Raid 42

by Graham Hurley

  On this note, the conversation had taken a lighter turn. Dieter’s host had ordered another four bottles of Côtes du Rhône seized from the French Navy’s mess at Brest, and the evening had ended with a raucous game of skat which Dieter, much to his surprise, appeared to have won.

  ‘You’ll find a crate of Mouton Cadet in your room,’ his host had whispered. ‘Our best to your comrades.’

  Now, at 8,500 metres, the Me-110 seemed to be hanging motionless in the limpid air. For the last ten minutes Dieter had been sucking oxygen from the mask on his face. It tasted of rubber with a hint of exhaust fumes, but it had cleared his head after last night and left him with a feeling of immense privilege which – through the summer months – had become a bit of a memory. From his seat up here in the gods, unthreatened by the English, he could see forever. Move his head a little to the right, and the long curl of the Friesian Islands stretched all the way to Denmark. Glance left, and the Ruhr Valley was unmistakable, a long dark smudge, smoke from a thousand factory chimneys, proof that the Reich’s engine room was in the rudest of health. More bombs, he thought. More Heinkels, more Dorniers, more reasons for the British to throw in their hands, leave the table, and opt for an easier life.

  Would they ever do it, he wondered. Would they ever sue for peace? Somehow he doubted it. Back in the late spring, once the Sitzkrieg was over and the Panzers were off the leash, the English had spotted the invasion barges massing in Calais and Boulogne and knew that they were next on the list. Their precious Spitfires were held in reserve for the big battle to come, der Kanalkampf, and so for now they sent a two-engined bomber called the Blenheim to try and wreck the German plans.

  The Blenheim was a maiden aunt when it came to combat. It had just three guns to defend itself, all of them useless. It could carry less than five hundred kilos of high explosive. In level flight, on a good day, it could manage barely 300 kph, half the speed of a Bf-109. Yet day after day these tubby little impostors would appear from the north, in a perfect V formation, easy prey for the likes of Merz and his eager young sharks.

  Dieter smiled at the memory. The Spitfire was a princess among fighter aircraft, a proposition any Luftwaffe pilot would take very seriously indeed, but when it came to dropping bombs and making mischief the British were in the hands of designers who were still fighting the last war. The Blenheim was a hopeless aircraft. And so was the Whitley. And the Hampden. Too slow. Too vulnerable. Too small. One day all that might change, and you’d be foolish to assume otherwise, but by that time the war would be over.

  Dieter checked his watch. He’d been airborne now for nearly an hour and ahead he could see the bright gleam of winter sunshine on the Ijsselmeer. His left hand reached for the throttle levers and the cackle of the twin engines changed note as the aircraft began to descend. On the ground at Zwolle he was expecting to meet an Oberstleutnant with whom he’d served in the Condor Legion. Hans Siebert was running the show at Zwolle and had already been in touch by phone. More lectures had been scheduled for the days ahead, a chance for operational pilots to reflect on the lessons of the summer campaign, but for today Hans was promising a long lunch at a fish restaurant in Amsterdam, followed by an afternoon in a couple of bars beside his favourite canal. The fighting over northern Spain had bonded Condor pilots for life. With this new war going so well, the least they owed themselves was the chance to celebrate a memory or two from the old days.

  Minutes later, Dieter had the airfield in sight. He side-slipped the last hundred metres, kicked in a dab of right rudder, fed in a little more power to clear a hedge and then hauled back on the joystick until he could see nothing but sky. Then came a trio of tiny jolts as the aircraft settled on the racing turf and began to slow.

  Hans was waiting on the broad circle of hardstanding in front of the control tower. Expecting a grin and the usual pumping handshake, Dieter sensed at once that something was wrong.

  ‘Georg Messner?’ Hans was never less than direct. Georg had been Dieter’s wingman in Spain, and his best friend ever since.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Beata phoned this morning. Here’s her number. She’s in Berlin. She needs to talk to you. Urgently.’

  ‘But what’s happened?’

  Hans shot Dieter a look, then gestured loosely up at the sky.

  ‘The English paid Berlin a visit,’ he said. ‘Last night.’

  *

  Tam Moncrieff returned from Sweden that same afternoon. An Airspeed Consul took him to Dyce aerodrome outside Aberdeen. He caught a slow train south to Laurencekirk and, after a brief conversation on the telephone with his masters at MI5, took a taxi home.

  The Glebe House lay half an hour west, in the shadow of the Cairngorm Mountains. The property had been in the family for generations but recently it had suffered during Moncrieff’s long absences in London. After the death of his father in 1938, Tam had done his best to keep the modest family shoot available for parties of visiting businessmen, but the Munich crisis had reduced bookings to a trickle and even these had dried up after the outbreak of war. With killings of another order in prospect, no one wanted to shoot game in the hills.

  The taxi dropped Moncrieff at the head of the short drive. It had been raining earlier and water was still dripping from the line of beeches that had been his father’s pride and joy. The house revealed itself slowly, glimpsed through the trees as the drive curved towards the mountains: solid granite walls veined with lichen, a curl of woodsmoke from the chimney, doors and windows badly in need of a lick of paint.

  Moncrieff paused. A car he didn’t recognise was parked among the puddles in front of the house.

  Moncrieff let himself in. He could hear voices in the kitchen, then a roar of laughter. He listened a moment longer, making sure, then he dumped his bag on the flagstones, glad he hadn’t gone straight back to London. Archie, he thought. After all this time.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, finishing a bowl of what looked like barley soup. The moment Moncrieff stepped in, he was on his feet, hand outstretched. Moncrieff hadn’t seen him since he’d left the Marines, back in the mid-thirties, but the intervening years had barely touched him. The same brutal haircut. The same rosy, outdoor complexion. The same hint of mischief in the blueness of his eyes. Lieutenant Archie Gasgoigne had been the youngest of the officers in Moncrieff’s company. And by far the most talented.

  He pumped Moncrieff’s hand, complimented him on his choice of cook.

  ‘She fed you well?’ Moncrieff was looking at the empty soup bowl.

  ‘She made me welcome. And then she made me laugh. Bugger the food. Where on earth did you find a treasure like her?’

  ‘In a pub. Where else? Isn’t that right, Cathy?’

  Cathy Phelps had been looking after the Glebe House for nearly a year. She was small, mid-twenties, with a melting smile and an earthy sense of humour. She had limitless patience and a passion for befriending life’s misfits. Moncrieff had yet to meet a man who didn’t fall instantly in love with her.

  There was more soup in the pot. Cathy ladled a bowl for Moncrieff and let Archie help himself to seconds. There was soda bread, too, still warm from the oven.

  Archie asked about the trip. Tam said it had been fine.

  ‘Where did you go? Am I allowed to ask?’

  ‘No.’

  Archie held Tam’s gaze a moment, then shrugged.

  ‘OK, Boss. Sorry.’

  ‘Boss?’ The word made Cathy laugh. ‘Is that what you used to call him?’

  ‘It was. Boss and Big Man. Boss because that’s what he was. And Big Man because he always put us in the shade. Isn’t that right, Boss?’

  Tam shook his head, and attended to the soup. Once again, he wouldn’t be drawn. He’d loved his years in uniform, the company, the craich, the ceaseless physical challenges, and eager young whelps like Gasgoigne had been a big part of that.

  ‘You’re still in the Corps?’ Moncrieff asked.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What
does that mean?’

  ‘Later,’ Archie winked at Cathy. ‘I don’t want to bore your young lady.’

  Gasgoigne stayed the night. Cathy enquired about his tastes in food and when Archie assured her he’d eat anything that had once had a pulse, she busied herself at the kitchen range to cook a proper meal while the two men retired next door to the dining room.

  Gasgoigne had brought a bottle of malt. Glenmorangie.

  ‘Still partial, Boss?’

  ‘Try me.’

  Moncrieff found a couple of glasses. He wanted to know what Gasgoigne was up to.

  ‘Funny, that. I was going to ask you exactly the same question.’

  ‘Don’t want to tell me?’

  ‘Not at all. We’re running supplies into Norway. It might sound simple, but it isn’t.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and a bunch of other blokes. Most of them are Norwegian fishermen. They shipped out when the Germans arrived. There’s an Army guy in charge and a Navy bloke who they’ve let off the leash. I’m the only bootneck north of Cape Wrath. We run a freight service back to Norway. Tons of stuff you and me know only too well. Ammunition. Small arms. High explosives. Proper Norwegians can’t get enough of it.’

  ‘This is from Scotland?’

  ‘The Shetlands. A tiny backwater called Lunna that no one’s ever heard of. If you think this place is wild you should try a spell up there. Terrifying weather. And that’s before you put to sea. Even the sheep plead for mercy but you’d love it.’

  ‘You’ve come to offer me a job?’

  ‘You’re serious? The bloody Shetlands?’ Gasgoigne nodded towards the stove. ‘With a woman like her in your life?’

  ‘You think we’re together?’

  ‘I think you’d be crazy if you’re not. She’s mad about you. She told me.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘I mean it. Women open up to me. You know that. It was true then and it’s true now. You’re telling me she’s free? Because I need to know. One weekend might not be enough.’

  Moncrieff ducked his head, trying to mask a smile.

  ‘I’m old enough to be her father,’ he said.

  ‘So what? We’re at war, Boss. Anything can happen and probably will. Peace is a conspiracy to make us behave. That excuse has gone. Take a risk or two. Give her a kiss. Are you serious? You haven’t even tried?’

  The thought made him laugh. Moncrieff asked about his own love life.

  ‘I was married, Boss. Very briefly. Lesson one? Never tell yourself you’ve fallen in love. Let’s talk about something else. Why Sweden?’

  ‘I had to meet a German there.’

  ‘For King and Country? Line of duty?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘MI5?’

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t. I guessed. You’re not posh enough for MI6 so it had to be Five. Tell me it’s interesting. Tell me it’s full of like-minded deviants with no table manners and far too much imagination. Am I getting warm here?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Most of my colleagues spend their time locking up vast numbers of detainees. This country’s become a giant prison camp. If that sounds interesting, it isn’t.’

  ‘And you, Boss? What do you do?’

  ‘I do something different.’

  ‘Because you speak German?’

  ‘Yes. Well remembered. Because I speak German and because my face fits. I did MI5 a couple of favours around the time of Munich. To be frank, that was more than enough for me but then the war happened and they were suddenly back in my life. I work with some clever people. That makes me very lucky.’

  Gasgoigne nodded. He sensed his questions had taken him as far as Moncrieff was prepared to go. He grinned and raised his glass.

  ‘To the war,’ he said. ‘Long may she prosper.’

  A little later, Cathy arrived with plates of haddock and settled at the table. Gasgoigne pounced on her at once. She’d told him about meeting Moncrieff in a pub. Now he wanted to know more.

  ‘How come you can cook something as delicious as this? And how come you can meet the Big Man’s standards? He’s a tyrant when it comes to ironing. Or was.’

  The question made Cathy giggle. She said she’d been in royal service for a while. First BP. Then Balmoral.

  ‘BP?’

  ‘Buckingham Palace. My mum had a brother who’d been with the Royal Household. It’s the old game, who you know not where you come from. I was lucky. Not many girls from the East End get a chance like that.’

  ‘You’re serious? You were working for the King?’

  ‘The Queen, mainly. She liked me, God knows why. Maybe we had the same sense of humour. They’re a strange lot but that goes for most families. One of the chores they hate is being painted. I could help her out there. We’ve got the same build, the same height. The painter would arrive and I’d sit for him in whatever clothes the Queen had chosen and he’d paint me for hours on end until the time came to do the face and hands. Then I was back in the kitchen again. Knowing my place.’

  ‘You’re serious?’ Gasgoigne was spellbound. ‘I’m looking at a portrait of the Queen and it’s really you in there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Remarkable.’ He reached for his glass and summoned Moncrieff to his feet. ‘God save the Queen, Boss. We’re in the presence of royalty.’

  Moncrieff, who’d never heard this story, motioned Gasgoigne back to his seat. Cathy Phelps had come to him on the recommendation of good friends in Aberdeen. Now he had a question of his own.

  ‘Is that why you ended up at Balmoral? Because of the Queen?’

  ‘Yes. She owns the place. It’s hers. She spends as much time as she can there and she liked having me around.’

  ‘So why did you leave?’

  ‘There was a bit of an upset.’

  Moncrieff held her gaze, but it was Gasgoigne who insisted on an answer.

  ‘Upset?’

  At first Cathy shook her head, reached for the bottle, recharged the empty glasses, but then Gasgoigne asked again and she looked him in the eye, spared Moncrieff a glance, and then shrugged.

  ‘There was a young footman. I really liked him. One thing led to another. He was good at what he did but he never kept his views to himself. He was a Communist and when he’d had a drink or two he’d get on his soapbox and bang on about the Spanish War and Karl Marx and all the rest of it. We all looked after each other below stairs and not a whisper of this stuff went any further, but then he got really drunk one night and by next morning he’d gone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He poured sand into the filling cap of one of the Rolls-Royces. It happened to belong to the King.’

  ‘That’s sabotage,’ Gasgoigne sounded delighted. ‘Give me his details. There’s a job waiting for him in Lunna. Does this beau of yours speak Norwegian, by any chance?’

  ‘Beau?’

  ‘Lover. Consort. Prince over the water.’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t see him any more.’

  ‘But you’d like to?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ She got to her feet and stifled a yawn. ‘The rest of the fish is on the side in the kitchen. Help yourselves.’

  Moncrieff and Gasgoigne stayed up late that night, working their way through the bottle and swapping stories about the old days, and it was nearly three in the morning by the time the two of them climbed the stairs.

  Moncrieff now occupied his parents’ big bedroom at the front of the house and he lay awake, musing on where the war had taken them both. Gasgoigne, in one sense, had been right about MI5. The Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6 as some preferred to call it, was for the toffs, a collection of public school boys who’d passed through the sieve of Oxbridge or the better regiments. They were responsible for intelligence gathering abroad, a calling which naturally required both foreign languages and a certain je ne sais quoi. Their contempt for their lesser brethren in the Security Service was emphatic and undisguised. MI5, they murmured, was for
tweedy provincials and burned-out imperial policemen. Their noun of choice to describe these lesser folk was ‘plod’.

  Moncrieff had never agreed. Once you knew where to look, he suspected there were pockets of MI5 that held much brighter prospects and one of these was Section B1A, which addressed itself to Counter Espionage. This fast-growing empire was run by a softly spoken, balding figure who had the comfortable manners of a country solicitor. Guy Liddell rarely raised his voice but he played the cello to some effect and – to Moncrieff’s surprise – sometimes kept raffish company in the evenings. He was also a talent-spotter of genius and had carefully built a team of individuals – gifted, often difficult – prepared to pool their talents. Between them, in the words of Guy Liddell, it was the business of this coterie of eccentrics to defend the nation’s fragile little barque against espionage and subversion. An interesting challenge, Moncrieff had quickly concluded. And a pleasure to be on board.

  Now, in the darkness, he caught the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Then came the sound of a door opening and – after a while – a brief murmur of conversation. Seconds later the footsteps returned and another door opened and closed. Archie Gasgoigne, Moncrieff thought. Trying his luck.

  Moncrieff smiled to himself. One of the attractions of having Cathy around on the rare weekends he could spare away from London was the sheer pleasure of her company. She was bright and lively and brought something to his life that he knew had been missing. She had a natural gift for conversation, for listening and responding, and once or twice – a glance, a smile – he’d sensed that something more might be on offer. That he found her attractive was beyond dispute. She had a physical presence no man could ignore. But he cherished, as well, the simplicity of their relationship, the fact that he could trust her with a house he’d always loved. I’m lucky to have found her, he told himself as he drifted off to sleep. Keep things simple.