Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

  Since arriving in London, Luke had seen very little of Hubert Daines. This, he thought, was a pity, since, in the absence of Joe, he would have welcomed the presence of his second most long-standing friend.

  After all, but for Daines he would never have joined MO5 and would have continued his career as a policeman – possibly been an inspector by now, with an inspector’s position and responsibilities. But in time of war, the police had become, somehow, demoted. They were no longer in the front line. Their main job, equipped as they were with the armoury of Dora, seemed to be the harrying of suspicious people of foreign ancestry, most of whom were turning out to be excellent and patriotic citizens.

  Luke’s thoughts were running on these lines when Hubert walked in. Though he was brown and fit, there was a look in his eyes that Luke had not seen before. A look of controlled apprehension. He wondered what he had been up to. He might find out, by asking questions, but he had been long enough in the Intelligence Police to realise that the asking of questions was not encouraged. The doctrine of “need to know” was already firmly established.

  Spotting the two suitcases, Hubert said, “Typical. You’ve wangled yourself a holiday.”

  “Not so,” said Luke. “The call of duty.” He explained the object of his forthcoming visit to Mount Pleasant.

  “Watch your step,” said Hubert, “or you may find yourself run in.”

  “I can think of no reason why I should be arrested.”

  “People have stopped following the dictates of reason. The population of this island, with a few honourable exceptions, thinks of only one thing: discovering and arresting German spies. Their neighbours, casual acquaintances, someone behaving suspiciously in the street—”

  “Surely they also think a bit about what’s going on in France.”

  “Nothing’s going on in France. It was exciting enough for the first month or two. Now the armies have dug themselves in and spend their time spitting at each other. The real action and excitement’s all here. It’s like Boy Scouts rubbing two sticks together. Rub a spy and a counterspy against each other and you’ll soon see the sparks fly.”

  “I haven’t seen much action myself,” said Luke sadly. “Have you?”

  It was clear from his tan that Hubert had been leading an open-air life.

  “I’ve been in Ireland. Action? Certainly not. Ireland’s a nice, quiet place. The people have reverted to their pre-war occupations: hunting, fishing, and drinking Guinness.”

  “An example which you were glad to follow.”

  “The particular sport I was engaged in could rather have been described as stalking. I was looking for a man called Daryl Forbes, who is either a very dangerous man, or a remarkably stupid one, who opens his mouth too wide. Before the war he was a regular contributor to the Irish Citizen, under the name of Loki.”

  “I think I read some of his efforts.”

  “Then you’ll remember that they were remarkably unfriendly to the British. Urging soldiers and sailors to exercise their rights. In any other country, he’d have been put away for treason long ago. As soon as war was declared, he decamped. Heading for Ireland. I was sent after him, to see what he was up to.”

  “And did you?”

  “No,” said Daines sadly. “He was altogether too quick and too slippery for me. Then I heard, on the best authority, that he’d come back to England. So I came back, too. I’m on my way to Fleet Street to see whether the Irish Citizen can give me a lead.”

  “Journalists are famous for not giving away their sources. Irish ones are probably more close-mouthed than most.”

  As he jolted over the streets of London in a horse bus on his way to Mount Pleasant, Luke was thinking about what Hubert had said, not about the Irish. They were a chronic affliction. In one way, the coming of war had been an advantage: it had put the insoluble problems of Ulster into cold storage. No. It was what he had said about spy mania.

  It was true. It was a fantasy, a hobby, a preoccupation that had grown steadily since the first days of the war. It had been blown to fever heat by the sinking of the cruisers Ahoukir, Cressy, and Hogue by a German U-boat. Things like that did not happen to the Royal Navy. Clearly, then, there had been treachery. The whereabouts of the cruisers had been betrayed. By messages, flashed or tapped out – somehow.

  Kell, who had many contacts in the Admiralty, had expounded the sad truth to Luke. “The sea was so rough that the destroyer escort had been left behind. It was thought that if it was too rough for destroyers it would be too rough for submarines. It wasn’t.”

  But this was not the sort of explanation that the British public found satisfactory. A farmer in Norfolk had been arrested for sending signals out to sea by means of the sails of his windmill. Ha! That was more like it.

  When he reached Mount Pleasant, Luke found two overworked members of MO5 in a room that had been allotted to them. Until six months before, both had been schoolmasters. They had been selected for this particular job because they were German-speakers. The table behind which they worked was piled with letters, some opened, some still unopened. Luke picked up a check that had fallen on the floor. It was received apathetically. He wondered whether it would go back into the right envelope.

  “Before the war,” said the older of the two men, “I gather it wasn’t so bad. About half a dozen letters to be dealt with each day.”

  “Opened carefully,” said the younger man, “and carefully resealed. Now apparently, it doesn’t matter so much if these people know their mail is being examined. So what do they expect to get out of it?”

  His complaint seemed well founded. When the examination had been concealed, the authors might have been indiscreet. Not now, surely?

  He found photocopies of the pre-war letters in one of the cupboards, crammed the copies into his suitcases, and departed. When he reported what he had seen, Kell said, “I realise they’re shorthanded. If I had a single man to spare, I’d send him along. And yes, I do think it’s worth keeping up the inspection, even if they can’t be as careful as their predecessors were. The Germans think themselves cleverer than any other of God’s people. Sooner or later they’ll slip up.” He added, “Anyway, they’ve got a cushy job compared with their friends in the trenches.”

  Kell’s two sons were still too young for military service, but, like all fathers, he could see the dread day approaching.

  Hubert Daines, meanwhile, was heading for Fleet Street.

  The Irish Citizen had an office on Stag Court, one of the tiny alleyways that run north from the street. It was not an impressive outfit. The girl in the front office suspended her midday meal of sandwiches, examined Hubert’s card, and rang a bell. This produced a fat man in shirtsleeves who introduced himself as Mr. Portlach, the editor. He asked, in tones that were not truculent, but were not noticeably friendly, what he might be able to do to help Mr. Daines.

  “In private, if you please,” said Hubert.

  Mr. Portlach now examined the card more carefully and said, “Ah. I see. Well, come into my office. We can be quite private there.” He offered Hubert a chair and perched on the edge of the desk, swinging one leg, while Hubert explained what he wanted.

  “Always happy to help the authorities,” said Mr. Portlach, massaging one of his many chins with his forefinger. “Only thing is, I’m afraid we shan’t be a lot of use to you. You’ve got to realise that we’re only what you might call the British terminal. All the real work’s done in Dublin. We get the finished product and try to sell it.”

  “And this man Forbes – or Loki, as he calls himself – does he never put in an appearance?”

  “Here?” said the editor. His surprise seemed quite genuine. “What would he come here for? He deals with our head office and he’s paid by them.”

  Hubert said, “I suppose you realise that if the stuff Forbes is churning out is treasonable – and it’s beginning to look very like it – then you could get into trouble, bad trouble, for reproducing it and selling it here.”

 
; The idea did not seem to worry the editor a lot. He said, “I suppose that’s what you might call an occupational hazard. If the government wants to make a whipping boy out of me, because I’m handy and the real villain isn’t available to be whipped, that’s up to them. In this job, we often have to suffer for the sins of others.”

  “No one wants you to suffer,” said Hubert. “And I can make a suggestion that will get you out of any trouble. All we want is to locate Forbes. He’s said to be in this country. Very likely he’ll be in touch with you. Might write, or telephone, or even turn up in person. If you contact us quickly – the number on that card’s manned day and night – and if that enables us to lay our hands on Forbes, we’ll count it quittance for anything else.”

  “Well, that’s a fair offer,” said Mr. Portlach. “I do have certain contacts. I could sound them out.”

  When Hubert emerged from the half-light of Stag Court into the afternoon sunshine of Fleet Street, the man who had been propping up the wall at the entrance to the court levered himself into an upright position, crossed the street, and spoke to a man on the pavement. This man swung off behind Hubert. He made no effort to catch up, but seemed content to keep him under observation.

  From Joe’s point of view, one of the pleasures of ploughing a lonely furrow was that it enabled him to regulate his own timetable. He liked to get up late, and go to bed when the day had no more interest or excitement to offer. He was finishing his breakfast as the clock of St. Stephen, Silvertown, was striking eleven. At this moment, to his surprise, the door opened and Ben Lefroy came in. He had heard Ben leave the lodging they shared a full four hours before and had turned over comfortably in bed. He had not expected him back until the evening.

  “Wassup?” he said. “No. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’ve mixed something with something it didn’t ought to have been mixed with and it’s blown up.”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Then why are you looking like a billy goat in stays?”

  “At the works – last night – we had a burglary.”

  That didn’t seem to Joe to be anything to get worked up about. He said, “Fear not. You’ll get it all back from the insurance. Probably make a profit.”

  Ben wasn’t really listening to him. He said, “It was horrible. Three men broke in – or rather, they didn’t have to break in – seems they’d gotten hold of a door key from somewhere. Fred Hardistone was the only man on duty. They’d managed to disconnect the alarms before he could set them off. They tied him to a chair and soaked his trousers in gasoline. One of them held a light near his trousers and said, “Do you give us the strong room key, or do we toast your legs?”

  “And I’ve no doubt,” said Joe, “that he did just what I should have done: handed over the key in double-quick time. What do you keep in the strong room, anyway?”

  “Chemicals and drugs mostly.”

  “So that’s it. They were looking for drugs.”

  “Wrong. When we checked this morning, we found that all they had taken was sulphuric acid. Three large carboys of it.”

  “Strange choice,” said Joe, putting the last piece of buttered toast into his mouth and speaking through it. “What next?”

  “Before they left, they lashed Fred up tighter, gagged him with cotton waste and sticking plaster, and departed. When our people found him in the morning he was nine parts dead.”

  “And couldn’t describe the men.”

  “Not even when he’d recovered. They were masked, you see. He thought that two of them were Irish.”

  “Sounds like the Killarney boys,” said Joe. “We shall have to do something about them. They’re getting out of hand. However, cheer up. I’ve got some news for you.” He pushed a letter across the table. “The old man wants to talk to you. Luke has been telling him about you. He thinks you might be useful to his department. Just what you might call a temporary attachment, so pull yourself together, boyo, and try to look less like a depressed poultice-basher and more like an alert and courageous secret service man. More like me.”

  A week later, at four o’clock on a dismal November afternoon, Hubert Daines, picking up the office telephone, recognised the voice of Mr. Portlach.

  “I’ve got some news for you. Secondhand, but reliable, I think. The man you’re looking for has been at 3 Glenister Road, El6, for the past day or so. My informant added that if you want to catch him you’d better get a move on. He’ll soon be on his way back to Ireland. I expect he feels safer there.”

  Hubert thanked Mr. Portlach warmly, and then sat, for a few minutes, thinking about it.

  Kell’s instructions had been clear: “If Forbes is in this country, locate him, and keep him under observation. Hopefully, he’ll lead us to men we want more than him. If he tries to leave the country, we’ll have to think again. Until then, let him run.”

  Keep him under observation? For God’s sake! It would need a team of three or four men to do that. Maybe Special Branch would lend a hand. The immediate thing was to confirm Forbes’s whereabouts.

  He located Glenister Road on the map. It was one of a tangle of little lanes north of a small patch of green called Royal Victoria Gardens that ran straight down to the river. It was within a stone’s throw of North Woolwich Station, the terminus for passengers using the free ferry.

  When Hubert got there, it turned out to be as uninspiring a piece of London as it had looked on the map. The few passengers, who had come with him as far as the station, struck off for the pier, where the ferry was waiting.

  There was little suggestion of royalty about Victoria Gardens, a dank patch of turf intersected by gravel paths. Hubert knew from the map that if he circled it going north, and then turning to the east, he would find the street he wanted.

  The third one along was Glenister Road. There were no streetlamps. It sloped downhill into a pit of darkness. The door of No. 3, the second house on the right, was open. Striking a match, he tried to read the names on the board inside the hall. All of them seemed to be married ladies. Two on the ground floor, right and left of an unsafe-looking staircase; two more on the first floor, two more above that. Six respectable females. How was he going to find out which of them housed the man he wanted? It was while he was wondering about this that he realised he was not alone. Three men had come into the hall behind him. Before he could make a move to save himself, a savage blow on the back of his neck had shut out sight and sound.

  As Hubert slipped to the floor, his assailants proceeded, with the speed and silence of men who knew what they were about, with the job of disposing of him. They had brought with them a sack of the type used by Smithfield porters. One end had been weighted with oddments of iron and stone. When Hubert had been inserted into it, the open end was knotted securely. Two of the men picked it up and carried it the ten yards up the lane to the road. The third man had gone ahead to prospect for trouble. By the time they arrived he had the garden gate open, and when he gave them the all clear, they staggered across the road, carrying the sack.

  At the far end of the garden, past the railing, at the foot of a sloping embankment, the Thames ran by, in full flood. Here they halted. What was holding them up was the ferry, which still waited by the pier. Until it was out of sight across the river, they dared not complete the job they had in hand.

  It was at this moment that a new character came onto the scene. He was a man near six and a half feet high and broad in proportion. They recognised him at once: Big Tim Brady, a character feared and respected on the waterside from Southwark Steps to Barking Creek.

  He strolled up, stared at the men and at the sack on the ground, and said, “Phwat goes on here?”

  There was a moment of silence before the leader of the men said, “Private business, Tim. Nothing to do with you.”

  “Anything at all what happens around here,” said Big Tim, “is something to do with me. And why? Because I’m the big man in these parts. People have learned to treat me with respect. They’ve learned the hard way.”


  The man who had spoken before said, in tones that demonstrated that fury was beginning to overcome discretion, “Like I told you. This is our business, no one else’s.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the ferry was moving off. “If you want the truth of the matter, we’re disposing of a load of rubbish.”

  As he spoke, the other two men were edging slowly around behind Tim. None of them was as big as he, but if he was looking for a fight, at those odds he should have it.

  Tim seemed unperturbed by this development. He seemed to be listening. “Rubbish, is it?” he said. At that moment, the sack had given a convulsive jerk. “Lively rubbish, ain’t it?”

  Having heard the police patrol advancing along the path, he added, in the confident tones of a law-abiding citizen, “What you’ve got in that sack will interest the boys in blue, I don’t doubt.”

  By the time the policemen arrived, Tim was busy unknotting the cord around the neck of the sack.

  Chapter Nine

  Luke was attempting to solve a problem.

  On the outbreak of war, the barber Karl Ernst had been arrested, charged with espionage activities, and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. His twenty-one correspondents had been luckier. They had merely been interned. It was copies of letters to them that Luke had collected from Mount Pleasant. He had noted in particular the nine cases in which the recipient had been entrusted with verbal messages for der Vetter.

  All nine had been questioned about this. They had replied, with suspicious unanimity, that since they neither knew who der Vetter was, nor where he was to be found, they had been unable to comply with the instruction, which they assumed had been given to them in error. Their interrogators had not believed a word of this. But since the use of judicial torture had been abandoned in England in 1640 – a great mistake, Kell thought – there was nothing further they could do.

  Luke was now approaching the problem as a mixture of geography and geometry.