Silent War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘Although two hundred grand is a lot of money to you and me, Captain, it’s not the sort of sum to get too excited about, is it? Can’t we just grab a bit more from the Jerries in reparations?’

  ‘There is an and, Charlie . . .’

  ‘And what, the Crown jewels?’

  ‘. . . and millions and millions of American dollars. Maybe billions . . .’

  ‘Where on earth did we get those in 1945? Weren’t we giving everything we had left to the Americans by the end of the war, to pay for tanks, guns and aeroplanes? Whose mattress was that lot under?’

  He did the pause thing again. He actually looked a bit sick. His tanned face definitely turned a shade paler . . . and he whispered, really whispered, ‘We made it, Charlie.’

  ‘Made?’

  ‘Made it. Printed it. Good old De La Rue’s.’

  ‘The playing card company?’

  ‘That’s right. They print most of our money as well – except the Scottish and Irish stuff, which is a bit ropey.’

  It was my turn to stop for breath. I did that thing I’ve told you about; whistled the intro to a jazz number inside my head. This time it was ‘Caravan’; the Duke’s version.

  Then I asked him, ‘You mean we forged billions of American dollars to pay off the French Resistance?’

  ‘We couldn’t do anything else. We’d put so much forged British and French currency out there that no one trusted it any more. We didn’t have anything left to pay them with, and the French Commies wouldn’t fire off so much as a single round unless we paid first.’

  ‘Did our American cousins know anything about this at the time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Billions, you said . . . and it’s still loose out there somewhere?’

  ‘Possibly. That’s what we need to find out. It just hasn’t turned up anywhere yet.’

  ‘Do the Americans know about it now?’

  ‘No, not as far as we know. That’s rather encouraging, I thought.’

  ‘They are going to be very, very unhappy when they do . . .’

  ‘Which is why we need to get it back, if we can. There is enough there to destabilize the almighty dollar, and if that happens we’ll all go down the tubes with it.’

  ‘Did you know that I was once accused of assisting Frohlich’s merry bunch? Someone thought I must be in on it.’ One of those little lights went on in my head: money. ‘. . . That’s why an arrest warrant chased me all over Europe.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re here. The RAF has been looking for the remains of that aircraft on the quiet, ever since the end of the war. They’ve photographed every square foot of its probable flight path. Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Trans-Jordan – you name it. No one expected it to turn up in Kurdistan, but the hot candidate you saw a week or so ago was spotted from a lost Dakota fooling around in the mountains last year. It’s taken us months to find the bloody thing again.’

  ‘You really think it’s Frohlich’s crate?’

  ‘It’s black, and better eyes than mine say it’s a Stirling bomber.’

  I felt like saying better eyes than yours wouldn’t be all that hard to come by, but the dog growled at me, so I thought better of it.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Identify the bloody thing, old son. You’ve been inside it before, and we can’t find anyone else who’ll admit to having been anywhere near it.’

  Which is what I should have done if anyone asked me, shouldn’t I?

  ‘It will take us bloody weeks to trek up there, Peter. It’s on a small plateau in the middle of exactly nowhere.’ He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything, so I repeated, ‘It will take us bloody weeks . . .’

  When I looked up Levy was staring at me. Except he wasn’t, because of having no eyes. His sunspecs were looking at me. So was his dog, and so was the Arab.

  Peter said, ‘No, not really.’

  ‘What do you mean not really?’

  ‘Hudd reckons that once you’re out of the aircraft, you’ll be on the ground in less than five minutes.’

  It was one of those odd moments when all the sounds of the outside world fade to nothing. People’s mouths open and shut without speech: birds stop singing. I could no longer hear even the buzzing of the ruddy flies. Everything stops. It’s happened to me every time I’ve been arrested. Then I fully understood what he’d just said.

  He had to be bloody joking.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Blue moon

  I didn’t actually want to go back to Deversoir, and if you think about it for a minute, you won’t bloody blame me. Charlie Bassett – nobody’s fool. Play it, Sam. Play it again . . . these bastards were planning to fling me out of an aeroplane again, and I hadn’t even seen a pyramid yet. The problem was that we were still on red alert, so there was nowhere safe to go. My authorization from Watson covered me for a journey to the Bitter Lake Officers’ Club and back, not a Cook’s Tour of Lower Egypt. Even so I took a chance, and drove past my base, and on to El Kirsh. Sod the lot of them.

  When Haye with an e saw me she said, ‘There must be a name for people like you . . . ghouls who can’t stop themselves from hanging around hospitals.’

  ‘I came to see you. Is your fellah in town?’

  ‘No; he’s on leave in Alex.’

  ‘I’m not sure he exists. You may have invented him to put men off.’

  ‘You may be right. It wouldn’t be a bad idea. What did you want?’

  ‘I told you: to see you. When are you off duty?’ A passing doctor who was too handsome for his own good – one of those James Mason types – frowned to see his nurse talking to a humble airman as if he was a human being. She ignored him: I’ll bet that did her career a lot of good.

  She replied, ‘I was going to go for a swim. Have you trunks with you?’

  ‘I’ve nothing with me but my genius. Who said that?’

  ‘Nobody did, except you. Oscar Wilde may once have said something like it, but probably didn’t. I’ll find you something to swim in.’

  I drove her to the club at Abu Sueir, where we lay around the pool. She taught me a few swimming strokes. I could manage about six feet, say two strokes, of breast stroke before I rolled over on one side and foundered like a torpedoed aircraft carrier. It was fun. I suddenly realized that, apart from being with my boys and Maggs and the Major, I almost never had any fun any more. The thought quietened me, and Susan picked up on it.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I have two boys. I suddenly missed them.’

  ‘Do they have a mother?’

  ‘One each probably; I only knew one of them, and she didn’t stick around for long enough.’

  ‘That’s sad . . .’

  ‘Not as sad as if they had. We’re probably better off without them. The boys are with my two best friends, who live on the South Coast. When I get back, I’m going to find ways of spending more time with them.’

  ‘Do they know that?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘You should tell them.’

  We drank limejuice with native lemonade: it was cloudy and bitter. Just the thing for a warm day.

  Eventually she asked me, ‘Why did you come up here, Charlie? It can’t only have been to see me.’

  ‘Technically I’m AWOL, I’m afraid; I’m getting rather good at it. I was supposed to return direct to base, but I suddenly didn’t want to. Totally brassed off at being bossed about, so I came out here.’

  ‘That was possibly a little stupid. I don’t know whether to be flattered or alarmed. What about your boss?’

  ‘He’ll be having a hairy canary, but he won’t do anything about it. I’ll phone him later.’

  ‘What brought this on?’

  ‘Somebody told me something which scared me; really scared me.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘No. Need to know.’

  ‘Good. I hate other people’s secrets, but we nurses get told a lot.’

  ‘Ca
n I stay with you tonight?’

  ‘. . . another girl shares with me.’

  ‘. . . and she’ll mind?’

  ‘Probably not. You’re masculine and reasonably young; she’s an Australian – the rest speaks for itself.’

  We stopped at the RAF shops in Abu Sueir for a few things Susan needed, went on for a cool drink in Ali Osman’s cafe. I bought a couple of dirty postcards – Edwardian style – from the travelling hurdy-gurdy man winding his music outside. She dozed on the drive back to El Kirsh, even though it was only a short journey. Egypt looked colourful, primitive and peaceful. Who could get into trouble here?

  Haye with an e shared with a sheila named Sheila. I had difficulty with that myself at first. Like most Aussies she was a giantess, had big feet and a big laugh. She’d been contracted to the RAF from an oil company, and worked in a laboratory at El Firdan, testing aircraft fuels before they were pumped. She said there had been a problem with the water content of some of the stuff bought in from the Americans. It froze at high altitudes, and blocked the injectors. She also made gin: gallons of the bloody stuff. So we had a gay old evening.

  After an hour or so of drinking I walked out to a public telephone box on one of the streets of married quarters. It was identical to a phone box you can find on any London street. A woman in her forties had beaten me to it, and I had to spend ten minutes trying not to hear her arguing with her mother back in Blighty. When she left she gave me a nice smile, and raised her eyes briefly to the stars: she must have guessed my call wasn’t going to be an easy one either. Life wasn’t so bad.

  Watson was in mild mode. ‘Where are you, Charlie?’

  ‘El Kirsh.’

  ‘Seeing that nurse again? Anything going on between you two?’

  ‘That’s our business, sir, but no. And I am almost pleased to report it.’

  ‘Good. Don’t catch anything. We need you. When are you coming back?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Good.’ Again. ‘. . . and don’t lose that car: I can’t afford another one. Change the date on your warrant, initial the change and overstamp it with the hospital stamp. I’m sure the girl you’re with knows what to do. I don’t want the MPs picking on you.’

  ‘Fine.’ I seemed to have lost all my words. Does that ever happen to you?

  Watson had to make all the running. ‘What’s she like, this nurse of yours?’

  ‘She can quote Oscar Wilde.’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone: they’d probably send her home.’

  Maybe that was a tip to pass on. I offered to sleep on the veranda, but they said I’d be eaten alive by the creatures of the night, so I agreed to a bed made up from their sitting-room sofa. They showered and washed before they retired, and I followed them through the small bathroom. The feminine smells it contained made me almost as homesick as the memory of my boys.

  After I had washed I braved the veranda for a last smoke. My tobacco was getting too dry; I’d have to find a way of keeping it moist. I was sure the old buggers out here had already solved that problem. The girls’ small quarter was positioned midway between two street lamps, and as I smoked my eye was drawn to a tawny, dark shape sliding through the shadows cast by the houses opposite. Low and long, and completely silent. She paused to look at me, and then moved on. Eye contact. We’d have to stop meeting like this.

  In the middle of the night Haye with an e tiptoed out of her bedroom, and woke me. I sat up and yawned. She squeezed in alongside. I put my arm around her, and pulled a blanket around both of us. During that season the days were hot, but the nights cool.

  She said, ‘I remembered something else that Oscar’s supposed to have said.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Who, being loved, is poor? Are you poor, Charlie?’

  ‘No; not at the moment. I’m feeling a bit rich.’

  ‘So am I.’

  We didn’t have to do or say anything else, so we didn’t.

  We went back to sleep like the Babes in the Wood. Susan slept still leaning against me. Sometimes life deals you very pleasant cards.

  I was quite proud of myself for resisting the urge to drop into the Blue Kettle on the way back. I didn’t even stop at Ismailia, thundered along the edge of Lake Timsah, heading south, but it was one of those days when the gods had it in for me, because I picked up a flat halfway between Gebel Maryam and Deversoir.

  The road was dead straight before and behind me; the few palms shimmered in the heat haze. No water, unless you counted a bleeding great canal alongside me. One of those times when you realize that you could be in real trouble. I’d heard stories of Gyppoes spreading tacks on the road, and then gunning down the poor innocent who gets out to change his wheel. I scanned my surroundings from up close, right out to the horizons. No tacks. No Gyppoes. No anything for sodding miles. Not even a six-year-old stone thrower on the back of a camel, but if I wasn’t worth their killing, I wasn’t going to complain.

  Just when you think things can’t get worse, they always bloody do. When I opened the car boot there was no jack: so I had nothing to lift the bugger off the tarmac with. Half an hour later, when my depression was notching itself up into a nasty bit of panic, a three-tonner full of singing Brown Jobs came trundling down from the north.

  They hadn’t a jack small enough for the car, but they stood around and simply lifted it up and held it, until I had one wheel off and the spare on. One of the things the Army has always been exceptionally good at is training small groups of men to cooperate to achieve feats of strength beyond that possible by one on his own. The second lieutenant with them was sarky of course.

  ‘Always pleased to help the junior service when it’s in trouble, old son.’

  ‘And I shall remember to buy a beer for the next soldier I see in the next bar I visit. Thanks for getting me out of a spot.’

  ‘ . . .told you: my pleasure. I’ll be getting along now. Why don’t you follow me, and stay out of trouble? If you’re going abroad during a red alert you should at least carry a gun you know.’ I didn’t want to tell him that I’d completely forgotten to check the alert status again.

  ‘I’ll remember that, thanks. I’ve only been out here a few weeks.’

  ‘Most of our casualties have been out here less than three months when they cop it. If you concentrate on getting through that period, you should be OK.’ He touched his cap peak with his swagger stick. ‘See you later.’ He didn’t though, even though he meant well.

  Nancy was reading a copy of Picture Post that had a photograph of Marilyn on its cover. No one from my generation would ever ask you Marilyn who? He half rolled over when I ducked under the canvas. ‘Where’ve you been? Old Bugger-Lugs is getting ready to send out a search party.’

  ‘I’ve already reported, and given him his car back. I had a flat, and when I went to change the wheel found some bastard had nicked the jack. That’s the last time I take out a car without looking first. Have you got anything to drink?’

  ‘Water. I finished the Stella yesterday. We’ll need to get in some more.’

  Beggars can’t be choosers: water it was. I looked over his shoulder. Marilyn smiled back at me from a picture spread. Most of her clothes were still on.

  ‘I saw some original photographs of her that some tankies had taken from a German spy in France.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In 1945. She was stretched stark-naked on a red velvet curtain, but still looked like the girl next-door. She’s one of those people you don’t begrudge being famous.’

  ‘She is going to have an interesting life,’ he told me. ‘That’s written all over her face . . . and when she’s eighty she’ll write a book that will lift the lid on what all those film stars and producers really get up to.’

  ‘I’ll be first in line to buy a copy. Can I have her after you?’

  He flung the magazine at me, but in a good-natured way. ‘Help yourself. I have to go and clean up anyway. Watson has insisted that I look more soldierly. I respectfully observe
d that RAF officers weren’t supposed to look soldierly; that was for soldiers . . . and then he exploded. I don’t know what he expects me to do – I can’t help it you know.’

  ‘Help what?’

  ‘Looking like this.’

  ‘Yes you can, Oliver. You can get your hair cut the same length as the rest of us for a start . . . or at least have a decent DA.’ That’s a haircut shaped like the feathers on a duck’s arse, for those of you too young to know better. My generation were good, but crude, when it came to making up metaphors. ‘Then you could stop using perfume, and get yourself a bigger pair of shorts.’

  ‘Do you think the Old Man would notice?’

  ‘No, Oliver. But you would then conform, and he would stop noticing. That’s the point.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re back, Charlie: you understand these things. You can take the flak for a while. I don’t know why he’s in such a foul mood.’

  ‘Nor do I; but I’m going to have a shower, and clean up, then go back up there and find out.’

  Watson was limping. I hadn’t noticed that before. He moved around the room like a hungry wolf.

  ‘What happened, sir?’

  ‘What happened when?’

  ‘Apart from me, what happened last night or this morning to make you so damned angry? We’re a small team, so it’s not as if you can’t find someone to let off steam to if you want. What happened?’

  He flung himself into his chair, and then he laughed, ‘Napoleon would have loved you, Charlie.’

  ‘I don’t think I would have liked him, sir: he was a fat French git with piles . . . but why?’

  ‘He always advised his officers, If in doubt, march your men towards the sound of gunfire. That’s what you do. Everyone else has been tiptoeing around me all morning, whereas you blast in here and demand to know what’s going on at the top of your voice. What am I going to do with you?’

  ‘Send me home to Blighty?’ That was the title of another music hall song my old man used to sing when he was drunk.

  ‘Not a chance. Rather find you something else to do. Apparently you made a half-decent fist of the guard the other night, so it’s been suggested that I supply a bit more manpower. M’smith and Nansen will be pretty teed off with you, when they find out. If you had made a complete cobblers of it nobody would have asked us again.’