The Red Horse

by James R Benn

  “The twelfth and thirteenth letters of the alphabet,” I said. “I think Leo wants to talk, but he’s not leaving any evidence.”

  “Smart guy. He doesn’t want Vera to put him in the slammer. He’s discreet. You should take notes, Billy,” Big Mike said. “Now let’s get something to eat.”

  Big Mike was full of good ideas. Especially that last one.

  We polished off a meal of chicken with potatoes and asparagus, and, not long after, Big Mike was piloting the staff car up Park Lane, with Hyde Park on the left and the Marble Arch dead ahead. Big Mike braked as we took a left, the white marble of the arch gleaming in the evening darkness. The late summer sun had set, but there was enough lingering light to make out Leo Marks, with his trench coat collar turned up and his hat brim snapped down.

  “Hop in,” Big Mike said. “Where’re we going?”

  “Do you have the note?” Leo asked as he clambered into the rear seat, setting a briefcase beside him. I handed over the note and watched him methodically tear it into tiny pieces. “Turn around, head south across the river.”

  “What’s with the cloak-and-dagger stuff?” I asked.

  “I liked Charles Cosgrove,” Leo said. “He was a decent fellow. Served king and country well and came back for more. Gave himself a second lease on life. I didn’t like that being cut short. He deserved more. He deserved to see victory.”

  “No argument from us,” Big Mike said, heading back the way we’d come, toward Westminster Bridge.

  “You’re going to help us,” I said. “How?”

  “I am not going to tell you anything. I am not going to reveal any secrets. This trip never happened. Do you understand me?” Leo said, leaning forward and keeping his voice low, as if he might be overheard.

  “No,” I said.

  “Good. Now turn left up ahead onto London Road.”

  “Where’s that lead to?” Big Mike asked.

  “Never mind,” Leo said, swiveling his head and checking the traffic behind us. Big Mike looked at me and shrugged. Why not go for a ride? It wasn’t like we had anything else to do.

  We drove east for half an hour, motoring along the south bank of the Thames as full darkness blanketed the countryside. The sprawl of the city gave way to villages, and, at each turning, Leo gave a direction and not a damn thing more.

  “In twenty minutes, we’ll be at the Gravesend RAF base,” he said. “Don’t say a word. I’ll handle the guard at the gate.”

  “Gravesend? Sounds cheery,” I said. “What happens there?”

  “You keep quiet. Don’t draw attention to yourselves. Watch and listen. Nothing more,”

  Leo said. We drove on, the road illuminated only by the thin slit of light from our headlamps and the faint, soft glow coming from houses and shops under the new dimout regulations. It was more nighttime light than I’d seen in years.

  Road signs were still down and navigating in the dimout wasn’t much easier than in the blackout. Leo pointed out a few lefts and rights, and soon enough we found ourselves at the gate to RAF Gravesend. Sentries stood on either side of the car, weapons at the ready. Leo rolled down his window and presented papers to a sergeant who gave him a friendly nod in return. He didn’t seem to be a stranger here.

  “They’re with me,” Leo said, pointing to something in the paperwork. The sergeant eyed us and handed the papers back, signaling for the gate to be lifted. We went through, passing giant hangars, squat brick buildings, and rows of prefabricated Nissen huts. Royal Air Force personnel stood outside one hut; the red-and-white Polish banner was visible on a flagpole.

  “The Polish 306 Squadron,” Leo remarked. “Your friend Baron Kazimierz would have enjoyed this visit. How is he, by the way? I heard the surgery went well.”

  “You tell us. You seem to know a lot more than we do,” I said.

  “Resting comfortably as of two hours ago, I’m told. There, that last hangar,” he said, tapping Big Mike on the shoulder and pointing to the right.

  “Mustangs,” Big Mike said, passing a row of P-51 fighters with the RAF roundel. “American fighters in the Royal Air Force with Polish pilots. Now that’s Allied unity. Hey Leo, why not show some unity and spill. What’s going on here?”

  “That,” Leo said, pointing to a large dark form looming ahead of us. A Short Stirling four-engine bomber, painted black, a hallmark of the Special Duties Squadron, SOE’s air transport service.

  We parked in front of the hangar where we saw another matte black bomber, this one a four-engine Whitley. Both the Stirling and the Whitley had been retired from regular bombing duties, but the aircraft were kept active as transports, giving SOE a reach beyond the range of the single-engine Lysander.

  Leo led us to a Nissen hut off to the side of the hangar, hidden from the rest of the airfield. Smoke curled from a steel pipe chimney, and we heard the murmur of voices from within as we approached the door. We entered. Half a dozen RAF officers in flight suits were gathered around a large wall map at the end of the room, checking routes laid out with red twine on the map boards. One path went over the North Sea and into northern Germany, where the drop zone was marked outside of Kiel. The other cut across France to a drop zone in Bavaria. Navigators with clipboards took notes, studying the map, and tracing routes with their fingers as calmly as if planning a Sunday drive.

  I heard Polish being spoken as well as English. I knew Poles had dropped supplies to their comrades during the Warsaw Uprising and wondered if these men had flown over the besieged capital knowing how doomed the Polish Home Army rebellion was.

  “Josh, good to see you,” Leo said, shaking the hand of a British Army lieutenant. “Is Schiller all set?”

  “He’s ready,” Josh said, nodding in the direction of three men dressed in civilian clothes who were gathered around a table piled with sandwiches, cups of tea in their hands. “Who are your friends?”

  “Observers,” Leo said, forgoing introductions. He turned to a young fellow in a Royal Navy uniform. “Peter, your chaps all right?”

  “They’re fine. Ready anytime you are,” answered Peter.

  Leo turned to whisper to us. “Stay close and keep quiet.”

  “Listen, Leo, I know the drill. I’ve flown in a Lysander, so I know about Joes,” I said. The SOE flight crews called their passengers Joes, a common name that held no emotion or connection. Joes were cargo.

  “They’re not Joes. They’re Bonzos,” he hissed. “Now shut up.”

  Bonzos? I glanced at Big Mike, who looked as puzzled as I felt.

  Josh and Peter led their charges to a table. They were what SOE called conducting officers, guides for agents during their final preparations for a mission. Josh stood on one side with his man, Schiller, while Peter took the other side with his two agents. Leo was the SOE code master, and all eyes were on him as he sat at the head of the table and opened his briefcase. Big Mike wandered over to the food, watching the aircrew as he grabbed a ham sandwich. I sat in a chair along the wall and focused on the men at the table.

  First, Leo went over codes with Schiller. He gave him a sheet with German phrases, each with a four-number group adjacent to it. He translated for Josh, explaining that 2819 stood for I have been unable to make contact, and 2800 meant so-and-so can organize a resistance group.

  There were more precoded phrases. Schiller interrupted a few times with questions. His English was good, but his German accent was unmistakable. As Leo reviewed the codebook with Schiller, Peter and the other two agents whispered among themselves, nodding their approval. Their whispers were in German.

  There was enthusiasm over Leo’s codes, which would shorten Morse transmissions. He distributed onetime pads—coded sheets intended for a single use. The sender and receiver both had the same sheet, and the agent was to destroy his after each use. Unbreakable, Leo said. Then he turned to the other two agents. They were going in together on the Whitley
headed to Bavaria. Their codes were different but used the same format as Schiller’s.

  Leo was a coding wizard. He probably liked puzzles and could give Kaz some competition at getting the Times crossword puzzle done.

  He liked games.

  This was a game! A challenge for Big Mike and me to figure out what Leo didn’t want to say out loud. He had scruples and wisely took the Official Secrets Act seriously. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t deliver a message indirectly.

  If we were smart enough to decode it.

  So, what did I know?

  This was obviously an SOE German Section operation. Two drop zones inside Germany. German-speaking agents. Both Peter and Josh, speaking in German, broke in on occasion, likely to explain something as clearly as possible to their agents.

  Leo explained that the coding materials would be kept with the suitcase radios, which would be dropped along with the agents. He stressed the importance of destroying the codebooks if capture was imminent.

  Leo gave Schiller a coded list of names and addresses in the Kiel area. Contacts in the German resistance, he said. Some of them Nazi Party leaders who had given up all hope of a Nazi victory. He reviewed the key to the cipher code, then gave a similar encoded list to the other two agents. Theirs contained ten resistance contacts in Munich.

  Peter and Josh went over the codes with Leo and the agents, making sure everyone understood their respective cipher keys. As the discussion began to focus on which resistance members were to be contacted first, I began to think about my SOE mission.

  On the night of June 5, the eve of the D-Day invasion, Kaz and I had gone through our own briefing with Vera Atkins prior to being flown into occupied France in a Lysander aircraft. It had been a short hop compared to the trip these men were making. We’d landed in a grassy field in northern France, no need to jump into the night and trust our lives to a parachute.

  What had been different?

  It had been less crowded, for one thing. It was just us and Vera, and a third agent who was dropping by parachute. Along with a delivery of weapons canisters.

  We had another Lysander flight after that mission was completed. But instead of returning to England, we were sent to the Swiss border. Except the Lysander didn’t make it. Struck by German fire, we crash-landed short of our objective. We survived the crash, but our pilot hadn’t.

  I shook off the memories of the burning aircraft.

  I watched the three agents listening to their last-minute instructions.

  I glanced at the aircrew, now smoking cigarettes, checking wristwatches, and talking among themselves as they waited for the briefing to end.

  I studied the map, the bright red strings leading to the drop zones and charting the return flights home.

  The image of German tracers seeking our low-altitude Lysander refused to go away, playing itself out at the back of my mind.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I heard a truck brake outside. Doors slammed, and RAF enlisted men carried in piles of clothing, suitcases, and two parachutes. Everything was set out on the table.

  “One more parachute?” Peter asked.

  “Be here in a moment, sir,” one of the airmen replied and took his leave with the others.

  “Right,” Josh said, separating out the bundle of clothes. “Time to change, chaps.” The SOE was expert at outfitting agents in clothing appropriate to the country and the false identity of the wearers. Still, I was surprised by the Wehrmacht uniform provided for Schiller. It was startling to see, even though it was a disguise.

  “Oberfeldwebel Dieter Ratz,” Leo said, checking the phony identity papers. That was close to a staff sergeant in the US Army. “Bit of a promotion, eh Schiller?”

  Schiller grinned as he donned the Wehrmacht-issue underwear and uniform. The other agents were dressed as workmen in worn corduroy trousers, wool shirts, jackets, and caps. They were each handed a parachute. The aircrew left to board their aircraft and start the final check before takeoff.

  Josh checked the suitcase with Schiller. Looking much like a brown traveler’s suitcase, it contained the standard SOE radio. The codebooks and other papers were stashed inside. Once they determined everything was in order, Schiller put on dark coveralls, a jumpsuit designed to protect his clothing during the drop.

  A car door slammed outside, and an RAF flight lieutenant carried in the last parachute. The lieutenant helped Schiller into it and checked the harnesses several times. Once satisfied, he clapped him on the shoulder and wished him luck.

  The other agents and Schiller shook hands. Leo did the same, then Josh led Schiller outside where the sound of the Whitley’s powerful engines turning over reverberated against the metal building.

  Peter repeated the process with his two agents. A final check of clothing and the radio. Leo added a stack of postcards to the coding sheets. They matched the one I had in my pocket. The red horse was going to Germany.

  The jumpsuits went on, then the parachutes. Peter walked his agents to the waiting aircraft. As they passed us, one of the two men approached me, his hand extended, a look of determination mingled with dread playing across his face. I took it and wished him the best of luck.

  They left, and we heard a mighty roar of engines as Schiller’s aircraft taxied down the runway, beginning its long journey to northern Germany.

  We were alone in the Nissen hut with Leo. I didn’t much like him right then.

  “They’re all dead men,” I said.

  “Schiller is, for certain,” Leo said, slumping in his chair, his face buried in his hands.

  “What?” Big Mike asked.

  “The parachute,” I said. “Remember Blackford was after Sinclair to design a parachute malfunction? One that looked like the chute hadn’t been sabotaged?”

  “How did you get that from one parachute delivered late?” Leo asked, his curiosity overcoming his previous self-imposed silence.

  “He boarded first, but his parachute came last. Delivered by an officer who made sure it went straight to him. One of yours, I assume?”

  “Let’s say he’s not on the books at this establishment,” Leo said. “And before you condemn us, it should be known that Schiller was—or, I should say, at least for the next two hours, is—a double agent. We know this from the POW camp where he was recruited. He’s an ardent Nazi who bragged to his friends that he could trick us into believing him. Well, we’re a tricky bunch ourselves. As he will find out in his final moments. The chute is rigged to fail.”

  “That can’t be a good way to die, tugging at a ripcord that won’t work,” Big Mike said.

  “Yes. I agree. This is the closest I’ve come to killing a German soldier. I can’t say it feels pleasant at all,” Leo said, a sigh escaping his lips. “But it had to be done.”

  The second aircraft revved its engines, the growling sound echoing against the steel walls.

  “Same with those two?” I asked, tossing my jaw in the direction of the tarmac.

  “I’ll tell you in the car,” Leo said. “I’d like to leave this place.”

  As he opened the door, I looked back at the map with its telltale strings pointing to the cruelest of destinations. The agents’ discarded clothing lay bunched on the floor, as if they’d turned to ghosts and vanished into the night.

  Close enough, I thought as we stepped outside.

  The Short Stirling taxied to the runway, its prop wash blasting our faces, leaving the scent of exhaust and betrayal lingering long after the aircraft lifted off into the night sky.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “How certain are you about Schiller?” Big Mike asked as the gate went down behind us at RAF Gravesend. He had a cold edge to his voice, and his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel threatened to snap it. He looked in the rear mirror, piercing the code master with a sharp stare.

  “I’ve been told it ha
s been confirmed. Bugged quarters in the POW camp, as well as informers,” Leo said.

  “The other two?” I asked.

  “I’ve revealed too much already,” Leo said. “I told you to observe, and you have. Draw your own conclusions. If that helps with your investigation, all to the better. If not, well then I’ll simply thank you for the ride.”

  “Bullshit,” Big Mike said, braking hard and pulling over to the side of the road. We were on the outskirts of town. The only thing visible was a farmer’s fence and a grassy field stretching into the dark. Big Mike turned to face Leo, who seemed to shrink into the back seat. “You’re going to come clean, pal, or I’ll throw you into the ditch right now. By the time you find your way back to London, we’ll have made a call to Inspector Scutt at Scotland Yard about some cigar-smoking punk blabbing government secrets.”

  “Chief Inspector Scutt. I forgot to tell you, he’s been promoted,” I told Big Mike.

  “Even better. A chief inspector carries more weight. Now spill, Marks,” Big Mike said, one beefy arm on the seat rest, close enough to grab Leo. “You can’t just clam up and wash your hands of this charade. Tell us what’s going on.”

  “It is a charade,” Leo said. “A pretense, a sham, a tragic farce, all rolled up in one operation. Periwig. But let’s not linger out here. Drive on, and I’ll explain. But you may regret insisting.”

  “What’s the matter, you scared of the dark?” Big Mike asked as he hit the accelerator a little harder than required, sending Leo sliding back in his seat.

  “More than ever,” he said, craning his neck to look up at the stars.

  “Okay, I understand Schiller,” I said. “Assuming what you said is true, he got what was coming. The Krauts will find his body and the canister with his equipment, including the phony code books.”

  “Yes. Although they’re real enough. We hope they’ll buy Herr Schiller as an SOE agent with a bad parachute and use the radio to make contact as if he were still alive. Any information they send will be false, which is valuable when we know that’s the case.”