Scorched Earth

by Robert Muchamore

  Edith charged up to the third floor and burst into the apartment. ‘Americans!’ she shouted jubilantly. ‘They’re at the top of the hill.’

  Henderson shot up off the couch, but when he spoke he sounded suspicious. ‘What do you mean? Tell me exactly what you saw.’

  ‘Americans!’ Edith shouted, as she jumped in the air and clapped.

  Marc arrived last and began a more detailed explanation. As he spoke, he became aware of a rattling sound. It was clearly tank tracks, but they moved faster than the German tanks they’d grown used to and their petrol engines purred, in contrast to the slow chug of German diesel.

  ‘Now I believe you,’ Paul said, as he opened the front window to get a proper look.

  Several other locals had thrown their windows open and shouts came from all directions.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Paul screamed. ‘We’re gonna be all right!’

  Luc burst in with Laure as the lead tanks started to cross the bridge. As Edith joined Paul at the window a squadron of British escort fighters swooped overhead, but apparently found nothing worth shooting at.

  A nervous silence broke out as the American pathfinders made a dash for the city centre, but as clocks neared 02:30, the sound of Jeeps, tanks and trucks again filled the street. This time people shouting thanks to the Americans out of their windows found indignant shouts coming back in French.

  ‘We’re no bloody Yanks. We’re French!’

  Even in daylight it would have been an easy mistake. The Free French Army wore rebadged American uniforms and rode in American-made vehicles. They poured down towards the bridge in such numbers that they were forced to knock down barricades and use other routes.

  A church bell clanged as everyone headed downstairs. Luc caught up with Laure on the way down and raised one of her lads to his shoulders. As people poured out of their doorways, the street backed up with tanks and trucks painted with small French flags.

  Girls in their night clothes jumped on the side of trucks and kissed soldiers. A French soldier shouted out of the top of a tank. ‘Are the telephones working?’

  The woman downstairs, who had the only telephone in the building, shouted back, ‘Yes!’

  ‘Call my mother on o-nine-eight-one. Tell her I’ll be dropping in for breakfast!’

  The single church bell became a chorus from all directions and someone placed a gramophone at an upstairs window and began playing La Marseillaise.

  Henderson came down with his last bottle of champagne, to smiles and pats on the back from neighbours who’d been avoiding him all the previous day. After taking a couple of swigs Henderson passed the bottle into a truck, with no expectation of getting it back.

  ‘I called your mother,’ the woman downstairs cried, as the backed-up convoy started moving again. ‘She said she’s waiting for you and she loves you!’

  Marc had tears streaking down his face as Edith jumped on to a tank and had her slender frame lifted into the turret.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Henderson shouted cheerfully.

  ‘Berlin or bust!’ Edith shouted back, though she changed her mind and jumped down as her ride neared the bridge.

  PT danced around with Laure’s younger son balanced on his shoulders as the next line of trucks lit up the top of the hill.

  ‘I can’t believe they’re finally here,’ Paul said, looking at Marc. ‘I wish Rosie could see this.’

  ‘She can,’ Marc said, as he gave Paul an almighty slap on the back. ‘She’s up there watching, and I bet she’s bloody loving it!’

  Aftermath

  All facts correct as of December 2012.

  PARIS

  Allied planners wanted to divert troops around Paris, but the resistance uprising and pressure from the Free French led to a change of heart. In the event, American and French troops met little German resistance as they entered the western suburbs of Paris in the early hours of 24 August 1944. A lack of resources and a transport network crippled by bombing and sabotage meant that large-scale German reinforcements never reached the city.

  Within two days, most of the troops who swept jubilantly through Paris had exited the city to the east. They were soon engaged in much bloodier battles as the Allies launched their final push towards Berlin.

  Explosives had been placed around many of Paris’ most important buildings, including the Louvre, the parliament building and the Eiffel Tower. Hitler gave orders that Paris be destroyed. However, the city’s commander, General von Choltitz, did not pass these final orders on to the demolition teams.

  To this day, von Choltitz is sometimes credited as the Nazi who saved Paris. Others claim that he didn’t give the final order because he was keen to surrender to the Allies and save his own skin.

  The whole of France was liberated by mid-September. Resistance organisations disbanded, or morphed into new political parties. The Maquis emerged from the woods, while Milice and other German collaborators were subjected to brutal street justice.

  As the hot summer of 1944 ended, most people thought that rapid Allied advances would end the war within months. But the fighting got tougher when the Allies reached Germany and another million people would die on European soil before Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945.

  CHERUB

  Charles Henderson’s Espionage Research Unit B was one of more than a dozen intelligence organisations set up by the British during World War Two. As soon as the war in Europe ended, the heads of Britain’s traditional intelligence services – MI5 and MI6 – moved ruthlessly to shut down their rivals.

  CHERUB was officially closed on 1 October 1944. Campus and all facilities were mothballed. All of the organisation’s documents were destroyed, including the records of twenty boys and one girl who were trained for duties in occupied France. As a result, there is no official history of the wartime CHERUB organisation and none of its staff or agents ever received medals, pensions or any other recognition for their war service.

  A review of CHERUB’s successful wartime activities, along with rising tensions between the new global superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union, led to a decision to begin a new CHERUB organisation in July 1945. Charles Henderson was appointed head of the revived organisation, along with his deputies, Eileen McAfferty and Elizabeth DeVere (known as Boo).

  McAfferty took charge of the organisation following the death of Charles Henderson and ran it for the following twenty-one years. Today, CHERUB campus is a one-of-a-kind intelligence facility that is home, school and training camp to more than 200 highly trained child agents.

  PT BIVOTT

  In the years immediately following World War Two, PT Bivott returned to working on civilian ships in the Mediterranean. In 1949 he was arrested in southern Italy and extradited to the United States on charges of armed robbery and second-degree murder, relating to an incident that took place in December 19383.

  As PT was only thirteen at the time of the robbery, a judge agreed to give PT a suspended prison sentence, provided he report immediately to a recruiting office and sign up for three years’ military service.

  PT’s career in the US Navy was a chequered one, marked by a number of brawls and courts martial for running illegal gambling operations. This naval service was forcibly extended until 1953, due to the Korean War. He saw action on small boats in harassment and demolition operations along the Korean peninsula. PT was decorated for gallant service, but never promoted due to his poor disciplinary record.

  Upon release from the US Navy, PT was approached by Eileen McAfferty with a view to joining the expanding post-war CHERUB organisation. PT joined the new CHERUB in early 1954. He served the organisation in various roles, including physical training instructor, and rose to become Deputy Chairman before taking retirement in 1985.

  PT was twice married and had a daughter and two sons. He died in 2002 at the age of seventy-seven.

  PAUL CLARKE

  Paul Clarke returned to Great Britain shortly after the liberation of Paris. He
had inherited a reasonable sum of money from his late parents and was enrolled in boarding school, spending school holidays with a maternal cousin whom he had not previously met.

  Paul continued to excel in art and drawing. He studied Art History at Cambridge University, and obtained a first-class degree. After university, Paul did two years’ national service in the RAF and his drawing skills saw him assigned to a cartography department.

  Throughout this period, Paul dated his long-term friend Edith Mercier, and they married when his national service ended in the summer of 1951. Edith gave birth to twin girls the following year and they went on to have three further children before divorcing in 1978.

  Following his national service, Paul tried to make a career as an artist, without much success. A growing young family forced him to take a job in a small London art gallery and, with a keen business brain, he soon made enough money from buying and selling artwork to buy out his boss.

  Over the following decades, Paul became a well-known figure in the art world. He was a pioneer of the contemporary art scene, with two galleries in London and additional spaces in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. He was appointed to museum boards in the UK and the United States and wrote two books on modern art.

  Paul was a collector as well as a gallery owner and the explosion in contemporary art prices from the 1980s onwards meant that his wealth ballooned to a level in excess of £650 million at the time of his death.

  Paul Clarke returned to Beauvais every summer to visit his lifelong friend Marc Kilgour and the grave of his sister Rosie. He died in November 2011 at the age of eighty-three and was survived by his ex-wife Edith, three daughters, two sons and eleven grandchildren.

  CHARLES HENDERSON

  Henderson remained a controversial figure, both inside the Royal Navy and the intelligence service. His post-war career was overshadowed by an investigation into the illegal use of chemical weapons during a raid on an underground bunker used to design navigation systems for the V1 Rocket4.

  This investigation was never concluded. Facing a possible military tribunal and a wife who was in and out of mental institutions, Henderson had increasing problems with alcohol addiction and delegated most of the responsibility for setting up the post-war CHERUB organisation to his deputy, Eileen McAfferty.

  A drunken row led to an incident in mid-1946 in which Henderson was fatally shot by his wife. She committed suicide two years later, while still awaiting trial for his murder.

  Apart from his young son, Henderson had no family at the time of his death and his in-laws showed no interest in five-year-old Terence. The boy was adopted by Henderson’s assistant, Eileen McAfferty, and became Terence McAfferty.

  Terence McAfferty, more commonly known as Mac, became a CHERUB agent in 1950. After a career in business he returned to campus as a member of staff in 1983 and was the organisation’s chairman from 1993 until his retirement in 2006.

  LUC MAYEFSKI

  Eileen McAfferty worked hard to find a suitable place for Luc after the wartime CHERUB organisation disbanded. He eventually scraped through the entrance exam for a British boarding school, but was expelled after several incidents of vicious bullying and the head-butting of a PE master.

  Luc wound up homeless on the streets of London, but soon found work as a collection agent for a group of loan sharks. After heavy bombings, post-war London was desperately short of housing and shady landlords wanted to evict tenants paying low rents which were fixed by law. Luc thrived, first working as an enforcer for slum landlords and then by building his own property empire.

  As Luc’s success grew, he tried to position himself as a respectable property owner. This façade collapsed when a newspaper exposé described him as ‘Britain’s Nastiest Landlord’. Following this, Luc was charged with several offences and served three years of a five-year prison sentence for aggravated assault, insurance fraud and conspiracy to commit arson. While in prison, Luc’s property company was run by an accountant who stole large sums of money. Luc was released from prison in 1968 and declared bankrupt two months later.

  Penniless and with his reputation in tatters, Luc moved to Spain and began a new property business. By the early 1980s Luc was enjoying life in a seafront villa with a girlfriend and two young daughters.

  In June 1984, neighbours overheard screaming at the villa. Police found Luc’s girlfriend bloody and battered after a violent row. Officers chased Luc’s car as he tried to get away, but he lost control and died in a collision with an oncoming truck.

  Luc was fifty-five years old and was survived by two young daughters and a son from a previous relationship.

  MARC KILGOUR

  Two days after Paris was liberated, Marc rode a bike to Morel’s farm, north of Beauvais, and was reunited with his girlfriend. Both aged sixteen, Marc and Jae were married on Christmas Day 1944, and their first child was born three months later.

  Jae’s older brothers returned from four years as prisoners of war in Germany, but both men had serious health problems, so it fell to Marc and Jae to put Morel’s farm back into shape. As he was married with a young child and held responsibility for the farm, Marc received exemption from military service.

  Marc and Jae waited six years for their second child and had five more over the decade that followed. They doubled the area of Morel’s farm by buying up smaller neighbouring farms and led the lifestyle of a wealthy rural family with their seven children.

  Marc remained troubled by many of the things he did during the war, and always refused to speak about them. His boyhood wanderlust never returned. He rarely left the Beauvais area and established himself as a pillar of the community. He became a patron of the orphanage where he’d been raised and made generous donations.

  Marc also served a single term as Regional Mayor. He remained popular throughout his term of office but did not stand for re-election. Many people said he was simply too nice for the cut and thrust of politics.

  Jae Kilgour died in 2009, two weeks after their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary. At the time of writing, Marc Kilgour is eighty-five years old and in good health. He is retired and the family farm is now run by his eldest daughter, Rosie.

  Notes

  3 See Henderson’s Boys: Eagle Day

  4 See Henderson’s Boys: One Shot Kill

  OTHER CHARACTERS FEATURED IN THE HENDERSON’S BOYS SERIES

  Instructors Kindhe Boyamour and Rufus Kadiri returned to their pre-war careers working on ships plying cargo between northern Africa and the Middle East.

  Campus assistant Elizabeth DeVere (Boo) worked on CHERUB campus until she retired in 1987. She died in February 2012 and was survived by three children.

  Maxine Clere married a French politician and had two children. She wrote a successful autobiography about her work with the Ghost Circuit, which omitted all references to Charles Henderson and his team. The book was made into a French-language film and a BBC television drama. She received medals from France, Britain and Israel for her wartime service and died in 2006, aged ninety-one.

  Mason LeConte was the only one of Henderson’s wartime agents to become an agent in the post-war CHERUB. He retired after several successful missions and engaged in a brief career as a racing driver, before retiring to run a garage near to CHERUB campus.

  For many years Mason prepared and maintained vehicles used on CHERUB missions. He still lives close to campus and although he is seventy-eight years old, he still occasionally lends a hand when the CHERUB vehicle shop is short-staffed.

  Troy LeConte studied architecture and worked as a manager in Paul Clarke’s London gallery. He is currently the trustee of a project to build a permanent gallery to house Paul Clarke’s art collection.

  The captured German E-Boat known as Madeline II was one of the few examples of the type to survive the war. She was used as a support ship by the British Navy until it became impossible to get spare parts. She has now been restored to her original wartime specification and is on display at the Royal Navy museum in Ports
mouth. All records of her capture and role with CHERUB were destroyed.

  Eileen McAfferty was chairwoman of CHERUB for twenty-one years. She married in her sixties and died following a short illness in 1985.

  Campus assistant Joyce Slater worked on CHERUB campus for more than twenty years. She was forced to leave the secret organisation when she became a well-known figure in the disability rights movement. Joyce went on to become head of an international aid organisation and was a government advisor on disability issues throughout the 1970s and 80s. She has been a member of the House of Lords since 1988 and still regularly attends debates.

  Combat instructor Takada worked at CHERUB campus until his retirement in the 1970s. His daughter still works on campus in the same role.

  Brothers Joel and Sam Voclain stayed in France and worked as butcher and heating engineer respectively. Joel died in 2004. Sam is retired and lives in Portugal.

  The bodies of the last two orphans kidnapped by the 108th Heavy Tank Battalion were never found. The Beauvais orphanage near Morel’s farm is now a modern day-care facility and primary school. A monument on the site commemorates the lives of the five orphans and the nun who was killed while trying to stop them being taken away.

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