Swordpoint (2011)

by John Harris

  ‘Go across in a two-man dinghy, sir, knock the first chap we see on the head, chuck him aboard and bolt. Then turn him loose for the Intelligence wallahs to go at. If they can’t knock the truth out of him, let ’em turn him over to me. I bet I can.’

  Yuell suspected that Jago was a man who could be brutal, and it must have shown in his face because Jago frowned.

  ‘Sir, there’s no such thing as clean fighting,’ he protested. ‘Only dirty fighting and dirtier fighting. We’re not playing kiss-in-the-ring, and the Gestapo wouldn’t hesitate if the boot were on the other foot.’

  Yuell nodded because what he said was right. Jago had no head for plans but in small affairs like this he seemed to have a flair for doing the right thing.

  ‘Who would you take?’

  Jago grinned. ‘McWatters,’ he said. ‘He’s a murderous sod, sir. I think he belonged to a Glasgow razor gang before the war. Just the sort for a thing like this.’

  Yuell stared at him for a moment longer, then he nodded.

  ‘Let’s see if we can get you a dinghy from the Engineers,’ he said.

  Faces blackened, cap comforters on their heads, Jago and McWatters climbed into the dinghy just after midnight. They were armed only with revolvers and clubs, which McWatters had made by winding barbed wire round the end of a stave. Anybody who received a blow from one of them would suffer a very nasty wound.

  With the rain coming down now in thin wavering lines of drizzle, more mist than rain, the night was pitch-dark. Yuell had driven them down the road from San Bartolomeo in his jeep.

  ‘One prisoner,’ he said. ‘That’s all. Someone who’ll tell us a few things. I’ve told our Intelligence boy wonder, Harry Marder, to stand by for when you get back. How long do you expect to be?’

  ‘Hour, sir. Two hours. If we’re not back by then, I reckon we shan’t be coming back.’

  The two men faded into the darkness, blurred figures with black faces. Patrolling was an art and the job for a specialist, and, though the best ones were often ghillies, poachers and gamekeepers, there were also the other kind who’d lived in city streets all their lives and had an instinctive sense of direction and an ability to make a quick decision.

  Jago had rarely moved from his native Leeds before the war, but he was aware of possessing a special kind of skill and cunning when it came to affairs like this. He also didn’t like the Germans. He’d seen the fly-encrusted bodies of peasants shot by them, the tiny bits of flesh and clothing after the SS had tied dynamite to partisans and blown them up, the scarred wall of a village church where the men had been dragged from Mass and shot.

  So he’d never hesitated when a fighting patrol was asked for, and in the line had gone out nightly because there was always the need for information or a party to repair the gaps in the wire. Going out on patrol was always a cold-blooded business, and a lot depended on the experience of the leader; but as an unexpected finger of panic clawed at his stomach, he asked himself if he hadn’t volunteered once too often.

  ‘No fight if we can help it,’ he said to McWatters.

  ‘Nae fecht, sorr?’ McWatters turned.

  ‘No fight, I said.’

  McWatters shrugged, thinking that Jago was changing. He’d been on many patrols with him and had never known him back away from a fight before.

  ‘Wha’ aboot mines, sorr? They say yon place is thick wi’ ’em.’

  ‘It’s my guess they’ll be behind the path along the bank,’ Jago said. ‘In any case, it’s a chance we’ll have to take. If we get a prisoner and anything happens to me, it’s up to you to get him back on your own. Okay?’

  ‘Aye. Okay, sorr. Where are we gaein’, sorr?’

  ‘There’s an observation post forty yards downstream from the bridge. That’s where we’ll head for. It’s my bet somebody’ll be there or will come there before long. They must have some idea there’s something in the wind and they’ll be watching.’

  ‘Aye. Richt, sorr.’

  ‘No arsing about,’ Jago warned. ‘We’re not playing ring-a-roses. We want a prisoner, but don’t be afraid to hit the bastard.’

  As they whispered together the current was carrying them further downstream than they expected, and as the rubber dinghy grated softly on the bank at the far side Jago decided they couldn’t be more than twenty yards or so from the observation post. Climbing from the dinghy, they made fast to a willow growing from the water’s edge, and Jago tied a clean white handkerchief to the branches.

  ‘We might have to move fast when we come back,’ he said. ‘But we ought to spot that even in the dark. Remind me to pick it up.’

  They made their way gingerly up the muddy bank to the path. They could just make out scrubby bushes on their right and the dimly looming slopes rising towards San Eusebio. They were just about to move ahead when McWatters laid a hand on Jago’s arm.

  Petrified into silence, they saw the flash of a torch coming from the direction of the slopes, going on and off as though whoever held it was using it only over the more difficult stretches.

  Jago touched McWatters’ shoulder and pulled him gently to the side of the path.

  ‘They’ll spot yon handkerchief, sorr,’ McWatters breathed.

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping. If they do, they’ll stop. That’s when we go for ’em.’

  The approaching party consisted of Gefreiter Pramstrangl and three men. They were on their way to relieve the men in the observation post, and two of them were armed with rifles and two with 32-shot Schmeisser machine-pistols.

  Pramstrangl was a small wiry man but wore spectacles, which didn’t help in the dark; especially now when they were blurred by the drizzle. As they reached the path, the leading man stopped dead so that Pramstrangl and the others crashed into him.

  ‘Gottverdammte–!’

  In the dark Pramstrangl saw Jago’s clean white handkerchief on the tree, hanging limply as it grew heavy with the damp, and they all crowded round, wondering what it meant and puzzled how it got there. Then it dawned on Pramstrangl that it was a sign or something similar and, peering into the darkness, he spotted the rubber dinghy on the mud below.

  He was just about to shout a warning when Jago shouted for him. ‘Now!’ he yelled, and he and McWatters leapt through the darkness swinging their clubs. The man who had spotted the handkerchief went down first, his skull fractured, his scalp laid open to the bone.

  McWatters’ big shoulders sent another man flying into a ditch, but the collision put him off his stroke and the swinging club caught Pramstrangl on the upper arm, paralysing it and sending him spinning down the bank towards the water.

  The third man was still struggling to get his rifle off his shoulder and screeching ‘Englanders!’ when McWatters shot him in the chest.

  ‘Englander be buggered,’ he yelled. ‘Ah’m a Scot, ye German hoor!’

  ‘We’ve got one!’ Jago said as the noise died down. ‘He went down the bank! Grab him, McWatters, and untie the dinghy! What happened to the other bastard? There were four of them.’

  But the man who had disappeared into the ditch was wise enough not to attempt to climb out in a hurry. Instead he got quietly to his hands and knees, pawing the ground for the machine-pistol he’d dropped as he fell.

  By this time McWatters was already waiting at the water’s edge, one hand twisting the dazed Pramstrangl’s collar until he was half-throttled, and the other unhitching the rope of the rubber dinghy. More to show off than anything else, Jago was unknotting the handkerchief.

  ‘Right,’ he said after what seemed to McWatters to be a delay of several weeks. ‘Let’s go.’

  As McWatters released Pramstrangl to push the dinghy into the water before scrambling aboard, Jago picked up the German, flung him into it with a bone-cracking heave, and then flopped in after them.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘that was quick! Can’t be more than a quarter of an hour since we left.’

  They were out into the stream now and paddling hard. They could hear shouts on
the bank and running feet, and guessed that the men at the observation post had realised that something had happened to their relief and were on their way to find out what.

  ‘Turn the wick up a bit,’ Jago panted, digging at the water. ‘A bit further and the bastards won’t even know where we are.’

  As they paddled still harder, the man in the ditch struggled to his feet, holding his machine-pistol. He couldn’t see the dinghy now but he could still see the white handkerchief, which Jago had stuffed carelessly into his blouse pocket, and it seemed to glow through the darkness. As he raised his weapon to fire, however, the dinghy slid to his left on the current, and the willows got in the way. He cursed and, moving a little to the left, stepped on to the mud to get a better shot.

  The explosion lifted heads on the far bank.

  ‘We got a patrol across there, Sarge?’ somebody asked. ‘Yes, keep your eyes open for ’em. They’ll probably be on their way back.’

  The first speaker was silent for a while. ‘Not them, Sarge. That was a mine. They just walked into it. You ask me, they’re napoo. Kaput. Finis.’

  From across the water, German weapons had opened up, blindly spraying the bank. It sounded like all hell let loose.

  The soldiers peered into the darkness. They could hear voices at the far side. They seemed almost opposite them.

  ‘Give ’em a go with the Bren,’ the sergeant said. ‘At least it’ll make the sods keep their heads down.’

  As the Bren ripped out a short burst, a voice came from among the bushes just below them. It sounded angry.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, stop that firing! You almost blew our bloody heads off.’

  Jago appeared, pausing just long enough to tie the dinghy to a tree. Between them, he and McWatters dragged Gefreiter Pramstrangl up the muddy slope to the footpath and there let him sprawl among the puddles.

  ‘He don’t look so good, sir,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘You should see the other bastards,’ Jago said. ‘Where’s the nearest transport?’

  ‘End of the San Bartolomeo road, sir. About two hundred yards in that direction.’

  Aided by one of the sergeant’s men, McWatters hauled Pramstrangl to his feet and they set off after Jago who was already striding out in search of a vehicle. Though they didn’t know it, and Jago had no intention of letting them know it, his whole body was shaking.

  There had been more than a touch of bravado in his volunteering yet again, and he could only feel that God’s hand had been in it somewhere.

  By sheer chance, they’d put their dinghy ashore at one of the gaps in the German defences and someone endeavouring to reach them as they’d left had clearly stepped on one of his own mines.

  ‘There he is, Herr Hauptmann.’

  Lieutenant Thiergartner turned and looked up at Captain Reis.

  The injured man was lying in a heap on the mud, his life’s blood draining away into the river. He had trodden on a Schu mine, one of the Germans’ more delicately contrived inventions which flung up a charge to explode chest-high in front of its victim. Even if his chest hadn’t been punctured, he would still have been of little use to anybody because an eye was hanging out on one cheek and the other cheek was ripped open to show his teeth.

  Alongside him, two grenadiers, one of them the farmhand Pulovski, were waiting.

  ‘Get him up here,’ Reis said.

  Pulovski began to move to where the dying soldier’s head lay on the mud and Reis barked at him. ‘For God’s sake be careful where you tread, you damn fool,’ he snapped.

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.’ Pulovski looked up, his simple face that of a sixteen-year-old boy, bright and helpful in the light of Thiergartner’s torch. In his life at home on the Thuringian farm, the most difficult thing Pulovski had ever had to handle up to joining the army was harnessing a horse. He had no mechanical bent and no idea of danger – though he was an expert shot and an excellent provider of extra rations, always knowing just where to look for eggs or rabbits or pheasants.

  ‘All right, pick him up,’ Reis said.

  Smiling and full of willingness, Pulovski began to lift the wounded man, forgetting once more where he put his feet. Reis saw the other men moving back.

  Nobody wanted to be too near if Pulovski set off a mine, and Reis himself edged away. Showing an unexpected confidence in the slow-witted countryman, Thiergartner didn’t move and Reis had to admire his courage.

  As they got the man on to the path, Reis bent over him. There was little they could do for him.

  ‘What about the others?’ he asked.

  ‘One badly hurt, Herr Hauptmann,’ Thiergartner said. ‘God knows what they hit him with. A mechanical saw, by the look of his head. The other’s in the bushes. He’s already dead. There’s no sign of Pramstrangl.’

  ‘All right.’ Reis nodded. ‘See that they’re brought back, and inform the burial squad. You might also get in touch with headquarters and tell them to send a new relief party down. The Tommies wouldn’t have sent a patrol across if there weren’t something in the wind, and if there is we must be on the look-out for it.’

  Three

  Jago’s prisoner was the first thing that had gone right. Yuell had spent the whole evening worrying about the missing bombs and grenades and he was immensely grateful to Jago for his success.

  ‘I’ll see you get something for this, Tony,’ he said.

  Jago shrugged. He knew he didn’t deserve a medal but it would be nice, he thought, to have a ribbon up like Warley. ‘McWatters, too, sir,’ he suggested. ‘If they don’t give McWatters something, you can send mine back.’

  McWatters, who was a communist and was fighting less for the British Empire than to bring down the Fascist beasts who were standing in the way of world socialism, hadn’t much time for such baubles as medals and told Jago so.

  ‘Ah dinnae wan’ no medal,’ he growled.

  He was going to be put down for one all the same, Jago thought, and even if he still refused it Jago had no intention of sending back anything of his own. What he’d said had sounded good, however, especially with Mr Zeal listening, because it would get back to the men and that sort of thing never did any harm. There was a lot that was false about Jago, but at least his courage wasn’t part of it.

  Despite having gone through the desert and up the length of Italy doing the preliminary interviews of German and Italian deserters and prisoners, Lieutenant Marder still remained a bit of a hothouse intellectual. He was also too much inclined to look on the bright side, to jump to conclusions, and to believe what he wanted to believe. What was more, because he’d learned a few tricks, he’d begun to think he was clever.

  It was one of the ill chances of the day that Gefreiter Pramstrangl was clever. He wasn’t sophisticated like Lieutenant Marder because he’d never been to university, hardly even to school, but he’d lived most of his life in the mountains and had the sharp wiliness of a mountain fox. During the winters before the war he had run a ski-shop at Igls and during the summers driven the tourist bus from Innsbruck. He took an immediate dislike to Marder because he looked so much like the haughty British tourists who’d so often treated him like dirt.

  Marder had already got Pramstrangl’s name, rank and number. There was no need to ask for his unit because it was shown on his collar, and Marder knew all the collar insignia. He also firmly believed in what Caesar had said in Shaw’s play: When a man knew something, the chief difficulty was to prevent him communicating it to all and sundry. According to the Duke of Marlborough, no war could be conducted without early and good intelligence, and a good Intelligence officer, to quote another of Marder’s idols, had to be courageous, adroit, patient, imperturbable, discreet and trustworthy. Lieutenant Marder considered he was all the lot.

  Now he studied Pramstrangl knowingly. Prisoners, he believed, were much more inclined to be communicative immediately after capture, if treated with kindness. The knowledge that he’d survived a violent meeting with an enemy filled with murderous intent alwa
ys loosened a man’s tongue, and it was important to create a climate of confidence between the questioner and the questioned. He pushed a cigarette across to Pramstrangl who frowned warily.

  ‘I’m not a Nazi,’ he said.

  ‘You people never are, I notice.’ Marder smiled smugly, making Pramstrangl dislike him even more.

  The interrogation was taking place in the Intelligence truck, which was like a newspaper office just before edition time. There was always someone arriving or a telephone ringing and men were working to get maps of the intelligence summary up to date. Marder glanced at the big 1/15,000 map where oblongs and squares denoted enemy minefields and blue marks indicated machine-gun posts, headquarters, supply dumps and trench systems. Then he opened Pramstrangl’s pay book. ‘Medal for the Einmarsch in Czechoslovakia. Medal for Poland. Iron Cross, Second Class, in France. Iron Cross First Class, in the Crimea.’ This wasn’t a new boy. He jabbed a hand at the map.

  ‘You were taken just here,’ he said. ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was going to the observation post about thirty yards further along the bank.’

  ‘What were you observing?’

  ‘You people, of course.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent!’

  ‘Well, what else would I be observing? The moon?’

  Marder frowned. He jabbed at the map again. ‘This point here,’ he said. ‘Is it fortified?’

  Pramstrangl studied the map. Since it ought to be obvious even to an idiot that the point would be fortified, he didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t admit it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Minefields? Where are they? Here and here along the bank?’

  ‘Yes.’ All this was obvious too, and Pramstrangl saw no point in backing away from it.

  ‘What about the approaches to San Eusebio from this direction?’

  Pramstrangl hesitated before answering. He didn’t like the Nazis. He was a good Austrian and had loathed them since the day they’d walked into his country in 1938 for no other reason than that they believed it needed their special brand of efficiency.