Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  They both got out and started scraping at the markings on the wings with pocketknives. Lang took the carbine out and laid it on the bonnet.

  They had got most of the unit insignias off the Humber when they became aware of a vehicle approaching from the Beersheba direction, the way they had come. Lang spotted its dust first and then, even in the clear morning air, it changed shape a couple of times. It was not part of a convoy. It was a single vehicle. The Templer took his Dienstglasse from the holdall. “It’s that Italian RAF truck,” he said. “She must have spent the night at Beersheba.”

  “We’re not going to kill her,” said Lang. He wasn’t killing Jewish women no matter what the circumstances, what uniform they were wearing.

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” said the Templer.

  “I’ll tell her we’re with Haganah and need to borrow her truck.”

  “ I thought Haganah had declared a truce with the British while the war lasts.”

  “Some of them still steal weapons when they can. Let her think we’re going to raid some sort of dump.”

  “Tell her what you like,” said the Templer. “We’ll have to lock her in the boot of the car and hide it under the trees. She won’t get too hot.”

  “We’ll open some of her orange juice and leave it in with her,” said Lang.

  They drove down to the road and waited. At one point a bend and a dip took the truck out of sight. Then it reappeared and the Templer flagged her down.

  “Resting or trouble sir?” asked the WAAF. Her dark curls touching the pulled up collar of a shirt open enough to reveal the short gold chain and Star of David about her throat.

  “Must be something wrong with our fuel gauge,” said the Templer. “Looks like we’re out of petrol. Can you spare us enough to get us into Khan Yunnis? Perhaps we could siphon it out of your tank if you haven’t got an emergency can.”

  “I’ve got one in the back,” she said and jumped down.

  Lang accompanied her to the rear of the truck. She climbed up behind the cardboard boxes to reappear with one of the strong, flat German petrol containers the 8th Army called Jerrycans and were so much better than their leaky British counterparts. In terms of booty they ranked only after Lugers and Leicas.

  “I thought you were driving straight through to Khan Yunnis,” he said as they walked back towards the car. “What happened?”

  “Radiator trouble. I stopped at the Army Service Corps station in Beersheba to get it repaired and slept the night in the cab.”

  He took the jerrycan from her. When they got to the car the boot was open. “Where’s your driver?”

  “He was suddenly taken sick,” said the Templer. “We had to drop him off at Hebron.”

  She put up a good fight. She told them they would never get away with it. She told them they were thieving bastards and certainly not Haganah for she was a member of Haganah herself and they would never permit this. But when they shoved her scratching and wriggling like a cat into the Humber’s capacious boot with a case of her punctured orange juice cans for company, she pleaded with the last of her kicks that she suffered from claustrophobia. They chose not to believe her, dropped the lid and drove to the palm grove. As they drove away in the Fiat Lang thought her screams sounded real enough. They had discussed removing her from the Humber long enough to shoot holes in the boot for ventilation but concluded they might hit the petrol tank and, even if it didn’t burst into flames, the fumes would only make it worse for her.

  While the Templer drove Lang changed into one of the shirts with the Polish flashes and then they changed places at the wheel so the German could do the same. The South African shirts were shoved in the holdall at their feet where the Schmeisser was kept along with the remaining plastic explosive. Lang rested the M1 on top of the bag and put his feet over it. They had found another 30 rounds for the carbine in the glove compartment in two fully loaded spare magazines. The suitcase containing the wireless rested behind his head on the ledge at the back of the cab. As they approached the Rafah checkpoint at the Egyptian frontier they still had well over half a tank of fuel left.

  ***

  “Sir, sir, it’s your driver sir.”

  “Have they found him?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Where?”

  “He’s on the line sir.”

  “The devil he is! Give me that telephone.”

  “Hawkins? You alright? Good. Where are you? Say again. Where? Hebron. What the bloody hell are you doing there?”

  Calderwell picked up the receiver on the Assistant super’s desk in the ops room and asked the police switchboard if it was possible to listen in to the call the Colonel was taking. It was.

  He heard a voice that obviously belonged to driver Hawkins saying, “You see sir, they were taking the set to this advanced party.”

  “Were they,” said the Colonel? “And how did you get to Hebron?”

  Calderwell listened to Hawkins explain about the way he had been asked to drive to the Russian Compound and the Templer’s animated chat with the sentry there - it turned out he had merely been asking the way to Mount Scopus - and then their arrival at the Royal Army Service Corps rest stop at Hebron. “Well, the major, the South African gentlemen sir, he went and saw Sergeant-Major Roberts who’s in charge here and said he needed to use the telephone to tell you he would be taking the car on until he caught up with the advance party. He asked me your name and said he was going to tell you direct that he had been obliged to take the car and that you’d understand. I’d spend the night at Hebron and come back to Jerusalem today “

  "Did you actually hear him say all this? Were you present when he was speaking?”

  “No sir. He told Mister Roberts that it was a security matter and that he needed to make a confidential call. He let him use his office.”

  “I see.”

  “He came out and told me that battalion headquarters would pick me up at four o’clock this afternoon but I wasn’t to worry if they were a bit late. Then this afternoon sir Mister Roberts saw me hanging about and wanted me to do a driving job. When I told him I was waiting for transport he called battalion HQ to find out exactly what time they were coming. Then the adjutant spoke to me had me put through to you sir.”

  “Hawkins?”

  “Sir?”

  “Did this South African major by any chance tell where he was going on to? Did you ever hear him discussion it with the other officer.”

  “No sir. He just said he was going on. He was really pissed off - he was really angry sir that this advance party had moved on from Hebron.”

  “Tell me something Hawkins, what did you imagine this advance party to be?”

  “I don’t rightly know sir.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Calderwell.

  The Colonel looked across the room at him, eyebrows raised. “Superintendent Caldershot of the Palestine Police wants to talk to you.”

  Close enough thought Calderwell and asked Hawkins if his kidnappers had still been wearing South African uniforms when he last saw them.

  “Yessir.”

  “And did they have any luggage with them?”

  “Yessir. The little suitcase which they had when they came out of the house by the railway station and were saying they’d found the set and the sort of bag you put sports kit in, about the size of a cricket bag.”

  “Did you see what was in this bag?”

  “No sir.”

  “But it was big enough to carry a change of clothes?”

  “Oh yes sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  The colonel came back on the line. “Hawkins. Get your transport to bring you straight here. Understand? Not to battalion headquarters. Here. The Russian Compound, the police headquarters in Jerusalem.”

  “Yessir. Sir? I’m sorry sir, but what with everything else I forgot to take your Winchester out of the car. I’m very sorry sir.”

  “Well so am I but at the moment this is the least of our worries I can assure y
ou. Do you realise how lucky an escape you’ve had Hawkins?”

  “Sir?”

  “Do you know who these officers you were chauffeuring about really are?”

  “The adjutant said they were the German agents sir but I didn’t know.”

  The adjutant had said a lot more too. “So you just drove them off in the CO’s car without even attempting to find him first!” But they were officers in a hurry and it was only going to take five minutes and you always obeyed the last order.

  “German agents and murderers Hawkins. You’re very lucky to be alive and not lying in some wadi off the Hebron road. You do realise that?”

  “Yessir.” He was beginning to get the picture. He remembered the unexplained stop when the WAAF turned up in her truck and shuddered.

  “Of course,” the Colonel went on in a tired voice. “Of course, when they stepped into my car it didn’t occur to you to ask to see their identity cards did it?”

  “No sir. Well, you told me to expect to do a bit of running about back to the Russian Compound.”

  “So I did. They probably had very good identity cards anyway. Well, at least you’re in one piece Hawkins. I just wish I could say that’s all that matters.” And he put the receiver down.

  “My guess is they’re heading for Rommel, trying to get to the front,” said Calderwell as soon as he had finished. He was reasonably rested having grabbed almost four hours sleep on a camp bed he kept in his office followed by a shave at a Jaffa Road barber who knew how to revive with hot towels.

  “Could be Cairo,” said the Assistant Super who had dozed fitfully in a chair for an hour and looked like it. “Easy place to lose yourself. Supposed to be whole gangs of deserters hiding up there. Then again he could be doubling back here. He’s got to get through a whole army to get to Rommel.”

  “He’s got the nerve for it. I bet he thinks he can bluff his way through and still have change out of a fiver.”

  “Do you really think they could do it?” said the Colonel. “Jerusalem to El Alamein? It’s what, the best part of five hundred miles? If you haven’t already, you’ll be putting out an alert for my car in Egypt and even if they get hold of something else sooner or later they’ve got to get petrol for it and that isn’t so easy without the right chits and identification. And if they were lucky enough to get as far as the Alamein front and get through everybody’s minefields there’s still a very good chance their own side will shoot them to pieces.”

  “Judging by his past form,” said Calderwell. “These two enjoy pushing their luck. Besides, they’re running out of choices.”

  He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. It would, he reflected, be even later if the sergeant-major commanding the Hebron rest station, hadn’t made a point of finding out when Hawkins’ battalion intended to pick him up. Even so, Lang and his Templer friend had more than a twelve-hour start on them. They must be well into Egypt by now.

  Hawkins turned up and they questioned him a bit more but he could add nothing to what he had already told them and was more concerned about the consequences of losing the American carbine.

  “I think we might find mitigating circumstances,” said the Colonel and Calderwell was struck by his obvious relief about getting his “good lad” back. They were the last army personnel to leave the ops room.

  Calderwell discovered that Hare had disappeared at about the time he was getting his Jaffa street shave. Apparently, the Direction Finding detachment he had been put in temporary command of had at last received orders to proceed immediately to the armoured division they were promised to.

  “Happy as a dog with two tails he was,” said the Assistant Super as he and Calderwell drafted between them an urgent teleprinter message to British Military Police, Cairo with a description of the Humber and its occupants - photograph of Lang to follow by air courier - believed to be heading westwards, almost certainly crossing the canal at El Qantara and then down to Ismaliya where they would either head south-west for Cairo or proceed due west through Zagazig straight across the Delta and Upper Egypt to Alexandria from where it was possible they would carry on westwards along the coast, through Burg el Arab, and towards the German lines after El Alamein.

  “We’d better describe them as a South African deserter and a Palestinian Jewish criminal,” said the Assistant Super. “That way they might get the assistance of the Egyptian police. From what I hear of their mood at the moment, if we start talking about German agents they’re more likely to help them on their way. Somebody was telling me the other day that half the Cairo souk think Hitler is a Mohammedan. Can you believe it?”

  It turned out that the police at the Rafah checkpoint had not been notified about the missing Humber. Calderwell knew they were both to blame for this. They had just never expected them to run that far. “And why did they free Hawkins at Hebron?” he asked. “Not that he knew he was a prisoner. They didn’t hesitate to kill that Arab lad on Hattin.”

  “Because they thought it would give them more time and it did,” said the Assistant Super. “If they’d have left him dead on the roadside we would probably have learned which way they were heading shortly after first light this morning when the traffic picked up.”

  “Probably,” said Calderwell though he wasn’t entirely convinced. Surely there were places not far off Palestine’s roads where shallow graves had kept their secrets for centuries? They might have had an even longer lead. “I’m wondering about that wireless they’ve got,” he said. “Have they dumped it yet? It would be a total giveaway if a road block checked the car out.”

  “I think he’ll hang onto it in case he spots something interesting,” said the Assistant Super, handing out one of the dreaded Capstans. “When he’s not trying to knock off Sir Harold and all around him he seems to be some kind of compulsive spy, interested in everything. Look at that bit he picked up from our Merry Widow on the postal censors’ sensitivity about Canadian troop movements in southern England. Bloody trivia!”

  “So if he does use it we still stand a damn good chance of catching him don’t we?” said Calderwell who had begun pacing up and down a bit.

  “If there was a DF team onto him at the time I suppose we do. Not that I would trust the army not to make a mess of it again when it came to the business of feeling his collar.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” said Calderwell. “If I’m right and he isn’t going to Cairo he’s heading in the same direction as Hare and his team. If I left now I could catch up with them by Alexandria at the latest. Most of the time they’ll be crawling in convoy and I can cut in and out of the traffic in the Austin.”

  There was a long pause while the Assistant Super inhaled deeply. Then: “Alright, I’ll do it. After all, it’s our case. I’ll need to get you some sort of authorisation. Something covered in rubber stamps saying you’re God on a day off. Take enough petrol to get yourself to Alex and then buy some more from the Greeks there - don’t rely on the army.”

  Before he left Calderwell went to his locker and changed into uniform, choosing for headgear one of the army style berets that had recently been issued to police armoured car crews and stayed on your head in open topped vehicles. Probably on horses too but he wouldn’t swap his broad brimmed lemon squeezer for the world.

  Then he called Mitzi and told her he had to go to Alexandria but hoped to be back in a couple of days, three at the most. As he spoke Calderwell glanced at a calendar on his desk and saw that today was Thursday, sixth of August 1942. Whatever happened to July?

  He asked if she knew whether she would be working at Sarafand the following weekend and Mitzi said she had no idea, she might even be back in Egypt herself by then, returned to Cairo. He heard her inhale sharply on a cigarette and could sense her disappointment, a bit of irritation too.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “I’ll put your milk out in the garden for the stray cats,” she said. “You don’t have a refrigerator.”

  “Good idea. But water it down. Otherwis
e it upsets their stomachs.”

  “Walter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be careful in Alex. Don’t swim out too far.”

  “I’ll try to stay off the beach.”

  “And I hear there is a lot of bombing there nowadays. Be careful. Make sure you go to the shelter.”

  “Another good idea.” But he was touched. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Thank you for phoning,” she said softly.

  “Look after yourself,” he said.

  “Walter, I think I -”

  “God Bless,” and he put the receiver down.

  ***

  “Sorry, er, sir. No chit, no petrol,” a grimy Royal Army Service Corps corporal with, the Templer noted, the most disgusting finger nails was telling Lang who did the better Polski English. “It’s more than my life’s worth.”

  “You underestimate yourself,” said Lang and shot him twice through the chest with his Walther. The corporal began to slump forward onto the trestle table at which he sat, a look of total incredulity on his face. He tried to speak but all his lips produced were little bubbles of blood and saliva. Lang shot him again, this time in the head.

  The corporal died because he was alone. For almost ten minutes Lang and the Templer had sat parked across the road from the dump which had large hand written no smoking signs up? His was the third refuelling point they had approached and they had given up hope of finding some dozy soldier who failed to check their paperwork properly. The WAAF’s papers only took her as far as the RAF station on the Palestine - Egyptian border and now they were just beyond the Delta town of Zagazig and no more than a hundred miles from Alexandria.

  So they had pretended to be rearranging the boxes of tinned orange juice on the back of the truck while they watched for a gap in the traffic and the driver of a jeep with Royal Artillery markings to finish filling his tank through a large metal funnel. Only then did they venture over to where the corporal was sitting before a large, tent like camouflage net, beneath which his precious cans were stacked. His rifle was lying at his feet on top of his small pack and he didn’t have the slightest chance of using it.