Shadows of War

by Michael Ridpath

  He wished he could discuss all this with his father. Lord Oakford knew Alston well, and he had access to everyone in power in London. He could ask questions and get answers. If Alston had indeed arranged for Millie’s death, then Conrad should be able to rely on his father to help him. But Oakford and Alston were not just colleagues, they were friends, and Polly Copthorne hadn’t given Conrad absolute proof that Alston had killed her husband – certainly nothing that would persuade Lord Oakford that Conrad’s accusations weren’t fantasies.

  If only his father trusted him! Conrad was certain that Lord Oakford would never do anything to betray his country or his son, but who knew what he might say to Alston in the mistaken belief that his fellow director was harmless? Lord Oakford was a fine man in so many ways, he was the man Conrad admired most in the world, yet he couldn’t trust him. It was so frustrating.

  He would just have to rely on Anneliese and McCaigue. Anneliese was doing well; what McCaigue was up to, he had no idea.

  ‘Sir! Mr de Lancey, sir!’

  He turned to see a lance corporal running towards him.

  ‘Yes, corporal?’

  ‘Message from Lieutenant Dodds, sir. Three Home Guard have wandered into a minefield. They need sappers to get them out.’

  Conrad swore under his breath.

  The minefield was only ten minutes from the school on a stretch of boggy pasture half a mile in from the sea. The minefield was clearly marked, although in the dark it was impossible to make out the writing on the wooden signs. Dodds was there with the Home Guard platoon commander and he had alerted the engineers who were on their way. Even in the gloom, Conrad could see three figures in the field about a hundred yards away waving towards them. One of them was shouting for help. He sounded more like a child than a man.

  ‘How did they get in there?’ said Conrad to the Home Guard officer, who was a middle-aged man with the rank of captain. ‘I thought you people were supposed to know the local terrain. That was the whole point.’

  ‘They come from a village ten miles away,’ said the captain meekly. ‘They have never patrolled here before.’

  ‘Well, can’t they just keep still and wait?’ Conrad said. ‘The sappers will be here in twenty minutes.’

  ‘That’s Cobbold shouting,’ said the Home Guard officer. ‘He’s only seventeen. He’s just joined up.’

  Conrad stood up and roared. ‘Private Cobbold! Stay calm and wait for the sappers! They won’t be long.’

  Private Cobbold shut up.

  ‘I could go through the minefield and lead them out, sir,’ said Dodds. ‘It’s quite muddy. You can see their footprints in the field. If I tread in them exactly, I shouldn’t blow up a mine.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dodds. Just wait for the sappers.’

  ‘He was shouting about running for it earlier,’ said Dodds.

  ‘Why would he do that?’ said Conrad. ‘If he’s that scared he will just stay put.’

  ‘Message from the sappers, sir.’ It was Lance Corporal Fowler. ‘Their vehicle has broken down.’

  ‘They are engineers, aren’t they?’ said Conrad impatiently. ‘Can’t they fix it?’

  ‘Fan belt has snapped.’

  ‘All right, you men out there!’ Conrad shouted. ‘There’s been a delay with the sappers. Hold tight, we’ll sort it out!’

  He turned to send his own vehicle to head back to pick up the sappers. Just then there was a cry from the field. Conrad turned to see a figure sprinting towards them. ‘What the hell?’ said Conrad. ‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘Private Cobbold, I said—’

  There was a loud explosion and Private Cobbold was sent flying into the air, landing hard on his shoulder.

  Then there was silence. The watching soldiers held their breath, straining to hear sounds of life. Then it came, a long low moan.

  ‘Are you all right, Cobbold?’ the Home Guard officer shouted.

  His request was met by another moan.

  ‘I’m going to get him,’ said Dodds.

  ‘Wait for the sappers. It’s his own bloody fault he’s in there. There is no reason he should get you killed too.’

  The moan rose to a scream. And then another.

  Conrad turned to Corporal Fowler to give him orders to drive off and pick up the sappers.

  When he turned back, Dodds was in the minefield. He had a torch and he was sweeping the ground in front of him, stepping gingerly from footprint to footprint.

  ‘Mr Dodds! Come back here at once!’ Conrad shouted, but Dodds ignored him.

  The screams continued.

  Conrad held his breath as he watched Dodds pick his way through the field. At any moment he expected to hear another explosion and to see Dodds turned into a rag doll flying through the air. But perhaps Dodds’s theory would hold true. Perhaps by sticking to the footprints he would dodge any mines.

  Conrad liked Dodds, and he was turning into a very good officer. This would be a very stupid way to lose him.

  He reached the point at which the Home Guards’ path into the minefield was closest to Cobbold’s moaning body. But there was still ten yards distance between the two men, ten yards of virgin minefield. Dodds hesitated. For a moment Conrad thought he would chance his luck by stepping on to untrodden grass, but then he eased himself on to the ground, and began to crawl. It was hard to see in the dark, but standard operating procedure when forced to traverse a minefield was to crawl on your stomach, using a bayonet to probe ahead for mines, and that was what Conrad assumed Dodds was doing.

  It was still dangerous, though, and Private Cobbold was still yelling.

  Those last ten yards seemed to take an age. Then the moon appeared from behind the clouds, and a few seconds later Dodds’s tall frame was silhouetted against the grey horizon above the sea in the distance. Conrad could hear the officer talking soothingly to the fallen man, whose screams decreased to whimpers. A barn owl shrieked.

  Dodds bent down, slung Private Cobbold over his shoulders and stepped back the way he had come. The screams intensified: Dodds had given no consideration to Cobbold’s wounds – he couldn’t afford to.

  Carefully, slowly, Dodds picked his way to the edge of the minefield where four men and a stretcher were waiting for him.

  He ambled over to Conrad and stood to attention. He was breathing heavily and his tunic was covered with blood.

  Conrad felt the fury explode within him. ‘Mr Dodds! I gave you a clear order not to go in there! Are you trying to get yourself killed?’

  ‘Yes, sir! I thought we had discussed this before, sir!’

  ‘You’re an idiot, Mr Dodds.’

  ‘Yes, sir! No doubt at all about that, sir!’

  Conrad stared at the tall, blood-spattered, nineteen-year-old officer with the rosy cheeks, standing to attention in front of him. A wave of relief rushed through him, extinguishing the anger and replacing it with a sort of giddy euphoria. He felt his lips twitch into a grin. Dodds smiled too. Very soon they were both bent over laughing, as the Home Guard captain looked on bemused.

  It was a long night. The sappers eventually arrived and cleared a path to the two men still stuck in the field. The boy survived, but only just. He had lost a lot of blood and the surgeon said he would lose his leg below the knee.

  When Conrad and Dodds eventually arrived back at the prep school for breakfast, there was an envelope waiting for Conrad, addressed in his father’s writing.

  Conrad tore it open. It contained an unopened telegram with a covering note from his father saying it had arrived at Kensington Square and he had forwarded it immediately.

  Good for him, thought Conrad.

  The cable was from a Hubert Berger of a bank in Liechtenstein. MEET ME IN HOLLAND 11 MAY AT 6 PM MADVIG’. Given the invasion of Denmark in April, Copenhagen was no longer operational as a letterbox, and so Theo had used a neutral Liechtensteiner to pass on his message. According to the code they were using, 11 May at 6 p.m. actually meant 8 May at 3 p.m., which was the following day.

  It mu
st be urgent. Probably something about an imminent invasion of Holland and Belgium, Conrad guessed. But how the hell could he get there in a day?

  He could try to persuade Colonel Rydal to give him leave, but since he had only been back at the battalion for less than forty-eight hours, that was a long shot. If the colonel did agree, then Conrad might be able to book a seat on an aeroplane to Holland: it would be tight but it was possible he could get to the airport in time. But would they stop him getting on the aeroplane at passport control?

  Probably. Given how Major McCaigue had somehow known about his trip to London the previous weekend, it seemed quite likely that someone would stop him.

  He could try to get authorization from McCaigue or from Van. But that would take hours, or even a day. And even then the chances were he wouldn’t get it.

  Was there anyone he knew who could or would just up sticks and get on an aeroplane to Holland? Someone he could trust and so could Theo?

  Anneliese? No. Insurmountable border-control difficulties. His father? Definitely not. His brother Reggie? Worse. Veronica?

  Veronica.

  He found a telephone and gave Veronica’s number to the operator. Amazingly, she was already awake. Must be the war and the driving job.

  ‘Darling! How lovely to hear from you!’

  ‘Veronica, can you do me a tiny favour? It would involve dropping everything and getting on an aeroplane right away. The ticket’s about eleven pounds. I’ll pay.’

  ‘Oh, is it something cloak-and-dagger?’

  ‘As a matter of fact it is.’

  ‘How divine! Tell me.’

  Ten minutes later Conrad composed a telegram back to Herr Hubert Berger in Liechtenstein: ‘SORRY CANT MAKE TRIP STOP WIFE WILL COME INSTEAD STOP DE LANCEY’.

  39

  Clapham, South London, 8 May

  Constance found the pub easily enough, just off Lavender Hill in Clapham. She ignored the hubbub coming from the public bar, and pushed open the frosted glass door of the saloon bar, which was empty, with the exception of a big man perched on a stool, accompanied by a half-empty pint of beer.

  He grinned when he saw her. ‘Hello, Connie, my love! Good to see you!’

  ‘Nice to see you too, Joe,’ said Constance. Normally she hated people calling her Connie, but it somehow seemed all right coming from Joe Sullivan.

  ‘What will it be?’ asked Joe.

  ‘A glass of sherry, please.’

  ‘Ada!’ Joe yelled through towards the public bar. ‘A sherry for the lady.’

  They sat down at a table. Joe Sullivan was a big man with a broad chest, a thrusting jaw and two distinct bumps on his nose. He was probably about thirty: old enough not to be called up yet. Constance had met him at a Nordic League rally and, despite his tough appearance, she found him remarkably easy to talk to. They shared an enthusiasm for the literature of the movement, and had become experts on the various theories of Jewish, Freemason and communist conspiracies. Constance knew that Joe had done some bodyguard work for the Nordic League and the British Union of Fascists. He could be firm. The truth was he liked a fight. And he believed in the cause. So, the right man to come to.

  Within a couple of minutes they became involved in an intense discussion of a pamphlet they had both read: The Rulers of Russia by an Irish priest, which demonstrated that fifty-six of the fifty-nine members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Russia were Jews.

  ‘Why can’t people see what’s right in front of their faces?’ said Joe. ‘This war is being run by the Jews for the Jews.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ said Constance. She glanced at the bar. Empty. They were alone. The time had come. ‘Joe? Could I ask you a favour?’

  ‘Course you can, Connie. What is it?’

  ‘Have you ever killed someone?’

  Joe froze, his blue eyes coolly examining her. For a dreadful moment Constance thought she had made a mistake, but it was too late. She ploughed on.

  ‘Would you kill someone for me?’

  Still no response from Joe.

  ‘I’d pay you.’

  ‘Who is he?’ said Joe. ‘A lover? Or is it a she? Your husband’s mistress?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ said Constance. ‘There’s something going on. Something I can’t tell you about at the moment, but it will change the government and end the war. In a good way, a way you would approve of. But only if we can get rid of this man. His name is Conrad de Lancey.’

  ‘Is he Jewish?’

  ‘No,’ said Constance. Then she had an inspiration. ‘But his father works for a Jewish merchant bank.’ Henry had told her that Gurney Kroheim’s roots were actually Quaker, but there was no need for Joe to know that.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Five hundred pounds. I have two hundred and fifty with me to give you now, and two hundred and fifty afterwards.’

  ‘And I’m supposed to take it on trust that this will help stop the war?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Constance. ‘

  Joe smiled. ‘Who would have thought it? A nice well-brought-up lady like you?’

  Constance stared at him. ‘I’m deadly serious, Joe. This has to be done.’

  Joe laughed. ‘I know you are. All right. I’ll help you. Do you have the money with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Constance, reaching into her bag.

  ‘Not here,’ said Joe. ‘Somewhere more private. And you’ll need to tell me something about this Lancey bloke. Come back to my place and we can talk some more about it.’

  He was smiling. Constance knew what he wanted.

  ‘Where’s Ivy?’ Ivy was Joe’s pretty wife.

  ‘At work. Peter Robinson in Oxford Circus. Works all hours, my missus. Won’t be back till late.’

  For an instant, Constance felt guilty about betraying Henry. It was possible that Joe would still do the deed if she didn’t sleep with him. But if she did sleep with him his help was guaranteed.

  And that would keep Henry safe and his plans intact.

  She finished her sherry and smiled at the big man. ‘Yes. Let’s go back to your place.’

  Leiden

  Theo lit his third cigarette as he dawdled over his coffee in the little café in the Diefsteeg, a Dutch newspaper open on the table. Just as they were parting, after the Gestapo agent had slipped off the roof of the Academy building, Theo had suggested the café to Conrad as a future rendezvous. Although the British agent had spotted them there before, the Gestapo hadn’t, and it was somewhere they both knew.

  Theo was enjoying his coffee. Almost reason enough to come to Holland, a neutral country which still served decent coffee. Not for long, though. Maybe he should have another cup while he could.

  Theo was not happy that Conrad wasn’t going to meet him himself. He wondered who ‘his wife’ was. It could be someone from the British secret service, in which case Theo wasn’t sure yet what he would do. The British were blown in Holland, and approaching one of them with his message would be foolish. Yet perhaps he should risk his own safety, given the importance of what he had to say.

  Or perhaps Conrad meant his real wife, or ex-wife, Veronica. Theo had never met her. She belonged to the five-year period between 1933 and 1938 when Conrad and Theo hadn’t seen each other.

  Just then the door opened and a tall Englishwoman entered the café. She was striking: red hair, pale skin, high cheekbones, long legs, wearing an expensive tweed suit. Theo was sure the woman was British: she had that air of cool arrogance of the English upper classes. She scanned the small café. There were only three customers: two old men drinking beer in companionable silence, and Theo.

  For a moment Theo caught her eye. The Englishwoman raised a carefully plucked eyebrow. Theo smiled vaguely and turned back to his newspaper. Out of his peripheral vision he could see the woman hesitate, clearly deciding whether to approach him. Then she ordered a cup of tea in English, and sat at one of the other tables, lighting her cigarette. Theo was confident she wasn’t a professional; she had no tradecra
ft at all. She must be Veronica de Lancey.

  The four customers sat together in silence for half an hour; then the two old men left and a couple of male students dropped by for a cup of coffee and a slice of cake.

  Eventually, at four o’clock, Veronica gave up, paid her bill and went out on to the narrow lane.

  Theo followed her rapidly. He glanced up and down the alley: it was empty. She turned and saw him.

  ‘Theo?’

  ‘Yes,’ Theo replied in English. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Veronica. Conrad’s wife.’ She looked angry. ‘Why did you let me wait for so long looking like a chump?’

  ‘I wanted to be sure we weren’t being watched.’

  Veronica looked up and down the lane. ‘Well, are we?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Theo. ‘This will only take a moment. If I tell you something, can you remember it without writing it down? It’s extremely important that you repeat it to Conrad as soon as you get back to England.’

  ‘I can do that,’ said Veronica.

  ‘Right, then. Listen carefully. The German offensive will start on the tenth of May. That’s Friday. We will invade Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium. And the main thrust will be through the Ardennes at Sedan. Have you got that?’

  Veronica repeated it accurately.

  ‘Good,’ said Theo. ‘Now we should part. I’ll go back up to the Breestraat, and you go down there.’ He pointed down the lane towards the Pieterskerk.

  ‘Goodbye, Theo,’ said Veronica with a smile. ‘Perhaps we’ll meet again after this stupid war.’

  ‘That might be a while,’ said Theo as he turned on his heel. He had a lot still to do before dawn on Friday.

  House of Commons, Westminster

  Alston was sitting on the government benches a couple of rows behind and a little to the right of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. The House was packed, and although they were well into the second day of the debate on Norway, no one was bored. The tension was growing. History was being made in front of them. But it was not clear to Alston which way history was going.