Death or Glory III

by Michael Asher

  She forced herself to focus. She had no hidden weapons: she doubted that Brunetto did either. There’d been two big men with pistols in the room when she’d come in: she guessed they were still lurking behind her in the shadows. The cellar was large and dimly lit: its walls were draped with faded crimson hangings. There was what appeared to be a signals booth to her left: she’d seen an enormous four-poster bed when she’d first entered. There seemed to be no windows – the cellar was underground, of course. There were several doors apart from the one she’d come in through: she’d counted five – three lining the wall to the right, one behind Rohde, and another to the left of the comms booth. Some might lead to auxiliary rooms, a toilet, others to passages or staircases. All in all, the chances of escape didn’t look good. On impulse, she decided to rely on bluff.

  The deserters knew her as Maddy – a girl they’d found wandering the streets, disorientated and unaware of her identity. She hadn’t been listening to Eisner’s words properly: now they came back to her. I know they picked you up after the crash, that you lived with them because you’d lost your memory. Eisner had also called her Maddy; an old acquaintance of yours. One you might not remember, he’d said of Rohde. It was a gamble, but right now it was all she had.

  ‘Where’s Calvin?’ she demanded with a hysterical edge in her voice. ‘I came to see Calvin. Where is he?’

  Rohde’s tonsils grated. ‘You took me in once, Miss Maddaleine Rose. Not again. My friend Johann tells me that you are not the person you once were: that you have lost your memory. I was prepared to believe that until I discovered the signora here, who had been substituted for you. That seemed rather too much of a coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I came here to see Calvin.’

  ‘I’m aware that you’re a good actress. I discovered that to my cost. I won’t be caught again –’

  ‘I talked to the deserters who found her,’ Eisner cut in peevishly. He’d been standing in the shadows out of Nolan’s vision: now, he moved noiselessly in front of her, stared at Rohde. ‘They found her wandering around Cairo the night of our crash. She didn’t know who she was or what she was doing there. She’s been with them ever since. She’s taken part in hijacks and shootings. Nobody’s cover is that deep. How could she have known she’d be in an accident that night?’

  ‘Even if that’s true, doesn’t it occur to you that the Italian bitch might have told her who she is?’

  ‘That wouldn’t necessarily make any difference. Not if her memory is blocked. She wouldn’t remember.’

  Rohde leaned forward again, allowing light to fall on his hideously deformed face. ‘You see this? She is the same person who did this to me, whether she remembers it or not. She will suffer the consequences.’

  He sat back, gasping for breath. ‘I’m going to tell you about those consequences,’ he said at last. ‘You see, after I was maimed by you and others, I came up with an idea that would pay you out, and all your kind with you. Our germ specialists had developed a synthetic disease with the modest name of UB7. It was based on the fungus that causes ergotism. UB7 is highly infectious. It is passed from person to person by contact, and the symptoms show up within a few minutes. My idea was to have a huge dose of UB7 sealed in a black box, itself a clever device, with properties that might dissuade any casual observer from trying to open it. I had the box placed in the hull of a dummy aircraft, constructed to look as if it had crash-landed in the desert. All that remained was to leak to British intelligence that the black box really contained a prototype electronic counter-measures device that could deceive radar. Something they couldn’t possibly ignore. The plan was so brilliantly conceived that our rivals, the SS, wanted it for themselves. They sent a unit to retrieve the black box. They were too late, of course. By now the box will be in Egypt. It may well have been opened. Even as we speak the plague may be spreading throughout Allied command. It won’t be contained there. Many civilians will die. I tell you this so that you understand what your actions against me set in motion. Thousands will die horribly because of what you did.’

  Nolan and Brunetto gaped at him. He’s mad, Nolan thought. He’s stark, staring bonkers. Rohde slipped out an automatic pistol, covered both of them. ‘Normally, I give the females I invite here a choice. Either they can go to the palace to be fucked by any filthy Gyppo greaseball who wants them. Or they can play horse-and-jockey with Johann here. Most take the first choice. In your case, though, I’m giving no such options. You will join Herr Eisner in his enjoyable games. Eisner loves horsy games, don’t you, Eisner? As long as you are the rider, eh?’

  Eisner blanched. ‘What do you mean … ?’

  Rohde’s whispery voice was almost coaxing. ‘You think I don’t know about the vanishing girls? The ones who end up in shallow graves in the desert after you have sodomized them and slit their throats?’

  Eisner’s lips trembled. ‘That’s not me. I’m not responsible for that …’

  ‘I see,’ Rohde snickered dryly. ‘So what is the purpose of that little knife in your pocket?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Eisner stammered. ‘The person who does that to those girls … it’s not me … it’s someone else.’

  ‘I want you to get that little knife out and cut their throats.’

  Brunetto let out a stifled scream. Nolan felt petrified with panic, tried to push it back by sheer will-power. Whatever happens, you mustn’t seem afraid.

  Eisner felt for his knife, brought it out. He looked at it, then at Maddy. She was facing death, yet she didn’t seem scared. She was like a child, except that there were those eyes, deep, deep eyes, that seemed to draw you in. Eyes that seemed to be seeing another world.

  ‘Eisner,’ Rohde rapped. ‘Do it.’

  Eisner hesitated, caught in Nolan’s beam like a rabbit.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he stammered.

  ‘I want to see you do it. You fouled up every single attempt to kill her, you incompetent fool. Do her now while I watch. Do them both.’

  Eisner stepped closer to Nolan, his knife ready. He lifted her chin gently, caressed her cheek, stroked her neck. She didn’t flinch from his gaze. She’s not afraid. She’s not afraid of me. He remembered the time he’d been about to kill her in the Cairo house. That was what had made him hesitate then. Her refusal to show fear. She’s the only woman I’ve ever met who isn’t afraid of me. You could do anything to her, have her in any way you liked, and she’d never be afraid. He realized he wanted her more than anything: he wanted to do things to her until he finally saw the fear in her eyes.

  ‘Eisner.’

  Eisner let his hand drop: he raised the knife slowly. Then, with astonishing speed, he wheeled round on Rohde, sliced his neck with a single snick of the blade. Rohde’s one good eye bugged, he choked, coughed, gurgled blood: gore and froth oozed from the severed flesh. His tarantula fingers twitched: he slumped sideways, toppled on to the floor.

  Brunetto squealed, fought frantically at her bindings. Nolan heard deeper yells, half turned to see the guards advancing on Eisner with drawn pistols. He stood his ground, shot them both with Rohde’s discarded automatic.

  Rohde was lying face upwards in a puddle of blood, his hand on his throat, his slot of an eye blinking, making gurgling sounds in his throat. Eisner crouched over him, spoke in his ear. ‘I know you can hear me,’ he whispered. ‘I wanted to tell you that it was me who informed SS command about STENDEC. It was me who gave the Totenkopf the location of the black aircraft. I realized long ago that the Abwehr was so riddled with double-agents and anti-Hitler people that it was no longer trusted by the OKW. You were right about one thing: I do like horsy games. That’s why I changed horses in mid-gallop. I’ve been working for the Gestapo for months. So here’s this for my incompetence.’ He spat in Rohde’s eye. ‘I’m not going to finish the job. I’m going to let you lie here, bleed slowly to death, and ruminate on your own incompetence.’

  He stood up, saw Brunetto trying to crawl away. He ignored her, dragged N
olan to her feet, started to sever her bindings. ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  He opened his wolf-eyes wide. ‘I want you.’ He paused, glanced at Brunetto. ‘Your friend will have to go, of course, but not you. You’re mine.’

  There came a sudden spurt of gunfire from outside, screams, running feet. Eisner stood perfectly still, cocked his ears. At that moment Brunetto launched herself at him, shrieking: she was free of her bindings: she wielded in her hands the pistol she’d taken from one of the dead guards.

  Eisner stepped back: his mouth gobfished.

  Then the door exploded.

  The cellar was full of fumes and shouting. Brunetto was sprawled on the floor with Eisner’s little knife in her throat: Eisner was backing away with Nolan in a headlock. His temple was blubbing gore where the Italian girl’s bullet had winged him: he held Rohde’s pistol against Nolan’s neck. A broad-shouldered figure edged out of the murk: Tom Caine was there in front of them, his Thompson at the ready. For a moment Nolan thought she must be hallucinating. Caine looked different: his face scorched, his neck bandaged: there was a limpness to his left arm, a stiffness to his body. Then he said Betty and the bubble popped: it was Caine, Tom Caine, Thomas Caine, Thomas Edward Caine, solid, strong, as real as his stone-polished eyes, his blunt head, his freckled features. He was only yards away, yet it was infinity. Nolan tried to say something: words wouldn’t come. Eisner dug the .22 pistol into her flesh, dragged her towards the green baize curtain behind Rohde’s chair. His back came in contact with it: he elbowed it open, touched a button. Nolan heard the rattle of electric cascade doors: a lift.

  Caine stared at them, frozen: a voice in his head shrieked, This isn’t happening. I’ve found her, and now Eisner is taking her away again. His gorge rose like a tidal wave: he fought to keep calm, to ease the screeching inside. He needed a steady grip to make a headshot – a feat considered impossible with a hip-held Tommy-gun. If I hit her that’s the end. I couldn’t go on, knowing I’d shot her. But if I don’t, Eisner will have her. She’ll be dead then, too. He eased off the safety, felt the fingers of his left hand creep along the forward stock, touched the trigger-guard, shifted the muzzle slightly. He set his teeth: his boneground eyes fixed on a spot on Eisner’s bleeding head.

  Eisner was backing Nolan into the lift. ‘Stop,’ Caine growled. ‘Let her go.’

  Eisner’s wolf-eyes glowed. ‘She’s mine now, Caine. Mine to do what I like with.’

  Caine remembered the words that had haunted him, so long ago, it seemed. If he’d been deluded then, his mind was now as clear as an icepick. They were almost in the lift. Caine’s finger brushed the trigger. ‘You can do it, skipper,’ a voice whispered. It was Pickney. ‘Go on. It’ll be all right.’

  Caine squeezed: the gun boomed, smoke belched, cordite blew. Eisner jerked, let go Nolan’s head. As he fell back into the lift his pistol cracked. Nolan lurched forward, the lift doors closed: traction-cables rumbled. Caine fired burst after burst through the iron doorframes: he didn’t stop shooting until Celia Blaney’s fingers closed round his wrist. ‘It’s all right, Tom. He’s dead.’

  Whenever Caine thought about it later, what happened after that remained a hazy memory. He recalled seeing Brunetto on the floor, her naked chest heaving, her lips working soundlessly. He remembered seeing a one-legged, one-armed man with a horrifically mutilated face, gargling, as gore streamed through his fingers. Most of all, though, he remembered Betty Nolan – the pale features, the blood in the golden hair, the tiny entry wound in her head that seemed no bigger than a bee-sting. He remembered Blaney squatting at his elbow with a medical pack and a field dressing, recalled the graveness in her pigeoncoloured eyes. She’s still breathing, Tom. But only just. Caine remembered the coldness that had gripped him then, how he’d staggered away, clutched at the wall, wailed inwardly No. For Christ’s sake. No.

  After that he remembered only how the sneer on Rohde’s horror-mask face had faded when Stocker whispered in his ear that his STENDEC scheme had failed. He recalled the eldritch, oldcrone voice wheezing. ‘You haven’t defeated me, Caine … in Libya I gave you enough Olzon-13 to cause lasting nerve damage. Tell me … have you seen any ghosts recently?’

  He recalled how the slot-like eye had burned, how the man had cackled, coughed, spluttered through his bloody phlegm, until the moment Caine had shot him in the head.

  51

  They walked down the corniche arm in arm, and sometimes Caine even forgot it was Celia Blaney beside him, not Betty Nolan. For days after the incident he’d lain in hospital raving in delirium – the result of wound-trauma, battle-fatigue, shock: Blaney had sat patiently at his bedside for hours on end. Later, as he’d begun the long slog back to health, she’d been there for him whenever he’d needed her. They’d tested him for possible nerve damage from Olzon-13 poisoning, but the results had been inconclusive. Caine knew he’d experienced some strange symptoms before and during Nighthawk, but Maurice Pickney had paid him no visits lately, and he realized that he would now never know if Rohde’s last words had been a bluff.

  By the time the medics had passed him fit to return to his regiment, though, everything had changed. Montgomery had pushed the old Panzer Army far to the north of Tunisia: Axis forces were hanging on there by a thread. Even Hitler seemed to have abandoned North Africa: Rommel had been recalled to Berlin.

  There was another SAS Regiment, now, 2nd SAS, based in Algeria, training for the invasion of Italy. 1st Regiment hadn’t really survived Stirling’s capture: Stirling had made too many enemies among what he’d always called the fossilized shit at GHQ. A desert raiding force wasn’t needed any more, they pointed out. Word was that they were going to disband 1st SAS, and reform it as an ordinary commando mob under Paddy Mayne.

  Caine realized that they’d arrived at the place where the taxi carrying him and Nolan had crashed into the Nile, more than six months earlier. That had been the last time he’d spoken to her: now she’d been shipped back to Blighty, alive but in a coma. From the latest he’d heard, she was still unconscious, still in intensive care.

  They shared a cigarette, watched Allied soldiers out taking the air, ogling the girls, arguing with vendors. The Nile waters were clay-brown and sluggish: a felucca with a sail like a white butterfly skimmed the stream.

  ‘Any news of Wallace and Trubman?’ Blaney asked.

  Caine shook his head, took a drag, passed the cigarette to her. ‘Officially declared missing in action.’

  He steered his thoughts away, not willing to face that yawning chasm he’d looked into so often during his convalescence. ‘Harry’s doing all right, though. Been posted to officer-training at last.’

  ‘He’ll be happy about that.’

  ‘Yeah. Over the moon.’

  ‘Angela’s OK?’

  ‘Yep. They’re still together.’ Brunetto had been lucky: distracted by her shot, Eisner had struck her only a glancing cut. His knife had stuck in her flesh, but her windpipe hadn’t been severed.

  ‘You heard about Caversham and the others?’ Blaney asked.

  Caine raised his eyebrows. ‘Surprise me.’

  In the end, she told him, none of them had been court-martialled – not Caversham, nor his MO4 cronies, nor Sears-Beach. Caversham had been able to demonstrate that the DMO had ordered the op on el-Fayya bridge. Stocker guessed that the order had come in response to false int., supplied by MO4, that the Totenkopf objective was to hit the Kiwis from the rear, when in fact they’d simply been tasked to retrieve the black box. Stocker didn’t believe that 164 Panzer Division had ever intended to cross the Matmata Hills. He couldn’t prove any of it, of course, but if it were true, it meant that Caine’s stand at the el-Fayya bridge had been a wasted effort. As for the black box, there was no proof other than hearsay that it had ever existed: Willington had never actually seen it, and the brass had preferred to believe Caversham, rather than Caine and Cope. Neither Stocker nor Blaney had been consulted. The Stirling affair had been swept quietly under the carpet
. ‘Insufficient evidence,’ Blaney commented wryly. ‘Otherwise known as friends in high places, Stocker says.’

  Caine shrugged. It was no more or less than he’d expected. Whatever happened, it wouldn’t bring Nolan back.

  He stubbed out the cigarette, found Blaney looking at him with the gently expectant expression he’d grown used to. A smile widened her soft mouth.

  ‘So what about you, Tom? What are you going to do now?’

  He shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. Nothing’s the same any more, is it? One thing I’m sure of, I’m not letting her go. Not while there’s a chance she might come round.’

  He saw a hint of sadness in her eyes, knew he’d been inconsiderate: it wasn’t much of a reward for her devotion, to profess that his heart still belonged to another girl – a girl who might not even live. Was that how it would be for the rest of his life? he wondered. Would Nolan always be there, looking over his shoulder? He’d killed Eisner, but he’d failed Nolan: he’d been close, but not close enough. That was one wound that would never heal. The worst of it, though, was not knowing, not being sure.

  He gave Blaney a peck on the cheek, slipped his arm through hers. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you a tea.’

  Him and Blaney? He liked her. He liked the way the chip-bag cap sat jauntily on her fiery hair: he liked the soft, dove-coloured eyes, the peachy skin, the way the battledress clung to her figure. He liked her gentleness and her warm heart. She wasn’t Betty Nolan, though: she never would be. But maybe she could be. He didn’t know.

  He just wanted a decent book to read ...