Troubled Midnight

by John Gardner

  They slewed and leaped over the waves, steadily for another half-hour, then suddenly there was activity from the two men in the cockpit, a looking back and shouting, a sudden unexpected surge of power, a little extra bit of speed, an increased banging and rolling, and a look of fear in Gibbon’s eyes, as he shouted at Puxley, who kept making quick excited glances behind him.

  Out of the shriek of the winds, the roar of the engine and the clamour of the boat on the waves, came another noise, a great hooting, like a train signalling, a wild low and persistent whistle, calling for attention. Then a garbled voice shouting faintly in English, distorted across the water.

  She couldn’t understand what was being said but she thought she could distinguish the words “Make way,” yet didn’t know what it meant. Gibbon was pointing at her, shouting at Puxley who simply shook his head violently, again and again. Then Gibbon made a swooping dive towards her and Suzie, still unable to move, cringed away as he put his arms around her feet and began dragging her towards the upper decking.

  Puxley continued to shout and Gibbon was yelling something about getting the weight off. Suzie, terrified, attempted to kick with her bound feet, and Monkey Gibbon spun around and began to drag her by the shoulders, pulling her towards the edge of the deck, attempting to manhandle her to the side of the launch, the business made more dangerous by the way the craft was tossing and bucking in the sea.

  One minute Suzie found herself looking out to sea, the next she saw Puxley, screaming and shouting at the obviously frightened Gibbon, who hauled at her shoulders even harder bringing her almost to the edge of the deck.

  She had a glimpse of another ship, some sixty or seventy feet astern – sleek with the figures 217 and RAF roundels on the bows and two things that looked like gun turrets from an aircraft on the superstructure. The guns appeared to be pointing towards Puxley’s launch. The next thing she knew was Puxley, turning away from the wheel in the cockpit, bracing himself against one of the stanchions, his arm raised and his mouth moving as he levelled a pistol at Gibbon.

  Suzie closed her eyes, terrified, feeling the spray soaking her as the launch bucked and rolled, almost carrying her over the side.

  Far away she heard the shot, like hands clapping, whisked away by the wind, then another and above the other noises, the elements and the ship, Gibbon screaming. She saw him fall, felt him grab hold of her and knew she would be dragged overboard with him.

  She had a fleeting glimpse of Puxley turning back to the wheel, and Gibbon’s face pleading, his eyes wide with terror, his hand on her shoulder and the scream that was her as she was dragged over the side and into the pounding sea.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  SHE REMEMBERED SISTER Veronica Mary who taught them English literature at St Helen’s quoting a poem in some long forgotten summer classroom. She could hear the nun’s voice now: they used to call her voice “The Silver Bell” because Sister Veronica Mary obviously thought she had a voice that would rival the great voice of the trumpet as foretold in the Revelations of St John the Divine.

  Sister Veronica Mary was quoting from some sixteenth century poet, saying:

  The waters were his winding sheet, the sea was made his tomb,

  Yet for his fame the ocean sea was not sufficient room.

  Suzie knew the waters were fast becoming her winding sheet, bound as she was hand and foot, swallowing water, choking, rolling, unable to stay on the surface in the strong, roiling filthy sea. Until, miraculously that same sea spat her out. On the sharp incline of a building wave, there she was lying on her back, stable as a woman in a swimming pool. And it was then that the Royal Air Force air-sea rescue launch, all 63 feet of her with the two turrets and the Vickers K machine guns, bubbled alongside and Leading Airman J Hawkins leaped into the sea to save her.

  “It’s a wonder she’s not dead with cold, ’cos it’s bloody freezing in here,” he reported to his captain, who was a Flying Officer with a lot of experience in the Pagham Yacht Club.

  Suzie remembered very little of this. She in fact recalled only four things clearly: first, being turned over on the deck to have water pumped out of her and seeing for a moment, moving towards the horizon, Branwell Puxley’s launch. “We’ll never catch the bugger now,” somebody said.

  “Wonder what he was playing at?” said another.

  Secondly, she had a clear memory of complaining bitterly as one of the lads fished inside her blouse for the dog tags, finding the solid little brick-red labels and shouting, “She’s with the bloody Met, Skipper. WDS Susannah Mountford. Met Police.” And she responded by saying, “That should read DI. I got promoted. DI Mountford attached to War Office Intelligence Liaison.”

  Thirdly, before they took her down to the cabin, stripped her and somehow got the handcuffs off – they had untied the rope on the deck – rubbed her down with thick towels and poured brandy into her, she saw the sun come out and illuminate a rainbow in a patch of oily sea.

  Fourth, one of the crew said, “That’s a lovely coat, she was wearing,” and the Flying Officer replied, “Yes, my mum’s got one just like it. Bought it before clothes rationing at Fenwicks.” And she felt bloody old.

  As they were undressing her, she was later told that she muttered, “Red hat, no knickers,” and the sergeant had replied, “So they say, Ma’am, but in my experience that just isn’t true.”

  They poured coffee into her as well as the brandy while they made all speed to Folkstone where she went into a deep coma for five days. When she came round a sexy-looking nursing sister told her they’d all been very worried about her. She said there was no need and promptly lapsed back into the coma for a further two days.

  This time when she came to she stayed awake, couldn’t sleep for three nights, but there was an intriguing vase of flowers on her locker. “Very posh bloke brought them,” the sexy sister told her. “Drove down with a big bloke. Big bloke with a little black tash. Wouldn’t leave any messages.”

  “Didn’t call you ‘heart’ by any chance?”

  “No, but the big bloke with the tash called him Chief.”

  Big bloke with a little black tash fitted Brian to a tee.

  After two weeks they moved her to a hospital nearer London, where Elsie Partridge came to see her and stayed a while. She had started to sleep a little by then, but was troubled by vivid and horrible dreams.

  She kept seeing Branwell Bomber Puxley, drowning under a green-grey sea. He would turn towards her with a pleading look, still alive, then he returned and this time his face was dead, nibbled at by sea creatures, pieces of flesh flapping free: his cheeks like wings.

  * * *

  TWO GERMAN E-BOATS picked up Puxley’s launch about two miles off Ostend and they escorted him into the harbour, thinking themselves no end of a pair of dogs for capturing a British spy. But Bomber argued and told them to get hold of Nicholaus Ritter in Hamburg. He arrived in Ostend two days later, and immediately played merry hell with the people there who’d been keeping him in their local jail under a close armed guard.

  Now Puxley began to live high on the hog, in a suite of rooms in a local hotel that was being used for senior officers. Ritter talked to him for a long time and he answered the questions effusively, handing over his report which he turned into a detailed en clair statement which Ritter took away by hand and had typed by three different high security typists and ready to be sent on to the most important intelligence analysts in the western region.

  “You’ll be the most highly thought of agent of the Third Reich,” he told Puxley. “They will write of you in military history books as an agent nonparareil. This is the key to the invasion plans.”

  “I know it,” Puxley said sipping his champagne and knowing that his success would embrace Ritter as well.

  * * *

  SUZIE’S MOTHER, HELEN, had one vulgar expression which she still used quite often, and which, to be honest, rather shocked her second husband, Major Ross Gordon Lowe (or Gordon-Lowe as he preferred it). When examining gove
rnment forms she would express herself graphically by saying that these people wanted to know the far end of a fart.

  Now, after Elsie Partridge first visited her Suzie said, loudly, “Bloody hell, Elsie wants to know the far end of a fart.” Shocking the sexy nursing sister who wasn’t over fond of ladies speaking plainly.

  This was true. Elsie asked about every detail of the journey with Puxley and Gibbon, plus a large number of things Suzie really couldn’t tell him: technical things about Puxley’s launch, the car, and exactly what Monkey Gibbon was wearing. Regarding this latter Elsie told her, “A body’s been washed up, d’you see? Not much of it left, but oddly some of the clothing is intact.”

  Naturally, Suzie didn’t want to think about it. She told him all she could, said she really wanted to get her special thanks to the commander and crew of air-sea rescue launch 217 and Elsie said he’d do that for her. He also told her Curry Shepherd sent his best wishes. “Bit busy at the moment,” Elsie said. “They’re talking about wedding bells.”

  “Who’re talking about wedding bells?”

  “Curry and that popsie Ruth who mans the phones, does the typing and all that in the Ivor Place office.”

  “Ah,” said Suzie.

  “Personally I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I think they’ve been having a bit of the old romantic entanglement for some time. I rather feel she’s pushing but Curry’s not all that keen. Personal observation of course.”

  “I don’t think Curry’ll ever be tied down by one woman,” Suzie observed. “Personal observation, of course.”

  Elsie said they had people assessing how far Overlord had been compromised. He told her that in due course she would have to appear in front of a tribunal looking into the whole business of Puxley and the Overlord plans.

  “Of course. Be glad to,” Suzie told him.

  “Oh no you won’t,” Elsie grinned. “You’ll only tell ’em what I say you can tell ’em,” and he laid his right forefinger along the side of his nose conspiratorially.

  “Anything come about that flaxen-haired Squadron Leader?” she asked. “One with a flourish of a moustache?”

  “Couldn’t prove a thing. He was one of our Whitley pilots, towing the gliders. Been put where he can’t hurt anyone.”

  “And that woman?”

  Elsie gave her his inscrutable look. “Got her salted away,” he grinned smoothing his bald pate with the flat of his right hand. “She’s being put to the question.”

  For some unaccountable reason this made Suzie shudder.

  * * *

  WHEN COLONEL BARON Alexis von Roenne arrived at Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in the chateau at La Roche Guyon, he came heralded by many warnings, for the Colonel Baron was head of the FHW the western Intelligence arm of the Supreme Command, OKW.

  Rommel greeted von Roenne and took him into his private quarters for lunch which was a pleasant meal – a brace of pheasants and a chestnut soufflé during which they spoke of Rommel’s many plans and changes for the reinforcing of Fortress Europe, in particular the Channel coast.

  When the two men were finally left alone, von Roenne asked if Rommel had read the latest intelligence reports. “I mean this stuff that’s come from our source Sattler?”

  “Of course. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it.”

  Roenne laughed, “Does it deserve any detailed discussion?”

  “Why don’t you tell me? After all, you’re the expert.”

  The Colonel shook his head. “I’ve been looking at this Sattler’s bona fides.” He paused. “And also the bona fides of the man who recruited him, and the others who appear to have so much faith in him.”

  “And?”

  “Field-Marshal, I’m not going to insult your intelligence. We already know that the Allies will make their assault in the Pas de Calais. To do otherwise would be folly. Madness. This is obviously an attempt to make us look in another direction.”

  “You mean it is a deception plan?”

  “Of course. There is one already – a fake army up in Scotland trying to make us believe that they are coming in via Norway.” Another laugh and a dismissive gesture of his right hand.

  “And they want us to believe they’ll also come in through Normandy and Brittany?”

  “Of course. You’ve seen the traffic signals we’ve been receiving from their huge First US Army Group, Patton’s army. You’ve seen the reports from our agents in England. Could you doubt their strength?”

  “No. I’m inclined to believe they’ll come through the Pas de Calais. If I were in Eisenhower’s place that’s what I’d do, and I’d be at the Rhine within weeks. The country inland in Normandy and Brittany is just not suitable for tank warfare.”

  “Then the only thing left for us to discover is who this Sattler thinks he is? Is he a dupe, a man who has swallowed the story whole, deception and all? Or is he something more sinister? A double perhaps?”

  “That’s for you to discover, my dear Baron.”

  The Colonel shook his head, “No, Field-Marshal, I think our friends in the RSHA should have a little talk with him.” The RSHA was the Reich Security Administration. The Party Intelligence Service. Basically the Gestapo. Twenty-four hours later two officers called upon Puxley and asked him to come with them to Berlin to clear up one or two points. “Nothing serious,” they said. “Just a few technical points.”

  He was never heard of again.

  * * *

  SUZIE MOUNTFORD WAS discharged from hospital on the first Wednesday in February, 1944, on the understanding that she would go on leave for a month.

  She was given a jeep and driver to take her back to Upper St Martin’s Lane where she arrived at a little after two in the afternoon. She had been given her lunch in the hospital but was undoubtedly feeling a little weak and oddly, she thought, unhappy.

  There was a pile of mail inside the door. So much that it almost jammed the door and she was forced to push it open with her shoulder. She gathered up the mail and plonked it on the little hall table, piles of it, all her Christmas cards and bills, and lord knew what else.

  She went straight into the kitchen, put the kettle on then walked around, peeping into every room, something she did automatically when the flat had been empty for a while, coming back into the kitchen. Making tea, realising she had no milk and deciding to drink it without.

  She planned to ring her mother and go down to Newbury, to Larksbrook, the family home, later. Perhaps the ‘Galloping Major’ could drive up and take her down, if he had the petrol. She poured her tea then went into the hall again to fetch the mail.

  She began to sort it on the kitchen table, separate piles, cards, bills, letters …

  She stopped, recognising the handwriting, ripping it open and looking at the sheet of heavy crested notepaper. Tommy had written to her from the estate, from his father’s, the Earl of Kingscote’s estate. He had written over Christmas. They used to have a joke about it, she always talked about him going down to flog the peasants at Christmas. Last year she had gone with him, the Honourable Tommy Livermore.

  She began to read –

  Suzie, My Darling Heart,

  This is to apologise, though I know that a mere apology is not enough. What I did to you about the possible GM, and all the other ways I treated you – all of them – are unforgivable so I have no right to ask for your forgiveness. But my dear heart, I love you more than I can ever express, and miss you with all my heart and mind. I miss you with such pain, a pain that causes me anguish with each breath I take.

  I miss you and long for you. I see you and hear you everywhere. O God I miss you so much and in every way. I miss you now. I miss your touch and the feel of you. I miss seeing and hearing you. In the night, I miss your dark triangle and the Elysian Fields that lie beyond.

  Please. Please. My love ever,

  Tommy

  Dandy Tom, she thought reaching for the telephone.

  Historical Note

  There is absolutely no
evidence to suggest there was a particular spy sent to search out the plans for Overlord. However, all the agents sent into Britain by the German Intelligence services were put in the bag, and all but two of them were turned, sending back a large amount of intelligence to back up Operation Fortitude.

  Also, Colonel Baron Alexis von Roenne was the head of German Intelligence in the West – as opposed to the brilliant Reinhard Gehlen in the East. At the end of World War II, Gehlen set up his own Intelligence Service on behalf of the Allies.

  Alexis von Roenne took the bait of Fortitude and, while he rejected the possibility of an invasion through Norway, was completely hooked on the Pas de Calais deception and was one of the many reasons for the German indecision in the first week of the Normandy landings.

  1 American senior officers had little faith in Fortitude, mainly because they remained ignorant of the amount of disinformation being played back by the XX Committee from captured German secret agents.

  2 In present day money this translates into just under £95.

  3 The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Alan Brooke wrote, as late as June 1944, ‘It may well be the most ghastly disaster of the whole war.’

  4 L C Partridge should have known better: Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, was in Cairo with the Prime Minister.

  Also by this author

  James Bond Novels

  Licence Renewed

  For Special Services

  Icebreaker

  Role of Honor

  Nobody Lives For Ever

  No Deals, Mr. Bond

  Scorpius

  Win, Lose or Die

  Brokenclaw

  The Man from Barbarossa

  Death is For Ever

  Never Send Flowers

  SeaFire

  Cold

  License to Kill (From the Screenplay)

  Goldeneye (From the Screenplay)

  The Boysie Oakes Books

  The Liquidator

  Understrike