One Man's Flag

by David Downing

  There was something different about him, she thought. Something sadder. Perhaps he had lost a close friend.

  He was calling for the check. “I regret I must go—I have a meeting to attend. But I will inquire after your Major Suhr, and if you will give me your address, I will be in touch. Perhaps we could have dinner one evening?”

  “I would like that.” She gave him the address on Uhlandstrasse, and said he could also leave messages at the Adlon. “It was good to see you,” she said as they parted. He gave a slight bow, gently clicked his heels, and walked off down Friedrichstrasse.

  The weather remained seasonably hot and humid for the next week. Caitlin saw a lot of Jack Slaney and entertained herself for several days with the thought of seducing him—after all, the men in the prison camp were not the only ones who missed sex. But she soon found out that Slaney had a childhood sweetheart back in the States, whom he meant to marry and to whom he was touchingly faithful. She liked him too much to put him in the way of temptation.

  So work it was. Fortunately, Gerhard Singer proved an efficient provider of copy material. There were trips to General Staff headquarters, to a munitions factory, and to schools for both infants and adolescents; meetings were arranged with representatives of predominantly female organizations ranging from a sewing club to a nurses’ trade union. And she was also allowed to take her interpreter out onto the streets and into the cafés, where she could sample opinions about the war and the peace that hopefully lay beyond it.

  Few of those she talked to had any doubts that their country would emerge victorious—when had Germany ever been defeated? War was terrible, of course, but there was almost universal agreement that the government had had no choice. People were resigned to a long period of hardship, and many naturally feared for the lives of their fathers and sons at the front. In all this they were much like the English and the French, and no doubt the Russians and Turks. They all shared the same self-righteous resolve—they were right, and they would damn well see it through, no matter what it cost them. Which, as far as Caitlin was concerned, showed up the absurdity of the whole wretched business. If she could get that across to American readers, she might help build resistance to her country’s involvement and save a few thousand lives.

  As Slaney drunkenly remarked one evening, it seemed to him that the people of Alsace and Lorraine should decide who governed them, not those in faraway Berlin or Paris. And as for settling international disputes by holding vast shooting contests, you might as well just have a ball game, which would certainly be a lot less bloody and waste less time and money.

  This was not a theory she shared with the two socialist members of the Reichstag whom Singer arranged for her to interview. Both men seemed thoroughly middle-class to her—their dress and affect seemed miles away from anything Caitlin associated with people intent on changing the world—but she tried her hardest not to prejudge them. Unfortunately, Kollontai’s predictions of what they would argue proved all too accurate—that the German people would never have forgiven them, that they couldn’t risk all the social advances, that fighting reactionary Russia could only be progressive. The phrases rolled out, phrases, Caitlin thought, that these men had used to convince themselves. She had come armed with a sheaf of quotes from earlier years and watched with interest as each man was irritated, annoyed, and finally angered by her refusal to offer absolution.

  There was no mystery here. Germany’s Social Democrats had welshed on their own beliefs for the most basic of reasons—fear and self-interest. In the lonelier hours of darkness, they probably knew as much themselves, but in daylight and company they just about managed to sustain the pretense.

  Slaney’s reaction, when she told him about the interviews, was predictable. Why would she expect any politician to sacrifice a career for principles?

  But some had, she pointed out. Several of the people that Kollontai knew had refused to follow the general line and had set up an antiwar party of their own. Two—Rosa Luxemburg and Klara Zetkin—were now in prison, while Karl Liebknecht had been forcibly enlisted and was now serving on the Russian front.

  Slaney had an answer to that: “Ah, but they’ve all written ‘revolutionary’ in the career box. They can’t afford to abandon their principles.”

  This had infuriated her for some time, although she wasn’t quite sure why. She supposed it was the glibness of his cynicism and the implied corollary that any journalist worth his or her salt needed to take a jaundiced view of anyone promoting a political line. She didn’t want to go that far. Suspicious yes, but there had to be some room for hope.

  Singer had news when she saw him next. Major Suhr was in Turkey, he told her, doing much the same job as he’d done with her brother, and there was little prospect of his returning to Germany before the year was out. His wife, however, was willing to talk to Caitlin. “She was in Ireland with her husband,” Singer said, as if anticipating a refusal. “And she did meet your brother.”

  Caitlin’s interest was piqued. “I’d like to meet her.”

  The Suhrs lived in Wilmersdorf, in a rather grand-looking house that backed onto a park. According to Singer, Freya Suhr spoke English quite well, so Caitlin could afford to dispense with her usual interpreter. A maid opened the door and showed her through the house and out into the rear garden, where a pretty blonde not much older than Caitlin was sitting beneath a canopy umbrella.

  She rose languidly to her feet and greeted Caitlin with a smile. “Please, have a seat. Emmi, coffee and cake.”

  “It’s good of you to see me,” Caitlin said, sitting down. With a vista of sunlit grass and trees and a happy chorus of birdsong, she needed only a whiff of hot dogs to conjure up a Prospect Park picnic. Which was enough to make anyone homesick. She took a deep breath. “I hear your husband’s in Turkey.”

  Freya sighed. “But at least he will be safe, I think. Better teaching the Turks how to blow things up than doing it himself at the front.” She raised a hand. “I’m sorry. You have lost a brother already. My . . . what is the word? Condolences?”

  “That is the word.”

  “They were brave boys.”

  “You met them?”

  “Only once. I complain about so many days in the city, and Manfred let me come with him one day, out to the farm where they stay. I remember two men with American accents, the big man named Brady and your brother, Colm. He liked to joke, I think, and Manfred tells me he is quick to learn.”

  That sounded too good to be true, Caitlin thought. Colm had always been all thumbs when it came to anything mechanical.

  The maid arrived with the coffee and cakes, which would have tasted good in peacetime, let alone a year into England’s blockade. In between mouthfuls Caitlin asked Freya Suhr how she saw women’s role in the German war effort and received a predictable answer.

  “To support our men, I suppose. My friends and I are all knitting gloves and socks for the soldiers.” She smiled. “I’m afraid mine are not very good, but I will get better if the war continues. My little brother thinks the Russians will surrender before Christmas and that the English and French will not fight on without them.”

  “Is your brother in the army, too?”

  “Yes, in East Prussia. So he knows how things are going there.”

  Caitlin paused. “I’m glad you have a younger brother,” she began, “because you will know why I must ask this question. I want—I need—to know what my younger brother died for. The operation that he and his friends mounted was clearly intended to assist the German war effort, so I’m guessing that the German government had offered them some material support in return. Did your husband ever tell you what that was?”

  Freya shook her head. “If there was anything like that, Manfred never told me. I think it is more a matter of a common enemy and friends doing what they can for each other. I am sure they are not forgotten here in Berlin, and that our government is doing what it
can. There may be difficulties—the English rule the seas for now—but I am sure we are trying to help. We would be foolish not to, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Caitlin agreed. Why did she have the feeling that that Freya Suhr had been thoroughly coached in what to say?

  Walking back up the long Uhlandstrasse she asked herself what the German government might be trying to tell her. That they were actively helping the Irish republicans? Then why not make up some concrete quid pro quo for the original operation and give her the satisfaction of knowing that her brother had died for something real? There was only one reason she could think of—either that there had been something on offer or that something similar was happening now. Something they might have told a grieving sister but not a foreign journalist.

  Which wasn’t much help to her when it came to vindicating Colm’s self-sacrifice, but she could hardly blame the Germans for that. If they had new plans to arm the Irish rebels, they wouldn’t want the enemy forewarned.

  A Hill by the Burhabulang River

  There was no letup in the enervating weather. If ever so slightly cooler, it was just as wet and twice as humid. As one old hand told McColl in the Bengal Club bar, the only thing to do in August was look forward to September, when the store catalogs arrived from England and people could start picking out the gifts they wanted for Christmas. The man was so enthused by the prospect that McColl refrained from pointing out that this year things were bound to be different.

  In the days following the Harry & Sons fiasco, Tindall came down with a serious stomach bug, leaving no one to narrow a widening rift between his colleagues. Having already blamed McColl for leaving the raid too late, Cunningham now insisted that one of McColl’s team must be leaking information to the terrorists. How else could he explain the arrival of the alarm raiser on the night in question? His own team, of course, was above suspicion.

  They fell out further over Bhattacharyya. Before becoming ill, Tindall had given McColl first crack at the Bengali, who proved as obdurate as ever. After apologizing for lying at their earlier interviews, he announced that this time he would simply remain silent. And nothing McColl said over the next half hour succeeded in shifting the young Indian’s resolve. Reduced to reading facial expressions, McColl thought he detected the glimmer of a smile when he asked whether Jatin Mukherjee had been among those living at Harry & Sons, but he had no way of knowing whether that meant yes or no. After two such sessions, he reluctantly passed the baton to Five, and the next time he saw Bhattacharyya’s face, it was covered with bruises. Cunningham deflected McColl’s anger with infuriating smugness, having apparently extracted information where his opponent had failed. When the information in question turned out to be false—the wealthy Indian whom Bhattacharyya had shopped turned out to be a friend of the governor—McColl felt a little smug himself, but the Bengali was the only victim. An enraged Cunningham had him placed in solitary confinement, ostensibly to wear him down, actually to punish his native impudence.

  There were more spot checks at the stations. Two ships from Batavia were searched from keel to funnel after tip-offs that proved malicious. Several random raids in Black Town angered the locals to no useful end.

  The search for the movers continued, but without a name or a destination it was like looking for a needle in an Indian dung pile. The firm in question had to be local, but there were hundreds to choose from, and most were unregistered. So where had the carts transported Harry’s effects? The city, the suburbs, a nearby town? Had they taken them to a train or to one of the myriad wharves on the river? The gramophones might be in Burma by now, or halfway up the Khyber Pass.

  There was no other choice but to wait. McColl was cheered by a letter from Jed, announcing a full recovery from the gas poisoning. It was “quite quiet” on the British section of the Western Front, his brother reported almost ruefully—Jed had always chafed at inactivity.

  It wasn’t so quiet on the various battlefields. Indeed, one of the local papers had recently estimated that five thousand soldiers were dying every day. If correct, that meant almost two million had perished already.

  Toward the end of the week, McColl endured a long, hot train ride to Chittagong, where the local police had arrested a possible German spy. The man claimed he was a Swedish naturalist and had papers so cleverly forged that they couldn’t be distinguished from the genuine article.

  There was a reason for that, as McColl informed the preening captors—they were the genuine article. The Swede was released with many apologies and sent back to the wild to continue his cataloging of Burmese mountain butterflies. McColl took the train back to Calcutta, this time overnight, and spent some of his sleepless minutes wondering whether counting pretty insects while half the world bled was something to admire or detest.

  He’d been back only two days when the officer responsible for the twice-daily check on the chaikhana reported the return of its owner. McColl took the Bengali-speaking Sanjay along for the interview but needn’t have bothered—Asok Bagchi spoke perfect Urdu.

  Had he spoken to the removal people hired by Harry & Sons?

  He had, the Indian said. But that was all he had done. He knew nothing about the people in Harry & Sons. He had spoken once to the proprietor, maybe twice. But definitely no more than that.

  “You’re not in any trouble,” McColl reassured him. “I’m only interested in the removal people. Do you know where they came from?”

  Bagchi shook his head. “They didn’t say.”

  “Do you know where they were taking the shipment?”

  “Howrah station.”

  McColl saw a glimmer of hope. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes. The morning they left, the man in charge told me they were in a hurry, because loading ended at eight.”

  That was even better. “I don’t suppose he told you where the train was going?”

  “No, sahib.”

  It didn’t matter, McColl thought as he and Sanjay rode back down Harrison Road. The Howrah Bridge, when they reached it, was the usual bedlam, but their driver refused to let anything slow their progress and seemed to take an inordinate delight in cutting across stranded automobile taxis with their profusely sweating white passengers.

  The station and freight yards backed onto the river south of the bridge, with the offices occupying an area larger than Dalhousie Square. It took McColl a quarter of an hour to find the relevant one, but that was the difficult bit. The shipment ledgers were arranged by destination, date, and time and included an inventory of goods being shipped along with names and addresses of both shipper and recipient. The only general-merchandise train scheduled to leave at the time in question was the morning Madras, and the relevant ledger was duly fetched.

  Five minutes later McColl had his answer. A shipment containing, among other things, “twenty-three gramophones” had been sent to Balasore, a small town about 120 miles south of Calcutta. Looking at the map that an eager railway official supplied, McColl noticed how close the town was to the sea.

  In the ledger the space for the recipient’s name and address contained only the former—a Mr. Banerjee. He would collect—had already collected—the shipment at Balasore station.

  They were in the hunt again, McColl thought as the tonga took them back across the teeming bridge. From Tindall’s office he cabled the police in Balasore, asking whether the town had a gramophone shop, particularly one that had just been opened. No reply arrived that morning, but when he and Tindall returned from a long and pleasant lunch at Firpo’s, there was one on the DCI man’s desk. “Yes,” an Inspector Naysmith had reported. “The Universal Emporium opened for business three weeks ago. Are you looking for a particular model?”

  The police train set out for Balasore just before midnight. Once a small army of officers had been rounded up—no minor undertaking—Tindall had spent the better part of two hours convincing the governor that Calcutta would not be sw
ept by lawlessness in their absence. The relief on his face as their train rattled clear of the Howrah terminus was plain to see.

  The other good news was that Cunningham had called in sick that morning—he hadn’t gone into details—and was back in his bed in Ballygunge.

  Tindall was soon snoring in the compartment they shared, but McColl was wide awake. There was something magical about a journey through the Indian night, even one not punctuated by frequent stops. As the train chugged westward through the flat and often flooded fields, its engine trailing smoke across the heavens, he stood by the open window feeling as close to contentment as he ever did. Each copse of swaying palms, each moonlit platform lined with sleeping bodies—at moments like this, India felt like a gift. Maybe one not given freely, maybe one that wasn’t deserved, but accepted with gratitude just the same.

  After passing Kharagpur Junction, where the line from Madras diverged from the route to Bombay, he reluctantly took to his berth, and it seemed like only minutes before one of Tindall’s men was shaking him awake. “We’re there.”

  It was three-thirty in the morning, and clouds now blanketed the night sky. Half a dozen tracks away, the Balasore station platform was mostly shrouded in darkness, its two hanging lamps imparting only the faintest of yellow sheens to the multitude sleeping beneath them.

  He heard voices through the window on the other side. On the cinders below, Tindall was talking to two men in uniform, one English, one Indian. These would be the local police, who’d been asked to meet the train but not, under any circumstances, to go anywhere near the Universal Emporium.

  Half an hour later, all the men from Calcutta were lined up ready to go. Rather to McColl’s surprise, this had been accomplished with only an odd whispered curse to break the silence—Tindall was determined that this time the terrorists would not see their nemesis coming. The march from the darkened yard was managed in an almost ghostly hush and raised only a handful of heads among those sleeping on the platform.