Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  Stocker examined Caine’s face. ‘I’ve seen your medical record, Captain,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it true that your sawbones wouldn’t release you because you suffered from delusions?’

  Caine gazed directly at Stocker for the first time: his eyes were bloodshot and distant. ‘He wouldn’t release me because I refused to believe that Elizabeth Nolan was dead. That wasn’t a delusion. She’s alive. That’s how Colonel Caversham roped me into this. He promised to help me find her.’

  ‘More nonsense,’ Caversham chortled.

  Caine’s eyes were still on Stocker. He noticed that the Field Security officer looked slightly flushed. Stocker avoided his eyes, placed his pipe between his teeth, brought out a packet of Swan Vestas, lit one, spent several minutes lighting up. Everyone in the room watched him. He blew a ring of blue smoke, studied it intently, took the pipe from his mouth. He looked at Caversham. ‘I have just one question, sir. After that, perhaps Mr Caine can go to the sick bay, and I’ll leave you in peace.’

  Caversham looked relieved. ‘Certainly, what is it?’

  ‘Just now you referred to a giant black aircraft with no markings. I just wondered why you said that. I don’t recall Mr Caine mentioning that the hypothetical aircraft was either big or black. He referred to it only as a derelict aircraft.’

  Caversham’s thick lips goldfished. ‘I … er … I don’t remember. I’m sure he did say it …’ He cast around for help, met Maskelyne’s sparrow eyes: the ex-magician shook his head. Caversham bit his lip, blew his cheeks out. ‘Well, I don’t know where I got it from. Imagination, I suppose.’

  Stocker blew smoke pensively, caught Caine’s eye. ‘Was this derelict aircraft you found big and black?’

  Caine chuckled wearily. ‘Biggest kite I’ve ever seen, sir. About a hundred and fifty feet from nose to tail: a hundred and twenty-foot wingspan. Four engines. And, yes, she was black: black as your hat: she was made of some black material, like resin.’

  ‘Superb fantasy,’ Caversham snickered.

  ‘Did you tell Colonel Caversham about that? Anyone else here?’

  Caine shook his head. ‘Never mentioned it.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ Caversham scoffed.

  ‘No, it doesn’t, Colonel,’ Stocker said placidly, ‘but now I think of it, I do have a couple more questions. First, isn’t it rather unusual for a sabotage team to be tasked by MO4? I mean, sabotage isn’t your brief, is it?’

  ‘We had orders from the DMO: I can prove that.’

  ‘I see. The other question is’ – Stocker pointed his pipe-stem in Willington’s direction: his eyes didn’t leave Caversham – ‘why task a Blenheim bomber to go to Tunisia? You must have sent Mr Willington’s crew to pick up something?’

  Caversham’s jaw tightened: his eyes behind the dense glasses were boreholes. ‘To pick up the SAS patrol, of course.’

  Stocker waved his pipe in disbelief. ‘In a medium bomber? You’d surely have needed a troop-carrier for that?’

  He raised an interrogative eyebrow at Willington: the pilot was out of his chair now, poised with his feet apart, his fists clenched. His eyes blazed: two rose-pink patches showed on his ivory cheeks.

  ‘I say, I’ve had enough of this hogwash, sir.’

  Stocker realized that the pilot wasn’t talking to him: his gaze was fixed on Caversham. ‘You claim the black box is Captain Caine’s delusion,’ he went on. ‘Well, I said I didn’t see a black box, and I didn’t, but I did see one very sick Jerry with yellow pus-blisters all over his face, and so did my gunner. And if the black box didn’t exist, why did you task me to pick it up? I risked my life and my crew’s lives twice over for that damn’ box.’

  He turned to Stocker, yanked agitatedly at his moustache. ‘Colonel Caversham ordered me to fly to Bir Souffra, in Tunisia, to retrieve a black box, sir. There were supposed to be three enlisted men with it. On the first run, the chaps didn’t show. The colonel sent me back again, and I found two officers there: Mr Caine and Mr Copeland. They told me there’d been a change of plan: the black box contained a germ-warfare agent that had already infected a platoon of Krauts. I didn’t believe it until I saw one of them with my own eyes – just before my gunner shot him.’

  Caversham rose to his feet, whipped off his glasses, pointed them accusingly at the pilot. ‘You fool, Willington. Don’t you realize you’ve just given away classified information?’ He swung round on Stocker: his bottletop nostrils flared. ‘You have no right to interrogate me about a secret operation. I want you out of here, now.’

  He waved blunt fingers at the corporal by the door. ‘See him out,’ he ordered. The corporal hesitated. ‘Celia,’ Stocker called.

  The door flew open: a girl in battledress came in, bracing a Tommy-gun: she had cool, greyblue eyes, and a curly mass of flaming red hair. Behind her was a gruff-looking staff-sergeant and several other Field Security NCOs, all toting weapons.

  ‘Sit down, Colonel,’ Stocker said, ‘and I’ll tell you the real reason I’m here.’

  47

  ‘It was called STENDEC,’ Caversham said: he had lost his bluster now: his voice was plaintive. ‘It was a prototype electronic counter-measures device, capable of fooling enemy radar. It could have changed the whole course of the war.’

  He sat hunched up on the sofa: Stocker had removed his duffel coat and beret: he perched on the edge of an upright chair, bending forward, his elbows on his knees, the pipe still in his mouth. Celia Blaney had cleared out the MO4 men, and escorted Maskelyne to another room, to be interviewed separately. The Field Security staff-sergeant was standing at the door, a Thompson slung muzzle-forwards over a beefy shoulder. Willington had gone back to his aircraft: Caine was in the infirmary with Copeland.

  ‘So you knew about the derelict plane?’ Stocker persisted.

  Caversham stroked his orb of a head with a hirsute hand. ‘Groot reported that it was a new class of aircraft developed in Germany – a silent aircraft, it was called. It was invisible to radar, specially designed to carry the STENDEC device. It had apparently gone down in Tunisia on a test-flight.’

  Stocker shoved his pipe into a breast pocket, buttoned it. He removed his glasses, blew on them, began rubbing them hard with a piece of two-by-four. ‘So you thought this STENDEC device worth sacrificing our own men for?’

  Caversham gave a hollow sigh. ‘There’s always sacrifice in war, Major, you know that. In the case of Caine’s patrol, it wasn’t a great loss. I mean, half of them were hard cases from the glasshouse, and the others …’

  ‘… were highly decorated, extraordinarily courageous soldiers.’

  Caversham bared his teeth in a grimace. ‘It’s their job to take orders. It’s not for the likes of Caine to reason why.’

  Stocker felt an indignant flush seeping up his neck. He slammed his glasses on, stood up suddenly, stared down at the colonel. ‘And what about David Stirling? Was it for the likes of him to reason why?’

  Caversham’s face seemed to sag. ‘That was … unfortunate. Of course, Stirling was one of us –’

  ‘Yet still you handed over our most brilliant special-service officer to the enemy –’

  ‘That was … the agreement. It was the only way we could get the STENDEC device …’

  Stocker saw red. ‘There was no STENDEC device, you bloody imbecile. You were taken in by an Abwehr Trojan horse operation. The object was to get a germ-warfare agent inside our command centre. It could have destroyed us, and you fell for it lock, stock and barrel.’

  Caversham’s eyes dulled. ‘But my contact, Groot … he was a highly reliable double-agent … he was one of us. He would never have let me down …’

  Stocker gasped in frustration. ‘Groot was compromised years ago. You weren’t communicating with Groot, not even with Berlin. I checked the signals. They emanated from a local source –’

  ‘Yes, but that was just a relay: the signals were passed on via Groot’s agent, codenamed Cheshire Cat, in Alexandria.’

  ‘What?’
Ice-cold feathers touched Stocker’s cheeks: sweat popped his brow. He turned away, took a series of quick breaths. Cheshire Cat was Calvin, the man who’d taken control of the deserters. It fell into place with an almost audible snap. Calvin was a Nazi agent. He was organizing the deserters into an Axis fifth-column inside Egypt. At the same time, he’d put together this complex Trojan horse scheme, designed to wipe out Allied command. It was a one-man campaign, and Stocker had just sent Betty Nolan into the thick of it.

  He grabbed his duffel coat and beret. Caversham watched him resentfully. ‘Surely you’re not leaving me like this? I acted with the best of intentions …’

  Stocker pulled down his beret grimly. ‘The highroad to hell is tarmacked with them, Colonel.’

  ‘But come, come, Major, you’re one of us, aren’t you?’

  ‘One of whom, exactly?’

  ‘One of the ruling elite. People of good breeding.’

  ‘Not really. My father worked on the railways: I got a scholarship to Oxford.’

  He turned his back on Caversham, addressed the staff-sergeant. ‘Throw this well-bred officer in the deepest dungeon this monastery has, Staff. If he tries to get away, shoot him.’

  Caine sat with Celia Blaney by Copeland’s cot in the infirmary: a small, clean ward with a handful of beds and bare stone walls. Cope was out for the count. The MO4 sawbones, a crop-haired youth with a permanent grin, had removed the bullet from his calf: the fever had subsided, and they’d given him a sedative. He was still pale, and his leg swollen, but the doc assured them he’d pull through. FANY nurses had washed Caine’s wounds, disinfected the rope-burns on his neck, bandaged it. They’d thrown away his torn and bloodstained garments, found him a new battledress suit that almost fit.

  The MO had instructed Caine to rest, but he was too excited. Blaney had just told him about the shooting incident during which she’d recognized Betty Nolan. He’d had to choke back tears. What Jizzard had told him was all true. Nolan had survived the crash. She’d lost her memory for a while but was now fine. She was working for Field Security among the deserters. Blaney had also told him that Angela Brunetto hadn’t been an Axis plant after all: Stocker had devised that as a cover story. The truth was that Brunetto had also been deployed undercover among the deserter gangs, as Nolan’s minder. Caine was so happy for Copeland that he had to be dissuaded from waking him up.

  Blaney saw the euphoria in his eyes: she bit her lip guiltily. She hadn’t mentioned the fact that, only a few hours earlier, Brunetto had left an emergency message at the Field Security office: Nolan had been summoned to Calvin’s HQ. It was the breakthrough they’d been waiting for, but Stocker was here in Sinai, and there’d been a delay before the message had reached him. It had come too late to dispatch an FS team to support her. They had to rely on Brunetto to keep tabs, and to maintain contact: since then, nothing had been heard.

  Blaney had talked to Maskelyne for over an hour: the interview had been productive. The ex-magician had admitted that he’d wanted revenge on Caine and his men for their behaviour on Sandhog. He’d known about the STENDEC aircraft and the black box: he’d been in Nighthawk up to the hilt.

  ‘It wasn’t his idea to rope you in, though,’ Blaney said. ‘That came from another officer. Someone outside MO4.’

  ‘Come on,’ Caine said impatiently. ‘Spill.’

  ‘It was Lieutenant Sears-Beach.’

  Caine almost fell out of his chair. Then he remembered: the dying Fiske had mentioned Sears-Beach: so had his vision of Pickney in the derelict aircraft.

  ‘Sears-Beach knew about Captain Nolan,’ Blaney went on. ‘He knew she was living with the deserters, and that she’d lost her memory. He had her followed, had photographs taken of her … the ones they showed you.’

  Caine’s fists tightened. ‘He knew? And he never reported it to GHQ? That bastard …’ He swore to himself silently that one day he and Sears-Beach would meet again. ‘Are Field Security going to pull him in?’

  ‘That’s not up to me to decide, sir, but he’s certainly in this as deeply as they are. Maskelyne admitted that he approached Sears-Beach for commando-trained detainees to volunteer for Nighthawk. He came up with the idea of using you and the others. Maskelyne told him you might not be amenable: Sears-Beach proposed using his photos of Nolan to coerce you.’

  Caine closed his eyes, took a breath, steadied himself. He tried to recall the faces of his men – the ones who’d died on Nighthawk, his mates Wallace and Trubman, who were missing, possibly dead. Sears-Beach had been partly responsible, but only partly. The decisions on the ground had been Caine’s. There was no escaping that.

  ‘Are you all right, Captain?’ Blaney’s voice was a gentle catpurr.

  Caine opened his eyes. ‘What about Maskelyne? What’ll happen to him?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’ She seemed cagey.

  ‘He was in Nighthawk up to the hilt, you said.’

  ‘There may be extenuating circumstances. Maskelyne is our mole in MO4.’

  Caine’s jaw dropped. ‘Mole – you mean informer?’

  ‘Yes. He was the source of the DMI’s information that Colonel Caversham had been in contact with the Abwehr, that he was involved in Colonel Stirling’s capture. That’s what put Major Stocker on MO4’s track in the first place. We came here looking for Caversham, and we found … you.’

  ‘I’m glad you did, but surely he’s not …’

  Caine was interrupted by the arrival of Stocker, looking unusually flustered. ‘Celia, we’ve got to get to Alex,’ he gasped. ‘Get on the blower, lay on a Dakota to pick us up here.’

  Blaney was already running.

  Caine stood up. ‘What is it, sir?’

  Stocker caught his breath. ‘I haven’t been entirely fair with you, Tom,’ he panted. ‘Not with regard to Captain Nolan.’

  A cold swill raced up Caine’s back. ‘What do you mean, sir? Miss Blaney told me –’

  ‘You know she’s alive,’ Stocker cut across him, ‘but she doesn’t know you are. I told her you didn’t survive the crash.’

  ‘What?’ Caine’s senses groped. ‘Why on earth did you do that?’

  ‘I don’t have time to explain, but I will. At this point in time, though, Nolan is in trouble. I’ve just realized from something Caversham said that the Nazi agent who set up the STENDEC scheme is the same man Nolan’s been tracking for us, the man who’s been organizing the deserters. And right now she’s walking into the lion’s den.’

  48

  They came for Betty Nolan in the late evening, about the same time Caine was landing in Sinai. They didn’t take her, though: they took Angela Brunetto instead. Four goons in trenchcoats broke into the safe-house, battered Taylor unconscious with night-sticks, and marched Brunetto out to a waiting lorry. Nolan heard it all from her room. Her first impulse was to rush out and tell them that it was her they were after: she clenched her teeth, held back. She knew that Brunetto had understood the blunder, too. She and Angela were lookalikes: the thugs had probably just barged into the first room they came to, found a pretty blond girl, assumed she was the one. Taylor might have put them right, but they hadn’t given him the chance.

  Nolan paused for a few seconds to think: the crucial thing was to trace Calvin. That they’d snatched the wrong person didn’t change that, as long as Nolan didn’t lose track of Brunetto. They’d known this was coming for hours, ever since Taylor had arrived with the announcement Calvin wants to see Maddy. Nolan had repressed a shiver: this was the chance Stocker wanted, but she also recalled that, of the women who’d received such a summons, none had ever come back. Taylor remembered it, too. Over my dead body was his reaction. From the sound of the beating they’d given him, it had almost come to that.

  After the message arrived, Brunetto had managed to alert Field Security. Stocker had been out of the office, though, and there’d been no immediate reply. Nolan was aware that her job now was to follow Brunetto, hoping that they’d take her to Calvin’s base, and that support would a
rrive ASAP.

  She was wearing a one-piece black FANY overall and desert boots. She pulled on a cap-comforter, retrieved her Colt pistol from under the floorboards, grabbed the haversack she’d prepared. She ran across the ops room, stopped for a moment to examine Taylor. He was bleeding from the head: his breathing was regular. She wished she had time to help him, but told herself he’d be all right. She felt a wave of sadness: he’d done his best to stop this happening. She knew he’d been in love with her in his own gruff way. He’d kept on, hoping that one day she’d wake up and feel the same. Poor Taylor. Loving someone who doesn’t love you is like trying to catch a boat from a railway-station.

  When she emerged into the yard, the tail-lights of the wagon were just disappearing through the gate. There was no one else about. She jumped into the covered Willy’s Bantam she and Brunetto had earmarked for the job, started her up, reversed on a sixpence, drove out of the gate in the lorry’s tracks.

  It was about one in the morning when she reached down-town Alexandria: the lorry was still in sight. It had taken a couple of hours to get there, but long stretches of the journey were lost to her: her senses had been focused on those red tail-lights, winking in front of her like rat-eyes. She remembered the occasional blink of gaslamps in silent Delta villages, the reek of smoke and nightsoil, dogs barking, the oily gleam of canal water, wedges of reed-forest, nightblue reaches of starfilled sky. The only tricky moment had been when she’d been stopped at an MP checkpoint on the outskirts of Alex. She’d talked her way through with false papers and a shy batting of eyelids at the young Redcap sergeant. For a moment she’d felt safe in the presence of that squad of solid British lads in battledress: she’d even considered telling the sergeant her real identity, asking him to contact Stocker’s office. She’d rejected the idea, though: it would have taken too long to establish her credentials: her objective was to find out where Calvin was. Once she’d done that, all that remained would be to get Brunetto out.