Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

  Hall said, “I’ve checked with AA Command. They tell me that two Zeppelins were over Sheerness the day before the explosion on the Bulwark.”

  “When you say the day before, do I assume that you mean the evening before?”

  Hall said, “That’s correct. The first sighting was at 2035 hours. It would have been dusk, but not yet dark. Why? Does something turn on it?”

  “Yes, Captain. I think it does.”

  The major picked up the curious object that had been on the table in front of him. It was a fat, metal tube, about eighteen inches long and four inches round, with a small propeller at one end. Grasping it firmly, the major unscrewed it and held it up for their inspection.

  As far as they could make out, the interior was in two sections, divided by a membrane.

  “This little joker was thrown into an ammunition ship in New York and found on top of the cargo when it reached Liverpool. When I tell you that the ship had been berthed alongside a German boat, you can guess how it landed up where it did. When we found it – it’s empty now, of course – one of these chambers contained sulphuric acid, the other high explosives. The membrane prevented them mixing prematurely. Here”—he inserted one finger and lifted a small metal arm—“is a spring-loaded igniter. The device that holds it back is controlled by a small rotating wheel, rather like the wheel that governs the mainspring of a watch. When you have fiddled the wheel around the requisite number of times, the device is armed and ready.”

  “I follow that,” said Hall, who had been listening carefully. “But why didn’t this particular one detonate?”

  “Sound mechanics, poor chemistry,” said Duprès. “The sulphuric acid mixture wasn’t strong enough to eat its way through the membrane.”

  “Second objection, then,” said Hall. “How would it get onto the Bulwark? And even if you’re going to suggest that a treacherous sailor or stoker was induced to put it into the magazine, I can’t believe he’d have been clever enough – or brave enough – to open it and fiddle with the control wheel.”

  “That’s the really ingenious part about it.” The major sounded as pleased and proud as though he had invented the bomb himself. “We’ll suppose that in the case of the Bulwark it was dropped from a Zeppelin. If attached to a small parachute, its descent would be leisurely. Plenty of time for the propeller, which would have been going around”—he twirled it with his finger—“to turn the wheel so that, by the time it landed on the Bulwark, it would be armed and ready. Then, as soon as the acid – a stronger mixture this time, no doubt – had eaten through the membrane, it would detonate handsomely. If a single spark reached the magazine, the ship would be destroyed.”

  “Sounds a bit hit-and-miss to me,” said Hall. “How could they be sure that a single bomb would land on the ship? Or if it did, that it would end up in a place where it could do serious damage?”

  “No one suggested a single bomb,” said Cooper-Key. He was provoked by this scepticism and though, as a major, considerably junior to a captain R.N., did not hesitate to show it. “Half a dozen could have been loosed and escaped detection in the dusk. However, since you find my suggestion farfetched, allow me to hand you over to my colleague. Perhaps you will find his ideas more convincing.”

  The professor said, “What has been demonstrated to you is the possibility of an attack from above. I think you were wrong to dismiss it.” He looked severely at Hall, whose unconvincing attempt to look contrite was nearly too much for Luke’s self-control. “So let me offer you the alternative: an attack from below.”

  He produced from his briefcase what looked like a thin stick of barley sugar.

  “What I have here is a piece of caustic soda that has been coated with varnish. Before I explain how it might have been used”—a further severe look at Hall—“allow me to clear certain preliminary points. Matters of naval routine, about which you will, of course, know much more than I do. First, what armament was being carried?”

  “In the Bulwark? Six and eight inch guns.”

  “I’m obliged. The ammunition, then, would be in the normal two-part form. The projectile and the cordite charge would be delivered separately to the gun turret.”

  “Certainly. By mechanical hoists, operating on opposite sides of the turret.”

  “Just so. And if a continuous and sustained programme of firing was contemplated – in practice, or in actual battle – I imagine that there would be a number of projectiles and charges in the turret.”

  “Yes. In racks, behind the guns.”

  “Then, one final point: the magazine from which they came would be – I speak comparatively – a cool place.”

  “Not just cool. Temperature-controlled.”

  “Yes. And the turret?”

  “That, of course, is quite a different matter. It’s ventilated, but after a period of firing, it does get extremely hot. If discipline allowed it, the men at the guns would work stripped to the waist.”

  “Just as I visualised it,” said the professor happily. He picked up the pencil-shaped object and said, “This device can lie among TNT, quite innocuous, for months on end. But, when heat is applied, directly or indirectly, it will burst into flames – which would detonate not only the charge to which it was attached, but also the other charges around it. And if even one of the hoists leading down to the magazine happened to be open …”

  He broke off. A long silence ensued. Then Hall said, speaking so unwillingly that the words seemed to be wrenched out of him, “I must confess, Professor, that I find your theory the more probable of the two. Hideously probable. A dishonest or suborned member of the crew could, I suppose, carry such a thing in his pocket. Yes? And it would be the work of a moment to insert it in one of the cordite charges – possibly when he was assisting to stack them in the magazine. Then all he would have to do is wait until that particular charge was used.”

  Kell said, “We know now that the Bulwark explosion occurred when the ship was leaving Sheerness on a training course, which was to involve firing practice. The day was an unusually hot one, and if charges had been stacked ready in the turret, then trouble was very likely to occur. But don’t these facts give us a chance of locating the man concerned? Knowing what was likely to happen, wouldn’t he have made some excuse to stay off the ship? Compassionate leave, hospitalisation, a visit to the dentist …”

  “Yes,” said Hall, “we can check that.”

  “Also, now that you know the two possible ways of attack, you’ll be able to take steps to guard against them. If Zeppelins are overhead, don’t concentrate all your searchlights on them. Have at least one of them focused on the ship. And check all charges, both in store and before using them. That should give you a margin of safety.”

  “Until the buggers think of something else,” said Hall. But he said it so softly that only Luke, who was sitting just behind him, heard it.

  Chapter Eleven

  After this spate of activity, the pace slowed and, before anyone was quite expecting it, Christmas was on them.

  A sad Christmas for some small people of no national importance. Into their mailboxes was dropped, in the place of Christmas cards and good wishes, a buff envelope, with its terse message signed by their “obedient servant” from the War Office who “regretted to inform” them. News that took a minute to read and years to forget. A husband or a son had crossed over Jordan into the promised land.

  By a strange turn of fate, the people who seemed happiest about the advent of Christmas were the men in the trenches. To the horror of commanding generals, they had seized on the occasion to meet their enemies in no-man’s-land and shake hands with them.

  Unofficial football games had been played among the shell-holes, and Heilige Nacht had mingled with Noël, Noël. Clearly, the thing had to be stamped on. How could a man shake hands with someone one day and bayonet him the next? Moral fibre would be dangerously slackened. Fraternisation became a court-martial offence and was successfully stamped out.

  So, as the year
turned the corner and as an icy January became a damp and depressing February, both sides braced themselves for the next act: the first studied, methodical offensive. A decisive victory now could end the war. Afterward, the chance would have gone. It would be too late. And the key to success, as Kell had impressed on Luke, was ammunition: bullets, shells, bombs, trench mortars, grenades.

  True, the output was beginning to increase, but slowly. New factories had to be built and tooled up, and men had to be found to replace the skilled hands who had hurried to the colours at the start of the war. If the pitifully small existing stocks could be attacked, even partly destroyed, this would be a deadly blow.

  And such an attack was coming. Kell was sure of it. If he could divine the enemy’s plans, he could take steps to counter them. At the moment, he was lunging blindly, in the dark. He thought about the Royal Arsenal. For the Germans, with their love of the Schwerpunkt, the Angriffslustig, the bold and aggressive attack on the main objective, it was such an obvious target. And what Luke had told him about its defences was only halfway encouraging. The surrounding walls might be high, but if the men on them were getting on in years, tired out by long spells of duty …

  Kell shook his head angrily. He knew that it was on occasions like this that bad mistakes were made. Better at the moment to concentrate on small things he could do. Train his little army and have them instantly ready for action.

  Special Branch had temporarily assigned two of their hard men, Kirchner and Durkin, to MO5 to give it some badly needed muscle. Joe had been allowed to disappear from time to time, sinking deeply and more deeply into the half world around the Victoria and the Royal Albert docks. Ben Lefroy had been granted a leave of absence on two afternoons a week so he could improve his schoolboy knowledge of German.

  Kell had given him the names of three language schools. “There used to be a dozen and more in London, but a lot of them have closed down, and others have become bashful about teaching German. More credit to the ones that have been honest enough to keep it up. The obvious one for you is the Abbey Wood Tutorial Service. Easy to get at. It’s on Southern Railway from Woolwich.”

  To it, Ben had dutifully proceeded, armed with a letter of introduction from Kell. Joe, who had taken an almost paternal interest in Ben ever since he had joined them, was proud of the speed with which he had picked up a new language. “Quicker than Luke,” he said. This was tactless, but tact was never Joe’s strong point.

  Luke had spent the months of winter and early spring in a tedious checking and rechecking of the names on Kell’s list. Somewhere – he was sure of it – somewhere hidden in the jungle of East London was the man it was becoming so desperately important to find.

  Snowdrops and then primroses made their timid appearance, and a few buds showed on the skeleton branches of the trees. And life went on – calm on the surface, tense and anxious below it, as a climax approached that, it seemed, they could do nothing to circumvent or hasten.

  Toward the end of March, a tiny gap opened in the clouds – a patch of blue, small, but encouraging.

  The team that Hall had attached to Mount Pleasant was made up of two commanders and one lieutenant commander, all in their early forties. Their systematic but uninspired attention to the work they had been given may have explained why they had been passed over for promotion. The arrival of a fourth helper had ruffled the surface.

  The newcomer was Sublieutenant Burnhow, a boy of twenty, who had been on deck on the Bulwark when the explosion occurred. He had been thrown into the sea and picked up, with a shattered left arm that had to be amputated at the elbow. He had been a young officer of ability and promise, and now that his career in the navy had been aborted, he turned with savage energy to a job he hoped would help hunt down the enemies who had tried to destroy him.

  His three seniors observed, with concealed dislike, his habit of working twice as hard as they did.

  One of the files of copied correspondence that had been handed over to him included a number of letters to and from a Mr. Goodison, the manager of Leslie Lindsell and Sons, sanitary engineers and fuel stockists, who had an office and a yard in Bostall Wood. The letters had come in for inspection only because Charles Goodison, before he changed his name, had been Gustav Gottfried. To avoid insult and obloquy, many innocent citizens had taken a similar step on the outbreak of war. Mr. Goodison had done so six months earlier, which might suggest that he had private information that war was coming. Admittedly somewhat slender grounds for suspicion. His correspondence with Messrs. Zeeman, metallurgists and mining agents of Stockholm, had, in the past, dealt only with details of lead piping and brass fittings and continued to do so, in the dullest possible way.

  Previous investigators seemed to have read the letters rapidly and decided that they were harmless. Burnhow, having leafed through the copies of the earlier correspondence, was now patiently treating each new one that came in, with all of the three known methods of restoring invisible writing. His seniors watched him sardonically, wondering why he was wasting his time.

  In the last week of March, his patience was rewarded. Scrawled down the fold of a letter from Zeeman, he was able to read, “Let 105 know special product on its way to you.”

  This seemed important enough to Burnhow for him to bring it personally to Kell, who examined his offering with the excited attention of an entomologist faced with a hitherto unknown beetle.

  Burnhow, who was meeting Kell for the first time, murmured that he hoped he found it interesting.

  “Not just interesting,” said Kell. “Extremely important. You’ve read all the earlier correspondence. You know the background. So what do you think it means?”

  “It seemed to me that Zeeman was supplying Goodison openly with lavatory fittings and something different under cover.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Something he couldn’t get in England. Or couldn’t import openly without paying a large import duty. Or perhaps something illegal.”

  “Drugs,” suggested Kell gently.

  Burnhow was young enough to blush. Drugs had been the first thing he had thought of.

  “Whatever it is,” said Kell, “we’ve both got work to do. I’ll investigate the firm. You keep your eyes peeled for further messages.”

  The result of Kell’s investigations arrived three days later in the form of a memorandum. Burnhow was interested to see that other copies had gone to Naval Intelligence, to the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard, and to the Department of Trade and Industry, with thanks for their assistance.

  The firm of Leslie Lindsell & Sons was founded in 1850. Control passed from father to son and son to grandson. Leslie III, who lost money by mismanagement, was happy to sell the assets and goodwill in 1908 to Gustav Gottfried. Gustav calls himself manager – he lives over the shop – but he’s clearly the owner. The name “Lindsell” was retained by him as part of the goodwill. After this change, the business, which had been chiefly confined to the installation and repair of household water systems, was enlarged. The firm started to manufacture all forms of lavatory equipment. It also became a fuel stockist, a business that needs money, patience, and storage space. All types of household fuel, coal, wood, paraffin, and so on are purchased cheaply, from sources here and broad, in spring and summer when there is little demand for them, and sold at a large markup when winter sets in.

  Kell had scribbled at the bottom of Burnhow’s copy, “Gottfried/Goodison arrived in this country in 1905 from Bavaria. Nothing known against him. Applied for and was granted naturalisation in 1910. Original classification A. I’ve demoted him to AB: Anglo Boche, doubtful. Keep me informed.”

  The certainty that he was on to something and that the management was happy about his efforts sustained Burnhow through an empty two weeks of fiddling toil. Then he landed his second fish.

  “I was hoping for something a little more decisive,” said Kell. He was discussing the new message with Luke, who had been deploring his own lack of progress. Together
they read and reread the straggle of blackened words: “Tell Tyr he will get suitable supplies from you in time to do the necessary.”

  It was not easy to read, having been written inside the fold of a double sheet of paper.

  “He’d have needed to smooth it out flat before treating it. And it’s the trickiest of the three methods. The writing’s done with a small paintbrush in watered milk. Quite invisible in any light until brushed over with graphite.”

  “Impressive,” agreed Luke. “Nine people out of ten would have missed it altogether.”

  “Very impressive,” said Kell. “He’s too valuable to take chances with.”

  Luke was unclear what he meant, but had learned that when you didn’t know what to say, you said nothing.

  Kell leaned back in his chair, gazed at the ceiling for a long moment, and then, “You and Joe spent years together as policemen in one of the roughest parts of London and learned a little – not much, but the elements of self-protection. You must not judge everyone by yourselves. Here we have two young men working for us – Burnhow and Lefroy – one of them brought up in the nursery of the navy, the other inside a laboratory. They know as much about the real world as my cat, Melinda. Less, really. She’s a very knowledgeable animal. So what follows?”

  Luke opened his mouth and shut it again.

  “What follows is that we must look after them. As we could have looked after Hubert Daines if he’d behaved sensibly and told us what he was up to. We’re not without resources. As well as Kirchner and Durkin, Special Branch have lent us a third man, Merchison. A Scotsman who was, I believe, formerly a bouncer in a nightclub. They are messing together in a flat in Poplar that I’ve got for them. Here’s the telephone number. Write it down. If you need help, phone them. They’ll be doing a number of jobs for me, but promise, if possible, to leave one man behind to answer the telephone. I’ve told Burnhow and Lefroy about them.” Kell smiled austerely. “Both seemed surprised that such precautions should be necessary.”