Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  ‘Of course,’ said Maeltzer. ‘Do you wish to see my papers?’

  ‘It won’t be necessary,’ said Buchan, who had already made up his mind that the man could prove he was the Pope for all the useful information that he was going to get out of him. ‘It just occurred to me that you might be able to get word back to my people that I’m all right, in good health, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Your people?’ Maeltzer looked genuinely perplexed.

  ‘My parents.’

  ‘I can’t see why not.’

  Maeltzer produced a notebook and pencil and, after a couple of false starts, got down the Englishman’s name and home address. While he did this Weidinger, who hardly spoke any English, wandered off for a chat with Pichler, who had just turned up in a Mercedes-Benz driven by one of the aviators from Fast’s.

  ‘I should say then that you have been well treated?’ inquired Maeltzer. There was a cautious tone to his inquiry.

  ‘So far so good,’ said Buchan.

  ‘And how did you enjoy your visit to the Holy Sepulchre and the other holy sights this morning?’

  ‘Most interesting. Of course, one would have liked to have done it under different circumstances.’

  There was a short pause while Maeltzer wrote this down and Buchan had a flash of inspiration. ‘But if you’re going to stay on here I think you’ll be seeing a lot more of the British army.’

  ‘Do you mean that soon we will capture the entire Egyptian Expeditionary Force?’ demanded a new voice. ‘How are we going to feed you all?’ It was Krag, the intelligence officer, brushing the dust off the sleeves of his white summer uniform.

  ‘I meant no such thing,’ said Buchan, the colour rising to his cheeks. He could not remember being put down so neatly since he left school.

  ‘My apologies, er, Lieutenant,’ said Krag, taking in the prisoner’s badges of rank. ‘I must have misunderstood you.’ As he spoke he took out a packet of oval-shaped Turkish cigarettes and screwed one into an amber-coloured holder.

  ‘Ah, Major Krag,’ said Maeltzer. ‘Are you feeling better? I was told you were unwell.’ He continued to speak English. He did not wish to remind Buchan that he was more at home in the language of the enemy.

  ‘A touch of malaria, that’s all,’ said Krag, who also continued to speak in an English that Maeltzer found surprisingly good. ‘God’s curse on both armies is it not, Lieutenant? But now I suppose you’ll tell me that your side has never heard of it, eh?’

  I would if I had thought of it, thought Buchan.

  ‘But please excuse me. I must not interrupt your work, Herr Maeltzer.’ This time Krag spoke in German. He bent forward slightly from the waist, made a slight clicking movement with his heels and moved off.

  ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Major.’

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Buchan.

  ‘Major Krag, an intelligence officer. He’s the one you have to watch.’

  ‘And not you, Herr Smaltzer? I don’t have to watch you?’

  ‘Maeltzer,’ corrected the journalist softly. For the first time he appeared to notice the young Englishman’s bandaged knees. ‘But you are wounded,’ he said with what sounded like genuine concern though Maeltzer had dissembled so long in the pursuit of a story he hardly knew he was doing it.

  ‘Not really. I fell into a cactus hedge, that’s all.’

  ‘You must get them looked at,’ urged Maeltzer. ‘If the thorns aren’t removed the infection can be very serious. How did it happen?’

  How did it happen? Buchan was not really certain how it had happened, and even if he had been he was not at all sure it was something he wanted to discuss with a foreign journalist living in the enemy camp.

  He was trying to formulate a suitable reply when a voice at his side said, ‘It ‘appened because the bleedin’ staff had their maps arse about face. That’s what ‘appened.’

  The speaker was a small man wearing an Australian’s digger hat. To Buchan’s ears his accent sounded like a hybrid of Cockney and that awful twang from which not even some Australian officers were entirely immune.

  ‘Arse about what?’ asked Maeltzer politely. He knew all the words. The problem was his English wasn’t quite up to hearing them linked up like this.

  ‘They made a fuckin’ Fred Karno’s army of it, that’s what they did,’ said the little man. ‘They got –’

  ‘Look,’ interrupted Buchan. ‘Some of the men have had a hard time of it. I don’t think it’s fair –’

  But the little man would not be silenced, and Buchan shied away from giving him a direct order to shut up. Unlike his own fellows, who might rag you a bit when the sergeant’s back was turned but generally knew where to draw the line, you could never tell with these Colonials. For the most part they lived up to the reputation they had first acquired against the Boers: excellent horsemen, fine shots, splendid physiques – though this fellow seemed to be an exception to the rule in that area. They were also famous for a lack of discipline that sometimes made them less reliable than English troops. Certainly there was no automatic respect for His Majesty’s commission, orders delivered in a certain accent.

  ‘They got us stuck in that bleedin’ cactus didn’t they. Rear fuckin’ guard, that’s what we were.’

  Buchan guessed that he must have been among a detachment of Australian Light Horse who had been sent in to cover their retreat from the slopes of Ali Muntar Ridge. ‘Then the Royal fuckin’ Navy starts shelling’ us, our own bleedin’ ships start blowin’ us to fuckin’ glory.’

  Maeltzer was nodding sympathetically and scribbling away in his notebook. Buchan walked stiffly away. His knees were hurting, and he wanted to find a place where he could sit down quietly for a few minutes. The Australian continued his diatribe, ‘If I ever get my hands on one of those bleedin’ matlows,’ he was saying. ‘I’ll guard his fuckin’ rear for him.

  ***

  Buchan sat down with his back against the Crusader stones that made up the lower part of the city’s wall, stubbed his cigarette out and almost immediately lit up another one. His knees were hurting like hell; he suddenly felt very tired and depressed, almost near to tears.

  Of course, the Digger was right. It had been the most frightful shambles, he realised that now. At first he had not felt qualified to form an opinion, for the simple reason that he had never been in a battle before. He had expected noise, smoke, dust and a certain amount of confusion. But there were other things he had not been prepared for.

  He had never imagined, for instance, just how terrifying the zizz of a single rifle bullet fired by an enemy could be, even when its course was probably several feet above your head. Or how easy it was for a new officer to make a fool of himself in front of his men by ducking at the sound of your own outgoing artillery. Or that it was possible to get as tired in battle as he did in that first week when his brigade took the place they called Green Hill, using bayonets and Mills bombs to winkle the Turks out of the holes they had dug themselves behind the cactus hedges. Not, thank God, that he had done much winkling himself, although he had followed the other platoon commander’s example and carried a rifle in addition to his revolver so that snipers would not immediately spot his rank. He had thrown a couple of grenades and later fallen into a hole and shot a dead man who had the temerity to stare. The Turkish defence was in depth and there were other lines to bomb and stab their way through. When they had done so they were ordered to withdraw, because elsewhere on the front things had gone wrong and they had become a long finger exposed to attack on three sides. After they had rested for a week they were ordered to take it back again.

  He had expected to have to hide his fear among men who were braver and more experienced than he was. Some of his fellow-subalterns seemed to have iced water running in their veins, and exuded an air of enjoying the whole business. He had hoped that their courage would prove contagious, and to a certain extent this had happened.

  What he had not expected was for the oldest member of his platoon, a corporal who had
turned down a soft billet with a home service battalion, to start sobbing like a child when they were being shelled. He had been crouched in a shallow Turkish trench with his arm around the weeping man’s shoulder when a runner, a hero if ever there was one, had arrived from company HQ with a message that the fire was coming from two Royal Navy monitors and a French cruiser offshore, and was intended to cover their withdrawal.

  The next shell had killed the runner on his way back. When the barrage did slacken it was only because it had shifted slightly further south, cutting off their line of retreat as effectively as a steel curtain.

  When they tried to get out the Turks added to their misery by bringing up their machine-guns. Buchan had hardly noticed the cactus thorns when he and his men flopped onto their bellies and the lead stitched neat little holes in the wicked vegetation around them.

  Somebody must have told the ships they were firing too far south for, once again, the gun crews altered their elevation – but not enough. Their next salvo had fallen directly onto the forward British positions.

  Buchan recalled how the blast from the first eight-inch shell had tugged at his clothing like some flirtatious spirit while the second had sucked the breath out of him. After that he had lost count: he had pressed his chin, chest, stomach, tiny detumesced genitals, thighs and knees against an earth which rocked and cracked and whined, while one hand squeezed the stock of his rifle and the other pulled and pinched at the thin flesh of his chest. Three of his men had been killed outright, and of the eleven wounded another three would later die of their injuries.

  Leaning against the ancient stones, absently patting his bandaged knees, Buchan looked up to see that one of his Essex men was talking to Maeltzer, who was nodding and smiling in an encouraging manner. ‘. . . one moment I’m layin’ on the ground sayin’ my prayers then it all goes quiet and the next thing I know old Johnny Turkeycock is standin’ there. “Ello Tommy,” he says . . .’

  Not for the first time Buchan marvelled at his men’s marvellous capacity to make a joke of the most horrendous things. His own capture had proved almost as terrifying as the naval bombardment.

  There had been a sudden and inexplicable silence, so that he could almost hear the drumming of his heart. For a few seconds he had lain there quite motionless, savouring the fact that he was still alive, feeling the heat of the sun through his tunic. Then the drumming had become more insistent; there were occasional shots, though they sounded far off. After a minute or so he had worked out what the drumming was.

  He had raised his head a couple of inches from the ground. At first he could see nothing but swirling clouds of dust. Then he had made them out, coming through the dust fog like ghosts: figures on horseback carrying long poles, walking their mounts through the cactus scrub because there was no longer any room to canter. Turkish lancers.

  Somewhere nearby one of his wounded had begun to moan loudly, and he had hated him for drawing attention to themselves. He had got to his knees and watched the poles come closer, utterly transfixed. He recalled how once at his prep school a retired Indian Army officer on the staff had enthralled him with his tales of the Raj, until it came to the noble sport of pig-sticking. ‘Nothing as dangerous as a wounded boar in a thicket,’ the old sportsman had declared, but try as he would the twelve-year-old Buchan had been unable to shed his sympathy for the pig at bay.

  Now he was the pig – but unwounded, undangerous, and petrified by the notion that he was about to be impaled on one of those long lances. He had five rounds left in his rifle and the full six in his holstered revolver. He had picked up his Lee-Enfield, but even as he did so he resolved that he would only fire if they looked eager for skewering practice.

  Some men on foot had appeared around the horses. To his amazement he had realised that they were his own men and that they had their hands up in surrender, except for the sad cameo of a wounded soldier with his arms draped around the shoulders of two of his mates. This isn’t right, he had thought. I didn’t order them to give up. He had wanted to shout something, but couldn’t think what to say.

  Turkish infantry with bayonets fixed had appeared on the scene. Buchan had dropped his rifle and stood with his arms by his side. It had seemed absurdly theatrical to put them over his head until one of the infantry approached him and he saw that the bayonet was the serrated, saw-edge type banned by the Geneva Convention. At this point he had put his hands up to shoulder level and tried to smile, the Turk, a powerful-looking man who needed a shave, had grunted something.

  As it turned out his captor, who was wearing a kind of pointed leather slipper rather than boots, was more interested in loot than murder. Within a second he had jerked Buchan’s revolver from its holster and, holding his rifle near the muzzle, used his bayonet to cut through the lanyard that ran under the right epaulette to the ring on the butt of the pistol. Then he had expertly run his hands through Buchan’s pockets and found the cigarette case.

  The soldier had been busy with the strap of Buchan’s wristwatch when a Turkish officer had come up silently behind him and delivered a sickening backhander to the side of his head. The soldier had stood rigidly to attention while the officer continued to berate him, all the time punctuating his remarks with slaps across the face. When he had finished and the cigarette case had been returned, the Turkish officer had saluted Buchan and walked off.

  Thus commenced the first five days of captivity, which had culminated in a silent prayer for his wellbeing at the altar of the Holy Sepulchre and a photographic session near the Jaffa Gate. Buchan thought that if his knees were not hurting so much he might have seen the funny side of it.

  The captain with the head wound came up to the men clustered around Maeltzer and shooed them away. The journalist did not mind. He had more than enough.

  4

  After interviewing the prisoners Maeltzer accepted an invitation to join Weidinger, a couple of other junior staff officers, the artilleryman Pichler and his aviator friend for a late lunch at Fast’s.

  His hosts, none of whom had yet reached thirty, were in a relaxed mood, buoyed up by the sight of the prisoners. On the whole they had thought them dignified enough, but – with the possible exception of the Australians – poor physical material compared to German infantry. Maeltzer decided it was best not to point out that the British had not sent a single Guards battalion to Palestine.

  Had he wished, the journalist could easily have lingered with them over coffee and cigars for another half hour or so. But he excused himself, explaining that he wanted to write his despatch in time to give it to an officer who was going home on convalescent leave the next day. Depending on the state of the railways, he should take no more than five days to reach Vienna. He had promised to see that the despatch was delivered to his newspaper’s bureau there, and they would cable it to Zürich.

  Pichler asked him why he did not telegraph it directly from Jerusalem, and Maeltzer told him that his newspaper was so mean they would think it excessive if he telegraphed an account of the battle of Armageddon. This was only a slight exaggeration. He had sent a short telegram setting out the bare facts of the Gaza battle: his editors believed that readers anxious for further details would not have their appetites blunted by a week’s delay.

  France, Russia, the American factor and unrestricted submarine warfare were still the centres of attention, Maeltzer had reminded them. Palestine, he regretted to say, was regarded as a sideshow, along with Mesopotamia, Salonika, Italy, Rumania, East Africa, Japanese assaults on German naval bases in China, air raids in London and all the other minor mayhem of a world at war. After the young men around the table had digested this proposition, he added, ‘But personally I find these sideshows, these forgotten fields, can be more fun.’

  They all drank to that, toasting each other in a local red wine from a monastery at Latrun. Weidinger noticed that Maeltzer drank sparingly, his mind obviously on his work.

  ‘Tell me, Herr Maeltzer,’ asked Pichler as the journalist rose to leave. ‘Do our n
oble allies subject your despatches to censorship?’

  ‘They used to. It was called the postal service. One simply dropped something in this end – and it was never seen again.’

  Pichler and Weidinger both laughed at this. Good old Herr Professor Maeltzer! It was a title they sometimes honoured him with, for he aroused the kind of affection in them – but particularly in Weidinger – that seventeen-year-olds will bestow on a favourite schoolmaster. Besides, jokes about the inefficiency, sloth and sexual desperation of the Turks, however weak, were always welcome. Maeltzer knew full well that the postal service was one of the better things about the Ottoman Empire. Before the war all the major powers had been allowed to maintain their own post offices in Jerusalem. The Austro-Hungarians and the Germans still had theirs, but military demands on the rail network meant that there was a backlog of everything civilian, including mail.

  Maeltzer stayed at the Grand New Hotel, which had been eclipsed by Fast’s long before the outbreak of hostilities and was now neither grand nor new. It was an imposing enough building; its three storeys were built around a central courtyard, while its railed flat roof provided a good all-round view of the Jerusalem skyline. Its architect – an Italian, Maeltzer suspected – had attempted the requisite neo-classical look, but Maeltzer thought the effect was more Egyptian than Greek.

  Whereas Fast’s was outside the walls, the Grand New was part of the noise, stench, filth and summer diseases that flourished behind them. The hotel was just inside the Jaffa Gate, near the gap in the ramparts that had been made for the Kaiser’s entrance in ‘98 so that he could enter the Holy City on a caparisoned charger without upsetting Ottoman protocol by riding under one of its ancient portals. Opposite the hotel was the Citadel, the fortress within a fortress with its own moat and drawbridge, where the Turkish garrison had its headquarters. Its battlements were frequently adorned with tripod gallows where the condemned dangled in their ankle-length shrouds. On several mornings Maeltzer had been greeted by the sight of a dangling man with his head on his chest. He had taken to opening his curtains a few inches at a time, hurriedly drawing them again if a preliminary reconnaissance seemed to confirm his worse fears. He could watch burial parties clean up a day-old battlefield and eat a hearty meal afterwards, but the very thought of those gallows left him trembling.