Seek Out and Destroy (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  The war would not wait.

  They would try her, find her guilty, pass sentence and shoot her within the hour. Smith had heard rumours of this and now he was to be a witness. He did not know where to find a senior officer or whether such an officer would listen to him. He had to stop this himself. Now. At once. But how?

  The three of them in the Ford hadn’t a weapon between them and even if they had, could they use it? Certainly the threat alone would not be enough to subdue the Italians: they would fight.

  He stared at the house through the rain running down the windscreen of the car, remembered how Helen had looked at him with hope and trust, standing in the ramshackle little shed...

  He tightened his grip on the wheel, warned Davies and Buckley, ‘There’s going to be shooting. If you have any sense you’ll get out of this now.’

  Buckley glanced at Davies then said, ‘We’ll stick with you, sir.’ Davies nodded.

  Smith engaged gear. ‘Whatever happens, you were acting under my orders. Remember that. Under my orders!’

  The car moved forward... They had not heard the salvo coming, but shook to its impact as the shells hurled up mud and rocks from the road, blasting the roof from one house and the corner from another. The sentries ran for the trench and after them went the officers and carabinieri streaming from the house. Then the Ford was into the lane running down the side of the house.

  As they entered the yard at the rear Smith braked and shouted at the other two, ‘Tell her to get away from that back wall!’ They jumped down and ran to the lean-to while Smith drove the car to the end of the yard and turned it. Another salvo fell, one shell bursting on what was left of the roof above them so that tiles rained down in the yard. In the flash of that burst he glimpsed Buckley by the window of the lean-to. Darkness descended again and he rammed his foot down on the accelerator. The wheels of the Ford spun in the mud then gripped and it shot forward. The lean-to rushed up at him as the car charged across the yard and he braked only feet away so it skidded on with the wheels locked and crashed into the wall.

  He held the wheel but he was thrown forward and slammed his chest against it. The breath whooped out of him and his eyes watered but he blinked them clear and pushed himself back. The wall had collapsed inwards and the front of the Ford was inside the lean-to. The engine had stalled. Davies and Buckley appeared at either side of the car and set their shoulders to it, shoving. Smith knocked it out of gear and climbed down to shove with them so the car rolled back into the middle of the yard. He straightened and gasped at them, ‘Get her!’

  They ran to the lean-to, hauled wreckage aside and Buckley climbed in. Smith cranked the Ford, the engine fired and he ran round to the driver’s seat. The glare lit the yard as a third salvo exploded. He thought again that it was inevitable this village, at a road junction on the way up to the line, should be shelled. In that blink of light he saw Buckley coming out of the lean-to.

  He was blind again, did not see them till they fetched up at the car, Davies, Buckley — and between them Helen’s stumbling figure. They pushed her in beside Smith, he tugging at her arm, then they jumped into the back. Smith turned the car, the offside wheels bumping over the littered timber of the lean-to. A man appeared in the wreckage and Smith was close enough to see the Italian lieutenant had braved the gunfire to come and look for his prisoner, perhaps to save her. But the Ford lurched on, turned into the lane along the side of the house and accelerated towards the road. Shots cracked out behind as the lieutenant emptied his pistol after them. Smith shouted, ‘Anybody hit?’

  ‘No, sir!’ That was Davies.

  They were out on the road, mud spurting up from the tyres and Smith hauled at the wheel to send them slipping and sliding around a shell-crater. One of the houses erupted in a tongue of flame as the junction was hit again, dirt and rocks showered down on the car’s leather hood, the windscreen shattered and collapsed in fragments and the rain drove in on the wind of their passage. They raced away from the village, bouncing and swaying on the rutted road.

  After a quarter-mile of wild progress Smith slowed the Ford to a more sedate pace. He did not think they were followed and the turnoff to Venice was close. He braked as they came to the road crossing theirs and swung left on to it, heading eastward, away from the front. Davies in the back let out a long breath. ‘Bloody ‘ell! We do see life!’

  Buckley answered in his deep Geordie, ‘Told you, didn’t I? Still, if you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t ha’ joined.’

  Smith managed a smile as the tension eased out of him. Without them he would have failed. They had helped him all the way through and saved Helen’s life, of that he was certain. They were the salt of the earth and he owed them more than he could say. ‘Thanks, both of you.’

  And Helen added shakily, ‘Bless you. All of you.’ She clung to his arm, her face against his shoulder as the Ford ground on down the narrow road through the rain-filled darkness.

  16. ‘For God’s Sake! Why?’

  They lay close in the darkened room in the house on the Ca’di Dio and she whispered, her breath on his face, ‘We’ve had so little time.’

  He answered, ‘We’ll have time.’

  She knew that wasn’t true but at this moment she was happy and let it be.

  He said, ‘Tomorrow we must go to Devereux’s office and clear up this mess. Those soldiers and carabinieri have your name and they’ll follow it up.’

  She was silent, then: ‘All right.’ And: ‘Don’t leave me.’ And: ‘You see, I didn’t want to love a man in the war.’

  His answer was wry. ‘You made that very clear.’

  She laughed softly despite the lurking fear, or because of it, rolled on to him. ‘But I’m making it up to you. Aren’t I? Aren’t I?’ And finally, sleepily, ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘I won’t.’ He knew he lied because he would have to leave her. But he would return to her, somehow. He lay in a drifting dream between sleeping and waking, quietly happy. He recalled that first day he met her and all the other meetings. He could remember every word. Every word... He chilled suddenly, felt her warmth against him. He was wide awake. Christ, would he ever sleep again? Tiredness dragged at him. The night was long and finally he slept.

  He woke in the first light of the day. His thoughts dragged him from the bed to stand naked at the window, staring out across the lagoon that was wreathed in mist. Until he looked at his watch and saw it was after seven thirty. He shivered and, moving quietly, washed and dressed, went down through the house. On the ground floor he heard the old woman moving about in the kitchen, then the knock came at the front door and he opened it to Pietro Zacco.

  The tall lieutenant said, ‘The photographs. Trieste and Pola.’

  Smith took them from the envelope and looked at them. Helen called from above, ‘Who is it?’

  He answered, ‘Zacco. Come for me.’

  She appeared at the head of the stairs, a robe thrown around her. ‘Another operation?’

  ‘Trieste. Tonight.’

  ‘No!’ She ran down the stairs and held him, argued and pleaded: he could get out of it somehow, say the operation was not possible, the weather was wrong, they were not ready. Or he could send a junior officer, ask to be relieved. He could tell them he had seen enough of war and that was true. He had come back from the Piave looking like a ghost. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

  He nodded agreement to that, but: ‘I have to go. It’s my command, my orders.’

  ‘Orders!’ She wept then, at his stupidity and hers.

  All the time Zacco stood in the background, shifting from one foot to the other, embarrassed.

  She pushed away and wiped at her eyes with her hands, calm now. ‘I have to — go to Captain Devereux.’

  ‘And I have to go to the ship.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me.’ She kissed him, and he turned away, left her.

  He went down to Hercules and told Buckley. ‘Get my glasses from the cabin.’ Then gave him his orders. Buc
kley was puzzled but answered, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Smith called for the three MAS captains, and Balestra, Archbold and Menzies, and when they were gathered on the deck of Hercules he said, ‘We attack tonight. But we’re sailing very soon.’ He looked around at them. ‘Ready?’

  They nodded, all watching him uneasily. He appeared to be waiting for something.

  Finally Buckley called from up on the superstructure where he stood with the glasses, ‘Weighed now, sir, an’ puttin’ to sea.’

  ‘Very good. That’s all.’ Smith turned on the officers. ‘We will sail in thirty minutes, gentlemen. Mr. Zacco, I will come with you.’

  Buckley dropped down the ladder from the wheelhouse and met Fred Archbold, who asked, ‘What the hell happened to him? D’ ye see the look on his face?’

  Buckley shook his head worriedly. ‘I’m, goin’ with him.’

  *

  The Gatecrashers were clear of the harbour and running slowly northward up the coast in line abreast, Hercules making eight knots and the engines of the MAS boats throttled back to a mutter to conform. Smith stood in the after cockpit of Zacco’s boat. To port he could just make out the drifter through the mist that patched the sea. Somewhere beyond her was Gallina’s boat while to starboard and just in sight was Pagani. Smith balanced to the pitch and roll of the boat with the glasses to his eyes, searching. Buckley stood behind him, eyes on Smith, bewildered and uneasy like the rest of them. On Smith’s order small-arms had been issued. He wore a pistol himself and so did Buckley. The Colt machine-guns were manned, Smith had given the orders, curtly, but no explanation, and now stood with face set and haggard, his mouth a thin line. Now he lowered the glasses, wiped spray from the lenses, lifted them again to his eyes. It was as if the boats were playing hide-and-seek in the mist: sometimes he could barely make out the craft on either side but again and again they broke out into a patch of clear water. They did so now and he said flatly, ‘There she is. Fine on the port bow. Full ahead.’

  The engine note climbed and the stern sank deeper with the surge of power and bite of the screws. Zacco eased the wheel over and the bow slid around to point at the yacht Sybil. She was a quarter-mile ahead and under way, no sails set but leaving a foaming wake from her screw. Even so her auxiliary engine made barely five knots. Buckley thought there was something different about her rigging and identified the wireless aerial strung from her main mast just as muzzle-flashes flamed from her well aft.

  Smith shouted harshly, ‘Open fire!’ The machine-gunners looked doubtfully over their shoulders, appealing to Zacco, who hesitated then nodded as a bullet ripped splinters from the fore-deck of the boat and Smith shouted again, ‘Open fire damn you!’

  The machine-guns chattered in short bursts. Again. Again. All the time they were closing the yacht, working up to twenty knots or more. The machine-guns hammered away, the bursts longer, and finally the rifle-fire from the yacht ceased.

  Smith said, ‘Take us alongside.’ He drew the pistol from its holster and Buckley copied him. The MAS slid in to the yacht, ran alongside, edged in to rub against her and Smith jumped. He landed on his feet in the well but stumbled and fell to hands and knees. Buckley landed cat-like beside him and pulled him to his feet as the MAS sheered away, the machine-gun still trained on the yacht. Smith reached out a hand to the engine control and stopped it. The two Swiss lay in the well with their rifles. Blood spattered the deck and the tiller, the engine-housing. The hull of the yacht was splintered and holed where machine-gun bursts had ripped through the timber. Smith lurched forward and into the cabin. Its former surprising smallness was now explained. The table was now hung up on chains at one side and a door had been opened in the forward bulkhead. The space beyond held a wireless and a wide shelf and a stool bolted to the deck. Helen Blair sat on the stool, slim hand still resting on the morse key. She stared white-faced at Smith as he stood with the pistol dangling in his hand at his side.

  He whispered, ‘For God’s sake! Why?’

  She did not answer him but said, ‘You’re too late. I’ve sent my message and they’ve acknowledged it in Trieste. And when we passed the guard-boat I gave them a letter for the Ammiraglio at Naval Headquarters telling him exactly what I was going to do. He will have it soon. So you cannot go on to Trieste because he knows that the Austrians will be waiting for you. It’s all out in the open now, and you dare not take the chance.’ She was very calm but as she took her hand from the morse key he saw her fingers tremble.

  He asked again, ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, David!’ She shook her head. ‘You’ve no right. I act for the same reasons as yourself: orders. I’m Austrian, and I serve my country. My family lived in England for many years and I was brought up there, went to school, but when the war came we returned to Austria and then to Trieste because my father was given a diplomatic post there. In the summer of 1915 the Italians bombed the port. They killed my father and mother — and Edward. I told you Edward was my fiancé and killed in the Dardanelles. The truth is that he was my brother. He was fourteen years old.’

  Smith heard the MAS slip in alongside again with a low rumble of engines that then cut out. The yacht heeled gently as the MAS rubbed against her.

  The girl said, ‘I wanted the Italians to pay. There was a major in the army, a friend of my dead father — he was in intelligence and told me how I could help. I had learned Italian on holidays as I told you. I speak it well, but with an accent, so they gave me a British passport. The real Helen Blair lived in Taranto. She was the mistress of an Austrian consular official and she’s living with him now in Vienna. Her passport needed some doctoring, a new photograph, but it was good. I burned it this morning after you left.’

  Smith was conscious of Buckley standing behind him in the well, listening to all this. Buckley would be a witness when... he rubbed at his face.

  She went on, ‘My money came from Argentina, from German funds there. The yacht I bought as I told you.’ She stopped, then: ‘That’s all I can tell you. Except that you were right about revenge. It’s meaningless... When I saw those poor people walking in the rain with only what they could carry, everything else gone, their homes... And you came...’ She looked up at him. ‘How did you find out?’

  Smith remembered the moment, when he lay close beside her and his dreams became a nightmare. He said savagely, ‘Out of your own mouth. You’d told me you learned Italian in a few weeks or months. Yet you were with two seamen who spoke German and you said you didn’t know a word of it. And that was after two years. It

  didn’t make sense. So, suppose you knew German and were hiding it? Why?’ I started remembering things, looking at them in a different light. Lying cold by her side. ‘How you saw us set out for Trieste with the Flying-Fish and it was as if the Austrians were waiting for us.’

  Her eyes still held his. ‘That was my last transmission, David. My men knew, so I had to send it. They would have if I hadn’t and at that time you were still an enemy — I thought. But that was the end for me. I didn’t sleep that night, thinking about you. After that I was just — going up to the line out of habit.’

  Smith went on as if he had not listened to her: ‘And that soldier at Fassolta, I thought he was a stupid oaf prejudiced by the rumours of spies and treachery, but he was right. You spoke German to those prisoners. I should have suspected a long time ago but I didn’t. Until this morning.’ He had been blind and knew the reason.

  Perhaps that showed in his face. Helen Blair said softly, ‘I didn’t lie about loving you, David. I didn’t use you.’ She tried to read belief in his face, then sighed. ‘You can’t believe that a woman could love you, really love you, not just for a night.’

  He stepped back from her and called harshly, ‘Leading-Seaman Buckley!’

  ‘Sir!’

  Smith turned and faced the big man stooped at the door of the cabin. ‘Guard her!’

  ‘Sir?’ Buckley peered past him at the girl, the wireless.

  ‘You’ve got
eyes and ears! You’ve seen and heard! She’s a spy!’ Smith thrust him aside and blundered out into the well, stood holding on to the cabin’s coaming. The two seamen lay where they had fallen in pools of their own blood, their bodies shifting slackly to the slow roll of the yacht. They were probably Austrians rather than Swiss, with forged or stolen papers, but it hardly mattered now. He saw Pietro Zacco watching him, puzzled and anxious, and turned away. The other two MAS boats lay off a cable’s length on either beam. Hercules was bustling up astern, men on her deck, Davies at the six-pounder in the bow. Smith threw over his shoulder at Zacco, ‘Tell Hercules and the other boats to come alongside. I want to talk to all captains.’ They had to be told.

  He heard the Nicking of the signal-lamp, saw the answering flicker from Hercules, watched her come on but with his thoughts still on the woman below. Had the Austrians put her and the Swiss ashore in the south of Italy one dark night? Or sent them by a roundabout route as passengers on a neutral ship, maybe out of Holland? And the yacht — had she and the two men sailed it across to Cattaro or Pola to have the wireless fitted? It was more likely they had picked up the equipment from a submarine and the two men had done the work while the yacht lay in some quiet cove and the girl sunned herself on deck, an Englishwoman of leisure. It did not matter how it had been done — the Italians would dig it all up now they were on to her. They would interrogate her before... but his mind shied away from that.

  Hercules slipped in alongside and men climbed down from her to make fast. Balestra was on her deck with Menzies, both staring incredulously at the shot-riddled hull of the yacht and the dead men in the well. Smith shouted, ‘Buckley! Bring her aboard Hercules!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’

  Smith climbed up to Menzies and Balestra and was immediately followed by the three MAS captains. He returned their salutes, looked up at the wheelhouse and saw Fred Archbold there, well within earshot. He turned at Balestra’s startled exclamation. Helen had appeared in the well of the yacht, Buckley at her back, his pistol trained on her. For the first time Smith realised she was stylishly dressed as always, the dark hair piled, an expensive dress showing off the slim legs and feet in small shoes. She was playing out her part to the end. He wondered how many men had died because of her devotion to her duty as she saw it. Then he remembered the corpses littering the marshes on the banks of the Cavetta canal, laid there by the gunfire he called down as he himself did his duty.