Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  “You’re terribly good at the interrogation, aren’t you? Tommy says that anyone who could do it and make it seem like an ordinary conversation was brilliant. That’s you alright.”

  “Tell you what,” Curry’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “I really don’t give a fuck what Tommy says about anything, so be an angel and don’t quote him again.” About half a minute later he added, “Heart”. Tommy Livermore’s favourite endearment, used by Curry now to let her know he wasn’t really angry with her. Well, not much.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ONE CHRISTMAS, WHEN he was ten years old, an uncle took Sadler to the pantomime in London and he could still conjure up the memory, the gilt and the red plush under his hand, the taste of the chocolates. And best of all the most wonderful scene when Aladdin, the principal boy who was really a girl, said the magic words, ‘Open Sesame,’ rubbed the lamp, so that the stone rolled away allowing him entrance to Abanazar’s cave. The scene seemed to dissolve there and then, before Sadler’s very eyes, revealing a vast treasure chamber.

  There were chests brimming over with silver and gold ingots, open caskets full of jewels, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, carbuncles; crates out of which spilled golden goblets and boxes of silver inlaid with precious stones; gold doubloons, pieces of eight, Napoleons. The sight dazzled his eyes and sent his brain reeling. And that was how he felt now as General Frederick Morgan, Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander, went over the outline plans for Operation Overlord: the programme that he and his staff, together with Colonel John Bevan’s staff from the Central War Rooms at the War Office, had carefully assembled over the previous eight months, a job made twice as difficult because they were forced to work on the scheme for the greatest single operation in history without benefit of a Supreme Allied Commander.

  Sadler felt his stomach churn, fluttering with excitement. He had found the Holy Grail, the lost chord and the secret of the universe, a totally enthralling prospect for it would lead inexorably to the rout and defeat of the Allied armies. At its best it was the greatest secret of World War II; the most arcane knowledge concerning the actual landing area for the invasion; the fact that it was not the assumed territory between Calais and Dieppe, the Pas de Calais – the short and easy route into Occupied Europe – but the stretch of coast containing the beaches of Normandy and Brittany: the place least well-defended by the German armies under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. To the west was the Contentin peninsula with the important port of Cherbourg on its most westerly side, yet the bulk of the peninsula was an unsuitable battlefield for heavy armour. The marshy, waterlogged stretches of the Contentin was not only inappropriate for the tanks and other armoured vehicles, but also the locale gave advantages to the enemy who, it was reckoned, might easily bottle up the invasion forces within the confines of the peninsula for a considerable time.

  Sadler immediately recognised that this information alone – that the landings were planned for Brittany and Normandy – would be stunning news when he got it to France. This was the crux, the very hinge of fate. The future governance of Europe, maybe the entire world, depended upon this knowledge alone.

  “Sir, has anyone addressed the fact that our major spearhead may well require a wider front than the one we’re going to use in this scenario?” A redheaded US Army Colonel asked, and General Morgan said he understood this was a point that General Eisenhower had already queried. “We’re looking at the possibility of adding another beach landing further west,” Morgan told them. “But, as you can see, this would bring certain dangers upon us,” tapping the large map set up on a blackboard easel, referring to the difficulties presented by the Contentin. “The priority of the invading force must be surprise, then the capture of Caen, Bayeux and the road to Saint Lô.” Tap, tap, tap, with his pointer on the map. “Before that the two major problems will be the size of the front when we get off the beaches. Much depends on Fortitude.”

  There was a grave nodding of heads and muttered agreement. For the fraction of a second Sadler paused wondering about the code reference, Fortitude. Most likely this was some deception operation but, if it did not come out naturally in the General’s briefing, there would be difficulties in filching the details of Fortitude. He thought about it for less than fifteen seconds now, coming to the conclusion that it was a side issue. He had the most vital intelligence: that sometime in the late spring or early summer, at a time when the tides were right for it, the Allies would fling huge numbers of troops onto the long beaches of Brittany and Normandy. With support from their large and heavily armed navy these troops would spring from the sea and fight their way off the beaches. At the same time other troops would leap forward inland, large numbers of men arriving by air, by parachute and glider.

  This was the essential information he had been sent to steal and, by his own account, he had done so brilliantly. It was, he considered, enough for any man. To get this back to his masters in France and Germany would surely be enough. This information – the battle order of the Allied Armies and the exact location of the landing areas in Normandy – would checkmate the Allies on the battlefield and bring a decisive victory to the Führer’s glorious armies.

  The conference went on for three more hours and while Fortitude was mentioned several times nobody went into details.

  As they were leaving, late in the afternoon, Sadler, bumping against an American infantry Colonel, muttered his apologies and then said, “I missed some of the earlier briefings, tell me about Fortitude.”

  The American shrugged and chuckled, “Better get your own people to talk about that,” he growled. “Fortitude’s supposed to be our ace in the hole, but we don’t set much store by it.”1 Sadler’s own people, however, seemed desperate to get away on leave. “Talk about it after Christmas,” one of his comrades told him gruffly. “I want to get the six-fifteen to Reading, where there should be a little golden-haired popsie waiting for me.” The sentence ended with a lecherous wink.

  Sadler, blessed with a large portion of hindsight, knew that he might well be missing after Christmas, possibly lost believed drowned, or dead from some other kind of accident. Deep in his mind he continued to work out his next move.

  So Sadler went away, for now, and checked into a hotel near Marble Arch where he spent the evening writing a minutely detailed report of what he had learned from the briefing at Norfolk House: of the beaches where the men would land, of the possible LZs for the parachute and glider troops; of the minutiae concerning the naval and air forces that would support the hundreds and thousands of men and their deadly machinery which would crash into Northern France as soon as the signal was given.

  When the work was half completed, he went down to the hotel’s restaurant around eight in the evening, incredibly crowded this Saturday night, and had dinner: a chestnut soup, herrings in tomato sauce with duchesse potatoes and cabbage a Londres. For desert, a so-called figgy pudding.

  Printed at the top of the menu was the Ministry of Food New Meals Order 1942.

  (a) No more than one main dish and one subsidiary dish can be served. (b) Any main dish containing more than one specific food can be served. (c) No more than two subsidiary dishes, can be served. (d) No more than three dishes can be served. And at the bottom of the wine list – he had ordered a bottle of 1934 Beaune costing 65 shillings2 – were the deathless words, OWING TO THE AIR RAIDS IT IS PREFERABLE FOR THE RED WINE TO BE DECANTED.

  Once more Sadler allowed the word Fortitude to slink through his mind. Maybe he should try again in the New Year: try to find out about Fortitude. But by the time he had finished the wine it did not seem to be so urgent. For the umpteenth time he thought about the enormous amount of intelligence he had gathered in a matter of five hours. He could leave Fortitude to take care of itself and later, when he’d completed the report and put it into cipher, he would make contact with Julia.

  Before he went to his room Sadler picked up a copy of tonight’s Evening News. Leafing through it, he noticed, among the advertisemen
ts a section on church services. One in particular caught his eye: St Paul’s Cathedral, Saturday 18th December, 1943 at 6.30 pm Evensong will be a full Choral Carol Service.

  * * *

  FORTITUDE WAS QUITE capable of taking care of itself, for this was the great hurricane upon which Overlord pivoted. The first concept of Overlord was surprise, the hundreds of ships and landing craft coming suddenly upon the beaches, Men hurtling through the air, landing where nobody thought possible: coming out of the night into the dawn with massive firepower to blast through the enemy defences, crying havoc as the dogs of war were unleashed. What was required to perform this great trick was an act of strategic misdirection.

  To achieve the necessary surprise they had built a complex deception plan, a sleight of war that would lead the German armies sitting across the Channel to clearly see preparations for an undoubted attack in the Pas de Calais and nowhere else.

  To attain this, General Patton appeared to command a fictitious 1st US Army Group (even larger than the huge real 21st Army Group) with dummy camps, tanks, vehicles, landing craft and supported by real wireless communications, hundreds of dummy aircraft and a wonderfully massive construction near Dover, claiming, by rumour, to be a tank from which fuel could be pumped across the Channel to service the tanks and armoured vehicles once they had made the journey and were fighting around Calais and Dieppe.

  The ‘landing craft’ were made from tubular scaffolding bolted to oil drums and covered with canvas. These craft were sent nosing down to the Dover area then taken back again, dismantled overnight and reassembled to provide another flotilla so that enemy reconnaissance would detect movement. This was also maintained among the dummy vehicles, some of which were so light that they could be lifted and moved en masse by a few men and women.

  There was a further fantasy British 4th Army in Scotland, complete with wireless traffic, the army posing a threat to Norway. But the largest part of the operation was the mythical 1st Army Group that made preparations in en Claire radio traffic over several months, making no secret of its fairy-tale aims.

  To plunge home and reinforce the illusion of a landing in the Pas de Calais the twenty or so captured and turned German agents now controlled by the XX Committee would sent radio messages to their case officers in France, Germany and Portugal, or communicate by secret writing. All their information would concern the details of the fictitious invasion force and its objectives.

  The final masterstroke planned for Fortitude was that during the hours of darkness in the early morning of D-Day, while the colossal fleet made their way towards the Normandy coast, a number of bomber aircraft would circle the Channel, off the Pas de Calais, and drop Window, the metallic strips used to confuse radar, thus giving the impression of an advancing invasion fleet.

  So, at the given time, the components of Fortitude would come together, combined with an aerial bombardment throwing both the strategic and tactical leaders of the Wehrmacht, Panzergrenadiers and Luftwaffe into disarray and uncertainty and so be responsible for the Germans looking the wrong way when the balloon went up.

  And Sadler knew nothing of this, except for the word Fortitude.

  * * *

  WHILE SADLER WAS still in Norfolk House listening to General Morgan’s briefing so Curry Shepherd and Suzie Mountford drove in Curry’s Vauxhall Ten towards Curzon Street, where they would park and go on foot to Shephered Street.

  Curry was deafeningly silent behind the wheel and Suzie finally asked him if he was okay.

  “Just thinking things over, and coming to the conclusion we’re running out of time,” He told her. “If Elsie’s really put it all together none of us has many days left.”

  “Hutt, Sharp or Puxley?” Suzie mused.

  “Or Bart Belcher,” Curry negotiated Hyde Park Corner and into Piccadilly as two Bren gun carriers and a 15 cwt truck pulled in ahead of him, the men in the carriers muffled against the cold.

  “Then we have to stop them bloody sharpish.”

  “Quick as the Aztec Two-Step.”

  “What’s that? Aztec Two-Step?” She wrinkled her face into a puzzled innocence.

  “Quick as Montezuma’s revenge. The runs, old Suzie. That’s it.”

  She made an exasperated sound. All men, she thought, they’re all the same, knee-deep in crudities. Foul-mouthed and vulgar.

  Curry leaned over and patted her knee, which was a bit of an advance on things so far. “You think you know how to get into our Julia’s good graces?” he asked, giving the knee a squeeze.

  “Only how Elsie suggested. Play the wide-eyed innocent. I’m not much of an actress.”

  “You don’t have to be much of an actress. Just be your own sweet self.”

  She didn’t feel like her own sweet self: after all they really had nothing tangible to go on. It was like trying to bottle smoke. Elsie had told them he’d struck gold when the lads in MI5 had been concerned about Tim Weaving and the girl Richardson.

  It began with a standard vetting because they were inordinately concerned about the officers attending the COSSAC planning meetings. The CIGS in particular was paranoid about the security surrounding Overlord3. So, when Colonel Tim Weaving announced his engagement to Julia Richardson they had done a superficial background check. Almost as an afterthought the Watchers began to have a look-see at Julia’s house in Shepherd Street. The brief was to peep at the comings and goings over forty-eight hours in teams of three. One of each trio detailed to follow when necessary.

  What was it Elsie had said? Julia Richardson, lives in Shepherd Street. Amazing area that. Ladies of the night, frail sisterhood, girls’ boarding houses, proper slice of sin round there. Damned difficult place to put watchers they tell me. Fellows standing about casually get accosted every few minutes. Some tart comes stooging up, ‘Want to come home with me?’

  When L C Partridge, the ginger man, talked to them about Julia Richardson Suzie felt it was for her benefit alone because Curry appeared to know everything already. Almost immediately, the Watchers had produced one large piece of information causing the brief to be extended until further notice.

  “Thing is,” Elsie told them, “Thing jolly is that our Julia gets herself engaged to Tim Weaving but has another pretty close male friend, fellow in the Swedish Embassy name of Lars Henderson. Very tight they are.”

  So tight that they’re doing it on a regular basis, “The horizontal jig, beast with two backs sort of thing,” as Elsie put it. Not just once but five times, the Watchers counted in that first forty-eight hours. “Not really suitable wife material for someone as precariously placed as Colonel Weaving,” Elsie had sighed.

  Now, in the Vauxhall, Suzie said it was really all conjecture wasn’t it? Elsie was jumping to conclusions and Curry snorted.

  “Believe me, Elsie doesn’t jump. Like God he moves in a mysterious way. Our chum the spy is deeper than the deepest ocean. Elsie’s narrowed it down to someone close to Tim Weaving. If he’s done that you can bet your knickers he’s right. This bloke, let’s give him a crypto, call him Cyclops – one-eyed giant. Cyclops, according to Elsie, will hang himself by his own tradecraft.”

  Elsie had used the word tradecraft which Suzie had never heard before, and didn’t understand, so Curry explained. “Security and intelligence world’s equivalent of military field-craft: technique of going undetected, rules for contact, signals, living, all that stuff.”

  According to Elsie, Cyclops was obsessed by the secret routines. “He’d been seeing young Julia regularly but couldn’t just hand over stuff to her, sort of face to face. Has to go through an intermediary, a cut-out, because that’s what the tradecraft demands. It’ll be the death of him.” Count of three. “With any luck.”

  “And Elsie just pulls all this out of the air?” Suzie asked as the car turned into Curzon Street.

  “I told you, Suzie. Elsie moves in a mysterious way, like God, his wonders to perform. We are visible servants but he has many more, people who can’t be seen…”

  Like Big
Peter and Little Trevor? And his minder, Eddie?”

  Curry shook his head. “They’re all pretty visible, love. It’s the invisible ones you have to look out for: his footpads, creepers and fingermen; his poppets and pinchers, forgers and fiddlers. Old Elsie has an army living out of sight. The people in Baker Street at Special Operations Executive working with the resistance people, and the boys and girls with MI5 and 6 are sometimes jealous of him. And you have to watch his lads on the kippers.”

  “Kippers?”

  “Kippers and bloaters. Motors. I made them up.”

  But Suzie knew Curry was no fool and while it all sounded far-fetched to her she could see that Curry believed most of it, so why should she doubt him?

  “Let me see if I’ve got it straight,” she said as Curry parked the car and sat back to hear her out. “Elsie seems to think they’ve got a dodgy bloke in the Swedish Embassy, a fellow who slips stuff in on the QT, then sends it over – over in the diplomatic bag – to Sweden, to Stockholm where there’s probably another dodgy bloke who lifts whatever it is out of the bag and passes it to the German Embassy. Once there it can be sent straight to Berlin, or wherever.”

  “That’s Elsie’s construction of it and I shouldn’t be surprised if he believes Julia Richardson imagines she’s only giving a harmless hand to the neutral Swedes.”

  “So, our Cyclops is getting someone to pass intelligence to Julia who passes it to the Swede, Henderson did you say?”

  “Lars Henderson, yes. Elsie wants him made persona non grata.”

  “And Lars gets it to Stockholm in the diplomatic bag where another iffy Swede nips over to the German Embassy with it.”

  Curry gave an affirmative nod. “Sounds complicated doesn’t it? Like one of those convoluted detective stories you hear on the wireless.” He put on a breathless urgent voice – “Mrs Carstairs couldn’t have seen the vicar in the churchyard at three o’clock because the Colonel was talking to Bob the gardener at five past three while old John over at the Bull & Cow could never have read Bert’s letter … and so on ad nauseam.” It was a reasonable imitation of some of the tortuously plotted intricate radio plays with which the BBC bulked out its schedules.