‘We’re in trouble!’ Klaus yelled in alarm. ‘Get a hold of him.’ He indicated Dietz, hand dropping to his pocket where his pistol rested. ‘Come on. They’re after us!’
Down below there came the sound of heavy boots. Someone hissed a command. Klaus recognised the language. ‘Great crap on the Christmas Tree,’ he cried, pistol in hand, now, ‘It’s the shitting Tommies.’ Wildly, he looked around the bathroom for some means of escape. ‘The window,’ he cried. ‘Get that shutter down. We can drop into the garden below. Los!’
Frantically, as Klaus faced the door, pistol in hand, the others ripped and tore at the wooden shutters that sealed off the little bathroom. Outside a voice said, ‘They’re in there!’
Klaus didn’t understand English, but he recognised the tone. The damned English knew where they were.
He slipped off the safety catch. Face set and taut, he aimed and fired. The noise was ear-splitting in the confines of the tiny bathroom. Outside somebody yelled angrily. Klaus could hear the intruders fling themselves to the floor for cover. ‘That’s stopped them for a minute,’ he cried. ‘Now hurry up with that damned window!’
With one last desperate heave, the two men at the window pulled down the shutter. Klaus didn’t hesitate. He wrapped two towels around his left arm, still carrying the pistol in his right, and smashed the arm against the window. It splintered. Glass flew everywhere. Hurriedly Klaus clawed out the remaining fragments and then yelled, ‘All right, let’s go. You,’ he pointed the pistol at Dietz, naked save for his shirt, ‘you go in front of me. No funny business either. Los!’
McIntyre, watching from behind the shed, grinned coldly. ‘Here, they come, Hurt. No unnecessary shooting. I want the sods alive.’
Hurt crouched next to him, pistol in hand, nodded. ‘Pity, though, a great pity.’
‘Shut up,’ McIntyre snapped tersely, as the first man landed on his feet, and crouched there, gun at the ready. The others followed. McIntyre gasped. There was Dietz falling out of the window, his shirt billowing out about his naked, bloody, tortured body.
‘Well, I don’t know what that big blonde sees in him. That ain’t much to write home about,’ Hurt whispered and chuckled.
But McIntyre wasn’t listening. He straightened up and broke cover, big automatic levelled. ‘Hande hoch,’ he snapped. ‘Mach kein Theater!’
Klaus gasped. His jaw hardened, as if he might press the trigger of his pistol. McIntyre beat him to it. ‘I wouldn’t if I were you, chum,’ he snapped. ‘Just look behind you.’
Klaus swung round. Four hard-looking men had risen from the bushes, weapons at the ready. They were trapped. He let the pistol drop to the grass. A moment later, the others were doing the same and a weeping, smiling Dietz was kissing McIntyre’s hand deliriously, crying over and over again, ‘Thank you, Major… thank you!’
‘Christ,’ McIntyre exclaimed in apparent disgust, ‘that’s the second time today that somebody has kissed my pinkies. I must be doing something wrong… All right, let’s get back to the bridge before the cops arrive…’
Three
‘Dordrecht,’ Smith announced as they started to thread their way through the traffic in the busy Dutch port, heading for an anchorage. ‘We’ll spend the night here. Any instructions from C will, apparently, be waiting for us at the main post office “poste restante”.’
‘Good show,’ Dickie Bird said amiably, eyeing the docks, where lines of buxom girls in wooden clogs were busy gutting and cleaning gleaming silver herrings which they threw into great barrels of brine.
Next to him at the wheel, CPO Ferguson growled: ‘I’ve been here before in 1912, showing the flag. So I can tell ye what they do with yon herrings. They eat them raw.’ His craggy face broke into a look of disgust. ‘Worse than yellow chinks with them rotten eggs of theirs.’
Dickie Bird grinned. ‘Oh Chiefie, come off it. You’ve been everywhere and seen everything, yet you’re the worst bigot I’ve ever met.’
CPO Ferguson said, ‘I dinna ken what yon big word means rightly, but if it means I don’t like furreigners, then you’re dead, sir.’
Slowly, they lined the Swordfish up against the long jetty, which seemed to run the length of the estuary, watched by a few bored waterfront types in baggy trousers tied at the ankles, most of whom wore a kind of fur hat on their heads; all were smoking white clay pipes in silent contemplation. ‘Slow both,’ Smith ordered and then a moment later, ‘Stop both.’ The Swordfish’s engines went dead and they glided the last few yards in silence until they bumped gently against the jetty wall.
At the bow, Billy Bennett, holding the stout rope, cried in English, ‘Hey, one of you lot, grab a hold of this!’
One of the watchers took his pipe solemnly out of his mouth, tapped out the dottle, blew in the ball, thrust the pipe in his pocket and walked very slowly over to Billy Bennett, who said, ‘Don’t rupture yersen, mate.’ He threw out the hawser. The man caught it in the same unhurried way and tied it around one of the bollards.
That task completed, he held out his hand and said in English, ‘One guilder, please.’
‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ Billy Bennett exclaimed. ‘Fancy wanting money for that.’ All the same, he hauled out a piece of the Dutch money with which they had all been supplied, and tossed it to the solemn Dutchman. He caught it neatly, bit it, then raised his fur hat. A second later, he sauntered back to the rest of the silent, sombre onlookers.
‘Cor ferk a duck,’ Ginger Kerrigan commented, ‘Ain’t they a bleeding lot o’ laughs. I bet a sailor could have a fine old time in a place like this.’
‘Well, as long as they’ve got something with chips in it, I’ll be satisfied,’ Billy Bennett said, his big stomach already beginning to rumble in anticipation. ‘I’m bleeding sick o’ bully beef and spotty dick.’
‘Christ, can’t you think of nothing else but grub?’ Ginger snorted. ‘Ain’t you got no time for the finer things o’ life?’
‘Such as what?’ Billy asked puzzled.
‘Beaver, fer instance? I ain’t parted no beaver for so long, I’ve almost forgotten how to do it.’
Up on the little bridge, CPO Ferguson was also concerned with the same problem, namely ‘beaver’. ‘Are you gonna let that bunch o’ randy men ashore, sir?’ he asked Smith as the anchor rattled to the bottom of the estuary.
‘Well, I thought we could let half a watch go this morning and the second half this afternoon. I want everyone on board before it’s dark, however.’
The old Scot tugged the end of his nose, thickened by years of salt winds and copious drams of his beloved Scotch. ‘I was thinking ye would, sir,’ he commented. ‘But ye ken there could be a muckle trouble. There’s plenty o’ cheap hussies in a place like this – and plenty of yon diseases, ye know what I mean, sir?’ He hinted darkly.
‘Have a heart, Chiefie,’ Dickie Bird moaned, eyeing the ample bottom of one of the bonneted girls cleaning the herrings, who had bent down in her broad starched skirt to reveal a plump, knickerless behind. ‘There’s not much pleasure in this life for a poor sailorman. He’s got to have something.’
‘Ay, I ken that wiel, sir. But the price he pays sometimes is awful high.’ CPO Ferguson sighed. ‘Wiel, so be it, sir. But dinna say I didna warn ye.’ With that he stalked off, muttering darkly to himself.
Smith shook his head in mock wonder. ‘I’ve often heard it said, Dickie, that the English take their pleasures sadly, but God knows I’ve never met anyone who takes them as sadly as the old Chiefie. No matter. All right, I’ll see off the first half of the watch and then find the main post office for C’s instructions. You’re in charge of the afternoon watch…’
‘Righto, Smithie,’ Bird said happily. ‘Give me time to spruce up a little. Bit of the old pomade and talcum powder, you know.’
Smith looked at him. ‘You are going to run those terrible risks old Chiefie has just outlined, Dickie?’ he asked with mock pomposity.
‘You bet your life, I am, Smithie,’ Dickie answer
ed joyfully. ‘I shall find myself some beautiful lady of the night and indulge myself in absolute, unadulterated bliss. Spiffing!’
Half an hour later the morning watch was assembled, dressed in their new finery, their faces clean and shining, eyes sparkling in anticipation. Smith looked at them. ‘Just one thing to say, lads. Stick together.’
‘What – in between the sheets, sir?’ Ginger Kerrigan asked cheekily.
CPO Ferguson shot him a murderous look, but Smith said mildly, ‘No, I think that would be taking it a bit too far. All the same, stick together and don’t get lost. You’ve got four hours. Get on with it.’ He stepped on the jetty and headed for the solitary horsedrawn cab further up the quay. With a whoop, like excited schoolboys being let out of the classroom after a long day of boring lessons, the half-watch headed for the brothels, while the other half looked longingly after them before heading below to the ‘ablutions’, as the Navy liked to call the greasy tin bowls in which they washed.
The cabbie stopped outside the Centraal Post. Smith paid and dismissed him and reached for his passport. He strode inside. The place wasn’t very busy. A man leaned against a pillar reading De Telegraaf; an old woman comforted someone else’s crying baby ensconced in a strange high pram made of wickerwork, a yellow man lazily cleaned the littered floor. He threaded his way through them to the counter marked ‘post restante’.
A prim-looking clerk in a black jacket and pince-nez stood there. ‘Dag,’ he said in a bored manner, like someone who had been doing the same boring job for too long and resented the fact that he had.
Smith took out the fake passport with which C had issued him and opened it in front of the man. ‘Post for Mr Owen?’ he asked in English.
The clerk no longer looked bored. ‘Engels?’ he asked, looking at the name and photograph. ‘Ja ja.’ He went to the row of pigeonholes at the back of the little office, peered along it and selected a letter. ‘Hier.’ He thrust it at Smith.
‘Thank you,’ Smith said and walked away to the far end of the concourse. He looked at the envelope. He noted it bore a Dutch stamp and had been posted that very morning in Dordrecht. He nodded his approval. C was being very careful. He had sent whatever message the envelope contained by radio and in cypher to the British Chief Passport Officer (CPO), his agent in the British Embassy at The Hague. The latter had decoded the message and had driven down to Dordrecht that morning to post it. Thus, instead of going through innumerable hands the letter had gone through those of the CPO alone – and, naturally, the counter clerk.
He slit the envelope open carefully and unfolded the message. There was no letterhead, date or any other clue to the sender. The note was brief and to the point. It read: ‘New developments in the B.A.O.R.’ For a moment Smith was puzzled by the initials, then he remembered what they meant – ‘British Army of the Rhine’. ‘Report to our friend at the Cathedral for further instructions soonest.’ There was no signature.
Again he was puzzled by the ‘Cathedral’. The friend was, of course, McIntyre, but ‘Cathedral?’ Then he got it. The HQ of the British Army of the Rhine was located in the former German Hotel Dom – and ‘Dom’ was the German for ‘Cathedral’. He nodded his head and told himself that McIntyre had obviously found out something new since he had left London. The news cheered him up. Now they had something to go on. He stuffed the paper into his pocket and strolled out of the big echoing station into the bicycle-filled streets, where it seemed the cyclists competed with the tram drivers on who could make the most noise with their bells.
Behind him at the counter, the primlooking clerk nodded. The man reading ‘De Telegraaf’ nodded. With seeming casualness he folded the paper, put it under his arm and strolled out into the sunshine after Smith. Contact had been made.
* * *
‘Cor,’ Ginger exclaimed as the two of them entered the waterfront brothel, filled with drunken sailors though it was not yet midday, and saw the prostitutes sitting on wooden chairs along the far wall. All of them were skimpily dressed and all of them had their legs well spread to reveal they wore no knickers. But it wasn’t that which caused Ginger’s surprise. It was the sheer size of the women. They were all huge, some nearly six feet tall, with massive breasts bulging from their cheap frocks. Great flanks and bellies quivered and trembled when they moved, which they did frequently to reach for the large pots of beer at their feet. ‘Look at that Billy! All that meat and no potatoes!’
‘You’re right there,’ Billy Bennett said, his stomach rumbling again at the mention of potatoes. ‘Hope we don’t have to buy ’em by frigging weight. Christ,’ he said, looking at the skinny little Liverpudlian, ‘you’ll have to work hard at it with one of them tarts – the size of them!’
‘Get it off,’ Ginger said happily, ‘they’re all the same, big or small, when they’re on their backs with the pearly gates open. Come on. We ain’t got all day.’ He started to push his way down the hall, which stank of cheap tobacco, cheaper scent – and sex. Around them they could hear half a dozen different tongues – German, French, Dutch, Flemish… For the estuary was used not only by ocean-going ships, but by barges from all over Europe, using the great Rhine–Maas link to take their cargoes to Rotterdam and Antwerp for shipping overseas.
A big man in a reefer jacket with a water glass of Genever in his hand barred their progress – to Ginger it seemed, almost deliberately. ‘Let the dog see the cat, mate,’ the Liverpudlian said with a winning smile on his skinny face.
The man, dark face sinister and menacing, looked down at Ginger. ‘I don’t like English,’ he announced.
‘Can’t do nothing about that, mate,’ Ginger said, cheerfully enough, his mind on more urgent things.
The man held a hand like a small steam shovel to his nose. ‘English – they stink,’ he said. Around him his cronies, all big men like himself in reefer coats, with black peaked caps pushed to the backs of their heads, guffawed hoarsely.
Billy Bennett’s face darkened. ‘You mind yer words, mister,’ he said through suddenly gritted teeth, ‘or I’ll be giving yer the old whatfor.’
‘Whatfor? What is this?’ the man in the reefer asked.
Ginger gave Bennett a shove, ‘Come on, Billy. Let’s get to them pearly gates. No time for arguments now. He’s probably pissed anyway.’
Billy let himself be persuaded. Behind him the man in the reefer sneered, ‘Typical English – they no like to fight. They run away, hein.’ Again his cronies laughed.
Ginger pretended not to hear. Instead he crooked his finger at a blonde (though he could tell that she wasn’t a natural blonde). ‘What about you and me having a nice time, ducks?’ he said.
She nodded. She took a deep swig of her beer and rose ponderously. ‘What you want, sailorman – once round the world, eh?’ Her English was badly accented, but she knew the professional terms all right, Ginger told himself happily.
‘No, luv. Haven’t got the time. Just a straight job. Get the dirty water off me chest.’ He slapped her huge rump joyfully and the flesh trembled and quivered beneath the thin material. ‘Lovely grub,’ he cried in delight. ‘Come on. Let’s get up them dancers.’ He caught her big hand and started dragging her up the stairs to the bedrooms hastily.
‘Hey, you sailorman,’ she protested mildly, ‘you bin at sea a long time. You such hurry.’
‘It seems like a million years. Now come on, move it. I want to show you the big present I’ve got for yer in me slacks.’
She shrugged and let herself be persuaded.
Moments later Billy Bennett followed with another whore, who was almost as big as he was. Patting his ample stomach, she chortled, ‘You fine big fellow.’ Then she patted her own large belly and added, ‘Not difficult though. I ride you like a horse.’ On another occasion and if his need hadn’t been so great, Billy Bennett would have blanched at the prospect of being mounted by a woman of that size. Now, all he could comment was, ‘Let’s hope I win the race, then.’
So it was that the two old shipmates di
d not see the man with ‘De Telegraaf’ come through the open door into the brothel and crook his finger at the man who thought the English were cowards…
Four
At first light they got under way. The men were lazy, but happy. All had stories to tell of their amorous episodes and were full of their conquests in that easy manner of young men who have had sexual satisfaction – all except CPO Ferguson.
He had welcomed the afternoon watch with, ‘Ay, well ye may look like a lot of lovesick bulls. Ye’ve had yer pleasure and na doubt the lot of ye’ll be poxed up soon. But I’m na having pox and shanker on my boat.’ Whereupon he had ordered them to the bow where he had set up his own ‘pro station’, as he called it: a zinc trough, with three rubber tubes connected to bottles of a purple-coloured liquid, which was potassium permanganate. This he ordered the crestfallen sailors to squeeze – by means of the tubes – into their organs. ‘It’s the only sure way,’ he maintained. ‘It’ll sting a wee bit, but ye’ll na get the pox.’
So, to the embarrassment of the watch, and the bewilderment of the stolid Dutch onlookers, still puffing at those white clay pipes of theirs, they were forced to bare their private parts and carry out ‘the treatment’ as Ferguson called it.
As the Swordfish threaded its way carefully and slowly into the river, still packed with barges and coastal freighters heading downstream to the sea, Smith said, ‘I aim to get to Arnhem by dark. We’ll wait up there till midnight and then have a crack at crossing the German frontier. There’ll be no moon and no stars. If we’re lucky we can find a barge going the same way and hide on her lee side – something like that. We’ll work it all out when we get there.’
Dickie Bird yawned lazily, his mind only half listening. He had had what he would have called a ‘perfectly spiffing’ afternoon. He had struck up a conversation with a very pretty girl in one of the many tearooms almost immediately. At first he was a bit worried because the girl – Antje – was too refined and polite. As he had often expounded to his shipmate Smith, ‘Sailors don’t have time for respectable women, Smith. They’ve got to be ladies of the night, where goods are exchanged for hard cash. Fact of life.’
Death on the Rhine Page 9