Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  Of course, there would be an inquiry. Probably an official reprimand, loss of seniority. He was a police inspector from Palestine. He had no authority to tell Dudek to fire at anybody. The Pole might not know that but a lot of other people did. And there was undoubtedly more than a hint of outrage about the way that flag was moving. Then he remembered the way they had bluffed their way out of that cordon in Jerusalem. We’ve got the set! Clever bastards. And why wasn’t the second man showing himself. He could have sworn he saw two of them. Where was he? My God! Was there a British soldier lying dead or wounded down there?

  ***

  “I think without a doubt there are no more than two of them,” the Templer was saying to Lang who was still lying prone beneath the truck with the carbine. “Don’t fire yet. I want to be sure of them. If we could get hold of that car in working order it would be even better.”

  He put his Dienstglasse onto the driver and then the helmeted soldier with the Bren gun besides him. There was something vaguely familiar about the driver.

  ***

  Calderwell caught the flash of the glasses being used on them and stopped. He asked himself: would an outraged man, an innocent party who had just had the fright of his life be looking at you through field glasses? Well, why not? He wanted to know what sort of bloody idiot would do a thing like that. But then why wasn’t he just walking towards him, waving his flag, shouting insults or pleading for medical treatment for his companion? Surely it was perfectly obvious that they weren’t going to fire again?

  Calderwell started to move the car gently forward. Dudek had placed the Bren gun’s bipod stand on the bonnet with the butt firmly into his shoulder and the weapon’s business end pointing over the radiator. Even so, the chances of him shooting accurately while the Austin was moving were remote.

  “Does that look like the truck you saw at Burg-el-Arab?” Calderwell asked as they slowly narrowed the gap.

  “A bit,” said Dudek. “A lot of it was covered by the camouflage net.”

  “But it is a Fiat?”

  “It looks like one to me. I told you, we had them in Tobruk.”

  “But you can’t be certain?”

  “I cannot be certain.”

  “And the man standing behind the bonnet?”

  “What man?”

  He had disappeared.

  Calderwell made a very quick decision.

  “Fire!” he shouted scrunching the Austin into reverse. “Aim underneath it.”

  There was an extraordinary amount of noise. Instead of the trained soldier’s three rounds at a time Dudek seemed to be firing one long, continuous burst. Something slapped Calderwell’s left forearm away from the steering and he realised that he was right. They were firing back.

  Dudek shouted, “Stop the car. I can shoot better.”

  Calderwell did what he was told. They we now at least 300 yards from the truck and the Pole fired in the prescribed, tap, tap, tap manner before he paused to change magazines and began again. Calderwell’s left arm was stinging. It felt like it had been lashed with a whip. He got out of the car and crouched by the running board while he examined it. His wristwatch had gone and there was an ugly red weal running down the inside of his arm from wrist to elbow. It started to bleed.

  “I think they have stopped firing,” said Dudek whose own weapon was silent.

  “Better keep shooting,” said Calderwell drawing his revolver though he swas nowhere near close enough to do much good with a Webley. "Give ‘em another burst."

  “I cannot.”

  “Why?”

  “We are out of ammunition.”

  ***

  Lang was coughing.

  “Do you think you can walk?” inquired the Templer who was crawling slowly towards him.

  He coughed some more. “Perhaps with some assistance. Yourself?”

  “It’s mostly my left arm. I think I can walk all right. The Schmeisser is wrecked. The magazine was hit. It was half empty anyway. That’s the trouble with these automatics. They’re too fast. Before you know it, all your ammunition has gone. Also I did what I always told you not to do. I cocked it too soon and it fired a fraction before I intended.”

  “They were going back,” gasped Lang who was speaking like a man who had just run a long way and was trying to recover his breath. “But I don’t think I was shooting well with the Amerian gun. I needed the rifle we burned at that fuel dump. I know them.”

  “He was a very scruffy soldier. It probably wouldn’t have worked.” The Templer was almost up to Lang now. He noticed on his way that the ground was littered with fresh white splinters the Bren had chiselled off the wooden underside of the truck’s trailer. Most of its rounds had been a bit too high. Not all.

  The Jew was lying on his side but under the truck it was too dark to get much idea how badly he had been hurt. He sounded bad and it was possible he had some blood on the front of his shirt but the Templer could not be certain. Apart from his arm, it felt like he had been hit in the biceps from the ricochet off the Schmeisser, he thought his own wounds might not be as bad as they looked. He was pouring blood from a wood splinter he had pulled from his cheek.

  “We almost had them,” he said, as his right hand at work inside the holdall. “They were almost close enough then they smelt a rat. Perhaps I went down a couple of seconds too early.”

  “Did we hit them?”

  “Probably. They have pulled back and stopped firing.”

  “We definitely got MacMichael.”

  “Definitely.”

  “With a bit of help from the Luftwaffe.”

  “A detail.” The Templer had finished what he was doing in the bag. He crawled up towards the petrol tank with it and came back to him.

  “I’m going to try and drag you a bit now. It may hurt and I’ve only got one arm working so when I pull you’re going to have to push. Do you think you can do that?”

  “Leave me.”

  “Certainly not.”

  He got his right arm, the uninjured one, around Lang’s body, careful not to tip him on his back for he didn’t want him to choke. His hand was quickly covered in blood. The schoolteacher murmured something.

  “What was that?” The German had to put his ear to the Jew’s mouth.

  “If you prick us do we not bleed? It’s Shakespeare.”

  “I know. Merchant of Venice.”

  ***

  Hare came clattering up in the Marmon-Herrington pursued by four Bren gun carriers, the same number of light trucks towing long barrelled six pounder antitank guns and a couple of jeeps.

  “Didn’t see you turn off,” he shouted from his open turret. “We ended up at the brigade headquarters.” Then, “ Dear Christ! What happened?”

  As Dudek wrapped a shell dressing around his arm Calderwell was becoming aware of the punishment the little Austin had taken. Parts of its bodywork looked like a cheese grater. some of it was from shell shrapnel but most of the holes, despite the Templer’s best intentions to preserve it for his own use, had been made by his Schmeisser. It reminded Calderwell of those pre-war newspaper photographs he used to see of the riddled automobiles of ambushed American gangsters. It might have been much worse but by reversing instead of turning round they had presented a narrow target and the engine had protected them from the worst.

  “We traded a lot of lead with them,” he told Hare, an expression he had never used before but it suited his thoughts of colander cars in Chicago back streets. “They’re down there under that lorry. We haven’t had a peep out of them for the last couple of minutes. We may have nailed them. Could you give ‘em a squirt with your Lewis? We’re out of ammo.”

  “Right,” said Hare, delighted to have arrived in time to fire his first shots in anger even if they were probably at dead men. He ordered the armoured car to move a little off the track towards the right which enabled him to rake the length of the truck with a long burst from the chubby barrelled Lewis gun. He thought he saw some holes appear in the cab door. Immensely s
atisfying.

  Despite his arm wound Calderwell managed to haul himself on top of the armoured car. “Let’s have your glasses,” he said.

  When he got them focussed Calderwell could detect no sign of life by the truck though, apart from a couple of holes in the cab door, it didn’t look all that damaged.

  “What are this lot doing here?” he said gesturing towards the Bren gun carriers and the trucks towing the antitank guns, which were heading towards the fence, their steel helmeted occupants staring curiously at them.

  “The people in the jeeps are sappers. They’re going to tape a route for them through the minefield so that the guns can engage some German tanks the RAF has spotted heading this way. The idea is that they’re going to fire at the panzers then fall back through the mines, take up positions the other side and hope Jerry takes the bait and comes charging down after them. Once they’re back through the sappers are going to pull the wire down and seal up the channel they’ve made with some more antitank mines.”

  “Are they all antitank stuff?”

  “They told me it’s a mixture. Antipersonnel as well.”

  Calderwell was looking at the Fiat. “I dare say those antitank gunners wouldn’t mind getting their eye in with a couple of rounds. But why don’t you give ‘em a bit more first?”

  Obligingly Hare emptied the rest of the Lewis’ flat, circular magazine into the truck and was in the process of putting in a new one when the Fiat blew up. It was a spectacular explosion. Pieces flew into the air, the lorry’s back was broken and the wreckage caught fire and made black smoke.

  “Did I really do that?” Hare looked amazed. “Can I have my binoculars?”

  “The bastards have blown themselves up,” said Calderwell, reluctantly passing him the glasses.

  Hare focussed on the Fiat and then went beyond them “Good God!”

  “What?”

  “I think you’d better take a look. Go to the lorry and then about two o’clock, in the minefield.”

  The smoke from the burning Fiat was spreading and Calderwell was thinking that Hare’s idea of two o’ clock was not his own when he caught the movement and adjusted the focus slightly.

  They looked like a couple of drunks. Each had arms about the other’s shoulders and one of them was dragging both legs. “Let’s drive down there,” said Calderwell.

  They got to the part of the fence where the Bren gun carriers had gathered in preparation for their trip across the minefield. “What’s happening?” the infantry major in charge asked Hare. “Are those two idiots your Jerry saboteurs or whatever they’re supposed to be?”

  They were not much more than a hundred yards from away from the wire and moving very slowly.

  “Yes,” said Hare. “That’s them.”

  “You want us to stop them or are you going to leave it to the mines.”

  “Not with their luck,” said Calderwell standing up on the armoured car and cupping his hands around his mouth. “Halt!” he yelled. “Halt or we’ll fire.”

  For a moment they did seem to pause but perhaps they were merely resting. Calderwell thought that the man with the grey-blond hair not unlike his own, the Templer, one of the people who had left his bunting in the Forsters’ loft, made as if to turn his head. Then both their backs seemed to stiffen and they went on.

  “I’ll put some over their heads,” said Hare, his hands back on the Lewis gun.

  When Hare fired all those watching saw his targets flinch slightly but the next moment their heads were up and they hobbled on. Hare caught the soldiers in the nearest carrier looking at him with a mixture of astonishment and what might have been disgust.

  “Shoot them,” said Calderwell quietly.

  They were against the sun, almost silhouetted. Hare was taking forever.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Can’t,” he whispered. “Not like this.”

  Calderwell looked at him. Hare was close to tears.

  “Get inside,” he said. “Let me have the gun.”

  Even then it was awkward because Calderwell had to crouch on the open edge of the turret and make his injured arm work though he could manage a Lewis with one hand if he to. He got the foresight onto their backs, then brought it down to their legs telling himself to let the barrel climb. As he pressed the trigger there were at least two sharp cracks and he knew it was the mines.

  When the dust had settled Calderwell got his glasses back onto them. He thought it possible one of them was still moving.

  ***

  Lang was dead by the time the sappers got Calderwell and Hare to them but the Templer was still had enough life left in him to groan. One of the sappers lifted up an arm and gave him a morphine injection and he quietened down but his eyes were still open and moving.

  “Hello Major De Wet,” said Calderwell, holding him up while Hare offered him his water bottle and tried to keep his eyes off his legs and something just as awful that had happened higher up around his waist. “But it isn’t Major de Wet is it?”

  The Templer, having managed to wet his lips, pushed the water bottle away. At first, his eyes were everywhere but then he settled on Calderwell.

  “Would you please tell us your name?” said the policeman. “Name, rank and number. No more than any prisoner-of-war is obliged to give. That’s all I’m asking.”

  Thin lips remained firmly shut, the breathing shallower. Calderwell could not make out whether he was refusing to speak or unable to do so. Then the Templer said, “I remember. Europa café. Jessica’s drunken American. You introduced yourself. Calderwood?”

  “Inspector Calderwell.”

  “Long way off your beat inspector?”

  “Not as far as you’re concerned.”

  “Ah, you were protecting your Reichsprotektor.”

  “My what?”

  “High Commissioner.”

  “Sir Harold wasn’t on that aircraft.”

  “Hope that’s not true. Lot of wounded on it.”

  “You’re a Templer aren’t you?”

  “And you’re a clever man.”

  “Won’t you give us your name? That’s all I’m asking.”

  He closed his eyes and his breathing became even shallower. Calderwell thought, he’s going. Then he said in a quiet but clear voice: “I will give you my name and rank if you promise to do something for me. Do you know the Templer cemetery in Haifa? It’s next to the British war cemetery there. It’s a bit overgrown. You’ll find it at the back. That’s where I would like to be. If you can’t manage that at least go there and say a prayer for me. Will you do that?”

  “Yes,” said Calderwell.

  “That is a promise to a dying man.”

  “I know.”

  He closed his eyes again and for a moment Calderwell thought he had changed his mind. Then slowly, almost as if he had difficulty remembering he said: “Colonel Otto Alexander Wagner. Like the composer. Born Haifa, nineteenth of May, eighteen ninety-six.”

  Hare was impressed to see that Calderwell had produced a notebook in which he was writing this down.

  “And did you kill the shepherd boy on the Hattin?”

  “No. That was my comrade.”

  “Lang?”

  “Yes. How is he?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I thought so. He was a good man.”

  “And were the other Jews you worked with good men Colonel?”

  “Only my name you said inspector. I’ve already given you more than our bargain required.”

  The Templer closed his eyes and would only open his mouth again to accept a little more of Hare’s water. An ambulance eventually came up and took him to the nearest casualty clearing station together with the dead Lang. Hare and Dudek crouching besides the dying man, the Pole there in case of a German-speaking exit.

  Calderwell had just stepped out of the treatment tent where his arm had been properly dressed when Hare came up and told him the Templer had died without saying anything else, no last words in German. He
produced two soiled looking little Walther PPK automatics. “I thought you should have first choice,” he said.

  “Do you remember which one was found with Lang?”

  Hare examined the guns. “Can’t say that I do. Does it matter?”

  “Our forensic department is going to need them to show that one was used to kill the boy. As soon as they’ve finished with them I’ll make sure your get one of them back.”

  Hare handed them both over. As they left a burial party were taking Lang and the Templer to a temporary graves area. Calderwell went after them to make sure they put the right names on markers. The only other German they had buried that day had been a Messerschmitt ace whose parachute had snagged on his tailplane.

  ***

  “No, I’m sorry you can’t use it immediately,” the Hussar officer who had been acting as their escort officer was telling Pickett and Malley. “They’ve slapped a news embargo on it until it has been announced by the War Office in London.”

  It was almost midnight and the briefing was taking place in a sticky candlelit press tent with all the flaps down against the blackout. They had been waiting for it for almost six hours, ever since they had slipped their escort and got talking to some voluble RAF ground crew who had revealed there was what the British called a brasshat on the plane that had been shot down.

  “Goddammit!” said Pickett. “This is a big story. Gott was going to take over command of the 8th Army. Everybody knew that.”

  “Krauts included by the look of it,” said Malley.

  The captain ignored that. He was wearing a tent cap, the soft, high backed forage cap officers from his regiment had first worn in the Crimea. In his moustache there was a gap where recently scorched flesh could not yet sustain follicle growth.

  “Look, you know what they’re like,” he said. “You won’t get round it. What I can do is give you some of the background so that you can fill your despatch out a bit when it’s released.” On the whole he enjoyed working with reporters and was getting to know what they wanted. It certainly beat being set on fire in a tank.

  “Let’s hear it,” said Pickett.

  “Well, there were also fourteen badly wounded soldiers on the aircraft -”