Attack Alarm

by Hammond Innes

  The argument was interminable. It seemed rather pointless. The main thing was that the troop had brought the ’plane down. At last we got our food. I had just started eating when I saw Andrew Mason come in. He stopped in the doorway to look round the room and then made straight for our table. He looked agitated.

  “You’re wanted at the office at once, Hanson. Mr. Ogilvie wants to see you.”

  He sounded urgent. I found I had my fork suspended half-way to my mouth. I put it down. “Oh, hell!” I said. “What’s he want to see me about?” But I knew already. And I felt like a cub reporter facing his first awkward interview with the editor.

  “I don’t know,” said Mason. “But Wing-Commander Winton is with him. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

  I got to my feet. “Don’t be a fool—finish your supper first,” said Kan. I hesitated. “I think you’d better come now,” said Mason. “It seemed to be urgent and I’ve already been some time trying to find you.”

  “All right,” I said. I put my cap on and followed him out of the canteen. I felt nervous. Something must have gone wrong over that wire. And if it had, I was in a proper mess. It was hardly likely that Ogilvie would understand my explanation. Thank God Vayle didn’t hold a King’s commission. His civilian status made a lot of difference.

  Mason took me straight into the inner office. Wing-Commander Winton was seated in a chair beside Ogilvie’s desk. They looked up as I entered. I saluted. “You wanted to see me, sir?” I was rigidly at attention.

  “Did you give a Waaf named Sheldon a telegram to send for you to-day?”

  So I was right. I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that the telegram?”

  He handed me an inland telegram form. The message I had scribbled on the back of an envelope in the Naafi that morning was written on it in a clear feminine hand. “Yes, sir, that is the telegram.”

  “It’s incredible, Gunner Hanson—quite incredible. You realise that by implication you are accusing Mr. Vayle of something that you don’t dare to state? What are you accusing him of?”

  “I was not aware that I was accusing him of anything.” I replied.

  “Then why do you write to your friend asking for full details about him? You must have had some reason for it.”

  “It was a purely private communication to a colleague on my newspaper, sir.”

  “Nothing is private once you are in the Army. You are fortunate at this station in that there is no censorship as such. But this telegram was so startling that the postmistress at Thorby thought it wise to ring up Station H.Q. to find out whether the Waaf in question had authority to send it.” He paused and glanced across at the Wing-Commander. “Perhaps you would like to question the man, sir.”

  The C.O. Thorby was a big, heavy-jowled man with steady, alert eyes. He came straight to the point. “As Mr. Ogilvie says, this telegram of yours accuses Mr. Vayle by implication of something that you are evidently unwilling to put down on paper. You require from your friend details of Mr. Vayle’s life prior to 1936. You say it may be of vital importance. Perhaps you would explain.”

  I hesitated. Winton was easier to talk to than Ogilvie. Probably because he had had more experience of men. But I was uncertain what line to take. In the end I decided on frankness. “I sent that wire because my suspicions had been aroused, sir,” I said. I then went on to explain how the German pilot had stopped talking the moment he saw Vayle, how I had learnt that Vayle had spoken to the pilot before he went before the Intelligence officer, and how I was doubtful whether the pilot would have taken the line he did without guidance. “I could find out nothing about him prior to 1936, sir,” I finished. “So I decided to wire my colleague and see whether he could discover something of Mr. Vayle’s background. I was bearing in mind the fact that a plan of the ground defences of the aerodrome had already found its way into enemy hands.”

  “I see. In other words, you suspected Mr. Vayle of being a Nazi agent?”

  The C.O.’s heavy brows were drawn downwards over his eyes and he spoke very quietly. I sensed a menace in his words. But I could do nothing to stave it off. I said, “Yes, sir.”

  “You realise that the proper course would have been to explain your suspicions to your commanding officer or alternatively to have asked him to arrange for you to see me? If you had done so I should have been able to tell you that Mr. Vayle came to this station from a well-known public school, and that we have the most complete confidence in him. Instead, you start a little personal investigation without any authority to do so.” He gave me a suddenly keen glance. “What were you before you joined up?”

  “Journalist, sir.”

  He glanced at the address on the telegram. “The Globe?”

  “Yes, sir.

  “And this man Trent—what is his position on the paper?”

  “Crime reporter, sir.”

  “I see. A sensation-seeking paper and a sensation-seeking man.” I was conscious of a very unpleasant feeling of loneliness. “I regard this matter very seriously.” His voice was cold, distant. “The reasons for your suspicions seem to me quite inadequate. Apart from that, however, your communication with your newshound friend might have had very unfortunate repercussions. Mr. Vayle, though of British nationality, was for a number of years lecturer at a Berlin University. Being of Jewish extraction, he was forced to leave in 1934. As I have said, we think very highly of him at this station. Had your wire not been intercepted, I can well imagine what a stunt article your friend would have written.”

  He got up abruptly. “I leave you to deal with this man, Mr. Ogilvie. You know my wishes. I want no repetition of this at my station.”

  Ogilvie got his feet. “I’ll see that it does not occur again, sir.”

  I hesitated.

  But as the C.O. moved to the door, I said: “Excuse me, sir.”

  He paused with his hand on the door. “What is it?” he said, and his tone was not inviting.

  “In the first place,” I said, “Trent would never have used any information he obtained without my permission. Secondly, because I have joined the Army I have not forfeited my right as a citizen to take any steps I think proper in the interests of my country. My suspicions were flimsy, I knew that. It was out of the question at that stage to raise the matter with any one in authority. I took the only course open to me to attempt to satisfy those suspicions one way or the other.”

  “The interests of your country would have been best served by your bringing your suspicions to me, not to a newspaper.” He still spoke quietly, but there was a tremor of anger in his voice.

  I suppose it was foolish of me to pursue the matter. But I said: “Had I done that, without first seeing whether there were any grounds for my suspicions, I could hardly expect the matter to be taken any more seriously than my views about the information of a plan for immobilising our fighter ’dromes given me by the German pilot.”

  “The headquarters staff of the station is better able to judge the importance of information than you are. I think it would be wise if you forgot that you’d ever been a journalist and remembered only that you’re a gunner in the British Army.” He turned to Ogilvie. “Whatever you decide, I look to you to see that this sort of thing does not occur again.”

  “Very good, sir.” Ogilvie opened the door for him. When he had left, Ogilvie went back to his desk and lit his pipe. “You haven’t made it any easier for me by taking the line you did, Hanson,” he said. “Wing-Commander Winton expressed a desire that I should have you transferred to another troop or even another battery, so long as you did not remain at this camp any longer than necessary. However, I am not prepared to go as far as that.” He took his pipe from his mouth. “You will be confined to your site for twenty-eight days, and you will only leave it to get your meals and to wash. All letters and other communications during that period will be delivered to this office for me to censor. I will instruct Sergeant Langdon accordingly. All right. Dismiss!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

&n
bsp; NOT SINGLE SPIES

  I THINK I was very near to tears as I came out of the office. The sense of frustration was strong in me. I felt lonely and dispirited. I was cut off from the outside world. I felt like a prisoner who wants to tell the world he didn’t do it, but can’t. Thorby was a prison and the barbed-wire bars had closed with a vengeance.

  Seated on a bench outside the office building were Fuller and Mason. They fell silent as I emerged. I did not speak to them. I felt so remote from them, as they sat there enjoying the pleasant warmth of the gathering dusk, that I could think of nothing to say. I wandered slowly up the road and across the asphalt in front of the hangars. The peace of a late August evening had settled on the place. The revving of engines, symbol of war in a fighter station, was no longer to be heard. All was still. Faintly came the strains of a waltz from the officers’ mess.

  It was quiet. Too quiet. To me it seemed like the lull before the storm. To-morrow was Thursday. And Friday was the fateful day. If the proposed raid was to prepare the way for an air landing on the ’drome, any time after Friday might be zero hour. I was in a wretched position. Technically I had done all I could. Yet how could I leave the matter where it stood? Vayle had been a lecturer at a Berlin university. Winton might know him to be sound and my suspicions might be entirely unfounded. Yet the fact that he had been in Berlin at the time the Nazis came into power only served to increase my suspicions. British he might be, but there were Britons who believed in National Socialism. And there was certainly nothing about him to suggest the Jew.

  As I approached our site I knew that somehow I had to go through with it. I had to find out whether or not I was right. But how—how? Easy to make the decision, but what was there I could do, confined to my gun site with all my communications with the outside world censored? And anyhow, wasn’t it far more likely that Winton was right? The headquarters’ staff, as he had said, was far better able to judge the reliability of the pilot’s story than I was. And as regards Vayle, Winton had known him intimately for several years, whereas I knew no more of the man than I had been told. It seemed absurd to proceed, when there was so, little cause.

  When I went into the hut, I found most of the other members of our detachment had already returned and were making their beds. It was nearly nine. I felt nervous. I thought every one must know what had happened and would be watching me to see how I took it. I went straight over to my bed and began to make it. Kan looked across at me. “Well, what did the Little Man want?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said.

  He didn’t pursue the matter. At nine we went out to the pit and relieved the others. Fuller hadn’t yet turned up. There were only Kan, Chetwood, Micky and myself. “Where’s Langdon?” I asked. It was unlike him to be late for stand-to.

  “He had to go down to the orderly room,” Kan told me.

  I was silent, gazing out across the ’drome. The sky was very beautiful in the west—and very clear. Soon the nightly procession would start.

  “Got any fags to sell?” Micky demanded of the gun pit at large.

  There was a shout of laughter. “Not again,” said Chetwood despairingly. “Why don’t you buy some once in a while?”

  “Once in a while! I like that. I bought ten only this morning.”

  “Then you’re smoking too much.”

  “You’re right there, mate. Do you know how many I smoke a day? Twenty!”

  “Good God!” said Kan. “That means we’re supplying you with seventy a week. Why don’t you buy yourself twenty at a time instead of only ten?”

  “I smoke ’em too quick, that’s why.”

  “You mean, you don’t smoke enough of ours.”

  “Well, as long as you’re mugs enough.” He grinned in his sudden mood of frankness. “I tell you, I wouldn’t starve—not as long as there was a sap left in the world.”

  “All right, we’re saps, are we? We’ll remember that, Micky.”

  “Well, give us a fag anyway. I ain’t got one—straight I ain’t—an’ I’m just dying for a smoke.”

  His request was met by silence. “That wasn’t very well received, was it, Micky?” Chetwood laughed.

  “All right, mate.” He produced an old fag end. “Give us a light, someone.”

  “Oh, my God, no matches either!”

  “Would you like me to smoke it for you?” This from Fuller, who had just arrived in the pit. He tossed Micky a box of matches.

  At that moment the sirens began to wail. Micky paused on the point of lighting his cigarette and glanced up at the sky. “The bastards!” he said.

  “You want to mind that light.” It was John Langdon, who had just come up on his bike.

  “Well, be reasonable, John, it ain’t dark yet.”

  “All right, Micky, I was only kidding you.” He propped his bike up against the parapet and vaulted into the pit. He produced two bottles of beer from beneath his battle blouse. He tossed one to Micky and the other to Chetwood.

  “I thought you went to the orderly room,” said Kan.

  “I did,” he replied. “But I stopped off at the Naafi on the way back.”

  I was conscious that he glanced in my direction as he spoke. He went over to the gun and looked at the safety lever. The other four settled down on the bench, drinking from the bottles. The first ’plane went over high, faintly throbbing. The searchlights wavered uncertainly. Langdon came over to where I stood leaning against the sandbags. “You seem to have got yourself into a spot of trouble, Barry.” He spoke quietly, so that the others should not hear. “You understand that you are confined to the site for the next four weeks, and that all letters and other communications must be handed in to me so that I can pass them on to Mr. Ogilvie to be censored?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t want to pry into your affairs,” he added, “but if you care to tell me about it, I’ll see what I can do to get the sentence mitigated. Ogilvie’s no fool. He knows the strain we’re living under.”

  I hesitated. “It’s very nice of you,” I said. “I may want to talk it over with you later, but at the moment—well——” I stopped, uncertain how to explain.

  “All right.” He patted my arm. “Any time you like. I know how you feel.” I don’t know what he thought I’d done.

  It was then I realised that the four on the bench were casting covert glances at me. They were leaning forward listening to Fuller, who was speaking softly. I heard the word “Friday” and I guessed what they were talking about. I remembered that Fuller had been talking to Mason when I came out of the orderly room. Micky looked up and met my gaze. “Is that true, mate?” he asked.

  “Is what true, Micky?” I said.

  “Bill here says that that Jerry pilot told you this place was going to be wiped out on Friday.”

  “I didn’t say” wiped output in Fuller.

  “You said a raid, didn’t you? What’s the difference?” He turned to me again. “You can’t deny you was talking to the feller. I saw you wiv my own eyes. Chattin’ away in German you was like a couple of old cronies. Did ’e really say we was for it on Friday?”

  There was no point in pretending he hadn’t. I said, “Yes, that’s what he told me.”

  “Did ’e say Friday?”

  I nodded.

  “Cor blimey, mate, that’s practically to-morrow—an’ I was going to ’ave a haircut on Saturday.”

  “Do you think he really knew anything?” asked Kan.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It was probably just bravado. He wanted to frighten us.”

  “Well, he ain’t succeeded,” put in Micky. “But, blimey—to-morrow! It makes ye think, don’t it? And we got to sit ’ere and just wait for it. Wish I’d joined the ruddy infantry.” His brows suddenly puckered. “Wot you confined to the site for?” he asked.

  The directness of the question rather disconcerted me. That was like Micky. One was always being faced with the problem of replying to remarks which other men would never think of making. I made no reply. Ther
e was an uncomfortable silence. Langdon broke it by asking about my conversation with the pilot. I told them what he had said. He made no comment. The others were silent too.

  “How come you speak German?” Micky asked suddenly.

  “I worked in the Berlin office of my paper for some time,” I explained.

  He turned that information over in his mind for a moment. Then he muttered, “An’ you got yourself into trouble. Wasn’t anything to do with what you said to that Jerry, was it?”

  I said, “No.” Perhaps I denied it a little too quickly, for I sensed a sudden atmosphere of suspicion. I realised that I was not the only one who had been thinking over the fact that someone had attempted to get details of the ground defences of the aerodrome to the enemy. I sensed hostility. Jaded nerves did not make for clear thinking, and a newcomer is never easily absorbed into a community of men who have been working together for a long time. I felt the loneliness of my position acutely. If I was not careful I should be in difficulties with my own detachment as well as with the authorities.

  “Ever met the fellow before?” It was Chetwood who asked the question.

  Perhaps I read suspicion where none was intended. But as soon as I said, “Which fellow?” I knew I had attempted to be too off-hand.

  “The Jerry pilot, of course.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why did he talk so freely?” asked Chetwood. And Fuller said, “Are you sure he told you nothing else?” I hesitated. I felt at bay. Kan, with his easy manner, would have turned the questions with a wisecrack. But I was more accustomed to writing than to conversation—it tends to make you slow in repartee. Micky followed up the other questions by asking, “Sure you told him nothink else?”

  I felt bewildered. And then quite suddenly the conversation was turned from me by Kan saying, “Funny that Westley should have asked for special leave on Friday.”

  “What for?” asked Micky.

  “Oh, it’s his uncle’s funeral or something.”