‘How do we know the stoolpigeon story is true?’ Stirling cut him off. ‘It could be disinformation intended to throw Sandhog off track. What easier way to force us to abort the mission than to let drop that it’s already compromised? Even if Hekmeth believes it, she might have been set up by Eisner …’ He lifted a stack of thin personnel dossiers from his knees. ‘I’ve been through the backgrounds of Caine’s section, and I can’t believe any of them is a Nazi sympathizer. It just isn’t on the cards.’
Stocker surveyed Stirling’s face gravely. ‘Hekmeth said that Caine was walking into a trap. Now, it is not, of course, conclusive, but I would suggest that, since only Caine knew Sandhog’s target, the trap was the contact Maskelyne mentioned: the one that may have done for the LRDG. If so, Caine evidently survived it, and is thus still on his way.’ His eyes gleamed, but neither Stirling nor Nolan looked convinced.
‘Sergeant Copeland knew where they were going,’ Stirling said bluntly. ‘He knew because the letter from the Itie woman that helped sanction the op was addressed to him.’
Nolan raised her chin. ‘You’re saying Copeland is an Axis spy? There’s no way, sir. I know Copeland: he’s a good man.’
‘I’m not saying anything,’ Stirling said. ‘I’m not even satisfied there is a stoolpigeon. I’m just saying that knowledge of the target wasn’t confined to Caine alone, and you know how these things get around.’
Stocker cleared his throat. ‘Can I suggest,’ he said, ‘that, for practical purposes, we make two assumptions? The first is that there is a traitor in Caine’s section. The second is that Sandhog is still operational. If either or both of these assumptions is wrong, we haven’t lost much. If they are correct, we need to take action. We need to focus our efforts on discovering who the traitor might be, with a view to informing Caine before it is too late.’
‘And how the heck do we do that with no comms?’ Nolan asked.
‘We’ll consider that later.’
Stocker stood up and moved over to the blackboard, picking up a pointer, facing them as if he were addressing a tutorial. He thrust the stick at the scrawled names. ‘Eleven men, including two officers,’ he said. ‘Let us consider them systematically and see if there is anything untoward about any of them.’
‘There’s some I’d eliminate right off,’ Stirling said. ‘For a start, the two officers. We know Caine is sound as a bell …’ he grinned ‘… apart from certain, er … idiosyncrasies of course; Audley comes from a good family: he’s ex-Guards, and has won the MC.’
Stocker looked at him, his eyes bright behind the lenses. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But let us not exclude them entirely. Let us just leave them till last.’
‘All right,’ Stirling said grumpily. ‘We’ll do it your way.’
Stocker pointed to the third name on the list. ‘Corporal Samuel Brian Dumper,’ he said, raising an eyebrow at Stirling.
‘Dumper’s ex-RAOC,’ Stirling said, raising his chin, as if he were being asked to sell out his own men. ‘A regular soldier, exemplary record. Won the MM for bravery dismantling a live charge, saving a column and getting his fingers blown off in the process. A London bus driver in Civvie Street. Nothing shady in his background: no Nazi sympathies.’
Stocker crossed out his name with a stub of chalk. ‘Corporal Gaston Larousse.’
‘Larousse came to us highly recommended from Canadian forces. Ex-combat engineer. Excellent record, currently in for the DCM for his action at el-Gala, where he risked his life to give covering fire while the rest of the section escaped. Larousse was married to a French Jewess and had two children. They were abducted during the invasion of France and were killed by the Nazis. I’ve seen the report. I think that rules him out.’
Stocker put a line through Larousse’s name. ‘Sergeant Harold Copeland.’
Stirling sighed. ‘Copeland’s very bright. He won the MM on Runefish with Caine. A hostilities-only soldier, ex-RASC trooper-driver. Middle-class family, a teacher in Civvie Street. There were rumours that he was a communist, but that’s nonsense. Actually, he’s very ambitious and has his eye on a commission: his brother is a captain in the Marines. The only thing against Copeland is the letter business.’
Stocker considered it. ‘But there was independent corroboration, I take it?’
‘Oh yes.’
Stocker crossed out Copeland’s name. ‘Corporal Maurice Pickney.’
‘Pickney’s ex-RAMC. Superb combat medical orderly, he also won the MM on Runefish, during which he was badly wounded. He’s from Birmingham, an ex-merchant seaman. He’s rumoured to be the other way …’
‘Really?’ Stocker’s eyes flashed. ‘Now, couldn’t that knowledge be used for blackmail purposes?’
‘Unlikely. Pickney’s got high moral principles, and he’s tough as they come in combat. Not the type to give in to that kind of pressure.’
Stocker thought about it for a moment, nodded, scrubbed him out.
For the next thirty minutes they went carefully through all the names: by the end of it, both Nolan and Stocker tended to agree with Stirling that none of the SAS men seemed a likely candidate for Nazi stoolpigeon: Wallace had served a term in prison in Civvie Street for grievous bodily harm, but most of his family had been killed by the Germans, and he’d won the MM on Runefish; Netanya was a German Jew who’d also lost his people to the Hun: he’d gone AWOL from his unit in Palestine, but he’d done so to join the SIG: hardly Nazi material; Gibson: an American from a poor Texan family with a first-class combat record who’d quit the French Foreign Legion in disgust at the pro-Nazi Vichy regime. A possible plant? Unlikely: Gibson had personally killed dozens of Axis soldiers, many with his bare hands; Rossi: the same. His mother tongue might be Italian, but he’d accounted for so many Ities that the idea of his being a Mussolini sympathizer or a secret Nazi looked ludicrous; Trubman, a quiet Welsh Presbyterian who didn’t drink and who’d only joined the SAS as a signaller because Stirling pressed him to: another ex-Runefish MM winner. Not likely.
At the end of it, they sat back in their chairs, flummoxed. Stocker eyed the crossed-out names again. ‘Netanya,’ he said suddenly, staring at Stirling. ‘Didn’t you have trouble with a traitor in the SIG earlier this year?’
Stirling grimaced. ‘You mean Bruckner? Yes, but he was an Afrika Korps POW who helped train the SIG, an ex-Foreign Legion trooper who swore on capture that he was anti-Nazi. We trusted him, and he knifed us in the back. His case isn’t the same as Netanya’s, though: he wasn’t Jewish.’
Stocker went silent. ‘Then that just leaves Caine and Audley.’
‘I’ve already said what I think about that, Major,’ Stirling said severely.
‘Yes, you did.’ Stocker paused and removed his glasses, put them back on again, and gazed inquisitively at Stirling. ‘How much do you know about Lieutenant Audley, sir?’ he asked. Nolan noted that it was the first time he’d addressed the younger man as ‘sir’.
Stirling looked annoyed. ‘I told you, he’s ex-Coldstreams: the eldest son of the Marquis of Leigh …’
‘Really? Do you know the family personally?’
‘No, I’ve never met them: I grew up in Scotland. My family is Roman Catholic, and I went to Ampleforth. I don’t know all the English nobility … anyway, if I remember rightly, Bertie was brought up in South Africa.’
Stocker held up a dishevelled book in his small hand. ‘This is the Army List,’ he said. ‘I took the liberty of consulting it earlier. A Lieutenant Thomas Caine is listed but, most curiously, there is no Lieutenant Bertram Audley.’
Stirling glared at him as if he’d gone mad. ‘It must be a mistake,’ he said. ‘They sometimes miss people, especially in wartime, when there are so many officers.’
‘Indeed,’ Stocker said. ‘That’s what I thought myself. I then examined the list of recent winners of the Military Cross. Again, no Lieutenant Bertram Audley, Coldstream Guards, is recorded as having been awarded that decoration. One mistake, yes: but two seems excessive.’
&
nbsp; Stirling had gone grey. ‘This is nonsense, Major,’ he snapped. ‘I know how to settle it. I’ll ring the duty officer at 201st Guards Brigade right this minute and ask for Audley’s record.’
‘An excellent idea.’
Stirling picked up the telephone receiver, consulted a list taped to Stocker’s wall and dialled the number. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘It’s Colonel Stirling here, 1st SAS Regiment. I’m enquiring about a Lieutenant Bertram Audley. Yes, he’s now serving with my unit. Formerly with 1st Battalion, Coldstreams.’
He relaxed for a few moments as the officer went to check, then said, ‘Hello, yes,’ and listened, his hand on the receiver tightening visibly. He said thank you and put the phone down. When he turned to Stocker, his face was deathly pale. ‘There is no record of a Lieutenant Bertram Audley in the Coldstream Guards,’ he said heavily, as if forcing the words out one by one.
Nobody spoke. Stirling got up stiffly and took a step over to Stocker’s overloaded bookcase. He found the volume he was looking for, took it out and slapped it on the desk. Nolan saw that it was Debrett’s Peerage. Stirling scrabbled through the pages with white fingers, then stopped and turned to the index. He traced lists with an almost desperate look on his face. Then he slammed the book closed and thumped it with his fist. ‘What a bloody fool I’ve been,’ he swore. ‘What a bloody imbecile. There is no Marquis of Leigh. The family doesn’t exist. I should have known. I should have seen it. The way he behaved at el-Gala. Caine didn’t want him on Sandhog but I insisted. I’m a bloody moron, and that bastard, whoever he is, has taken me for a ride.’
He swallowed hard and gazed at Stocker, whose expression had turned meek. ‘It’s Audley,’ Stirling said, as if he still couldn’t believe it. ‘Your instinct was correct, Major. Audley is the Nazi stoolpigeon, and if Sandhog is still operational, then he must be with Caine right now.’
29
They climbed the escarpment in the milklight, hearing dry thunder and squinting at strings of lightning that drew slowly nearer, giving them glimpses of the hills above, etching their faces with veins of spectral blue. They crept up the path leadbooted, lifting their feet, planting them carefully, feeling for loose stones, crouching every few minutes to watch and listen. They wore cap comforters and had smeared their faces with fireblack, emptied their pouches of anything that rattled, bound them up with string, removed the slings from their weapons, looped strips of hessian around the stocks and swivels.
Once they heard the flat snap of a gunshot from far away: they crouched down, seeing the whites of each other’s eyes, wondering what the shot meant. They continued: just before they reached the top, rain fell in sudden slashes, fat droplets sifting across stones. The rain soaked them, skewed down their necks, made them shiver: it lasted only minutes but obscured the tracks they were following. Caine decided to continue along the path anyway: he reckoned their quarry wouldn’t leave it until they reached the foot of the escarpment on the other side.
They crested the scarp and saw the flicker of a fire down in the darkseamed valley. Caine took a shufti through the nightsight, made out pale shadows haunting the circle of firelight. Wallace squatted, donned the tactical ear headphones, cocked his head. Caine crouched next to him. ‘You reckon it’s them?’ he asked.
‘Yep,’ the big gunner answered, pulling off the headset. ‘I can make out Arab voices on this thing: I’ll bet they weren’t expecting a hot pursuit, not on a night like this. They’re in their own place and they feel safe. That fire’s less than a thousand yards off, skipper. We could hit them from up here.’
Wallace was carrying his Bren, but Caine had swapped his Tommy-gun for a Garand: the night-simulation range had convinced him of its effectiveness in the dark.
He shook his head. ‘Nah. We might hit our boys. If it were daylight and we had a clear view, all right, but in this … No, we’ve got to get closer.’
It took them almost thirty minutes to reach the foot of the scarp: the fire was still glowing, and Caine reasoned that the Senussi must have decided to remain here for the rest of the night. The wadi floor was sandy, its edges thick with saltbush, knifegrass and prickly pear. They fell prone and crawled across the sand into the bush, walking on their elbows, holding their weapons clear of the ground between cupped palms. They found a place behind a nest of eggshaped boulders amongst the trees from where they could see the fire blazing under a chalk rockface no more than fifty paces off.
Caine moved around the edge of the boulder nest, peered through the nightsight, saw the wadi brushed with steely light. To his surprise there was now only one figure by the fire: it was Bertram Audley, sitting crosslegged, gazing morosely into the flames. He didn’t seem to be tied up or confined in any way. Caine panned the RG sight back and forth: he clocked no Senussi, saw no sign of Gaston Larousse. A warning klaxon trilled in his head: why would Audley’s captors leave him alone? And if he were truly alone, why hadn’t he made a break for it? The night was so dark that anyone coming after him would have lost him within thirty yards.
Caine handed the RG sight to Wallace: the gunner took a long gander then gave it back. ‘It’s gotta be a trap,’ he grunted softly. ‘They must of heard us comin’ after all. They’re usin’ him as bait.’
Caine pondered the situation. They couldn’t withdraw and leave Audley to his fate, but any action would be playing into enemy hands. He had no doubt that the Senussi were concealed in the deep shadows of the wadi, waiting for his move. He had no way of knowing how many there were. On the other hand, he and Wallace could use the darkness to their own advantage, too: they had the nightsight and the tactical ear, and the Arabs didn’t. They also had superior weapons. Caine decided to spring the trap: he’d walk right in there and rely on his skill and speed to get out again.
He searched his pouches, found his Very pistol, already loaded: he crawled so close to the big gunner that their heads touched. He passed him the flaregun and the RG sight, took the tactical ear in exchange. He listened carefully through the headset, caught the crackling of the fire. ‘I’m going in,’ he hissed in Wallace’s ear. ‘You cover me through the RG: the moment you clock anyone moving, blast ’em. Once we’re back in the trees, use the flare for illumination, take out any pursuers. Then we bug out the way we came.’
Wallace stuck a knoblike thumb almost in Caine’s eye. Caine gave his mate’s big shoulder a hard squeeze then swivelled his body round. He crawled to the edge of the cover. He was about forty-five yards from Audley at the fire. He could run it in a few seconds, and the enemy wouldn’t see him in the darkness: the moment he broke the circle of the firelight, though, they would have him in their sights and would open up. Instead of running, he moved forward with the same diverlike slowness he and Wallace had used on the way here: rifle ready, ears cocked under the headphones for the slightest movement, each pace carefully measured and perfectly noiseless. Within ten paces of the fire he stopped, lay quietly down in the sand with his weapon at the shoulder: Audley was still staring gloomily into the flames, evidently unaware of Caine’s presence.
Caine took a deep breath, knowing that the moment he spoke the contact was initiated. ‘Bertie,’ he yelled. ‘Run. Over here.’
Audley stiffened, leapt to his feet, stared wildly about him, giving Caine a glimpse of seedcorn teeth and faded filmstar features. ‘Caine?’ he shouted. ‘Caine, it’s a setup.’
‘Run,’ Caine bawled. ‘Run on my voice.’
Audley hesitated for a fraction of a second, and in that moment a whiteclad Arab leapt into the firelight, a lean, agile, darkbearded figure with a rifle in one hand and a curved dagger raised in the other. Caine had sighted up and was about to drag iron when a double tap of tracer from Wallace’s Bren sousaphoned, jackscrewed over him in a twin groove of blinding orange, paired shooting stars that cooked the night air with the odour of fried sulphur: Caine saw the Senussi’s head burst like a split melon, rip apart in stipples of dark flesh and bright bone. Audley was already hurtling towards Caine when the sootblack dark was
chivved by spontoons of fire: Caine heard slow rounds drone like the notes of a cello in the headset, heard the wheeze and thwack as bullets bombed around him. He’d pinpointed four or five muzzleflashes: he traversed his rifle, pulled iron, skeaned .30-calibre rounds at the flashes, scatterdrumming chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp, making the whole drywash whoof and boom with fire. He heard the jing of steel as his clip selfejected, heard the thrash of Senussi rifles, heard more shots skysweep, heard the whazz of ricochets. He found a new clip, fed it into the top breech: he hopped to his feet, collided with Audley, almost knocked him down. ‘Make for the bushes,’ he yelled. ‘We’ve got your back.’
He heard Audley’s receding footsteps in the headset, followed almost at once by bare Senussi feet whispering over sand. Caine dropped on one knee, fired two rounds in the direction of the invisible target, heard a pigsqueal out of the darkness, smelled charred flesh, scorched cotton, sautéed blood. Feet squeaked dirt to his left: he swivelled the Garand, claymored the shadows with twin lances of fire, heard a grunt like air rushing from a punctured tyre, heard the muffled thud of a body thumping earth, heard the metallic ring of a rifle hitting stone. He stood up, poised, Garand at the shoulder, ranging the muzzle, weaving his head this way and that, straining for sound. There was a sudden chamfering of earth behind him: a greasy arm snagged him round the neck: Caine smelled goatlard and rancid butter, felt a knifethrust turned against the backbuckles of his belt: rotated his head to the crook of the elbow, yanked the arm down with his left hand, clubbing backwards onehanded with the butt of his Garand. He had a momentary sense of another ghost in front of him, a dekko of blue light glinting along a steel blade: then Wallace’s Bren deadbolted a second time, crepitating through the headset as loud as thunder. Caine heard the ripfire of ballrounds tearing open the night: the dark figure was blown away. He let go his rifle, hauled down on the arm around him with both hands, exerted all his weight. He felt the Senussi flip over his back, crash into the sand in front of him. Caine’s bayonet was in his hand in an instant: he threw himself on the prostrate Arab doublekneed, punching the breath out of his lungs. He felt his way across the enemy’s chest lefthanded, skewbladed the bayonet through the rib-box into the heart, felt the blade jar, forced it in up to the hilt with both hands. The man twitched and went rigid: warm gore spurted in Caine’s face, up his sleeve, across his shirt. He pulled the blade, wiped blood out of his eyes, groped for his fallen rifle, picked it up, dashed after Audley.
Death or Glory II: The Flaming Sword: The Flaming Sword Page 24
