Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  ‘You could say that.’

  Willington called a name: a robust-looking flight-sergeant with a pink blob of a face and grizzled hair jumped down and hurried to help. ‘No, I’ll do it, sir,’ he told the pilot. ‘I’ll get him on a stretcher.’

  The NCO helped Copeland through the door: other hands assisted from inside. Willington paused, turned to face Caine. ‘I was rather expecting three parties – enlisted men,’ he said. ‘And there was talk of cargo. Something about a black box?’

  Caine swayed: his head looped. He put a hand on the fuselage to steady himself.

  ‘I say, sir,’ Willington said. ‘Perhaps you ought to be on a stretcher too.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘So what about this box thingamy?’

  Caine shivered, wondered where to start, how to explain what they’d encountered back there: a derelict aircraft of a strange design, a deadly disease carried in a box that itself possessed weird qualities.

  ‘Who gave you orders to pick up the black box?’

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Caversham.’

  ‘There’s been a change of plan. The parties you were expecting are dead. The black box contains a deadly germ agent that’s already infected a whole platoon of Huns. If it reaches Cairo there’s no telling what will happen.’

  The pilot looked at him with wide eyes. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, sir?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘You see, I have my –’

  He was cut off by the sewing-machine buzz of a Schmeisser SMG. Caine wheeled round to clock a Totenkopf man in full battlekit and helmet poling out of the palm-grove shadows not twenty yards away. The man was snarling, lurching from side to side, laddering off rounds, kicking up dark traceries of dust. Willington drew his weapon, took a pace to the side, pointed the pistol at the swerving Jerry. Caine could clearly see the Hun’s bared teeth, the suppurating scarlet chancre of a mouth, the black beans of eyes lost in the raw, bubo-ridden mass.

  ‘My God,’ Willington said.

  ‘Shoot him, for God’s sake.’

  At that moment there came the chackachack of .303 rimfire, a javelin of flame from the upper gun-turret: the Jerry crashed sideways, rolled into the deck.

  The pilot lowered his pistol. ‘That was our Flight-Sar’nt Atkins, upper-turret gunner. Good shooting, what?’

  ‘You want to have a closer look?’ Caine said: he nodded towards the dead Jerry.

  The RAF man holstered his weapon, cast a nervous glance at the dead Hun. ‘I rather think we should push off, sir, black box or no black box. There may be more of them out there.’

  ‘Another dozen at least. If they get away, there’ll be shit on.’

  Wellington set his teeth grimly. ‘Get aboard, sir. We’ve got a 1,000-pounder in the rack.’

  Ten minutes later, the Blenheim was wheeling through a sky of beaten copper. Caine sat in the glazed nose-section, peered out at the aircraft’s shadow flitting across the smouldering reefs of the desert, like an angular speck. The plane banked sharply, straightened as she accelerated into her final run. Caine saw the sun like a half-closed eye on the skyline, saw the ragbacked hills go out of focus, saw knotfaults and rock jumbles form long chains of darkness across the cobbled plain. The Bir Souffra outpost came into view, the palm-forest like a head of bushy hair sprouting from the leopardskin shoulder of the basin. Before the bombardier shouted bombs away, Caine thought he saw tiny figures scuttling about down there, like ants.

  45

  Celia Blaney sat at the wheel of a jeep parked, with the two other FS wagons, in the shadow of a butte overlooking LG101. Tonight, her magnificent red hair was invisible under a cap-comforter, and she was wearing a duffel coat over her battledress. The night was cool and inky: there was ambient light only from the glittering armadas of desert stars. Blaney could see Stocker standing about five paces away, watching the landing ground through binoculars.

  The drone of aircraft engines was nearer now: Blaney had already identified the plane from the sound as a medium bomber. A few minutes earlier she’d seen the flash of an Aldis lamp from the airstrip: the aircraft was coming in, all right. Why would a bomber be landing on an airfield in Sinai designated for MO4 operations? The more she and Stocker had learned about Caversham’s little outfit in the past few days, the more it seemed a world unto itself.

  There was a gush of fire on the landing ground: petrol-tin flares bursting out in a double-chain of fire. Blaney stepped down from the jeep, moved silently to Stocker’s side: even without binos she could make out ground crew moving among the flares, phantom shapes illuminated for a fleeting second before dissolving back into obscurity. The plane’s engines dopplered: the aircraft touched down with a creak of wheels, her engines settled to a hum as she taxied forward, layering the night with the high-octane smog of aircraft fuel.

  The flares were dim by the time the Blenheim came to a standstill: there was enough light to spot the dwarfish figure of Miles Caversham, and the scarecrow form of Jasper Maskelyne, hurrying towards the aircraft, followed by a group of BD-clad men. Stocker clocked another figure jumping down from the fuselage door, peered him through his field-glasses until the light failed.

  ‘Good grief,’ he said. ‘It’s Caine.’

  Blaney’s enquiries about MO4 staff had turned up some interesting data. Maskelyne was a hostilities-only officer – one of the so-called Magic Gang who’d masterminded the Bertram deception. Glenn was a professional soldier: both had been seconded to MO4 fairly recently. Caversham, though, was a different kettle of fish. He’d been in the army since the Ark, and had spent most of his time in Intelligence. He’d worked in Berlin in the 1930s and had made contacts with certain members of the German ‘Defence Service’ – the Abwehrdienst – who he thought might prove sympathetic to the British in time of war. It seemed unlikely, given Caversham’s cut-glass background, that the tail was wagging the dog, but anything was possible, and, as Stocker had learned, the Abwehr was a dangerous animal, capable of deceptions of the subtlest kind.

  Meanwhile, Blaney’s surveillance of St Anthony’s had also come up with surprises. One day she’d spotted the umistakable form of the giant Trooper Fred Wallace, 1st SAS Regiment, being hustled into the monastery like a prisoner. Blaney was curious: she’d met Wallace once, and remembered he’d been in Tom Caine’s crew on the Sandhog scheme. Shortly after, she was astonished to see another Sandhog survivor enter St Anthony’s, apparently freely: it was the signaller Corporal Trubman, whom she’d also met. When, the following day, she’d clocked another slight acquaintance, Second Lieutenant Harold Copeland, getting out of a 3-tonner in the monastery forecourt, she’d heeded the saying that three times was enemy action, and reported it.

  Meanwhile, Stocker had been investigating the provenance of the suspect communications from MO4. He’d been unable to read them because of the code, but their destination had intrigued him. A visit to the comms centre at GHQ had convinced him that, whoever the Groot was with whom Cavendish had been talking, he wasn’t in Berlin at all. After reading Blaney’s report, he’d also done some checking on the current whereabouts of Second Lieutenant Copeland: he’d been due to start an officer cadet course at OCTU in Palestine, but hadn’t turned up. Strangely, both Wallace and Trubman were missing: Wallace had been in the MP lockup at Suez after a brawl, but had been removed without any paperwork. Trubman had vanished from the Transit Centre in the Canal Zone. When Stocker had discovered that Tom Caine himself had disappeared from a fleapit hotel in Ismaeliyya, an alarm bell started clanging. Wallace, Trubman, Copeland and Caine were the four male survivors of Sandhog: they had also incurred the wrath of Maskelyne and Glenn, two of the principal officers of MO4. Stocker had already worked out that the highly reliable but confidential source mentioned in the DMI dispatch must be a friendly mole inside Cavendish’s section. If so, why had the source spilled the beans about Stirling, but reported nothing about Caine and his men? It could, of course, simply concern a top-secret mission that had been kept
quiet even from most MO4 staff. The juxtaposition of Caine with Maskelyne and Glenn, though, had suggested something more worrying – especially if it were true that Caversham had already done for David Stirling.

  It had been several days, though, before Stocker had decided to join Blaney in Sinai. He’d brought a section of Field Security NCOs with him, just in case. They’d watched the monastery after dark, seen Caversham and Maskelyne leaving in a jeep, with other ranks following in a 3-tonner. They’d tailed them to the landing ground.

  Now the flares were out, Stocker could see nothing on the LG but the occasional weft of a torch-beam. He could hear raised voices, though: there was a sudden flash of gunfire: a single shot whamped. Both Stocker and Blaney jumped. More shouting. ‘The blighter shot me,’ someone wailed. ‘Put the cuffs on him, Corporal,’ bawled a basso voice.

  Blaney looked at Stocker, her anxious eyes cupped in darkness. ‘Do you think we ought to move in, sir?’

  Stocker considered it for a moment. ‘Let’s hang on,’ he said. ‘Wait till we see where they go.’

  46

  ‘Please get Lieutenant Copeland to an aid-post,’ Caine said.

  He was sitting handcuffed in the same chair, in the same room, with its leather-bound books and devotional paintings, that the Nighthawk scheme had started: he no longer knew how many days ago that was. Caversham sat glowering at him with the same blackball eyes, through the same deep lenses, from the same sagging armchair: Maskelyne stood beside him, wagging his spring-laden head. He looked pale and irritated: a medical orderly was bandaging his wrist. Copeland lay slumped on the sofa, skin blanched, eyes glistening, too feverish to talk. Pilot-Officer Willington sat by the mullioned windows, looking almost as white as Cope. A corporal and two more enlisted men in BD and black berets had taken up a strategic position by the door: all three carried night-sticks and Sten sub-machine guns.

  For once, Caine’s speed had failed him: with the pain of his wounds and the accumulated fatigue, he’d been a fraction of a second too slow. Once he’d confirmed that Willington had orders to land at LG101, he’d managed to snatch the pilot-officer’s weapon: he’d hated doing it, but he knew that if Caversham got hold of them unarmed, he and Cope would be for the high jump.

  As soon as the Blenheim had come to a standstill, he’d piled out, confronted Caversham and Maskelyne: the look of astonishment on Caversham’s face had almost been worth the whole scheme. Caine had been too close to them, though: he’d forgotten Maskelyne’s speed. The ex-magician had whipped out a willowy arm, grabbed for the weapon. Caine had got off one shot, before the thugs jumped on him: Maskelyne had taken a graze in the wrist.

  ‘Mr Copeland needs medical attention,’ he insisted. ‘Please get him to a hospital, now.’

  ‘He’s right, sir,’ said Willington. ‘The chap’s in a bad way.’

  Caversham ignored him. ‘No one is leaving till I’ve discovered what’s going on.’

  He turned back to Caine, found him gazing at a spot on the wall over his shoulder. ‘What in damnation are you staring at?’

  Caine had been looking for the painting he remembered – The Torment of St Anthony: the one that had given him the clue to the contents of the black box. The painting was gone.

  ‘That picture of St Anthony. It’s not here.’

  Caversham rolled his ballbearing eyes. ‘Are you mad, Caine? There never was such a painting. What has it got to do with this anyway?’

  ‘You told me St Anthony was known for curing a bouquet of plagues, collectively called St Anthony’s Fire.’

  ‘I never told you that. Your mind’s playing tricks.’

  ‘No,’ Caine persisted. ‘Those plagues were also called Holy Fire. That’s what was in the black box you sent us to get – plague, a deadly germ-warfare agent. A platoon of German soldiers is dead because of it. If you’d managed to get it here, it would have killed you all, and spread to every part of this country. It would have wiped us out.’

  Caversham’s fat lips formed an O: his eyes bulged, he hooted incredulous laughter.

  ‘You are crazy, Caine. I sent you to Tunisia to blow a bridge. I don’t believe I said anything about a black box.’

  There was a rap on the door. Caversham looked mystified. He gestured to the corporal, who opened it. John Stocker stood there, a stout man in a patched duffel coat open over unkempt battledress, and a black beret a size too large: he was bespectacled and comfortable-looking, with an old pipe stuck in his mouth, yet to Caine he seemed to radiate authority and power.

  ‘Major Stocker,’ Stocker said. ‘Field Security. May I come in?’

  Caversham bristled. ‘You have no right to barge in here, Major. This is MO4, and we are entitled to privacy.’

  Stocker removed his pipe, surveyed the room: his eyes lingered on each person in turn. ‘I don’t think you have the right to arrest these officers, Colonel,’ he said.

  ‘Who told you they were under arrest?’

  ‘Nobody. But this man’ – he pointed at Caine – ‘is handcuffed, and that one is clearly in need of medical attention. I would like to request that you release the one, and have the other taken to the sick-bay.’

  The orderly had finished bandaging Maskelyne’s arm. Caversham nodded to him. ‘Take the lieutenant to the infirmary,’ he said. ‘One of these men will help you.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Stocker stood back to allow them to manhandle Copeland out of the room. Caversham instructed the corporal to unlock Caine’s handcuffs, watched Stocker with narrowed eyes. ‘Oh, you might as well come in, Major. We’ve got nothing to hide. Do you know Major Maskelyne?’

  ‘We’ve met.’

  ‘And that is Pilot-Officer Willington.’

  Stocker gave the RAF man a polite nod.

  ‘Do sit down,’ Maskelyne said.

  ‘Thank you. I’d prefer to stand. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what exactly is the problem.’

  ‘The problem is this chap Caine,’ Maskelyne said, holding up his spindly, bandaged arm. ‘He shot me in the wrist. Only a scratch, but he’d have done worse if I hadn’t snatched the gun off him.’

  ‘That’s why we had to handcuff him,’ Caversham added. ‘The man’s an absolute menace. He’s got a record of violence as long as your arm. He lost his commission in the Sappers for attempted murder, was locked up for beating an MP to a pulp, and shot a fellow officer in the knee.’

  Stocker looked at Caine, noted that he was bloody, battlestained and seemed on the verge of passing out.

  ‘Is it true that you shot Major Maskelyne?’ he enquired.

  Caine didn’t look at him. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘He and Colonel Caversham tried to have me and my comrades killed in Tunisia, by men under my own command. I knew they wouldn’t be pleased to see I’d survived. It was self-defence, you might say.’

  Caversham snorted. ‘Major,’ he said. ‘Mr Caine is suffering from delusions. He’s wounded and has lost the faculty of reason. The truth is that I sent him and six men on a secret mission in Tunisia, to blow a bridge. I can see that he’s wounded and tired, but to claim that I somehow organized a mutiny within his ranks is preposterous. My mistake was in taking him on in the first place. I have documents proving that he’s mentally unstable …’

  Stocker raised an eyebrow. ‘Yet you sent him into the field? A mentally unstable officer?’

  Caversham wadded a stubby hand, made a gesture of despair. ‘It was a vital job, and almost impossible to find special service troops.’

  Stocker nodded, made no comment.

  ‘Now, of course, he’s come up with all manner of demented claims, rambling on about a black box that contains some sort of plague – Holy Fire, he called it – a germ-warfare agent. He says I was trying to smuggle it behind our own lines. Why would I do that? This is the stuff of delirious fantasy.’

  Stocker fiddled with his pipe. ‘Is this true, Captain Caine?’ he asked.

  Caine was
having trouble keeping his head up: he tried to string his words together carefully, tried to get events into proper sequence. ‘We answered a Mayday call. We found a derelict aircraft of an unknown type. No markings. There was a black box inside, with the word STENDEC stencilled on it. We took the box, but we were followed by a Jerry unit, who were also after it. We held them off at the el-Fayya pass, but one of my chaps did a bunk with the box. I’m sure he was under orders from Colonel Caversham, but I can’t prove it. After the battle, Mr Copeland and I chased him to the RV, where he was to meet an aircraft, but the Jerries got there first. It was our chap who opened the box first, but they all got infected, and now, they’re all dead.’

  Stocker put the pipe in his mouth, took it out again. ‘So where is this black box now?’

  ‘It was destroyed. Mr Willington’s crew dropped a bomb on it.’

  Caversham shot him a furious glance. Stocker took a quick look at Willington. ‘Is that so, Pilot-Officer?

  The pilot fidgeted nervously. ‘We did … drop a bomb, sir, yes,’ he stammered, ‘but as far as I know it was on a German unit.’

  ‘Did you see a black box?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, but –’

  ‘There you are, Major,’ Caversham cut across him. ‘There’s no proof that such a black box ever existed, let alone some fabulous germ-warfare agent. There is only Mr Caine’s word. Are we to take the word of a mental case, evidently out of his mind with battle exhaustion? I think not.’ He turned to Caine, tilted his monkeyface to one side as if addressing a child. ‘Captain Caine, did I give you orders to answer a Mayday call?’

  Caine sighed. ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘I see. Did I order you to bring back a black box?’

  ‘No –’

  ‘Good. Is it not the case that I instructed you to sabotage the el-Fayya bridge – that, and that alone?’

  ‘Yes … but …’

  Caversham smirked triumphantly at Stocker. ‘I rest my case, Major. Even if there were a black box, it had no connection with MO4. I ask you, though, in the name of all that’s rational, does it seem likely? A giant black aircraft with no markings? A black box carrying Holy Fire? Mr Caine’s mind is delusional. That’s why the medical officer wouldn’t release him for active service. He imagines things.’