Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

  After an uncomfortable pause, Mr. Stokes said, “Well, I suppose you could …” and then stopped, because, as a naval man, he saw the hideous difficulties looming.

  “The Kobold is booked out at 3 a.m. this morning. If we wanted to stop her, we should have to take official action, through the navy and the port authorities. And they wouldn’t agree to take any step unless we could produce positive proof that they’d kidnapped this young man and were carrying him off. But just suppose that they did hold this ship – a unit in the Imperial German Navy – and the whole thing turned out to be an illusion brought about by something your twelve-year-old daughter thought she’d seen. What do you imagine the result would be?”

  “I hadn’t exactly thought it through,” agreed Mr. Stokes slowly, “but now that you put it to me, I do see the consequences might be unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate! It’d be an international incident. It would play into the hands of the politicians on both sides and would be a meal for the press.”

  It was clear that Mr. Stokes had no wish to provoke an international incident or to be a meal for the press.

  Seeing that he had made his point, the inspector said, “So let’s be practical. If those unknown characters have got hold of your boarder they might intend to rob him, or to beat him up. When they finish whatever they’re planning to do, they’ll dump him somewhere. Right?”

  “I suppose that’s right.”

  “Well, we’ve got night patrols covering all parts of the town.” He looked at the charge room clock. “The reliefs will be going out in half an hour. I’ll give them special instructions to keep their eyes open. If there’s anyone needing help, they’ll help him.”

  This did seem to be the only practical solution. It had a modest element of hope in it. Mr. Stokes departed to relay this hope to his wife and daughter.

  A few minutes after he left the police station, Superintendent Marcher, on his way home, looked into the charge room. He made a habit of calling in on the night duty officer in this way to create the illusion that his unsleeping eye was on all police matters during the watches of the night. In fact, the powerful series of drinks, prepared for him by the marchioness, rendered him incapable of any constructive action except early retirement to bed.

  Inspector Tillotson told him, in a fairly light-hearted way, about Mr. Stokes, his daughter, and her illusions. Also of the steps he had promised to take. The superintendent expressed his approval.

  “It won’t do any good, but it covers us. That’s the main point. As a matter of fact, I was having a word earlier this evening with Sir John. He asked me to impress on all ranks the necessity for keeping a cool head. If this threat of war with Germany comes to anything – myself, I’m sure it will fade away as it did three years ago over Agadir – but if it should, one thing’s certain: there’ll be a lot of public hysteria. People will see German agents everywhere.”

  “Spy mania,” suggested Tillotson.

  “Exactly. And our job will be to cool it down. Treat every case on its merits. In strict accordance with the evidence. Pass that on to your men. Sir John is going to speak to his fellow magistrates. Between us—” the superintendent drew himself up and squared his shoulders—“we should be able to keep the ship on a straight course.”

  Thinking about it afterward, Andrew was never certain whether, despite the cold and the discomfort, he might have dozed off for a few minutes or even longer; but he was quite clear about what had called him back to full awareness. “Navy stroke,” he said between chattering teeth. “Must be.”

  Somewhere in the darkness, a six-oared or eight-oared boat was being rowed and was approaching. It was not heading directly for the rock, but its present course would bring it close. For a moment, he wondered if his attackers might have gotten hold of a boat and be coming after him, but he dismissed the idea. They had been a crowd of louts. This boat was proceeding under discipline.

  He shouted. Then again. And again, desperately.

  A voice called out an order, and the next moment a ship’s cutter, skilfully handled, ran head onto the sand and grounded.

  Two sailors jumped ashore.

  The voice said, “See who it is. If it’s some boozer sleeping it off, he can stop there.”

  Andrew, speaking as best he could, said, “Not drunk. Very cold.”

  One of the sailors said, “Looks as if he’s been in the water, sir. He’s not in a good way at all.”

  “All right. Bring him along,” said the voice.

  When Andrew tried to stand up, his legs gave way under him and he was half carried, half dragged down and lifted into the boat, which was expertly kedged off the sand, backed, and swung around.

  The journey was not a long one. Their destination, as Andrew had begun to suspect it might be, was the battle cruiser Queen Mary, which had been lying at anchor for the past week off Calshot Buoy. Its commanding officer was a man who was already being talked about, sometimes with admiration, sometimes with horror. Andrew had heard about him even before he came to Portsmouth, and a friend of Andrew’s landlord, dropping in for a drink, had filled out the portrait.

  “‘Blinker’”, they calls him. “‘Blinker’ Hall, on account of he’s got a twitch in one eye. But it don’t stop him looking at you like he was drilling a hole in your head.”

  “Would that be the man,” Stokes had asked, “who had a chapel built on board?”

  “A chapel, a rest room, and a bookstall, too. And that’s not all.” He had paused to give full effect to his final bombshell. “He put in a cinema.”

  His audience had gaped at him.

  “Spoiling the men, some people call it. Encouraging indiscipline. But I don’t know. The ones I met seemed a happy enough crowd, and as for indiscipline, I don’t fancy any of them tried any tricks on him. No, sir. He’d have had their guts for garters.”

  As they approached the Queen Mary Andrew found himself debating two matters. The first was a practical question: how on earth was he expected to get onto the battle cruiser, whose steep side was now looming over them? He was still shaking with cold and his legs and arms felt unequal to any strenuous effort. The second was a more theoretical question but just as important: was his rescuer, in fact, the remarkable character he had been told about? If he was, explanations could be made to him that could not properly be made to anyone else.

  The first problem was soon settled. After an exchange of shouts, a sling was lowered and passed under his arms, and he was hauled aboard bodily and dumped on the deck. The second matter was settled when his rescuer was saluted and welcomed by a man with a commander’s rings on his sleeve.

  This, then, must be the redoubtable “Blinker” Hall. He started to scatter orders, directed mostly at the chief petty officer who had lined up with the commander.

  “The first thing this scarecrow needs is a shower bath, a thorough towelling, and dry clothes. Get ’em from the dunnage and put ’em down to me. Next, a strong drink. Then he may be able to tell us his story.”

  An hour later, feeling a lot better, Andrew was able to make his way unaided to the captain’s cabin. Hall was behind his desk, signing the last of a batch of papers and hurling them at his clerk with an order to get going on them, which the clerk appeared to understand, removing himself and the papers without comment.

  As soon as they were alone, Hall swung around and said, “Sit down. Tell me about yourself.”

  A pair of cold, grey eyes discouraged dissimulation or delay.

  Andrew said, “In Portsmouth I go under the name of Andrew Shuter. My real name is Luke Pagan. I was in the Metropolitan Police and reached the rank of sergeant in the CID before I joined MO5. I’ve been working, for the past year, for Vernon Kell.”

  “Yes. Vernon asked me to keep an eye open for you, in case you needed help. But I didn’t expect to find you perched on a rock, like a storm-blown seagull. How did that happen?”

  “It’s an odd story, sir. I don’t understand all of it myself. I’ve got a job as potboy at
the Royal Duke …”

  Hall was a good listener. He let Luke’s story flow without interruption until he came to the scene in the manager’s office. Then he said, looking as though he could hardly believe what he was being told, “Say that again. He offered you five pounds. What for?”

  “To go to bed with him,” said Luke.

  He thought he had never seen such a look of revulsion and disgust on a human face. Hall’s upper lip was drawn away from his teeth, and his eyes were half closed, as though he were shutting out a sight that nauseated him.

  During the uncomfortable pause that followed, Luke remembered having been told that both of Hall’s parents had been deeply moral people. A lot of it seemed to have washed off on their son.

  Shying away from this distasteful topic, Hall said, “I can guess the rest of the story. No need to tell me. It was an act of revenge by von Holstern. Typically Prussian. You were able to listen to these people?”

  “Some of the time, yes.”

  “Do you speak German?”

  “My real languages are Russian and French. I learned both of them when I was young.”

  “Best time to learn a foreign language. Any others?”

  “When I joined MO5. Kell put me through a crash course in German. I’ve reached the stage when I can read it – print and written – and speak it, but not really fluently. I would never pass as a German, but I understand it well enough.”

  “So,” said Hall. “Two and a half languages. Not bad, but not as good as your chief.”

  “Not by a mile,” agreed Luke.

  It was common knowledge that Kell had spoken German, Italian, French, and Polish, all fluently, before he went to Sandhurst, and since joining the army had added Russian and three of the Chinese dialects.

  “So what did you pick up?”

  “A lot of it was braggart talk. Der Tag. The day was fast approaching when they would crush all their opponents. More particularly the British Navy.”

  “And did they specify,” asked Hall dryly, “exactly how they were going to carry out that part of their programme?”

  “Not in detail. What they did say – it was a sort of battle cry – ‘über and unter.’”

  “Interesting,” said Hall. “Unter would refer, no doubt, to their growing fleet of submarines. We have been warned about them. Über must mean Zeppelins. We’ll be able to deal with them when our warplanes can get above them. Was there anything else?”

  Had there been anything else? Luke remembered the look on the American judge’s face when he spotted Major Richards. It was no more than a vague impression. He could have imagined the whole thing. Hall, he felt certain, was interested in facts, not theories. He said, “There was a lot of boasting and shouting and singing. That’s all.”

  “Very well. The next thing we shall have to think about is what we’re going to do with you. We could, of course, put you up here for the night, but by the time you got back tomorrow someone would have raised storm signals.”

  “I agree, sir. I must get back as soon as possible.”

  “Who are you lodging with?”

  “A retired petty officer. William Stokes.”

  “Bill Stokes. A first-class man. He was with me on the Natal. He’ll back up any story you choose to tell.”

  “I was often out late. If I’m back by midnight he won’t have started to worry.”

  “And when you do get back, say as little as possible.”

  “If you think that’s best.”

  “If you tried to make a fuss the captain would say that it was you who made an improper advance to him, which he rejected indignantly. And to give you a lesson had his sailors treat you to a ducking.”

  “I’ve no doubt you’re right,” said Luke. “If you could arrange to have me put ashore, I’ll think up a story about a drinking spree with friends that got out of hand.”

  “In any event,” said Hall, “the Kobold will have cleared Portsmouth by dawn, so I think we can regard this episode as closed. Just as well to clear the decks. I’ve got a feeling there’s going to be a lot of work for your people to do very soon.”

  “Then you’re sure that war’s coming?”

  “Of course, you won’t have heard the news yet. We only got it ourselves this afternoon. It seems that yesterday a Serbian student assassinated the Austrian archduke Ferdinand and his wife at a place called Sarajevo, where they were on a visit of ceremony and friendship.”

  “And you think this will lead to trouble?”

  To Luke it seemed comfortably remote. Trouble in the Balkans. Nothing unusual about that.

  Hall said, “When you light one end of a carefully laid fuse and the other end is resting in a powder barrel, no great intelligence is needed to anticipate an explosion. This is how I see it. Austria will send Serbia a note of protest in the strongest possible terms. Serbia will apologise, but not profusely enough to satisfy Austria. So a further note will demand a more abject apology, coupled with the giving of undertakings that Serbia cannot possibly comply with. To reinforce the menace of this note, Austria will mobilise, forcing Serbia to follow suit. Germany supports Austria. Russia backs Serbia. France comes in behind Russia. General mobilisation. Ultimatums with short time limits for compliance. Now the fuse is near the powder.”

  “Too near for anyone to stop it?”

  “I fear so,” said Hall. He shook his head as though to shake off the visions he was seeing. “Anytime now we shall be ordered north to our battle stations. Which means we shall be unlikely to meet again. A pity. There are things I’d have liked to discuss with you.”

  He got up. Luke, seeing him clearly for the first time, realised that he was quite a small man.

  “I told the cutter to stand by. Your clothes are still too damp to be worn with comfort, so I’ve had them parcelled up for you. Please regard the clothes you are wearing as a gift from the Royal Navy. I’ll wish you bon voyage.”

  When Luke reached his lodging there was a light on in his landlord’s room, and he found Mr. Stokes smoking what was evidently the last of a series of pipes. He jumped up when Luke came in, started to say something, and broke off to stare in astonishment at his lodger.

  To make up a story accounting plausibly for his arrival home at midnight, patently sober and wearing the off-duty garb of a naval rating, was altogether beyond his power of invention. So he had decided to fall back on a modified version of the truth.

  When he had finished, Mr. Stokes said, “The trouble is that Doll saw you being kidnapped and what with one thing and another we had to tell the police. They had patrols out searching every hole and corner in Portsmouth for your battered body.”

  “Awkward,” said Luke. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to tell them that I was at a party and have just got home.”

  “They won’t be best pleased.”

  “I realise it’s put you in a hole and I’m more than sorry, but that’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “Did Captain Hall say so?”

  “It was his suggestion.”

  “Then it must be done. No one on the Natal argued with him. Not twice.” He knocked out his pipe and stomped off to propitiate the police.

  Luke went up to his bedroom and lay down. He was deathly tired, but he knew he was not ready for sleep. He heard Mr. Stokes come back and go up to his room, and ten minutes later he was snoring. It seemed that his encounter with the police had not disturbed him unduly.

  Luke rolled off his bed and plodded across to the window. From it there was a good prospect southward over the cemetery wall – an expanse of blue-black sky, spangled with stars, in the light of a near full moon.

  As he watched, the intruders came. Two cigarlike shapes drifting in from the southeast, throwing their shadows on the sleeping town. Their course, he calculated, would take them directly over the harbour.

  What eyes were peering down at them? Shortsighted, bespectacled German eyes. Were white, pudgy hands even now fingering the bomb release?

  Craning out of the wi
ndow, he watched the obscene intruders until they were out of sight. In a way, their presence had helped to clarify his thoughts. He was out on a limb in Portsmouth. He needed help – help that could only be found in London, specifically from his old friend Hubert Daines, who had extracted him, by force, from the ranks of the Metropolitan Police and had sponsored his attachment to MO5.

  Having reached this sensible conclusion he went back to bed and, at last, to sleep.

  The next day, as his train trundled toward London, his thoughts were running in two directions. Backward over what he had already achieved that morning, and forward over his plans for the future.

  After breakfast, he had informed Mr. Stokes that an urgent matter had cropped up that called for his attendance in London and might keep him there for a few days. Mr. Stokes, whose house did not boast a telephone and who was aware that his lodger had received no letter, was beginning to wonder whether there was something odd about him.

  He said, “Will you be keeping your room here?”

  “Certainly,” said Luke. “That is, if you can put up with me after my behaviour yesterday.”

  “I did get my ears chewed off by that inspector,” Mr. Stokes agreed. “He accused me of being a scaremonger.”

  Luke said how sorry he was, adding that now that those Germans had taken themselves off, there probably wouldn’t be any more trouble.

  His next step had been to present himself at the Royal Duke and explain to the manager that his mother was seriously ill, that he would have to go to London at once, and that he would be there indefinitely. The manager had proved sympathetic. Though not strictly obliged to do so, he had paid him for a broken week’s work and had, moreover, given him the pound fifty that represented his share of the twenty-five-dollar tip from the Americans.