The Burning Sky rtw-1

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘Why is it,’ he murmured to himself, as he pulled out a set of door keys, ‘I have never had any common sense?’

  It was an office of sorts, dirty walls in need of fresh whitewash, a ceiling with holes big enough to show the naked wooden laths, a desk and a chair set against the back wall alongside a battered wooden filing cabinet and an excessively large cupboard, all sitting on plain floorboards. Once inside he checked for signs of entry: an oil lamp just behind the door, so that if it was opened too wide oil would leak onto the boards to create a stain impossible to remove; little scraps of folded paper in odd places; a hair spat on, then stuck to a filing cabinet drawer, and inside that an open ink bottle, precariously balanced, that required his inserted fingers to keep in place.

  Lanchester saw Jardine disappear, which made more acute his examination of the street: he too could see those loading that lorry in a desultory fashion, but they had not paused or looked in Jardine’s direction. No one had emerged from any of the other buildings along the way, these observations being made as he was harbouring the same notions as the man he had come to Hamburg to find.

  He could just go and leave Jardine to it, the danger to him if he left was minimal — how could he be arrested for merely talking to a fellow countryman? That was until he recalled this was Hitler’s Germany, a country where the rule of law did not apply. Besides, he had a job to do, so after the required interval, he picked up the Gladstone bag and made his way to the doorway, heart in mouth, croaking his name at the panelling.

  ‘What is this place?’ he asked as soon as he was inside, the act of brushing his sleeves in such a grubby location an automatic one.

  The smell was of musty and disturbed dust, made worse as Jardine lifted a worn blind to reveal a grimy window from which he could watch the street.

  ‘The way out of Germany, Peter. There’s a tunnel under the dockyard wall that we have kept as our exit in an emergency. Smugglers built it during the last war to get contraband in from Sweden and they brought it back into use when the Nazis banned certain imports. Being kindly disposed, they have given us the use of it as a one-off way out.’

  ‘Black marketeers?’ Jardine nodded. ‘They would not be Jewish by any chance?’

  ‘There are plenty of Aryans up to the same tricks.’

  ‘Except Aryans, even criminal ones, are less likely to be watched.’

  Jardine looked at his watch. ‘We have a little time to chat now, Peter, so why don’t you tell me what it is you came to Hamburg to propose?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘You told me what you wanted, but not who wanted it done.’

  ‘I think that is better left till we are safely out of here.’

  ‘Don’t prevaricate, Peter,’ Jardine snapped, going to his Gladstone bag and, on opening it, producing a Mauser pistol, which he passed to Lanchester, followed by a clip of bullets. ‘I take it you still know how to use one of these.’

  ‘I do, but I have a strong disinclination to employ them in the situation in which we find ourselves.’

  ‘Last resort, Peter; best to leave a couple of dead secret policemen behind us than end up in somewhere like Dachau.’

  ‘Where and what is Dachau?’

  ‘It’s a special prison for enemies of the state, but just be satisfied it’s not a place you would want to visit.’ Jardine pushed the chair towards Lanchester and sat on the edge of the desk. ‘Now please answer my question.’

  Lanchester clicked in the clip of bullets, having first checked the safety was on. ‘The idea was that I would take you back to Blighty to meet a group of people who share your concerns.’

  ‘And you, Peter?’ That got a raised eyebrow. ‘You don’t strike me as a knight in shining armour. Quite the reverse, in fact.’

  ‘I am a messenger, Cal, what I believe is irrelevant.’

  ‘Funny that, Peter, I always had you down as someone who lacked beliefs.’

  ‘It makes for a contented life.’

  Jardine went to stand by the window, far enough back from it to not be observed. ‘My question?’

  ‘I represent a group of people who think that unchecked fascism is a danger to our national security.’

  ‘Can’t fault that.’

  ‘But they are not in government.’

  ‘Churchill?’

  ‘Most folk think he’s just a mad old warmonger.’

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘It will do for now, old boy.’

  ‘You said a group of people?’

  ‘An eclectic mix who think if we back Ethiopia and put a stopper on Mussolini it will make Hitler think twice about disturbing the peace.’

  ‘It won’t, but I need names.’

  ‘Not yet, Cal, just take my word for it they exist and that the funds are available to aid the world’s underdogs.’

  ‘Most people I know think Fatso Mussolini is a genius for making the Italian trains run on time, especially those with a few quid and no brains. They are the same ones who admire Adolf and think Britain would be better off with someone like him in charge. You know the type, shoot a few miners and the world will be safe.’

  ‘Shall we leave politics out of it for now?’

  ‘If you insist, but guns cost a lot of money and they are not easy to come by without everyone knowing about it, the arms trade being somewhat incestuous by nature.’

  As he was speaking, Jardine went to the door and, opening it, peered out just enough to look along the street. When he looked back at Lanchester it was with a less than happy face.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘That lorry, they are taking far too long to load it.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Can you stop your Yids?’

  Jardine, who now had his own pistol out, was, for the first time, really sharp. ‘Peter, this is not the bloody golf club, will you stop calling them that.’

  ‘Can you?’

  ‘There’s no telephone here.’

  ‘Something of a flaw in the organisation, I hazard. I’m beginning to regret accepting this commission, all this danger is not my cup of tea at all.’

  That laconic statement got Lanchester a look and a wry smile: Jardine had been right when he declined to accept that they were really friends, but they had served together as young subalterns in the last months of the Great War, and whatever else the man was he was no coward; he had been a damned fine officer with a mind sharp enough to know when it was foolish to be brave, as well as when it was necessary to employ just that quality to carry forward his men. They had both stayed on in the army after the war, Lanchester because he was open about not being fit for anything else, Jardine for his own personal reasons.

  That he lacked convictions did not single Lanchester out from his fellow regimental officers: they were all racial bigots to a degree, with the concomitant drawback that some of them were certifiable dunderheads as well — not all the donkeys in the British army were generals. Lanchester was far from the exception: it had been Callum Jardine who was the outsider in his declarations that what they were doing in the Middle East on behalf of the British Government was utterly wrong and likely to produce the exact opposite result of what was intended.

  You did not pacify the locals by dropping bombs on rebellious Iraqi villages, killing more women and children than the targeted fighters, acts carried out at the behest of government ministers like the aforementioned Winston Churchill, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. These policies were something about which Peter Lanchester had been sanguine, and Callum Jardine furious enough to eventually resign his commission.

  ‘Why we did not crush these Hun buggers when we had them on the floor, I still do not comprehend, Cal. Their army was totally beaten in 1918 and now they tell us they were stabbed in the back by their own bloody politicos.’

  ‘You trying to remind me I was wrong about that, Peter?’

  ‘Only in a roundabout way, old boy, but I do recall you saying that there was every reason to gr
ant the Hun an armistice instead of killing several thousand more, whereas I was all for pushing on and burning Berlin. Come to think of it, I’d still happily go to Holland and shoot the Kaiser.’

  ‘I was concerned about more of us dying for no purpose, not least myself, and I am sure you can remember the losses we suffered as well as I can. But I’m doing my best to make up for not agreeing with you here and now.’

  ‘And to quote that fine comedian, Mr Oliver Hardy, this is another fine mess you have got me into.’

  ‘Not that again!’

  Iraq had been Mesopotamia when they first served there and it had been hell: hot enough to fry an egg on the toe of your boot, dusty, flyblown and deadly. The army of which they had been a part had artillery, trucks, armoured cars and aircraft; the Arabs old pattern rifles, guile and, sometimes, suicidal bravery, which made patrolling extremely risky.

  Lanchester was of the opinion that shooting first and asking questions after was sound military sense; Jardine, marginally senior by date of his commission, was not, and in employing his tactics he had got two infantry half-companies trapped in an Iraqi village of mud huts and narrow streets, totally outnumbered and with no means of calling for support.

  ‘I got you out, didn’t I?’

  ‘Only by my crawling on my belly for several hours along a dry watercourse! Christ, I am still picking the sand out of my teeth. If you’d heard some of the names my chaps were calling you …’

  ‘Don’t worry, Peter, my lads were using the same language and it was we who provided the rearguard and took the casualties.’

  ‘Justice and no more, old fruit, and thank the Lord no one died. But the question is, if we are in the soup now, which I rather suspect you think the case, how are we to get out of it?’

  That got a wave of the Jardine’s Mauser. ‘I don’t think we can shoot our way out.’

  ‘Nor, I suspect, will you think of sacrificing your …’ Lanchester paused then to choose his word carefully ‘… refugees?’

  Jardine went back to his bag and opened it again, taking out a folder of papers. ‘These are their travel documents, Peter, tickets from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, as well as the names of their British sponsors, with supporting letters. Without someone to vouch for them and feed them they will be turned away.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘They will have their own, at least in highly saleable commodities, which was what we were arguing about in that apartment. I was telling them to take those and abandon everything else.’

  That got a loud and disapproving sniff, to which Jardine responded with a bored look. He moved to the large cupboard, opening both the doors and reaching inside. Unable to see, Lanchester heard a series of wooden clicks. Then his companion emerged, closed the doors and soundlessly moved the cupboard to one side, revealing a square hole in the floor.

  ‘This is the tunnel. It takes you into the docks, and if you walk directly down to the quayside and turn left you can’t miss the Den Haag.’ There was no need to say that was the Dutch ship by which they were to depart. ‘The captain has been paid.’

  ‘Risky.’

  ‘No, he has helped before and I trust him.’

  ‘It does not strike you that the Hun have knowledge of this tunnel?’

  ‘That depends on whether you have told me everything you know, Peter.’

  ‘I would have to be stupid to hold back on anything now, would I not?’

  ‘It’s possible they know, but unlikely, Peter, because if they did, I would have been taken as I walked in here, as would my refugees. Germans are methodical, it is not in their nature to take chances, and the first thing I checked was that no one had been here since my last visit. Not even the most careful entrant could have passed by the precautions without leaving a trace.’

  ‘Supposition, brother.’

  ‘What else have I got? If the Gestapo knew this was the way out they would have been all over it to make sure they did not cock up, and they haven’t. It is also true that if your chum in the Berlin embassy knew certain things, then Jerry knows too.’

  ‘My man knew what you were up to but not how you go about it.’

  ‘Did he tell you how he found out?’

  ‘No, and I did not ask.’

  ‘There’s a lot of competition in intelligence-gathering in this neck of the woods, the new boys created by the Party treading on the toes of the old police and spy agencies, like the Abwehr. Your embassy contact wasn’t the military attache by any chance, was he?’

  ‘Clever boy, Cal.’

  ‘Rumour has it there’s a turf war going on between the Abwehr and the SS, who want all counter-espionage to be in their hands, so the army boys might not be averse to queering their pitch by passing on certain bits and bobs, as you called them, to our embassy. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s a reasonable prognosis, but that does not explain the thugs we avoided earlier.’

  ‘If relations are bad between the SS and the Abwehr, they are truly diabolical between the SS and the SA. If my name and location came up as a suspect, the Brownshirts would jump at a chance to beat their rivals to it so they can claim to be the true guardians of the Nazi faith, and they spy on each other all the time. We will never know, but it is very possible that a party of Gestapo were on their way to the Reeperbahn when that truckful of club-carrying beauties alighted.’

  ‘And here and now?’

  ‘Why would the army intelligence boys tell the Berlin attache half a tale? — which backs up my theory that this escape route is unknown to the Gestapo. They have only got part of the story and that is there is a cell in Hamburg, of which I am a part, queering their pitch of stripping the departing Jews of their wealth. They would deduce we are using the Elbe to get them out with their possessions, but that only allows you to block the obvious routes, like the main dockyard gates.’

  ‘They could search the departing ships.’

  ‘It would take too long and upset the ships’ owners, who would divert their cargoes elsewhere. I would guess they have limited information about the where and when of any alternative exit, and it is obvious we must have one that does not involve normal tickets, so they would have to spread themselves around the whole area, which is huge. These docks are close to the size of Liverpool.’

  ‘They might also be inside on the quays?’

  ‘Perhaps, but again distributed very thinly and wondering what to cover, and we have to hope no idea of which vessel we will be heading for, given there are dozens of them sailing in and out of the port every day.’

  ‘Have you asked yourself how they came by whatever knowledge they do have?’

  ‘Of course, but I don’t think there’s a leak at the Jewish end. That could only come through interrogation and I am unaware of anyone being arrested who knows anything.’

  ‘And you would know?’

  ‘My Jewish contacts would know.’

  ‘If I was running this show from the Hun end, they wouldn’t.’

  ‘Is that what you’re in now, Peter, counter-intelligence?’

  ‘Good God, no! You know me, Cal, I couldn’t run the sock counter at Harrods.’

  The absurdity of that would have made Jardine laugh at another time; now was too serious. ‘Since I am making assumptions, I must give you a choice. If you wish to go, do so now, through the tunnel; give the captain my name and he will get you out of here even if me and my party don’t manage to join you.’

  ‘Have I ever told you how your bloody nobility gives me a pain in my posterior?’

  ‘More than once.’

  ‘One of these days you must tell me the real reason you engage in such asinine activities.’

  Jardine pocketed his Mauser, picked up the Gladstone bag and went to the door, turning the handle. ‘I would advise you not to hold your breath while waiting for a response.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To see if I can draw off any watchers. Maybe if I move, so will they, because I am convinced they cannot kn
ow who is coming and from where, or if they are close to the real escape route. But for certain they know my identity, so they might tail me, which will leave the way clear for the Ephraims.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’

  ‘Then you will hear gunshots. After that, you must decide how to act on your own.’

  ‘Say they do follow you, I assume that leaves me to get these bloody people through the tunnel?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘And you, how do you get out?’ Jardine just grinned and touched the side of his nose with an index finger, which exasperated Lanchester. ‘If you do manage, Cal, for the sake of the Lord do not tell anyone I helped to rescue some Yids. I’ll never live it down.’

  ‘Army amp; Navy Club, Peter, two weeks from now and you can buy me luncheon. Oh, and by the way, don’t be surprised by the way our party is dressed. Can I have my scarf back? I might need it.’

  Lanchester was taking the muffler off when he too grinned. ‘Does Bonny Lass speak Yiddish?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Lanchester ran a tidying hand over his glossy black hair. ‘Might be prepared to learn if she does, don’t you know. How long does it take to get to Rotterdam?’

  ‘I saw the way she looked at you, Peter; for what you’re thinking about, Tokyo is not far enough.’

  ‘And I saw the way she looked at you, Cal, but never underestimate the charm of a true Englishman.’

  The sun is slow to fall near the Baltic, but it is low in the long evenings, so it cast deep shadows between the high warehouses that lined the deserted street. Approaching the lorry, with a couple of men seemingly working to load it, moving boxes about, it was hard to appear nonchalant, even harder not to look too directly at them to see if they had the kind of coarse appearance such labourers should have.

  Gladstone bag swinging in one hand, the other in his trench coat pocket holding tight the now warm stock of his pistol, Jardine did flick a glance towards them as he passed close by, throwing them a crisp ‘Guten Abend’.