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

by Michael Asher

  ‘Well, don't look at me,’ Shaffer said. ‘There's no way I could have warned him, was there? I mean, I've been in your custody for the past three hours.’

  Stocker ignored him and addressed the W/T operator. ‘Put out an alert to all MP patrols and civil-police roadblocks,’ he said. ‘He's driving a white Cadillac.’ He turned to Shaffer. ‘What's the registration number?’

  Shaffer told him, and Stocker repeated it to the operator.

  ‘They won't get him, though,’ Shaffer said, shaking his head. ‘Eisner knows this city better than my Redcap friend here knows his tart's fanny. He was brought up here – he's got a map of the bloody place in his head.’

  Field Security had picked up Shaffer at his Gezira Cotton Exports Company office late that afternoon and transported him straight to the Central Detention & Interrogation Camp. It hadn't required much pressure to make him talk. He'd confessed that his heart had never really been in intelligence work. He was a loyal South African, he'd claimed, but the Nazis had exerted pressure on his family by arresting relatives still in Germany. When Stocker revealed that Eisner was the brutal sex-murderer of at least three young women, he'd been horror-struck and sickened, and only too anxious to give him up. The first gems he'd given up were the location of the houseboat, and the wireless transmitter in a hidden cubicle on board. Stocker had deployed a section to stake out the boat immediately. Though Eisner had already left when the Field Security boys got there, Stocker guessed it would only be a matter of time before he returned.

  After finding Sim-Sim's body that morning, Stocker and Avery had worked frantically to close the net on the man Stocker now knew as Johann Eisner. Avery's first action had been to send G(R) agent Susan Arquette to occupy Betty Nolan's deserted flat, in case their quarry showed his face there. Avery had long ago groomed Susan as a Runefish lookalike who might be useful if anyone needed convincing that Betty Nolan was still in Cairo. The flat had been carefully swept clean of any clues before the mission, and the concierge bribed and briefed. They had agreed to stake out the place, but the Field Security surveillance party had arrived too late to observe the first caller that morning. Susan had been able to identify him as a South African, though, and a fast scan of the files had brought up the names of several suspect South African nationals. From their mug-shots, Susan had picked out Pieter Shaffer, director of the Gezira Cotton Exports Company.

  As Stocker seated himself in the van beside the operator, the wireless beeped. The signaller listened carefully to his headphones and tapped out a reply. ‘That message was relayed from Sergeant Miller's section, sir,’ he told Stocker. ‘They've found the safe-house – an isolated villa in its own grounds on Roda Island, as we were informed. Captain Avery's body was found in the grounds. I'm sorry, sir – but he's dead. Miller reports that he had multiple bullet wounds in the back, and others in the shoulder and arm. He was probably shot while trying to escape, but his body also showed signs of severe torture.’

  Stocker slammed the wireless table with a small, horny fist, let out a string of curses. ‘Dammit,’ he barked. ‘Now we have to assume Eisner knows the lot.’

  It was Shaffer who'd given them the address of Eisner's safe-house on Roda. Eisner wasn't even aware that Shaffer knew about it: he'd shadowed Eisner there once, out of pure curiosity. If they'd only managed to get to Shaffer an hour earlier, then Avery's death might have been prevented.

  Shaffer had been trained in wireless procedure, but it had always been Eisner who'd sent the messages. All Shaffer knew was that the encrypted texts went to an Abwehr controller whose real name was Heinrich Rohde. Eisner's codename was Stürmer.

  ‘I suggest you think again about the location of his reserve transmitter,’ Stocker told Shaffer. ‘That's where he'll be heading, and if he gets there before we do, the game's up. The more you help us, the better it will be for you.’

  Shaffer made a face. ‘You're asking too much,’ he said.

  ‘Stop bellyaching and think,’ Stocker urged him. ‘Did he make any references to places he visited often – places that might seem an unlikely venue for a man of his sort?’

  ‘Give me a cigarette,’ Shaffer said. ‘It might help me concentrate.’

  Stocker frowned and asked the guard if he smoked. The MP flipped out a Senior Service and stuffed it in the prisoner's mouth with obvious resentment. Stocker lit it for him. Shaffer took a long drag and removed the cigarette with his cuffed hands. Stocker watched him impatiently. ‘There is one place he talked about a couple of times,’ Shaffer said at last. ‘St Joseph's Church in Emad ad-Din Street.’

  ‘A church?’

  ‘Yes, I think it's a Roman Catholic church. It surprised me a bit at the time, because Eisner told me he'd been brought up a Muslim. His family are still in Cairo – he never told me his Islamic name, though.’

  Stocker thought it over, then picked up the field telephone. ‘This is urgent,’ he told the base-operator. ‘Please find out ASAP the name of priest or priests incumbent at the St Joseph's Roman Catholic church in Emad ad-Din Street. I'm particularly interested in foreign nationals and, if possible, their known affinities.’

  He put the phone down and looked at Shaffer. ‘I know this is a tough one,’ he said, ‘but can you remember any specific dates when Eisner might have visited the church?’

  Shaffer snickered. He dropped his cigarette butt on the floor, crushed it out with a shoe and stared back into Stocker's bright, intelligent eyes, which were magnified by his lenses. ‘You're really hunting the snark,’ he said.

  ‘Think,’ Stocker insisted again, sticking his pipe in his mouth and chewing the stem.

  The phone buzzed. Stocker grabbed the receiver, listened for a moment, said ‘Thank you,’ and put it down. ‘There's a French priest at St Joseph's,’ he told Shaffer. ‘Father Pascal. He's thought to be a Vichy supporter. Did Eisner ever mention him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Have you remembered any dates?’

  Shaffer coughed. ‘I'm sticking my neck out,’ he said, ‘but I'd plump for June 15 and June 19.’

  Stocker picked up the phone again. ‘First,’ he snapped into it, ‘I want two sections dispatched at once to St Joseph's church, Shari' Emad ad-Din. One is to throw a discreet cordon round the place and watch out for our man. And I mean discreet – they are to keep completely out of sight. The other squad is to arrest the French priest, Father Pascal, and search the entire premises for a possible wireless transmitter. Second, I want to know at once if we recorded any unregistered transmissions from the downtown area on June 15 and 19.’

  He returned the receiver to its bracket, and a moment later it buzzed again. He listened briefly, then replaced it. ‘There were transmissions on June 15 and 18,’ he said. ‘Could it have been June 18?’

  ‘I suppose so – I told you I wasn't certain.’

  Stocker turned and bawled to the driver in front. ‘St Joseph's Church, Shari' Emad ad-Din, and make it snappy.’ When he turned to Shaffer again, the South African saw a gleam of victory behind the thick spectacles. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it's just a matter of who gets there first.’

  35

  Eisner felt safer after he'd ditched the Caddy in one of the alleys behind Emad ad-Din. The car stuck out like a sore thumb, and although he'd managed to dodge roadblocks so far, he felt sure that if they'd tumbled to the houseboat, they would certainly have his registration number. How they'd found his boat was a mystery that he preferred not to brood over at present. The key thing was to pass on the crucial intelligence he'd acquired.

  St Joseph's stood tucked away in a niche at the end of Shari' Emad ad-Din, a narrow conduit of open-fronted shops lit from within by carbide lamps – a row of small stages upon each of which its own little drama was being enacted: a butcher chopping hanks of meat on a block, watched by a woman clad entirely in black, her face masked in a burqa like the head of a falcon; a barber lathering the chin of a reclining man, still smoking a cigarette, with thick cream; two youths sharpening knives on grinding
-stones in showers of sparks.

  Eisner, clad in his black suit, fez and dark glasses, wearing a pair of oversized leather driving-gloves to disguise his injured finger, let himself merge into the crowd, a ghost among disconnected faces, fellahin in kuffiyas, Berberines in white turbans, women veiled with hejabs. At the end of the street men were sitting around braziers on little stools smoking hubble-bubbles, drinking coffee, listening to the wail and grind of Arab music from a wireless. Despite the news that Rommel had taken Tobruk, there was little evidence of panic here. Eisner felt at home walking through the squares of light cast by the shop lamps on the pavement, but still he played the counter-surveillance game – pausing to peer into a shop here, lurking in a doorway there, backtracking as if to examine something he'd missed. There was no sign that he was being followed.

  The church was a nest of curves and angles dominated by a rounded tower like the bastion of a medieval castle. The heavy door was reached down a short portico lined with potted shrubs. Eisner stopped before entering and glanced at his watch. It was almost nine o'clock. Mass was recited at seven thirty sharp, and would be over by now. The church would be empty of celebrants, and Father Pascal would be in the vestry, putting away the wine, having a private swig, or doing whatever it was that priests did after mass. He pushed open the door, took in the scent of incense, lit candles, empty pews, deserted altar and pulpit. Everything was quiet: not an object out of place.

  He opened the door of the vestry and found Father Pascal sitting motionless behind a desk, his furrowed face and shock of steel-grey hair highlighted by the flickering flame of a tallow candle. The room was large and full of shadows: there were no windows, but a second door lay in a narrow archway beyond the priest's desk.

  Father Pascal rose when Eisner entered, standing very straight in his soutane, his shadowed eyes like dark caves. ‘I wouldn't have expected you so late,’ he said in French.

  ‘The war waits for no man, Father,’ Eisner answered. ‘I've got special intelligence to pass on.’

  The priest's hawkish eyes fell on Eisner's hands clad in their leather gloves, and he cocked a curious eyebrow. ‘Are you injured?’ he asked.

  Eisner shrugged impatiently. ‘Just a little accident. Can I have the set please?’

  The old man nodded, and as he moved towards the cupboards to his right, Eisner turned and locked the main door. He made a move towards the second door, but the Father stopped him. ‘It's all right,’ he said.

  The priest opened a cupboard, brought out the suitcase that held the transmitter and laid it gently on his desk. Eisner unfastened it and began to set up the antenna. When that was done, he hooked up the batteries, connected the headphones and Morse key, and sat down with the code-book and encryption pad in front of him. As the priest looked on, he pencilled out his message painfully, using his left hand. He laid the pencil down, checked the cipher, then donned the headphones, removed his left glove, and sat with his fingers poised on the key.

  Totally focused on the task in hand, his hearing muffled by the headphones, he didn't notice the door behind him open. Neither did he see the dark figures slipping silently through it, until a sudden movement caught his eye. His reaction was instantaneous. He kicked his chair backwards and went for his Smith & Wesson. At that moment a blackjack whacked into his shoulder, paralysing his whole arm. Eisner yelped and dropped his weapon, sensing the cold muzzle of a Tommy-gun against his neck. ‘Move, go on,’ a voice goaded him. ‘I'd love to blow your bloody block off.’ Eisner froze, feeling an icy ghost-finger scrape his spine. The electric light was switched on suddenly, making him blink: he saw that the vestry was full of khaki-clad British soldiers, armed to the teeth.

  Arms rammed him against the wall, and his right glove was pulled off, exposing his bloated, broken index finger. ‘Hello, what have we here?’ the same voice said. ‘Looks like Captain Avery gave you something to remember him by.’

  A hand grabbed the broken finger and snapped it backwards: a shock of pain electrified Eisner's muscles, an agony so intense that he jumped a foot in the air, howling like a belaboured dog.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ the voice said.

  They were no gentler in slapping steel cuffs on his wrists, though, and Eisner pig-squealed as they manhandled him. Probing hands ran up and down his body, found the concealed knife, removed it. Almost sobbing now, Eisner was wrenched around again to find himself staring into the spectacles of a short, dumpy man with a domed forehead and sparkling blue eyes. The man, who wore major's crowns on his shoulder straps, was fingering his knife. ‘Vicious,’ he commented in a soft voice. ‘I presume this is the weapon you used to murder Lady Goddard, Rachel Levi and Susan Arquette. Dear me, two ladies in one day. Wasn't that a bit greedy, even by your standards?’

  ‘I don't know what you're talking about,’ Eisner stuttered. ‘Those murders were nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Bloody liar.’ It was the voice of the soldier who'd held the Tommy-gun to his neck and twisted his finger: Eisner glanced sideways to see a burly sergeant major in bush-jacket and peaked service cap, still holding his sub-machine gun. ‘You are a human louse, matey,’ the man said. ‘You raped those women and slit their throats. You shot Sergeant Maffey, you murdered Corporal Salim Tanta and burned his body, and you tortured and killed Captain Avery. If I blew your balls off right now it'd be too good for you, you piece of dog-shit.’

  ‘You may yet have the chance, Sarn't Major,’ the bespectacled man said. ‘It all depends on Mr Eisner here.’

  For the first time, Eisner looked shocked. ‘How do you know my name?’ he demanded.

  The major smiled wistfully. ‘The same way I knew about your houseboat, your car, your safe-house on Roda. You see, your friend Mr Shaffer was a loyal South African after all, or at least enough of one to give you up.’

  Eisner stifled a gasp, rocked to the core by the knowledge that Shaffer had ratted on him – and more. Shaffer wasn't supposed to know his real name, or the location of his safe-house. That meant that he'd been doing some private snooping of his own. It suggested that he might have been planning to rat for some time. He cursed Rohde's shortsightedness. Hadn't he always warned him that a man working under duress could never be completely trusted? It was typical of Rohde to believe that in fear lay absolute security.

  ‘More crucially for us,’ the major went on, ‘Mr Shaffer knows your signals procedure – call signs, security codes, that sort of thing.’

  ‘So what?’ Eisner said.

  ‘So we will know if you attempt to botch up the message you are about to send on our behalf. The message will read, 'Identity of Runefish confirmed: First Officer Maddaleine Rose, Women's Royal Naval Service, staff officer at Allied GHQ Middle East Forces, Cairo. Authenticity of material carried corroborated.’

  ‘No,’ Eisner said.

  The eyes behind the thick lenses were unflinching. ‘On your knees,’ said the major quietly. Before Eisner could move, the two soldiers holding him forced him into a kneeling position. Slowly, very deliberately, the officer laid the knife on the desk, drew the Colt .45 automatic he was carrying at his waist, and held it to Eisner's temple. ‘I don't consider myself a violent man, Mr Eisner,’ he said. ‘In peacetime I was a professor at Cairo University, but I share the sentiments of the sergeant major, as, I dare say, does every man in this room – even your ecclesiastical friend, who was also ready to turn you in when he found out the true nature of the monster he'd been nurturing. It is one thing to fight for your country, Eisner – even to spy for it. It is quite another to rape defenceless young women, and to kill them in cold blood.’

  ‘Defenceless?’ Eisner gasped, as if facing rank injustice. ‘That bint in the flat almost did for me.’

  The sharp eyes blazed behind the dense lenses, and Eisner sensed suddenly that the major was holding volcanic fury in close check. The deadly passion behind those lenses terrified him. Major Stocker was not an imposing figure, but there was a chilling quality about the intense eyes, the pedantic diction, the
schoolmasterish manner. Stocker pressed the muzzle of the Colt so hard against Eisner's head that it was forced back. ‘I knew Susan Arquette,’ he said softly. ‘She was a very fine young woman. If I were a less civilized man, Mr Eisner, I should be sorely tempted to pick up your wicked little stiletto, sever your penis at the root, insert it in your throat, and let you asphyxiate on it. You are not a man, you are a cowardly, craven animal. However, as I do not propose to sink to your level of bestiality, I shall content myself with putting a bullet through your skull instead. Indeed, I hope very much you do not cooperate, as it would give me unspeakable pleasure to send you to the hell where you belong.’

  ‘You're bluffing. I'm too valuable for that.’

  ‘How valuable is a filthy rapist and murderer? You are not a soldier, Mr Eisner, and you deserve to die like a dog. If you refuse to send the message, I will kill you now. I shall simply have Mr Shaffer send it instead.’

  Eisner ran his tongue along dry lips. He had no doubt that Stocker would carry out his threat: this was wartime, and Field Security could probably get away with anything, even murder. If he played along with them, though, he'd survive, and he'd almost certainly be able to escape later. It would mean sending Rommel a false message, but then, if Rommel captured Cairo, he'd be redundant anyway. What did he have to lose by going along with the British for now?

  He dry-swallowed, and stared at Stocker. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I'll do it.’

  ‘Good, but one word of warning. We cracked your code some time ago and, as I have said, we know your security signatures. One wrong digit and, believe me, you won't leave this room alive.’

  36

  Moving more slowly now, Caine hugged the shadows in the streets of Biska, aware that he no longer had his Arab disguise but hoping that anyone spotting him by chance would take him for a German soldier. His wound was agonizing, and he was seething with anger about Naiman's death – he had half a mind to leave Rose to the mercies of the Black Widow. As it stood, he was faced with the task of infiltrating the town-hall area, and armed only with a rusty knife, extracting her from the hands of an entire Brandenburger platoon and a company of colonial carabinieri. His only advantage was the fact that they would not be expecting him. How much easier it would be, he thought, just to make his way back to the leaguer, declare the mission aborted and head back home. That was what Rose deserved. The sudden appearance of the town-hall building in front of him came almost as a surprise, and he realized that an unconscious urge had brought him here. It was as if, deep down, some remote part of him not under rational control knew that he could no more leave Rose than he could have abandoned Naiman to a long-drawn-out death.