Avenging Steel: The First Collection

by Hall, Ian

  I inhaled as she pushed me away, her breathing short and rapid. “Well, Biggles. Looks like you may have the makings of an operative.” She took a small handkerchief, licked it gently, and wiped traces of lipstick from my mouth. “Sandy Bell’s. Go!”

  Riding high on a cloud, I walked up Milne’s Close, and out into the Mile. I felt Edinburgh had suddenly gotten a whole lot warmer, and maybe a little more colorful too. Amazing what a kiss will do to a man.

  Sandy Bell’s is a drinking bar a stone’s-throw from the University, just past the Greyfriars Bobby statue. I’d been there many times.

  Usually filled with cap-wearing working men, seeing it half empty, and its clientele mostly German made my heart a little sad. I walked straight to the bar. I ordered a ‘pint of 70 shilling’, and leaned on the bar, trying not to catch anyone’s eye, taking in details of the scarcity of whisky on the mirrored glass shelves behind the weathered counter.

  “Mister Baird!”

  Ye Gods. It had taken him all of ten seconds to accost me.

  I didn’t hate him; I didn’t know him well enough for that emotion to surface, but I did dislike the young man. He was only two years older than me, and already in charge of people’s lives. In my opinion he hadn’t lived long enough for that honor. But he did annoy me. He was arrogant, yes, that was on par for the German middle class, but he also was just enough humble to make it bearable, and trust me, that was worse. If I’d have hated him, he might have been more sufferable.

  Thankfully I didn’t have to endure his company long, he insisted on my being his guide through the exhibits in the Museum, just a short walk away.

  I didn’t even see the snatch coming; it came so rapidly, I have no real clear recollection of the order of events.

  I recall a girl’s shout from the alley next to Sandy Bells, our walking toward the sound, Derwall’s call for the perpetrator to show himself, and at some point him drawing his angular Luger pistol. Then a hand clamped over my mouth, and Derwall’s frightened face looking at me in alarm, his eyes wide with a mixture of drunkenness and shock.

  Next thing I knew, we were in a plain van, heading south out of the city.

  Derwall had been knocked unconscious, his hands bound behind his back with seriously thick cord biting deep into his wrists. “Hello, Mister Baird.” Ivanhoe’s voice.

  The van stopped within five minutes, I considered myself near Gilmerton, a country suburb, but I did not recognize the farm when the back doors opened. I watched Derwall being taken to a barn, its large green door ajar; the air around the two men who manhandled him inside clouded in the cold mist of their exertions.

  “You did well, Baird.”

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  Ivanhoe smiled, and there was darkness behind the veneer, a coldness I instantly realized I did not want to stir. “Derwall works at the Castle; he’s in the Political Wing. We’re going to turn him.”

  “Turn him?” I recognized neither phrase nor concept.

  “His grandfather was a Jew. We can capitalize on that, and have him work for us.”

  “Who exactly is ‘us’?”

  “I guess it’s time to let you in on our little secret.” Ivanhoe’s grin warmed considerably. “The organization we work for is called the S.O.E.; Special Operations Executive. See? You’re no better off.” He laughed at my discomfort.

  A man crossed the area between van and barn, and I almost gasped. He paid us no mind, but I instantly recognized him as the man who had shooed me away after the Tollcross bombing, so many weeks before.

  “You have a good memory, Mister Baird.” Ivanhoe must have seen my spark of recognition.

  That was the moment it all started to make sense. These men were no unorganized bunch of individuals; they were a structured resistance, obviously formed before the invasion started.

  And I was determined to play my part in it.

  “Do you want to see the process?” Ivanhoe’s question startled me back to reality.

  “Yes.” I said, my sudden revelation probably making my answer sound too eager.

  “You do realize that if you do, you’re committing yourself to us. There’s no going back. If you get caught, it’ll mean interrogation, torture, then a firing squad.”

  I was resolute. “Count me in.”

  It All Becomes Official

  From the first moment watching Derwall’s interrogation, it was all cloak-and-dagger stuff, straight from the pages of John Buchan’s books.

  First I had to apply for a week’s leave from the newspaper. Then in the cold days of January, I made my way to South Queensferry, and bought a ticket for the short ride over the Forth Estuary to Fife.

  Feigning a relative in the small town of North Queensferry, I walked into the village. Needless to say, my papers were checked at every stage of the journey.

  Walking the narrow streets, I got picked up by a car, pulled into the back seat, and a black hood placed over my head with a drawstring pulling it tight around my neck. Unknown to me, my training had already begun.

  Half an hour later, the questioning began. “Tell me details of the journey.”

  I sat in a dark musty room. A light shone in my face, masking my interrogator’s identity. My arms and ankles were tied to a metal chair. “What journey?”

  Slap. Hard; right across the face from behind me. If I’d thought this was going to be a picnic, I soon disabused myself of the notion. “What journey?” I shouted defiantly.

  “The one you just had, Sonny Jim.” I’d heard that expression before, and as I pretended to think on his question, I searched my mind for the owner of the voice. Ivanhoe! Even though he’d altered his voice, making it more Edinburgh-Scottish. “Think! What do you remember about the car journey?”

  “We went up a long hill.” I recalled the car’s engine toiling. “Two hills, actually, there was a little dip halfway.”

  “Good. What else?”

  “Eh, I think we did more left turns than right.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “Well,” I began, “It may mean we circled back, it probably means we’re not by the sea; we’re inland a bit.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know!” I thought I’d try and bring things to a close. “There’s no point in going all Walter-Scott on me.”

  He remained silent for a moment, then the light turned off. Ivanhoe stood in front of me, the glowing embers of the bright light still marking my retinae with little orange coils. “Welcome to your next seven days.”

  I had never been taught so much in so little time before; it put my University course to shame.

  I learned what they called ‘street-craft’; the art of tailing a subject or avoiding being tailed. I learned how to handle both pistol and machine gun, British and German models, how to strip them, how to identify the ammunition, how to fire them. I was taught how to drop letters, how to arrange drops, how to use people to carry messages, and how to use ‘dead-drops’; a method of passing messages without either party being aware of the other.

  I was shown observation techniques, how to tail a suspect without being seen, how to work alone and as part of a team. I got taught how to question a subject harshly, and how to ask seemingly innocent questions to get information.

  I pored over books on military insignia, and took tests… lots of tests. My day began long before sunrise, and ended in the darkness of evening. I don’t think my exhausted body had more than six hours sleep per night. But, boy did I sleep the slumber of the dead.

  One morning, to my consternation, I was introduced to a pliable grey substance called C-4; an explosive of quite devastating power.

  Finally, every morning, we practiced hand-to-hand fighting, both with a knife and without. I learned fifty ways of killing a man silently, with knife, garrote, pieces of wood and my bare hands.

  When I returned to Edinburgh a week later, I felt quite a different person.

  For one, my attentiveness had sharpened. So
long unaware of my situation, taking everything for granted, I became so conscious of my surroundings it actually scared me at times. Without showing it, I took note of all kinds of interactions that previously I’d ignored completely. It made me a better person, yes, but it also brought to light more of the subtlety in the German occupation.

  The first thing I noticed was the make-up of the men was evolving; week by week more older men arrived to take the place of the younger ones. The German force in Edinburgh was changing to an occupying force rather than the youthful combat troops we’d grown used to. Italians arrived too, their uniforms markedly different from the Germans. Thanks to my weeks training I recognized units from Bulgaria and Romania. This was the kind of information I’d been taught to notice, and it was my job to get the information to my contacts.

  By arrangement, I placed a grey folder against the office window, the sign I had a message, and I sat back, waiting.

  An hour or so later, a young scamp walked into my office. He was a typical ten-year old street urchin; dirty, unkempt, clothed in colorless grey from head to foot. “Are you Mister Baird?”

  I found it amusing that street kids talked far broader Scots than the usual run-of-the-mill Edinburgh children. “Aye,” I answered in kind.

  “A man ootside says, ‘Happy Birthday’.”

  “Thanks,” I looked at the boy who stood his ground, not retreating once he’d delivered his message. “What are you waiting on?”

  “The man says you’ll give me a letter.”

  The folded note on German troop concentrations lay inside my sock. “Turn round.” Only after he’d turned away completely did I pull the letter forth. “Okay, face the front.” Usually I would have accepted the boy’s offer without thinking, now after my week’s training I chose to question his authenticity. Watching the young lad’s expression, I tapped the paper against my fingers. “Describe the man outside.”

  “He’s just a man,” the boy’s face screwed up like he’s just eaten a sour lime. “He said to bring the letter.”

  “Was he wearing a flat cap?”

  “Nut,” The boy shook his head. “A pointy one.”

  “Like that one?” I motioned to the hat stand by the door. Paton had left his trilby when he disappeared.

  The boy screwed up his face, uncomfortable with my questions. “Aye, but mair pointy,”

  A Fedora, Ivanhoe’s choice of headgear.

  I hesitated no longer, folded the note and handed it over. The boy turned on a sixpence and left the room. In seconds I’d forgotten his face; he’d looked as innocuous as a streetlamp among many more, invisible to Nazi and local alike, the perfect messenger.

  As I got used to the German dictates, my stories for the newspaper began to flow easier, allowing me more time to study; the Degree course at the University now an essential diversion from my alter-ego of Biggles the master-spy.

  I had a wage packet which I collected from the Payroll Department every Friday afternoon, and it seemed to be enough to keep the three of us from the poor-house.

  To my disappointment, I saw no more of Lilith for the rest of the month, although the memory of our kiss still burned in my mind as clear as the moment it had happened.

  One morning, in the dregs of January, Derwall arrived at the newspaper office and was shown upstairs to me. Gone was his confident swaggering demeanor, replaced by a more modest outlook, not subservient, yet not overbearing; whatever had happened to him, he’d been affected by it.

  “Leutnant Derwall!” I sprang to my feet. “Where have you been?” he tried to dismiss me with a wave of his hand, but I persisted. “I tried to contact you, but I didn’t know what department you worked in.”

  “Alles in ordnung,” He carefully took his gloves off, held them as if ready to strike me. “Everything is fine.”

  “I hope you understand, Leutnant Derwall, that if I had enquired after you, and you had indeed disappeared, I would have been held as a suspect.”

  “I know,” He sighed and sat down, the dejected expression returning. “They know my grandmother was a Jew.”

  “They?” Unknown to Derwall, I had watched the whole interrogation, the resistance, and the ultimate crumbling breakdown. “Who are they?”

  “Ach, the resistance,” he shook his head violently, “The resistance that no one will admit exists.” He slapped his gloves at the edge of my table in frustration. “But I know, for they hold their executioner’s axe above my head like the sword of Damocles.”

  “We can go to your boss, your superiors, we can tell them what happened!”

  “No!” he almost screamed. It was in that moment that he let me in to his world. This creature of the invading forces was as much a captive as I, perhaps more so. His people had scourged the Jews so well, that he now shook in terror in my office.

  “What can I do for you, Leutnant Derwall?” I said quietly, my voice steady and strong.

  “What happened to you at Sandy Bell’s?” he asked. It was no interrogator’s question, more a plea for information.

  “I was pushed to the ground; I think I blacked out for a moment. When I came to, you were gone, and the cold world around me held no clue of your fate. I even considered that I had been the subject of the attack, and you had left me in the alley.” I had rehearsed that line with Ivanhoe many times. I knew I had delivered it perfectly. “But now, today. How can I help you?”

  To my utter shock, he rose from his seat and walked out. “There is nothing you can do to help me. I don’t know why I came.”

  He left as meekly as he’d arrived, and I sat bemused for a few moments.

  In the quiet of my office I grinned at the wreck we’d caused, the breakdown of a man from within. I heard a car screech to a halt outside, a woman screamed. Curious I walked to my window. Far below, a German officer had climbed onto the high wall of the North Bridge, and was looking dejectedly down towards the train tracks. Men behind him were yelling at him, pleading in loud barking German, but the officer paid them no mind.

  Then he looked up, and I watched Friedrich Derwall, who had studied philosophy at Heidelberg just a year ago, plunge to his death onto the train tracks a hundred feet below.

  I walked back to my desk.

  The next day, five minutes before the one o’clock gun, Leutnant Möller held me in his stare. “Do you know Leutnant Friedrich Derwall?”

  “Why, yes, I met him at a concert, just before Christmas if I remember correctly.”

  “Hmph.” He slid the corrected papers across his immaculate desk. His eyes never left mine until he dismissed me many seconds later.

  Outside the HQ building, German regulars were forming up in parade, the collars of their grey greatcoats pulled up around their necks. Large packs lay behind the parade; these men were leaving for good. I looked for insignia, but on their coats they wore none. I noticed a middle-aged officer, striding in front of them, and stopped to untie and tie my shoe-lace. As he neared the end of the line I saw the death’s head emblem on his collar. I took a mental note of numbers; almost one hundred, a full company. I got to my feet and walked down the wynd.

  As I walked across the parade ground, I had to weave among arriving trucks of German soldiers, well, Hungarians, and mostly in their middle years; again I had information to pass on.

  I placed the folder in the window, to be rewarded by Lilith herself, just minutes later.

  “I was just passing,” she said, closing the door behind her. “Every minute the sign hangs in the window, the more danger you’re in.” She walked to the window, looked out across the North Bridge and onto the follies on Calton Hill. “You do have a great view.”

  I didn’t care. Her subtle perfume was already mixing in my nostrils, the silhouette of her profile dark against the scudding white clouds outside.

  She turned round, placed the folder from the window onto my desk. “I have a new way to signal.” She pulled three or four books from my bookshelf, and sat them on the wide windowsill. Then she capped them with a forth
volume, like the lintels on Stonehenge. “From now on, if you have information, do this.”

  “Okay,” I paid special attention to the books’ placement. She held her hand out, and I pulled the small message from my lower desk drawer. “Will you be able to see the books from the street?”

  “Aye, no problem,” Something was on her mind, and her furrowed brows foreshadowed an announcement. “I’m going to have a small dinner party tomorrow night. You’re invited. Don’t bother to bring a bottle; we’ll be drinking German schnapps.”

  I almost soared out of the window; dinner with Lilith! But she’d mentioned the word party. “A big party?”

  “No.” she shook her head. “Small, just a few of us. Do you know Dalkeith at all?”

  “No, sorry,” Considering the small town lay just five miles south of Edinburgh, I wondered why.

  “That’s okay. Make your way to the centre of town, and at the top of the hill, get onto the Musselburgh Road; basically a left turn. Past the church and graveyard on the left, there’s a little lane. The house is beside the masonic. Painted white, you can’t miss it. Be there for six.”

  And before I could ask anything to prolong her visit, she was gone, her perfume left behind her.

  I had a Friday night dinner date with a lady. One I had kissed.

  Alice from Wonderland

  The front door of the whitewashed house opened a moment after my knock, and Lilith led me inside.

  “Before you get your hopes up, this is not what you think, old boy.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything, honest,” was all I could manage. I thought my face would catch alight, it felt so red.

  “Of course you weren’t…” her smile disappeared down the short passageway.

  As I walked into the small living room, I noticed a young woman sitting at the end of the table. “This is Alice,” Lilith said, motioning me to sit down next to her. “Alice, this is James.”