A Deadly Caper (Innocents At War Series, Book 2)

by Andrew Wareham

  The Minister for War turned to his Permanent Private Secretary, the most senior of his civil servants, always at his side.

  “Find out what this is, Gerald. See if we can put this Starks out of business, and, ideally, shoot its owner!”

  “Stark, sir… Might well be as wise to tread carefully there.”

  “Provided you tread carefully on him, then yes, Gerald.”

  The civil servant shook his head.

  “Not wise, sir, I much regret. The gentleman has come to our notice in the War Office already, sir, and we have discovered a little of him. He is half-brother, by name, to the Major Stark who has attracted some little attention in the RFC. You will remember that young man, I believe, sir.”

  “Yes, indeed I do. His name is on the list of those who might well merit a DSO now that he has the minimum rank for the Order. A fine young gentleman, I believe, who will soon earn further recognition by his King. You said half-brother ‘by name’, I notice. What’s the story?”

  Gerald told him the round tale.

  “Family resemblance?”

  “Not met either man myself, sir, but I believe none.”

  “Nasty! What else? That ain’t sufficient on its own to protect Stark.”

  “He has made a lot of money in very short order, sir. And he has laid out no small amount, and some of it in cash into the hands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, sir. Mr Lloyd George will serve as his protector, I have no doubt.”

  Once bought, Mr Lloyd George stayed bought.

  “Add to that, sir, he has gone into some sort of partnership with the back-bencher Monkton, a near neighbour of his. I think Monkton acted to guarantee a large bank loan in exchange for a share in the profits, paid under the counter – he is not a shareholder as such.”

  “Monkton… came new into the House recently, did he not. Fat little chap?”

  “That’s the one, sir. He is married to Moncur’s eldest girl; the youngest, by the way, married Major Stark in December – you remember the performance Sykes put up?”

  “Only too well – horrible little man, Sykes. Due to be sent out of England as soon as we can find a distant command of some importance; the further distant, the better!”

  “Quite, sir. Moncur is very useful, sir. A good man, highly reliable and capable of serving the government and the country well.”

  “Bit of a bloody mess, Gerald. What will we find when we investigate Stark’s factory, I wonder?”

  Gerald could only guess, but he much suspected they would find a pile of blown cans of corned beef being disposed of very carefully, one or two tins to every consignment of a hundredweight.

  “He will have been paid to dispose of the tins properly and will have provided the initial vendors with a false certificate of their destruction. First offence. Then he will have seen to the venting, soldering and relabelling of the tins. Second felony. Then he will have himself sold the goods knowing them to be unfit for human consumption. Third crime. Enough money involved that he must be stood in the Old Bailey before a judge and jury, where he will start to name names, sir. The trial might be held in camera, sir, in secret, that is, but a judge must be persuaded that to reveal the evidence or its source might be to jeopardise national security or might bring disrepute on the King; we cannot offer that certainty.”

  The minister shook his head; judges were a damned nuisance, high and mighty and claiming to be servants of the Law, as if there were some mystical nature attributed to the statutes passed by politicians. Add to that, any hint of bribery was responded to with screams of ‘privilege’ and ‘contempt’. Most judges were honest, men of integrity, but a few in every generation were both corrupt and wholly untouchable.

  “Can’t be done, Gerald, not at this point, with a long war in front of us and the death lists growing. Have you seen how many were killed at Neuve Chapelle, and for nothing? We dare not set the people against us. We should use Moncur as well – I know him and he is able, as you say. We will need our heroes, and for them to be clean-handed, as I believe young Major Stark to be. We must bury this business, Gerald, but I absolutely insist that Stark’s capers with corned beef shall come to an end – whatever the price must be. Give me a solution by tomorrow morning.”

  The civil servant returned to his desk and the minister took up his telephone and made a call to the most important newspaper editor in Fleet Street.

  “Charles, old boy – this botulism business, an unfortunate affair. Isolated though, won’t spread, and we don’t want the people to think we have a new plague, a Black Death, taking hold in the Army. Just been talking to the medical people, at the highest level, and we have the matter well in hand. Could you have a quiet word along the street, perhaps? How’s your lad, by the way? Good, glad to hear it. We must look after him – he could do very well for us in the Lords, next year, perhaps?”

  There would be no further mention of botulism in the Press.

  The Minister for War appeared in his office as early as ten o’clock in the morning, a sure sign that there was important business to hand. The House of Commons typically sat from four pm till midnight and ministers were rarely seen at work much before noon.

  “Well, Gerald?”

  “With your approval, sir – and I cannot quite do this by myself – then I propose the following actions. The man Stark is to sell his factory to one of the larger food processing companies, at a low price; there are several who will purchase at our nod, and will turn the place to a proper use. Second, Stark is to be appointed to a Purchasing Commission which will go abroad to arrange contracts with producers in various countries outside the British Empire – South America initially, I should imagine, and then to various parts of the United States, or the other way around – sufficient to keep him out of the country for a year or more. Third, he is to be promised a minor Honour at the war’s end, provided he is good; a knighthood will do for him.”

  The Minister was not entirely pleased by this solution.

  “The bloody man will make millions from that, Gerald.”

  “He will, sir. Undoubtedly.”

  “Will we be able to fob him off with a knighthood? Won’t he want something hereditary?”

  “Not that one, sir! He will not be in the way of fathering children!”

  The minister was an old-fashioned man, Victorian in his mind and intolerant of those he regarded as deviant; he was disgusted.

  “Are you sure we can’t have him shot?”

  “Not wise, sir. We would have to put him before a military court, in secret, and produce some evidence of treason. It could be done, it is never impossible to create evidence, but would be difficult to keep confidential. Besides that, sir, there is at least one Irish traitor, the man Casement particularly – and he is the same sort - who will be going that way. Wiser not to take the risk of too many such; I think there might be talk.”

  There must not be any rumour, not that might reach the ears of the masses; the country was, and must remain, united in its prosecution of the war.

  “Let it be as you say, Gerald. But do send a very serious sort of gentleman to have a quiet word with Stark, and remind him that he must cooperate unreservedly. Point out to him that the Americas are wild lands where an innocent man with a big mouth may easily die in, apparently, an armed robbery.”

  “That will certainly be done, sir. What about Moncur?”

  “What about him?”

  “Close enough to hear whispers in the family, I suspect, sir.”

  “He is reliable, is he not?”

  “Wholly, but he has a tendency to be honest as well. He might be tempted to take a horsewhip to Stark.”

  “Damned good thing, too! Cannot be permitted, however. Will you beg him to visit me in this office, at soonest? I will be frank with him, and tell him all he needs to know, and persuade him to keep things quiet.”

  “Very wise, sir. The back-bencher, Monkton? He is rather well-off, as back-benchers go, has a lot of land, but little understanding of the way things
are going. Not the most perceptive of chaps.”

  He sounded like the ideal sort of man to have as an MP – quite harmless.

  “Vain? He must be, of course, would hardly be a politician otherwise. Let us recognise him as a coming man… What say you to a Commission of Enquiry – three MPs to go to France and talk to the generals and actually get as far as the trenches and visit an airfield or two, and then write a report? Inform the House of what is ‘truly happening in France’. Send a photographer with them, perhaps even one of these moving picture men, so that they may be seen to be braving the hazards of the war in the desire to ensure that all is well.”

  Gerald thought this was a very clever suggestion, added his own mite to it.

  “His wife is close to term, sir. Should she present him with a son, then…”

  “A baronetcy would be very welcome, no doubt. Hereditary title, but he can remain in the House of Commons as it is not a peerage – very sensible, Gerald! Anything else?”

  “Major Stark, sir, the pilot. Too early by far to promote him and he has the MC and one of these Russian Orders, but we should do a little for him… I cannot, offhand, think what, though.”

  “DSO on the next occasion that he distinguishes himself? Make his brevet permanent? Where is he at the moment?”

  “Droncourt, close to the Belgians. There is a new bombardment squadron, experimental sort of affair. He has already had one or two small successes, and he shot a German scout down only last week. The squadron itself probably will not become permanent because bombardment don’t work with the planes we’ve got. They are slow, so have to stay high to avoid the guns, and there is no way of achieving accuracy if bombs are dropped from more than about fifty feet, it seems. One day, sir, with faster and more powerful machines, it will be possible.”

  “Speak to Henderson. Convert the squadron to scouts to chase down the Hun in the air, like the French do.”

  “We can try it, sir, but the Hun has very few planes in the air at all, just at the moment. Making far more use of balloons for observation purposes. Well protected, too – difficult to put down. Major Stark achieved a success there just a few weeks ago, but the Hun has planted machine-guns and quick-firing cannon of some sort all around his new balloons – far too hard to deal with them now.”

  “Ah, well. If we cannot do much in the air at the moment then we must just accept the fact. Bear him in mind, Gerald.”

  “Orders, Tommy. We are to end the bombardment experiment – we have dropped several tons of high explosive and have achieved remarkably little in the process, it would seem. That, of course, is precisely what we have reported to Wing. Bombardment is not yet practical.”

  Tommy agreed, he had been saying just that for weeks.

  “What do we do, sir?”

  Major Case looked up from the papers in his hand.

  “Patrol, Tommy. We are to own the sky, it would seem, and forbid it to the enemy in all of his forms.”

  “Balloons?”

  “They are included, certainly, but not until we have devised a method of dealing with them.”

  “There ain’t one yet, sir.”

  “I agree. Therefore, we shall avoid them like the plague they are! Patrol the trenches, and be seen by our men on the ground. Keep an eye out for anything in the air and give chase when you spot German planes. Do not allow yourself to be pulled into ambush by, for example, a Taube circling low over nests of machine-guns. I see, by the way, that the firm of Starks has been bought out by one of the other big names – the newspaper did not say which.”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “Nothing to do with me, sir – I have met the man once, and we did not speak on that occasion – at his initiative, I would add. He cut me dead!”

  “No loss, from the little I know of the firm. You hear their name mentioned when the men complain about their food.”

  “Not surprising, sir. What I know of the man does not prejudice me in his favour.”

  Patrolling became not at all unpleasant in the early spring – the snow and sleet was gone and the sun shone on occasion and the British anti-aircraft guns had almost stopped shooting at them, and were still no more accurate than they ever had been. They crossed the German trenches every day, never below three thousand feet and varying their height and course unpredictably so that they presented no easy target there.

  For a month, they saw very few other aeroplanes, and none within their reach; the sole irritant was the balloons, flaunting themselves, untouchable blots in the sky.

  “What would happen if we climbed to say eight thousand feet, Tommy, and dropped bombs from there?”

  “We would miss, Noah. The machine-guns wouldn’t touch us, that’s a certainty, but their bigger guns, the three-inchers or whatever they might be in their damned millimetres, would still be in range and they always have a cluster of them around their balloons. We would have to be at twelve thousand at least to stay clear of them, and then we wouldn’t manage to put our bombs in the same county even.”

  “Ah… but what about flechettes?”

  “Damned good question, dear boy. What, indeed? In fact, what are they?”

  Drongo and Fred put down their teacups and looked enquiringly at Noah.

  “Frog invention, steel darts, sharp pointed and with a small explosive charge in them. Being long and thin they are said to fly straight.”

  “Sounds interesting, Noah. Have we got any?”

  “Well, no, not as such. But we could try to borrow some from the Frogs.”

  Drongo could see the problem there.

  “All very well borrowing them, Noah, but what do we do when they ask for them back?”

  “Well, I suppose we’d have to buy them.”

  “Not bloody likely, mate! I ain’t spending my money that way.”

  “Not us! The squadron would ask Wing, and they would bend General Henderson’s ear and get the cash from him.”

  “Ah! Rich bugger, is he?”

  “No, you bloody peasant! He’d use RFC money.”

  “Right, mate. Got yer now! As long as it ain’t ours, good idea, mate!”

  Tommy suggested flechettes to Major Case, found him deeply unconvinced.

  “Saw ‘em used against cavalry back in September, Tommy. We had some of our own. They missed. Mind you, trying to drop them from a Farman without ripping our own wings to bits wasn’t that easy. Does Noah think the French have got a new sort? How does he know?”

  “Good question, sir. Let’s pull him in.”

  Noah admitted to having spoken to an officer from Wing, when they had come visiting the previous week.

  “Poor show, Noah. We don’t speak to brasshats. Never a good idea to encourage them!”

  “But this was only a lieutenant, sir, just out from England. Said he wanted to speak to an Armaments Officer, and Drongo said that was me, because I was the expert with the Lewis Gun.”

  Tommy had to admit that was true.

  “Anyway, Noah, you talked to this boy from England. What did he have to say?”

  “He said that they had some new flechettes at Wing, sir, for inspection and to give an opinion of them, just a couple of hundred of them.”

  “We could have a word with Wing, say that we had heard of these things and wanted to try them out, Tommy?”

  Major Case was slightly more enthusiastic – it would show the squadron in a good light, he thought.

  “If you think we should, sir, then we could give them a try. Do we actually know anything about them, sir?”

  “Only one way of finding out, Tommy.”

  The original flechettes used in the first couple of months of the war had been little more than sharpened nails, weighted to fall point downwards onto the heads of enemy troops and horses. The French had improved upon these and had developed an eighteen-inch long steel dart with vanes, an inch in diameter and with a tiny explosive charge in the head. They were vague about the precise target they envisaged, but were sure they would do a lot of harm to anything they
hit.

  “Weighing roughly two pounds apiece, sir. We could carry forty and a Lewis.”

  Noah was determined to discover the best in the flechettes, being his idea that they should try them.

  “How do we fit them?” Major Case was unconvinced.

  “Underneath the cockpit, sir. We can’t throw them by hand, being a single-seater, and they won’t fit into the clips for the Cooper and Hales bombs, or into the nets we used for the incendiaries. So we get the Armourer to tie them underneath, with a lanyard to pull in the cockpit.”

  “A butterfly knot, I presume, Noah?”

  “Well, something like, sir.”

  “Discover if anything is possible, Noah. Check it very thoroughly.”

  The young armourer thought it was a challenge, a most entertaining idea. He came up with three different possible ways of carrying and dropping the darts, the simplest being to tie them in bundles of ten and to dangle them from the clips used for the bombs.

  “Thin string, sir, which will snap as soon as they start to fall. Thick ties from the string to the clips, which will slip off when the clips are opened.”

  Tommy remembered what had happened to Jack.

  “What if we bump, taking off?”

  “Four ounces of explosive, sir – no great harm in that in the unlikely event that one might fall off.”

  “Make up your bundles and attach them to my plane.”

  Noah protested that it was his idea.

  “Time to be thankful that you’re a lieutenant and I’m a major, Noah.”

  “Lieutenants are expendable, Tommy.”

  “Majors write the reports, and have to justify why they ordered their juniors to test unofficial and untried ideas. They go on my plane. You three watch my tail, and get ready to explain exactly what you saw.”

  They took off early next morning, when the air was still and the thermals had had no time to build turbulence to thump and bump the light planes.

  Tommy climbed for nearly half an hour, circling behind the British lines until he had topped eight thousand feet, which seemed sufficient for the initial test. With reasonable luck, he would not have been spotted from the German side, the western sky that little bit darker at dawn. He led the Flight directly to the location where they had spotted balloons every day for the past week, found them rising into the morning air, perhaps at two thousand feet and looking like postage stamps beneath his feet. He doubted he would get within a quarter of a mile of them; he guessed the wind and his distance from them and the exact speed he was travelling and then mentally shrugged and tugged on the length of cord the Armourer had installed. He could see nothing immediately underneath him but felt a small kick as if the weight had gone. He banked away towards the other three, raising a thumb to Noah, at the front of the line.