Death on the Rhine

by Charles Whiting

  McIntyre fired again. Suddenly the car behind them was slithering out of control all over the road. A moment later it overturned, effectively blocking the road behind them. One man got out. McIntyre could see him in the overturned car’s headlights, running desperately for safety. He just made it. As he flung himself into the drainage ditch, the darkness was split by a vivid flash of angry light. A moment later the wrecked car was blazing fiercely and McIntyre sat back, body lathered in sweat, and breathed a sigh of heartfelt relief. Five minutes later they were rattling over the bridge to where British Tommies, all polished boots and blancoed equipment, were staring at the mud-stained, bullet-holed car in frank astonishment.

  Six

  ‘The sawbones tried to patch the Hun up, but it was no use,’ McIntyre said as they sat, listening intently to his story of the kidnapping and that night chase to the safety of the British Zone of Occupation. ‘But he was grateful and he sang. He thought we were trying to save his life.’ McIntyre shrugged and lit another of his cheap cigarettes. ‘We didn’t. He croaked.’

  ‘But he did tell you something,’ C interjected hurriedly, though he had been intrigued by the tough Canadian’s story just as much as the other two.

  ‘Yes,’ McIntyre breathed out a stream of blue smoke. ‘Some.’

  ‘What?’ they all asked eagerly.

  ‘Well, first that this Hitler feller is going to make an attempt to seize power in Germany.’

  ‘You said before that it would be some time in the autumn,’ C prompted him.

  ‘Yes, there’d been a meeting of all these Hun storm troop chiefs and it was agreed they would all converge on Munich around that time. Once they had taken over Bavaria, the rest of Germany would follow.’

  McIntyre took a drag at his cigarette, knowing that they were all hanging on to his words yet determined not to be hurried. ‘The second important thing I got out of him was that just before Hitler’s attempt to take over power, his people are going to have a crack at the occupation powers.’

  C nodded his understanding. ‘Yes, some coup in that area would make him and his fellows heroes in the eyes of the ordinary Hun,’ he said. ‘But which power did he say they had selected?’

  ‘Well, as sure as hell it won’t be the Yanks,’ McIntyre sneered, with all the contempt that most Canadians reserved for their neighbours below the 49th Parallel. ‘The Huns think nothing of them.’

  ‘The French?’ Smith ventured.

  McIntyre shook his head firmly. ‘As I’ve said before, the Froggies shoot people – and without too much yes and no either. No, it’s going to be one of our people in the Zone of Occupation.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps a place even, an army barracks in Cologne. Possibly Army HQ at the Hotel Dom.’ He paused and let his words sink in.

  For a while there was no sound in the room, save the muted whirr of an airship’s propellers passing overhead. Each man was wrapped in a cocoon of his own thoughts and apprehensions.

  Finally C broke the silence with, ‘Do you think you would like to have another crack at taking this bad business a little further, McIntyre? I know it’ll be damned dangerous. I am clear that you are probably a marked man by now over there in Germany.’

  McIntyre shrugged easily. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I’ve been living off borrowed time ever since Vimy Ridge. When you survive and every other feller gets killed all around you, I guess you tend to think that you’ve got luck on your side.’

  ‘Good for you, McIntyre,’ C said enthusiastically. ‘You see, the government doesn’t want to see Germany reunited under any sort of strong man. We need a stable Germany, of course, to stop the Reds in the east moving further into Europe with all that Bolshevik rot of theirs – government by the masses, how dreadful!’ He wrinkled his face, as if he had smelled something particularly foul. ‘But, at the same time, we don’t want a powerful Germany governed by some sort of fanatic throwing his weight about. We had enough of that with the Kaiser and we all know what that led to – the Great War.’

  The three of them nodded their agreement.

  ‘So we must not give this Hitler chappie a chance of upsetting the applecart. In particular, we must stop him carrying out whatever he intends for our zone of occupation, whether it is an assassination or some sort of terrorist attack on our installations like the Irish have been recently carrying out in that accursed country.’

  ‘Frigging Irish Micks,’ McIntyre said softly and to himself.

  Dickie Bird grinned and said, ‘I say, old fruit, you don’t seem to like anybody, what?’

  McIntyre looked hard at the young officer and Dickie Bird closed his mouth quickly. It seemed safer to do that. McIntyre was obviously a man who didn’t have a sense of humour.

  ‘So this is what I suggest,’ C continued, making his decisions as he spoke. ‘While Major McIntyre returns to the unoccupied part of Germany and tries to find out what this man Hitler is up to, as far as our people are concerned, I want you, Smith, to take the Swordfish and sail to Cologne. That will be your base. From there you will be able to stop any attempts to cross the Rhine by these National Socialists.’

  ‘Bit of a tall order, sir, if I may say so,’ Smith objected mildly, for his heart had leapt at the promise of an active command once again.

  ‘Not so much as you might think, Smith. In our area of occupation there are only the bridges at Dusseldorf, Cologne and Bonn to be watched. The Army will take care of that. So you are confronted with an area of the Rhine which is fifty miles long at the most.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ Smith said, not altogether convinced, realising that they were being sent on a very uncertain mission. They knew not what the target was to be, nor who would perform the deed, nor indeed what that deed would be.

  But McIntyre was plagued by no doubts. ‘If there’s nothing else, sir,’ he addressed C, ‘I’ll sling my hook.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it’s all,’ C answered.

  ‘How will we keep in touch?’ Bird asked the Canadian.

  The latter gave him his usual cold, scornful look, the one he always reserved for upper-class Englishmen – ‘shits’, as he called them to himself – and said, ‘You won’t. That’s the short answer. The less people know of my whereabouts, the better. But don’t worry. When I’ve got something, I’ll contact you.’ He put on his battered, stained khaki cap and set it at a rakish angle. ‘Now I’m going to get me a Piccadilly whore. Just in time before I catch the night train to Cologne.’ He gave C a careless salute and swaggered out.

  C breathed out hard. ‘Sometimes that man—’ he began in exasperation, then calmed down. ‘But you must admit that he is a very brave man. Knows his business. Hard as nails.’ He dismissed the Canadian with a sweep of his hand. ‘Now, his point about security is well taken, Smith and Bird. Undoubtedly the Hun will have spies in our Zone of Occupation. So you will only contact our authorities in an emergency. You’ll wear civvies and naturally the Swordfish will have to be modified too.’ He gave them a wintry smile. ‘Can’t have you sailing down the German Rhine armed with torpedoes and a quick-firer, can we?’

  They returned his smile and Smith said, ‘We can turn her into a sort of pleasure cruiser, sir. A lot of chaps have bought surplus boats since the war ended and turned them into floating homes – that sort of thing.’

  ‘I say, yes,’ Bird said enthusiastically. ‘We’ll be rich toffs – English milords off on a jaunt to the jolly old Continent. Money to burn with one eye on the lookout for the charming little ladies of the demi-monde, what!’ He smiled brightly at the other two.

  ‘Don’t be an ass, Dickie,’ Smith snapped. And C said sternly, ‘There’ll be no money to burn on this show. But you will be given an appropriate slush fund to bribe the natives. All these continental Johnnies like having their palms greased.’ He said the words as if they constituted a well-known fact.

  C relaxed a little, if that energetic, stern spymaster could be said ever to relax. He looked up at the two friends as if he were seeing them for the very first time and told him
self that they were the very best of Englishmen: the kind who had made the Empire and who would give their lives selflessly to maintain it. He sighed. If there were only more of the kind instead of this new breed of long-haired, so-called ‘intellectuals’ who were determined on the destruction of England’s great heritage.

  ‘Well, that’s about it,’ he said firmly and rose, the joint of his wooden leg squeaking audibly. He thrust out his hand again. ‘I’d like to wish you God speed. Come home safely. England has a great need of chaps like you in these hard times.’

  They each took the hand, then saluted and did a smart about-turn. C’s presence made people do things like that. They were on their way – to the unknown…

  * * *

  King’s Cross station was crowded. There were huge groups of young sailors, lugging big white seabags, Woodbines stuck at the side of their mouths, caps perched on the backs of their heads in a most irregular fashion. Most of them were slightly drunk, but good-humoured in the fashion of the British matelot. A fiery-faced three-striper, very drunk, was reciting loudly, ‘There was once an old man of Leeds who swallowed a packet of seeds. Great tufts of grass shot out of his arse and his cock was covered in weeds…’

  Smith grinned and said to Bird, ‘I hope that old boy is sober enough when he gets to wherever he’s going or the Master-of-arms’ll really give him hell.’

  Bird nodded.

  By now they were both transformed. The smart naval uniforms were tucked in brown paper parcels under their arms. Their place had been taken by two none-so-clean blue suits bought at a pawnbroker in Camden Town. On their heads they both wore greasy ‘gor blimey’ caps.

  ‘You realise that we can’t travel first class in this gear,’ Bird had said when he had first seen himself in the flyblown mirror.

  Now, eyeing the crowd of drunken sailors, groups of whores and crippled beggars with their tin mugs and chestfuls of war medals, he said petulantly, ‘But I’m damned if I’m going third class with this little lot. Could catch all sorts of nasty diseases.’

  Smith laughed seeing his old friend shudder, as if he were already afflicted by some loathsome skin disease. ‘All right, we’ll go second class, if that’ll please you?’

  Grumbling still, Dickie Bird said it would.

  They pushed their way onto the platform, through a company of kilted Scots, hard-looking regulars with bulbous red noses and the permanently tanned look of soldiers who had done long service in hot climates. A mere boy with a single pip on his shoulder and no medal ribbons appeared to be in charge of them and he was bellowing out orders in a high-pitched, affected voice, which the soldiers obeyed in a slow relaxed way. ‘Good job they haven’t been in the bar,’ Dickie Bird commented, ‘or I think his nibs over there – what a pipsqueak – wouldn’t get away with it.’

  Smith grunted something and found their carriage, occupied by a plump woman with a shopping basket placed carefully at her side. She eyed the two young men suspiciously and said in a ‘refained’ accent, ‘I hope you realise that this is a non-smoker.’

  ‘Yes, Madam, we do,’ Smith said, his mind already on other things, ‘and I can assure you we don’t intend to smoke.’

  She sniffed and said, ‘Well, mind that you don’t.’ Then she turned her head and watched as the Scots started to pile into the third-class compartments at the head of the train, watching their beefy naked thighs under the dangerously swaying kilts with obvious interest.

  Suddenly, however, her attention was caught by another spectacle. A small procession of important-looking people were being ushered down the platform by the station master in a top hat. Behind them, a convoy of porters was pushing mountains of luggage. The procession stopped at first class. The station master doffed his top hat. A man in striped trousers and a morning coat went among the porters, who also took off their caps respectfully, as he passed each man a sixpence. Then came much stiff bowing and clicking of heels, as the Scottish soldiers began to hoot, ‘Why yon folk is squareheads! The Huns are here, laddies. Why didn’t they hang Kaiser Bill?… Come on, why didn’t they hang Kaiser Bill?’

  Smith and Bird watched, amused, as the little subaltern ran up and down the platform opposite the third-class carriages trying to shut up his old sweats with cries of: ‘I’ll have the lot of you on a charge when we get to Edinburgh… Stop that disgraceful barracking at once!’

  But in the end, the only solution was for the red-faced station master to signal the guard to blow his whistle. He shrilled it urgently three times. Doors were banged shut. The steel wheels clattered on the rails. Steam rose. Slowly, the train started to pull out of King’s Cross on its long journey to Scotland.

  Five minutes later, a little man in a well-pressed suit of a continental cut opened the door of the carriage from the corridor, bowed slightly and placed his Gladstone bag on the rack. He flashed a gold-toothed smile at the woman, closed his eyes and promptly went to sleep.

  Dickie Bird looked at Smith and mouthed the word, ‘Hun?’

  Smith nodded.

  Half an hour later, lulled by the rocking motion of the train they were fast asleep, too.

  Seven

  They awoke with a start. A jolt, a sudden rumbling and the train started to slow down. Bleary-eyed, they looked out at lights from the houses on both sides of the line. Opposite them the little man in the continental suit opened his eyes and said, ‘Please, where are we now?’

  Smith squinted at the sign to his right. ‘Grantham,’ he said.

  ‘Aach, Grantham, yes. Thank you,’ the man said, as if it was important.

  The woman picked up her purse and basket and tugging her skirt tightly to her stout body, as if she were afraid of having any bodily contact with the three men, she swept by them, with ‘I hope you’ll excuse me?’

  ‘Of course we will,’ Dickie Bird said, with a wink at Smith, pulling his knees almost to his chin.

  She sniffed and departed, while outside, as the train came to a stop, a porter shouted, ‘Grantham… Five minutes stop… Grantham…’

  Suddenly the Scots were pouring out of the train, heading straight for the shining lights of the station bar, almost overturning the trolley being dragged up the platform by a youth, crying, ‘Soft drinks, tea, coffee, sandwiches!’

  Dickie Bird looked at Smith and licked his lips. ‘No chance of getting a drink with that lot filling the station bar. What about a cup of tea? We can stretch our legs, too.’

  Smith nodded and opposite them, the little man said, ‘I will watch your luggage,’ indicating the two parcels of clothing on the rack. ‘One can never too careful be.’

  Dickie laughed and said, ‘Yes, one can never too careful be. Thank you. Come on, Smithie, before the lad runs out of tea.’

  Five minutes later, pushing their way through the Scots, who were goose-stepping past the German in the first-class compartment and making rude remarks about the deposed Kaiser, they found their own compartment was empty. The little man and his Gladstone bag had vanished, but their brown-paper parcels were safe on the rack. ‘Not much of a watchdog, our little German friend. I suppose his boss must have called him to his own compartment,’ Dickie said. ‘Probably wants him to polish up his sabre or something.’

  Smith grinned. ‘Something like that, I guess. Come on, Dickie, let’s get a bit more shuteye. We’ve got time before we change at Doncaster for Hull!’

  ‘Well said,’ Dickie agreed. ‘Snore on, MacDuff.’

  * * *

  Up in his first class compartment, Kapitanleutnant von Horn shut his ears to the angry ranting of the ambassador in the next one – ‘a gross insult… I shall have words with the Foreign Office about the behaviour of those brutish soldiers’ and stared up at the little man who was standing rigidly to attention as if he were back in the old Imperial Navy. ‘Well?’ he asked in that deceptively soft voice of his.

  ‘The device is in place, Herr Kapitanleutnant,’ the little man answered, staring rigidly ahead. ‘They got off at the last stop. I did it then.’

/>   ‘Excellent,’ von Horn murmured and the little man chanced a glance. Von Horn was almost an albino. His yellow hair was cropped to the scalp so that it looked as if he were wearing a yellow skullcap and he had no eyebrows above eyes that were the pale blue of a mountain glacier. His new master, the little man told himself with an involuntary shudder, had the face of a murderer.

  Von Horn dismissed him with a wave of his hand. ‘You will leave the train at Doncaster. There you will catch another train to Hull. A tramp steamer, SS Hamburg, is in dock. It will take you back to the homeland. In no fashion must you be seen to be associated with the ambassador’s shooting party.’

  ‘Jawohl, Herr Kapitanleutnant.’ The little man seized his Gladstone bag and, clicking his heels, departed.

  Von Horn relaxed a little in his seat, eyeing the tourist picture of Scarborough on the wall opposite. ‘Scarborough,’ he mouthed the name and remembered that splendid day in 1914 when the battle squadron to which he had belonged had totally outfoxed the English navy. They had spent wonderful hours systematically pounding the seaside town with their heavy guns. Behind, they had left a pile of smoking wreckage.

  In the next compartment, the ambassador was still ranting on about the behaviour of the ‘English soldiers in skirts’, as he called the Scots. Von Horn allowed himself a sinister smile. The ambassador was a fat socialist from Magdeburg: a Mecklenburg peasant who had been one of those who had stabbed Imperial Germany in the back in 1918 and had been given this post as a reward, although he couldn’t even speak a word of English.

  He sniffed. Soon, this new rabble-rouser, who was a peasant, but who had his heart in the right place, would put an end to the regime of those Berlin traitors. Then Germany would be respected once more: the most powerful state in Central Europe.