Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  A shallow little valley of hard-baked earth and tufted grass lay between the small inverted boomerang-shaped ridge the Yeomanry were on and the enemy ground. At its narrowest point the valley was about six hundred yards across. Some shells started to come their way from the mountain guns ahead. Calderwell found himself hunching forward against Villa’s neck, as if he was leaning into a heavy wind, but the rounds fell with a series of sharp cracks well behind them – the gunners were having trouble adjusting to the speed of their advance.

  To the right of the column Calderwell noticed that four or five officers including Gray-Cheape and his regimental headquarters staff were bunched up, obviously holding a conference on the march. As he watched them the colonel removed the ash walking-stick he always carried tucked under his saddle and handed it to one of the headquarters’ signallers – who were easy to pick out because they carried the tripods for their heliographs where the rest of them had their sword scabbards. The signaller gave a sort of half salute with it and rode back to his position in the column.

  The conference broke up and people started shouting orders. ‘Halt. Left wheel. I said left wheel!’ The sergeants and corporals were going up and down the line yelling, ‘Don’t bunch. Spread out! Come on now, we know you’re all in love with each other but spread out!’

  Calderwell, dressing off to the left, noticed that the NCOs were not swearing and found it oddly worrying. He looked to his right and saw the Worcesters’ squadron moving off at a canter towards the mountain guns. He caught the gleam of sword steel in their dust.

  Then came the formal, parade ground voice of the squadron sergeant-major. ‘B Squadron, drawaah swords.’

  Calderwell leant to his left side, felt his right hand sticky against the bone hilt, and realised that he could have told Mace even before he saw what the Worcesters were up to that they were about to charge. He could have told him that he was wrong about everything. He could have told them that the officers were all bloody madmen, and that they were going to do it without the machine-guns and the horse artillery. They were going to do it because the general had come up in person to ask them to do something about those guns and they were all too well brought up to say no. They were going to do it because it was even better than hunting. Half a league, half a league. . . . Funny thing, it was the only scrap of poetry he could ever remember.

  On the opposite ridge the mirror glass of a heliograph started flashing.

  ‘He’s tellin’ ‘is Mam we’re comin’ for ‘im,’ said Mace and Calderwell shortened his reins and joined in the laughter. It was good to be with your mates.

  ***

  ‘Any more movement?’ asked Pichler. ‘I’ve just sent a message on the magic mirror saying it looks like cavalry massing on our front but there was no reply. I think they may have all cleared out of Huj.’

  ‘It’s cavalry sure enough,’ said Weidinger.

  He was lying belly down on the nearest point of the ridge to the Tommies examining the enemy dust through field glasses. Behind him, beautifully hidden in a broad shallow gulley that fissured the ridge at that point, were Pichler’s four guns. Behind them, below the main body of the ridge, was a battery of Turkish manned 5.9 howitzers, and at the end of the ridge, was another Turkish battery, the little mountain guns whose first shots had given Calderwell a bit of a turn.

  Pichler’s .75mms and the howitzers were still laying down a brisk barrage on the British infantry, who had gone to ground in the scrub land about two kilometres to their right. Eight shells in the air every thirty seconds.

  ‘Cavalry or mounted infantry,’ said Pichler. ‘Not that it makes much difference. The Australians who charged at Beersheba were mounted infantry.’

  ‘They aren’t going to charge – not yet anyway.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘They haven’t started shelling us. The positions at Beersheba had been shelled all day before the Australians charged – that’s what I heard in Jerusalem anyway. The last time the English cavalry attacked a position like this without artillery cover was in the Crimean War. And you know what happened then. They got massacred.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t know their history as well as you do,’ said Pichler, lying down alongside him. ‘Perhaps Beersheba has given them the appetite to take bigger chances.’

  ‘Well if it has, their officers should be shot,’ said Weidinger. ‘No cavalry officer worth his salt would send his men at a position like this without doing something to keep those fellows’ heads down for a start.’

  He leant back on the stump of his left arm and gestured with his binoculars to a line of three stone piles, each about fifty metres apart, beyond the gulley where the guns were. Each stone pile had a hole in the middle. Behind each of these sangers were three brand-new belt-fed Krupp machine-guns, the sort with a little square of armoured plate around the breach to protect the firer.

  ‘That’s if they know we’ve got ‘em,’ said Pichler. ‘The other thing that worries me is that they’re behind my guns. Bit unusual for infantry to be behind the artillery, don’t you think? The way things stand it looks like my battery is the next obstacle in the path of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. At least our friends with the mountain guns over there have the infantry mixed in with them.’

  ‘They may be behind but they’re above you,’ said Weidinger. ‘They won’t let anybody get anywhere near your guns. Besides, you really can’t compare those boys to Turkish infantry.’

  Much to Weidinger’s delight, the machine-guns were manned by two-man German crews who had arrived in Huj shortly before noon from the coastal railhead at Deir Sineid. They were part of the unit which von Falkenhayn had extracted from the High Command for Yilderim. They had spent most of the last month being shunted about the remains of the Turkish railway system and had now been broken up and scattered about the rearguard. More Corset Staves, Weidinger had thought, wondering what had happened to those splendid-looking storm troopers he and Shemsi had travelled down from Etline with. He suspected they were all dead or captured, sacrificed in the hill fighting around Tel el Khuweilfeh.

  It was true the machine-gunners were tired. Who wasn’t? But at least they were still discernible soldiers, which was more than could be said for the battalion of Turkish infantry digging in around them. Among them were men emaciated by dysentery and so exhausted they could hardly summon the energy to dig a slit trench, not even for their own protection. A few of Tommy’s shells would soon sort that out one way or the other.

  ‘You know, for men who are going to settle down and take pot shots at us until their artillery comes up they’re making a lot of dust,’ said Pichler thoughtfully. ‘And I thought I caught the flash of steel. Don’t some of the English cavalry carry sabres?’

  ‘Their mounted Yeomanry regiments have a sword – they call it a thrusting sword,’ said Weidinger.

  ‘I think I’d better get back to the battery.’

  Weidinger got up with him. He hated following Pichler around like a stray dog, but there was little point in remaining where he was, directly in front of their own infantry. If anything did happen he would be shot to pieces.

  They walked down to the guns. The lorry was still there. So was Krag. So was the Widow Shemsi, who had extracted a pink parasol from her Gladstone and was twirling it over her right shoulder as if she was at some sporting event. All of them should have gone at least ten minutes before, and Pichler gave an audible little groan when he saw them. Weidinger’s feelings on the matter were more confused, at least as far as one of the parties was concerned.

  ‘It seems we have a mechanical problem, gentlemen,’ said the intelligence officer. The bonnet was up and the most visible part of the driver was his large backside.

  ‘It might not be your only problem,’ said Pichler, who walked past the vehicle and started bellowing orders at his gun crews to turn two of the field pieces so that they faced the end of the inverted boomerang-shaped ridge where the English cavalry was now gathered.

  �
��He thinks we’re about to be attacked by cavalry,’ Weidinger explained, a bit startled by the other’s brusqueness.

  ‘And what do you think?’ said Krag.

  ‘Not yet. Not until they have artillery support.’

  ‘Do you mean we are about to be bombarded?’ asked the Widow Shemsi.

  ‘I do,’ said Weidinger. He wanted to frighten her but he could see that he was not succeeding. Her tone reminded him of the way she had announced ‘I’ve never been in an air raid’ when their train almost ran into the bombs hitting Etline. That seemed a thousand years ago now.

  Sometime during the morning Shemsi had changed into a clean beige dress with a little lace collar. The dress went tolerably well with her straw hat, though perhaps not with the parasol. In fact, thought Weidinger, considering the heat and the lack of sleep, Shemsi was looking remarkably fresh, poised and smiling at Krag in a way she had not the last time he saw them together. He still couldn’t get over the transformation, the cynicism, the downright fickleness of this female.

  ***

  When he had emerged from the wireless room after sending his message to von Papen, she had been standing alone under one of the palms with her back to him, her Gladstone at her feet. Pichler had gone off to see that all was well with his battery.

  Weidinger had walked over to her, scraping his boots on the hard earth to let her know that he was coming, for he could see by the way her shoulders were heaving that she was still crying. He had contemplated putting an arm around her but at the last moment she had turned, red-eyed, tucking a handkerchief up her sleeve. ‘Why?’ was all she had said.

  ‘Why what?’ Weidinger had replied, because he wanted her to spell it out.

  ‘Why did he forge those things in Herr Maeltzer’s despatch?’

  ‘We can’t be certain –’ Weidinger had started to say, but only for form’s sake.

  ‘Why else would he deny all existence of the journal?’

  Weidinger had merely shrugged.

  ‘Where do you think it is now?’

  ‘I have the feeling it’s been destroyed.’

  ‘So do I, and I know why he did it.’

  ‘You do?’ He had wanted to hear her call Krag more than a liar. He wanted to hear her call him an unscrupulous bastard, rotten with ambition, who wasn’t worthy to wear the Kaiser’s uniform. But she hadn’t obliged, not even when he had prompted her with, ‘So why do you think he did it?’

  ‘I can’t tell you – not now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know – it might be dangerous.’

  ‘For who – yourself?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I’m going to do what I came here to do, Herr Oberleutnant. I’m going to find Major Krag and get the written permission I need to proceed overland from Etline to Jaffa.’

  ‘And when you’re safely ensconced in your new hotel, will you spare a thought for Maeltzer?’

  She had looked quite angry with him then. ‘You have sent a wireless message to Jerusalem about Herr Maeltzer’s journal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then nothing I could add would save him. I have no proof. Only . . .’

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ and suddenly her face had broken into one of her, rare mischievous smiles. ‘It’s called female intuition, isn’t it? I don’t think it would carry much weight at a military tribunal.’

  ‘But you believe your feelings?’

  ‘Yes, I believe my feelings.’

  She had gone off then and the next time he saw her was almost five hours later when he had just emerged from the wireless office again, disappointed to find it already abandoned, the valves and condensers smashed, and no sign of any reply from von Papen. Krag was with her, and although they were not exactly arm-in-arm, Weidinger thought they might as well have been.

  By then the confusion which had greeted them when they first arrived in Huj had turned to chaos. This was partly because the engineers had dynamited the wells without warning and most of the available transport, whether horse-drawn or motorised, had stampeded away in a northerly direction in the belief that the British were upon them.

  ‘We seem to have a problem,’ Krag had announced. ‘My car has gone with the rest.’

  He had not sounded particularly upset about it. In fact, for Krag he sounded quite cheerful. Weidinger had wondered whether this insouciance was for Shemsi’s benefit or his – the cool head at the front.

  ‘The lorry with Pichler’s battery is going on ahead of them with their baggage and rations,’ Weidinger had said. ‘I suppose you could ride in that.’

  Up to then Weidinger had been determined to stay on with Pichler and leave with him on the gun limbers, but now he found himself looking at Shemsi, hoping she would ask for him to go with her. Surely it was inconceivable that she would wish to travel alone with Krag after all that had transpired? The realisation of how anxious he was that she should want him to be with her had come as something of a shock.

  ‘Where is it now?’ asked Krag.

  ‘The driver and one of the other men are looking for ammunition for the guns. There is supposed to be a dump here somewhere. They’ll be back to pick me up.’

  ‘You didn’t want to go with them?’

  ‘I was checking the wireless room for messages but I was too late.’

  ‘Ah yes. I helped the operator destroy the set half an hour ago. It’s a sad business, wrecking such fine machinery. I’m sorry if you wanted to send another telegram. I have just burned all the copies of the last outgoing and incoming telegrams I could find. I think there was even one for you, Herr Oberleutnant – something about a stay of execution?’

  And Weidinger had nodded, stunned by both his nonchalance and the metamorphosis that had come over Shemsi – as indeed he was intended to be.

  A cart with what looked like an entire regiment of Syrian Arab soldiers clinging to it staggered by, the men staring balefully at these German officers and the woman standing with them. Krag said, ‘Excuse me a moment,’ and walked off towards one of the abandoned buildings, presumably in search of a privy the engineers had not yet booby-trapped with a stick grenade.

  ‘Why did you change?’ he had asked Shemsi as soon as he was out of earshot.

  ‘I have not changed, Oberleutnant Weidinger, but other things have. The first thing is that Herr Maeltzer is no longer going to hang. Major Krag tells me that he now doubts whether he will ever hang, although he still believes he should, because Maeltzer is Jewish and since this British declaration about a homeland for the Jews it is now German policy to encourage the Turks to show kindness to them. The second thing is that Major Krag has asked me to marry him. I have accepted.’

  She talked about her second thing as dispassionately as the first, as though it had always been part of the agenda, something he should have been aware of.

  It winded him. He had to hear it again, slowly.

  ‘Major Krag has asked you to marry him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you have accepted?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how could you, knowing what you do?’

  ‘How could I not? I’m not of an age to turn down too many proposals of marriage.’

  ‘But what about your feelings? That intuition of yours?’

  ‘As I said, Herr Maeltzer is no longer going to hang – Major Krag showed me your telegram.’

  ‘Did you ask him about the diary? Did he tell you about that?’

  ‘He said that there was – what do you call it, rivalry? a feud? – a feud between him and von Papen, and that the diary is of no importance, but he doesn’t want to give von Papen the satisfaction of handing it over to him.’

  ‘And you believe this? You believe this story?’

  ‘I believe that Maeltzer won’t hang. That he will be released and sent back to Switzerland where he belongs.’

  ‘And what will happen when you are asked to t
estify in front of a new tribunal about that diary – as you will be?’

  ‘I am going to stay with my family in Beirut for a while. Besides, I shall be married.’

  ‘God, if marriage is so much to you I would marry you myself if I were a whole man!’ The words had come gushing out, spontaneous, almost out of control. He was quite exhilarated by them.

  ‘Good heavens!’ said Shemsi. ‘Two proposals in one day! I like being at the front. But you wouldn’t marry me although it’s nice of you to think you would. And you are a whole man and you know it.’

  And then she had kissed him on the forehead.

  ***

  Now here she was, leaning against the truck, twirling her parasol while the fat driver grunted over his engine with a spanner. Even Krag, his cap set at an almost rakish angle, was looking more relaxed than he usually did, which in Weidinger’s eyes made him more odious than ever. As he walked the three hundred metres back to the guns he wondered why the intelligence officer had allowed himself to get into this predicament in the first place. Basically, he gloated, it was his reliance on mechanical transport. No horse ever got dust in his carburettor or snapped a magneto. All the same, surely he could have departed with the signals personnel from the wireless hut?

  At the battery the Austrians, great continents of sweat stencilled on the back of their shirts, were still manhandling two of their pieces around to meet the cavalry threat. Only the 5.9 howitzers behind them continued to fire at the English infantry. The gunners strained at the base plates while others fetched rope-handled ammunition boxes from the pile that had been unloaded from the stricken vehicle. The ensign, his eyes like poached eggs now with infectious hepatitis, was staggering from gun to gun distributing extra bullets for the crew’s carbines and pistols.