Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  ‘No. It’s his leg,’ she said without looking up and for the first time Weidinger noticed the right trouser-leg cut off at the thigh, the blood-soaked bandages and the bare toes.

  The occupants of nearby stretchers realised what was going on and called out to her. The Widow Shemsi moved from man to man. When the water bottle was empty she went back to the troopers for another. Weidinger was beginning to resent her. What the hell was Krag up to letting her run loose like this? The woman was a menace.

  ‘Madame, please,’ he begged, as he followed her about with her bag. ‘I’m going to miss my train.’

  ‘Then go back.’

  She was cradling the head of a man whom Weidinger thought was dying. His eyes were going back and he appeared to be having difficulty in swallowing. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ thought Weidinger. ‘This is ridiculous.’

  The Oberleutnant was debating whether to dump her bag and go when a lamp lit up the stretcher.

  ‘What do we have here? An angel of mercy?’ asked a voice in German. It was a queer accent. Almost Viennese but not quite. Behind the beam Weidinger could make out a figure wearing a white overall coat over a tunic with a stethoscope around his neck.

  ‘Ah Herr Doktor,’ said Weidinger, visibly relieved. ‘The lady here is waiting for the Jaffa train. Could you possibly –’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll be waiting a long time then,’ said the doctor who turned towards Shemsi. The English bombed the Ramleh bridge yesterday and cut the line.’

  She stood up. Weidinger made the introductions.

  ‘Dr Neumann.’

  Weidinger understood the accent now. He was one of the Zionist Jews the Turks had conscripted.

  ‘There must be some other form of transport,’ insisted Shemsi. ‘A buggy?’

  ‘I’m afraid everything’s been requisitioned down to the last camel and bullock cart,’ said Dr Neumann. ‘And even if there is anything available civilians now need a special pass signed by a major or above to travel by road.’

  ‘Surely there’s someone here who could help me?’

  ‘Well, there are some Turkish officers . . .’

  Neumann’s voice trailed off. Everybody knew that a Turkish officer might well put a high price on his signature for a Syrian woman travelling alone.

  ‘You’d better come on to Etline. I’m sure Major Krag would give you the necessary authorisation,’ said Weidinger, pleased with his tact.

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ she said.

  ‘I hope the rest of your journey won’t be too uncomfortable,’ said Neumann. ‘Your train looks as though it’s carrying half the Jerusalem garrison.’

  ‘A battalion of storm troopers actually,’ said the Widow Shemsi.

  ‘Really?’ said the Herr Doktor. ‘One of those German-trained units I suppose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Almost as good as the real thing.’

  ‘Almost,’ said Weidinger. As usual, he warmed to a person who appreciated the innate superiority of the German military. For the moment the lesson of Maeltzer was quite forgotten.

  It was nearly daylight now. Weidinger need not have had any fear about missing his train, for its departure was further delayed while a flat-bedded wagon carrying a heavy machine-gun fitted with an armoured shield was hitched between the tender and the officers’ carriage. The hold-ups en route meant that the storm troopers’ last leg down to Deir Sineid would all be in daylight, which was not what had been intended.

  As their train pulled out Dr Neumann counted the carriages. When he had a moment to himself he would jot down the number and the time and the type of troops they carried in the kind of arcane scribble a person might expect to find in a doctor’s notebook. It was force of habit really. Since Sarah Aaronsohn had gone he did not know how to get his figures back to the British. He suspected there must be at least a dozen Nili orphans like himself scattered about Palestine.

  Although the sun was streaming in and the officers’ carriage beginning to warm up, most of the windows remained firmly closed against dust and the soot from the locomotive. Because of this neither Weidinger or Shemsi heard the machine-gun fire and the crump of the bombs from the RFC’s raid on Kress’s headquarters until they were almost at the Etline signals halt and the locomotive was again hissing to an unexpected halt. Apart from the anti-aircraft crew and a few riflemen who had apparently been travelling on the roof of the train ever since Junction Station, everybody scrambled down the embankment and took cover in some cactus shrub by the side of the track.

  As he helped the Widow Shemsi down Weidinger thought that she seemed to grip his hand just that little bit longer and tighter than was strictly necessary. She had to hold her hat on while stumbling down to the cactus in her hobble skirt. He noticed how tight her breasts were against her blouse, the way her buttocks and thighs were clearly outlined by the skirt. Weidinger was not quite sure whether what he felt was lust, affection or the notion of an exquisite revenge against Krag. Perhaps it was all three.

  ‘I’ve never been in an air raid,’ she gasped. To his surprise he thought she sounded quite excited by the prospect.

  In fact they were not in the air raid, which was taking place almost two kilometres away from them. However, they did see the smoking biplane on which Kress’s gunners had won their colonel’s cigars. Everybody cheered, including Weidinger and the other officers. Only the Widow Shemsi spared a thought for the man at the controls.

  Their stop at Etline, which was no more than a signal halt ten minutes down the line from Junction Station, was just long enough for Weidinger and the Widow Shemsi to disembark. The troopers watched them go with indifferent faces as they stepped down. Shemsi detected no envy in their gaze, not even from the officers and NCOs who were all veterans and knew what they would shortly be going into.

  Weidinger recognised their look. They were Frontkampfers, members of that exclusive club who habitually visited the sharp end. One-armed staff officers and their lady companions lived on another and grossly inferior planet. As their train pulled out Weidinger, despite his contempt for most things Turkish, saluted them. His behaviour did not surprise Shemsi. That’s what these Germans were like. She had seen them wet-eyed at the words of a marching-song.

  It did not take them long to locate Krag’s toppled tent. At first they feared the worst, but the servant assured them that all the officers had been at conference at the time of the attack. They began to help him pick up the various papers.

  It was Shemsi who spotted Maeltzer’s diary, its cover too green to camouflage it in the dusty cactus it had been blown into. As soon as she picked it up she could see what it was, for the journalist had written his name across the top in bold Gothic script. She had put Maeltzer out of her mind. Now this confirmation that the diary was exactly where the journalist had told her it would be made her feel quite cold, even though the day was already warming up with the beginning of a khamsin wind.

  Shemsi opened it at random on the entry for 17 May 1917, her lips moving with the words, for German was a language with which she had a much larger oral than written acquaintance. ‘Sarah Aaronsohn is a foolish lady,’ she read.

  She acts as if her brother Aaron was still around and a favourite of Djemal Pasha with his schemes to find some lost strain of wheat and turn Palestine back into a granary. But now there are also rumours that the Jew was always a British spy and has been seen wearing an English officer’s uniform in the cafés of Cairo. If this wasn’t bad enough she is always accompanied by this strange Lishansky boy trying to play the fop with his ridiculous monocle.

  I fear for her. Today I found her dawdling by an open carriage door, on the north bound platform, practically willing to miss her train back to Haifa because Lishansky had not turned up. Doesn’t she realise how sensitive the Turks and the Germans are about civilians hanging about rail terminals, people who might be trying to count how many soldiers get on and how many get off? I quite surprised myself with how forceful I was with her, practically ordering h
er onto the train. Of course, that young fool Lishansky arrived at the last minute.

  So absorbed was Shemsi by this that she was quite startled when a voice behind her inquired, ‘Interesting?’

  Weidinger was peering over her shoulder, reading the words.

  ‘I think it’s Herr Maeltzer’s diary,’ she said, closing the book and handing it to him.

  ‘So do I,’ said Weidinger, who began to leaf through it.

  ***

  30 May 1917.

  Weidinger in good spirits over the impending arrival of von Falkenhayn as commander in chief for this theatre. Seems to think this is bound to lead to more German reinforcements. They could certainly do with them. They appear to be short of almost everything – particularly artillery and aeroplanes. But even if they get them something will have to be done about Turkish logistics or they will never get through. Kress is always grumbling at the state of their railways. It is really quite amazing that the British have been held on the Gaza–Beersheba line for as long as they have considering the size and equipment of the Turkish forces. Sir Archibald Murray must be one of the most incompetent commanders of the war. If the Turks had Christian de Wet and a kommando of two thousand Boers they would probably be in Cairo by now.

  He turned to one of the last entries.

  ***

  12 October 1917.

  After a briefing from Ismet Bey, the Turkish garrison commander, was told nobody was available to escort me to the Gaza sector as planned so returned to Jerusalem by train in the company of Weidinger. The boy has done very well! He went on patrol with some Turkish lancers and very nearly collared an English colonel who they wounded and appears to have got away by the skin of his teeth. Much more important was that in the process the brave colonel dropped a haversack containing papers that quite clearly show that Allenby does not intend to attack at Beersheba. W. got me to check them out for him because his English is not that good. On the strength of what I told him he sent Kress a short coded wireless signal about the situation and is now hurrying back with his prize. Of course, I won’t be able to write a word of it – not yet.

  Weidinger closed the book again with some emphasis, embarrassed to have shown an undue interest in it in front of her. He was also aware that Krag’s servant was eyeing them both with some curiosity.

  ‘Did you know about it?’ asked Shemsi.

  ‘Know about it?’

  ‘Yes. Did you know Maeltzer kept a journal?’

  ‘I was sent here to collect it,’ said Weidinger with one of those bursts of candour that had so endeared him to Maeltzer in the first place.

  ‘I see,’ she said, not seeing at all.

  After some hesitation Weidinger handed the book to the servant. It was, after all, in the possession of a senior officer. He could hardly seize it just because he had happened to stumble upon it while that officer was away from his bivouac.

  ‘Do you want to stay here?’ he asked. ‘I think I’d better find Major Krag.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll come with you.’

  ***

  ‘As I was saying before the Englishmen dropped in,’ said Kress who was standing by a map pinned to an easel. ‘If we cannot recapture Beersheba we must at least see to it that Allenby does not cut us off. We must keep a door open so that, if need be, Eighth Army Corps can slip back to the hills of Judaea and Jerusalem.’

  Most of Kress’s audience were glum-looking Turkish majors and colonels seated on the old waiting-room benches. The rearguards were holding well and inflicting heavy casualties even when, as was frequently the case, the enemy were up on both flanks and threatening to surround them. Yet there was more than a whiff of defeat in the air. It was inconceivable that von Kressenstein would be talking about the importance of keeping doors open unless the situation was very grave indeed.

  Krag knew what was coming next because Kress had already told him. Von Falkenhayn had ordered a counter-attack, start time 0600 hours tomorrow. It was not going to be launched by them but by Seventh Army Corps, which had just established its headquarters in Hebron, that malarial slum south of Bethlehem with its ancient community of observant non-Zionist Jews living among the Muslim majority. The Seventh were now under Fevsi Pasha because the irascible Mustafa Kemal had resigned his command on the 27th.

  For the purpose of the counter-attack the Seventh was to be reinforced with the 19th Division, Kress’s Corps reserve and not a bad outfit with some good Turkish battalions. They and the Third Cavalry, part of the 24th Infantry and what was left of the 27th were going to strike out towards a hamlet called El Dhaheriye on the main Beersheba–Hebron road. The important thing was to hold on to Tel el Khuweilfeh, a hill which commanded the entire area including its water supply, for as long as possible.

  Krag watched him as he went into his spiel, using one of the captured British bayonets some of the staff had picked up after the Easter victories at Gaza. The bayonet hovered over the map until its point found the hatching that marked Khuweilfeh. ‘Here, gentlemen. Any questions?’

  Somebody wanted to know about the Jewish settlements. Surely they should implement Djemal Pasha’s instructions at once and move them out of Palestine? Hadn’t these places turned out to be nests of spies? And hadn’t the British Foreign Secretary just announced their reward by telling them that they would be allowed to set up their own state in Palestine?

  This was the kind of non-tactical question, totally inconceivable at a German headquarters meeting, that Kress dreaded. But it would only exacerbate things if he refused to talk about it because there was a growing lobby among the Turkish officer corps who would have it that the Germans were soft on Jews and Armenians.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Three days ago Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, made some sort of declaration promising he would support something he called “a Jewish homeland”. But at the same time he said that the rights of what he called “the indigenous peoples” should be respected. I don’t know about you, gentlemen, but I would consider these two propositions to be mutually exclusive. I don’t think for a moment it will fool the Jews either. The majority of the Zionist settlers here are not only pro-Turkish but pro-German – always have been. And those that aren’t had better watch out!’ he concluded to a certain amount of laughter.

  What Kress did not tell them about was the copy of Foreign Minister Zimmermann’s telegram to von Falkenhayn’s headquarters which he had received the previous evening. In the light of what it had called ‘certain recent British promises to world Jewry’, it had urged the German Military Mission to Turkey to do everything possible to foster good relations with the Jewish community in Palestine – and let there be no repetition of what it was pleased to call ‘the Armenian calamity’. Von Falkenhayn had appended his own message saying that he believed the Kaiser himself was concerned that the Turks were driving the Jews into the arms of the English. No mention there of mutually exclusive propositions.

  But did the colonel know that the Seventh Army had already started to move some Jewish settlements around Hebron?

  ‘No, I didn’t know,’ snapped Kress. ‘That’s Seventh Army business. But by God I hope when you’re speaking on the wireless to your friends in Hebron you’re discreet. The English are very good at listening in.’

  He looked at Krag for confirmation. Krag nodded but kept his mouth shut. Let him deal with the uppity bastards, he thought. He liked to see Kress getting rattled. The von was having a bad start to the day.

  ‘Now let’s forget this trivia,’ said Kress. ‘We may be in retreat but we are making Allenby pay a heavy price for every metre of Ottoman soil he occupies. Let us give him a hollow victory.’

  But now the questions started in earnest.

  How had the British been able to mass their cavalry before Beersheba undetected and how had they found enough water for their animals?

  We don’t know.

  Were the wells destroyed at Beersheba?

  We’re not sure. According to some reports cha
rges were laid but it is not known whether they were fired.

  There were said to be reinforcements at Aleppo, several regiments of infantry, waiting to get down: what was holding up these reinforcements?

  The shortage of rolling stock and the English air raids. A locomotive had been destroyed in Sheria station.

  Where was the German flying corps?

  ‘They’re either dead or on the Western Front,’ said Kress with unexpected bitterness.

  He would have liked to call the conference to an end then and thrown the lot of them out, but he still had to lay down detailed instructions for the stonewalling tactics required of the Eighth Army Corps while the Seventh attacked. Reluctantly, he returned to his map.

  The bayonet went to a hamlet called Huj which lay roughly between the two main railway lines and about five miles behind what was presently the central sector of his Corps’ front. The engineers had completed laying a rail track to Huj – narrow-gauge admittedly, but they were already building up a fair-sized ammunition and supply dump there.

  From outside came the sound of picks and shovels. Krag saw that the German well-boring engineer was supervising the digging out of the British bomb, which was now covered by a pyramid of sandbags. It seemed to Krag that the pick-axes were being wielded with unwarranted abandon but the engineer, a red-headed fellow with a face burned almost the same colour by the sun, did not appear to be concerned by it.

  ‘Of course, what this campaign is really all about is men, not territory,’ Kress was saying. ‘Our 35,000 or so tying down Allenby’s 400,000.’

  Krag thought the imbalance a bit exaggerated, but judging from the reports that went across his desk it was a fact that Allenby had something like a ten-to-one advantage over them.

  ‘There is no disgrace in making a strategic withdrawal from the Gaza–Beersheba line. You gentlemen all know that we are sorely outnumbered. And there is no way Allenby is going to get his forces through the Judaean hills in winter. They defeated Richard Coeur de Lion and they’ll defeat him as long as we have the troops to man our defences there. Meanwhile we must at all costs prevent Allenby from cutting off Eighth and Seventh Army Corps, trapping us on the plain between the hills and the sea.’