Werewolf (Commander Shaw Book 16)

by Philip McCutchan

  Trotton said, “I can’t pre-empt an infantry decision, of course, but I think you can take it the troops’ll be there.”

  “Good man,” I said. I thanked him and rang off. Then I called Max on the security line to his private address. I told him about Gunther Pizzen. I said, “Portsmouth is confirmed. At the same time as the brain goes on show in West Berlin, and I don’t know what that time will be, Portsmouth Naval Base comes under attack — ”

  “Big Eye?”

  “Yes. That means the whole of the city will come under the spread — the lot, from Eastney through to Gosport and beyond, and north to Cosham and Portsdown Hill. I — ”

  Max asked, “How is it to be done?”

  “Not from an aircraft. Nothing so easy to intercept — ”

  “A man with a package?”

  I said, “Something like that. A supporter of Leeds United will be coming through, either by coach or train, and he will plant it. It’ll have a radio-controlled firing circuit, and as the brain goes on show here in Berlin, a signal will be made and the device will blow — ”

  “By which time the fan will be safely out of Portsmouth again. I suppose you realise the chances of picking him up before he plants his device will be something like a quarter of a million to one, adding Portsmouth’s population to the Leeds influx?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do realise that. And somehow I doubt if he’ll be wearing his United scarf. But he has to be found. For my part, I’ll be doing all I can to inhibit the radio signal, but that depends on whether I can locate the brain and Klaus Kunze in time.” I passed a few suggestions as to what ought to be done in Portsmouth Naval Base — all ships undergoing refit to be battened-down against the droplets of Big Eye that would scatter as they had scattered over East Berlin only a few days before, all dockyard personnel brought aboard the ships and kept below decks, all vessels fit for sea to be sailed from Portsmouth until the danger was past, the harbour closed to the cross-channel car ferries and to the coastal cargo-vessels using the Camber. I said, “None of this should be put into effect too soon, of course. We don’t want to scare the birds away. That’s why I’m not suggesting the Pompey — Leeds match should be cancelled. It’s going to happen sometime unless we can bowl the bastards out, and the sooner we do that the better. Agree?” Max agreed. It was hard on the United fans but NATO considerations had to take priority. Until Adolf Hitler’s brain showed and could be dealt with, it remained as a constant threat to the defence of the West. And if it showed and then was not dealt with once and for all, we’d all had our chips. I had a strong feeling that the Soviet Bloc would take its chance and roll in the massed armoured divisions to crack down decisively on Nazism’s re-emergence. In my view it was the trickiest political situation the West had faced yet.

  I was flown down to Bonn, where some of the NATO brass had arrived; they agreed, in various languages, with my fears. Brigadier Trotton came on the line to report that two infantry battalions, no less, had been allocated to the gas chamber assault and would be embarked aboard their helicopters at immediate readiness for the final orders. He asked about Pizzen: would his arrest not alert the Kunze mob, tell them something might have leaked?

  I said, “We’re hoping not, Brigadier. There’s been a clamp on the press and no mention of an arrest. I know the circumstances of the arrest weren’t exactly hush, but we have to chance that.” It was fifty-fifty: someone in that crowd the night before might have known Gunther Pizzen. There was nothing we could do about that.

  From Bonn I went back to West Berlin, where everything was as ready as possible for the Kunze blockbuster which would be put on show next day, time still unknown. I was working on a theory which could have been much too way out, not to say doolally: this was, that Kunze meant to give the brain a go when the Pompey — Leeds match kicked off, allowing for the time-zone difference. He might see a need to latch it onto something specific, if only so that his tame fan planted in Portsmouth would know when to set the Big Eye timing device and then get the hell out. And there was that stolid, often stupid, German mentality: all the British love their football. It was what they lived for. So it would be a nice object lesson if they died for it also. Assuming that I was right, we had — I checked now with my watch as I was landed at West Berlin’s airport — twenty-six hours left. Met by some plain-clothes men in a plain car, I was driven once again to police headquarters, through a city on edge with expectations: the mobs were out again, and the Nazi emblems were being exhibited with a fresh arrogance and an apparently total disregard for both the law and the feelings of the anti-Nazi democratic public. It was tense to a degree, and I sensed an undercurrent of real fear and foreboding in the pinched and anxious faces that watched the marchers go by.

  When I got to the police chiefs room Felicity Mandrake was there. She had news: she had seen Jason Clutch.

  I felt excitement. I asked where.

  “Tegel airport,” she said.

  “What were you doing there, for God’s sake?”

  “I thought it might be interesting to see who turned up for the Gatwick flights. It was. Jason Clutch did.”

  “And?”

  She said, “He did what he’d come to do. He flew out for Gatwick — ”

  “It didn’t occur to you to have him arrested?” I broke in coldly.

  “Yes. But I resisted the temptation. I thought he was better left to do his own thing for a while. So I let him go and then I rang through to Max. He approved what I’d done and said he would put a tail on.”

  I nodded. “Good girl! What was Clutch this time — cleric, or non-cleric?”

  “Definitely non. Cheap anorak and blue denims … and he was carrying a zipped canvas bag and a rucksack.”

  “Uh-huh. Did he see you?”

  She said she was positive he had not. I walked up and down the police chief s opulent room, thinking hard. Jason Clutch, more or less where Felicity and I had come in … the whole thing could end with Clutch; he was supposed to be a Yorkshire parson, and he could conceivably be a Leeds United fan, but that was surely carrying my football fantasies much too far. I asked Felicity what time Jason Clutch’s flight had departed; her answer told me that by now he would be well away from Gatwick and under a tail. I looked at my watch again. “Nothing we can do for now, Felicity. Let’s go and find some lunch.”

  *

  We had a good lunch: we found a place that specialised in Old English food of all things, a change from Chinese, Greek, Indian, Italian and Jap. We had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with roast and boiled potatoes, Brussels sprouts and peas. Thankfully, no chips. This was followed by an excellent rice pudding with baked apples and double cream. After coffee and a brandy we felt replete. By some miracle, Max left us in peace until we were ready to go. Then I heard the tiny buzz from my inside pocket and knew I was being called on the special transistorised radio used for personal contact with field men in dire emergency. I took out the gold biro that housed the set and gently tapped it between my teeth. Max’s miniaturised voice came to me, reduced to a baby’s tone, very weird. I murmured my personal call sign and he said angrily, “Police HQ didn’t know where you were. Clutch. Report back to FH soonest possible. Never mind Germany.”

  There was a tinny rattle and he’d gone. Orders via the emergency set are never, repeat never, queried. So it was back to London for me, and no orders in regard to Felicity. That meant she stayed and I was sorry.

  I got up, called for the bill, paid it via American Express and we went out into the street where I passed Max’s orders. Felicity was sorry too; one day, she said, we would have that free night that we’d thought we were going to have in York, a night that seemed a world away now. I told her to stay on the job in co-operation with the West German police and the British Army as represented by Brigadier Trotton, and take care of herself.

  Then I got myself organised for the Gatwick flight.

  *

  Max was looking more worried than I’d ever known him and he didn’t take
long to tell me why: the Royal Yacht, Britannia, was in Portsmouth dockyard under orders to move out before first light the next day. She was sailing for Jamaica to embark some members of the Royal Family who had gone out by air and take them on a tour of the West Indies. This was not new; it had been scheduled for a long time. What was new was that the Britannia had developed an engine fault and was unable to leave Portsmouth. I asked, what about tugs?

  “Crews on strike,” Max said bitterly.

  I swore. “At a time like this, for Christ’s sake?”

  “They don’t know it’s a time like this, and Whitehall won’t give clearance for them to be told the facts. Tell the strikers and you tell Portsmouth. You made a similar point yourself, if you remember — that nothing should be done too soon unless it put Kunze off.”

  “Sure. But this … ” I blew out my cheeks in hopeless despair. “A frigate could do the job,” I said.

  “Use of a strike-breaking frigate — ”

  I said, “Jesus wept.”

  Max went on stonily. “Use of a strike-breaking frigate would escalate the dispute, and another withdrawal of labour would endanger lives by leaving security and defence wide open. These days, the Navy’s dependent on the unions when it’s in port. We simply have to face that, Shaw.”

  Max was dead right in point of fact. I said, “Then why not bloody well concede? Aren’t lives more important than — ”

  “Yes.” Max had, or had been made to accept, all the answers. To concede wouldn’t help: such an offer had in fact been tentatively made but the tugmen had replied through their representatives that since the strike involved all the other naval bases — Devonport, Chatham, Portland, Rosyth — and because Saturday and Sunday intervened it would be impossible to call off the action before Monday.

  At that, I gave up. I said, “I take it there are no royals aboard.”

  “Of course not. That’s not the point. The point is contamination of the yacht — the fall-out from the Big Eye if it goes off anywhere in Portsmouth.”

  “Then decontaminate,” I said angrily. It wasn’t an insoluble problem and lives were vastly more important, a matter on which no-one would have agreed more readily than the royals themselves. But it seemed there were other considerations and Max was coming under heavy pressure from Whitehall. Decontamination after a Big Eye drop was potentially extremely dangerous to the lives of the decontaminators and while lives lost in protection of ordinary citizens and naval ships’ companies were automatically acceptable, there would be a political storm if one was lost whilst dealing with the Royal Yacht. Such was life. Frankly, I didn’t think it added anything to the overall threat and was not enough to have me brought back from Germany. I said as much; but I got shot down. Max said that now the yacht was unable to leave Portsmouth, the brain boys in West Germany might see her as a good prestige target. The Big Eye might be employed directly against her; and although the principal target of Big Eye was personnel, the blast did do a certain amount of damage to buildings and ships. Britannia could sink at her moorings and Hitler would have scored again. Because, and here was the real nub, there was something else: Britannia had been berthed, supposedly on a temporary basis, alongside an ammunition store containing a vast quantity of rocket missiles for arming the frigate squadrons. Ear too much to have a hope of shifting it in the time likely to be available as the last hours were counted down.

  “Has the Defence Ministry started shifting it?” I asked. “No. The argument’s going on now. We want to kill this Hitler thing stone dead the soonest possible. That means, as Eve tried to say, not scaring the buggers off.”

  “At risk of the whole of the Portsmouth area?”

  Max nodded. He was much too calm, I thought: something would burst soon. “That’s about it,” he said. “How do you rate the chances of bowling out the Big Eye carrier before he sets up his explosion?”

  I returned the ball to him. “How do you?” I asked.

  He gave a hard laugh. “Nil,” he said.

  “Never say die. I’ll be doing all I can. As a matter of fact, that Britannia could even be a help — that is, if the brain boys mean to get her. It does narrow the field!”

  *

  I went back to my flat for a change of clothing and a bath. I was thinking about Portsmouth and the people who didn’t know what might hit them while they were, some of them, watching a game of football. The whole thing was crazy and it wasn’t just Klaus Kunze and his schemes. It was us. Detail a frigate and haul Britannia clear and balls to the strikers: it was so simple; but things didn’t work that way anymore. As Max had said, if the security side came out the whole lot would be wide open. There were plenty of ways into the dockyard, or would be once it was unwatched. It was a very nasty dilemma. But Max would be beavering away on the union and Whitehall ends and he might get agreement yet — at any rate to the extent of putting an all-out effort into shifting the rocket missiles and calling it a routine redistribution or something. Knowing Whitehall, I didn’t expect too much.

  I shifted my thoughts towards Jason Clutch. Max had told me he had been tailed onto the Inter City for Leeds and two men were with him still. There would be further reports later on, or he hoped there would. I had to wait. Leeds fitted and something might emerge in time. My own plan for next day, D-day as it were, was to station myself in a plain police car with radio in the naval base, highly mobile for any emergency. As for the incoming fans from Leeds and the north generally, plain-clothes men would proliferate aboard the chartered coaches and the special trains, while the station exits at Fratton, Portsmouth Town and, for good measure, Portsmouth Harbour, would be under very careful scrutiny by men who had studied photographs, old ones admittedly, of Jason Clutch and a number of other men known to have Nazi tendencies. The naval base would also be alive with plain-clothes men from the Yard and from 6D2, disguised as somewhat unlikely dockyard mateys as the shore workers were known to the Fleet, doing overtime. They probably wouldn’t be doing overtime in fact on a Saturday afternoon when Pompey was playing at home, but the chances of that being appreciated had to be accepted.

  From my flat. I drove down the A3 to Portsmouth; the Jensen that had replaced my blown-up Volvo had been brought from Lyneham and, as usual, driven to my garage; the shattered glass had been replaced. I arrived in Portsmouth fairly late; accommodation had been fixed for me in the wardroom block of HMS Nelson, the naval barracks adjoining the dockyard. On arrival I was told that the Commodore of the barracks was still in his office and wished to see me. I was taken across to the office block and found a very worried man: he was responsible for a large number of personnel. With him was the Flag Officer, Portsmouth, who was responsible for a good many more plus the Royal Yacht itself. They were eloquent about strikes and the general craziness of the situation where a ship couldn’t be moved even in an emergency except by kind permission of the union. I saw the sparks in the Flag Officer’s eyes; he at least had been in the last war when it had been a different Navy. Now he was powerless.

  While I was there Scotland Yard came on the line: the Assistant Commissioner Crime, who had been told by Max that he would be able to contact me. At last they had positive news of the expected demo. Negative Pompey, the ACC said: it was to be Brighton.

  “Well clear of explosions,” I said.

  “So it seems.” The ACC rang off and I passed the news to the naval officers. They were glad enough Portsmouth was to be spared a march, an illegal one since it wouldn’t have been authorised by the police and one that would have meant a devil of a lot of aggro; but it didn’t ease their own problems vis-a-vis Big Eye. These were highlighted when, just as I was about to leave them, the Defence Ministry came on the line; the Minister himself, with final confirmation that nothing was to be done that might bring about any leaks to the Nazi factions here and in West Germany that we were on to the coming involvement of Portsmouth and its naval base. That meant compliance with the strikers’ demands that no-one should assist in ship movements. I gathered that Max had
made strong representations that the rocket missiles at least should be moved, and approval was now given for this. Knowing that it was too late to shift more than a quarter of them, the Flag Officer got on the phone as soon as the Minister had rung off, and gave his orders for an immediate start to be made using the ships’ companies of the frigates and other ships in the port.

  “And I hope that doesn’t lead to another bloody strike,” he said savagely. I felt that it might: the dockyard mateys had never liked work being taken from them by seamen, but neither did they like being called out to work in the middle of the night, so they might stretch a point. After that I left the senior officers to it. I’d got only a short way down the corridor when I was called back, urgently. Max was calling me. I went back and took the call and Max gave me some totally unexpected news: word had just come through from Bonn. Willi Waldstein reported that one of his field men had penetrated the Werewolf high command and Klaus Kunze was doing his nut: Adolf Hitler’s brain had disappeared and the Nazi hunt was up for, guess who, Jason Clutch, who had been meant to take only the Big Eye into Britain and was now Number One suspect of a double-cross.

  *

  Jason Clutch: well, he’d certainly beaten it out of West Berlin and he’d been carrying baggage, though it hadn’t sounded substantial enough to accommodate the brain in its bowl and box plus Big Eye. I wondered what he could be up to: he had been in it from the beginning, of course, right the way back to Yorkshire. He had been one of the Plug boys. I thought about Plug and the others, the strong-arm mob who had died in the crash on Sutton Bank. I had made the assumption, as things began to emerge, that Plug, Clutch and the others had been acting for Klaus Kunze. No doubt Kunze also had believed that. Now it looked as though the hypothesis had been given the lie. It was possible that we had all been hoodwinked; it was possible, it now seemed, that Plug’s objective, and therefore Jason Clutch’s, might all along have been to misappropriate the brain for use in Britain. Maybe they had meant to steal the glory from the West German lot, and establish a British Nazi Party thus giving Britain the lead in the new order in Western Europe. There were plenty of maybes; Jason Clutch had to be found and immobilised before he did any lasting damage. While I’d been on the line to Max, he’d told me that he had gone into action as soon as the news of the missing brain had come through from Bonn, but Jason Clutch had slipped the net again. He had been lost during the tail from Leeds railway station and hadn’t been picked up again.