The Winter Soldiers

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  Crossman was astonished at his audacity. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘He paid me,’ came the blunt reply. ‘While I was shaving him he said he’d seen me with you. He asked me if I was one of your men and I said I was. Then he wanted to know what you got up to, and offered to pay me.’ Gwilliams jingled coins in his trouser pocket. ‘I told him about Enticknap. Hell, he won’t do nothin’ with it.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’ seethed Crossman.

  ‘I’m willin’ to bet he won’t do nothin’ with it.’

  ‘He’s already done so. Well, so I’ve got a viper in my nest, have I? What am I to do with you, Gwilliams? I can’t trust you.’

  ‘Nope. Ain’t that a bitch?’ said Gwilliams, grinning. ‘Look, sergeant, that was dirty work and you know it. It weren’t nothin’ to do with military secrets, nor to do with this war. That was one officer getting rid of another one. Well, I made a bit of money on the side. It’s a one-off thing. Won’t happen again.’

  With that he left the room, leaving Crossman rather deflated.

  The second time ‘that business’ surfaced again was when Crossman met with a rather less well informed Jane and Lavinia.

  Lavinia said, ‘Alexander. Have you heard about General Enticknap? It seems he’s got to go back to England. Something to do with a domestic crisis. It’s just too bad, isn’t it? Just when we had a nice rendezvous.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The cottage, Alex. The cottage. It’ll go to someone else now. Heaven knows who that will be. I’m not sure I’ll be able to influence them. Oh, it is just too bad.’

  Crossman agreed that it was and after exchanging polite enquiries with Jane, he went on his way. Jarrard came to see him later, to try to pump him. ‘I know you know something about this, Jack. Let me have it.’

  ‘Nothing in it, Rupert. I don’t know the man.’

  ‘Yes, you do. I heard Hawke and Enticknap had a fight. Now the general’s suddenly called back home? It stinks of undercover stuff, Jack. You’re the undercover man. Tell me what you know.’

  ‘I know nothing, Rupert. Please.’

  ‘All right, but I shall ask Jane about it, when I see her. I’m sure you tell her things you don’t tell me.’

  ‘That’s a bit stiff, Rupert. Squeezing my cousin.’

  ‘I know, we’re a wicked bunch, us newspaper men.’

  9

  The captain of the ketch-rigged sailing barge said his name was Od Freir. He was a Norwegian. The Norwegians, like the British, were a seafaring nation and as such their sailors fetched up in the most unlikely corners of the world. So long as there was a sea that connected with other seas and oceans, then there would be a Norwegian somewhere within hailing distance. The sailing barge normally plied its trade in the Sea of Marmara and along the Golden Horn to the Bosphorus and the Black Sea, but lately there had been better pickings carrying cargo for the allied armies around the Crimean peninsula. Now the craft had been hired for a specific task and its blond-haired captain – a Viking if ever Crossman saw one – was due to make a great deal of money carrying passengers instead.

  ‘These damn-blast calm seas,’ growled Freir, who was polishing a brass swivel-gun set in the front of his unlovely but sturdy craft. ‘Yust when you want a big blow, they go all soapy on you.’

  Crossman didn’t know whether he actually meant ‘soapy’ or had mispronounced a word like ‘soppy’ but he let it go.

  ‘Where are we now?’ he asked.

  ‘In Hell!’ cried a voice from the hold, where his peloton was crouched in the dampness, their weapons between their knees. ‘In bloody Hell, that’s where we are.’

  Crossman was dressed in a navy shirt and Nankeen trousers, a close-fitting woollen hat on his head. He looked every inch the sailor. His men were out of sight in the darkness of a barge whose last cargo had been salt-fish and pickled herrings. Crossman knew it stank down in the hold, that the boat was leaking and his men were sitting in bilge-water up to their hips, and that one of them at least had been sick over most of the others. He knew this but could do little to relieve their condition. What was more he knew that this situation might last for hours: until there was a squall at least.

  Both Freir and Crossman ignored the plaintive call from below.

  Freir said, ‘We are one half-mile from the coast. See, those small lights over there on the cliffs? That is houses. Look, we do no good here. Come to my cabin aft. We smoke a pipe and drink some rum.’

  ‘I’d like some rum, please,’ cried the same voice, which Crossman knew belonged to Wynter. ‘Send some rum down ’ere.’

  ‘Have you got enough for them?’

  ‘I haff plenty.’

  The men were given tots, which Crossman refused to increase, knowing that Wynter or Yorwarth would abuse the privilege and get drunk if they possibly could. This was not a time to become inebriated. In a matter of hours they would have to attack the beach and he wanted them all sober. As for himself, he enjoyed the same sized tot, while Freir had a tankard which held about five times more than everyone else. ‘. . . but of course, I am used to it, since it is my rum.’

  With the lamp swinging back and forth across the table which was bolted to the floor between them, Crossman sipped his drink and talked with the Norwegian. ‘So,’ he said, ‘what takes a Norwegian from his home shores into the Black Sea?’

  ‘It’s better than the fishing.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Anything is better than the fishing. As a yunk man I worked at the fishing.’ Freir held up a hand and revealed that he had two fingers missing. ‘Those had the hooks in them. Big hooks, like this,’ he curled the forefinger of his other hand over. ‘If you get one in, it splits the bone. Better to chop it off straight aways. Always the master of the boat haff a meat cleafer ready by his hand to chop off a finger. Not a good life, the fishing. Too cold, always. And high seas, like this.’ He used his hands to indicate rough waters with giant waves. ‘Better to come down to warmer waters.’

  ‘These are not particularly warm waters, not all the year round.’

  ‘Ah, this is special journey, for now, while you fight the war. But I am usually in the Med. Or the Marmara and Bosphorus. Not in here, in the Black Sea. And after the spring, the waters is good and warm. Now for a while I run from Samsun or Trabzon to Balaclava. Or even from Burgas. I bring candles, blankets, oil, things like this. Some for the French, some for the British. Some for the people of Crimea. Seven days ago I climb up the Chufut Kale, above Bakhchiserai, to the Karaim people’s old synagogue there. No more Jews, but other people live there now. They buy from me barrels of whale oil for their lamps.’

  ‘Yes, I know that place. Near Mangup,’ replied Crossman. ‘There’s a sort of plateau there with ruins of watch towers, broken walls and arches that hang over the grasslands. Quite an eerie area. I know the settlement you’re speaking of.’

  ‘That’s the place. Many ghosts there. Old peoples, from before civilization. Scythians, Cimmerians.’

  While they were talking there was a creaking from the barge. Freir jumped up and went to adjust the sails. When he came back he said, ‘The wind is getting oop.’

  ‘How can you handle this vessel all by yourself?’ said Crossman, as the Norwegian settled himself again. ‘What about when we hit a squall or a storm? Surely you need some help then?’

  ‘No, I am quick,’ smiled the clean-shaven captain, brown teeth stark against his white skin. ‘I yump from sail to sail. I am like the monkey. Very fit. Very strong.’ He crooked his arm to show a bulging muscle through the woollen jumper he wore. ‘Ah, listen!’ He held up a finger. ‘Yes, she is definitely getting oop. Soon we will have some white waves and my little boat will bob like a cork. We will find these bad men of yours when the dark comes later.’

  ‘Sergeant!’ someone yelled from the hold. ‘Peterson’s bin sick again!’

  ‘You’ll just have to put up with it,’ he yelled back. Then to Freir, ‘I’m sorry, some of my men hate the water. They get
sick standing on the beach.’

  The Norwegian shrugged. ‘It happens, eh? I get sick in one of those new chuff-chuffs.’

  ‘A steam train?’

  ‘Yes. I do not like the smell from the smoke. It sends my brain giddy. And so fast! They fly along the iron rails. I do not think the human body is meant to go so fast.’

  ‘Oh, surely? I find the train exciting.’

  ‘Each man to his own. See,’ the boat lurched, ‘here we have the beginnings of the stormy weather. Let’s go oop and look. Always at this time of year we do not haff to wait long for bigger waves. ’

  Indeed, the sea was getting rougher, and darker, and ghostlike shadows were chasing each other in the hollows of the swell. There were heavy gusts of wind sweeping across the water in patches, rippling the surface, while here and there the waves broke into white sprays. In the distance an even darker shoreline was merging into the sky. Crossman was told to get his oilskins on. Those below decks were not given the choice, since there was not enough sea clothing to cover them all. They would get cold, it was true, but not as cold as those on deck. And everyone would get wet, oils or no oils. That seemed to be a fact of sea life.

  The gloomy aspect of the sea and land was reflected in Crossman’s spirit. His task here seemed only remotely possible. They had to limp along the coast, pretending to be in trouble, yet actually searching it bay by bay. Freir maintained it was an easy exercise, but then the longer they were out the more money the Norwegian was earning. It did not matter to the boat’s captain if they were out there for weeks on end, forever searching for their prey. Od Freir would happily tell Crossman anything to keep the enterprise alive.

  Now the rain came, sweeping in from the east. It hit the canvas sails with a steady patter that swiftly became a drumming. The fresh water rolled off the curving canvas and flowed down into the hold in a steady stream. Freir told the occupants of the hold that they would have to work the pumps harder or he would have to put the hatch on and consign them to darkness and bad air. They cursed him. He cursed them back in a Viking tongue. Some of them went to the buckets, to keep up with the water that was now coming in from both below and above. Crossman knew his men had never been so miserable. ‘Just thank the lord you’re not in the navy,’ he told them, trying to cheer them up. ‘Remember, this has got to end any day now. If you were on board ship it would last two years or more.’

  ‘Thank you, sergeant, for those comforting words,’ yelled Gwilliams, ‘but I would no more serve in the British Navy than I would in the Chinese Imperial Guard.’

  ‘You might be pressed, sometime.’

  ‘Not me. That’s all stopped now, and you know it, sergeant.’

  ‘Has it?’ said Crossman, innocently. ‘Well, then, where are we going to get our sailors from now?’

  ‘I hear tell the gentry are going to supply them,’ replied the wry Gwilliams. ‘They will send their younger sons to the admiralty to be used as deck-fodder for the navy, and good riddance I say.’

  Crossman had to smile at that one. But he did not smile for long. Freir, despite his earlier claims that he could handle the craft all on his own, began to yell at him to pull this sheet, or grab that halyard, or ‘take the damn tiller if you can’t do anything else, soldier-man.’ Indeed, Crossman had no idea of the terms the captain was using, and when he had the tiller in his hand, the boat seemed to have a mind of its own, yawing this way and that, as Crossman over-corrected the steering, and in the end it was Ali, called up from below, who was given that task while Crossman was back to being yelled at and cursed, and told to ‘reef’ one of the sails – a verb which had escaped his vocabulary so far.

  Soon the barge, which had seemed a reasonably large vessel while the sea had remained calm, now appeared tiny and liable to be swallowed by any of the waves that seemed to be coming at it from every direction. However, once Freir had all the trappings of the sailing barge the way he wanted them, he once again turned into a reasonable human being and even laughed at Crossman’s attempt to make a bowline, the final result of which was a flapping sail and whipping sheet, that lashed the sergeant across the face before he got it under control again.

  ‘Everything all right now,’ Freir yelled at Crossman. ‘We rush, rush, until I haff the sails in the best way, then I can work her easy.’

  Spray hissed across the deck, soaking Crossman and running in rivulets from his head to his boots. One particularly heavy wave shouldered the craft, almost turning her over, had it not been for Freir’s skill in using the rudder to take them out of trouble. Crossman had always understood that you steered into the wave, parting it, thus avoiding being broached, but these waves seemed to change direction without warning, so that the steersman had to be constantly on the alert, accepting each stretch of sea as new territory, and fully aware that betrayal lurked behind every other mound of rolling water and each treacherous gust of wind. It seemed every second that they were doomed to drown, yet somehow the boat stayed afloat. Freir, the god of this wooden bark, now glowed with casual confidence, calling the soldiers babies and saying it would make men of them.

  The storm continued to worsen and soon Crossman began to feel that the sailing barge would really be in trouble. They wouldn’t have to fake it. So many British ships had gone down in the Black Sea, since the war had started, it wasn’t difficult to visualize this small craft sinking below the waves with all hands on board. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon, but it was as dark as midnight. If they got into difficulties there was no one around to help them. They were on a lonely and perilous part of the coast: that indeed had been the idea.

  It was in this area that Reece and his gang operated, preying on small craft just like this one. They rode along the cliffs, sometimes plundering farmhouses, always on the lookout for vessels in difficulty, struggling to find a safe harbour close to the shore. They would wait until a cutter was launched, with a landing party, and attack them as they battled through the surf to the beach. Whatever was in the cutter, or any landing craft, would fall into their possession. A land expedition against the renegade always failed, his lookouts being sharp and his mounts being swift. He had to be lured into a trap of his own making.

  The sailing barge had only a rowing boat, which would take up to about four or five men. It had been Lovelace’s idea that they find a smallish vessel, hire it, and use it as a decoy. To Crossman the whole enterprise seemed fraught with problems, but Lovelace had insisted it would work. So here they were, on a tossing ocean, trying to tempt land pirates. They had already limped into three wide bays, two small coves, and up to a long windswept stretch of beach covered in white driftwood and seaweed, without any success. Crossman always felt there would be long odds on coming up against Morgan Reece and his crew of deserters.

  ‘Is that a light I see, up there on the cliffs?’ yelled Crossman, through the spray, as another large wave struck their bows. ‘Freir, look!’

  The captain did indeed look and cried that he had seen it.

  ‘Nothing to do about it,’ the Norwegian said. ‘We can’t launch the row boat in this filthy weather. It would be swamped bad a short time. Better to wait until the blow dies a little, eh?’

  ‘If you say so. I don’t want to risk my men.’

  ‘I don’t want to risk my boat.’

  So they continued to grapple with the storm, until there were breaks in the cloud above and light showed through. The sea became less mountainous and more like the Sussex Downs in aspect. While the light was still too poor for anyone on the coast to witness what was happening in detail aboard the barge, Freir raised a tattered mainsail in place of the good one, let fall the smaller of the two masts as if it had broken and began to limp into the nearest bay with a sideways motion in order to make it look as if the rudder had gone and there was difficulty in steering. When they were close, the rowing boat was launched with seasick soldiers crouched in the bottom, once again awash with water. There was not one amongst them who would not have emigrated to the middle of
a wide continent at that moment, given the choice. Of seascapes and waves they had seen enough.

  Crossman and Ali did the rowing, they being the only two visible to anyone on the sands. Excitement stirred in Crossman’s breast as two figures appeared from behind some rocks, just as the rowing boat was tackling the heavy surf. ‘Ready men,’ he whispered. ‘Bayonets first, until you can use your dry powder.’ They had not loaded their muskets for the very reason that the powder would be wet and useless before they reached the shore. So they intended a quick charge, hoping to have the opportunity to load their weapons with powder now wrapped in waterproof pouches.

  Crossman and Ali had swords lying beside them in the boat. When the underside of the rowing boat scraped the sands of the beach both men grabbed those swords and leapt out on the strand. They were quickly followed by Wynter, Peterson, Yorwarth and Gwilliams. Every man jack of them was yelling blue murder, as they charged towards the two figures who were between the rocky cliff and the boat. At first those silhouettes of men turned to run but, no doubt seeing it was a hopeless flight, turned once again and armed themselves with pistols. A ball whined past Crossman’s ear. There was a misfire from the other man’s pistol and Crossman was vaguely aware in the excitement of the charge that this person had dropped his weapon when it fizzed and flared in his hand.

  The charging soldiers were almost on the two men when the unarmed man fell to his knees and yelled for mercy. Crossman faltered, as did Ali, but the others were past them with glinting bayonets. Wynter, white-eyed, raised his rifle to pierce the kneeling man. Crossman yelled hoarsely, ‘STOP!’ But Wynter was too far gone to pull back. Gwilliams, to his right, struck Wynter’s rifle a blow with his own. This swift action diverted the point of the bayonet into the victim’s shoulder. It had been aimed at the heart. He was a fortunate man. He fell backwards with a scream in his throat, at the same time wrenching at the blade that appeared to be stuck in his scapula.

  Wynter, furious with Gwilliams, let go of his weapon and struck out with his fist. Gwilliams punched him back, solidly, on the jaw. Crossman jumped between them. During this melee the second stranger was desperately trying to reload his pistol. Ali knocked it casually from his hand and the man dropped to his knees. The two of them begged for their lives in the local language of the Tartars, the wounded one having at last freed himself from the rifle bayonet. He was staunching a flow from his shoulder with the palm of one hand and waving the other one, pleading over and over again for his life and the life of his friend.