Courtney's War

by Wilbur Smith

“Precisely.”

  “Never mind, old boy, look on the bright side. They’ll give you a slap-up dinner before you go—bangers and mash tonight, from what I gather—and all the eggs and bacon you can scoff when you get back for breakfast. Where else can a chap get a deal like that these days?”

  “And a pretty girl to pick up when I get there,” Warden said.

  “Sounds like a splendid show.”

  An hour later, fortified by food and coffee, Warden walked out to the dispersal area where his matte-black-painted Westland Lysander was waiting. The Lizzie, as all the pilots called it, was not an impressive-looking machine. The fuselage was as short and stubby as a half-smoked cigar and was slung beneath long, lozenge-shaped wings that were angled forward, like a gull. The Lizzie was slow, not agile, and, when configured for special duties, carried no guns to defend itself. As a combat aircraft, it was a sitting duck. But it had one gift that made it perfect for this type of mission: it needed little space in which to land and take off. Nor was it fussy about the ground beneath its wheels. For getting agents in or out of tricky situations, there wasn’t a better plane.

  Warden ran through his final checks. The aircraft was in fine fettle. His chart and torch were present and correct. He had a clear idea of where he was going and what he should look out for when he arrived.

  As the engine spluttered into life, the propeller whirled and the Lizzie trundled like a portly banker toward the Tangmere runway, Warden gave his craft one last word of encouragement.

  “Here we go, old girl. Up, up . . . and away.”

  •••

  At eight in the evening, it was Julie Deforge’s turn to go down to visit the policeman who was on watch outside their property. She carried a tin plate of her splendid pork-and-apple stew and a bottle of vin ordinaire.

  The policeman was new to the area, but as he had come on shift, the officer he replaced had assured him that he could expect to be well looked after because the Deforges were fine people and understood how things should be done. At first he refused the offer of wine, since he was not supposed to drink on duty. But Madame Deforge had insisted that one glass couldn’t do any harm and he had, on reflection, agreed.

  •••

  While the sentry was distracted, Jean Burgers and André Deforge entered the farm at a rear entrance. They ate supper while Saffron explained what their role would be when the plane came to pick her up. Shortly before ten in the evening, their time, they went across to the barn.

  The message from London came in on time. She decoded it and it read:

  AIRCRAFT DISPATCHED TO AGREED LOCATION. ARRIVAL 23:30 GMT. CHALLENGE W. REPLY P. GOOD LUCK

  Saffron replied:

  MESSAGE RECEIVED. UNDERSTOOD. SEE YOU TOMORROW

  Saffron and the two men went out into one of the Deforges’ fields and rehearsed the landing procedure until all three were confident in their respective roles. She rested for half an hour, not trying to sleep, but lying still, breathing slowly, relaxing her body and emptying her mind.

  At half past eleven local time, an hour before the pick-up, they set off for the landing field on foot. The journey was less than three kilometers and best undertaken across country, in silence, taking advantage of any hedges or woodlands that would hide them from prying eyes.

  They arrived at the field with half an hour to spare and settled down to wait.

  The half hour passed without sight or sound of the plane, though the sky echoed to the drone of passing bombers, high overhead.

  Another fifteen minutes went by.

  Saffron tried to keep the apprehension she could feel growing within her at bay. So many things could go wrong. The plane could have been hit by anti-aircraft fire aimed at the bombers, or shot down by a Luftwaffe nightfighter.

  “How much longer should we wait?” André asked.

  “As long as we have to,” Saffron replied. “He’ll be here. I know he will.”

  But five more minutes passed, and still there was no sign.

  •••

  Michi Schmitt had been an industrial welder before the war. He was a union man, in the days before Hitler banned them. The workers at his factory in Mainz elected him as their shop steward because they knew he would always fight for their cause with the bosses. Management respected him because, as tough and unyielding as he was, if Schmitt gave his word, they knew that he would keep it.

  When he was called up to the army, Schmitt swiftly rose up the ranks. By the time the war in Russia had entered its second year, he was an Oberfeldwebel, or master sergeant, in a regiment of panzer grenadiers—motorized infantry who fought alongside the tanks at the sharp end of any attack.

  His unit had spent eighteen months as part of Army Group North, most of them camped outside Leningrad in a siege that seemed doomed to last forever. There came a point when they had lost so many men, and those who remained were in such poor shape, that they had to be withdrawn from the line. Now they were in Belgium, stationed at Spa to rest, recuperate and reinforce their numbers with new men before they headed back to the front.

  Spending a day at the beck and call of a Gestapo man on a fruitless search for a radio set, and a British spy who might have been in their area, and which might possibly be connected, was not the kind of duty that Schmitt enjoyed. Too many of his communist friends had been arrested by the Secret Police to make him feel comfortable doing their dirty work, even if they were on the hunt for a genuine enemy.

  When they’d returned to base and come off duty, Schmitt had obtained his company commander’s permission to go for a drink with a couple of other sergeants and a dozen or so men, all veterans of the war in the east. They’d taken the truck they’d been driving around behind Krankl and headed off to a country inn outside Spa, where the food was good, the beer was brewed on the premises, and the landlord didn’t mind staying open into the early hours.

  They were armed, because they’d served in Russia and seen what partisans could do to soldiers who had been caught napping. Only a fool went unarmed in occupied territory. But Schmitt didn’t expect to be seeing action that night.

  It was a warm evening, so he and two friends—old comrades who’d been fighting alongside one another since the Polish campaign in ’39—were sitting outside the inn, as they drank their beer, smoked their cigarettes and looked up at the night sky as the bombers droned overhead.

  “I hate those bastards,” Schmitt said. “They’re too shit-scared to fight like men, face-to-face. They’d rather kill our women and children.”

  “Don’t waste time on them, Michi,” one of the other sergeants said. “There’s no point. Nothing you can do.”

  “On the other hand, you could get us all a drink,” another NCO said. “It’s your round, you tight bastard.”

  Michi went into the inn to get the beers. As he came out, he was half way to the table where his friends were sitting when he stopped and listened.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  “What?” one of the others asked.

  “An airplane engine.”

  The man laughed. “No? Really?! For hell’s sake, man, there’ve been hundreds of planes flying over us all night . . .”

  “No, this one’s different. Listen.”

  The men were silent, and now they understood what Schmitt had been talking about. Something was up there. But this wasn’t the roar of a four-engine bomber; this was the thinner sound of a small, single-engine plane.

  “Sounds like a Storch,” someone said.

  “That’s a reconnaissance aircraft. Why would anyone be up in one now?” Schmitt asked.

  “No, they take passengers, too. The top brass use them for transport. I heard Rommel has his own, done up how he likes it.”

  “Maybe . . .” Schmitt said.

  “Can we have our beers, or are you going to stand there all night?”

  “Ah . . .” Schmitt brought the drinks to the table. The men returned to drinking and talking, with much of the conversation dedicated to their distas
te for being lackeys to the SS and all its offshoots.

  Then it returned, the same aircraft noise.

  Someone laughed. “That idiot’s got shit for brains, going round in circles.”

  “Maybe he’s as drunk as you,” another said.

  “Or maybe he’s lost,” Schmitt said, “because he doesn’t know where he is . . . because he’s a damned Tommy.”

  “God in heaven—what if that Gestapo bastard was right about that enemy agent?”

  “Whatever he’s looking for, it must be round here. That’s why he’s been circling.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Schmitt said. “Tell the lads we’re moving out, now.”

  The engine noise was fading to the south. Schmitt pointed after it. “And that’s the way we’re going.”

  •••

  “Damn and blast!” Bobby Warden cursed his rotten luck and his even more rotten navigation. For reasons he could not begin to explain, he had found himself north, rather than south, of Spa. That meant he had to take a long detour around the town to take him back toward the landing zone, which in turn resulted in him approaching it from the wrong direction, and thereby missing all the landmarks that he was counting on to guide him in.

  The most obvious of these was the Spa—Francorchamps road, and the only way to find that was to circle over the general area and hope that the line of the road at some point cut across his course. He went all the way around once without success, aware of the time ticking by. He was going to be late for the pick-up and the later he was, the greater the danger for all concerned.

  There was nothing for it but to try again. This time, to his relief, he saw the silvery-black line of the tarmac in the moonlight. He was about to bank the Lizzie in the right direction when he caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head to see the faint glow of light spilling from the door of what looked like the Belgian version of an English country pub. He saw men in uniform, sitting around a couple of tables, drinking, and in the road beyond them an army truck.

  Bloody Germans! And unless they’re deaf and blind they’ve spotted me.

  Bobby started doing sums in his head. He was a couple of miles from the landing ground. He’d be there in under a minute. Say it took them a minute, at the most, to get into their truck and get going, and say the truck went at thirty miles an hour—once they got on the main road, they’d be bound to see him land. And they’d drive that truck to the limit of its speed.

  Then it would be a race.

  They would take maybe four, five minutes to get there. In that time, he had to locate the pick-up spot—which was easier said than done, in his experience—land, come to a halt, turn the plane, taxi to where the girl would be waiting, get her aboard and then take off.

  “Christ,” Warden muttered. “This’ll be a close-run thing.”

  •••

  There was a set procedure that Saffron, like all Baker Street agents, had been taught for the preparation of a field for use as an impromptu airstrip. It required three lights, or torches, known as A, B and C, which were arranged in the shape of an L, with A at the end of the longer side, C at the end of the shorter side, and B at the corner where the two sides met. The L measured 150 meters by 50 meters.

  The agent stood at point A. When the aircraft approached, the agent flashed the challenge letter in Morse code: tonight it would be “W.” The pilot then flashed his reply letter, in this case “P.”

  Now each party knew that the other was genuine.

  At this point the three marker lights were lit. The pilot, who by now had probably made a circuit of the site, then came into land, aiming to touch down at Point A and then aim for the midpoint of B and C: down the long side, to the center of the short side, in other words.

  Bobby Warden had been trained in the same procedure and had carried it out on more than a dozen missions to France.

  Everyone knew what was supposed to happen.

  But only Warden knew what was actually going on.

  He’d seen the truck. It was barreling down the Francorchamps road.

  Forget four minutes. Make that less than two.

  •••

  Saffron stood at Point A, with Burgers at B and Deforge at C. The noise of the incoming aircraft was getting louder, and then she saw it, a black shadow against the sky, coming in low over the trees beyond the main road.

  Saffron flashed W: dot-dash-dash.

  There was no response.

  The aircraft kept flying toward them, descending as it went. But there was no glimmer of a reply letter, no sign that the pilot was genuine. It could be a trap. And it was coming into land.

  •••

  Schmitt saw the aircraft too, traveling so slowly that he could not believe it could stay in the air, flying across the road ahead of them, barely higher than the trees on either side of the carriageway.

  “There it is!” he shouted.

  “I see it!” the driver replied. He pressed his foot hard on the accelerator and the truck picked up speed with the lumbering bulk of a rhino pushing itself into a charge.

  The aircraft was less than a kilometer ahead of them. The truck’s speedometer was straining up toward 60 . . . 70 . . . 80 kph.

  Schmitt called out, “We can get them!”

  The driver grinned. “Can’t wait to see that Gestapo man’s face.”

  “Come on,” Schmitt shouted. “Go . . . go!”

  •••

  Warden had no time for the usual landing rigmarole. Get in, turn around, grab the girl, take-off. That’s all he could do.

  If he was lucky.

  But first he had to remind himself: less haste, more speed.

  The Lizzie could stay airborne at remarkably low speeds, and the slower Warden came into land, the sooner he could stop and turn the plane, ready to take off again.

  Warden wasn’t going much faster than the truck as he came into land.

  He’d seen it as he crossed the road. It was too close for comfort.

  He could only pray that the agent and the men with her would work out what was going on.

  •••

  Saffron was paralyzed by indecision. The aircraft was close enough for her to be sure it was a Lysander. But what if it was one that the Germans had captured? What if the Abwehr found a way to read the one-time pad code? Were they in charge of this operation, just like all the others?

  She thought of Leo Marks. He had been certain that the Germans had cracked the old codes, and he’d been right. He was also convinced that he’d found a way to beat them. Saffron had faith that he’d be right about that too.

  She waved her torch over her head, signaling to the two men to turn on their lights.

  The aircraft was over the field, coming down, and then it was passing her at barely more than head height. She could see the blue, white and red R.A.F. roundel painted on the side and the identification letters. And though there was still a voice in her head saying, This could be a trap, she forced herself to believe. No, this is real. He’s come to take me home.

  She watched the plane break to a halt in what seemed like no distance at all. It began to turn and start taxiing back toward her. Burgers and Deforge were running from their posts, coming to say goodbye.

  Saffron waved at them, smiling now, feeling sure that everything had worked out. And then Burgers stopped and a second later so did Deforge. Burgers pointed past the plane, toward the road. They hesitated and then turned tail and dashed the way they had come, heading for the shelter of the trees on the far side of the field.

  Saffron swung around to see what had frightened the two Belgians.

  At the edge of the main road a truck was turning onto the field and driving toward them.

  Now she understood why the pilot had not bothered with the regular landing procedure.

  She saw a black shape emerging from the side of the truck. Then a series of bright pinpoint flashes and an instant later the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire.

  Saf
fron started running for the plane.

  •••

  “Get in!” Warden leaned as far as he could out of the cockpit, gesturing frantically toward the ladder, fixed to the fuselage, that led up to the rear of the cockpit.

  •••

  Saffron was running hard toward the Lizzie, forcing herself to go across the line of gunfire, moving like an athlete with high knees and pumping arms. But she could never win a race against the truck, which was speeding toward them across the field. It was still four or five hundred meters away, but at the rate it was going, it would cover the ground in less than twenty seconds.

  •••

  Schmitt had his head and shoulders out of the side window of the truck, blasting away with his submachine gun in the direction of the aircraft and the running woman. The truck was bouncing like a jackrabbit and both his targets were moving. The odds against him hitting anything were long. But gunfire distracted and frightened even the most hardened soldier and all it would take was one lucky shot to kill the agent or the pilot of the plane.

  •••

  Saffron had reached the foot of the ladder. She pulled herself up onto the second rung, grabbed the bottom of the cockpit, which was hinged on the far side to open across the fuselage, and she flung it open. In an instant there was a spark on the metal fuselage in front of her, a high-pitched clanging sound and a whirring, grabbing sensation as the bullet that had ricocheted off the side of the plane passed through the hair at the nape of her neck. Her body was untouched, a finger-width away from death.

  Barely five seconds had passed since she’d first grabbed the ladder, but the truck had come at least a hundred meters closer.

  Saffron threw herself into the cockpit, banging her knees and shins against the metal frame, ignoring the pain. She pulled the hatch down over her head.

  Before she had time to buckle herself into her seat, or put on the flight helmet that would give her oxygen and a voice link to the pilot, the Lizzie had started moving.

  •••

  In the split second that the cockpit hatch crashed into place, Warden opened the throttle and let the Lizzie rip. The manual said the Lysander required 279 meters of runway to take off and reach a height of fifty feet. The truck was no more than 50 meters away and the gap was closing from both sides.