It’s not a couple o’ Lugers or a few hand grenades we’re bringin’ out this time, Tomás: ten crates o’ guns and ammunition…!” He gave a sigh of frustration, recognising there was no purpose in pursuing a pointless argument and instead changed tack. “When are they expecting the buggers to come through?”
“What intel we do have indicates there’ll be a Nazi assault ship docking at Derry on Sunday,” Glynn answered with a shrug. “Barkmann’s requested a contingent of heavy armour and mechanized infantry for escort before they’ll move the target out of Strabane.”
“Nice to know you fellas have got ‘em so bloody scared,” Riordan growled bitterly. “It’s not just you lot who’ve been hurt by the crackdown the SS have put in to place since this God almighty fuck-up o’ yours started.
“We all stand to reap the benefits, Jamie, and you know it,” Glynn replied with a thin, mirthless smile, his displeasure over the failures the IRA had suffered over the last few days quite evident. “All we need from your boys is to make sure the diversions go off as planned, and our boys’ll be standin’ right beside ‘em when they do…”
“You know it’ll take more than a few dozen rifles to put bloody tanks down…!”
“Oh, don’t you worry yerself about that, Jamie… we’ll have the element of surprise wi’ us! You just make sure all your people know to stay well away from Strabane this weekend… that’s the last place we want the bloody Germans takin’ any notice of, come Sunday mornin’…”
District Inspector 3rd Class Danny Moran of the Royal Ulster Constabulary slipped into the shed no more than five minutes after Glynn had departed, wearing a similar woollen coat and work-style dress as the others. As tall as Riordan but fitter and more muscular, he’d worked many years with the RUC, mostly locking up IRA Volunteers just like Tomás Glynn. At forty years of age, he was a sharp man with little formal education but a wealth of experience and ‘street smart’ to draw from.
“The bugger’s gone then?” He asked gruffly, his throat raw in the cold, as if he were coming down with an infection.
“Aye… they’re all set. The guns have come through and they’ll be passing them around for Sunday as planned.”
“Well, you boys know what to do…”
“Are you sure, though, Danny?” Riordan asked searchingly, rising for the first time and rubbing his hands nervously along his sides. “You RUC fellas have never steered us wrong before, but this is some strange stuff you’re getting’ us into. Are y’ sure all this is coming from the Southern Command… the IRA Southern Command?”
“Straight from the mouth of Stephen Hayes himself – I was there when Patrick took the call.” He shrugged with resignation. “Believe me, I’m as confused about all o’ this as you are, but I heard the request clear enough and Patrick confirmed it with ‘em. This is exactly what they want us to do…” He gave a wry grin. “Jaysus, Jimmy, with all the years you’ve spent fightin’ these bastards, I’d a’ thought you’d have jumped at the chance…!”
“Well, I’ve no love for any o’ that lot, that’s true enough,” Riordan conceded, a dark ball of unease churning in the pit of his stomach, “but I’ve worked with Glynn and his boys for the better part of a year now, and I’m inclined t’say they’re as good a bunch as I’ve come across in a long time, misguided as they are, o’ course…” He grimaced as another thought came to him. “I’ll tell ye another thing as well: there’s quite a few of ‘em have something to say about that Hayes bastard too… a lot to say, and none of it good, and if I had to choose which one of ‘em to trust, I’d take Tomás every day o’ the week and twice on Sundays… this Sunday in particular!”
“You’re a bloody strange bugger sometimes, Jimmy,” Moran observed, shaking his head faintly in surprise over the man’s response. “A funny bugger indeed…” He walked over and sat down at the table, urging for Riordan to do the same, which he eventually did. “Don’t make a lot ‘o difference what either of us think in the end, though, does it now? Orders are orders, and this time we do what the IRA Southern Command wants us to do…”
“Even though what they want us to do is absolutely nothin’…?” Riordan asked pointedly. The idea of sitting on their hands while fellow Irishmen were left to die sat well with neither of them: orders were orders, as Moran had pointed out, but neither man had to like them.
Germanische-SS local command HQ
Strabane, County Tyrone
Reich-Protektorat Nordirland
October 10, 1942
Saturday
Richard Kransky’s cell was small, damp and exceptionally Spartan in its décor. With one tiny window for light, placed high up near the ceiling on one wall, he’d been accorded little more than a hard-framed bed with an extremely uncomfortable mattress that was at least a ten inches too short for his six-foot-six frame. A tin bucket in the corner was the only other feature; one that currently stank badly and needed emptying. That unenviable task was usually given to one of the other inmates, when there were any, but he’d heard no other prisoners in the cells around him over the last two days and he’d been left with no alternative but to endure the foetid reek. That had at least cost him his appetite, which had helped in a small way in reducing the need to make any further use of that foul container.
A week spent within the walls of that dank, concrete cell had only served to confirm within his own mind his enduring belief that most cells were very much like one another, and having experienced more than his fair share of them over the years, he considered himself learned enough on the subject to provide a well-informed opinion, should anyone have come asking. No one had though, of course. No one in Strabane seemed to care much about his opinion on anything, although he knew that would almost certainly change for the worse once he was transferred back to the main SS headquarters in Belfast; something that was sure to happen eventually. The guards had been promising that for days… had taunted him with it… but so far there’d been only words with not a great deal of actual action to back them up.
Kransky was a killer. He took no pride in it, but the fact remained that when provided with an appropriate rifle, no potential target was safe out to a range of a mile or more in the right conditions. A journalist at the time of the Japanese annexation of Manchukuo (formerly Manchuria) in 1932, he’d been sent to cover the invasion by a major US daily newspaper. It was there amid the horror of war and the cruel atrocities of the advancing Japanese that the man had eventually fallen in with a group of freedom fighters and discovered his innate, incredible talent with firearms.
He’d seen action in a number of conflicts since, including the Civil War in Spain; in China, again fighting the Japanese; and also against unstoppable Wehrmacht as it had swept through Western Europe three years later. Escaping to Britain during the fall of France and the British fiasco of Dunkirk, he’d then spent time at an installation at Scapa Flow with a top secret, special task force where he’d been made privy to some incredible and extremely classified information and operations, before being sent back into the field once more as the Nazis landed on the beaches of South-East England in September of 1940.
He’d been on the run ever since, evading capture and causing havoc all over Occupied Britain with assistance from small but committed units of British Resistance. It was ultimately his involvement in an IRA-backed mission a week earlier to extract a very special individual from German-controlled territory and sneak them across the border to the Republic of Ireland that had led to his capture and landed him in that SS cell, awaiting transfer back to Belfast for what he fully expected to be the very short remainder of his life. It was a life that was certain to be filled with any number of unimaginable tortures followed – if he survived those – by a no doubt agonising death.
The sound of a key turning in the solid iron door of his cell caught Kransky by surprise in that moment. As he rose from his uncomfortable reclining position and turned to place his feet on the floor, remaining seated, the door swung back to allow entry to a small man i
n dirty overalls carrying a bucket in one hand that was identical to the one pushed into the far corner of the room. Behind him, the imposing shape of an SS guard carrying a large submachine gun suggested any attempt at escape would be worse than foolish.
“Evenin’ to y’, Yank…” the newcomer exclaimed softly, wrinkling his nose as he walked slowly over to the bucket in the corner and exchanged it for its replacement. “They finally decided to give y’ some relief, I see…” He paused as he took some time with its placement, all the while holding the full bucket as far away from his sour expression as he was able. “Bastards might’a done it a bit sooner if y’ ask me...”
“Verschliessen… no talking…!” The uncomprehending guard growled in broken English, more interested in upholding regulations than any real fear of any communication as he took a step through the open doorway.
“Ahh, pog mo hoin, ye great gobshite…!” The little Irishman muttered back under his breath, averting his eyes as if that act alone might prevent any retaliation over such disrespect.
“Dämlichen Iren scheisshaufen…!” The big trooper snarled back, lifting a meaty hand from the stock of his weapon and cuffing him across the side of the head. “Hurry up…!”
“Like bein’ hit by a bucket…” the little man grumped as he rubbed at his bruised temple, at the same time giving the weary Kransky a very pointed look. “Stupid thing t’ say… in hindsight…” With a single raise of an eyebrow that only the American could see, he left without another word, the trooper following on behind him.
With a poor grasp of English at best, the guard had completely missed the emphasis the cleaner had placed on the final word in each sentence. Kransky has caught it all quite clearly however, and as the solid door again closed with a loud clang, his heart had missed a beat at mention of the word ‘hindsight’.
Hindsight had been the name of the task force he’d spent time with in Britain during 1940, before the German invasion, and there was no doubting the little Irishman had brought up that word intentionally. He’d also emphasised the word ‘bucket’, and first taking care that the peephole in his cell door wasn’t obscured by someone’s prying eye, he rose from the bed and moved quickly across to the newly-placed and – more importantly – quite clean bucket now standing in the corner. Lifting it in his hands, he first inspected the inside and then turned it over to find two words scratched faintly into the metal of its bottom: Utaramay, Awnday.
Although some ethnic groups in Germany had their own versions, it was unlikely any Nazi would recognise the simple code for what it was unless they’d spent a good deal of time studying or living in America. Kransky recognised it immediately, of course; ‘Pig Latin’ was as popular with kids in his neighbourhood as it was anywhere else in the United States, and it didn’t take him more than a second or two to translate the words into their correct format: Mutara, Dawn.
Mutara… the name of a fictional nebula in a movie that had been a favourite of one of the Hindsight Task Force members… a pilot and a good friend named Alec Trumbull. Trumbull had told him the movie was something called Science Fiction, and it had been one of a series called Star Trek. The Mutara Nebula had been a tactical trick employed by the hero of the movie – some guy called Captain Kirk – when he’d taken his damaged spaceship into the nebula to hide from a dangerous enemy, reducing their attacker’s advantage to zero and evening the odds.
Two weeks earlier, Kransky had been present aboard a motor torpedo boat, escaping Occupied Britain and making for the Republic of Ireland across the Straits of Moyle. Damaged and unable to outrun their pursuers, a fugitive Jewish scientist by the name of Samuel Lowenstein had used the same idea to avoid an enemy E-boat, by hiding in thick fog off the coast of the Irish coast.
The ensuing close-range battle had left them with further damage but had also resulted in the complete destruction of their attacker, and they’d been forced to come ashore in Northern Ireland, the six counties also under the control of Nazi Germany as they had been since the British surrender of December 1940. The action that had followed had left him a prisoner but had at least seen the rest of his group escape – a group that had included two young teens.
Mutara, Dawn.
The writing on that bucket came back to haunt his mind, and against all hope and all good sense, the only possible meaning he could draw from those two words was that Lowenstein would be involved in something that was likely to happen tomorrow at dawn… something that must involve him, or surely there’d have been no point in sending him the message. Kransky had been ready to accept his fate at the hands of the Nazis; ready to accept his fate in return for the safety of the charges he’d helped escape. That being said, he was by no means looking forward to it, or the torture that undoubtedly also awaited him. If there was any hope of escape, he was willing to take it… or die trying.
2.The Troubles
Victoria Bridge near the Mourne River
County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Reich-Protektorat Grossbritannien
Perhaps six miles south of Richard Kransky’s cold, concrete cell, the Mourne River ran through the tiny hamlet of Victoria Bridge as it flowed northward toward Strabane from its origins in the confluence of the Rivers Derg and Strule. Just a few hours before midnight, the water’s surface was dark and featureless as it meandered on beneath a starry sky cluttered by thick, ominous cloud.
Most of the town’s few hundred residents lay on the western bank of the river, with just a few dwellings along Liskey Road on the opposite side. Not far from the where Liskey intersected with Fyfin, coming across the river from the opposite bank, a small and quite nondescript cottage stood amid a row of half a dozen or so. Nothing special unto itself, the home was a safehouse for the Irish Republican Army.
Samuel Lowenstein stood at the bathroom washbasin, aided by the meagre light of a single candle perched on a nearby stool, as he prepared for his first full shave in at least five years. He’d always kept his beard roughly trimmed, maintaining it in a relatively neat condition whenever possible, but in all honesty he was feeling a little apprehensive as to his appearance once it was all removed. Stocky and of no better than average height, he looked to be perhaps in his early fifties, with short-cut hair thinning and grey. Some might’ve been surprised to discover that by his own, personal timeline he was over sixty years of age.
He knew that he’d look no different from the last time he’d gone clean-shaven, half a decade earlier, and therefore recognised the lack of logic in any concerns regarding his appearance. Being a generally pragmatic man however, he also accepted that recognising that fact held little sway with his own fears and subconscious. He found opportunity at least for a faint, wry smile, considering that his life would’ve been immensely less complex and perilous at that particular moment, had his shaven appearance been the only source of nervous tension.
“The sight of you in that uniform is difficult to take…” The soft words came from the open doorway to his left, echoing the thoughts in his own mind as he lifted a straight-razor to his face and scraped gently at his chin. He stood at the mirror in white vest and braces over field grey trousers, and hooked over the top of the open door behind him hung the pristine officer’s tunic of a lieutenant-colonel of the Waffen-SS, replete with all the standard decorations and the ubiquitous swastika armband.
“You and me, both,” He answered, his smile growing as he nodded in agreement. “A strange thing for a Jew to wear, yes…? I suspect Herr Himmler would be similarly mortified if he knew…” He normally spoke with a what was left of a relatively refined, Cambridge accent, but Lowenstein found that lately he’d also been accentuating a faint Jewish accent in his normal speech that he’d never exhibited during his younger years, and he sometimes wondered if it was a side-effect of his involvement with the travelling companions he’d now had for the last few months.
The boy in the doorway was slight of frame and displayed distinctly Slavic features with dark hair, matching eyes and a vaguely dispropo
rtionate nose that was the most prominent hint of his Jewish heritage. Levi Lowenstein had spent the last two years of the German Occupation of Great Britain in hiding, moving from one cellar or loft to another throughout London, often with the Germanische-SS hot on his trail. It hadn’t made him feel all that special, of course: the Nazis had been rounding up every British Jew they could find in the months and years following the September, 1940 invasion.
He and his childhood friend, Evie – a Gentile whose parents had been killed during the Siege of London – had been travelling under the older man’s guidance and protection now since the preceding spring, and they’d both come to trust the man as they would their own father, something Levi had discovered just a few days earlier to be an incredibly dark irony that to his young mind bordered on the verge of outright chutzpah.
“You shave like Papa…” Levi observed, sadness in his voice as he watched Lowenstein work a straight razor down one cheek with care. “I think perhaps you have his profile too, seeing you like this.”
“I don’t remember much about him,” the older man replied with melancholy of his own, taking care to move his lips as little possible in defence to the razor-sharp blade gliding across his cheek. “He…” The words faded, unsaid as ancient history was supplanted in his mind by the current ‘reality’ of what had happened to each of them.
“He died…” Levi nodded simply, his voice hollow as he recalled memories he’d spent the last two years trying to forget. “He was old already, of course,” he added, trying with limited success to subdue his emotions with logic.
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 5
