Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

  Joe saw no point in hanging around, and was back with his report before eleven o’clock. The admiral had given them his home telephone number, and Luke was resolved that he should have the results at once. Unfortunately, there was no telephone in the house and the nearest phone booth he knew of was in the main line station, which was half a mile away.

  “Five minutes if I run,” he thought. “Lose not an hour.”

  He caught the admiral at the point of going to bed and poured out the news. Every time he paused, the admiral grunted. The grunts became increasingly menacing as he went along. At the end he said, “I’ll check up your results first thing tomorrow. If I find that they’re right – as I’ve little doubt I shall – I will have a word with the superintendent.”

  Chapter Seven

  It was clear to the admiral, as soon as he was shown in, that Superintendent Marcher was nervous. This was not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes it was easier to deal with a man who was full of self-confidence. The sparks might fly, but results could be obtained. A nervous man was apt to roll himself up in a ball, like a hedgehog.

  Considering this, the admiral decided to start with a plain statement of his case.

  He said, “You will have noted the regular visits we have been having lately from Zeppelins L3 and L4.”

  Marcher admitted, cautiously, that he had noted them.

  “Then you will have seen that they came in on a bearing of roughly 315 degrees, in all types of weather, and arrived directly over the port. Our Zeppelin experts have assured me that this was a remarkable feat. So remarkable as to be incredible, unless they had some help at this end.”

  “I must take your word for it,” said Marcher politely.

  “Once we appreciated this, we started looking for possible helpers. There was one obvious candidate. A mid-European, name thought to be Schneider. Known to all as ‘the bosun’. He has been hanging around the port for the past two or three months. Lately, the port employees have gotten so tired of having drinks pressed on them and being asked questions that they’ve decided to send him to Coventry. He’s no longer allowed into the port, and the more responsible men say no to his drinks. I doubt whether he can get much useful information now.”

  The superintendent had been listening to this with interest and, it seemed to the admiral, with a measure of relief. He said, “Splendid. So you’re no longer worried by him.”

  “Not directly, no. But we still had to locate the light the Zeppelins were steering on. We considered a number of possibilities. For instance, the ships in the port were often careless about lights. Not last night. The blackout I imposed was, I assure you, complete. But still they arrived. Dead on target, as though drawn there by a string, so we had to consider other possibilities.”

  “The golf club, do you think?” said Marcher. He had a map open. “They are probably careless about lights.”

  “We considered the possibility. But the clubhouse is what gunners call ‘hull down’ to the sea. Meaning that the slope of the land conceals it. Once the Zepps were over it, they could see the lights, but they wouldn’t serve as guides from a distance. No. Once we thought it out we saw that there was just the one obvious place: the house on Gilkicker Point. For some time now”—he was choosing his words carefully—“our people have had the house under observation. On three occasions, when the Zeppelins arrived, they were able to read a message that was being sent to them by turning the light on and off in the old observatory room at the back.”

  He explained the code to an increasingly worried Marcher, who said, “Are you telling me that this man Schneider not only guided the Zeppelins to the port but also told them what ships were in it?”

  The admiral said, “I think it’s highly unlikely that he did any such thing without the full concurrence and help of his employer.”

  Marcher had seen this coming. Before dealing with it, he moved to safer ground. He said, “You mentioned your ‘people’. Might I know who they are?”

  “Yes. They are two agents of MO5.”

  “Pagan and Narrabone?”

  “You know them?”

  “I have had dealings with Pagan on two occasions. On the first – about two weeks ago – my men were sent out on a wild-goose chase looking for him, when he was, in fact, at a drunken party. On the second occasion he was, as he admitted, in breach of our byelaws.”

  “Over securing a photograph.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think these two facts – I can give you the true story behind the first one if you wish – justify you in ignoring the evidence that the man who calls himself Richards is, in fact, a German agent.”

  Marcher hesitated. Then, “All I can say, Admiral, is that I would regard evidence from such a source with some hesitation.”

  The admiral drew a deep breath and let it out again slowly. He said, “I am responsible for the port and everything in it. If their Zeppelin fleet, guided to it, succeeded in destroying the port they would have struck a deadly blow at our navy. It’s not only the ships in it, though we should be sorry to lose them, but in addition the dock contains the most fully equipped and up-to-date workshops in the country. They are geared to repair, reequip, and turn around a ship damaged in action – even badly damaged – within forty-eight hours. If war started with a naval clash in the Channel or the North Sea, the loss of this facility could tip the balance. It might mean the loss of the war at sea, which, in my book, means the loss of the war itself.”

  The admiral had spoken with such evident sincerity that Marcher’s defences were beginning to crumble. He started to say, “I’d like to …” and then held back, with an almost physical effort, the words that would have completed the sentence.

  Finally, he said, “On the evidence so far, I should need the backing of the chief constable or the chairman of the bench before taking action against Major Richards. Sir John’s in London at the moment. I’ll have a word with him tomorrow morning.”

  “And the chief constable?”

  “Colonel McCann will be back in the second week of August.”

  “We must hope,” said the admiral, “that the Germans will be considerate enough to wait that long.”

  “I left it at that,” he told Luke on the following morning, “because I could see that I wasn’t going to get any farther unless I could produce some new evidence. I’m not at all hopeful that Smedley will come down on our side, though he might sanction some preliminary inquiries, or a watch being kept on Richards. That would be better than nothing.”

  It was as well for his peace of mind that he was not in the superintendent’s office at that moment.

  Sir John had returned from London a happy man. On the previous evening, at his club, the dinner table conversation had turned to the question of German spies. Although it was not a services club, its members being mostly lawyers and businessmen, their views seemed to Sir John to be sound. This may have been because they coincided with his own.

  “It’s up to people like us,” he had pronounced, looking around the table, “to see that the man in the street doesn’t lose his head. There are a lot of alarmists about – most of them should be behind bars – but as long as this misbegotten government leaves them at liberty, we can at least do everything in our power to see that they aren’t listened to.”

  This sentiment had met with vociferous approval.

  When, therefore, he heard the superintendent’s suggestion that some preliminary steps – he refrained from saying exactly what steps – should be taken against Major Richards, his first reaction was indignation. His next was to laugh.

  “My dear Marcher,” he said, “I’m surprised at you. You’ve been listening to fairy stories. Soon you’ll be saying that you believe in Father Christmas. Two idiotic young men tell you they have been seeing lights, and you propose to rush off and make a fool of yourself.”

  “I wasn’t going to suggest anything drastic—”

  “If that young man – what’s his name? – Pagan was as drunk as he
was when your men wasted their time searching the gutters for him, the lights he saw were probably inside his own head.”

  “Admiral Manfred seemed to think—”

  “Yes. I always thought him a sound man, and I’m sorry that he’s been deluded by these two charlatans. Tell me again about this ‘chit’ that he showed you.”

  “You can see it for yourself. He left me a copy.”

  When Sir John had read it, he laughed even more heartily.

  “If you think,” he said, “that the head of the Metropolitan Police has the right to issue orders – framed as requests – to the head of a borough force, a totally independent body, then he needs a few lessons in police organisation. But I’m sure you weren’t impressed by this piece of impudence.”

  Marcher, who had been impressed, said, “I read it only as a request for assistance from one branch of the force to another.”

  “Then let me tell you this.” Sir John leaned forward. “If you were so misguided as to order the detention of Major Richards, the result would be an action in the High Court for false imprisonment, coupled with an action for damages for libel, or slander, or both. And if I was called on to give evidence I would be forced to tell the court what I’ve told you – that Major Richards is a man of unimpeachable character. He showed me – in confidence, of course – letters from highly placed friends in America, one of whom described him as ‘the best type of thinking patriot.’ No, no. My advice to you is to await the return of Colonel McCann. He will view the matter rationally, I’m sure.”

  “And in any event,” thought the unhappy superintendent, “the responsibility will be his, not mine.”

  Since he had promised the admiral that he would speak to Sir John, the superintendent felt bound to telephone him and tell him what had transpired. It was a carefully edited version of the truth.

  “In short,” said the admiral, “he won’t play.”

  “I’m afraid that’s so.”

  “The fact that he’s chairman of the bench doesn’t give him any authority over you.”

  “No direct authority, no, but—”

  “But you would find it difficult to go against his advice. Even though you were convinced that delay might be dangerous.”

  Marcher, who was at heart an honest man, said, “I suppose that’s right. And I’m trying not to let myself be influenced by the fact that Major Richards is a personal friend of Smedley’s.”

  “I’m glad about that. It means that you are keeping an open mind. If proof was forthcoming that the major had committed a criminal offence, that would, I imagine, change your views.”

  “It would be a different situation and I would be prepared to view the matter differently.”

  “I hope so,” said the admiral. But he said it to himself after hanging up.

  Luke, also, was on the telephone.

  If a climax was coming, it seemed to him that communications would be important and he had approached an old lady who ran a sweetshop on the next street. Succumbing to his youth and charm, she had surrendered to him the telephone newly installed at the back of her shop, and had unwillingly accepted payment in advance.

  “Use it when you like,” she said. “I’m getting so deaf I can’t understand more than half of what people say on it. You’re young, I expect you’ll manage.” Luke had thanked her warmly.

  He had just concluded a long call to Hubert Daines, bringing him up-to-date. Daines said, “We’re none of us happy about the position. So much so, that Kell is sending me down to lend a hand. Not that he mistrusts you; in fact, he was unusually complimentary about what you’ve been doing. But the sky looks uncommonly black, and if the storm breaks over Portsmouth, two heads may be better than one. Can you fix me with a room somewhere?”

  “No problem. Plenty of rooms at the Royal Duke. When are you coming?”

  “I can’t get away before the weekend, but should be with you on Monday. Meanwhile, Kell’s view is that we’ve got to wait for an answer from America.”

  When Joe heard this he said, “If we’ve got a couple of days to kill, why don’t we go out and get good and properly stinking. That’ll take up one day, and the hangover will fill up the other.”

  That same evening Sir John Smedley gave his wife a modified version of what he had said to the superintendent. His wife was embroidering the cover for a fire stool. She did not always listen patiently to her husband, but on this occasion she allowed him to hold the floor. When he had finished, she threaded her needle with wool and said, “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Sir John, who went his own way in most matters, had, nonetheless, a considerable respect for his wife. He found the comment disturbing. He said, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what I say. I hope you’ve thought carefully about your own position in the matter.”

  “Yes. I may say I’ve thought very carefully.”

  “That’s all right, then,” said his wife and dug her needle firmly into the canvas. “Why do they choose three different green wools that are almost indistinguishable?”

  Sir John was unable to help her on this point.

  It had been a long day. And when Luke, expecting neither Zeppelins nor lights, had climbed into observation, he found it difficult to keep his eyes open. He was sitting so still that an owl alighted on the bough beside him, looked at him gravely for nearly a minute, and said what sounded like “You, too.”

  “Me, too,” agreed Luke. “Sitting here waiting for something to happen, and if it does happen, without a blind idea what to do about it.”

  As sometimes happened when he was sleepy, his mind started out on a track of its own. It started from the blackout in the port. From where he sat, he could see that it was totally effective. Trust naval discipline for that. But there were plenty of lights in the houses around the port. Might it have been possible to impose a blackout on them, too? He thought not. It would have raised immediate protests. Liberty of the subject. The parrot cry of democracy.

  From which stemmed further uncomfortable thoughts.

  How could a country that was organised like England – tier upon tier of interlocking authorities, often at enmity with each other, parliamentary bodies, county councils, local councils, intelligence organisations, police authorities – hope to defeat a monolithic and despotic authority? As part of his education when he joined MO5, Kell had given him a number of books about Germany to study and think about. If a national blackout had been considered necessary there, the order would have come from the army and would have been obeyed. And anyone found behaving like Major Richards would have been put up against a wall and shot.

  Luke felt so depressed that he abandoned his watch and went straight home. Joe was out. He went to bed, but slept so badly that he was awake, well after midnight, when he heard him come in.

  On Saturday, surprisingly, the Zeppelins did not appear. Sunday night was blank, too. A quiet weekend in Portsmouth. Not so elsewhere.

  The terms of the Austrian ultimatum were so arrogant and threatening that the British ministers had to forgo their normal weekend leave, and the Cabinet was in session all day. It was on that Saturday evening that Churchill wrote to his wife, “The Austrian note to Serbia is the most insolent document of its kind ever dispatched. Europe is trembling on the verge of a general war.”

  He was the only Cabinet minister whom the prospect of war seemed to exhilarate rather than alarm.

  On Monday morning, Hubert Daines, arriving in Portsmouth, brought with him a letter from Kell.

  “He doesn’t often write letters to his subordinates,” said Daines. “I fancy he had two reasons for doing it on this occasion: to sort out the legal position in his own mind, and to have it on record in case he has to defend his department.”

  The letter began:

  I have spoken to the attorney general. He said that to proceed against Major Richards we must have a definite, provable criminal offence.

  Showing a light from his attic and playing with the lights in
his annexe doesn’t amount to such. In default of a criminal charge we have to rely on the Official Secrets Acts. The earlier one, of 1889, is a broken reed, since you have to prove intention. A man is caught taking photographs of warships. So what? His granddaughter back home wants them for her album. The Act of 1911 is an improvement. Under it, if a man is behaving suspiciously, going into places he ought not to, it’s up to him to prove that he wasn’t doing it to help a potential enemy. Much better. But there’s a snag: No prosecution can take place without the fiat of the attorney general, and he told me quite flatly that in this particular case he was not prepared to issue it. Not without proof of a criminal act.

  “Back where we bloody started,” said Luke.

  “Might he be provoked into assaulting one of the golfers?” asked Joe.

  “Too clever for that,” said Hubert.

  What maddened Luke was the feeling that time was running out.

  He turned over in his mind a number of possibilities. Suppose that the next time the major came to the Royal Duke, Joe jostled him and shouted that his pocket had been picked, having stealthily dropped his own wallet into the major’s pocket.

  He was saved from such wild ideas by a startling message that Kell had arrived in Portsmouth, was staying with a Colonel Upjohn, and would be calling on them.

  Joe said, “I’ve heard about him. People call him a colonel, but he’s really a lootenant. Or is it the other way around?”

  Luke managed to work this out. Colonel Upjohn was the Lord Lieutenant of the county. It was unclear what he had to do with the matter. It seemed to add one further complication to a matter that was complicated enough already, for God’s sake.

  When Kell arrived that afternoon, he brought one piece of good news with him. He said, “I’ve heard from Judge Rosenberg. He wrote to me personally. He said, ‘I have no hesitation in identifying the subject of your photograph as a man who passed here under the name of Edward Palmer, from Canada. His papers, under that name, were apparently in order. We became suspicious of him, since he seemed to spend his time addressing shop-floor meetings, provoking anti-British feeling, and running an anticapitalist line. But it was only after he had left that we were able to obtain any accurate particulars about him. It seems that his real name is Erich Krieger and that he works directly under Gustav Steinhauer, the German intelligence chief. Incidentally, he has never held commissioned rank in any armed service. Had we known all this in time, we could have charged him, either with traveling on false documents or – a very serious offence in this country and in yours, too, I think – of professing to hold a military rank to which he was not entitled. I hope this will give you the leverage you require. I must add that, on the one occasion on which I met him in England, he maneouvered himself so skilfully that I only caught a fleeting glimpse of his face. I wish I had had the courage of my convictions and told you then what I tell you now.”