Over and Out

by Michael Gilbert

  He said, genially, ‘I can see that you have devoted a great deal of thought to this, Colonel. Perhaps you could give me your ideas.’

  Hurdle number one jumped, thought Macdonogh.

  He said, ‘I can do it best, perhaps, by reminding you of a certain cavalry officer. I’ll not bandy his name about, but I’m sure you’ll know who I mean. A typical member of the upper class, a fox-hunting man who turned himself into a most efficient infantry officer, was wounded, was awarded the MC and, being wounded again, announced, publicly, that he had had enough, and that the only sensible step was to stop the war before a lot more people got killed.’

  ‘Yes, I know the man you mean. But was he not ultimately persuaded to abandon his defeatism and rejoin the fight?’

  ‘Yes. He was. To the disappointment, no doubt, of the Germans, who had been expecting great things from his apostasy. However, they are nothing if not persistent. They could not see much chance of other officers being seduced so they shifted their objective. They turned their sights a little lower. They considered—and who shall say they were wrong—that if a number of trusted NCOs and old soldiers—the cement of any army—could be induced to renounce their loyalty and preach the cause of pacifism, this would have a shattering effect on the morale of the army as a whole.’

  Charteris was studying the list once more. He hated the whole conception, but was experienced enough to appreciate its force.

  He said, ‘Have you any idea how they got hold of these particular men?’

  ‘That’s one of the things I’m aiming to find out. All we can say, at the moment, is that they have been very carefully selected, and very competently spirited across the lines. We know, too, that as soon as they are safely in enemy hands, their supporters in England—some of the more extreme of the bodies whose names I gave you—have started to use them as ammunition. Their families join the chorus. They may be ashamed that their sons should be ranked as deserters, they realise that they may be facing trouble at the end of the war, but in their heart of hearts they are jubilant to think that they will survive. Their views and comments are reported, discreetly of course, but they fan the flames.’

  Charteris contemplated, in silence, the picture that Macdonogh was painting. If the civilian nerve broke, that would indeed be the beginning of the end.

  He said, ‘And that is all that you can tell me?’

  ‘Information is beginning to come in. I have here a short report from one of my men who happened to encounter, and recognise, a deserter. He has not enlarged on his adventures, but I would judge, reading between the lines that he extracted himself by a mixture of luck and determination.’

  ‘I’ll read it now,’ said Charteris, and did so.

  Whilst he was reading, Macdonogh sat silent, content with the way things had gone so far.

  ‘Luke Pagan,’ said Charteris. ‘An enterprising young man, it seems. The name sounds foreign.’

  ‘No. He’s a Lincolnshire man. English born and bred. Son of a gamekeeper.’

  ‘Probably a poacher into the bargain.’

  ‘Maybe. Anyway, a solid countryman. And he certainly organised his son’s education well. Before he was sixteen Luke was fluent in French and Russian.’

  Having absorbed this information, Charteris moved on to what he really wanted to say.

  ‘It seems to me that the job of running down the people who are organizing these defections is really one for the Military Police.’

  ‘Helped by the French police. Where their civilians are involved we have, of course, no jurisdiction.’

  This seemed to be a novel idea to Charteris. He said, ‘You’re talking about farmers who shelter a deserter.’

  ‘Or transport him to the coast.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose a certain amount of co-operation with the French police is called for. Tactful co-operation. We mustn’t upset our gallant allies.’ Charteris managed to express, by his tone of voice, all his dislike of a divided authority.

  ‘Commissaire Bernardin, who heads the sub-division of the Police Judiciaire at Ypres has been very helpful to our Military Police.’

  ‘The CMPs,’ said Charteris thoughtfully. ‘Yes. They’re the people who should have been dealing with the situation. They seem to have failed to do so.’

  ‘They haven’t got very far yet. But it’s a new problem and a tricky one.’

  Charteris looked down at the paper on his desk, which seemed to fascinate him. He said, ‘Where did that list come from?’

  ‘It was compiled, I understand, by Colonel Fleming.’

  ‘A good man?’

  ‘I’ve always thought so. He’s been APM here for more than a year and seems to do his job well.’

  ‘The names on this paper. They’re in chronological order?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then the man who heads the list—Bombardier Bakewell—was the first to go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when was that?’

  ‘I shall have to check. But my recollection is that he was missed last October.’

  ‘So. Six months. And nothing achieved. The GOC won’t be pleased when he hears that.’

  Macdonogh was well aware of the way Charteris’s mind was working. He would sacrifice Fleming – any number of Flemings – to keep his own job.

  He said, ‘I don’t think we should be in a hurry to jump to an unfavourable opinion of Colonel Fleming. On the first two or three occasions the missing man might have got back to England. Not easy, but it has been done. Or he might have slipped en route, and joined the many hundred corpses in the slime of Passchendaele. It was only when the list grew to its present length—and consistency—that the work of an enemy organisation was first suspected.’

  ‘That’s an excuse, not an explanation.’

  Keeping his temper, Macdonogh said, ‘I think Fleming should have one more chance at least. And I’d like to help him by seconding two or three of my best men to him. Temporarily, perhaps. That would give them the authority and the machinery of the police behind them.’

  And would also, he thought, subject some of his wilder young men to the healthy bonds of military discipline. But this thought he kept to himself.

  ‘Pick the men you have in mind,’ said Charteris. ‘It certainly seems that—what’s his name?—Pagan should be one of them. If he’s fluent in French that will certainly help him in his enquiries. I’ll tell the provost marshal what we’re doing. He’ll be glad to co-operate. The less publicity the better. He can arrange the cross postings, quietly, through the adjutant general’s department. Meanwhile I’ll have a word with Fleming. Keep him up to scratch.’

  Macdonogh said, ‘Right,’ and, ‘Thank you.’

  Fleming was clearly in for a rough passage, but he thought he’d survive it.

  Chapter Five

  ‘When I first heard the news,’ said Luke, ‘I wasn’t happy about the idea of a change. Here was I, comfortably established in a nice clutch of egg-heads—’

  ‘I’ve never been classed by my friends as an egg-head,’ protested Tom Braham. ‘Though I must admit that we do seem, one way and another, to have inspanned most of the real thinkers in the army’

  ‘And I imagine you weren’t best pleased when you and Johnnie Hanover were told that you were being posted away with me.’

  ‘I don’t really mind what slot they put me into, as long as I’m allowed to get on quietly with the job.’

  ‘No guarantee that it’ll be quiet. Do you realise that we’re policemen now? And our main job will be to locate the next characters who are destined to join that list I showed you—fourteen names, may be more by now—to arrest them before they can scuttle away, and hand them over to an early-morning firing squad.’

  ‘Not an inspiring programme,’ agreed Braham, ‘but look at it from your point of view. You’ll be working from a comfortable base at Montreuil, not skulking around in a forest on the other side of the line, in imminent danger of facing a firing squad yourself.’

  ‘You have
such a rational way of putting things,’ said Luke. ‘Must be your legal training.’

  Most of the pique was draining out of him. He realised now that what had really upset him had been that he had been expecting a pat on the back for his escapade and the pat had not arrived.

  ‘I must confess,’ he added, ‘that my last experience of working with the CMP was agreeable enough. That was at Le Touquet when I first came across. There wasn’t a lot of regimentalism about them. Parades and mess dinners and all that bull. They’d simply taken over the Station Hôtel, and meals were there when you wanted them. I hope the crowd we’re joining will operate in the same way’

  ‘You’ve met their top man, the assistant provost marshal. What did you think of him?’

  ‘Colonel Fleming? Too soon to be sure. But I’m prepared to give him one good mark: he didn’t try to savage me.’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘Everyone seems to have heard that he’s just been keel-hauled by Charteris. And you know the drill. If a colonel gets his balls chewed off by a brigadier, he picks on the nearest available major or captain and chews his balls off. It’s a form of catharsis. However, as I said, he was quite reasonable. And he seems to have got the outline of the German scheme fairly well worked out. Here’s how he sees it: their first step is to locate a likely prospect. A soldier, with a good record, who’s had enough. Probably with his family behind him. The moment for action arrives when that man goes on leave—which has been granted fairly freely lately.’

  ‘Not unconnected, wouldn’t you say, with the fact that large sections of the French Army came close to mutinying, mainly for lack of regular leave. But go on. Your prospect’s at home, what happens next?’

  ‘Next, it seems he’s got at by the peace-at-any-price boys, who may already have converted his family to their way of thinking. So now they can get to work on him. And they have a good case to argue. This man has done his bit. Whilst he’s on leave, let him spare a little time to look around him. He’ll see plenty of men who’ve wangled exemption from military service and are making a pile of money. Was he really prepared to go back, for them, to be shot to pieces in Polygon Wood or drowned in the filth of Zonnebeke? Moreover, if he wanted out, and his exit had to be paid for, they could, as it happened, supply him with the necessary money. The propaganda organisations are rolling in cash. Donations from sympathisers. Some given under cover, but a lot, recently, handed over quite openly.’

  ‘It sounds a plausible scenario,’ said Braham. ‘Is it guess-work, or has he got any real evidence?’

  ‘It seems he had one piece of good luck—a bit heartless to call it that. About a fortnight ago, the returning leave train from Le Havre was bombed by the Germans. It must have been a long odds chance, but they actually succeeded in landing a bomb on the train. Ten killed and forty wounded. One of the men killed was a Sergeant Mick Donovan. He’d been in trouble already for being too outspoken about the slackers at home. Perhaps the authorities thought that ten days with his family would restore him to a more rational frame of mind. The police had been asked to keep a tactful eye on him. They reported that he’d been visited regularly by members of the SOBH.’

  ‘That’s a new one on me.’

  ‘Send Our Boys Home. Brainchild of a man called Leonard Trench. A dangerously charismatic character. Awarded an immediate MM and invalided home after the Somme. Minus his left hand. He was seen around the Donovan home on a number of occasions. All of which added up to Donovan having been an obvious prospect if he had survived.’

  ‘A plum ripe for plucking,’ agreed Braham.

  ‘And one further thing: did you ever hear of a soldier coming back off leave with his pockets crammed with money?’

  ‘Au contraire. When a man knows he’s going on leave he rakes up as much money as he can and blows it in one gorgeous bust as soon as he gets home.’

  ‘Which does make it a little odd, don’t you think, when I tell you they found a packet tucked away in Donovan’s back trouser pocket stuffed with French francs to the value of £250.’

  ‘Odd, certainly.’

  ‘And that wasn’t all. Someone had scribbled down a row of numbers on the packet. I copied them out when Fleming showed them to me. He seemed to expect that, being an intelligence officer, I could immediately turn them into something useful.’

  ‘And could you?’

  ‘Alas, no. If you’d like a sleepless night or two, here they are.’

  He pushed across a page torn from his notebook on which he had inscribed – ‘16987171082694’.

  ‘You can see what was in Fleming’s mind. He hoped that each number stood for a letter, and, if I could read it, he would get the name and address of the man who was organizing Donovan’s onward journey for him.’

  ‘And you’ve given it up?’

  Tom sounded happy. He loved puzzles of this sort.

  ‘I tried the obvious ways. A = 1 B = 2 and so on. That gave me PIHGQJHZID, so I tried it with the alphabet reversed. This time we got KRSTJQSARW So I gave it up and went to sleep.’

  ‘I’ll certainly have a shot at it,’ said Braham, ‘but what it needs is a trained decoder. There are men who do nothing else. Do you remember that curious character who was with us for a short time? Name of Hickory. We called him the mouse. “Hickory, dickory dock. The mouse ran up the clock”.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘I remember him. He looked like a mouse, too. A mouse in horn-rimmed glasses. And he had a squeaky voice.’

  ‘A typical schoolmaster. Loved to put you right. Not the sort of man you could warm to. Still, no reason we shouldn’t use him. I’ll write to him tonight.’

  Chapter Six

  On 20 November, 1917, the British tanks crashed through the German first and second lines at Cambrai, and the church bells of London were rung to celebrate a famous victory.

  Then things went wrong.

  It seemed that the Germans – sly devils – had brought up three divisions from the Russian Front and were holding them poised to counter-attack. Which they did, with devastating success. All the ground that had been taken was recovered and British casualties were heavy.

  So who was to blame?

  On this occasion there was no room for doubt or evasion. Charteris’s second-in-command, Marshall-Cornwall, had found out, in good time, about the arrival of these reinforcements. His information was firm, and timely, based on the interrogation of prisoners and documents taken from them. Charteris refused to believe it.

  ‘Bluff,’ he told Marshall-Cornwall. ‘Those divisions exist only in your imagination. Or, if they exist, they are still on the Russian Front.’

  For once the War Cabinet stood firm; Haig’s protests were overruled; Charteris was sacked. His place was taken by the tough and experienced Brigadier Edgar Cox.

  Colonel Fleming was still in a state approaching euphoria when he next spoke to Luke.

  ‘Marshall-Cornwall and Cox,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t have a better pair. Now we shall have to pull our socks up. And not a week too soon, in my view. Strategically we’ve shot our bolt. No more suicidal attacks. For the next three or four months it’ll be a question of defending our line, and hoping for the best.’

  ‘Do you think the Germans have a chance of breaking through?’

  ‘Their best chance, certainly. Maybe their last chance. Those three divisions they brought up are just an advance guard. The real weight is piling up behind them. We must find out, in good time, where and when the attack is coming. Then we may be able to hold it.’

  ‘In good time,’ said Luke thoughtfully.

  ‘Right. The Dame Blanche and Lux railway watchers are producing a regular supply of information. As you might expect when you consider that they are using over four hundred observers. But there’s one drawback. We have to wait up to two weeks for their reports. One appreciates their difficulties, but, in the sort of battle that’s coming, a fortnight may make the difference between victory and defeat. And that’s why our rather amateurish efforts south of
the railway, and the prompt information they produced, were so useful. For the moment they seem very largely to have ceased.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s right,’ said Luke. ‘I had a word with Hanover when he got back across the lines yesterday.’

  Fleming said, ‘I’ve seen his report. It didn’t make good reading.’

  Delavigne, it seemed, had turned right round, and had denounced Truffaut who had been dragged off for questioning by the Germans, whilst his farm was being burned to the ground. Having explored the hidden routes, by which old Héricault and Truffaut had approached the railway, they had brought in more than a hundred soldiers to examine every yard of the line from Douai to Basel, to locate any other concealed lines of approach. This had led them to Michel Mont, who had stoutly denied taking any part in the watching, but had nevertheless been taken into custody for questioning.

  Gérard Gentilhomme had heard them coming and had departed, in good time, with his family for Spain.

  ‘Leaving that part of the cupboard bare,’ said Luke, sadly.

  ‘The watchers on the spur lines from Hirson are still operative, but they’re keeping their heads well down. And will continue to do so as long as the Germans have, under their hand, a stream of our people, long-serving soldiers who can identify at sight almost anyone we send into the area—well, I don’t need to tell you about that.’

  ‘Which means that if we are to re-establish any sort of effective train-watching, in the way we had it set up, we must first put a stop to this game the Germans are playing with our men.’

  ‘We could stop it quickly enough,’ said Fleming, closing his mouth with a snap, as though he had been chewing on an obstinate mouthful and had finally broken through it. ‘Quickly and finally, if we could find out how it works at this end. Two questions: first, how do they locate a useful prospect? Second, how do they get him through the lines? That’s the job for you and Braham and Hanover. You can lay off any other assignments. Just find the answer to this one. And quickly, please.’