Between The Hunters And The Hunted

by Steven Wilson

  Chapter 3

  Coastal Command Photograph Analysis, outside London, 11 July 1941

  Lieutenant (j.g.) Jordan Cole, United States Naval Reserve, Office of Naval Intelligence, straightened awkwardly and rubbed the stiffness out of the small of his back. He shook his head in disgust at the notion of his only injury in this war coming as a result of hanging over light tables, his eye pressed to a stereoscopic eyepiece, looking for enemy ships hidden in black-and-white photographs. Not even for his own navy either, but for the Royal Navy. He was dispatched as an observer to the Royal Navy, his orders had read, as a part of an exchange program between the two services. That was a lie.

  He was dispatched to the Royal Navy, his commander at Norfolk had told him, because: “You wear the uniform of a naval officer but you aren’t a naval officer. You’re a dilettante, Cole. You may be a college professor outside of the navy, but you’re a waste of time in. You’re going to England, my fine young friend, as a special observer, and you’re going to do whatever the Limeys want you to do. Maybe you’ll grow up over there.”

  His commanding officer had said other things: comments about the navy not having to settle for officers just because there was a war on, even if it wasn’t their war. Things like that.

  Strangely, Cole liked the navy. He liked the regulation and stability, and for some reason he felt protected within the structure of the navy. He didn’t always fit and he sometimes said too much or even just enough at the wrong time. “If you would just learn to keep your goddamned mouth shut!” someone had told him. It couldn’t have been Ruth. He hadn’t heard from her in months.

  He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed them gently. He figured out the routine. Take a break, get a cup of tea, swing your arms about, and then get back to the photographs. Bend over the table, adjust the glass, and begin searching. If he found something that looked interesting he circled it with a red grease pencil so that Sublieutenant Richard Moore could look over it. Dickie Moore—all arms and legs with a mass of blond hair that defied control. A good man.

  “Active Service,” Moore had informed Cole. “What you Americans call Regular Navy, although I must confess that there is nothing very regular about me. Most irregular, in fact. Thank God my family is filthy rich and my father is rather keen on the navy.”

  “Here we are, sir,” Petty Officer Markley said, bringing a bound folder into the photograph analysis room. “Bit of a mess down there, sir. Those blokes aren’t as organized as they should be. Time at sea would cure that right off.” He set the thick folder on the table with a thump. “Raised a lovely protest, sir. I was forced to employ my rating and flex my muscles a bit. If you know what I mean, sir.”

  “That should have done it,” Cole said, smiling at the hulking man with the ludicrously large, red moustache that sat perfectly straight on a square face. Markley moved carefully through the strata of the Royal Navy, as any good petty officer should after years in the service. He was here only because a shipboard accident ended his career at sea and forced him to take an assignment in the quiet confines of Photo Analysis Operations. It took him a while to become used to Cole’s relaxed manner of doing things. “I don’t get excited,” Cole had once told the wary Markley, who eyed the young American with suspicion, “until there is blood on the deck.” Now they were—within reason and the restrictions of officer and noncommissioned officer, and cautiously on Markley’s side—friends.

  “Indeed it did, sir. Indeed it did. So here they are, After Action Reports.”

  “Just the Kattegat. Leka Island.”

  Markley straightened as if called to attention. “Not entirely, sir. The place was in a right mess, as I reported, sir. I took it upon myself to hurry the blokes along and in the confusion they gave me everything they had. Sir.”

  “I didn’t need everything, Markley. Just those flights pertaining to Leka Island.”

  “Exactly my words to those—”

  “That means that I’m going to have to have someone help me go through this mess.”

  “Sublieutenant Moore is just the man to assist you—”

  “Markley,” Cole said. “He isn’t here. He won’t be back for a couple of weeks, if we’re lucky. Take a look around, Markley. You’ll find you, ten thousand photographs, that folder, and me. I want the After Action Reports for reconnaissance flights over Leka Island, and as I always say, call it done when Markley is on it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Petty Officer Markley said, rubbing his mustache in disgust. “Begging your pardon, sir, but I haven’t a bit of experience manning these photographs, sir.”

  “You’re in luck, Markley. In the U.S. Navy we call this OJT.”

  “Sir?”

  “On-the-job training. Let’s get cracking.”

  “Sir,” Markley said, recognizing his defeat. He pulled bundles of papers out of the folder. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you American chaps are a colorful lot.”

  “Practically red, white, and blue, through and through.” Cole opened a drawer from under the light table and produced a fifth of whiskey. “Petty Officer,” he said, and tossed it to Markley. “This might help.”

  Markley acknowledged the gesture with a tip of the bottle and: “To your health, sir.”

  Cole had the photographs of Leka Island and a one-hundred-square-mile area around it carefully arranged on the table. Some of the photographs were clear, some obscured by haze, and some angled so that the images were distorted. It was detective work, interpreting photographs. Cole laughed to himself and shook his head. No, it was scholarship—some sort of ironic punishment for a failed associate professor of history. Instead of facts and figures, instead of primary and secondary documents, he studied photographs taken thousands of feet above islands, ships, roads, canals, mountains, and railroads. From all of that, with the loyal Dickie Moore at his side and the square-rigged Petty Officer Markley manning the slide projector, he briefed his superiors. He was off to war armed with a pointer, clad in chain-mail armor of reports and memorandums, and mounted on a podium in the darkness of a smoke-filled room cut neatly in half by a shaft of light thrown by the projector. And his audience: relaxed potentates of high command and senior officers who might have once been charged with ambition when they were younger but had since exchanged that attribute for comfort.

  The rewards for Cole’s service, however, had been considerable. The other day he had gotten a clap on the back from Commander Harry Hamilton, Royal Navy Intelligence Operations, Coastal Command, and his immediate superior.

  “Excellent job,” Hamilton had said. “Damn fine analysis.” That was when the slap on the back came. “Learning a bit, are we?” Hamilton had continued, hardly waiting for an answer. “Brilliant idea, this exchange. Americans observing how we do things. The only way to gain experience. Good thing, too. We’ll all be in it soon enough. Together again against the Hun, as it were.” Then Hamilton had decided to address the delicate issue of Cole’s temperament. “See here, Cole, you came with a bit of baggage, if you know what I mean. Must have been some bad blood back home, but let bygones be bygones, I always say. Carry on with the same spirit you’ve shown us and things will look up for you.”

  Cole straightened several of the photographs and planted his hands on the table, peering at the images. His eyes traveled over the black-and-white landscape, almost willing them to assume three-dimensional form, for valleys to sink, mountains to rise, seas to run in some sort of lazy motion under the watchful gaze of drifting clouds. He watched as details emerged from backgrounds to become things. Other times they buried themselves in shadows offering only questions. Is that a bridge? Are there two destroyers in that fiord?

  “What is so important about Leka Island?” Cole asked the photographs.

  “How’s that, sir?” Markley said, papers in hand.

  Cole straightened. “Find anything yet? About Leka?”

  “Yes, sir,” Markley said, handing a report to Cole. “N-for-Nancy. Coastal Command Hudson that went
out several days ago, sir.”

  Cole took the report and quickly scanned it. He found the section marked Enemy Defenses. He read it carefully. He sensed Markley standing by expectantly. “Come here,” he said to the petty officer. Markley followed him around the table to a light board covered with photographs, mounted on the wall.

  “Hit the switch,” Cole ordered, motioning to a wall mount. Markley did and the board flickered to life, the photographs glowing from the soft aura of the light behind them. “All of these are photographs of Leka Island,” he said, “which is really a collection of islands. This large island”—he pointed to a photograph—“and this grouping of islands.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take that glass”—he pointed to a stereoscope on the table—“and look over these photographs.”

  “Yes, sir,” Markley said hesitantly. Cole knew that Markley was old-sailor enough to be wary of an officer trying to entrap him. Even if he were only a Yank. Cole smiled to himself—they had the same kind of petty officers in the United States Navy.

  After several minutes Markley turned to Cole.

  “Well?” Cole said.

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but I’m not entirely certain—”

  “Just tell me what you see.”

  Markley took a deep breath. “Well, sir. Nothing. Some little squares and a thread or two, but if there is anything there, it’s well hidden.”

  “Those are buildings. The squares. The threads are roads. But you’re right. There is nothing else on Leka Island or around Leka Island worth a damn.”

  “Yes, sir,” Markley said, relaxing.

  “If that’s the case, Petty Officer Percival Markley, former gunner’s mate of the watch aboard His Majesty’s Ship Nelson, why do the Germans care so much about it?”

  “Sir?” Markley said.

  “N-for-Nancy made two flights over Leka Island. These photographs are the result of the first mission. I got a call from one of the base officers wanting to know if anything turned up because, as he put it, ‘Our chaps had a most unfortunate go of it.’ I told him that we didn’t find a thing but to be sure, could he schedule another mission? He did and this After Action Report is from the second mission. No photographs will be forthcoming because the plane had to jettison the cameras. Along with just about everything else.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said. He reached around Markley and turned off the light. “Percival,” he said to the petty officer, “there’s not a goddamned thing on those islands except some old fishermen’s shacks and a couple of dirt roads, but when a reconnaissance plane shows up all hell breaks loose. They don’t want us to see something. Whatever is there and however it is skillfully camouflaged, the Krauts are afraid that we’ll figure it out. They don’t want us anywhere near Leka Island. Why do they care so much for a bunch of rocks in the middle of nowhere?”

  “That’s a question for a better brain than mine, I’m afraid, sir.”

  “Yeah,” Cole said, thinking. “Mine, too, except …”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I sure hate to give up on something when I smell a rat. And I smell a very large German rat. Get me?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid that I don’t.”

  “We’ve found the hornets but not the nest.”

  “I see what you’re getting at, sir. Things don’t add up. Still, begging your pardon, maybe we ought to shift from port to starboard.”

  “Go on.”

  Markley tapped his index finger against his chin as he studied the photograph. “What isn’t there, sir? Barracks, antiaircraft batteries, gun emplacements. Everything that the Coastal Command chaps claim is making their life miserable.”

  “No,” Cole said. “I saw three emplacements along a ridge.”

  “Yes, sir. Three emplacements. But those chaps are talking about a dozen or more guns. I know guns, sir. As good as any seaman afloat. I didn’t see them, sir. Big or small, I—”

  “I’ll be a ringtailed bobcat,” Cole said. “I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Where the hell are the other guns?”

  “Not your fault, sir,” Markley said, without emotion. “We all make mistakes, now and again.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Markley,” Cole said. “But why bother? Why defend this island in the middle of nowhere at all? There’s more here than meets the eye. They’ve got to go back over Leka, Markley.”

  “I’m afraid that you’re going to make some Coastal Command blokes very unhappy, sir.”

  “It can’t be helped. The answer is down there somewhere. I’m going to find it.”

  “If you don’t mind, sir. It’s customary at times such as this to toast brave men. The Coastal Command chaps, I mean, sir.”

  “It is, is it?” Cole said, certain that the tradition was newly minted by the thirsty petty officer. “Okay, go ahead.”

  Markley held up the fifth that Cole had thrown him earlier. “To the good health of the poor bloody bastards that will have to go take its picture again. May God grant them a safe flight and speedy return with everything in its proper place and functioning as the Almighty intended.”

  “You just want an excuse to take another snort.”

  “Nothing of the sort, sir,” Markley said, without cracking a smile as the whiskey burbled into his glass.

  Chapter 4

  London, England

  Cole threaded the little MG through piles of rubble in the street, stopping occasionally as work crews loaded the remnants of people’s belongings in lorries and horse-drawn wagons. He tried not to stare. It was impolite somehow to watch families scour what they could from shattered buildings that had once been their homes. A lifetime of things, photographs, books, records, and furniture… What if I lost all of my books? he had once asked himself. He preferred not to think of it. Besides the books, his collection of records was the only thing he had that he cared for, his music, and then he realized that they were inanimate objects. No one to care about, he thought. Perhaps that was just as well.

  He pulled up across from the dingy facade of St. Elias Hospital, a hulking building of stone and brick. A century of London’s coal fires had turned its facade a mix of dismal gray or a brooding black. Add now the smoke of the fires that burned from the air raids and you had another layer of filth.

  An elderly matron at the ornate front desk directed Cole to ward 18 on the second floor. You must take the stairs at the end of the hall, she insisted. The lifts seldom work, so you must take the stairs at the end of the hall. Okay, Cole assured her, I’ll take the stairs. He found Dickie Moore stretched out in his bed, his left leg in a cast, suspended on some sort of elaborate contraption attached to the framework of his bed. There were seven other beds in the ward—six were occupied.

  “Anything to get out of work,” Cole said.

  “Why, if it isn’t my Yankee friend,” Dickie said cheerfully.

  “Don’t you ‘friend’ me,” Cole said. “I’m up to my eyeballs in work and Uncle Harry won’t give me any help.”

  “It wasn’t my fault the filthy Hun broke my leg,” Dickie said innocently.

  “Why weren’t you in a bomb shelter?”

  “I was entertaining a young lady.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “Cole,” Dickie said, glancing about, “I was actively entertaining her, if you catch my meaning.”

  “Gentlemen?”

  Cole turned around to see a nurse enter the ward. Her light brown hair was tucked carefully under her nurse’s cap and her eyes were a very pale green, almost clear, Cole thought.

  “Rebecca, dear,” Dickie said. “Here is my good friend, Jordan Cole. Jordan, here is the most charming sister of mercy that I have ever had the pleasure to meet.”

  Cole watched as Rebecca smiled broadly. “How do you do …” She quickly studied his uniform. “Oh dear. Now that’s one that I haven’t seen.”

  “Lieutenant, J.G.,” Cole said. “United States Naval Reserve.” He held out his hand and sh
e took it, her touch light, and her fingers slender and graceful.

  “J. G.?”

  “Junior Grade,” Cole said. “That means that they don’t quite trust me with anything important.”

  “That hardly seems right,” she said with a smile.

  “Maybe, but there’s three ways of doing things. The right way, the wrong way, and the navy way.”

  “I’m Rebecca Blair,” she said. She nodded at Dickie. “The sublieutenant’s keeper.”

  “Oh, I say, Rebecca. Be kind to me today.”

  “I am kind to you every day,” she said in a soft voice. There was a breathless quality to her voice, making her words sound quaint and charming. Cole found himself wanting her to say more. “I shall return after they have taken you downstairs for X-rays. Nurse Noonan informs me that you are healing nicely.”

  Dickie made a face at Cole as Rebecca moved to another bed. “Noonan. Lovely mustache. Size of an elephant. An angry one. I think she fancies me. Cole? Are you listening?”

  Cole turned back to Dickie. “What?”

  “Yes, Rebecca is sweet, dear boy, and rather a looker. I could listen to her talk for hours, but she has a husband and those usually mean trouble. Some place in North Africa, I’m told.”

  “She’s very pretty,” Cole said, watching Rebecca gently brush the hair of a sleeping patient off his forehead. He watched her speak to another man and when he was reluctant to speak back, she pulled a chair up next to his bed and began to talk to him. Cole could almost feel her compassion and then he thought of Ruth’s comment: You have no empathy. You don’t care about anyone but yourself.

  “She’s beautiful,” Dickie said. “And she is a very charming creature. You mustn’t make her one of your conquests, Jordan.”

  “Okay.”

  “No. I insist, old boy.”

  Cole turned to Dickie. “Have I ever lied to you, Dickie?”

  “Oh, that’s a very stupid question. Of course you have. And I’ve lied to you.”