Death or Glory I: The Last Commando: The Last Commando

by Michael Asher

  His father shook his head. ‘You don't have to. You could stay.’

  ‘No, I want to stay, but there are things I haven't finished. People trusted me, and I can't let them down.’

  ‘Ah well, then you're right. You have to go.’

  Caine opened his eyes and found himself lying face up, his head resting against a stone shelf, his body immersed in four feet of water. The first thing that hit him was an overpowering stench – the stink of death. The well towered above him, a vast black chimney with a cap of wan starlight at the apex. He could hear, if only faintly, moans of pain from beyond the well, and knew that it was his mate, Moshe Naiman, bleeding to death with his foot blown off. Caine had no idea how long he'd lain there, but guessed from the starlight above that it must have been at least an hour, perhaps two. He hadn't been injured in the fall – he felt nothing but a dull pulse of pain from his side, where Rohde had used the iron.

  Caine's first thoughts were about Runefish: he'd sworn to bring her back or execute her, and he hadn't completed that mission. It was probably too late now to stop her talking – Rohde would surely have been interrogating her for the past couple of hours. He couldn't be certain, though. People were often tougher than they looked, and his brief encounter with Rose had given him a glimpse of a character of rigid determination. The problem was that she didn't want to be rescued. No matter – he still had his orders, and before he could carry them out he had to extract himself from his current predicament.

  Caine stood up in the water, feeling mud squelch under his feet. The stink of rotting meat made him gag, but it was almost pitch dark in the well and he couldn't make out where the smell was coming from. He gazed up at the dark spiral above him. There was only one way out, and that meant scaling the wall. It looked impossible, but Caine had been trained in climbing cliff faces in the commandos and knew that few surfaces, even man-made ones, were without some kind of hand- and foot-holds. He had always excelled in climbing – his massively strong shoulders and chest and relatively light legs were the ideal physique for it. Still, he'd always climbed with ropes and pitons – he'd never encountered anything as difficult as this.

  Caine's bush shirt and shorts were heavy with water, but his shirt felt lopsided, as if heavier on one side. He grappled frantically in the inside pocket on a hunch, and incredibly, miraculously, it was there: his Zippo lighter in its waterproof condom. He took a deep breath to control shaking hands: he flicked open the lid, worked the flints. He smelled lighter fuel, caught his breath as a flame licked up on the wick. He cast around in the globe of light, and almost jumped out of his skin.

  He was sharing the water with a dead man. It was the bloated corpse of an Arab, still dressed in his robes – the Senussi, Caine thought, whom Rohde had boasted about. The one who'd lasted five days. It was from the cadaver that the dreadful stench emanated.

  Caine retched again, but forced himself to turn the corpse over: the Arab's face was ghostly white in the Zippo's light, the milky eyes staring madly. Then Caine noticed something strange: there was a hole in the Arab's robe at the belly, a glimpse of severed, bloodless grey flesh beneath. This was a serious knife wound. Rohde hadn't mentioned anything about stabbing the prisoner, and with a wound this size he'd never have held out for five days. No, this was a self-inflicted wound, Caine was sure. The Arab had done himself in, probably when Rohde had told him about the fate of his village. He had stabbed himself, which meant he'd had a sharp weapon. The Jerries hadn't searched him properly and hadn't found the knife, just as they hadn't found Caine's lighter. That meant that it must still be there.

  Calming himself, Caine put the Zippo away and ducked under the water, groping along the muddy bed. It was difficult work – twice he had to surface for breath – but the area wasn't very large, and if the knife was there he was bound to find it. On the third dive his fingers closed round something cold and hard. He burst out of the water gripping it with triumph: it was a Senussi dagger, ten inches long, curved at the end – rusty and blunt, but still functional. It might just be his ticket out of the place.

  He heaved himself out of the water and stood on the stone shelf, feeling for crevices – as he'd suspected, there were plenty. The stone lining of the well was ancient and the stones were both uneven and without mortar. The wall was full of tiny gaps where he could wedge the knife in firmly and use it to pull himself up. He found such a place at full arm's length, stuck the knife into it, finding a hold for one foot. His sandals were sopping wet, and as he tried to lever himself up, his foot slipped. The knife dislodged itself from its cavity under his weight, and he fell back into the dark water with a splash. Cursing, he tried again. This time he'd managed to scale three or four feet up the wall before he missed his footing and fell smack on top of the floating cadaver beneath him. For a second he lay in the water, ignoring the stinking flesh, wondering if it was worth the pain, the effort. He could just lie here and die; his father, the forge would be waiting.

  Naiman's sobs and groans came again, bringing him back to the present. Caine heaved himself out of the water and attacked the wall with new determination. He worked the knife with frenzied effort, balancing on inch-wide footholds, thrusting the blade in, securing each step as he'd been trained to do. Slowly, but with increasing confidence, he made progress – ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty feet. At twenty-five feet he paused, panting, flush against the wall, and glanced up. The moon had come out – a three-quarter moon, directly over the well head, casting gilded light straight down the shaft. He was a quarter of the way up the well, and about five feet above him he sensed another rocky shelf. Beyond that, though, he glimpsed something that excited him much more: the moonlight reflected dully off a pattern of steel – a ladder of iron rings climbing from the shelf right up to the well head. He only had another five feet to go, and he'd made it.

  Two more panting, agonizing efforts and he had his hand on the shelf. He was dragging himself on to it when something large and scaly uncoiled out of the shadows directly towards him – he felt the movement, saw the moonlight reflected off silver scales, glimpsed a savage, vicious dragon-head, saw a flicking fork-shaped tongue, heard the terrifying hiss. He was so shocked that he let go of the shelf and plummeted thirty feet down the chimney, crashing into the water like a wrecking-ball.

  32

  Erwin Rommel sat at the table in the roadhouse marking maps with coloured pencils and sifting through sitreps and intelligence reports. He had recovered his normally buoyant spirits. His old wound was no longer giving him problems. Among the int. reports was one suggesting that further east, at Capuzzo, he would find supplies to equip an entire division – more than enough to reach Alexandria and Cairo. He had no doubt that, once the OKH/OKW in Berlin had granted him permission to cross the frontier, he would take Mersa Matruh easily. He had already dispatched his 90th Light Division down the Via Balbia to seek out the new dumps. Victory was within his grasp. All he needed was intelligence that would convince Kesselring and the High Command that the Eighth Army really was about to disintegrate.

  He looked up as Mellenthin strutted in, carrying yet another report. ‘It's here,’ he said, calmly handing him the paper. ‘The Runefish report, sir. It arrived from Rohde in Biska just a minute ago.’

  Rommel laid the single sheet on the table and pored over it, his eyes devouring the words, reading phrases out loud: ‘The Eighth Army has been more fragmented… than the Axis knows… Our armour has been destroyed… Our infantry divisions are wheeling aimlessly… We have lost more than 80,000 men… Our logistical system is in ruins.’ He paused and shot a glance at Mellenthin, who saw the shadow of a smile on the severe features. ‘Listen to this,’ he said. ‘Eighth Army's morale has reached rock bottom. The men have lost confidence in their officers… officers are now openly questioning the… High Command. More than 25,000 men have deserted… the Army is a hair's breadth from mutiny… Rommel is likely to push into Egypt immediately… Eighth Army will almost certainly be destroyed… the Commander-in-Chief…
requests permission to evacuate Egypt forthwith. He wishes to withdraw to Palestine or… up the Nile to Port Sudan.’

  When the GOC looked up from the paper, Mellenthin saw that his face was glowing. ‘This is it,’ he said, and the IO could hear the exaltation in his voice. ‘Twenty-five thousand men deserted. The army on the brink of mutiny – exactly what I predicted.’

  ‘Shall I have it sent to Field Marshal Kesselring immediately, sir?’

  Rommel hesitated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, he gave us twelve hours. Let's sit on it just a little longer.’ He got up abruptly and started pacing around the room, deep in thought. ‘Kesselring was bluffing,’ he said at last. ‘He was certain we wouldn't get any proof. No, what we must do now is get confirmation from our sources in Cairo as a back-up, so that when Kesselring prevaricates, we'll be ready for him. What was the code-name of the agent who primed us on this?’

  ‘Stürmer, sir.’

  ‘Yes. Contact Stürmer at once and ask for corroboration.’

  ‘We can only contact him via Rohde, sir. Abwehr security regulations: Rohde is his controller.’

  ‘Tell Rohde to get on to it immediately,’ Rommel said.

  ‘Very good,’ said Mellenthin, ‘and congratulations, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Major. We shall be eating dinner in Shepheard's hotel by this time next week. Nothing can stop us now.’

  *

  The sun was already melting in gold and blood-orange through the dust haze in the Western Desert when Johann Eisner broke into Betty Nolan's flat in al-Hadiqa Street. He had been apprehensive about the possibilities of risking it in daylight, but speed was of the essence now. It was typical of Rohde that he would sit on Eisner's reports for days without responding, and then suddenly want an answer in five minutes. Eisner was perfectly aware, too, that Shaffer's visit to the place might have set alarm bells ringing at Field Security HQ, but the Black Widow's request was urgent, and there had been no other option.

  Eisner's first reaction to Rohde's message had been incredulity. If the major had Runefish in custody five hundred miles away, in Cyrenaica, then who was the girl Shaffer had identified as Runefish only that morning, at Nolan's flat? Obviously, she couldn't be in both places at once. Rohde had wanted an immediate confirmation of the identity of the girl he had interrogated, whose name he'd given as First Officer Maddaleine Rose. Was Rose the girl Eisner had photographed in the staff car, in Wren uniform? Was she Betty Nolan? Eisner had requested a couple of hours to make absolutely certain.

  He hadn't had time for the usual counter-surveillance measures. Luckily, he had discovered a fire escape at the back of Nolan's building with easy access to a bathroom window on the first floor. Almost as soon as he'd jumped down inside, he'd realized that this flat couldn't be permanently occupied, whatever the concierge had told Shaffer. Though there was a towel on the rack, toilet paper by the WC and a bar of soap on the sink, there was no trace of the small personal items one would have found in any woman's bathroom – perfume, lipstick, make-up powder, bath-salts, toothbrush: it had the look of a stage set.

  This conclusion was confirmed as Eisner moved cautiously through the rest of the flat – there were made-up beds in the two bedrooms but no clothes in the closets, minimum furniture in the sitting room but no food in the kitchen – nothing but sugar and tea – no books, no magazines, no letters, no ornaments, no photographs. The only outstanding feature was a telephone on a low table next to the front door. The flat had the impersonality of a hostel or a spy's safe-house. If he'd been hoping for any evidence of Nolan's existence, any clue to her current employment, he clearly wouldn't find it here. The place had been swept as clean as a whistle.

  He was nosing methodically through cupboards in the kitchen, when he heard the scuffle of footsteps outside the front entrance. A key turned in the lock. He was at the kitchen entrance in a bound, but by that time the front door was already opening, ruling out a frontal attack. Instead, he lurked in the shadows of the kitchen, and peeping out, saw a tall woman closing the door. She had her back to him, but he took in a nest of shortish blond hair cut in fashionable style, a white blouse, a knee-length black skirt and an elegant calfskin hand-bag slung over her shoulder. Eisner felt for the knife in his waistband and drew it out slowly. To his surprise, instead of proceeding into the room, the woman lifted the telephone receiver, and before he could move, had pressed a button and was speaking into the mouthpiece. She just had time to say, ‘Captain Avery, I'm in,’ when Eisner was on her, one arm crooked round her neck, his knife at her throat. She dropped the receiver, snapped her head towards the crook of his elbow and wrenched the throttling arm downwards with astonishing force, flipping Eisner off balance. In an instant her head was out of his grasp, and she had dodged round and twisted his arm behind his own back in a perfectly executed ju-jitsu move.

  Eisner's mouth fell open as he found himself propelled against the wall, hitting it with a crunch, dropping the knife. He had recovered in a second, wheeling round furiously on the girl. She was going for a .38 Webley pistol concealed under her blouse, and had it half-way out when he snatched her arm, yoiked it back with all his strength and clouted her in the jaw with a shattering blow. The woman grunted and pitched over backwards. As she went down, Eisner slipped his Smith & Wesson from its holster and threw himself on her prone body with all his weight. He lay over her full length, his knees digging into her thighs, jamming the pistol under her jaw. ‘Try that again, bitch, and I'll blow your chin off,’ he spat. Her body relaxed, her eyelids fluttering, her breath coming hard through her nostrils.

  It was a good attempt, Eisner thought. She did look like Betty Nolan – same height, same lean, lissom figure, same short blond hair. It wasn't her, though. Eisner had a good memory for faces, and he was certain of that. She might have been the girl in his photo if seen from far off, or even for someone like Shaffer, who'd never seen the genuine article, but the features were subtly different. Eisner forced her head back savagely with the muzzle of his weapon, beside himself with rage. He'd been cleverly cheated – it was a set-up, and he'd walked straight into it. ‘Who are you?’ he spluttered.

  The girl's seagreen eyes were remarkably steady, and she didn't whimper or cry out. Her lack of panic infuriated Eisner – he felt like pistol-whipping her face to rid it of the calm expression. ‘I'm Betty Nolan,’ she gasped. ‘I'm just a cabaret girl.’

  ‘Lying cunt. I've seen the real Betty Nolan, and you're not her. I never met a cabaret girl yet trained in unarmed combat, or who carried a pistol under her blouse. You're Field Security, aren't you?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  There was a sudden squawk from the telephone mouthpiece, and Eisner froze. He swore to himself, realizing he'd made a serious tactical mistake. The person she'd been speaking to – Captain Avery – had heard everything. Stupid. Stupid. Wasn't Avery the one Natalie had told him about – the officer from whom she'd stolen the Runefish schedule? Taking advantage of his momentary lapse of attention, the girl pivotted her body, smacked the pistol muzzle aside with her arm, tried to jerk Eisner off her. Blind with rage, he knuckle-smacked her twice in the face with his left hand. Her eyes lost focus, and her body went limp. Eisner jumped off her, grabbed the telephone cable and ripped it feverishly out of the wall. He picked up his knife and looked down at the unconscious girl. She wasn't Betty Nolan, but he had to admit that she was lovely – especially the way she was lying, with her skirt up, revealing shapely, cream-white legs and soft thighs. Legs to drive you wild, Shaffer had said. Eisner licked his lips, fingering his knife. This was absurd, he thought. He had no need to kill her, and in any case the Field Security boys would be on their way – maybe they were here already. He'd made enough gaffes for one day without doing something even more stupid. He wasn't going to do it, and nothing could make him. What he had to do now was to get out of there pronto. He put the knife away and had taken a step towards the tunnel that led to the bathroom when the girl moaned, her eyes flickering open. He stopped and squinte
d at her over his shoulder. Get out of here now, hissed a voice in his head. The room lurched abruptly as if there'd been an earthquake: the floor shuddered, threw him to his knees. The light dimmed, hard surfaces turned nebulous, the solid world liquified. ‘No,’ he protested. ‘I'm not going to do it.’ Then the sun switched off.

  When it came on again, Eisner was standing over the girl's body, drenched in sweat. His flies were undone, he was clutching his knife, which he saw was smeared with blood. There was blood on his trousers and shirt, and his hands and wrists were thick with it. The girl was still lying on the bare floor, but she was now belly-down and stark naked. There were gore-spatters like blemishes on her perfectly sculpted ivory back, gore-splodges on the soft white skin of her buttocks. Her ripped and torn clothes lay scattered around her, and there was a rapidly spreading pool of dark blood under her head. A gaping wound like a second mouth stretched all the way across her milk-white throat.

  ‘Oh God,’ Eisner moaned. ‘Oh God.’