In Line of Fire (Secret Soldiers of World War 1 Book 2)

by David Hough

  “Very well, Commander,” she said quietly. “Are you now ready to tell me exactly what it’s all about?”

  Cumming scanned the room. A few British officers sat at a table some distance from him. A couple of well-dressed French civilians sat a little closer, but out of hearing. It was safe enough to open up. “You’ve heard of the Gräfin von Birkensaft?” he began, putting on a passable German accent.

  “You mean the Countess of Birkensaft, Commander?”

  He suppressed a sudden irritation at her reminder that she spoke perfect English. “Very well, the Countess. She’s only a minor Belgian royal on the face of it, but she’s important to us because she was born a German. Her Bavarian relatives rank high among the German aristocracy.”

  Agent Duval nodded knowingly. “It’s common knowledge she married a Belgian prince at old Kaiser Frederick’s insistence. Sacrificed to international politics when she was still a young girl. They say she was actually pleased when her husband died.”

  Cumming’s earlier irritation faded behind a surge of satisfaction at Marie Duval’s knowledge. “The marriage was not of her choosing, that’s for sure. Maybe that’s why she reverted to using her outdated German title and family name after her husband died. Pure obstinacy, of course. One of the reasons the Belgian royal family don’t like her.”

  “I’ve never actually seen her.” Duval leaned forward as she replied, lowering her voice to a hushed tone. “But I believe she has strong links with Crown Prince Rupprecht. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “She’s his cousin. Yes, the Belgian Countess has an important Bavarian cousin. A man who now commands a German army.” Cumming nodded, took off his monocle and began to polish it in a clean handkerchief. “She’s a bloody-minded old woman, by all accounts. Refused to leave her château in Frelinghien when the Germans approached. Well, here’s the problem: the Countess is now trapped at her château on the wrong side of the front line, along with her two grandchildren.”

  “I believe they are no longer children, Commander.”

  “Did I say children?” Cumming reflected with a casual hummph. “No, I suppose you’re right. They’re adult twins. Must be around nineteen or twenty years old by now. They’re Belgian, born in this country, but the old lady insists that they all use the German family name, von Birkensaft now. Anyway, the Germans plan to move all three of them north to the Château Gheluvelt because they’re afraid we might retake Frelinghien and bring the old dear back under Belgian control.”

  “Will we be able to retake Frelinghien?”

  “Probably.”

  “And you know for sure the Boche intend to move all three of them?”

  “Yes. I’ve been given that information by one of my agents. A reliable agent. The Countess refused a Belgian request for her to move to safety, and it seems she now intends to go along with the German plan.”

  “Awkward.” Duval sat back, but kept her voice low.

  “Awkward for the Belgians,” Cumming conceded. “They’re getting a bit hot under the collar about their royals being held under German control, even though they don’t actually like the von Birkensafts.”

  “So, this is the problem you mentioned in the message you sent to Captain Wendel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Difficult.” Duval drew a deep breath. “And I presume you have a rescue plan?”

  Cumming replaced his monocle and scratched absently at his cheek. “The plan is for Wendel to go behind the lines and fetch the old lady out. And the twins, if he can. There is a problem with the plan, but I shall brief him fully on that matter when I meet him in Ghent.”

  “And Lieutenant DeBoise?”

  “He will wait here in Dunkerque. He’s my fallback.”

  “In case…?”

  “In case Wendel fails. Like I said, there is a problem.”

  “This whole war is a problem for most of us. What is your particular problem, Commander?”

  “I can’t tell you that. However, in the eventuality of Captain Wendel being killed, DeBoise will attempt to reach Château Gheluvelt when our troops advance on Ypres.” Cumming stared at his coffee cup, his mind again running through his options. “That’s the fallback plan. I hope we don’t need to use it. In the meantime I want you to keep an eye on Lieutenant DeBoise when he gets here. Just a benign eye, you understand.” Cumming paused and took another sip from his cup. Would the girl pick up on his suspicions? Suspicions that grew with time. “This is jolly good coffee. Would you like some?”

  “No, thank you.” The girl’s reply was cold and formal.

  “Suit yourself. There’s one more thing I can tell you, Marie. Crown Prince Rupprecht believes there’s a spy in his camp, someone who’s been feeding us information about German plans. He’s right and, in a sense, that’s part of the problem I mentioned earlier. That spy is much closer to him than he realises. Whatever happens, that person must not be compromised.”

  Duval cast him a querying look. “Can you tell me who the spy is?”

  “No.”

  “That doesn’t exactly help me, does it?”

  “You don’t need to know for the time being. I shall tell Wendel who it is when I meet him.”

  “Very well, Commander.” Duval stood up to leave. “If I hear news of the Captain, will I be able to find you here?”

  Cumming leaned back in his seat. It really was very good coffee. He would have another cup. He glanced around and signalled to the waitress. “Not for a day or two. I have some important meetings to attend. Alistair will be driving me as far as Meaux this evening and on to Paris tomorrow.”

  Lieutenant Alistair Smith-Cumming was his only son and, like his father, he had a passion for driving fast cars. A dangerous passion.

  Cumming leaned forward and lowered his voice as the waitress came closer. “Send me a message through the usual channels when you hear any news of Wendel and DeBoise.”

  “Take care, sir,” the agent said as she turned to walk away. “The Belgian roads are not built for speed.”

  “Don’t fuss, girl.” Cumming smiled to himself. Taking care in a fast car was for weaklings, and he was no weakling.

  Chapter Two

  Antwerp was dying.

  It was Sunday, but no devout prayers were likely to hold back the inevitable. Each bomb blast was a convulsive cough from the city’s fading life. As the sun sank into its grave beyond a bloody horizon, it left behind the crumbling ruins of a city without hope.

  The noise was overwhelming. Along with the destruction, it was on a scale Wendel could not have imagined before he arrived here. Yet he sensed that Antwerp’s death throes were nearing an end now. How on earth could such crushing torment continue?

  He flinched at an ominous sound, and ducked down behind the dust-strewn wall of a partly demolished house. Seconds later, a mortar shell screamed across the nearby rooftops and exploded somewhere beyond his sight. The flash silhouetted the skyline like the macabre backdrop to a vision of Dante’s Hell.

  “Missed us again, Captain.” DeBoise’s voice was infused with an unnatural blend of sarcasm and weariness. He crouched beside Wendel, his pistol pointing ineffectually into the smoky air, his face drawn and pink in the reflected glow of the flames.

  Wendel scowled. Of course the shell had missed them. If it had their names on it they would be dead. Most soldiers knew that: it was a central part of their daily catechism. Five years ago, when Wendel was still a student at Oxford, his father had introduced him to a brigadier who had fought in the Boer War. “If a bullet is destined to kill you, nothing will stop it,” the old soldier had told him. Wendel believed it then. He was even more convinced now.

  Another shell exploded nearby. He flinched and scanned the road ahead of them, waiting for the right moment to move. They hadn’t much farther to go. He cast a quick glance at DeBoise. The junior officer was breathing heavily, seemingly working up the energy for the last leg of their run. For a one-time religious academic who openly despised the brutal process of killing,
he seemed to be facing the situation with some degree of fortitude. It had to be an act, Wendel decided, and not a very good one. No one could be entirely immune to the horrors of this war, and the Lieutenant’s mask would have to slip sooner or later.

  Wendel tensed when the pounding noise stopped suddenly, as if someone had switched off his hearing. Reacting instinctively, he leapt to his feet. They had to go quickly, before the next salvo began.

  “Now! Follow me.” He patted DeBoise on the shoulder and set off across the debris-strewn street towards the St Antoine Hôtel. One minute… sixty seconds… and they could be inside the building.

  They were half way there when the guns opened fire again. A mortar bomb screamed down out of a sky that flickered and glowed red from so many fires. The noise grew ever louder until it pained Wendel’s ears. The bomb hit a terraced house less than two hundred yards away, bringing down the façade in a tumbling mass of bricks, stones and wooden beams. Wendel stumbled, falling to his knees, and the explosion momentarily deafened him. As the building collapsed, clouds of thick, grey smoke and dust blew along the road. Blown grit rasped against his face.

  He staggered back to his feet and continued running. His hearing recovered, raucous noises once again penetrating through to his brain. Another explosion erupted somewhere behind him as he dived through an open door into the hotel’s busy foyer. The blasts were only partially muted here, a constant noisy backdrop to a scene of chaos.

  Putting a hand to his heaving chest, he turned to ensure DeBoise was close by. The Lieutenant groaned as he slumped down onto an ornately decorated chair that now looked well beyond its best. Streaks of dust mottled the lenses of the young man’s thick glasses. He took them off and wiped them with a handkerchief.

  “You OK?” Wendel asked.

  DeBoise nodded, drawing several long breaths before he stood up. Grimacing broadly, he replaced his glasses and began brushing away a layer of clinging dust from his uniform. “I don’t think the Huns like us very much, sir.”

  “It’s probably nothing personal.”

  “No, of course not.” DeBoise clicked his tongue. “It just feels personal. As if they’re taking some sort of revenge.”

  “You mean, after what we did to General von Hahndorf? I suppose they’ve good reason to look for revenge.” Wendel spoke with deep sardonicism, but he couldn’t bring himself to laugh. Laughter was a sign of normality, and normality was a thing of the past.

  “We only did what we were sent out to do,” DeBoise reflected.

  To Wendel, it sounded too much like an excuse, something to appease the young lieutenant’s highly-tuned religious principles.

  “We were sent out to kill people in cold blood,” he grunted. “Don’t let your pious convictions get in the way.” He had his own reservations, but he refused to give voice to them. Like so many soldiers in this war, they were young men doing the bidding of old leaders, killing the enemy because their commanders demanded blood.

  Working behind the enemy lines, Wendel had discovered General von Hahndorf’s hideout and had cold-bloodedly shot him. In the same action DeBoise and a young Irish private had destroyed a château being used as a military intelligence centre. German soldiers had died in the process, but it had been nothing personal, just a job they were sent out to do.

  DeBoise rubbed more dust from his face. “In places like Leuven the Huns did far worse than anything we did.” It was clearly a poorly-concealed attempt to placate his conscience.

  “Uhu.” Wendel gritted his teeth as he glanced around. The mention of Leuven only served to remind him once again of the German army’s atrocities against civilians. It reminded him also that his Anglophile father’s relatives still lived in Germany. How many of the enemy soldiers out there – indiscriminately firing upon this besieged city – were his kinfolk?

  He looked around. The hotel foyer was crowded with frightened civilians, all seemingly anxious to escape the bombardment. The Belgian government had redeployed to Ostend, but the remaining diplomatic corps, housed in the St Antoine Hôtel, was only now getting ready to pull out. Probably too late. Wendel closed his mind to the screams and cries as each new explosion shook the walls, bringing down dust and plaster.

  Abruptly, the guns stopped firing. A full minute passed and the respite became oppressive. It could be only a temporary lull, but it seemed ominous this time. Wendel glanced through the open front door. Marines from the Royal Naval Division were advancing along the street, searching amongst the debris, helping injured civilians from the shattered buildings. Behind the men, a London bus rumbled into view, skirting around the rubble and taking on board the wounded and the dying.

  Wendel removed his cap and slapped it against his uniform jacket, a replacement for the one he lost in his last mission. Already it was looking war-weary. Dust rose from it into air that was already contaminated. “Seems like no one here wants to welcome us home,” he muttered wryly, casting his gaze around the foyer.

  “Doesn’t really feel like home, does it, sir?” DeBoise gestured at the scene of pandemonium. Amidst the frantic activity, no one took any notice of them. No one questioned their right to be there, and yet, strangely, they had a legal right. Half the ground floor was still technically British soil, occupied by the British Legation.

  “It’ll be even less welcoming when the German army gets here.” The voice came from behind them, a calm English voice.

  Wendel turned abruptly to face a tall man, a Royal Naval Lieutenant Commander wearing the insignia of a Squadron Commander in the Royal Naval Air Service. His bearing was erect, but a thick beard made it impossible to determine his age. He held a white saucer in one hand while he raised a cup to his lips. An aroma of freshly-made coffee drifted on the dusty air.

  “Soon, you think, sir?” Wendel eyed the Lieutenant Commander with a querying look. Neither wore a cap and so neither saluted.

  “Yes, quite soon.” The man nodded, carefully replaced his cup in the saucer and held out a hand. “Oliver Polmassick.” A relaxed grin showed through his beard.

  “Victor Wendel.” He took the naval pilot’s firm grasp and adopted a quizzical expression. “Polmassick? That’s not a common English name. If it is English.”

  “Sort of English. My grandmother married a Cornishman. When he retired, they settled in one of those quaint little Cornish villages. All pasties and pilchards.” The Lieutenant Commander chuckled. “If I’m not mistaken, Wendel isn’t a common English name either.”

  “Touché, sir. My father was German. Lived in Northumberland after he married.”

  “I’m glad to see his son is on the right side in this war.”

  Wendel ignored the comment. “Shouldn’t you have left by now, sir? I presume you have an aeroplane to carry you off to somewhere safe?”

  “I have. Should have flown it back to my base at Dunkerque.” Polmassick grimaced. “But I’m stuck here with a spot of engine trouble. With luck I’ll get away in the morning.” He paused when the bombardment resumed and a particularly loud explosion shook the building. Then he added, “If we’re still alive by morning.”

  “Your aeroplane is nearby?”

  “It’s out at the Wylryck racecourse landing ground.”

  “It carries bombs?” Wendel asked.

  “No. Why do you ask?” The pilot eyed him curiously.

  “I hate bombs.”

  “I’ve never carried bombs, Captain.” Polmassick clicked his tongue. “I came here to reconnoitre, nothing more than that. Then the engine packed up on me. There’s a mechanic working on it, but he’s short on spares and he tells me it’s going to be a difficult job.”

  “I wish you luck, sir.” Wendel had a horror of taking to the skies in a flimsy wood and canvas machine. It was suicidal, but he held that opinion to himself.

  “In this place, luck is all any of us can hope for, Captain Wendel. Time is running out, but at least you can still get a decent cup of coffee from the kitchen.” Polmassick calmly took another sip before setting down t
he cup onto a dusty table, picking up his equally dusty cap and striding away into the crowd.

  “Wish I had his philosophical outlook,” DeBoise said. “He’s too calm by far.”

  “Maybe it goes with his job.” Wendel indicated towards the grand staircase. “Let’s take another look at what the enemy guns are doing. Then I’ll try to send off one last signal to C, wherever he is at the moment.” In truth, getting information to Cumming was becoming more and more difficult.

  Pushing aside anyone who got in his way, Wendel led DeBoise up the staircase to the top floor. From there, a narrower flight took them up to a door that opened onto the rooftop. His chest heaved as he came to a halt behind a low parapet and gazed out over a blood-red scene. The view across the rooftops stretched as far as those distant burning villages that had already fallen to the German advance. Flashes from the enemy guns lit up the sky as they pounded out their shells towards the besieged, burning city.

  “They’re well into their stride now,” Wendel raised his voice against the constant noise. “Lieutenant Commander Polmassick was right. The defences won’t last much longer.”

  DeBoise waited while another mortar shell exploded somewhere in the centre of the city before he replied. “We’ve done as much as we can. Maybe it’s time for us to move on, sir. Before the Huns march in and invite us to an execution.”

  “They certainly won’t be offering us tea and cakes when they get here.” Wendel bit at his lower lip, considering their options. “Perhaps we should wait until the shelling finally stops.”

  DeBoise sounded hesitant. “You mean… wait until the last minute?”

  “The Huns will have to stop the barrage before their own troops move in. The road out should be safer for us then.”

  “If we’re still alive by then, sir.”

  Wendel eyed him with a silent grimace.

  He was well aware that the brutal attack on Antwerp had taken many citizens unawares. The first shell had killed a fourteen-year-old boy and wounded his mother. The second took off the head of a road sweeper as he ran for cover. Now the streets were deserted except for the military patrols. Many of the civilian population had left already and those who remained were likely cowering in their cellars.