by Colin Smith
Around his table with Calderwell were a hydrologist and his somewhat doleful Belgian wife, poached from a drunken copper miner on a pre-war posting in Africa, and Mrs Forster’s trophy guest. This was a uniformed South African padre convalescing from jaundice at the seminary attached to St George’s Cathedral where Mrs Forster had snapped him up at a sale in aid of the Red Cross opened by Lady MacMichael herself,.
It was to the padre - still a bit yellowish about the gills thought Calderwell - that Forster unfurled his miniature swastika flags to which the priest recoiled in mock horror, like someone trying to please an amateur magician. “They were rolled and hidden along the edges of a couple of the roof beams,” their host explained. “I thought it was some kind of insulation at first.”
The flags were passed around the table. They were attached to small sticks and looked like the kind seen on cinema newsreels in the hands of plaited and ecstatic Rhine maiden at party rallies The most spontaneous reaction came from the hydrologist’s wife, exiled from home and her family in German occupied Brussels for almost two years now. “I would like to put a match to them,” she said.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Forster, a bit alarmed at such a raw display of emotion. “I mean, it’s not often we capture the enemy’s flag. If we find any more I’ll send you one round for burning.”
“I suppose they picked them up on their last visit to Germany and brought them back as souvenirs,” said the padre who some years before the war had served in Windhoek and found the nationalism of South West Africa’s German community there no more sinister than other people’s nationalisms. “Nobody more patriotic than your expatriate eh?”
But the Forsters were reluctant to let it go at that.
“He was supposed to be a salesman of some kind,” said Mrs Forster. “Electrical goods, wireless sets, that sort of thing. He had his own car and went all over the country. I think he was a spy.”
“There are parts of the attic we still haven’t gone through,” said her husband. “They’ve probably got a bust of Uncle Adolf and a pair of jackboots hidden up there as well.”
“I’m certain he was a spy,” said Mrs Forster, a bit more emphatically this time.
“Perhaps he was keeping them handy for the victory parade in case Rommel got this far,” suggested the hydrologist.
“What brought these Germans here?" asked was his wife.
“They belong to Die Tempelgesellshaft - the society of Templers,” said the padre who had been hoping somebody would ask. “I’m informed they are sometimes known as the Friends of Jerusalem.”
“Presumably they model themselves on the Knight Templars, the Crusaders?” said the hydrologist, always eager to demonstrate that there was more in his head than gravitational pipes and the calculation of disposal rates - his speciality was sewage.
The padre smiled. “No, nothing to do with the knights,” he said. “That’s exactly what I thought at first, but their inspiration is much more recent than that. They’re Templers with a second ‘E’; not the Knights Templar with an ‘A’.”
Sensing he had an audience the priest paused, sipped at the water in his wine glass, all his liver could take for the moment, more’s the pity. Where to start? Hegel’s Stuttgart? The philosopher’s influence on David Friedrich Strauss’ Life of Jesus? The fury the book aroused in the breasts of these Swabian speaking pietists? The debate that almost tore apart the great theological school at Tübingen just over a hundred years ago? Bit arcane. Better keep it simple.
“They’re Protestant zealots,” he said. “Mostly from southern Germany. In the 1860’s the Turks allowed some of them to come here and start colonies in Haifa and Jerusalem while they awaited the Resurrection. They believed that the turn of the century would bring the Second Coming. So they came to the Holy Land to prepare for the return of the Son of God by establishing a colony where individual desires always came second to the needs of the community.”
“Sounds a bit Bolshie to me,” said Arthur Forster who, with all due respect to the church, was thinking that this was getting a bit heavy.
“Well, up to a point. They did have this community spirit. But nothing as doctrinaire as the kibbutzniks with all that very unJewish communal child care. They always believed in a certain amount of free enterprise and after nineteen hundred had come and gone some of them were more interested in Mammon than the Messiah. A few became quite well off. Herr Wagner of the armoured cars for example.
“And considering that their grandfathers left Germany just before it became a nation state they became very patriotic Germans too. Very nationalistic. Any excuse for a party. Not just the Kaiser’s birthday either. Sedanfest, anything. During the last war a lot of their men went off to fight and a lot of them didn’t come back. When the National Socialist German Workers Party came along most of ‘em took to it like ducks to water, no difficulty in reconciling membership with their Christian beliefs whatsoever. After all, even Hitler’s a Catholic. I’ve been told that when the Jews here complained about the swastika flags, the marching songs and the uniforms the authorities told them they were either boy scout troops or sports and social clubs and they shouldn’t make a fuss.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Forster.
“I do,” said Calderwell. “He’s right. Just like we never tried to stop them going off to Germany for military training and telling us they were going to university. Nor did we try to stop their reservists shipping out just before the balloon went up and everybody knew there was likely to be a war.”
“I thought they were interned?” said the padre, pleased to find somebody around the table who obviously knew what he was talking about.
“Eventually,” said Calderwell. “Most went to Australia on the Queen Elizabeth last summer just after Rommel arrived and we had something a bit more serious than the Italians on our hands. A few were allowed to stay on and work their farms and factories until something could be sorted out.”
“But you’re saying some got out in time to get to Germany?”
“And there’s a few more going soon,” said Calderwell. “They’re up at Athlit at the moment, under guard and waiting to go to Turkey to be swapped with Palestinian Jews caught visiting relatives in the Reich and unable to get back before war broke out.”
“I thought I saw a bit in the Post a couple of months back saying that had already happened?” said Arthur Forster.
“You did. In April. Now we’re doing it again as soon as the Red Cross can persuade Jerry to find the people we want. Apparently they’ve locked up so many people they’ve lost ‘em.”
“Didn’t the Palestinian Jews who came back last time have these fantastic stories about what the Germans were supposed to be up to in Poland and places?” asked the priest. “Made Attila sound like a softie.”
“That’s right,” said Calderwell. “Even the Jewish Agency here had difficulty taking them seriously.”
“Was it hearsay then?”
“Difficult to tell, almost certainly exaggerated," said Calderwell in a tone that suggested he might well know more but felt he had said too much already. He mainly did this to annoy Mrs Forster.
***
Calderwell was the last guest to leave after drinking a good deal of bottled beer with the roast mutton and leaving the wine for the ladies. When the others had gone he and Arthur Forster might have moved on to whisky if Mrs Forster had not shot her husband a glance that stopped in its tracks his drift towards the serious drinks cupboard. It was perhaps for this reason that the two men had finished their last beer in the kitchen - it was Muna’s day off - before they said their goodbyes at the back door and Calderwell made his way towards the open-topped Austen 6 Tourer he had borrowed from the motor pool. It was dusk, he was searching his pockets for the ignition key and wondering why a man would voluntarily want to cut his balls off by marrying somebody like Katie Forster, when he walked slap-bang into the line of washing Muna had hung up before she left for church and whatever else she did on
Sundays. The knickers, dry as a bone, were loosely pegged and fell to the ground.
Embarrassed, for Forster was still at the door lighting up the pipe he was not permitted to smoke indoors, Calderwell picked them up and as soon as he felt the softness knew they were silk. This was not a material to be found in abundance in wartime Mandate Palestine and he took a closer look at them. They were a greenish grey in colour and there was thick machine stitching down the length of one leg. He stared at them a moment longer, felt for the peg on the line, and was about to put them back up when he looked at the stitching again. This time he took a longer and closer look and saw, as he was beginning to suspect he might, that the stitching along the leg had no relevance to their composition whatsoever. It was a legacy of the material’s previous incarnation and Calderwell suddenly understood exactly what that had been.
He was still holding the silk in his hands, trying to work out the implications of this, when Arthur Forster came up to him, pipe going like the Flying Scotsman. “Sorry old boy,” he said, reluctantly removing the stem from his lips. “Should have warned you about that ruddy line. I’m always getting caught up in it myself.”
Calderwell turned, startled and a bit embarrassed which made him brusque. “This is parachute silk,” he said, handing him the underwear.
“Are you sure?”
Calderwell nodded. “Go on. Feel them. Take a look.”
Forster immediately identified them as Muna’s for they would have made three of his wife’s size. “Hmm. I wonder where she got them. She’ll be back this evening. I’ll ask her if you’re interested.”
“If you wouldn’t mind. In the meantime, I think I’d better hang onto them.”
“Is that really necessary?” said Forster who was beginning to think this was all getting wildly out of hand. After all, you should be able to invite a chap to lunch without him confiscating your servant’s unmentionables. How were they going to explain it to her? “Actually one of my guests borrowed them Muna. He’ll bring them back when he’s finished with them.” Perhaps Katie was right about policemen of a certain rank. Over the years, sooner or later, he had found she was usually right about most things. “After all old boy, it is her underwear.”
“It is now,” said Calderwell. “But it started life as a parachute. The RAF’s had a number stolen lately, from Aqir aerodrome as well as Lydda. Some of them were pinched from a kite parked there overnight, a Hudson I think it was, and the cases stuffed with old rags so that the crew actually did a flight with them. You can imagine how the Brylcreem boys felt when they found out that if anything had gone wrong they might have jumped with nothing but a torn keffiyeh to hang onto.”
“My God,” said Forster, who had never flown and thought all who did quite heroic. “But surely you don’t think Muna could have something to do with it?”
“I doubt it. She probably bought them in some souk either ready made or somebody was flogging the stuff by the yard. If we can find out which one we’d be well on our way to catching the buggers. But first I’ll need the RAF to confirm it’s one of their chutes.”
Forster handed the garment over.
“Not that I’ve got much doubt,” said Calderwell, holding them up so that the curve of a parachute panel was plainly visible. “I don’t think Palestine is importing much in the way of silk lingerie at the moment.”
2 - The Funnies
But he was wrong about them being from an RAF parachute.
“Definitely not. Different colour. Ours are white,” a Squadron Leader told him on the telephone the following afternoon. “We know how to please the ladies.”
“So they’re not from a parachute?” Calderwell was wondering what the hell he was going to tell Forster let alone his maid. She had already been questioned at tearful length. This might have been jumping the gun a little but the airforce had taken so damn long to get back to him
“Didn’t say that old boy.”
Calderwell sighed. He’d expected a little gratitude not some hair splitting comedian from RAF Intelligence. He’d rather deal with the army any day, even the Eighth Army and they weren’t a patch on the army he’d been in. “Well, if they’re from a parachute, and it isn’t one of yours, whose is it? The bloody Luftwaffe’s?”
Squadron Leader was the equivalent of an army major and both outranked him but the military rarely understood Palestine Police ranks. Besides, most of the RAF officers he’d met were just out of short trousers.
“Not exactly. German aircrew use white parachutes - same as us. So do the Italians. But we’ve got somebody here who was in Crete and he thinks your knickers came out of a German paratrooper’s brolly or the chutes they used to drop equipment.”
“Is he sure?”
“Yes, he happened to bring a chute he was using as a sleeping bag back with him. We were able to put them side by side and it was a pretty good match. Do you want them back?”
“What?”
“The knickers. Otherwise we were thinking of turning them into a windsock. Perhaps two windsocks.”
“They’re evidence,” snapped Calderwell. “Treat them like your mother’s.”
The next day the Squadron Leader brought them, discreetly tied up in brown paper, to a meeting chaired by the Assistant Superintendent in charge of CID at their headquarters in the Russian Compound. Calderwell was surprised to see that the RAF officer was about his own age with a slight limp and some of the same 1914-18 medal ribbons over his left hand pocket. Besides the Assistant Super and himself there were three other people at the meeting of whom the most important was Davison.
Colonel Arthur Davison, late of the Indian Army, was the current representative of M15 in Palestine, a clever man of often choleric disposition to which the best barometer was the rising and falling of a pair of amazingly vertical sandy eyebrows. None were more jealous of M15’s prerogative to oversee all counter-espionage activities in the Mandate, as indeed the security service did in all His Majesty’s overseas territories and trusts, as Davison. He was particularly on the qui vive for any penetration of his service’s rightful territory by interlopers from M16, who tended to cloak themselves in titles such as Secret Intelligence Service, Special Operations Executive and the like, squandered their public funds in an outrageous manner and were generally much better at stealing secrets from other government departments than they were from the enemy.
As far as Davison was concerned, you couldn’t expect anything better from an organisation which, as far as he could make out, was mainly run by a bunch of dismasted sailors with more poodle fakery than a Hindu wedding. Well, that was their business and most of the time they didn’t do anybody any harm, least of all the enemy. But woe betide the M16 man who strayed onto his turf.
Which was why he was pained to see that young Hare was at the meeting. David Hare was a boffin in uniform, reputedly a wireless wizard poached by Six when, if he was any good, he should have been working for Davison’s service. Today Hare was wearing the winged Mercury cap badge of the Royal Signals if you please. In fact his regular army connections were now about as tenuous as the links that remained with the Post Office Research Department at London’s Dollis Hill where only his commission in the Territorials had prevented his superiors from retaining him for essential war work. If pressed, Hare told people he was working for something called the Inter-Services Liaison Department which was one of MI6’s new cloaks and one that Davison suspected had been invented purely to confuse MI5. Calderwell, who had helped to police Palestine for fourteen years without having any confirmation that these secret services existed outside the pages of popular fiction, had never heard of Hare’s department and was not ashamed to admit it.
“What does it mean? What do they do exactly?” the Inspector had asked when his boss had called him into his office for a brief chat just before their conference began.
“Funnies,” the Assistant Superintendent had whispered conspiratorially. “Same same Davison Sahib but different branch of the firm. You watch. Davison Sahib
no likee. Will gobble alive and regurgitate the remains.”
The Assistant Superintendent was about ten years younger than his Inspector, had joined the Palestine Police straight out of his minor public school and never been to Hong Kong or nearer the sub-continent than a curry lunch in a Rajput officers’ mess. Calderwell rather liked him. They had played cricket together and he was a useful bat; but sometimes, he had to admit, he found communication difficult.
“Funnies?” he had said, leaning forward to take the proffered light for the Capstan Full Strength he had just been given. “Funnies?”
“Hush-hush. Intelligence. I had a chat with this one yesterday. He’s mostly a boffin, a wireless wizard, knows about Ohm’s Law, that sort of thing. He seems to spend most of his time driving between that wireless monitoring station they’ve got down at Sarafand and GHQ Cairo. At least, I assume it is GHQ. Anyway, he told me he’s got to go back to Cairo immediately after this meeting. He’s very young but he doesn’t seem too wet behind the ears so we mustn’t patronise him.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Calderwell through a perfect smoke ring.
The meeting took place around a long table in the briefing room which, like most of the building, had thick stone walls, small windows, whitewashed walls and was blessedly cool. A Jewish constable with a holstered revolver stood guard at the door. On the table were ashtrays and both Davison and the Squadron Leader put down folded copies of The Palestine Post they had brought in with them.
Most of its front page was devoted to Rommel’s latest offensive in the Libyan Desert. The official communiqués spoke of “fierce counter attacks” but in Jerusalem the gossip at the King David was that the Eighth Army had been outflanked again and might have to pull back towards Mersa Matruth. Only that morning Calderwell had heard one of his Jewish sergeants say that the Afrika Korps could be in Cairo in a month and Jerusalem in two and if that happened there would be more suicides than Masada.