The War Heist

by Ralph Dennis

  He didn’t have to spend time worrying about the meaning of shipping goods in his locker. He knew. He carried the two bottles to an empty locker down the line a ways and left them there.

  At 8:00 a.m. the day foreman passed out the pay envelopes on the dock. The foreman, Vic thought, wasn’t part of it. He had always been fair.

  The foreman said, “Word came back about a shipment went out yesterday, one loaded during the graveyard shift. There was some shorts. I guess I’ve got to do a shakedown.”

  Vic’s locker was the last of the three the foreman searched. While the foreman poked around in his belongings Vic didn’t watch him. His eyes were on the other two loaders. When the foreman lifted the pile of rags and backed away he said, “Nothing here either.” Vic saw the look that passed between the other two loaders. The question was there: What went wrong?

  Vic knew it was over as far as the job went. Once they went that far they wouldn’t stop until they got him some way or another. He’d been lucky this time. He might not be the next.

  After breakfast that morning, on the way to the room where he stayed, he made two stops. At a hardware store he bought a funnel. Next he bought two ten-pound sacks of sugar at the grocery store around the corner from his rooming house.

  He arrived at work that night about half an hour early. The evening shift was done, caught up with their loading, and they were sprawled around the dock drinking coffee and thinking about harder stuff. Vic didn’t have to make the suggestion. One of the early-night crew did it for him.

  “Since you’re here early, Soldier Boy, I guess we’ll go on home.” They didn’t wait for him to agree. They left for the nearest bar.

  He watched them go, and then he went to the clump of hedge that ran down one side of the loading area. He’d left the bag with the sugar and the funnel there on his way to the dock.

  There were three trucks backed up to the dock for loading during the graveyard shift. Before eleven, before the other two loaders showed up, he inserted the funnel in the gas tank of each of the trucks. He poured between six and seven pounds of sugar into each tank.

  He worked the full shift. He was standing on the dock the next morning when the trucks left on their runs.

  At the rooming house he paid up what he owed. He packed his few belongings. He rode a bus for a day and a half to reach Detroit. All the trip, seeing it in his mind, he knew what the sugar was doing to the engines. The sugar burning with the gas, syrup at first and then as hard as rock.

  The way he felt about engines it was almost enough to make him cry.

  He had been at his mother’s house, looking for work, for almost a month when the telegram came from Captain Whitman.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MacTaggart didn’t return to the boardinghouse from his office. Not right away. He found a pub and had a few pints. He thought about Peggy and how his life and hers were growing together, no matter that he had approached her at first like a ram in rut. It was different now.

  When he got to that point, when he felt he’d digested the lumps and the curds, he finished the pint he was on and returned to the boardinghouse and to her bed.

  Short of breath, afterward, he left the bed and poured two drinks from a half bottle of her Irish. He brought the glasses to the bed and sat on the side and placed her tumbler on her flat, bare stomach. The blackout curtains were closed. A single candle burned in a dish on the nightstand.

  “When I first met you all I wanted was your tall, handsome body,” she said, picking up the tumbler.

  “That’s always the way it’s been,” he said.

  “But now I’ve decided you’re more than just a tall, handsome man.” She sat up and smiled at him before she took a swallow of the Irish.

  “Now you’ve made me happy,” he said. “It’s a painful life, Peggy, if you don’t learn what to keep and what to throw away.”

  “I think I know now,” she said.

  He let her sleep with her head on his shoulder. He didn’t disturb her even after his arm went numb. He was awake when the first threads of light pushed through the blackout curtains.

  Johnny Whitman returned from New York on Thursday the twentieth. The two, almost three days, that Johnny had been away from Fort Belwin had been busy days for Tom Renssler. Besides his Army duties, now there was Lila on the phone at all hours with jobs for him to do. Gunny Townsend was at the bus station and needed someone to pick him up and take him to a rooming house. Richard Betts had called from the train station in Raleigh. Would Tom talk to him when he called back? Betts insisted upon knowing more details about the project before he was willing to catch the next train to Fort Belwin. And when Vic Franks sent a telegram from Detroit, Tom had to drive into town and cable him to remain there until he received further instructions.

  On top of everything else, he had to babysit the Gipson brothers. Randy, after his time in the stockade at Fort Bragg, was a short fuse looking for a match. His brother, Clark, couldn’t handle him alone.

  The message from Johnny was waiting for him when he returned to BOQ after a couple of hours soothing Randy Gipson’s impatience. Tom was angry and frustrated and had the beginning of a stomach burn when he drove across the reservation to the Row. It took about ten minutes to fill Johnny in on what had been happening while he was away. Johnny made notes on where the Gipsons, Gunny Townsend, and Richard Betts were staying. He’d drop by later to see them. It was time to start them north. And, on the way into town, he would stop by Western Union and wire Vic Franks. If Franks left Detroit first thing in the morning he could be in New York some time Sunday.

  “How do we get together up there? It’s a big city.”

  Johnny had planned that. He’d stayed at the Hotel Earle and he’d thought ahead enough to make a reservation for Lila and himself for Sunday. The Gipsons, Townsend, and Franks could reach him there, and he’d set up the meetings.

  “That settles it for everybody but the two of us.”

  “You take three weeks of leave,” Johnny said.

  “It won’t be easy,” Tom said. “Both of us on leave at the same time. It leaves the Company short.”

  “Not both of us. You take the leave. I’ve put in my resignation, effective immediately. I’ll take some accumulated leave while the discharge is being processed.”

  “They’ll have to replace you.”

  “In this cowshit Army? The way they feel about me?” Johnny walked to the screen door, pushed it open wide, and flicked a cigarette into the backyard. “I told them I was leaving for business reasons. I said I need a quick discharge so I can take a job with a stock company in New York. The way I put it I’ve got to be in New York on Monday. I don’t think they’ll bother to check it out, but it’s a real offer.”

  “I doubt …”

  “Look, the way I see it, Colonel Harper probably worked late today. I’d guess he hand-walked my papers through just to be sure I didn’t have time to change my mind.”

  “He loves you,” Tom said.

  “And I love him back.”

  There was a loud thump from a room in the front of the house. “Lila’s packing,” Johnny said.

  Tom nodded. He got his campaign hat from the hallway table. Johnny followed him to the front door.

  “I’ll put in for leave first thing in the morning.”

  “You don’t have to, Tom.”

  “Huh?” Tom turned to face him.

  “I sent the request in for you this afternoon. It seems you need time off to arrange your marriage plans with some wealthy girl or other.”

  “A girl in New York?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I signed those papers?”

  “With a flourish,” Johnny said.

  “I’ve signed the papers,” Colonel Harper said. “I was given to understand there was a legitimate reason for haste.”

  Tom Renssler stared at him. He didn’t know what the Colonel was talking about.

  “Captain Whitman told me in strict confidence.”

&
nbsp; Tom lowered his head and stared at his desk.

  “My boy, there’s no reason to be embarrassed. Many marriages begin with … these circumstances.”

  Then Tom understood. Johnny Whitman had gilded the facts around the bogus wedding in a way that assured that there would be no problem with the leave.

  “The girl is from a good family?”

  “The best,” Tom said. “Amelia and I have known each other for years, since we were children.”

  It was Friday afternoon. Colonel Harper had dropped by after lunch. The whole time, Tom had the feeling the colonel was staring at the new file cabinet in the office.

  “When is the wedding, Major?”

  “We may elope,” Tom said. “We think it might be easier that way on her family.”

  “It might.”

  The colonel left.

  Tom’s supposed engagement was the talk of Company D. Everywhere he went someone congratulated him. From the looks he got, he also had the feeling that everyone had heard that it was going to be a shotgun wedding.

  “You should have heard him,” Johnny Whitman said.

  “Who?”

  “Colonel Harper, that’s who. I’d said something about how I was sorry this business opportunity was going to leave him short of officers.”

  The late train from Raleigh that Friday night was crowded. There was only one sleeping berth available. Lila had taken it and had gone to bed about an hour after the train pulled out of the station. Now it was midnight; the dark Virginia land rolled past, and Tom Renssler and Johnny Whitman sat in one of the day coaches and passed a bottle back and forth.

  “When was that?”

  “When I picked up my leave papers,” Johnny said. “Harper gave me this look, toenails to eyebrows, and said, ‘This Army can function quite well without you, Captain John Whitman.’ ”

  “Too bad you couldn’t tell him you had some girl knocked up.”

  “You found out about that?”

  “He’d have been sympathetic,” Tom said.

  “That was in confidence,” Johnny said. “That man broke his word.”

  “What the hell? It worked, didn’t it?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MacTaggart felt that he was nailed to the wall. It happened so fast.

  As soon as he reached his office Colonel Haggard sent for him. It was under way—the whole mission—and the colonel hadn’t known about it until the night before. Of course, he’d been expecting it, but he’d assumed there would be more warning. He’d tried to call MacTaggart, but the phone in the hallway at the boardinghouse wouldn’t ring. He’d sent a messenger across London to inform MacTaggart, but there had been no one in the room.

  “Dammit, Mac, don’t you ever sleep?”

  MacTaggart was thinking the same thought. It had been a sleepless or almost sleepless night with Peggy on his shoulder most of it, and he didn’t feel very fresh. He’d hoped he’d have a chance to get a couple of hours of rest at his desk. Usually that was possible.

  “It leaves Euston Station,” the colonel said. “They’re assembling the train now. The boxes from the collection center here should arrive there about three this afternoon.” The rest of the paper shipment, from Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh, would be time-staggered and shipped directly from those cities to Greenock. “You’d better get over there now, Mac.”

  “My kit?”

  “I’ll send Billings around with a car to relieve you at six or half-six. You’ll have an hour.”

  It would have to be enough.

  The train was assembled in a barnlike shed in the freight section of Euston Station. It consisted of an out-of-date passenger coach and eleven boxcars. A squad of Scots Guards, hastily assigned, paced the length of the loading platform and stood watch at the entranceway to the truck ramp that led down from the street.

  A working party of twenty young men from the Horseguards training school arrived at two in the afternoon and waited for the first truck to appear. It was a long wait. The first truck didn’t arrive until almost four.

  It took an hour and fifteen minutes to unload the four trucks and reload the boxes into one of the boxcars. The boxes weren’t heavy. They held the stocks and bonds that had been packed in the London banks almost a week before. MacTaggart counted each box as it came off the truck and counted it again as it went into the boxcar. When the boxcar was locked and sealed it held 203 cases of paper wealth.

  There was a break of forty-five minutes and then the trucks began to arrive from the bullion yards of the Bank of England.

  MacTaggart had the unloading and reloading under way when Billings arrived with the car and relieved him. He turned the job over to his relief. By 6:20 he was at the boardinghouse in Shepherd’s Bush. He left the driver waiting outside and took the steps up to his floor in twos and threes.

  There’d been no way to reach Peggy. Now she came to her door when he knocked and the fear and anxiety left her face and she made a leap at him. “You said you’d be here at five and …”

  He shushed her. “That trip I said I had to take. It’s here.” He held her for a moment longer and then he turned her and led the way to his room. While she watched, he packed his battered leather handbag. Underwear, socks, a couple of spare shirts, and the zipper bag with the .45 Colt automatic and the three spare clips. His shaving kit went on top.

  He put that bag aside and dumped the rest of his belongings into the cardboard-sided suitcase. “You’ll have to keep this for me.”

  He carried both bags to her room. There wasn’t much time. He stored his suitcase in the back of her closet. He sat at her dining table and did some figuring in his head. He owed the landlord for a week. He counted out the money and placed his key with it. She would handle that detail for him.

  He stood and looked around. “I’ve got to go. I can’t say where I’ll be. I’ll be gone about three weeks. At the most a month. I’ll write you when I can.”

  “I wish we had more time, Mackie.”

  “I do too, girl.”

  He held her for a time. When he backed away she was trying to smile. It was a wounded smile. “Where you’re going, will it be cold and wet?”

  “It might be.” It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her; as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t give her any clues that might suggest his destination.

  He’d misunderstood her. He watched as she crossed to the table. She returned with two bottles of her Irish, a gift from her mother. “It will help you think of me, Mackie.”

  He packed the bottles in his bag and wrapped his spare shirts around them for extra protection.

  He kissed her good-bye in the doorway. He didn’t let her follow him to the street.

  At Euston Station the original working party of twenty men had been reinforced with the arrival of another twenty men from a casuals depot, a unit where soldiers waiting reassignment to other units stayed until their orders came through.

  Billings remained while MacTaggart ate a beef and cheese sandwich at the canteen that had been brought in to feed the working party and the soldiers.

  While MacTaggart was gone, they’d loaded two of the boxcars with bullion cases. Now, with Billings gone, it all fell to MacTaggart. As soon as one truck pulled away from the platform and up the ramp to the street, another pulled in.

  The next four hours, clipboard in his hand, he checked each bullion crate off the truck and checked it into the boxcars. The first nine of the remaining cars were loaded with 225 crates of gold bars. The final one held 204.

  Just before midnight, while the engine was backed into place and joined, MacTaggart made his final check of the ten boxcars. When he was satisfied with the count, the cars were locked and sealed.

  He signed the Bank of England’s manifest. It was his full responsibility from that point on.

  A squad of armed soldiers marched down the ramp and, under the command of a captain, filed into the passenger coach at the rear of the formed-up train.

  MacTaggart followed them in. H
e placed his leather bag and his black raincoat, what he called his travel mac, on an empty seat and looked in the private compartment at the front of the coach. Five men were crowded in there. All of them were neat and well dressed, wearing ties and suits. They had the mark of clerks and bankers on them.

  MacTaggart knew the man in charge, Craig. He got introduced to the others, to Phelps, Crewshaw, Forrest, and Kent.

  Each of the men carried a single suitcase. With the exception of Craig, they looked stunned and bewildered. MacTaggart understood that. Only Craig knew the details of the mission. The others had been recruited at the last possible moment, on purpose, so there’d be little risk of the information leaking out.

  MacTaggart left the bankers to their compartment. He didn’t feel he belonged with clerks and bankers.

  He took his seat among the soldiers.

  The blackout shades were pulled down and fastened before the train left Euston Station.

  Ten minutes out of London MacTaggart was asleep and snoring.

  Behind them, in London, the secret train had not remained secret. By morning rumors about the train swept through the city. The story given the most credence was that the train carried the Queen and the two Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, and the Crown jewels on the first leg of a trip that would take them to the safety of Canada.

  The morning of June 22 it was cool and clear in Greenock. The temperature was in the mid- to high fifties most of the day. In the distance, above the Greenock harbor, the dark green of the summer land edged down toward the paler green of the sea.

  On the cruiser H.M.S. Emerald the bosun piped the hands to cleaning chores at 0800 hours. The Emerald was “laid down” in 1918. It had been designed for World War I but was not completed until 1926. With the coming of the war in 1939, the cruiser toiled those early difficult months in the important but less-glamorous backwaters of the North Atlantic merchant convoys.