‘First-class propaganda for the enemy.’
‘Absolutely. So you can realise the shock it was to find a copy in Britain’s locker. Particularly if he intended to desert and take it with him.’
‘Is there any suggestion of how he got hold of the document?’
This question produced a lengthy and somewhat embarrassed silence. Finally, Raven said, ‘I’ve probably told you more than I should.’
‘Any confidence you’ve honoured me with I’ll respect.’
‘Thank you. But I think that all I can say at the moment is that the third charge, of abstracting a confidential document, intending to hand it over to the enemy, was to have been supported by evidence from a single witness, a clerk in the regimental office.’
‘You say it was to have been. Do I gather that the third charge has been withdrawn?’
‘The JAG has indicated that it might be inadvisable to press that charge. He questioned the clerk and did not find him a convincing witness. So I’d say that you need not trouble about the third charge.’
‘But there’s no reason I shouldn’t ask Britain about it.’
‘None at all. If the third charge is pressed, and he’s got a plausible explanation of how that document got into his locker, the court must certainly be told of it.’
‘And the members of the court are going to be?’
‘It’s never easy to find volunteers. However, there’s always Colonel Trett. Being in the RAOC he hasn’t been overworked. He’s always willing to make himself available. I think he enjoys it. In this case, the others are to be Lieutenant Rankin and Second Lieutenant Banner. Both comparative newcomers to the Bedfords.’
‘Who’ll do what Trett tells them.’
‘I imagine so. And for his part he’ll do what the JAG tells him.’
‘It doesn’t sound an easy tribunal to argue with.’
‘Speaking personally,’ said Raven, ‘I’d as soon argue with the Rock of Gibraltar.’
Luke had rarely seen a more intriguing face than the one he was inspecting in the light which shone through the barred windows of the cell in the citadel. The lateral lighting emphasised the high and low points; the close-cropped grizzled hair, the broad intellectual forehead, the thin straight nose, the rat-trap mouth and the square cloven chin.
Half non-commissioned officer, half don.
The most striking thing about it was the eyes, of a lighter blue than seemed natural in a man. Credible in a girl perhaps, though they would have been remarkable even then. They were, as Luke recognised uncomfortably, the eyes of a fanatic.
One of Captain Raven’s comments came to his mind. There was a hint of resignation in the face, the look of a man who had come a long way on a carefully planned journey and now saw the end in sight.
‘Very good of you to take me on,’ said Sergeant Britain. His voice was quiet and perfectly controlled. ‘I gather that Frank Millbanke twisted your wrist.’
‘Didn’t need a lot of twisting,’ said Luke.
‘And did he make it clear that I wasn’t likely to be an easy client?’
‘He didn’t say much about you actually. He gave me a graphic outline of your military career. Come to think of it, he did add that you were a difficult character.’
Britain laughed and his face became a lot more human. He said, ‘Difficult. I’m afraid I’ve been that ever since I joined up. Even before that, perhaps. You may know that Eton specialises in long and careful reports. When I left, my house master spread two pages over me. The gist of it was that I had a good brain which I obstinately refused to use in any orthodox way.’
‘That must have made it difficult for you to fit into the army.’
‘I fitted in well enough with my fellow squaddies. What I found difficult was the notion that people in authority have to be respected. That they must, by reason of their rank, be right in all they said and did. With some honourable exceptions, the opposite was true. The junior officers were tolerable, but the more senior they got, the more short-sighted and stupid they seemed to become. It was gradually borne in on me—the realisation didn’t come at once—that the ones who were so senior that they were actually running the war weren’t simply short-sighted, they were blind. They had lost any sense of direction. They had no idea where they were going. When I was convinced of that I saw it was my duty to open people’s eyes to the truth. And to the best of my ability I did just that.’
He stopped abruptly. Then said, ‘But you haven’t come here to discuss my heretical opinion. You want to discuss the charges.’
Luke said, ‘What you’ve just told me is very relevant to the main charge. For I take it that you did, in fact, fire off the barrage of criticism that you’ve been charged with.’
‘Wouldn’t deny a word of it. I could see the rats at the back of the audience scribbling it all down. I don’t doubt they got the gist of it correctly.’
‘And you really did suggest that soldiers could abandon military discipline.’
‘I suggested they should think for themselves. If that’s held to be treason, so be it.’
‘I’ve discussed the point with a friend of mine who was a barrister with a criminal practice. He tries to keep himself up to date and he tells me there’s been a lot of discussion about the Act they seem to be relying on. The Statute of Treason—’
‘1351.’
‘On the nail.’
‘Nearly six hundred years old, but still sufficiently the law of the land to send Sir Roger Casement to the gallows. The definition of treason—correct me if I’m wrong—is “being adherent to the King’s enemies, giving them aid and comfort”, which the court construes in the broadest way. Meaning that if anything you say or do helps the enemy, then you’re guilty of treason. Right?’
Luke could find little comfort in this.
He said, ‘If, in fact, the words that were reported are words that you used—’
‘Certainly I used them. With my eyes wide open to the risk involved. I was aiming to slide out down the escape route I’d heard about. I’d got my fare, and I knew the password and the address to go to. If I didn’t make it, what the hell! Do you realise that, even when nothing particular is going on, there are around two hundred casualties every day? Two hundred young men who could be saved if the war could be stopped even for a day. One life didn’t seem to me to be an excessive price to pay.’
He’d been right about the fanaticism, thought Luke. It was written in the eyes, the mouth and the chin.
He said, ‘If the law of treason is as wide and as all embracing as you suggest, it’s difficult to see how we’re going to get round it.’
‘Not difficult. Pretty nearly impossible,’ said Britain cheerfully. ‘All the same, when you think of some of the things that are said in Parliament and are written in the papers—what price Lord Lansdowne’s effort in the Daily Telegraph? That must have given the Germans a lot of pleasure and comfort—’
‘I’ll certainly press the point, if I’m allowed to. But I’m afraid they’ll make a distinction between things said by a member of the public, however reprehensible, and things said by a soldier.’
‘Whose hands are tied by the Army Act. I agree. But what do you make of the lies and forgeries in the other two charges?’
‘Lies and forgeries?’
‘I mean the typescript which was said to have been found in my locker and the mysterious figures scribbled on the back of my packet of money. Someone in M.I.5 must have been working overtime.’
‘What … what exactly are you telling me?’
‘The truth,’ said Britain with a smile. ‘I’m sorry if it hurts.’
‘You’re saying that someone on our side manufactured the typescript and put it in your locker? And wrote those figures on the packet of money?’
‘Of course that’s what I’m saying. Are you so imbued with schoolboy ideas of honour that you don’t realise the depth to which a security service can sink when it’s under pressure?’
Luke had got his b
reath back and his mind was working again. He said, ‘Since you know so much, you can tell me some more. If you didn’t do the typing, then who did?’
‘No great mystery about that. Almost certainly a man called Merrick. Lance-Corporal Merrick. A clerk in the company office, a nark of Colonel Fleming’s and widely believed to be his boyfriend, though myself I don’t think that’s true.’
‘And he was the man the JAG questioned and found to be an unsatisfactory witness?’
‘That’s the one. It really was an ingenious swindle and I’d love to tell you all about it, but if the third charge isn’t going to be pressed, it’d be a waste of time.’
‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘I do see that.’
He was beginning to think that he had been told too much already.
‘It was tough enough,’ he said to Tom Braham and Joe that afternoon. ‘But now that Britain has, more or less, confessed that he did what he’s charged with—I’m talking about the main charge—he’s got a story about the other two charges which I find it hard to believe—how do I stand as defending counsel?’
‘Difficult,’ agreed Tom. ‘When a defendant confesses to the barrister who’s defending him, that puts him on the spot. He can’t argue in court that his client is innocent, when he knows that he’s not.’
‘So what does he do? Abandon the case?’
‘No. He falls back on the proposition that a man is innocent until he’s been conclusively proved to be guilty. In other words he can challenge the opposition to produce their proofs.’
‘I did wonder if they intended to call the police spies who listened in at the meetings.’
‘I think they’re bound to call them. And if they do it’s open to you to cross-examine them and get them to trip themselves up. But what you mustn’t do is put any question to them to suggest that your man didn’t make any statement at all.’
‘Since I’m not a barrister,’ said Luke, ‘I see no reason why I shouldn’t bend the rules a bit. After all, there’s not much they can do to me.’
‘Can’t disbar you,’ said Joe, with his gap-toothed grin, ‘seeing as how you’re not at the bar. But a word of warning: don’t waste too much time playing at lawyers. Pretty soon, I guess, we’re going to find ourselves in for a fighting war. I got this, red hot, from Louis Cellier at De Panne, and he got it from his cousin, at Koderzee—that’s a small village east of Ostend—seems Rudi’s launched one punitive expedition already. It arrived yesterday, in the Liebling. You remember the fishermen who ducked two of Rudi’s goons? Well, this was to teach them to mind their manners. They beat them up, burnt their boats and sailed home rejoicing.’
‘We’ve heard nothing about that,’ said Luke.
‘You’d have heard about it if you’d been an authorised user of die Schmuglerslinie.’
‘Come again.’
‘That’s a very private telephone line, dug in deep along the bank of the Colme. If you’re on the list, all you have to do is go to a small shack on the riverbank, pay your fee, and you get put through to a similar shack at Koderzee. I’d guess that end is controlled by Rudi and his boys.’
Luke, who had been examining the map, said, ‘Are you telling me that this telephone line actually crosses the line of battle?’
‘Certainly. It’s a nice, quiet part of the line. So why not? The people who laid it and use it—smugglers, I guess—find it so useful that they keep it from the authorities, who’d be bound to stop it if they knew about it.’
‘I think we ought to get on the operators’ list ourselves,’ said Joe. ‘You never know when we might find it useful.’
Chapter Thirteen
Lucas Byrd was an assistant advocate general and wore the insignia of a lieutenant colonel. Luke, facing him in court, thought that his appearance matched his name. A bird. Yes. But what sort of bird? Raven? Crow? Not as straightforwardly villainous as either of them. No. Surely he was a magpie. His smooth black hair and crisp white linen reproduced the colour scheme exactly. His face, too, had the magpie’s bullying look. His speciality would be the snatching of small birds from their nests and gobbling them up under the eyes of their mother.
When these thoughts occurred to him they were in the small back dining-room of the Hôtel Voyageurs at Montreuil.
A white sheet had been spread over the central table. The three members of the court sat in chairs at the head of it. One of the longer sides was occupied by the magpie, who had two assistant magpies with him. Luke had not yet identified their precise function. He occupied the other long side, with Tom next to him. A male stenographer sat at the foot of the table, prepared and seemingly competent to get down anything that was said.
Luke wondered if it might not have been safer for the defence to have their own note-taker, but there had not been time to organise this.
‘Don’t bother,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll all hear what’s said. They won’t dare to fudge it.’
The prisoner, in many ways the most important man there, had been squeezed away in a corner, with a guard on either side. There were no spectators. The smallness of the selected room seemed to indicate that spectators were neither expected nor welcome.
At eleven o’clock precisely, Colonel Trett rapped on the table to indicate that the court was in session.
A glance at Lt Col Byrd invited him to begin.
He said, ‘The accused, in this matter, is Sergeant Robert Cecil Britain, a member of the Third Regiment of His Majesty’s Bedfordshire Fusiliers. There are two charges against him.’
Luke looked at Tom, who nodded. The omission of the third charge did, at least, clear the field, but it deprived the defence of a lot of useful ammunition.
‘Charge number one,’ Byrd continued, ‘is that, contrary to the provisions of the Treason Act of 1351 the accused, being at the time a member of the armed forces did, by public and repeated utterances, afford aid and comfort to the enemies of His Majesty, King George V These utterances will be produced to you in the form of affidavits made by three members of the police who heard them.’
‘On your feet,’ hissed Tom.
Luke rose, and was glared at by Colonel Trett, who said, ‘If, by rising, you are indicating that you wish to address the court, you are out of order. You must await your turn.’
‘With respect,’ said Luke, ‘the matter I wish to raise is of such fundamental importance that it cannot well stand over.’
This produced a whispered colloquy between Colonel Trett and the AAG, who had been summoned to his side. It seemed to go on for a long time. When it concluded, Colonel Trett said, with evident reluctance, ‘I am advised that I should allow you the opportunity of speaking.’
‘I am obliged,’ said Luke. ‘The point I wish to make is a simple one. The words that the prisoner is alleged to have uttered constitute the essence of the charge against him. Under the rule of best evidence, they must, surely, be reported to the court at first hand by the men who heard them, not at second hand by means of a written record.’
This produced a further, and longer, outbreak of whispering from which Byrd emerged and said, choosing his words with evident care, ‘A court martial in the field is not bound by the strict rules of evidence which govern a civil or criminal court at home.’ He paused from time to time to glance at the stenographer, to make sure that his words were being duly recorded. ‘In a court martial held under active service conditions, consideration must always be given to the exigencies of the situation. To command the attendance of witnesses from the other side of the Channel would involve a considerable waste of time and effort and, not less importandy, of shipping space. It is permissible, in such circumstances, to accept evidence in the form of affidavits.’
Luke remained standing.
The president, eyeing him with loathing, said, ‘I presume that Colonel Byrd’s statement of the law answers your point.’
‘No, sir. It does not.’
The president looked likely to explode. He said, ‘Explain yourself and cease wasting our time.’
/> ‘With respect then, I have no particular quarrel with what the AAG has said, but surely it amounts only to an expression of his opinion. He says that oral evidence can be dispensed with. I say that he is exaggerating the difficulties, and that the attendance of these witnesses in person is necessary. As president of this tribunal, sir, you have heard two different opinions. Very well. It must surely now be for you to decide which of these differing views is acceptable.’ He turned to the stenographer. ‘A permanent record of your decision can then be made, and can be considered by the various authorities who will have to scrutinise these proceedings.’
The president looked unhappy.
Finally, giving the impression of a man who has been invited to dive off a high board and is uncertain of the depth of the water underneath, he croaked out, ‘My decision is that affidavit evidence will be acceptable.’
Colonel Byrd, who had reseated himself with ostentatious evidence of boredom during these exchanges, now rose to his feet and resumed the attack.
He said, ‘It will be sufficient for my purpose if I read you a single passage which is contained, practically verbatim, in the sworn statements of the three officers who heard it. It runs as follows—’
‘Slowly, please,’ said the president.
‘Sergeant Britain, on the occasion of one of the so-called private meetings that had been organised for him when he was on leave, is reported as saying, “Many of you will remember that, at Christmas-time in 1914, men on both sides rose from their trenches, advanced across no man’s land and shook hands with each other. It only needs sufficient men on each side to repeat this decisive gesture and the curtain can be pulled down on the senseless and bloodstained tragedy which is now nearing its fifth year of performance. You may say that any such gesture would involve disobedience to orders. What of it? Have these orders got divine sanction? Is disobedience to them a sin? Ask the families of the hundreds of young men, British—yes, and Germans—who have been cut off in the prime of life. Are you in any doubt as to what answer you would get? In practical terms, it only needs one determined man in each unit and sub-unit to organise a soldiers’ soviet. It would have to be started cautiously, but once such a movement was under way it would be impossible to stop it. If anyone was in any doubt about this, he would only have to look at our former allies, the Russians, to observe how promptly and effectively a military juggernaut can be thrown into reverse by the members of the rank and file that it is busy crushing under its wheels.” I could read you other passages to the same effect. But I would submit that the two or three hundred words which I have quoted to you—uttered by a serving soldier to his fellow soldiers—constitute a clear and unequivocal incitement to mutiny. If that does not amount to treason, then words have ceased to have any meaning.’
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