Into Battle

by Michael Gilbert

General Foxley alone seemed unaffected. Luke had come to be treated by the general as an additional aide, a means of liaison with the military police, particularly useful since it saved him from having more than the minimum contact with Harper. Luke found himself, unwillingly, admiring the general’s professional balance, his refusal to move from the placid central course he had selected.

  Oncoming events were to test that placidity severely.

  When trouble took a long step nearer, it was Harper, once again, who brought the news, and the fact that he spoke so calmly emphasised rather than hid the feeling behind his words. He said, “Last night – or rather, in the early hours of this morning – twenty prisoners escaped from the detention compound. They included six men who were awaiting armed escorts. Two of them were under sentence of death. They were all classified as dangerous men. They are even more dangerous now. You will remember, perhaps, that a number of rifles and a quantity of ammunition were reported to you as missing from the QA store. It seems that whoever took them was in collaboration with the prisoners. They are all, now, armed.”

  “Have you any proof of that?”

  “Very practical proof,” said Harper grimly. “Two of my C.M.P.s who were on patrol in the area between Le Touquet and the forest encountered them at four o’clock this morning, when they fired a volley over them to demonstrate that they meant business. Sensibly, I think, they made no attempt to stop them, but returned as quickly as possible and reported to me. It was then that the prison break was discovered.”

  “How did they escape?”

  “In the normal manner: by digging a tunnel. I have inspected it. Quite an elaborate affair, some thirty yards long, coming out close to the railway.”

  “And they were able to dig this tunnel without arousing suspicion?”

  “I would imagine they did so without any difficulty at all.”

  The general looked sharply at Harper, as though he suspected what was to come.

  “When I took over the prison, you instructed me that I was to confine my attention to seeing that the outside defences were secure. I was not to harass the prisoners with the sort of inspections and periodic checks that are normal in prison camps and that are usually effective in spotting the signs of tunnelling and stopping it before it gets too far.”

  “Yes,” said the general. “I did so instruct you. You may regard that particular instruction as cancelled.”

  Luke thought that Harper, who was furious but containing his fury, might have made some observation about locking stable doors. Instead he said, “I have thirty-five military policemen on various duties in and around the camp. I’ve applied for more, but so far without success. I could withdraw the ones I have and use them as a posse to hunt down the escapers, but only by cancelling their other duties. And in view of the general feeling in the camp at this moment, I’d be happier to have them available under my hand.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  “The only course open to us, unless we are going to ask the army for outside help, is to form a strong contingent from camp personnel – say, of company strength; there are plenty of soldiers hanging around, waiting for leave or assignment. Put a good man in charge and comb through the forest.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said the general.

  And that was all Harper could get out of him before he spun around on his heel and marched out.

  The general signalled Luke to stay.

  He said, “I’m told that you and your one-legged assistant are often seen in and around the forest. I’d like your view as to whether the escaping prisoners now in the forest will find it possible to go farther. Frankly, if they did, I wouldn’t be sorry to see the last of them.”

  Luke realised the compliment that was being paid to him and chose his words with great care. He said, “From what I have learned so far, sir, of the situation in the south of the forest, I’d imagine that their main chance – really their only chance – of reaching safety would be to make for Spain. They could not, of course, hope to do so, on foot, through France. They would have to persuade the fishermen at Ezé to carry them by sea.”

  “French fishermen. Would they agree?”

  “I understand that this particular crowd place the payment of money a long way above the call of patriotism.”

  “Substantial payments, I suppose.”

  “I am told that the regular fare is five hundred pounds per person. No doubt, they have been getting a share of the money from the illicit liquor sales, but they could not possibly have saved the large sum necessary to pay for a succession of trips. I don’t suppose a fishing boat takes more than four or five at a time. That would mean half a dozen trips to accommodate the prisoners alone. And I think there are others ahead of them in the line. Men who have slipped away in the past …”

  Luke forbore to say that control in that vast, amorphous camp had been so slack that any number of men could have slipped away unnoticed.

  “Suppose there are a dozen of them – or even twenty. Where do you suggest that they have been lying up? Living rough, in the forest?”

  “The story is that they are living comfortably in a cavern near Eze, fed by the Ezeites, well paid for their services, no doubt. They’ll only be offensive if the money supply dries up. They won’t get any more from liquor sales, so they’ll be looking for alternative sources.”

  “It’s not a pretty picture,” said the general, “whichever way you look at it. But the one thing I don’t intend to do is to ask the army for help. They’ve got more than enough on their hands just now.”

  As though to underline his words, the wind, backing around to the east, brought them the sound of the opening bombardment at Loos.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Had Pepin ever been party to a legal document, he would have signed it Pierre Clairambaud. His nickname, signifying, in Alsatian argot, a fox cub, had been attached to him almost at birth. He had no objection. The fox was one of his favourite animals.

  The Clairambauds were a well-known Alsatian family. Many of them had left the country when it was handed over to Germany at the disastrous conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. They had spread across France and had prospered as factors and managers in the vineyards of the Medoc and the fishing communities on the Atlantic coast. Pepin, with his mother in tow, had been happy to light on one of them, François, a many-times-removed “uncle” who had risen to the post of second-in-command under Jacques Moulin of the Ezé fishing community.

  Once established, Pepin had made himself useful, particularly as a net mender. As he squatted happily on the quay, mending a net with nimble fingers, no piece of news or gossip had escaped him.

  When British troops had arrived, he had seen the desirability of acquiring at least a smattering of English, and Joe, on one of his visits to Ezé, and spotting his usefulness, had taken him in hand. His progress had been steady rather than remarkable. From “Pleezeter meecher” he had now attained a grasp of most of the soldiers’ normal obscenities.

  On the morning after the jailbreak, his uncle had approached him with a request.

  It was clear, from the tone of voice in which he spoke, that the matter was important to him. Pepin, with an eye to the main chance, would have been delighted to help him. The difficulty was understanding exactly what his uncle wanted.

  He referred to it as a “mouser,” seeming to indicate a cat or dog skilled in catching mice. A curious request, seeing that Uncle François occupied one of the most up-to-date houses in the village. It was only after elaborate explanations and the drawing of a diagram that he realised that what his uncle had set his heart on obtaining was a Mauser pistol.

  He said, “In a great cavern behind the village, English soldiers are in hiding. They are hoping for transport to Spain. One or two have gone already. Others will go when they have accumulated the necessary money. You may have heard something of this already.”

  Pepin, indeed, knew all about it. His face, however, showed nothing but polite interest.

>   “Now I will tell you something you may not know. It is confidential information, and I pass it on to you only because you must know about it if you are to help me. Recently these men have acquired a great number – a positive arsenal – of weapons. Some were stolen from a British store. But even more were brought by a German officer who was put ashore here, by motorboat, recently.”

  This was important confirmation of something that had previously been nothing but the vaguest of rumours. It was said that, under cover of night, in the dark of the moon, a German officer had landed. No one admitted to having seen him, or if they had, they were not prepared to talk about it.

  “The Mauser pistol is of a type that many German soldiers carry. I have no doubt that there will be one or more in this arsenal.” He paused, to answer the question that Pepin was going to ask. “It is a small cave, near to the main cavern, above it, on the south side.”

  His uncle did not explain how he had obtained such precise information. Pepin had his own ideas about this. He would, no doubt, have bribed one of the escapers, hungry for money to pay his fare, to act as his spy and informant.

  “So, if I were to show you a small, well-hidden entrance – known to me but to very few other people – you should be able to make your way, passing from cave to cave, until you reached the place where the arms are stored.”

  It was not an attractive project. It was all too easy to miss your way, to wander for days, to lie down at last, a feast for the rats that had been following you so hopefully.

  He said, “If I do this – if I get for you the pistol you desire – what do I get?”

  His uncle mentioned a sum of money.

  “In francs or in gold?”

  “In gold.”

  Remaining impassive, Pepin said that he would give his uncle a final decision when he had thought about it. First, he realised, this tidbit of news ought to be passed on to his new British friends.

  He found Joe in conference with Luke and, abandoning any attempt at English, spoke at length in French. He had the full attention of his listeners, who made him stop, from time to time, to repeat what he was telling them.

  Finally, after a long moment of silence, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, Luke said, “Do you think it could be?”

  “It’d be right up his street,” said Joe.

  Pepin could see that they were excited, but the last two exchanges, having been in English, had bypassed him. Reverting to French, Luke described their two previous encounters with the man of many pseudonyms, whose real name was Erich Krieger; how in both cases he had not been acting as a simple spy, his aim being the disruption of their war effort – first, by guiding Zeppelins onto their fleet base at Portsmouth; then, even more dangerously, by attacking their ammunition reserves.

  Pepin did not understand all of this, but he did gather that Krieger was an important and dangerous man.

  Joe said, “The boat he came ashore in. When it had landed him, did it go back out to sea?”

  “I asked my uncle the same question,” said Pepin. “He said that when it had put the German officer ashore, it went back. I think he was lying.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “My uncle is not very skilled at telling lies. Also, I thought it would have been much more sensible for the man to have kept the boat, in case he had to leave in a hurry. There are a hundred places along the coast, little inlets where it could be hidden.”

  “And the crew?”

  “I think they will have gone with the officer. Even in this fine weather, they would not have been too comfortable camping out. They would be happier, and safer, in the cavern.”

  Joe nodded agreement. Luke’s mind was on a different point. He said, “If this is the man we think it is, he is a careful operator. Even before he arrived, contact could have been made for him with certain of the German prisoners. With their help – foolishly trusted as they are by the authorities – it would not have been difficult to organise the developments that have upset our people – the arms theft and the prison break. The overall objective must be to provoke a private war, on such a scale that we would be forced to withdraw badly needed men from the front.”

  “As I observed,” said Joe. “Right up his street.”

  “You will appreciate how important it is to identify him. Tell me: do you really think you can reach this arms store?”

  “Knowing its general direction, yes.”

  “And you say that it overlooks the main cavern?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you should be able to identify this German officer and describe him to us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And having done so, find your way back?”

  “Yes,” said Pepin. “I think so.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Staff Sergeant Wilbraham, who was in charge, under Captain Mason, of the main officers’ mess in the Hôtel Bristol, was conscious of a feeling of relief when the last of the officers had departed, heading for their billets.

  Superficially, it had been a normal and agreeable evening – a cheerful babble of talk and an unusual amount of laughter. But Wilbraham was experienced enough to detect the underlying uneasiness.

  His last job in England had been running the mess in the embarkation centre at Southampton, and he had noted the same thing there. On the night before they were due to cross the Channel, many of the young officers were unusually noisy; but immediately behind the gaiety was the thought of what lay ahead of them.

  In this case, thoughts centred, perhaps, on an isolated billet on the outskirts of Le Touquet, one they had originally welcomed for its privacy and its distance from the lighted streets. Normally happy to be in bed by eleven o’clock, now they were hanging on until a group was ready to go. It would give them company for part of the way at least.

  Wilbraham superintended the clearing up of the mess room, the washing of the glasses, and the locking up of unused, or partly used, bottles, after which he sent his assistants to bed. They had had a long day and were glad to go. Wilbraham relaxed for a few minutes in his sanctum and thought of all the things he had to do the next day and how he was going to organise them. Having arrived at a tentative conclusion, he got up, turned out the lights, and moved into the hall to lock the front door.

  As he got there, it was opened in his face, and six men stalked in. They were wearing denim overalls and were masked. The leader, speaking good but guttural English, said, “Don’t do anything stupid. I have here a silenced revolver, and it will cause me no pleasure to shoot you in the stomach. You understand?”

  Sergeant Wilbraham, unable to speak, nodded.

  “Good. Then show me into your office. No hurry. There are also four men on guard outside. They will make certain that we are not interrupted.”

  When they reached the office, a small room that had once been the butler’s pantry, Wilbraham, whose legs were feeling weak, was glad to sit down.

  “That’s right,” said the masked man, “make yourself comfortable. Now, to business. We require all the cash that you have. And since you only bank on Fridays, and it is now Thursday, there should be a most satisfactory amount in your safe.”

  Wilbraham croaked out, “I haven’t got the key.”

  “Who has it?”

  “The officer in charge, Captain Mason.”

  “Who will, no doubt, be back in his billet.”

  “He left with the last of the officers.”

  During this exchange, the masked man had been eying the safe thoughtfully. It was a moderate-sized one, not built into the wall, but standing free.

  “We have men who could open it, but not here and now. However …”

  He signalled to one of his followers, who went out and came back with two more men. He said to the sergeant, “It would be easier if we had some sort of cart. No doubt, you have something of the sort. Think.” As he said this, he raised the gun he was holding very slightly.

  “In a shed at the back,” croaked Wilbraham. In his early service
, he had seen a man who had been shot in the stomach, and his one wish was to get rid of the man before anyone intervened and a gun battle started.

  The cart was one that had been used to carry bulky items. It had never held anything as heavy as the safe, and it creaked, but survived, as it was rolled down the hall and out into the road where a truck was standing, backed and ready. Two planks formed a sloping approach, and with all eight men helping, the safe was hefted up into the truck.

  At this moment, two officers, who had been at a party, came strolling past. They were happy but not drunk. They stopped and stared in blank surprise, but had no time to do or say anything before they were knocked down and held down.

  “Tie them up,” said the leader. “Back to back, wrist to wrist, ankle to ankle. Right. Now roll them into the gutter.”

  The ten men crowded, somehow, on and into the truck, which drove off, leaving the helpless officers on the road, jerking like newly gaffed fish.

  “I agree with you,” said the general. “It was done deliberately, in the most insulting way possible. The object being, I imagine, to increase the tension.”

  “Hardly necessary,” said Major Lipholzer with a smile. “The atmosphere’s so thick at the moment you could cut it with a knife.”

  He was sitting with Major Shoesmith on one side of the conference table, with Majors Porteous and Yapp opposite. Colonel Harper sat at the end of the table, facing the general. The meeting was informal, in the sense that no notes were being taken of what was said, but there was no doubt that it was an occasion of high seriousness.

  Shoesmith said, “I’ve noticed that it is affecting the German prisoners, too. Normally they’re quiet enough, willing to lend a hand and not showing any signs of wanting to escape. Now they’re getting—I don’t know—perhaps restless is the best description.”

  The general looked at him thoughtfully. Before he could say what was on the tip of his tongue, the genial Major Porteous broke in. “I’ve been wondering,” he said, “all the things that have been happening lately – the missing rifles, the money extracted from the liquor store, the prison break, and now, this barefaced robbery – it all seems to hang together. Can someone be running it?”