Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

  Luke found that it did work, was put through to Kell’s office, and listened to it ringing interminably. Finally, a girl answered. She said, “There’s no one here but me. They’ve all gone.”

  “Gone? Where?”

  The girl said she didn’t know. They’d pushed off with a crowd of sailors. She then replaced the receiver firmly.

  Luke was still staring at the instrument when Kirchner said, “If I might suggest it, don’t you think we ought to be getting after Mills? If he’s been supplied with a set of papers like the other one, he might be difficult to stop. My van’s parked around the back—”

  Luke said, “While you’re fetching it, I’ll have a word with Inspector Horniman. He can take over here.”

  As they were driving the short distance down Abbey Road to the school, all four crammed together in Kirchner’s tiny vehicle, Luke said, “We’ll be too late. He’ll be gone.”

  Durkin said, “I wouldn’t be on it. He’ll be there and he’ll put up a fight—I hope.”

  Kirchner said, “He’ll be there, but he won’t fight.” Joe continued to say nothing.

  Kirchner came nearest to the truth.

  When Mills saw them pile out of the van and guessed what they had come for, he opened the drawer of his desk, took out a service revolver, placed the barrel carefully in his mouth, and pulled the trigger, scattering his brains over the wallpaper behind his desk.

  It was only after a week of mixed and strenuous work that Kell found time to sum up for his two young assistants. Four of the anthracite bombs had been found in the last delivery of coal to the Royal Arsenal – two each in the coal stores at the powder factory and Slough. Clearly, they had been intended to detonate at the same time, if possible. An explosion in any one of the three places would have been a disaster.

  Kell said, “If all three had gone up it wouldn’t have been a disaster. It’d have been a catastrophe. A close-run thing. Closer than I like to think about. However, now that you have disposed of Robb—”

  Joe, who seemed to have recovered some of his spirits, said, “Yes, I disposed of him.”

  “It has been accepted that he was trying to escape and that you had no option. Mills has killed himself. Goodison is being held on charges that will, almost certainly, lead to a capital sentence. With the removal of Wotan, Tyr, and Vulcan we may assume that Operation Asgard has gone into – what shall we say? – involuntary liquidation. However, there’s one man who would have been a more valuable prize than those three together: Erich Krieger. Palmer in Canada, Richards in Portsmouth, Marriott in Ireland, and Lewin – as we’ve recently discovered – at Woolwich. From which he left for France a week ago with a party of officers who were rejoining their units.”

  “No doubt he’s back in Germany by now.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as that. Let’s say he’s certainly back across the Channel, absorbed safely into a million other soldiers and perfectly camouflaged.”

  Luke and Joe looked at each other. There was a note in Kell’s voice that seemed to offer a hint of the opening they were looking for.

  Luke said, in as casual a tone as he could muster, “Didn’t you once tell us that a number of your men had been drafted into the Intelligence Police in France?”

  “If I said that, it was, regrettably, true. I have lost a lot of good men.”

  Joe gave him a look that said, “Go on. Don’t fluff.”

  “We did wonder,” said Luke, “whether an attachment, a temporary attachment, might be arranged for us.”

  “It might be. But why?”

  “Well, sir, you said that Krieger would be a valuable prize.”

  “And you think that you might be able to locate him.”

  “He won’t have been able to change his appearance all that much. And we examined him, night after night, at his card table in that house above Gilkicker Point—”

  “The last time I saw him,” said Joe, “he was fiddling with his motorcycle outside that house in the Crescent. He had his back to me and was bending over the machine, so I didn’t recognise him, but I’m sure it was he—”

  “Oh, why?”

  “Because he recognised me. Must have done. And saw me talking to Ben, and that’s why—”

  “Stop that!” said Kell sharply. “If anyone’s to blame, I am. I picked out that language school for him. All right. I agree there are few people more likely to spot Krieger than you two. I’m not making any promises, but I’ll think about it. And I’ve got a piece of news for you: Hall tells me that the navy has scored a fine success in the North Sea. It’s not been announced yet, so don’t splash it about. Two of our cruisers engaged and sank the German armoured cruiser Kobold. She went down with all hands.”

  “Über and unter,” said Luke softly.

  Part Three

  LE TOUQUET

  Chapter Fifteen

  Luke was perched on the top of Mont St. Frieux, five hundred feet above the sea. From this inconsiderable height, he could look down on the largest reinforcement camp in France.

  It was divided two ways.

  Laterally by the Canche River, which ran from Montreuil to the sea. Lengthways by the D940 from Hardelot to Berck-Plage and the railway that ran alongside that road. This produced a pleasing pattern of four, roughly equal, quarters. The northwest quarter was an area of shrub and sand dunes that stretched from where he sat to the outlet of the Canche River. In the left-hand corner, he could see the court-martial prison and detention camp, a massive construction girdled by ten-foot wooden stakes and a double entanglement of barbed wire. It looked strong, but no stronger than it need be, thought Luke, holding delinquents and deserters from all parts of the British line. There were men in the detention block awaiting armed escorts. Some of them were under sentence of death.

  The northeast quarter, in and around Étaples town, housed the base camp, a tented city planted around playing fields. The headquarters building, a block of recently constructed flats, contained the rabbit warren of offices that seemed to spring into existence as soon as the British Army settled. The overall commander of the base, Major General Eustace Foxley, seldom visited it. He left all routine matters to his adjutant, Captain Edwards, and spent most of his time fishing.

  The southeast quarter, on the other side of the river, was the Kingdom of Q. It was based, sensibly enough, along the railway from which spurs ran to its four main sections, vast depots of clothing, ammunition, food, and drink. These were almost as carefully protected as the prison.

  Finally, there was the southwestern quarter. Much of it was taken up by the sprawling seaside town of Le Touquet. Most of the officers had found billets there, and the large Hôtel Bristol and the smaller Hôtel Le Manoir had been taken over as officers’ messes. A villa in the southern outskirts of the town was the base hospital, with a number of convalescent camps strung out along the shore. From where he sat this was out of Luke’s sight, but he could see the tops of the trees in the Forest of Merliment, a wild area that ran down all the way from Le Touquet to Berck.

  He wondered how many officers and men this mushroom city contained. Several thousand at least. And among them one man who might be there. One man whom he and Joe would have given a lot to locate. The difficulty of the job seemed to depress Joe more than it did Luke.

  He had enjoyed the weeks he had spent at Boulogne under the genial command of Colonel Knox-Johnson, who was busy, under General Macdonough, in forming and training the Intelligence Police, a remarkable collection of Oxbridge dons and London City men who managed both to shock and to impress the army hierarchy.

  When it was realised that Luke was a fluent French-speaker, he had been given the job of sorting out the crowd of Belgian refugees, many of whom seemed willing – sometimes too willing, he thought – to help the Allied cause by returning to their own country as spies. Some of the more promising were given a short course of training and were returned to Belgium by a roundabout route. Across the Channel to England; to Holland by the Folkestone-Flushing ferry; and
back over the Dutch-Belgian border. The last leg of their journey had become more difficult since the Germans had erected an electric fence, but there were ways over it and under it.

  Outstanding among these Belgians had been the sagacious Max Pieters. He was not offering himself as a spy but as a source of information. He knew both sides of the line. Head of the famous jewellers’ shop in Brussels, with a host of German and French customers and friends, he had been able to foresee more clearly than Paris or Whitehall the right-handed sickle sweep of the German Army and the inevitable occupation of Belgium that would follow. He had, in good time, transferred his money to a Swiss bank and the bulk of his stock to his branch establishment in the holiday resort of Le Touquet.

  He had been there himself when war broke out and was now keeping a close eye on things. Had he detected the least likelihood of the German Army breaking through the locked trench system, he would have made all the necessary preparations to move his stock to London. Like many Belgians, he was more attached to the English than to the French. Maybe it was a case of distance lending enchantment to the view.

  Luke had spent long hours talking to this cynical old man. Becoming confident in his discretion, he had told him, in general terms, what had brought him to France.

  “If you are looking for a top-ranking German agent,” said Pieters, “you won’t find him in Boulogne. It is nothing more than a railway station, men coming and going, all firmly controlled by the army. Boulogne and Calais are places in which you dare not relax your grip. If you lose control of the Channel ports you lose the war.”

  “Then perhaps you can suggest where I ought to be looking.”

  “You say that this man can pass, unquestioned, as a British officer. He has the uniform, the papers, the correct manner. But – and this is surely the important point – he must confine himself to the back areas. If he approached the lines, it could only be on the basis that he was rejoining his unit. He would be detected at once.”

  “You mean that he’s reasonably safe in a transit camp or a base camp – where the units are mixed and no one is over curious about his neighbour.”

  “A base camp or a convalescent camp would suit him well.”

  “And you have such a place in mind?”

  “Certainly. The place I have in mind is your base camp at Le Touquet. Having a shop there, I have been well placed to study it. And it seems to me to offer the greatest possible number of chances to a man whose mission it is to remain hidden and to stir up trouble. You may imagine that, because you have brought over a number of military policemen and set up a strong prison, you are in control. If you think that, I advise you to go and see for yourself. It is a curious area. The chalk pits and corridors of the Forest of Merliment have never been properly explored. A primitive area, into which you have, by force of circumstances, crammed a crowd of desperate men. Men with nothing to lose and ample places to hide in. Did you know that recently the police recaptured in Étaples a deserter who had been on the run since the opening of the war in August 1914? You must get Colonel Harper to tell you about it.”

  “Colonel Harper?”

  “Dan Harper. The provost marshal. A good man. I have no wish to denigrate the soldiers of an ally, but some of the other senior officers are – what is the word you use – deep pits? No, dugouts.”

  When Luke had repeated the gist of this to Knox-Johnson the colonel had said, “I’ve never been entirely comfortable myself about that place. You’d better do what your jeweller friend suggested. I’ll organise you a temporary commission in the C.M.P.s. When you’ve assessed the situation report back here. Harper will let you know if there’s any serious trouble in the offing.”

  Trouble? thought Luke, looking down at the base camp; at the men playing soccer on the two playing fields; at the hurdy-gurdy crowd around them; Crown and Anchor schools; three-card tricksters. It was like Epsom Downs on Derby day.

  Some of them were reinforcements, waiting to go up to the line; some were convalescents well enough to be allowed out, or who had simply removed themselves from the camps on the shore, to enjoy life before, if lucky, they were sent back to England, or if unlucky, back to the trenches. The camp commandant, Major General Foxley, whom Luke had met once, briefly, had expounded his creed to him: “As few restrictions as possible. Most of them have earned a holiday. Let them enjoy it.” If this had been a camp in England, adequately staffed, it might have been an acceptable policy of laissez-faire. In this corner of France it was, Luke thought, bloody dangerous.

  Climbing to his feet, Luke set out on the five-mile tramp to Étaples station. For the most part, he walked on the railway tracks, which was easier going than the sand and coarse grass. The C.M.P.s had taken over the station hotel, and Luke had been allotted a room at the top that had previously housed a minor member of the hotel staff. Possibly a housemaid? It was small, neat, and secluded, and it suited him perfectly. He changed from his outdoor clothes into service dress and went down to the anteroom, where he found two men drinking and talking. One was the black-haired, outspoken A.P.M. David Longhorn, who had something of a reputation as a disciplinarian. The other, Robert Dujardin, was a liaison officer from the French Police Judiciaire.

  “Poor old Dan,” Longhorn was saying. “My heart bleeds for him.”

  “Why?” said Luke.

  “He’s been invited – which means ordered – to dine at the headquarters mess. Which means that he’ll be forced to sit at a table with Foxley at one end and Lamperdown at the other, listening to Porteous, Lipholzer, and Shoesmith explaining exactly how they’d have won the war if they’d been in charge.”

  Luke could already identify the names. Lamperdown was the quartermaster general. Porteous, Lipholzer, and Shoesmith were majors and were in charge of three of the main Q depots.

  “Have you not omitted someone?” said Dujardin. “Are there not four depots?”

  “So I did. I forgot Puppy.”

  Puppy, thought Luke, must be Major Yapp. Identifiable, at first sight, as that dangerous type, an occasional heavy drinker. Not the best guardian for store QD, which contained not only the army’s reserve supplies of alcohol but also the Royal Army Medical Corps reserves of medication and drugs.

  Dujardin said, “Doubtless we will get a blow-by-blow account when the colonel returns.”

  “No such luck. Dan is too good a soldier to criticise senior officers. And here is Corporal Lace, to tell us that dinner is ready.”

  It was a good dinner and should have raised Luke’s spirits, but he went to bed depressed. It was not a happy ship.

  He wished he was back in Boulogne.

  Next morning he set out, after breakfast, crossing the river by the main road bridge and strolling through the streets of Le Touquet. Everyone was enjoying the autumn sunshine. The only reminder of the war was the sound of gunfire to the east, a persistent background grumbling they had learned to ignore.

  Once clear of the town, he struck out northward, across the dunes, heading for a point at the corner of the forest that he had marked down as a useful observation post. From it, he could see the base hospital and the three convalescent camps strung out along the shore. His eyes were fixed on the southern one, and presently he saw a figure detach itself from the perimeter of the camp and come stumping toward him, using a stick.

  He did not need his field glasses to tell him who it was.

  “Would perch on top of a bloody mountain,” said Joe, who was panting from the exertion of crossing the rough ground.

  “Mountain,” said Luke. “It’s hardly a hill. A hillock, perhaps.”

  “Hillocks to you,” said Joe, seating himself carefully. Getting up was sometimes more difficult than sitting down. “I take it you’re living, as per usual, in the lap of luxury.”

  “Comfortable enough. What about you?”

  “Nothing to write to the papers about. Would you believe it, when I arrived, the sergeant in charge offered me a hammock; I ask you, a hammock for a man with one leg. Luckily your pal,
the chief doctor, came along and sorted things out.”

  “Colonel Deeming, that would be.”

  “I take it he’s in the know.”

  “Yes. He’s been briefed about you.”

  “He’s fixed me up with a bed, a nice wound stripe, a couple of corn cakes, and made me an honorary corporal. I spend my time dishing out food, handing out mail, and evading questions about my war service. Luckily, they mostly think about themselves. Question number one: Can they wangle themselves back to England? Question number two: What’s for dinner?”

  “Along with your not too arduous duties, I take it that you’ve been keeping your eyes and ears open.”

  “Both,” said Joe. “Eyes first. Take a look around you. What do you see?”

  “Acres of sand, thousands of trees, and millions of bushes.”

  “Ah. That’s because you’ve only got what you might call superfissual vision and don’t know what’s underneath.” Joe thumped the ground with his stick.

  “No. Tell me.”

  “Solid chalk, and in the chalk there’re miles and miles of caves, one leading into another. If you knew your way through them, you could go all the way from here down to Berck without surfacing once. I said, if you knew your way. If you didn’t – well, one of our brighter invalids thought he’d do a little exploring. They found him ten days later. What was left of him. Plenty of rats in those caves, thankful for fresh meat.”

  “Ugh,” said Luke. “What else have you found out?”

  “Oh, I haven’t been wasting my time. It’s an interesting part of the world, this is. Full of life. There’re two villages on the coast. Doonyer – can’t pronounce them – and Easy.”

  “Dunière,” said Luke, who had been examining the map, “and Ezé. What about them?”