by Jack Higgins
‘I’ll find it,’ Devlin said.
‘When do you want to take delivery?’
‘Thursday the twenty-eighth and Friday the twenty-ninth. I’ll take the truck and the compressor and the jerrycans the first night, the jeep on the second.’
Garvald frowned slightly. ‘You mean you’re handling the whole thing yourself?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Okay—what kind of time were you thinking of?’
‘After dark. Say about nine to nine-thirty.’
‘And the cash?’
‘You keep that five hundred on account. Seven-fifty when I take delivery of the truck, the same for the jeep and I want delivery licences for each of them.’
That’s easy enough,’ Garvald said. ‘But they’ll need filling in with purpose and destination.’
‘I’ll see to that myself when I get them.’
Garvald nodded slowly, thinking about it. ‘That looks all right to me. Okay, you’re on. What about another snort?’
‘No, thanks,’ Devlin said. ‘I’ve places to go.’
He pulled on the wet trenchcoat and buttoned it quickly. Garvald got up and went to the sideboard and came back with the freshly opened bottle of Bushmills. ‘Have that on me, just to show there’s no ill will.’
‘The last thought in my mind,’ Devlin told him. ‘But thanks anyway. A little something in return.’ He produced the other half of the five pound note from his breast pocket. ‘Yours, I believe.’
Garvald took it and grinned. ‘You’ve got the cheek of the Devil, you know that, Murphy?’
‘It’s been said before.’
‘All right, we’ll see you at Norman Cross on the twenty-eighth. Show him out, Reuben. Mind your manners.’
Reuben moved to the door sullenly and opened it and went out. Devlin followed him, but turned as Garvald sat down again. ‘One more thing, Mr Garvald.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I keep my word.’
‘That’s nice to know.’
‘See that you do.’
He wasn’t smiling now, the face bleak for the moment longer that he held Garvald’s gaze before turning and going out.
Garvald stood up, walked to the sideboard and poured himself another Scotch, then he went to the window and looked down into the yard. Devlin pulled his motorcycle off the stand and kicked the engine into life. The door opened and Reuben entered the room.
He was thoroughly aroused now. ‘What’s got into you, Ben? I don’t understand. You let a little Mick, so fresh out of the bogs he’s still got mud on his boots, walk all over you. You took more from him than I’ve seen you take from anyone.’
Garvald watched Devlin turn into the main road and ride away through the heavy rain. ‘He’s on to something, Reuben, boy,’ he said softly. ‘Something nice and juicy.’
‘But why the Army vehicles?’
‘Lots of possibilities there. Could be almost anything. Look at that case in Shropshire the other week. Some bloke dressed as a soldier drives an Army lorry into a big NAAFI depot and out again with thirty thousand quid’s worth of Scotch on board. Imagine what that lot would be worth on the black market.’
‘And you think he could be on to something like that?’
‘He’s got to be,’ Garvald said, ‘and whatever it is, I’m in, whether he likes it or not.’ He shook his head in a kind of bewilderment. ‘Do you know, he threatened me, Reuben—me! We can’t have that, now can we?’
Although it was only mid-afternoon, the light was beginning to go as Koenig took the E-boat in towards the low-lying coastline. Beyond, thunderclouds towered into the sky, black and swollen and edged with pink.
Muller who was bending over the chart table said, ‘A bad storm soon, Herr Leutnant.’
Koenig peered out of the window. ‘Another fifteen minutes before it breaks. We’ll be well up by then.’
Thunder rumbled ominously, the sky darkened and the crew, waiting on deck for the first glimpse of their destination, were strangely quiet.
Koenig said, ‘I don’t blame them. What a bloody place after St Helier.’
Beyond the line of sand dunes the land was flat and bare, swept clean by the constant wind. In the distance he could see the farmhouse and the hangars at the airstrip, black against a pale horizon. The wind brushed across the water and Koenig reduced speed as they approached the inlet. ‘You take her in, Erich.’
Muller took the wheel. Koenig pulled on an old pilot coat and went out on deck and stood at the rail smoking a cigarette. He felt strangely depressed. The voyage had been bad enough, but in a sense his problems were only beginning. The people he was to work with, for example. That was of crucial importance. In the past he’d had certain unfortunate experiences in similar situations.
The sky seemed to split wide open and rain began to fall in torrents. As they coasted in towards the concrete pier, a field car appeared on the track between the dunes. Muller cut the engines and leaned out of the window shouting orders. As the crew bustled to get a line ashore, the field car drove on to the pier and braked to a halt. Steiner and Ritter Neumann got out and walked to the edge.
‘Hello, Koenig, so you made it?’ Steiner called cheerfully. ‘Welcome to Landsvoort.’
Koenig, halfway up the ladder, was so astonished that he missed his footing and almost fell into the water. ‘You, Herr Oberst, but …’ And then as the implication struck home, he started to laugh. ‘And here was I worrying like hell about who I was going to have to work with.’
He scrambled up the ladder and grabbed Steiner’s hand.
It was half past four when Devlin rode down through the village past the Studley Arms. As he went over the bridge he could hear the organ playing and lights showed very dimly at the windows of the church for it was not yet dark. Joanna Grey had told him that evening Mass was held in the afternoon to avoid the blackout. As he went up the hill he remembered Molly Prior’s remark. Smiling, he pulled up outside the church. She was there, he knew, because the pony stood patiently in the shafts of the trap, its nose in a feed bag. There were two cars, a flat-backed truck and several bicycles parked there also.
When Devlin opened the door, Father Vereker was on his way down the aisle with three young boys in scarlet cassocks and white cottas, one of them carrying a bucket of holy water, Vereker sprinkling the heads of the congregation as he passed, washing them clean. ‘Asperges me,’ he intoned and Devlin slipped down the right-hand aisle and found a pew.
There were no more than seventeen or eighteen people in the congregation. Sir Henry and a woman who was presumably his wife and a young, dark-haired girl in her early twenties in the uniform of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force who sat with them and who was obviously Pamela Vereker. George Wilde was there with his wife. Laker Armsby sat with them, scrubbed clean in stiff white collar and an ancient, black suit.
Molly Prior was across the aisle with her mother, a pleasant, middle-aged woman with a kind face. Molly wore a straw hat decorated with some kind of fake flowers, the brim tilted over her eyes, and a flowered cotton dress with a tightly buttoned bodice and a rather short skirt. Her coat was folded neatly over the pew.
I bet she’s been wearing that dress for at least three years now, he told himself. She turned suddenly and saw him. She didn’t smile, simply looked at him for a second or so, then glanced away.
Vereker in his faded rose cope was up at the altar, hands together as he commenced Mass. ‘I confess to Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my own fault.’
He struck his breast and Devlin, aware that Molly Prior’s eyes had swivelled sideways under the brim of the straw hat to watch him, joined in out of devilment, asking Blessed Mary ever Virgin, all the Angels and Saints and the rest of the congregation to pray for him to the Lord our God.
When she went down on her knees on the hassock, she seemed to descend in slow motion, lifting her skirt perhaps six inches too high. He had to choke back his laughter at the demureness
of it. But he sobered soon enough when he became aware of Arthur Seymour’s mad eyes glaring from the shadows beside a pillar on the far aisle.
When the service was over, Devlin made sure he was first out. He was astride the motorcycle and ready for off when he heard her call, ‘Mr Devlin, just a minute.’ He turned as she hurried towards him, an umbrella over her head, her mother a few yards behind her. ‘Don’t be in such a rush to be off,’ Molly said. ‘Are you ashamed or something?’
‘Damn glad I came,’ Devlin told her.
Whether she blushed or not, it was impossible to say for the light was bad. In any case, her mother arrived at that moment. ‘This is my mum,’ Molly said. ‘And this is Mr Devlin.’
‘I know all about you,’ Mrs Prior said. ‘Anything we can do, you just ask now. Difficult for a man on his own.’
‘We thought you might like to come back and have tea with us,’ Molly told him.
Beyond them, he saw Arthur Seymour standing by the lychgate, glowering. Devlin said, ‘It’s very nice of you, but to be honest, I’m in no fit state.’
Mrs Prior reached out to touch him. ‘Lord bless us, boy, but you’re soaking. Get you home and into a hot bath on the instant. You’ll catch your death.’
‘She’s right,’ Molly told him fiercely. ‘You get off and mind you do as she says.’
Devlin kicked the starter. ‘God protect me from this monstrous regiment of women,’ he said and rode away.
The bath was an impossibility. It would have taken too long to heat the copper of water in the back scullery. He compromised by lighting an enormous, log fire on the huge stone hearth; then he stripped, towelled himself briskly and dressed again in a navy-blue flannel shirt and trousers of dark worsted.
He was hungry, but too tired to do anything much about it, so he took a glass and the bottle of Bushmills Garvald had given him and one of his books and sat in the old wing-back chair and roasted his feet and read by the light of the fire. It was perhaps an hour later that a cold wind touched the back of his neck briefly. He had not heard the latch, but she was there, he knew that.
‘What kept you?’ he said without turning round.
‘Very clever. I’d have thought you could have done better than that after I’ve walked a mile and a quarter over wet fields in the dark to bring you your supper.’
She moved round to the fire. She was wearing her old raincoat, Wellington boots and a headscarf and carried a basket in one hand. ‘A meat and potato pie, but then I suppose you’ve eaten?’
He groaned aloud. ‘Don’t go on. Just get it in the oven as quick as you can.’
She put the basket down and pulled off her boots and unfastened the raincoat. Underneath she was wearing the flowered dress. She pulled off the scarf, shaking her hair. ‘That’s better. What are you reading?’
He handed her the book. ‘Poetry,’ he said, ‘by a blind Irishman called Raftery who lived a long time ago.’
She peered at the page in the firelight. ‘But I can’t understand it,’ she said. ‘It’s in a foreign language.’
‘Irish,’ he said. ‘The language of kings.’ He took the book from her and read,
Anois, teacht an Earraigh, beidh an la dul chun sineadh,
is tar eis feile Bride, ardochaidh me mo sheol …
. . . Now, in the springtime, the day’s getting longer,
On the feastday of Bridget, up my sail will go,
Since my journey’s decided, my step will get stronger,
Till once more I stand in the plains of Mayo …
‘That’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Really beautiful.’ She dropped down on the rush mat beside him, leaning against the chair, her left hand touching his arm. ‘Is that where you come from, this place Mayo?’
‘No,’ he said, keeping his voice steady with some difficulty. ‘From rather farther north, but Raftery had the right idea.’
‘Liam,’ she said. ‘Is that Irish, too?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘William.’
She frowned. ‘No, I think I prefer Liam. I mean, William’s so ordinary.’
Devlin hung on to the book in his left hand and caught hold of her hair at the back with his right. ‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary aid me.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, all innocence.
‘It means, girl dear, that if you don’t get that pie out of the oven and on to the plate this instant, I won’t be responsible.’
She laughed suddenly, deep in the throat, leaning over for a moment, her head on his knee. ‘Oh, I do like you,’ she said. ‘Do you know that? From the first moment I saw you, Mr Devlin, sir, sitting astride that bike outside the pub, I liked you.’
He groaned, closing his eyes and she got to her feet, eased the skirt over her hips and got his pie from the oven.
When he walked her home over the fields it had stopped raining and the clouds had blown away, leaving a sky glowing with stars. The wind was cold and beat amongst the trees over their heads as they followed the field path, showering them with twigs. Devlin had the shotgun over his shoulder and she hung on to his left arm.
They hadn’t talked much after the meal. She’d made him read more poetry to her, leaning against him, one knee raised. It had been infinitely worse than he could have imagined. Not in his scheme of things at all. He had three weeks, that was all, and a great deal to do in that time and no room for distraction.
They reached the farmyard wall and paused beside the gate.
‘I was wondering. Wednesday afternoon if you’ve nothing on, I could do with some help in the barn. Some of the machinery needs moving for winter storage. It’s a bit heavy for Mum and me. You could have your dinner with us.’
It would have been churlish to refuse. ‘Why not?’ he said.
She reached a hand up behind his neck, pulling his face down and kissed him with a fierce, passionate, inexperienced urgency that was incredibly moving. She was wearing some sort of lavender perfume, infinitely sweet, probably all she could afford. He was to remember it for the rest of his life.
She leaned against him and he said into her ear gently, ‘You’re seventeen and I’m a very old thirty-five. Have you thought about that?’
She looked up at him, eyes blind. ‘Oh, you’re lovely,’ she said. ‘So lovely.’
A silly, banal phrase, laughable in other circumstances, but not now. Never now. He kissed her again, very lightly on the mouth. ‘Go in!’
She went without any attempt at protest, wakening only the chickens as she crossed the farmyard. Somewhere on the other side of the house, a dog barked hollowly, a door banged, Devlin turned and started back.
It began to rain again as he skirted the last meadow above the main road. He crossed to the dyke path opposite with the old wooden sign, Hobs End Farm, which no one had ever thought worth taking down. Devlin trudged along, head bowed against the rain. Suddenly there was a rustling in the reeds to his right and a figure bounded into his path.
In spite of the rain, the cloud cover was only sparse and in the light of the quarter moon he saw that Arthur Seymour crouched in front of him. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I warned you, but you wouldn’t take no notice. Now you’ll have to learn the hard way.’
Devlin had the shotgun off his shoulder in a second. It wasn’t loaded, but no matter. He thumbed the hammers back with a very definite double click and rammed the barrel under Seymour’s chin.
‘Now you be careful,’ he said. ‘Because I’ve licence to shoot vermin here from the squire himself and you’re on the squire’s property.’
Seymour jumped back. ‘I’ll get you, see if I don’t. And that dirty little bitch. I’ll pay you both out.’
He turned and rain into the night. Devlin shouldered his gun and moved on towards the cottage, head down as the rain increased in force. Seymour was mad—no, not quite—just not responsible. He wasn’t worried about his threats in the slightest, but then he thought of Molly and his stomach went hol
low.
‘My God,’ he said softly. ‘If he harms her, I’ll kill the bastard. I’ll kill him.’
Nine
THE STEN MACHINE CARBINE was probably the greatest mass produced weapon of the Second World War and the standby of most British infantrymen. Shoddy and crude it may have looked, but it could stand up to more ill-treatment than any other weapon of its type. It came to pieces in seconds and would fit into a handbag or the pockets of an overcoat—a fact which made it invaluable to the various European resistance groups to whom it was parachuted by the British. Drop it in the mud, stamp on it and it would still kill as effectively as the most expensive Thompson gun.
The MK IIS version was specially developed for use by commando units, fitted with a silencer which absorbed the noise of the bullet explosions to an amazing degree. The only sound when it fired was the clicking of the bolt and that could seldom be heard beyond a range of twenty yards.
The one which Staff Sergeant Willi Scheid held in his hands on the improvised firing range amongst the sand dunes at Landsvoort on the morning of Wednesday 20 October, was a mint specimen. There was a row of targets at the far end, lifesize replicas of charging Tommis. He emptied the magazine into the first five, working from left to right. It was an eerie experience to see the bullets shredding the target and to hear only the clicking of the bolt. Steiner and the rest of his small assault force, standing in a semi-circle behind him, were suitably impressed.
‘Excellent!’ Steiner held out his hand and Scheid passed the Sten to him. ‘Really excellent!’ Steiner examined it and handed it to Neumann.
Neumann cursed suddenly. ‘Dammit, the barrel’s hot.’
‘That is so, Herr Oberleutnant,’ Scheid said. ‘You must be careful to hold only the canvas insulating cover. The silencer tubes heat rapidly when the weapon is fired on full automatic.’
Scheid was from the Ordnance Depot at Hamburg, a small, rather insignificant man in steel spectacles and the shabbiest uniform Steiner had ever seen. He moved across to a ground-sheet on which various weapons were displayed. ‘The Sten gun, in both the silenced and normal versions, will be the machine pistol you will use. As regards a light machine-gun, the Bren. Not as good a general purpose weapon as our own MG-forty-two, but an excellent section weapon. It fires in either single shots or bursts of four or five rounds so it’s very economical and highly accurate.’