Death or Glory I: The Last Commando: The Last Commando

by Michael Asher

  Avery suppressed his surprise. ‘This is connected with the counter-intelligence scene?’

  ‘Intimately. The man who murdered Mary Goddard was an Axis agent. He was using her infatuation with him to obtain secrets from her husband and passing them to the Germans. Now, having seen both bodies, I'd stake my reputation that Levi was murdered by the same man.’

  Avery looked puzzled. ‘I can see the rationale for the Goddard murder – she would've been able to identify him – but why snuff a cabaret girl?’

  Stocker produced a ready-filled pipe from his pocket, tamped the tobacco down with his thumb and began to light it with a match. In a moment, he was enveloped in clouds of smoke. ‘Rachel Levi was present the night Goddard was murdered,’ he said, puffing energetically. ‘Of course, so were dozens of others, but Levi was an associate of Nolan's and might possibly have learned something from her – a detail that didn't come out or wasn't noticed when Nolan was questioned. My first conclusion, therefore, was that this might be a case of the perpetrator eliminating witnesses. Then I asked myself why he should do so after he had gone undetected for a year. In fact, if he was simply concerned with witnesses, a murder like this would have been counter-productive.’

  Avery nodded. ‘So what was your second conclusion?’

  Stocker let the pipe lodge in the corner of his mouth, while he whipped off his glasses and began to clean them with a scrap of felt. ‘Two nights ago,’ he said, ‘a man arrived at Madame Badia's with a recent photo of your Betty Nolan. Did you know about that?’

  Avery looked slightly annoyed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn't told.’

  ‘Funny,’ Stocker said, replacing his glasses. ‘The brief should have reached you by now. Actually, I was tipped off by one of my men, who is working undercover at the club. He reported that this man was dressed as a British Army captain. He wanted information about Nolan, and my man directed him to Levi. A fateful move, as it turned out, but my chap wasn't to know that. He thought, quite rightly, that by quizzing Levi later he could find out what the man was after.’

  ‘So who was the officer?’ Avery asked.

  ‘He signed his name in the guest book as a Captain Sandy Peterson, General List. I've checked, and there is no such officer on the General List, or any other list. I believe that this “Peterson” was the killer of both Goddard and Levi.’

  Avery was fascinated. ‘All right, but if he was Goddard's killer, wasn't it a big risk returning to the club? He must have had some very compelling reason.’

  Stocker's eyes were blue, Avery noticed, and very bright behind the lenses. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Hence the British officer's disguise – a clever touch. Yes, you are perfectly right, Captain. Whatever brought him to the club two nights ago, it was urgent. I believe it was connected with Operation Runefish.’

  Avery stared at him, as the connection suddenly became clear. ‘You mean he's rumbled Runefish?’ he said.

  Stocker didn't answer, but beckoned Avery with a finger. They moved back out of the bedroom into the sitting room, which was now empty. Stocker pointed to the bloodstains on the carpet and on an upright chair and drew Avery's attention to a loop of rope attached to the chair, with ends that had clearly been cut through. ‘The thing about our man,’ Stocker said, ‘is that he's not only a spy but also a sexual sadist. He interrogates Levi while she's tied to this chair. The bloodstains indicate torture – incidentally, Levi's body had been cut in various places, including a breast. A piece of her left ear was missing – it wasn't found, so we assume he took it as a souvenir.’

  ‘Good grief.’

  ‘Yes. So he interrogates her about Nolan, extracting the information he failed to get out of her at the club two nights ago. We have to presume she told him all she knew, which was nothing about Runefish but would probably include the fact that Nolan was recruited into the army – that, as you know, was her cover story.’

  Avery smiled. He ought to know, because he had invented the cover story himself. Stocker continued. ‘Once he's got the information he wants, he drags her to the bedroom and does his thing on her – cuts her throat in the act of raping her, just as he did with Goddard. He's clever enough to know that his MO will be identified, so we must assume that his urge to simultaneous rape and murder is too strong for him to resist.’

  Avery frowned, trying to assess the threat to Operation Runefish. It was, he realized, serious.

  ‘Now, here's some relevant intelligence you will probably know about,’ Stocker went on. ‘On the night Runefish departed, our “Y” Service intercepted an unlicensed transmission from the central Cairo district. It went out almost simultaneously with her departure. We decoded the transmission, which contained the intelligence that a female naval officer, codenamed Runefish, was transporting top-secret documents from GHQ Middle East to London. These documents were for the eyes of the Prime Minister, and the courier had been issued with a cyanide pill, presumably to commit suicide if subjected to interrogation. The salient point about that transmission is that it came from an Abwehr agent known as Stürmer who is operating undercover in Cairo, and whom Field Security have been trying to identify for more than a year. You knew about this transmission?’

  Avery shifted slightly. ‘As a matter of fact, I did, sir,’ he said. ‘That intelligence was derived from a ‘leak’ my division deliberately disseminated to known Abwehr assets.’ He paused for a moment and flashed a glance at Stocker. ‘Are you saying that Stürmer and the Levi-Goddard killer are one and the same?’

  Stocker's bright eyes were on him again. ‘Let's call it a hunch,’ he said. He paused and swallowed hard. ‘The night that transmission went out, one of my agents – Cpl Salim Tanta – was murdered. He was last seen tailing a car that was spotted behaving suspiciously at the Helwan checkpoint. What was left of his body was found in the remains of his burned-out Vauxhall, in a derelict back-street in Maadi.’

  ‘Christ. You mean the person he was shadowing was the same one who sent the transmission? The Levi-Goddard killer – Peterson – Stürmer?’

  ‘I admit it's speculation, but I think there's a strong possibility.’

  Avery thought about it. There was, he saw, a logical flaw in Stocker's thesis.

  ‘The transmission suggests that the sender didn't know that Runefish was Nolan,’ he said, ‘but the fact that the killer – “Peterson” – came looking for Nolan at the club suggests that he did know. How else would he have made the connection? And he had a photo of her, you said? Doesn't that indicate that the killer and Stürmer are two different men?’

  Stocker removed his pipe from his mouth and sighed. ‘There are other possibilities. Say, for example, this man sends his initial report and only later realizes from the photo that Runefish is Nolan. Or that he knows it all along, but holds back the information because Nolan is also a witness of his murder of Goddard.’ Stocker sighed again. ‘Not being privy to the exact nature of the operation, I can't say any more. You're in a better position to judge than I am. I'd strongly suggest, though, that whether we're dealing with one person or two, the Runefish mission is in imminent danger of being compromised.’

  21

  Caine crouched in the cover of an arbutus tree, watching as Gracie began her slow descent of the spur from a panhandle three hundred feet above the wadi bed. She was the last of the wagons to come down. The tightness of the spur – only finger-lengths of clearance on both sides – made the operation almost as dicey as the ascent at Shallal in the early hours of that morning. Though the other six vehicles had all made it down nose-first under their own steam, there had been a flap when Marlene had suffered a crack in her differential cover-plate. Caine didn't anticipate any such problem with Gracie. Her driver, Bob O'Brian, had engaged six-wheel drive, and despite her massive load of fuel, and the fact that she was towing the water-bowser, Caine felt confident that she would make it without a hitch.

  In the limpid light, the truck and bowser looked bigger than they really were. Caine couldn't make out O'Brian's face i
n the shadows of the cab, but he could clearly see the pumpkin head and tanned, muscular back of Todd Sweeney, poised on the slope ten feet below the lorry, directing the driver with hand signals. Sweeney, clad only in boots, socks, shorts and stocking-cap, with his Tommy-gun slung over his shoulder, seemed impervious to the heat, which was coming down like ladles of scalding grease.

  The hint of salty moisture in the air reminded Caine that the sea wasn't far off, and the thought troubled him. If the Med was that close, so was Benghazi. According to Sheikh Adud, now curled up under a tree in seemingly untroubled sleep, the track they'd bypassed lay only a short distance down the wadi, and they still had ample time to bump the Brandenburger column. Considering they'd been going at slug-speed for the past twelve hours, that sounded incredible, but Caine had no reason to doubt the word of the Senussi sheikh, who had proved correct in almost everything else.

  He stood up yawning, and wiped waxy sweat off his forehead with his silk tankie scarf. It had been a long night and an even longer morning. All the way along the side of the Jebel from Shallal he'd felt naked and vulnerable. It had only needed one Axis shufti-wallah to pole up, and the whole unit would have been steak tartare.

  It had seemed for ever before the ledge had played out into the panhandle, with the narrow spur falling sharply into the wadi bed, dappled by thickets of ilex, arbutus and cork oaks. The three 3-tonners and the Daimler were now leaguered under the trees, well concealed from the air, while Caine had sent the Dingo on ahead to recce an ambush site and to locate the enemy column. He would feel much happier when this last vehicle was down.

  He took a last glance at Gracie, satisfied that she was on track, and that Sweeney and O'Brian, between them, could manage to get her down, and turned his back on the truck. He wandered back to the leaguer, where the wagon crews were stripping machine-guns, chugging petrol, mending punctures, replacing spark-plugs and fan-belts. Wingnut Turner called him over to inspect the repair job he'd just completed on Marlene's crushed cover-plate. ‘Hammered it back into shape and bolted it on, skipper,’ he said. ‘It won't give us any more trouble.’

  ‘Outstanding job, mate,’ Caine told him. ‘Especially in these conditions.’ He meant it – it was work that even his perfectionist father would have been proud of.

  He heard roars of laughter from a knot of men in the shade of an ilex tree, Wallace's great thorn-bush of a head conspicuous amongst them. Striding over to investigate, he was met by a sight that struck him as shockingly obscene. Medical Orderly Pickney was straddling the body of Private Ross MacDonald, attempting to shove a grease-gun up his arse. MacDonald, a grizzled, bearded vet of the Black Watch, was stretched out on his belly with his hands braced round the tree-trunk and his rifle next to him. He was buck naked apart from his socks and boots. It dawned on Caine rather belatedly that this was a medical operation. MacDonald had been complaining of painful constipation for the past two days, and lacking equipment for an enema, Pickney had improvised with a grease-gun from one of the wagons, attached to a tube of soapy water. Though Caine didn't know it, what was causing the ruckus was the fact that the grease-gun's nozzle was square, not round, and though Pickney had wrapped it with a cloth smeared in petroleum jelly, the operation was proving unexpectedly difficult.

  ‘You're enjoying this, Pickney,’ Mac roared. ‘For God's sake go easy with that thing.’

  ‘Stop belly-aching, MacDonald. You asked for it, remember?’

  ‘Hey, Mac,’ Wallace bellowed. ‘You highlanders are all sheep-shaggers, ain't you? Well, now you know what it's like to be the sheep.’

  Caine joined in the general explosion of glee, but MacDonald turned his face aside to glare at Wallace. ‘Eat shit, you big baboon,’ he yelled.

  Caine was about to tell them to give Mac some privacy when he clocked Todd Sweeney weaving into the cover of the trees, his Tommy-gun dangling from a naked, mutton-chop shoulder. He was surprised to see the corporal back so soon. ‘Is Gracie down?’ he enquired.

  Sweeney shook his football-sized head. ‘Nah. O'Brian's competent, so I left him to it.’

  Caine was about to ask more, when there was a crack – crack – crack of rifle fire from beyond the trees – three or four crisp gunshots sounding impossibly loud against the valley's tranquil backdrop. Caine braced his Tommy-gun and whirled round to see that the men had dropped everything and were fanning out into the scrub. Sweeney was inching cautiously towards the edge of cover. As Caine followed, he found that Copeland and Wallace had taken up positions on either side of him. Caine crouched down next to Sweeney, in time to hear the ex-MP whisper, ‘Oh shit.’

  Following his gaze up the spur, Caine saw Gracie, about a hundred feet up the slope, with both her front wheels hanging over the precipice. This time, Caine could see the head and bandaged neck of O'Brian in the driver's seat, slumped across the steering-wheel. The glass in front of him had been shattered by gunshots. ‘O'Brian's hit,’ Copeland whispered. ‘She's out of control…’

  For a moment, Caine thought the weight of the water-bowser would hold her, but an instant later both her left-side rear tyres were over the rim. The four-wheeled bowser arched out in a jack-knife: its wheels reeled out into empty space. Caine let out a moan, his eyes riveted on the bowser as it tipped sideways, pulling the truck with it. ‘She's going,’ Cope gasped.

  Wallace's chiselled jaw dropped: his eyes bulged. ‘Jackson,’ he hissed. ‘Jackson's in there.’ He took a pace forward: Caine jerked him back. All four of them gaped helplessly, as, with exquisite slowness, Gracie tumbled sideways into the abyss.

  They hurled themselves flat just as lorry and bowser kerauned into the wadi bed a hundred and fifty yards away, detonating instantly with a lung-crushing vrrrrooooom of high explosive. The air folded, the ground pitched, sand and gravel slingshotted, loose grenades trumped like firecrackers. Caine saw the spindling starflash of the wagon's convulsion – the frame turning fluid, snaking out of shape, un-riveting into a million black slivers – engine fragments, scorched flesh, spatters of boiling rubber, spurts of liquefied glass – all blowing outwards, riding a tidal wave of roiling red lava and black smoke. A lobe of gas and flame ballooned across the wadi, expanding until it buckled like a windless parachute, whip-cracking back in a dark hail of dust, pebbles, shrapnel shards. Gouts of foul smoke plumed up from the valley floor.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ Copeland mouthed.

  They struggled to their feet, lungs and throats scorched from the blast, faces lucent with shock. Caine sensed movement behind him, saw commandos careening through the thickets with fire extinguishers, waved them back. ‘There's a sniper out there,’ he yelled.

  It would have been hopeless, anyway. The Marmon Herrington was a gutted-out skeleton in a nimbus of licking flames, and there was a mat of crackling debris strewn over hundreds of feet – gobs of shredded rubber, slugs of white-hot metal, rissole-like knobs of matter giving off the stink of charred meat. There was no sign of a body – not even a whole limb. ‘Not enough to fill an egg cup,’ Wallace grunted, his voice quavering. His eyes were poisonous black peridots. Mauve blotches bloomed on his cheeks. ‘Poor buggers,’ he croaked. ‘Didn't even know what hit 'em.’ He reeled, his castle-like body hanging over Copeland. ‘I told you about them Hawkins grenades, didn't I?’ he bellowed. ‘The crush igniters must of gone up and set off the petrol – that's why the blowout was so big. I told you. I warned you about them.’ He looked as if he was itching to belt someone – most probably Cope – but Caine thumped his arm. ‘Don't be a turd, Fred,’ he said. ‘It wasn't the Hawkins grenades. Once she went over, there was no stopping the fuel going up.’

  He wheeled round on the other men, now hunkered in the trees with weapons trained. ‘Anybody clock muzzle flash?’

  No one answered. Wallace was still glowering at Copeland and was about to say something else when Ross MacDonald padded out of the shadows behind them, head and body held in a low slouch. He was carrying his rifle in both hands, cocked and ready: he had managed to slip on a pair of
shorts. ‘I saw smoke, skipper,’ he said. ‘When I was on my belly. I saw it through a gap in the trees. Look left down the wadi, about four, mebbe five hundred yards.’

  Caine craned his neck to look down the wadi, but the angle was too acute and the foliage too thick for a good view: in any case the air was now opaque with smoke from Gracie's burning wreck. He came up into a crouch and tried to peer around the trees, while MacDonald inched forward to indicate the target. Mac had taken one step beyond cover for a better look when gunshots zipped and whizzed: the back of his head globed-out like blown glass, ruptured, blistered, shredded apart in raw red ribbons. The force of the strike lamped him off his feet, cartwheeled his body ten feet through the sand, thumped it down in a nearly headless bloody parcel. Caine teetered, swayed back. ‘Take cover,’ he screamed.

  Commandos ate dirt, swallowed dust, dry-swam sand, as another rasp of fire crinkled air, spiffled leaves, scuttered off stones, chugged up sand-smoke. Caine clocked flashes in the scrub five hundred paces east down the wadi. Raising himself on his elbows, he tweaked the rear sight on his Tommy-gun, knowing even as he did so that the target was out of his range. ‘One o'clock,’ he yelped. ‘Five hundred yards. Enemy in scrub. Fire.’

  Nobody fired, and Caine clicked that none of the men had a clear view of the target. Wallace was lying with his Colt pointing down the wadi, and Caine could see the frustration written on his cave-man features. In his hurry to find out what was happening, he'd left his Bren on its bipod brace twenty feet away, and his Colt was good for close-quarter battle only. Copeland crawled closer to Caine, peering through his telescopic sight. ‘Incoming's stopped, skipper,’ he grunted. ‘Whoever bumped us, it's a small squad – maybe a two-man sniping team. Now they've done the business I reckon they're crawling out through the scrub.’

  ‘Whoever it is, they're good,’ Caine said. He considered ordering the Lewis gunners to blitz the whole segment, or to have the two-inch mortars set up, but thought better of it – it would just mean more wasted ammunition. He could hear the Daimler's engine strobing, and a moment later she edged out of a thicket with Murray's head popping from the top hatch. ‘Get that wagon up the wadi after them, Flash,’ Caine shouted. As Murray gave him a thumbs-up, he turned back to Cope. ‘Go with him, Harry. Stay in cover behind the AFV unless you see the shooters making a break for it. If they climb the escarpment, Murray won't be able to follow. Take Wallace and… where's that Arab? Take him with you as tracker. I want those bastards found. I don't want any sod warning the Brandenburgers we're here.’