Ungentlemanly Warfare

by Howard Linskey

  Cooper waited that whole day with no sign of the Komet. He trudged back to the camp and returned the next day and still there was no sighting of the jet fighter. After three days lying on his stomach he was certain the Komet was not on the base and that was no bad thing. It bought them a little time. Whoever said spying was glamorous, he mused as he brushed the dirt from his clothes? They didn’t write about this sort of thing back home in the comics and dime novels.

  On his way home at the end of the third day, Cooper climbed an escarpment that overlooked the valley. A dark shape on the horizon had intrigued him. When he finally reached the top, he realised it was a dilapidated old hunting lodge, probably built at the turn of the century. This tiny, derelict wooden building would have slept no more than four keen hunters back then, each looking to make an early start to catch unsuspecting bird life. Now it had fallen into disrepair but still afforded a panoramic view of the surrounding area. This might be just what I’m looking for, thought Sam.

  ‘There’s our man.’ Montueil was pointing at a shape in the night sky, a little patch of something moving; a gliding, spinning figure coming down to meet them at some speed. The plane that delivered him was already banking away and heading for home.

  The parachutist managed to land on both feet, but was dragged along in a stumbling run, before finally toppling over. Walsh had witnessed better landings but seen far worse. The impact wasn’t too hard but you could never really be sure with a jump. It was all too easy to break an ankle or put out a knee. Walsh stayed where he was, shielded by the tree line, watching. The parachutist climbed unsteadily to his feet with no apparent harm done. Behind him the radio floated down on a separate chute. He tugged at the strings of his own parachute, struggling to bring the billowing silk under his control while it, in turn, threatened to pull him down once more.

  It was time to greet the new arrival. Walsh pulled the cover from the old miner’s lamp and held it out in front of him as he stepped into the clearing. He wanted to be seen now. The last thing Walsh needed was to be shot at by a nervous Englishman delivering a radio. Visibility was poor in the darkness but Walsh could just make out the blurred figure. The man froze as he spotted the lamp, doubtless praying Walsh was a friend not a foe. It was a feeling Walsh knew only too well and was perhaps the reason why he risked a call.

  ‘Welcome to France,’ he spoke in English, just loud enough for the new man to hear, ‘you are safe now,’ and he immediately realised how ridiculous that sounded in this land filled with hostile, conquering soldiers.

  Still the parachutist did not move. The night was so dark it lent the immobile figure a ghostlike countenance, rendering him almost invisible. Walsh blinked hard and lowered the lantern to avoid its glare. He took in a short, slight figure, clad in a regulation khaki jump suit and skullcap. A balaclava had been added to protect against the cold, it hid the features of the new man, giving him a sinister air.

  Finally the apparition moved, advancing on Walsh. There was barely a yard between them when the figure finally stopped and looked him up and down. Then, in one fluid movement the skull cap and balaclava were pulled away.

  ‘Christ on a bike, it’s you,’ said Emma Stirling with not a little irritation, as her hair fell down around her shoulders, ‘I might have bloody well known.’

  Emma’s mood had not lightened by the time they reached the new camp, two miles from its unsanitary predecessor, and Walsh began to quiz her again about her presence among them. ‘I told you,’ she snapped, ‘I was given an order, that’s why I came.’ She was speaking as if they were all simple-minded; while Cooper, Valvert, Simone and Montueil sat around her. ‘Deliver a radio set to the Maquis, they said, then stay with the group until relieved. That was my order,’

  ‘Stay until relieved?’ probed Walsh.

  ‘Yes!’ replied Emma, as if he was particularly hard of hearing.

  ‘From Price?’

  ‘From Price.’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ and his aggravated tone annoyed her even more. Emma had assumed Harry Walsh had been removed from her life and she would finally be able to move on. She had thought of him often since the night he brought her out of Normandy but, as the days wore on, she told herself it was time to forget this married man who could never leave his wife. Emma loved Harry but knew she could never have him, so Walsh must be consigned to her past. The finality of this enabled her to dare to think of a future without Walsh. Now she faced weeks, possibly months, marooned in a Maquis camp with him, a place so small she could not hope to escape his presence for more than an hour. It was a bitter irony. Price might have caused this situation, deliberately no doubt, but her anger was firmly directed at Walsh. Would she ever be rid of the bloody man?

  Sam Cooper watched the interrogation of the new arrival closely. Emma Stirling’s answers troubled the American on some vague level. It wasn’t the words she used exactly but the tone of her replies that bothered him. Emma seemed exasperated, almost sulky, as she answered Walsh’s questions. Cooper had worked with women before and this one was not behaving like an agent. Walsh meanwhile acted like he was scolding a girlfriend about an impetuous purchase. Emma’s impatience and Walsh’s irritation obviously came from a long-standing intimacy with Harry Walsh, of that Cooper felt sure.

  ‘Who’s Price?’ the American finally asked.

  ‘My immediate superior,’ answered Walsh, the last word dripping with sarcasm.

  No one spoke for a moment.

  ‘Is there a problem we should be aware of?’ enquired the American.

  ‘There’s no problem, Sam.’ Just the minor issue of a commanding officer determined to play the mischief-maker.

  ‘That’s right, Captain Cooper, there is no problem. Captain Walsh is none too pleased to see me that’s all and the feeling is entirely mutual.’ With that Emma rose to leave, ‘I’m very tired, I haven’t slept much in the past few days. Simone, would you show me the way please?’

  As soon as the mortifying appearance of a woman in his camp had been confirmed to him, Montueil had sent for Simone. The fisherman had never been married, his experience of women being confined almost exclusively to other men’s wives and he knew little of their domestic requirements. For her part, Simone seemed irked at being asked to leave the men by this older, possibly prettier interloper but she acquiesced, despite her immediate dislike of the woman who seemed so confident with Captain Walsh, to the point of rudeness. Cooper waited till they were out of earshot.

  ‘Correct me if I have misread the situation, Harry, but is there some romantic history between you and Miss Stirling?’ Walsh shot him an irritated look. ‘I mean I could hardly blame you, she is very easy on the eye, but it would help us all if…’ His words tailed away for, in truth, he was not sure how to phrase it. How would it help them all to know if Walsh and Emma Stirling had been paramours? The OSS had not trained Cooper how to handle such matters of the heart. All of a sudden, he felt like a schoolboy who has clumsily trodden on something.

  ‘Goodnight, Sam,’ answered Walsh, before he climbed to his feet and trudged morosely away.

  ‘Might as well have said “Mind your own goddamned business, Sam”,’ offered the American and Montueil nodded slowly in agreement.

  Cooper watched Walsh go then he stole a furtive glance back at Emma, who rewarded him with a final tantalising swing of her hips, as she receded into the darkness.

  ‘Can’t say I blame him though,’ he said and Montueil gave an affirming Gallic grunt.

  27

  ‘The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience.’

  Ninon de Lenclos – French courtesan & author

  The following day, Montueil risked a visit to Rouen. When he returned he was a picture of resentment. ‘The Germans show no sign the war goes against them. There’s to be a grand meal. The local SS gangster will feast every senior military commander and polic
eman in the area.’

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ asked Cooper.

  Montueil waved his hand dismissively, ‘Anniversary of a failed attempt to blow Hitler to pieces before he seized power, in a beer hall. They say he was inches from death.’

  ‘That was an expensive failure,’ said Cooper.

  ‘Look what it has cost the world already,’ agreed Montueil.

  ‘Makes you wonder whose side he is on,’ offered Valvert. ‘God I mean.’

  ‘Who is the SS Officer?’ asked Walsh.

  ‘A Colonel Tauber.’ There was a look of recognition from Walsh. ‘Know him, Harry?’ asked Montueil.

  ‘We never actually met,’ said Walsh evasively.

  ‘Let’s hope you don’t have the pleasure,’ said Cooper.

  ‘So, it’s his big night, is it?’ asked Walsh.

  ‘One of my contacts has seen the orders.’ Montueil was bitter. ‘Three grand chefs to prepare the meal, dozens of assistants and two huge lorry loads of food and wine coming into Rouen from a wholesaler in Elbeuf, the very best of everything they say. The Germans will eat themselves sick that night, on the finest French produce, while we starve out here in the hills.’

  ‘And all the local bigwigs invited to attend, in their fine dress uniforms, with wives, girlfriends, mistresses,’ Walsh ruminated.

  ‘Not all three surely?’ quipped the American before adding, ‘got something in mind Harry?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he turned back to Montueil. ‘Must make you pretty angry to hear all this.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘How’d you like to do something about it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Valvert cautiously.

  Walsh shrugged. ‘Ruin their evening; give them all a night Tauber won’t forget in a hurry.’

  ‘Of course, I’d love to do that, Harry, you know I would, but how can we?’ asked Montueil. ‘There will be hundreds guarding them. They are expecting officers from the Wehrmacht, the SS, even the German navy has its headquarters at L’École Supérieure de Commerce in Rouen.’

  Valvert said, ‘You can’t be serious, Harry. We won’t be able to get within a mile. It can’t be done.’

  ‘Yes it can, Christophe, trust me.’

  ‘What about our mission?’ asked Cooper.

  ‘The target isn’t here yet.’ Like the question his answer was suitably vague. ‘I say we keep ourselves busy in the meantime.’

  ‘Harry, please,’ urged Montueil, ‘think about what you are saying. How can we attack a hall in the middle of town when it is guarded as if Hitler himself is in attendance? It isn’t possible.’

  ‘Almost anything is possible these days, Montueil, and I say we can ruin their night. Now, are you with me?’

  ‘Of course I am Harry but this is…’ Montueil had clearly run out of words to describe the madness in Harry’s head.

  ‘Jesus H Christ,’ said Cooper as he regarded the Englishman, ‘I can tell the cogs are whirring.’

  Emma soon learned there was little to do in the evenings but talk. The men would sit around the fire, drinking their local cider or bottles of second-rate wine not already purloined by the Germans. Emma drank sparingly and spoke mostly to Simone who, despite her initial distrust of the new arrival, was eager to hear all about London. Simone had never been anywhere and wanted to go everywhere. Paris would be a good start once this war was finally over and London seemed a world away.

  Sam Cooper ambled up to join their conversation and Simone was impressed to learn the number of countries he had visited but Emma was more interested in his homeland. ‘What do you miss most, Captain Cooper?’ she asked him.

  ‘Me? That’s easy, Fenway Park,’ and when his answer was greeted with incomprehension he added, ‘home of the Boston Red Sox, though they have never won a thing in my lifetime.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ asked Emma in genuine bemusement.

  ‘Baseball,’ said Sam, as if it were obvious.

  ‘Sam’s American,’ said Walsh as he joined them, ‘they play each other at sport and call it a “World Series”.’ He’d been grumpy ever since Emma’s sudden appearance. If anything, she felt even more aggrieved, as Walsh had yet to confide the true nature of his mission to her. To think he had once trusted her with their own enormous secret and now he was treating her as if she might secretly be working for Heinrich Himmler.

  ‘You’ve not seen a Fenway crowd when the Yankees are in town, Harry, now that’s an atmosphere,’ Cooper assured him. ‘One day my team are gonna win that World Series, then I will die a contented man. But I guess you guys don’t have baseball, so you don’t know what you’re missing,’

  ‘Oh, we have baseball, Sam, I think you’ll find we invented the game. Only we call it rounders. Emma probably played it at Roedean.’

  ‘Ignore him, Captain Cooper,’ ordered Emma.

  ‘Please, call me Sam.’

  ‘Ignore him, Sam, talk to me instead.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Cooper, ‘did you really go to Roedean? I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ said Walsh, ‘it’s the girl’s school for the posh and the rich.’

  ‘What do you know about my school?’ snapped Emma.

  ‘I know you hated it.’

  ‘Yes, well, maybe I did,’ she conceded, ‘perhaps I was neither posh enough nor rich enough then,’ and she directed the rest of her comments to Cooper. ‘I didn’t really fit in there. I didn’t respond well to the training.’

  ‘Training for what?’

  ‘They were teaching us to be the wives and mothers of entitled men. Oh they didn’t say as much but we all knew it really. What else were we destined for?’ And she reflected on this, ‘But then the war broke out.’

  ‘And you found yourself parachuting into France with a radio set. That’s quite a leap, in more ways than one.’

  ‘I had an aptitude for the language,’ she explained, ‘the one thing I was good at. The talent spotters found me working on translations when the rules changed in ’42. Women weren’t allowed on frontline duty until then. SOE thought I might be good at this.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘sure I mean but here I am anyway,’ said Emma, not wishing to prolong discussions about her self-doubt. ‘So, tell me all about Boston, what’s it like?’

  ‘Friendlier than New York, and full of fine people, mostly. We have the best seafood on the east coast. One day, Miss Stirling, you must try the shrimp at the Union Oyster House. That’s the oldest restaurant in America.’

  ‘I’ve been to a pub in Covent Garden older than your entire country,’ said Walsh.

  ‘Shut up, grumpy, we are not talking to you,’ and Emma made an elaborate point of turning to face Cooper. ‘Please, call me Emma. Will you go back there?’

  ‘When the war’s over? I’d like nothing better. Live in a brownstone on Beacon Street, get a regular job like a regular guy, walk down to Fenway to take in the game. Yeah that’s for me.’

  ‘Except you’re not a regular guy though, are you, Sam?’ said Walsh. ‘Describing this normal life you’re never going to have.’

  ‘Sounds like you are talking about yourself there, friend.’ And there was a definite edge to their words.

  ‘Does everyone follow baseball in America?’ asked Emma quickly. She had no interest in the answer but wanted to distract these two quarrelling ninnies before they came to blows.

  ‘Pretty much. There are two passions in my city; sport and politics, and I’m a typical Bostonian’

  ‘Then I’ll look forward to you running for president,’ said Walsh sourly.

  ‘Argh, but you’re forgetting, I’m Boston-Irish.’

  ‘Which means?’ asked Emma.

  ‘Which means America is a long way from accepting a Catholic in the White House.’

&nbs
p; ‘That’s no problem, Sam,’ said Walsh.

  ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘No, just change your religion’

  ‘Just like that, huh?’

  ‘Just tell yourself it’s for the good of your country.’

  ‘That what you think of me, Harry? Uncle Sam taps me on the shoulder and all my principles go into the trash can?’

  ‘I never said that, Sam, but it’s interesting that you did,’ then he added, ‘I’m going to stretch my legs, see if the perimeter guards are awake.’

  ‘That man’s insufferable,’ said Emma when he had gone.

  Colonel Tauber was in a lighter mood than usual. Kornatzki even caught his superior giving a little whistle at the end of the recital. ‘For a French quartet, I think they’ve almost mastered the Schumann,’ said Tauber as they left the town hall, ‘wouldn’t you say, Kornatzki?’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘It’s going to be a fine evening if they play like that. Everybody has accepted, simply everybody, well apart from one or two invitations I sent to Berlin but then one never really expected…’ and his words drifted away, for they were not really meant for his deputy.

  Tauber’s whistling was replaced by a contented humming of Schumann’s Kreisleriana. The Colonel felt like a man in control of his own destiny. The night would be the triumph he had waited so long for. Tauber had seen less able men rise through the ranks, while he drifted in one unpromising position after another; now, finally there was a chance to break free and move up. The expertly played classical music, the fine wines and elegant dining would all help to propel him up the ranks. If the evening went well, and there was no reason to doubt that it would, Tauber would become an accepted part of the social strata of the region. The Colonel smiled to himself. If the night went with a real bang, word of it might even reach Berlin.

  28

  ‘The quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love.’