The Levelling

by William Mitchell

  “We didn’t come under fire.”

  “It wasn’t a normal weapon.”

  “Some kind of death ray?”

  Another pause. “Something like that.”

  “And was this man involved?” Howard indicated the picture of John Erebus Ardent on the table in front of him.

  “Yes,” Simon said, this time with no hesitation at all. “He was involved.”

  Howard sat back and took a deep breath. “Just tell me what you want me to do,” he said.

  THE MARINES

  THE RETURN TO Germany was by sea, initially a Royal Navy frigate out of Dover, which went as far as the Weser estuary before craning a Royal Marine river patrol boat into the water under cover of night. It was the same place—and time of day—that Howard and Teddy had crossed the coast on that last mission, just over a week before. Then the frigate returned home, while the boat made its way up the dark river, its diesel engine chugging softly as it pushed against the flow.

  The boat was small, barely forty feet long, but was home to six Royal Marines plus Howard. Beyond initial pleasantries back on the frigate they hadn’t spoken to him much; Howard got the impression they carried out insertion of agents into hostile territory as part of their regular duties, and as far as they were concerned he was just another spy who needed delivering, like human luggage. Espionage still took place, even with Germany destroyed—the threat of an underground resurgence was always uppermost in the planners’ minds—so if that was what he looked like to the men who were transporting him, he wasn’t going to argue. The plan was that they would take him to a predetermined location, drop him off, and then he’d be on his own.

  What he was supposed to do when he got there though was less clear. He was a pilot, and a good one too, trained and experienced to a level that even most other airmen could only aspire to, but a mission like this was beyond anything he’d ever had to face. There were people who did this kind of thing for a living, sneaking round hostile territory, killing to order, and any one of them could have been given this job. Not for the first time, the words “What the hell am I doing here?” went through Howard’s mind. The only thing he could think of was that he’d be given his orders on arrival, some kind of sealed missive kept to the last minute to protect need-to-know, and those orders would somehow explain the whole thing. Then he remembered what had happened to Teddy, and Simon’s assurance that the man he was here to kill was involved—the only honest thing Simon had said as far as Howard could tell—and Howard made up his mind to see this through.

  He found a spot near the bow where he wasn’t in the way, then sat himself on a rations crate while the moonlit forest thickened around them. He took a package out of his jacket’s inside pocket. Wrapped in canvas was the last thing Simon had given him before sending him on his way. Everything Howard carried or wore had been provided specially for this mission—clothing and boots with no metallic fasteners, leather pouches instead of tin boxes—but the package was the important one. Howard unwound the fabric, revealing the dagger inside. It was made of hardwood of some kind, dense and heavy, almost black in colour, with an edge far sharper than the material it was made from would suggest.

  “This is what you need to kill him with,” Simon had said. “Carry nothing made of metal anywhere near him, do you understand? This is the only weapon you’ll get through. How you do it is up to you, get him when he’s sleeping or whatever, but just make sure you do it with this.”

  Howard held the dagger again, getting the feel for the weight of it in his hand. He’d given up asking Simon for explanations—why it had to be him, why it had to be done this way, what plan he was working to other than “go there and kill him”—and had resigned himself to simply seeing what happened and doing the best he could.

  Then a call came from the back of the boat.

  “Hey! Tea’s up if you want it!”

  Howard wrapped the dagger up again, then went to the stern, where four of the Marines were gathered round a small kettle.

  “Thanks,” he said as one of them handed him a mug. It tasted foul, and gritty, but he was grateful nonetheless.

  The light was building in the east, competing with the Moon to light up the fog patches that sat low on the water as if they’d spilled down the river banks and pooled there. The boat cut through them, one after another, leaving swirling silver whirlpools seemingly hovering over the water.

  “Have you been up this river before?” Howard said to the corporal who’d given him the tea, a man called Dixon, half Howard’s age by the look of him.

  “Couple of times,” Dixon said. “Not as far as where you’re going though.”

  “Met any trouble?”

  Dixon shrugged, then grinned. “Once or twice maybe.”

  Howard was about to ask him more, in case his previous experiences would give any clues as to what lay ahead, but was interrupted by Georgie, another of the corporals, making a deliberately vocal display of displeasure at the state of the rations.

  “They’re still giving us this bloody muck?” Georgie said, his broad Yorkshire accent somehow perfectly suited to the level of disgust he was showing. He had a half-chewed ration bar in his hand, some kind of creamy yellow substance that managed to look greasy and sugary all at the same time. “Hands up who’s ever eaten one of these and shat it out within half an hour?”

  Pretty much every hand on the boat went up.

  “I rather go hungry,” Georgie said, and threw the thing across the water. It disappeared into the surface mist and sank without trace.

  Just then the team’s sergeant called out: “Cover on both sides! Eyes left and right!”

  The Marines ran to the sides of the boat, tea and small-talk forgotten. They raised their rifles, taking aim into the thickly wooded river banks, scanning back and forth. Then Howard saw why—ruined buildings could now be seen in amongst the trees, the remains of the city of Bremerhaven. People still inhabited the ruined cities, living off the land but making what use they could of the remaining structures. He’d had people take pot-shots at him from the ground before now, harmless at ten thousand feet, but in the boat, with that much cover on either side, he suddenly realised how exposed they were.

  The river was still wide this close to the sea though, so it was easy to sail down the middle and give the banks a wide berth, especially as the bombed-out tree-infested ruins were concentrated on one side. There was no sign of anyone. Then the river went round a bend, after which the wrecked buildings were on the other side. This time there were people there, a group of six men, skinny and famished, balancing on the jagged top edge of one of the higher remaining walls. They saw the boat and started shouting incoherently, at which point the two of the Marines on that side took aim at them while the others continued to scan the wreckage and foliage on either side. The men on the wall weren’t armed, but one of them picked up a rock and threw it at the boat. It splashed into the water after covering less than half the distance.

  “Hardly worth wasting a bullet,” one of the Marines said. But they kept their aim on the men until the wrecked town was well behind them.

  It was later that day that the bodies came floating down the river. There were over a hundred of them, young and old alike, including children, all dressed in brown rags. At the first sight of them one of the Marines called out “Masks on!” at which point everyone on the boat grabbed a gas mask and pulled it over their heads. Howard had one pressed into his hands as well; he’d practised with one often enough that he had it tightened round his face in less than five seconds. Then the boat slowed down so that it could navigate through the corpses without driving over them.

  “Worst thing you can do,” Dixon said to Howard, his voice muffled through the mask, “cut one with the propeller and spill its guts. Or let the gas out.”

  “Why?” Howard said.

  “Cholera. That’s what kills most of them. If you see a bunch of dead people all in the water all at once, chances are they were dumped there, fast as possible
, to stop the spread. Inland they’d just burn them, but not here. It poisons the whole river.”

  Sure enough, the Marines kept their gas masks on for another five miles after they’d passed the bodies. Howard sniffed the air cautiously once they’d been given the all-clear. The air smelled musty, but it was a relief to get that heavy contraption off his face.

  Later that day they got to the city of Bremen. Like the towns they’d seen on the way, nothing was left but wrecked shells of buildings, some leaning like crooked tombstones, already losing the battle with the undergrowth that grew around and through them. The river was narrower here, with ruins on both sides, making it harder to keep a safe distance. The Marines were the most alert Howard had seen them, nothing about them but focus and tension, aiming their rifles into the ruins and watching for any movement. This time, there was none.

  As they left the last of the city behind them they passed a toppled monument, a slender stone tower with a swastika at the top now lying in pieces, with the swastika semi-submerged in the river. It had once been gold plated, but was now tarnished and pitted. One of the Marines, a man about Howard’s age named Vance, raised his rifle and took a shot at it. It was the first shot Howard had seen any of them take, and the loud crack sounded deafening compared to the silence of the dead city. The shot was a hit though, and a fresh dent appeared in the swastika’s metal structure to prove it. The clang of the buckled metal echoed around even longer than the gunshot.

  “Now that was worth a bullet,” Vance said.

  They carried on into the night, the Marines having established a shift pattern between themselves for sleeping and rations. Howard took the opportunity to sleep too, using a kit bag as a pillow. He knew even before he lay down that he would see Amy again, and sure enough he did, in that same strange building that he’d never seen in real life but deep down knew was the house she’d shared with her friends from the Coventry records office while he was stationed a hundred miles away. And yet again he saw the flames hunting her down like they were alive, pursuing her down that wooden-framed hallway as she tried to escape.

  He woke at daybreak. The river was even narrower here; a rock thrown from either side could hit them with ease. This had been farmland once, Dixon told him, but was now rapidly becoming a forest, with no sign of any cities. There would still be settlements though, clearings for villages and hovels, like the ones Howard had seen from the air. They tended to be set back from the river, to avoid seasonal flooding, with just a trail down to the river bank to let the inhabitants collect water. It was an old way of life, centuries old, that the inhabitants had simply had to adjust to over the last ten years.

  Yet on two occasions they did actually see people by the waterside, children both times, half-starved and dehydrated with sores over their faces and bodies. The first one was a girl of about twelve, though judging the age of someone that emaciated was hard; she could well have been in her teens for all Howard knew. She stood and watched mutely as the boat passed her, though the Marines kept their weapons trained on her nonetheless. The second one, five miles upstream, was a boy, much younger in appearance. This time he did react, shouting something as they passed. What he’d said wasn’t discernible, but the tone sounded defiant. Then he raised his right arm in the old Nazi salute and stood to attention, his face set with anger. He was too young to even have been born when the war ended, but someone had taught him that all the same.

  “They don’t give up, do they Sergeant?” Georgie said.

  “That they don’t” the sergeant said.

  Howard barely knew how many days they’d been on the boat. It couldn’t have been more than three, but it felt like over a week, a week of monotony, of waking, eating, and sleeping, with occasional bursts of fear and adrenaline whenever they saw habitation, or structures that might provide cover for snipers. The river was harder to navigate here, with frequent bends and blind corners, often choked with debris and fallen branches, that forced the Marines to slow almost to walking speed, not knowing what dangers were round each turn. Howard admired the discipline and focus they were showing, not only in the long tedious stretches, but the potentially dangerous ones too, when every one of them would become alert as rapidly as if a switch had been thrown, before returning to their routine existence once the danger had passed; if they’d had to keep this up for a month he was sure they could have done it. By now they were barely putting ten miles behind them each day. They’d done that much every hour when they’d started.

  Then, on what might have been the fifth day, Howard woke to something different.

  He heard Georgie’s voice first, his broad Yorkshire brogue coming from near the bow.

  “I do not like this,” Georgie was saying, “I do not like this one fucking bit.”

  Howard raised his head, and looked in that direction to see Georgie plus two of the others staring off into the greenery. For the first time on this mission they looked unsettled, and when Howard sat up and looked around, he saw at once what had troubled them.

  The green forest around them was just as thick, just as riotous, but now instead of dense woodland, with trees of familiar shapes and tones, they were in the middle of a jungle. The trees were taller, painted in vivid shades of green that went way beyond what any European forest could produce, and a dense web of vines and creepers was strung between them, choking the trunks and branches. The sky above was grey and hazy, and the air down by the river had that clammy, humid feel of jungle air in the early morning.

  “I told you Georgie! I told you something was up!” Alfie said. He was the youngest of all of them, barely even an adult to Howard’s eyes.

  The sergeant was at the bow with them. “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “There was something following us in the night, something in the water,” Alfie said.

  “You were on watch last night?”

  “Yes Sergeant.”

  “What did you see?”

  “It was an animal. Something swimming. I thought it was a fish flapping around at first but it was too big. And it kept coming back.”

  “And you didn’t wake anyone?”

  “It was just an animal Sergeant. I didn’t think it worth making a fuss. But there was the other stuff too.” His voice trailed off, a look of confusion on his face.

  “Go on Corporal.”

  “I could hear someone calling, from the river bank. I think it was—it sounded like my dad. But he’s dead.”

  “Your what?”

  Alfie had his faced screwed up in embarrassment, wishing he hadn’t spoken. “I could have been wrong. Maybe I was tired.”

  “Did anyone else hear this?” The sergeant turned to Georgie, who’d been driving the boat overnight.

  “I didn’t hear a thing Sergeant.”

  The sergeant turned his back on them in exasperation. “Jesus fucking Christ,” was all he seemed able to say. He looked like he was only just keeping his composure. Then he stared at the impossible jungle around them. “Just—just get to your bunks. With any luck this’ll be back to normal when you’re done. God only knows how though.”

  The air got hotter as the day went on, until it became choking. The jungle got noisier too, with unseen animals crashing through the branches, hooting and screeching as they went. The Marines were doing their best to carry on with the journey, focussing on the job of running the boat and keeping watch for threats, but the scene around them had become the thing that none of them dared mention.

  “It’s no good Sergeant,” Dixon said at one point from the helm, breaking the unspoken taboo. “We’re meant to be following the charts, but what’s the point? We should be near Petershagen by now, but this,”—he gestured vaguely at the chaotic rainforest around them—“What are we even doing here?”

  “Just keep going, and keep logging your progress,” the Sergeant said. “A mile is a mile, nothing can change that. Count the miles, and when we’re there, we’re there.”

  It sounded more like a way to ignore the
obvious though, rather than sound advice for the way ahead. But nonetheless they carried on, as the river got narrower and the air got even hotter.

  Alfie was on the edge of his nerves the whole of that day, fumbling and dropping everything he touched. Howard could see exhaustion in his eyes by the middle of the afternoon, and he got the distinct feeling Alfie hadn’t told the whole story of what he’d seen and heard the night before. Howard even tried asking him at one point, but Alfie just turned red and said he had to inventory the ammo boxes again, and barely spoke to anyone the rest of the day.

  Howard actually managed to sleep that night, lulled into tiredness by boredom and routine, despite the bizarre surroundings they now found themselves in. The heat was soporific as well, and he could tell that the day shift were getting drowsy as night time approached. Those who were meant to be sleeping though were kept awake by the heat, shifting and complaining as one hour led into another. But when the darkness fell, Howard tucked himself into the nest of kit bags he’d allocated himself and drifted off.

  He was woken when it was still dark, and could tell straight away that something unusual was happening.

  It was Alfie’s voice he heard first. He was at the bow, staring off into the darkness, saying “Dad? Dad? Where are you?” again and again, his voice wavering. The sergeant was there as well, plus Vance, but the two older crew members were making no attempt to settle Alfie or find out what was wrong. Instead they too were also gazing into the blackness.

  At first they were silent, but then the sergeant began saying “No, no, no,” under his breath, then again but louder, then again and again, making strange humming noises in between each time. His voice was wavering even more than Alfie’s. Then he began screaming “Tommy! Tommy!” again and again.