. I had no fears when I was young, no doubts about what would lie ahead of me tomorrow or having to live as if every day could be my last on the earth.
My heart was innocent, untainted, some may call it naïve. But I adored everything and everyone, even those who had jovially teased and bullied had never led to me harbouring an evil thought against one of them. It was that peace that I longed for, sitting in that graveyard. But I knew, until this war was over, I would need to put that dream behind me, lock it away in the safe that was my unconscious mind because, otherwise, I would be dead before I could begin to attain it.
As one of the grey under-bellied clouds rolled silently overhead like a zeppelin, I realised that as long as this war lasted, hatred would be all we had left. It was everywhere, in everyone’s minds. It was even ingrained in the earth, in the very soil that I walked upon day after day.
Every single man, woman and child who had died in this war so far had done so with hatred embedded firmly in their hearts, inhumanity spreading through the ground and infecting everyone that became involved.
The hatred that I found to be in my own being was despicable to me, an abomination that was so subversive to what the human heart should be desiring. It reached a fever pitch as, just before two o’clock in the afternoon, a figure emerged from the house.
I watched him as he slowly walked away from his house, down the main drag and into the village. It was definitely him, a tall stocky figure who walked with a slight limp, shoulders pushed so far back that it barely looked comfortable. The hatred bubbled up inside of me, until the point where it felt like I would almost drown in the contemptible thoughts that were racing within me.
What I could achieve, I thought as I restrained myself from getting up, if I was to simply race after him, stick a knife in his neck or maybe pop a bullet into his skull. That would be it, the end of the treachery, the sending men to their deaths and betrayal of his friends. It would end the war as I knew it, I was certain.
I was convinced that if I was to kill him, my mind would be straightened, there would be no person left on the earth towards whom I could foster so many evil thoughts and imagine so many vile deeds.
I held my head in my hands and stared down at the ground, as if I was visiting the grave of a recently deceased family member, knowing full well that once Joseph was dead, another figure would be along soon enough who I would hate just as much, quite possibly even more. It was the way of the human condition.
My plan was to sit tight and wait for him to return, which I hoped was soon, as my eyes were slowly giving in to the temptation of simply closing for good.
I began to shift myself around on the bench, trying to get some blood back into my posterior as it numbed from the hours of sitting in the same position without moving. As I did, I regretted the decision almost immediately, as the additional burden on my bladder had not been a welcome one. I was going to have to leave my observation post and soon, there was no way that I was going to be caught by the local priest squatting behind one of his dead parishioners.
I got up and walked slowly towards a row of trees on the other side of the church that I had spotted earlier. I moved methodically and gradually, not because of any operational reason, but because my legs simply weren’t used to the strain of walking. The blood was slowly pumped back into them, aggravating the blazing pain in my thighs, thanks to all of last night’s crouch and run routine.
Feeling in a lot more comfort now that I had managed to relieve myself, I decided to take a stroll around the graveyard, more to keep myself occupied than anything else, all the while keeping half an eye on all the users of the main road, to make sure one of them wasn’t my turncoat Frenchman.
I began to doubt some of what Rudolf had said in his dying moments as true, and began to call into question whether anything he had said had been the truth at all. There was a possibility that he had been lying, he was the enemy after all, but there was also a chance that he had been completely duped into thinking something that wasn’t in fact a reality.
Rudolf had
claimed that the informer to the Germans had been an English national, something which had shocked and surprised me at the mention of it. Immediately, the first person that had zipped through my head had been Jimmy Tempsford, my commanding officer in MI9, and I was convinced that Captain Jameson had had the same thought when he had first heard the accusation too. There was something off about Jimmy, something concealed within his past that meant that my faith in him was beginning to feel misplaced.
But the more I thought about it, the more ludicrous it seemed. For Jimmy to have been an informant for the Germans it would have meant that every escape attempt was communicated to him, by Joseph, which was then in turn passed on to the Germans, which simply wasn’t practical. Besides, I had never seen Jimmy actually receiving any sort of wireless transmission himself, which meant that his wireless operator would have to be in the employ of the Germans too, something which seemed so farfetched that it belonged in a dream.
As I roamed around the graveyard, taking in the sporadic name and the odd date, I came to the final conclusion that Rudolf had been mistaken about the fact that he was English. In my certainty that Joseph had been the traitor, I tried to make up excuses as to why he might be considered English, thus confusing a dying Rudolf into believing that he was in fact from the other side of the channel.
Joseph had received a good education, he had learnt English from a young age, before honing his skills by attending a British university, which is where he had met Jimmy. Maybe that was where Rudolf had been confused by it all, maybe he had heard that he had gone to a British university and concluded incorrectly that he was English.
My meanderings were interrupted abruptly as I realised how cold I was becoming. Taking stock of the current conditions I realised that I must have strolled around the cemetery twelve or thirteen times over, as the sun had begun to dim, and the moon had appeared in all its glory.
As the darkness of the night began to take hold, I realised that I had not seen Joseph return. Either I had missed him as I had relieved myself in the trees, or he had returned as I glanced down at the headstone of Maria Verlon to work out how old she had been.
I slapped myself mentally several times as I realised my mistake. My error had been a potentially costly one. There was no other option now but to put myself in harm’s way, yet again, as I couldn’t afford to wait another sixteen hours for him to resurface from his house.
What I would have to do now was audacious, but I hadn’t exactly left myself too much choice. As I got my head down on my favourite bench, I tried to think through precisely what I would need to do in a few hours’ time to begin speeding this whole process up.
I woke naturally a few hours later, the chill of the night beginning to settle over my skin causing me to awake in great discomfort. That was good, I thought, glancing at my watch to find that it was three in the morning, as I needed to be wide awake for what I was about to do.
I said goodbye to my old wooden bench, doubting that I would ever make use of it again, at least not to the extent that I had done over the last eighteen hours. I jogged my way down the gentle slope towards the wall, slipping frequently as I fought with the overnight dew that had settled on the uneven grass.
I hopped over the wall, opting not to use the gate as it had squeaked prominently on my way in. I didn’t want to attract any attention to the chance German patrol that had trundled up and down the road in their trucks since nightfall.
I wouldn’t have time to scout out his house and even if I did, it would be pointless, it was pitch black and I wouldn’t be able to make out too many details. Regardless, the first thing that I tried was the front door, there was no point in spending half an hour to find a way into the building only to find that I could have simply let myself in in the first place. The same went for the back door, but to no avail, they were both locked.
In my mind, that simply reinforced the notion that Joseph was a traitor, feeling the need to lock all of his doors as he slept, and not out of a fear that a thief or murderer was going to break in in the middle of the night.
I tried all of the windows that I could reach, with only one of them being sufficient for me to try and get into, it just so happened to be the smallest one. There was the slightest give on it as I tried to slide it upwards, just enough for me to be able to use a stick to flick the latch up and away, a slight clink indicating my success as I did so.
I dropped the small but sturdy stick that I had used to break in, before crouching down on to one knee to make sure my pistol was ready.
The magazine was in firmly, a small round sitting patiently in the breech. I jumped up and down a couple of times, to make sure I had nothing in my pockets that was going to act as some sort of early warning system to the traitor within. There was nothing. I was ready.
I pushed my head and shoulders through the gap first, crawling around inside and placing the pistol on the floor as I dragged the rest of my body through behind it.
Once fully in, I lay on my belly for a few moments, listening out for any scratches upstairs as a chair was pushed behind the door or any clicks as a rifle was made ready at the top of the stairs.
The silence was all I needed to continue on in my mission, as I began to adjust to the conditions around me.
The house was practically empty, not a single piece of furniture in the sitting room that I had broken into and very little in the way of crockery and utensils in the kitchen. It was almost as if no one lived here.
I checked every room downstairs, in case Joseph was the kind of man to sleep in a non-existent armchair by the fireplace, or stretched out on a rug in the front room. But there was no sign of him other than a coat dangling from a hook behind the front door.
Happy that he wasn’t downstairs anywhere, I began to slowly make my way up the stairs, treading ever so carefully on the extremes of the steps to make sure they didn’t creak and give Joseph the chance to prepare himself.
There were two doors on this floor, one leading off to the left and one to my half-right. I chose the left hand as I could make out furniture in there, which I assumed denoted Joseph’s chamber.
I found myself staring at the individual that I had hated ever since I had met him, and I had to resist the urge to simply murder him in his sleep.
His detestable face was flushed and sweating, and I took a great delight in the thought that he was having the most terrible nightmare. If he wasn’t, he was soon going to believe that he was.
I took the pistol and rammed it so far down his open mouth that I thought I was going to be able to touch his heart. He woke, gagging and spluttering saliva all over my face in an attempt to simply stay alive.
“Shut up, shut up,” I hissed, forcing the pistol further down his throat the more that he resisted.
“Be quiet, keep still.”
Eventually, he got the message, his eyes widening as his night-vision began to form facial features into a face that he vaguely recognised. I helped him out regardless.
“It’s Alfie Lewis. You remember me don’t you. I got reassigned. You know me.”
My arm began jolting up and down as he tried his best to nod fervently, his eyes filling with tears as he struggled to breathe. He looked utterly terrified and I was certain that he was just as surprised to see me alive as he was to see me standing in his bedroom brandishing a pistol.
“Okay, stay quiet. I just want a chat.”
I slowly withdrew the pistol from his mouth, wiping my hand on his bedsheets as they were doused in a gloopy saliva. I let him have a few moments to gasp for air before he began to calm himself down, as his oxygen levels returned to something resembling normal.
“Why are you here?”
“I need some help.”
He began fumbling around on his bedside table, before he eventually found the switch for his bedside lamp, which blinded the both of us for a few seconds while we readjusted to the sudden burst of light.
“What kind of help?”
I decided that I had sc
ared him enough, so began to lower the pistol out of his face, but still keeping it pointing in his direction. This time more at a hip height, still threatening enough that I would be able to use it at a moment’s notice, but submissive enough to allow him to talk relatively freely.
“I need a place to stay. Somewhere nearby. Have you got anywhere?”
“Yes. Yes. Of course, there are many places near here,” he said as he finally began to come across as awake and not still half asleep. “But why are you here?”
“You know why. There’s a traitor in the line. I’m here to find him.” I hoped that by telling him my intentions I would pressurise him into making some sort of mistake over the next few days, allowing a much easier ride in my tasking.
“The safehouse. It needs to be where other people are living. I can’t be in a building alone.” I needed somewhere that was habitable, so that people weren’t suspicious when they suddenly saw a stranger begin to duck in and out of a house that had stood empty for years. If I was with people, then it would look like I was a family member who had come to visit, or a lodger kipping in one of their spare bedrooms. “Have you got anywhere like that?”
“Yes. You know the Blume butchers?” I knew it quite well, it was where Louis had often left me standing outside when he ducked in to stock up on whatever meat they had to offer that week. It was a little further on down the main street, on the other side of the small village green.
I nodded.
“They have an apartment upstairs. You can stay there. Tell them I sent you. They will let you in immediately. Go there right away.”
I sighed as I stared at him, nodding gently as I mulled everything over. I thought about the possibility of confronting him there and then but stood nothing to gain from a standoff in the middle of the night like this, especially as I still had no solid evidence to charge him with.