Over and Out

by Michael Gilbert

  Tom Braham, with whom Luke had established an immediate entente, was a barrister with a criminal practice that was just starting to take off. He had joined the Inns of Court Regiment, as a private soldier, within days of war being declared, and had been one of the first men extracted from the ranks by Macdonogh and commissioned into Intelligence.

  The White Lady, the Dame Blanche that he and Luke were discussing was the railway-watching organisation based on Namur and keeping a watch on the line from Lille to Metz; the same important section that British Intelligence now had under observation from the south.

  ‘Speaking for myself,’ said Braham, ‘I prefer quiet stay-at-home jobs. Jobs that I can do from behind a desk. Not chancy expeditions behind the enemy lines. Unless you’ve a positive craving for excitement—’

  ‘Not really,’ said Luke. ‘And it was simple enough to start with. The Air Force dropped you in and picked you up again. Now they’ve started to make difficulties.’

  ‘I’ve always maintained that an independent air force was a nonsense. Air Force and Army should all be part of one organisation.’

  ‘A pity you’re not running the whole show.’

  ‘I’ve often felt the same,’ said Braham modestly.

  That same morning Macdonogh, who had come over from London, summoned Luke to brief him about these changes.

  He said, ‘I suppose one can’t really blame the Air Force. They’ve lost two planes recently, on both occasions doing pick-ups. I took it as high as Trenchard, but he’s an obstinate bugger. You could as easily change his mind, once it’s made up, as change the shape of Table Mountain. Very well. He’ll allow his boys to take you in. Provided they don’t have to go more than fifteen miles over the line they’ll drop you anywhere you like, but he won’t risk a plane to pick you up again.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Luke, trying to sound cheerful about it, ‘it’s up to us to make our own way out. Is that it?’

  ‘In a nutshell. If you don’t think it’s possible, we shall have to devise some other way of getting the reports back. They could go under some sort of neutral cover to London—’

  ‘And be out of date by the time they get back to us here.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s right. Speed is becoming more important every day. Once Russia threw in the sponge, it was clear that the Germans could and would move troops back to the Western Front and mount what they hope will be a decisive assault. But they’re not stupid. They won’t bring them back openly, or all at once. They’ll concentrate them in forward positions slowly and piece by piece. Then, when they’re quite ready, blow the whistle and come in. I expect you knew that the French nearly got caught that way at Verdun.’

  ‘A rumour to that effect,’ said Luke with a grin, ‘did percolate down to the lower ranks. We understood that it was Papa Joffre who carried the can.’

  ‘He was subject to formal criticism in the Chamber of Deputies, and was lucky to get away with it. If the weather hadn’t broken unexpectedly, the assault would have started a fortnight earlier, before any of his reserves were in position. And the Germans would have been in Paris. So you see—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luke, ‘I do see. Speed and accuracy. Both essential.’

  ‘Some of the best of the Dame Blanche reports come from watching the stations rather than the line. If a train stops for any length of time, no power on earth is going to keep the men inside the carriages. They swarm all over the platform and the watchers can identify the units.’

  ‘We can’t do as well as that yet,’ said Luke. ‘But we’re learning.’

  ‘You’re doing a good job,’ said Macdonogh, surprising Luke who knew that he was as chary of praise as his fellow Aberdonians of their pennies. ‘And if you can convince me that you’ve a reasonable chance of getting out without Air Force help, I’ll let you go. If not, you stop right where you are.’

  Luke said, ‘When we heard the rumour about the Air Force getting sticky, we all started to work out alternatives. We came to the conclusion that the best way out was through Switzerland. As you know, sir, they aren’t fenced round tight, not like Belgium and Holland. A friend of mine, John Hanover, who’s been that way, tells me that the frontier is marked by trig points and, sometimes, by a single line of wire. But not patrolled, or not regularly. And there’s that very convenient boot-shaped piece—south of the Belfort gap, between Delle and Feldbach—’

  Macdonogh, who was examining the map, said, ‘Yes, I can see it.’ ‘You walk in on the German side, walk across and walk out on the French side. Five or six miles.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Macdonogh, scratching the tip of his large and aggressive nose with his thumb. ‘The way you put it, it looks simple enough, but you’ve got to get down there first. It’s a long way to walk.’

  ‘I wasn’t actually thinking of walking,’ said Luke mildly. ‘Once I’m there, I go everywhere by train.’

  ‘No difficulties?’

  ‘Thanks to your excellent back-up organisation, sir, no real difficulties.’

  He added, with a smile, ‘When I read about escaping prisoners-ofwar who travel by train dressed in civilian clothes made out of blankets, with a scratch set of home-made papers, I realise how well off I am. If challenged, which hasn’t happened yet, I’m a respectably dressed and properly documented commercial traveller, employed by a Belgian firm of agricultural machine makers. My job is to visit potential customers—farmers for the most part—who live near the railway. Among them are the watchers I need to talk to.’

  ‘You make it seem all too easy,’ said Macdonogh. ‘But watch your step. The Dame Blanche warned us recently, the Germans are instituting a protective cordon on both sides of the railway.’

  Luke promised to watch his step. He had known Macdonogh since his days in M.I.5 which the colonel had headed before his transfer to Whitehall as DMI and he appreciated the patient care he expended on his agents.

  ‘One thing more: have a look at this.’

  He pushed a paper across.

  ‘Burn it when you’ve got it by heart.’

  Luke examined it curiously. It was a list of fourteen names, showing against each name the rank and corps of the man concerned. Most of them seemed to be private soldiers or junior NCOs. There was one warrant officer.

  ‘Do you know any of them?’

  ‘Sergeant Bamfield, RE. I met him at the depot a month or two ago. And Corporal Tumim. He had been in hospital with a chest wound and was awaiting posting back to his unit. Oh, and Lance-Corporal Mungeam. I met him in Béthune when we were both on leave. I stood him a drink, on the grounds that he was a fellow Norfolk man.’

  He studied the list once more. The other eleven names meant nothing to him. They all seemed to be good and experienced types.

  ‘Keep your eyes open and let us know if you come across any of them.’

  This deepened the mystery. Did Macdonogh mean if he came across them when going about his routine business in and around Montreuil – or came across them on the other side of the line? He knew that questions were discouraged, but if he was going to do anything useful he needed a few more facts.

  He said tentatively, ‘Could you possibly tell me what it’s all about?’

  Macdonogh did not answer immediately, and Luke guessed that something uncomfortable was coming.

  Then he said, ‘I can tell you this much. It’s our biggest headache to date. I won’t go into details now. One job at a time is a good rule. I’ll talk to you about it as soon as you get back.’

  ‘Right,’ said Luke. As he was folding the list carefully to put it away in his wallet, he felt constrained to risk one more question. He said, ‘Can you tell me the significance of the date against each name?’

  ‘That,’ said the colonel, ‘is the date on which the man concerned disappeared.’

  Chapter Three

  When assembling his amateur and irregular groups of intelligence officers, Colonel Macdonogh had stressed two important accomplishments: the ability to ride a motor cycle and some
experience of parachuting. Thus, as he put it, rendering them free of the earth and the sky. There were other factors as well, of course. Good brains, an ability to tune in to foreign languages and a modicum of courage, but these were inherent: the first two could only be acquired by practice.

  For weeks after their arrival, the green-tabbed subalterns could be observed careering round the lanes and tracks of northern France. After an increasing tally of broken legs and arms, to say nothing of broken machines, most of the officers had insisted on reverting to the use of horses, a mode of transport to which they had been accustomed from early youth.

  Parachuting was something different.

  Luke, like many of his friends, had supposed that half-a-dozen free falls over the aerodrome would banish all fear of this exercise. As far as he was concerned, the opposite had proved to be true. His first descent, from a thousand feet on a calm day, had been entirely delightful. It was only later that apprehension crept in. There were four or five seconds of breath-stopping rush to clear the plane, before one pulled the cord and the parachute opened. Long enough to ask oneself the unanswerable question: what if the ’chute failed to open?

  Such a disaster had happened only once, and not to Luke. But once was more than enough.

  He had been standing on the runway watching Dan Fordyce, a cheerful youth who seemed to think that war was more fun than peace, leaving the circling plane. Then, with his heart jumping and a feeling of physical sickness, he had seen that the parachute remained obstinately wound into a tight cylinder which trailed behind the falling man like a superfluous leg.

  It was the sound, as of an overfull suitcase dropped from an upper-storey window and hitting the pavement below, which had followed Luke into his dreams for many nights. In the end, he had succeeded in dismissing it with the words of comfort that softened so many of the fears of active service: ‘It won’t happen to me’.

  And once more nothing had gone amiss on that spring morning when Luke floated sweetly towards the wooded downland that lay to the north and east of Lille. It was four o’clock, with just enough light in the sky for his pilot to avoid enemy interference and find his way home.

  Once confident about his descent, he had time to think about his landing. His instructors had taught him how to direct his fall by pulling on one or other of the cords and spilling air from the ’chute.

  His objective was a patch of sandy scrubland among the trees of the Forêt Saint-Armand Wallers which lay north and west of Lille. Years ago, no doubt, the forest had hugged tightly round the little township. Now, clearance and plantation had forced it back for two or three miles. It would be possible, had it been necessary, to land actually in one of the fields which bordered the forest. Far safer, if he could manage it, would be a descent into the forest itself. Only he would have to steer clear of the taller trees. If caught up in one he had the razor-sharp knife in his belt which would cut the cords and let him down, but he would have to leave the ’chute dangling, an unmistakable signal of his arrival.

  On this occasion, the landing into a sandy bush-covered clearance went well. Luke picked himself up, released the G.Q. harness, and extracted the small spade from the sack which had come down with him. Then he set about burying the ’chute, throwing in on top of it such items as his parachute helmet, his heavy boots, the spade and, finally, the sack itself, after extracting from it a pair of neat brogues, a bulging briefcase and a civilian hat.

  These unhurried preparations filled up the time until his watch showed six o’clock. Then he set out, picking his way through the trees and crossing the fields by footpaths, meeting no one until he reached the houses and pavements of outer Lille. Here people were already on the move. The women were busy about their never-ceasing pursuit of provisions for their households, provisions which were becoming scarcer every day. The men seemed mostly to be heading for the station and an early train to work.

  Luke’s outfit, which would have seemed out of place had anyone encountered him in the fields, was now an emblem of security. A businessman among businessmen. He felt safe enough to stop at an early opening café for a cup of what was charitably described as coffee.

  At Lille Central Station, he bought a first class through ticket to Lucerne in Switzerland. This being an international ticket he had to produce his papers. A sleepy booking clerk hardly looked at them as he handed over the ticket, warning him that he would have to change and reconfirm his ticket at Basel. Luke nodded, with the noncommittal air of a man who had made the journey many times before, and was not worried about the formalities.

  In fact, he intended to leave the train before it reached the Swiss frontier.

  The eight o’clock train, like all the others on that line, was classed as an ‘omnibus’, since it stopped at every station, however small, on its leisurely run south-east to Strasbourg. There were five such trains in the course of the day, leaving at eight, ten, twelve, two and four, and they fitted Luke’s plans perfectly. Indeed, he considered that the railway authorities might have arranged them to suit his convenience.

  The single first-class carriage was empty, and he dozed in his corner seat observing the alternation of wood, meadow and farmhouse. Once they had rumbled across the River Scarpe he went out and stood in the corridor. The small town of Anzin came next and he knew that the length of the train’s halt would depend on the amount of business it had to transact.

  At Anzin he produced his ticket to the ticket collector-cumporter-cum-stationmaster, and strolled off down the narrow country lane which led south into the woods, looking, he hoped, like a busy commercial traveller visiting prospective customers.

  He was aiming for the Ferme de Raismes, which took its name from the forest behind it. The farmer was Gérard Gentilhomme, a man who had recently come north from Marseilles, and spoke the harsh staccato language of that city. (‘A step or two ahead of the police’, was the uncharitable verdict of his neighbours.)

  He was not a popular man and since his arrival had made little effort to ingratiate himself. Luke, however, liked him for his brusqueness, his independence, and the brandy, of which, in those times of scarcity, he seemed to have an inexhaustible store (‘The fruits of some smuggling enterprise, no doubt’, said his neighbours.)

  Along with a glass of cognac, poured out by his dark and equally taciturn wife, Gentilhomme produced a valuable budget of news.

  ‘The Schleus,’ he said, ‘are moving bodies of men, always from the east to the west.’ He demonstrated the movement with a sweep of his gnarled hand across the table. Always that way. Never the other. And here is something else: they are moving them by night, in order to escape surveillance, no doubt. The animals.’

  ‘Pigs,’ agreed his wife, adding a Marseillaise expression which implied dirt, dishonesty and incontinence.

  ‘As if they hope to evade our observation. Let them hope. Have I not sat up every night this last week and watched the trains go through? Since they stopped neither at Anzin nor at the station before or after it—that much I could detect—it cannot be supposed that they were part of the normal passenger traffic’

  ‘Troop trains, then?’

  ‘Probably. I have here for you a record of the past week. Two on the first night. None on the second. Two again on the third night which was Wednesday. None then until Saturday night, when there were three. On Sunday, I stayed in my bed. You will understand that I had some sleep to make up.’

  At this point his wife intervened. In order to allow her lord and master to get some sleep, she had taken on the daytime watch herself. She confirmed the regularity that Luke had observed, five regular trains, ‘agricultural caravans’ she called them, stopping at every station to take on or discharge goods and beasts.

  But, she added, there had been, for the past fortnight, a further train which did not fit in with the observed pattern. It had gone past at six o’clock or thereabouts in the evening, on three of the six weekdays. She had heard it, but since it was somewhat irregular in its timing and passed without hal
ting, she had not managed to see it. It sounded heavy and went fast.

  Luke, who had been scribbling busily, was delighted. This was the sort of hard news he was looking for, and it made the risks he ran to obtain it worthwhile. He paid Gentilhomme the sum agreed for his efforts, drank a second glass of brandy, and took his departure. People who met him on his roundabout way back to the station observed his satisfied smile, and concluded no doubt that he had made, somewhere or other, a profitable sale for his firm. And a handsome commission for himself. That was the manner in which business conducted itself.

  The trains he was using, running as they did at two-hour intervals, meant the next one was due at Anzin at 10.20. When it arrived, a few minutes late, Luke was escorted to his carriage by the one-man station staff and, finding himself alone, he extracted a salami sandwich from his briefcase and enjoyed an early lunch.

  His next stop was Le Quesnoy, halfway between Valenciennes and Avesnes. Here he repeated his previous drill and by midday was established in the front parlour of Michel Mont, a stout, red-faced Marnois, who had lost money as a butcher in Paris and was now making it back again on a farm by black market transactions.

  He had less of interest to report than Gentilhomme and Luke guessed that it would have taken a powerful inducement to get him to forfeit a comfortable night in bed. However, his daytime reports were full and detailed, and confirmed the pattern that was emerging.

  The line he was watching was, it was clear, an artery through which ran the blood of an agricultural community, feeding with its produce the hungry town areas of Lille at one end and Metz at the other. Knowing what he did of the French character he felt no doubt that a proportion of it would be diverted, en route, into the black market. But the bulk of the life-giving cargo would reach its destination.