by John Harris
The gale showed no signs of abating. The rain lashed the windows and blew the gulls inside out. As the waves continued to mount, senior naval officers in foul-weather gear stood outside staring at the sea, trying to assess chances. For Iremonger and Pargeter it was an impossible situation. A few vessels had been searched but the overcrowding made it impossible to check every man. Even the muster rolls were no help because the elusive Kechinski no longer appeared to exist under that name, and there was no alternative but to request units to report every officer who had joined within the last fortnight.
It was quite clear by the way signals were answered, however, that no one on board the landing craft and landing ships was very concerned with finding – and possibly losing – some valuable and busy officer at this stage in the game. By evening only five units had reported back, and they had little hope of hearing from many more.
The anxiety was now tense enough to touch. Then, suddenly, there was a gleam of hope. The two low pressure systems which had been causing the gale were amalgamating off the Hebrides in a single low, and the meteorologists began to predict moderating winds and a break-up of the cloud cover.
‘They might go after all,’ they were told.
Pargeter frowned. ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘we’d better hand over to the United States Army Provost Department.’
Iremonger scowled, smarting under their failure. ‘Those stone-headed bastards couldn’t find a pig in a sack,’ he said. ‘I’m going with ’em.’
Pargeter stared at him in surprise, and he went on angrily. ‘We’re never going to find this goddam Kechinski over here!’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to go over to the other side and pick him up on the beaches before he makes contact with the Krauts.’
‘That’s impossible!’
‘We’ve got all night to nail the sonofabitch! If we can get Southwick behind us, we can insist on units answering our signals. They can’t ignore a Supreme Headquarters directive. And if we know what unit the bastard’s in, we can get ourselves landed right alongside and pick him up before he does any harm.’
Pargeter studied him speculatively for a moment. Then an unexpected smile lit up his grave features.
‘Well,’ he said primly, ‘they say an old soldier’s a cautious soldier, but you’ll need somebody with experience to look after you, Linus. Perhaps I’d better come too. Let’s go and put it to Hardee.’
Thirteen
The weather was still poor. In the harbours ships still tugged uneasily at their anchors and ropes, and seasick pills were still being handed round. Some men had now been aboard for three or four days; the strain was beginning to tell, and the high morale of the first day had slipped. Instead of the need for courage, they remembered only the pep talks that had made them realise they were only statistics in a great gamble – so many would be seasick, so many would drown, so many would be killed.
There were grim faces at Southwick when Iremonger and Pargeter arrived. An Associated Press release had mistakenly announced that allied forces were already landing in France, and there were a great many officers on telephones busily contradicting it or trying to find out how it had come to be issued at all.
There were more than mere false alarms in the air, too, because the windows were still quivering under the force of the wind, and the rain was driving horizontally across the lawns.
‘The low up near the Shetlands is filling up,’ an American colonel told them. ‘We expect lower seas and less surf for two days starting on the morning of the 6th. Since the met boys refuse to predict beyond that, they decided to go. Ships are starting to move out already.’ He shuddered. ‘And God help those who have farthest to go,’ he went on. ‘The wind was still at force five when we got the “go ahead”, and the goddam plan’s supposed to be dependent on calm weather and flat seas.’
Iremonger jerked him out of his gloom with a bark.
‘We need a ship,’ he said. ‘We need to be in this thing.’
‘By the time we can get you down there they’ll all have left.’
‘Then lay on a destroyer.’
‘There aren’t any spare destroyers.’
‘Then find one.’
The colonel glared. ‘There are no reserves.’
‘Then put us on a battleship.’
‘With whose authority?’
Iremonger’s jaw hardened. ‘General Hardee’s,’ he said. ‘You’d better take us to him.’
General Hardee’s face was as grim as the rest as he motioned them to chairs.
Iremonger coughed. ‘We’ve pinpointed him, General,’ he said. ‘He’s with General Bradley’s First Army.’
‘First Army comprises two corps – around seven or eight divisions,’ Hardee pointed out.
‘And a hell of a lot of small units, General,’ Iremonger admitted. ‘But we know he’s there, so we have to look for him. We know now what he looks like and roughly where he is.’ He laid on the table the blown-up photographs they’d obtained. Hardee put on a pair of spectacles and stood up to peer closer.
‘Same man?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Name?’
‘Not Reinecke. Not Fox. Nor any of the others. At the moment he’s going under the name of Kechinski. When he was a Pole he was Taddeus Kechinski. He’s since become Jack Kechinski, an American.’
‘Can’t Records help you?’
‘I doubt if he’ll be on ’em, General.’
‘Movement Control?’
‘We’d need to know his unit and we don’t, sir.’
Hardee sat for a moment, thinking. ‘Searching the invasion fleet’s a formidable task,’ he said.
‘It can be done, sir, if we’re given the authority. A lot of people are tensed up and don’t want to be distracted from what they’re doing. We’re getting nowhere.’
‘That’s hardly surprising.’
‘On the other hand, sir, I don’t have to tell you how important it is to find him.’
Hardee looked up. ‘You do not,’ he snapped. ‘But you’ve left it a little late!’ There was a hint of annoyance but no more.
‘The postponement’s helped us, General,’ Iremonger leaned forward. ‘If we go with ’em, sir, we have another twenty-four hours. And if we have to pick him up on the other side, then we sure as hell will. But we need help to make everybody give us the returns we want.’
Hardee drew a notepad towards him. ‘Prepare your signals,’ he said. ‘I’ll give them top priority. But prepare ’em damn carefully because General Bradley’s got plenty to think about besides you. You’ll be fitted out with anything you want here and put on the destroyer, Forbes, which will put you aboard Augusta. The replies should be waiting for you when you arrive. By the time you’re ready to go, I’ll have a loading schedule listing all units waiting for you. It’ll show every outfit, which ship they’re in and which beach they’re due to land on. It’ll be up to you, when you’ve pinned down your man, to see that you’re put on the appropriate ship and the appropriate stretch of beach.’
Within minutes they were being rushed to stores to draw the necessary equipment. Fitted out with helmet, lifebelt, pistol, carbine, commando dagger and binoculars, Iremonger felt as if he were strapped inside a cage of harness. When Pargeter arrived, he was surprised to find that all he carried in addition to his walking stick was a revolver in a holster. His only other item of equipment was a navy-blue British-type steel helmet marked with a large white W.
‘What the hell have you got there?’ Iremonger said.
Pargeter blinked. ‘Linus,’ he said gravely. ‘I’m a British officer and when I go ashore at the other side, I’m going ashore looking like a British officer.’ He took off the flat helmet and glanced at it. ‘Smart, don’t you think? Scrounged it off a civilian storeman who works for you people. He’s not allowed out of camp, and he had no money to go the canteen, so he let me have it for half a quid. He’s an air-raid warden when he’s off-duty here.’
‘What about a tommy gun?’<
br />
‘Got a revolver and a flask of brandy. Should be enough.’
Iremonger frowned; then he grinned. ‘I think we’d better have a drink,’ he suggested. ‘It might be our last chance for a while, and I’m told they’ve got some good whisky here.’
Pargeter smiled. ‘You’ve found a way to my heart,’ he said.
Hardee was waiting for them when they returned with a thick wad of paper clipped inside a file. ‘Loading schedules,’ he said. ‘The file also includes a laissez-passer to any ship, unit or beach, no matter what’s happening. Signed by me and counter-signed by Ike himself. I have to rely on you to use it properly. I’ve been in touch with General Bradley. They’ll be waiting for you aboard Augusta. Your signal’s been sent out carrying the most urgent classification and the insistence that replies are sent without fail and at once. I just hope our man’s aboard a ship whose radio hasn’t broken down. How long do you need to wind up your affairs?’
Iremonger glanced at Pargeter. ‘Got the photographs, Cuthbert?’ he asked.
Pargeter patted his breast pocket and Iremonger turned to Hardee. ‘Nothing more than a telephone call, sir.’
They headed in different directions. When they rejoined each other, Iremonger was frowning. Pargeter gave him a beaming smile.
‘She wasn’t there, was she?’ he said.
‘No.’ Iremonger scowled. ‘How the hell did you know who I was telephoning?’
‘Guessed.’
‘Weinberger said she’d gone off with that Frog guy.’
‘Yes, she did. I rang her billet. She was there. She was crying.’
‘Was she, by Christ? What were you calling her for?’
‘Same as you, I suspect. To tell her I might be busy for a day or two but not to worry, I’d be back before long. Right?’
Iremonger scowled again and nodded. ‘Thought she was entitled to it.’
‘Save your consideration,’ Pargeter said. ‘We left her alone too often and she was never the most faithful of women. She’s dropped us both. De Rezonville’s been recalled to his unit and he’s already embarked and sailed. She was weeping for him.’
Iremonger stared. ‘That Frog bastard?’
Pargeter shrugged. ‘Better-looking than you, Linus,’ he said. ‘Better-looking than me, too. And, I suspect, a great deal more wealthy than either of us. A woman can make a man appear to be an imbecile in ten seconds flat.’
‘Yeah.’ Iremonger grinned unexpectedly. ‘One thing,’ he observed. ‘We don’t have to worry now about being killed.’
Part Three
From a View to a Death
One
When they reached Portsmouth the weather was still soupy and wet, with low visibility and a chill in the air that made them shiver. The streets were bare and there was a queer stillness everywhere. Now that the fleets had sailed, it was oddly unnerving to see the empty harbour.
Not long before, it had been noisy with military music as commandos had filed aboard their assault ships at the Isle of Wight pier. Now there was a great air of solemnity and secrecy, and the only assault forces left were the torpedo boats, which were to dash across the Channel at daybreak. Over the lighthouse on Portland Bill, aircraft – their lights on – were passing in dozens and heading out to sea.
‘Just about four years to the day,’ Pargeter pointed out, ‘since we were kicked out of France at Dunkirk.’
An RAF high-speed launch ran them out to a destroyer waiting beyond the boom. As the coxswain thrust the throttles forward, they rammed the stern of a naval launch cutting across their bows in a hurry.
‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ one of the airmen said cheerfully. ‘Have to have an accident now and then to make things go right, and we haven’t rammed anything for days.’
As they scrambled on to the deck of the destroyer, she put to sea at once. From the bridge, they could see a weathered gun position squatting lonely and silent on stilts offshore, and the concrete blockhouses on the beach behind them.
‘After tomorrow,’ Iremonger said, ‘Churchill can tear ’em all down.’
Pargeter nodded. ‘Amen to that,’ he said.
After a while they became aware of a dark line ahead and began to make out masts and fluttering flags, and eventually the square shapes of landing craft. Beyond them were troop-ships with smaller landing craft hanging from their davits. The sea seemed to be full of them.
It was almost dark as they spotted Augusta among the other vessels, a rakish beauty among the snub-nosed LSTs with her yacht-like bows and eight-inch turrets. It was hard work climbing up the wooden rungs of the rope ladder from the destroyer’s boat, and the great ship was already moving again as they were dragged over the rail.
The cruiser’s decks were wet with drizzle. The wind lashed at a canvas curtain across an open steel door, while the radar antenna on top of the foremast washed in and out of the overcast hanging low in the dark sky. Confused by their new surroundings, they followed the naval officer who met them, stumbling over ring bolts and deck projections in the dark. Passing through a dogged-back steel door, they found themselves in a war room that had been constructed on the aircraft deck, a temporary shed-like construction whose sheet-metal walls seemed to buckle and sway as the ship moved. Lights had been rigged up, taped like the face of the clock against the concussion of the guns when they fired. One wall was papered with a Michelin motoring map of France and next to it there was a terrain study of the assault beaches, bracketed into letter and colour designations. Between them, a Petty pin-up girl lounged on a more alluring beach. There was also a detailed map of the Normandy coast marked with concentric arcs giving the range of enemy coastal guns, and another charting the disposition of enemy divisions in blurred markings. A long plotting table filled the centre space, at which a naval lieutenant traced an overlay of beach defences. On a waist-high shelf along the seaward wall stood a row of typewriters for the journal clerks and log-keepers.
Bradley was wearing a pistol and a steel helmet, and was chatting with a colonel as he stared out at the mist and low cloud and the lessening visibility. The wind was still roaring round the ship at twenty knots and the water of the Channel was lifting in menacing waves.
‘There’ll be a four-foot surf on the beaches,’ Bradley was saying. ‘It doesn’t look good.’
‘I think it stinks, sir,’ the colonel said.
Bradley turned – a tall, approachable, spectacled Missourian with the face of a professor of history – and greeted them warmly.
‘You’ll forgive me if I have to throw you on to the mercy of one of my staff,’ he said. ‘But I have other things to do. Colonel Fitzsimmons here will give you all the dope and there’ll be food for you. Is there anything else you need?’
‘Only our replies, General.’
‘Fitz will fill you in.’
Excusing himself, Bradley turned away to confer with the naval man behind him. They heard the anxious muttering start again among the officers round them, and it made them realise that the fate of the invasion hung not in the big-hulled command craft but in wet-bottomed small vessels where seasick men cowered and groaned.
Fitzsimmons, a lean, lantern-jawed Texan wearing glasses, who looked remarkably like Bradley himself, stepped forward with a sheaf of flimsies. ‘There’s been a good response,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to accept that those guys out there have other things on their mind right now apart from your problem, but, even so, they seem to be trying. We’ve sent a repeat request to let them know it’s urgent and goddam important, and the replies are still coming in. There are still twenty-odd on the way, so you’d better find something to eat. By the time you come back, we’ll probably have the lot.’
They were given steaks and coffee in the officers’ wardroom, and when they returned to the war room Fitzsimmons was waiting for them.
‘Your signals are all in,’ he announced. ‘Nine units admit to new officers who’ve joined in the last fortnight. I’ve told them to check again into background, age, et c
etera. The first of them’s already replied. Their new officer’s not your man because he’s a lieutenant-colonel aged forty-nine and his name’s Finkelstein and it seems he looks as though it is, so he won’t be a Nazi. That leaves eight. You’ll just have to wait.’
High above Augusta’s bridge, a radar antenna rotated monotonously under a woolly sky. In the plotting room an officer bent before a radar screen, searching for the tell-tale pips that signified enemy aeroplanes.
‘Nothing at all,’ he said.
‘Perhaps it’s going to be Sicily all over again.’
‘You can hardly expect that in the crowded Channel. On a clear day an aircraft at ten thousand feet can see Southampton.’
‘It’s not a clear day, goddamit! I wish it was.’
They waited restlessly. Out of the eight replies they still needed, three more had now answered. Two had no doubt about their new officers, who apparently could be vouched for by other officers in their units. Only one seemed to be in doubt.
‘Captain Harry Gavin,’ Pargeter said. ‘Seventeenth Rangers. On board SS Mounts Bay.’
There was a strange silence about Augusta, as though everyone was afraid his voice might be heard, but also a sense of quiet exaltation that reached even through the tense anxiety of Iremonger and Pargeter.
Pargeter was standing quietly, wearing a crumpled field service cap, the air-raid warden’s helmet swinging from his hand. His face was calm and expressionless, as if he had complete faith in ultimate success; as though, having endured the Nazis for five long years, he was certain now that they were due for their comeuppance.
Another report came in. Once again the unit reported that its new officer was known to them and had been even back in the United States.
‘Leaves four,’ Pargeter said.
To the south there was a glow in the sky, and for a moment there was a little more nervous muttering.