Hellfire (2011)

by James Holland

  ‘It’s due to get into El Manachi at nine seventeen,’ said Sykes, ‘and if we keep this speed up, we’ll be there about the same time. It’ll be nip and tuck, Jack.’

  ‘But even if we don’t get there quite on time, those lads won’t be going anywhere without us being able to see them. There’s not much around, after all.’

  It was true. The railway line ran almost exactly along the edge of the Nile Valley. On their left the desert stretched endlessly away from them, while on the right the palm-lined river wended its way towards the coast. They passed a few mud-hut villages, the occasional flatroofed white house, and once in a while saw children playing, or men and women working in the fields.

  When they reached El Manachi, at just after twenty past nine, there was no sign of the train, but past a dense grove of date palms they saw it, steam and soot puffing from the funnel, the five carriages trundling along the line.

  ‘How much further to the next stop, Stan?’ asked Tanner.

  ‘Another twenty miles. It’s due in at nine fifty-nine.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tanner, making sure he held back. The jeep was kicking up a fair amount of dust and he didn’t want anyone on the train to see them.

  He yawned and blinked.

  ‘You all right?’ said Sykes.

  ‘Fine. My hangover’s gone at last.’

  ‘Mine too.’

  ‘I do feel a bit done in, though, after all that racing around this morning. And I’d forgotten how tiring driving is. You’re constantly fighting the steering out on these tracks, and there’s the endless gear-changing and double-declutching.’

  ‘Where’s Browner when you need him?’

  ‘Firing a bloody six-pounder. We should have brought him with us. Anyway, you’re going to have to take the wheel soon.’

  ‘You’re going to jump on the train, are you?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the only way I can think of that we’re ever going to take him alive. If we wait until they get off we’re only going to end up shooting at each other.’

  ‘We could kill the others and hit him in the leg.’

  Tanner screwed up his face, weighing the options. ‘Maybe, but the beauty of having a crack at them on the train is that we’re all in a confined space. There’s no easy escape.’

  ‘But it’ll be three against one.’

  ‘They’ve only got pistols and knives at the most, though,’ said Tanner. He tapped his Schmeisser and grinned. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  The railway left the green Nile Valley and cut through a low escarpment into the desert. Tanner continued to keep his distance but then, just before ten o’clock, the train began to slow.

  ‘We must be there,’ he said. Ahead he saw a single stone building.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the stop’s on the right. People will be getting off that side.’

  He slowed with the train and stopped as the train stopped, some fifty yards behind, still on the left-hand side of the track.

  ‘All right, I’m off,’ he said, grabbing his MP40 and jumping out of the jeep.

  ‘Good luck, mate,’ said Sykes, moving into his seat.

  Tanner ran forward. The line was elevated several feet above the road. Keeping it on his right, he saw several people getting off and on. There was a door at the rear of the last carriage. An open carriage, he thought. Good – third class. Mustafa was urbane, educated, a former officer in the Egyptian Air Force. Not a man who would readily sit in third class with the peasants. Class snobbery was even greater in places like Egypt and India than it was in England. Mustafa would not be in that carriage. Unless …

  Steam blew from the train and wafted slowly down its length. Tanner climbed on to the line, ran along the last ten yards of track, and at the rear of the train, he stopped to peer underneath. A few pairs of feet, but none that belonged to the men he was after. Getting on to the train, he realized, was going to be potentially the riskiest thing he had to do, because at some point he would have to open a door blind. If he had been spotted, there was a chance Mustafa and his men were waiting – and then he would be a dead man. He had intended to open the rear door and hope for the best, but now he changed his mind. Others getting on to the train could provide useful cover. Walking around the side of the carriage, he waited until two men were mounting the steps on to the train, then scurried low along the carriage towards the steam-gushing locomotive. He was pleased to note the guard looking the other way. With his pistol cocked in his trouser pocket, Tanner quickly jumped up behind the two elderly men. One looked at him strangely – Where did you come from? Then he saw the sub-machine gun and shuffled into the carriage.

  It was, as he had guessed, open plan, wooden benches in rows. Worried Egyptians stared at him, several clasping boxes of chickens. At the far end, a young girl clutched a goat, which now bleated pitifully. The train chuffed, the carriage lurched forward, and steam billowed past the open window so that Tanner got a waft of soot. A shrill whistle blast, and slowly the train moved off, the carriage clacking as it rolled along the rickety track. Beside him, a door led into the next carriage. Would the men be in there? He had been cavalier in the jeep, almost looking forward to getting his own back on Mustafa. Now, however, with a quickening heart and uncertainty gripping him, his clammy hand on his pistol, he closed his eyes briefly, counted to three, then opened the door into the next carriage.

  Third class again. Quick eyes scanned its length. He was looking for suited men, but there were no suits here. Slowly, calmly, he walked down the middle, eyes watching the door ahead. A young child looked up at him, eyes wide. Tanner winked, and strode on steadily towards the door at the end.

  He reached it, carefully turned the handle, opened the door and passed over the swaying plate that linked the carriages. Ahead of him there was the wall of a compartment, the corridor running to the left. Tanner stepped forward, saw a man directly in front of him by the window. When he turned. Tanner recognized him immediately – he was one of Mustafa’s men. The man gave himself away with the shock that registered on his face. He reached for the inside pocket of his jacket, but Tanner was too quick for him. At lightning speed he swung a short, sharp, powerful jab to the man’s right temple. He crumpled to the floor. One down.

  He stepped backwards as the door of the first compartment opened. Mustafa? He would be armed, of course, but the door was now open, which gave Tanner an idea. With his pistol in his hand, he looped his arms under the unconscious man, and quickly stepped towards the still open door. He saw Mustafa, saw the look of alarm and the pistol raised and fired. Too quick – the aim was wild.

  Tanner ducked behind the man’s back, heard the bullet hit something, then kicked the door wide and shoved the unconscious man as hard as he could at Mustafa, who fell backwards. Tanner crashed in, saw Mustafa try to aim again but this time the shot hit the ceiling. Now Tanner was on top of both men on the floor, Mustafa gasping as the wind was knocked from his lungs. Tanner grabbed his wrist, beating his hand against the floor so that he cried out in pain and dropped the pistol. Tanner now put one hand around Mustafa’s neck and firmly squeezed, while with the other, he rolled the unconscious man clear. Mustafa was choking, flailing with his right hand trying to reach something. A knife, a pistol?

  Tanner got to his feet, his grip on Mustafa’s neck never loosening, and pulled the Egyptian up with him, then drove his knee hard into his groin. Mustafa doubled up in pain, collapsing on the seat as Tanner whipped out his pistol and pressed it to the Egyptian’s kidney. He was about to feel Mustafa’s pockets when he heard a noise behind him. The third man stepped into the doorway. His eyes went to the prostrate Mustafa. Tanner moved his pistol arm clear and fired a fraction earlier than the man in the doorway, whose shot thumped into the plush seating as he fell dead into the corridor.

  But it was now Tanner’s turn to lose his pistol. In that moment, Mustafa struck out, smashing Tanner’s right arm into the window so that he dropped the Sauer and staggered backwards. Mustafa leaped at him, his hands clenching roun
d Tanner’s neck, long nails digging into the skin. Tanner gurgled, starved of air. He was shocked, too, by how strong Mustafa’s grip was. He swung his right arm but missed. Mustafa’s grip tightened, thumbs pressing hard against Tanner’s voicebox. A moment of panic. No – no panic, he told himself. Think. To release the grip he just needed to loosen one arm, so he now used both his arms on Mustafa’s weaker left. His vision was blurring but, summoning his last remaining strength, he yanked down hard, and suddenly felt the Egyptian’s hands slacken. Tanner gasped, rammed his forehead into Mustafa’s nose and, at the same time, raised his right leg and kicked hard, sending his opponent staggering backwards against the door. He coughed as Mustafa recovered his balance, producing a knife from his pocket that, with a flick of a catch, sprang open to reveal a thin, pointed, gleaming blade.

  For a moment, Mustafa stood there, crouched, eyes wild. Tanner could see his pistol on the floor beside him. Did he have enough time to grab it and fire? He couldn’t be sure. Mustafa took a step towards him, while Tanner, still struggling to breathe, watched him carefully. He reckoned he was taller than Mustafa by several inches – several inches that could be a crucial advantage. He stepped towards Mustafa so that they were now just a few feet apart. A feint – that was what he needed. Quickly, he moved forward a further inch, dipping his left shoulder as he did so and, as he’d hoped, Mustafa lunged, the blade flashing towards his neck, but Tanner flicked his head and shoulders to his left and drove a short, sharp right hook into his opponent’s jaw. Mustafa staggered backwards again, out into the corridor, but recovering his balance saw, as Tanner did, that the dead man’s pistol was lying within easy reach. Tanner cursed – his own was now behind him, and in a race to grab their pieces, he would lose.

  A split-second decision. Tanner hurled himself at Mustafa, who had grabbed the pistol. A third shot fired harmlessly into the carriage ceiling. Tanner smashed Mustafa’s hand again, the pistol dropped a second time, but Mustafa’s other hand was on Tanner’s face, yanking his head backwards and then punching him in the side. Pain coursed through him, as Mustafa rolled him over and again closed his hands around his neck. Tanner was vaguely conscious of someone shouting at the far end of the corridor, but his vision was blurring, his strength deserting him. Desperately, he fought to get his own hands around Mustafa’s neck, but it was no good.

  One last chance, he thought, as Mustafa’s grimacing face closed to just inches from his own. One, two, three. He let his body relax, and felt Mustafa’s grip loosen just a fraction. With all the strength he could summon, he jerked his head up, his forehead crashing into Mustafa’s nose. The Egyptian cried out, put his hands to his face, and Tanner pushed himself backwards, trying to get clear. But Mustafa lunged at him again, blood streaming across his face. No, thought Tanner, I haven’t the strength, but suddenly Mustafa’s head jerked forward, his eyes closed and his body went limp, dropping bloodily on to Tanner’s chest.

  Tanner gasped. The same lady he had seen just a day before in the bazaar at Khan El Khalili was standing over him, holding a pistol. He had thought she was still in the custody of Secret Intelligence Middle East. Tanja Zanowski.

  22

  Around fifty miles away as the crow flies, Alex Vaughan sat in a Lockheed Hudson as it thundered down the runway at Heliopolis. The aircraft had been designed as a twin-engine medium bomber but when they had been allocated to 216 Transport Squadron a couple of months earlier, they had been hastily converted. While they were definitely an improvement on the ageing Bristol Bombays, they were hardly a relaxing or comfortable mode of transport.

  Not that Vaughan cared. As the Hudson left the ground and rapidly climbed, he looked out of the window at the vast burnished desert. As the plane banked, he saw the verdant Nile Valley and the spread of Cairo, sun-baked and creamy in the mid-morning haze, but with patches of green marking the city’s many gardens. Down there, Tanja was locked in the cells of the interrogation centre at Kasr El Nil Barracks.

  The war had revealed many horrors. He had seen many people bloodied, burned and mutilated; he had killed and nearly been killed; he had lost friends in the carnage. He had witnessed the destructiveness of modern war, and the terrible suffering of the civilian population caught up in it. Yet no matter how shocking some of those images had been, nothing had prepared him for the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking humiliation and loss of the previous afternoon. To be in the arms of the woman he loved, and then to be so starkly betrayed, had hurt him as much as any bayonet twisted into his guts. And the betrayal had been so public – Sammy Sansom, for God’s sake, with an FS section Vaughan knew as well as any under Sansom’s command. Caught with his trousers down. Caught with a spy! A spy! Tanya was a fucking spy! He closed his eyes again and banged his head against the Perspex window.

  At least he had not had to sit with her on the way to the interrogation centre. At least he had not been arrested. They’d spared him that. Lieutenant Knightly had not said a word as they’d driven to Kasr El Nil. A brief glimpse of Tanja being ushered out of the car and that had been it – his last sight of her. He hoped he would never see her again.

  He had been interrogated by Sammy Sansom and George Kirk – all very friendly, a cup of tea and a fag. Nothing too formal – a bit of casual questioning. Sansom had apologized repeatedly. ‘I know this must be difficult, Alex,’ and ‘Believe me, I wish it could be otherwise.’ Yes, well, believe me, so do I. He had known that co-operation was the only way, but it had been hard recounting conversations, telling them of her views on Stalin and Soviet Russia, when his heart was breaking.

  Kirk and Sansom had been called away and had returned, looking slightly shaken, to tell him he was free to go.

  ‘Is that it?’ Vaughan had asked. ‘Am I going to be court-martialled?’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Kirk. ‘Go home. Get a drink.’

  He’d done just that. Half an hour later, when he was on his second Scotch, there had been a knock on the door. When he had opened it Maunsell had been standing outside.

  RJ had apologized. It should never have happened – if only he had been in the office at the time, he would have ensured that the flat had been properly watched first and that Vaughan had been nowhere near.

  ‘But I’ve been sleeping with a spy,’ said Vaughan, a renewed stab of despair surging through him.

  ‘Did you ever tell her anything?’

  ‘No, of course not. I didn’t even tell her what my job was. Nor did she ever push the point.’

  ‘And what about papers? Could she have stolen any?’

  ‘I never took any state secrets out of the office. If she’d looked through my case she wouldn’t have found very much. I certainly wasn’t aware of her doing so.’

  Maunsell had smiled and clapped his hands together. ‘Then you have nothing to worry about. I trust you implicitly, Alex. Rest assured about that.’

  ‘But there is something I haven’t told you,’ said Vaughan. He looked straight at Maunsell.

  Maunsell cocked his head slightly. Yes?

  ‘I followed her – about two weeks ago. She went into the Islamic Quarter and I saw her emerge from a shop. Half a minute later a man came out – he looked like Mustafa. I couldn’t say one hundred per cent that it was him, but I’m pretty sure. She said she had wanted to buy Turkish Delight but the shop hadn’t had any. I checked later – it didn’t. I began to think I was being paranoid. Seeing a sinister situation when the simple explanation was the right one.’

  ‘A common enough occurrence. It’s something I’ve warned all our operatives about.’ He leaned forward and gripped Vaughan’s knee. ‘I’m sure you’re upset, but you’ve nothing to worry about as far as I’m concerned. We’ve instituted a news blackout on this. Sammy, George and the FS section involved have all been informed and there will be no stain on your exceptional record whatsoever. We need you, Alex, heading up C Detachment. When you next go to GHQ, no one will be any the wiser. On that, you have my word.’

  ‘Thank you, RJ. Really.’
<
br />   Maunsell held up a hand. ‘Say no more.’

  ‘And was she Marlin?’

  ‘Yes. The radio operator in the circuit. We’ve lost track of Mustafa again, but at least we know for sure who we’re looking for. Or perhaps I should call him Artus.’

  ‘And Orca?’

  ‘Still in the dark on that one.’

  Vaughan was quiet a moment, then said, ‘I know it was Jack who reported her.’

  ‘He fought tooth and nail to spare you. He had to report what he’d seen, Alex.’

  ‘I know – it’s all right. I don’t blame him.’

  ‘Good. We want you two to work together on the Mersa operation.’

  ‘You don’t have anything to worry about in that regard – honestly, RJ.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘And Tanja?’ Vaughan asked.

  ‘Under lock and key and facing a considerable amount of interrogation. We have the radio and the codebook.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes – it’s rather curious. A German comic novel. Something of a contradiction in terms – I never knew such things existed.’

  ‘What will happen to her?’

  Maunsell smiled again. ‘I wouldn’t worry yourself about that. Just make sure you get in and out of Tobruk safely, and then we can get you to Mersa.’

  When Maunsell had left, Vaughan thought about getting blind drunk, decided against it and headed to GHQ. As RJ had promised, no one gave him so much as a strange glance. It was as though nothing had ever happened.

  And yet it had. The Hudson droned on. In less than an hour he would be at Alexandria. For Vaughan, rejoining the men could not come soon enough. Distraction, that was what he needed. Christ, but he would miss her.

  The train was approaching the next stop, El Khatatba, from where a small-gauge line ran to the Wadi Natroun on the ancient desert road that cut across to the coast. Tanner leaned out of the window and waved to Sykes, who accelerated, then eased the jeep over the track. Once the train had halted, he jumped down and ran over. ‘D’you get ’em, then?’