Code of Combat

by Michael Asher

He watched the bearded Reichsgeschäftsführer stalk towards the door in his immaculate dark suit, white shirt, silk tie, broad-brimmed hat. He didn’t like Stengel: they were fighting the same war, but the Ahnenerbe chief was a fanatic, a man obsessed – German mythology, the Jews, his blessed Codex – forever washing his hands, peering over his shoulder, counting things, costing things, adding things up. Most unsettling of all, he never looked you in the eye – seemed to look right through you instead. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was an intimate of Himmler, Grolsch wouldn’t have bothered with him. The escape of those two SAS-men wasn’t going to be easily painted over, though.

  He hurried after Stengel, caught up with him near the door. ‘Did you find the Codex, Reichsgeschäftsführer?’

  Stengel shook his head. ‘The countess was stubborn, despite my best efforts, and the place is vast, just as you said it was. If the Codex is there, we need to know where to look.’

  Stengel halted before the door: to his left there was a narrow iron grille set into the thick, plastered wall. The grille was padlocked: beyond it, a staircase spiralled down into shadow. He jerked his bearded chin at it. ‘Where does that lead?’

  ‘A crypt, Reichsgeschäftsführer. Some of these old churches have them.’

  Stengel inched past him, strode towards the grille, peered down the dark staircase. ‘Couldn’t somebody be hiding down there?’

  ‘Unlikely. The grille is locked from the outside. In any case, I’ve already found the men responsible for helping the escaped saboteurs. Didn’t you see them outside?’

  ‘The ones facing the church wall? They’re only boys.’

  ‘Boys capable of murder.’ Grolsch scratched his dimpled chin. ‘Sir, are you going to talk to the countess again?’

  ‘Of course. She’ll tell me in the long run.’

  ‘What if you were holding her brother? Wouldn’t that give you some extra leverage?’

  Stengel looked puzzled. ‘Her brother? Isn’t he in America?’

  ‘That was the story.’

  They stepped out of the door, descended the steps: the prisoners herded in the square ogled them with hostility: no one called out.

  Grolsch signalled to the subaltern in charge of the Sipo-SD platoon, had him march one of the youths up to the church door.

  The boy was pale, gristly, stoop-shouldered: he had smooth white skin, a hawk nose, shrewd green eyes narrowed to slits. He looked about sixteen, though tall for his age: he was dressed as a labourer, in shabby work clothes and a ragged cloth cap.

  ‘What is your name?’ Grolsch demanded in German.

  ‘I have already told you: my name is Marco Luchetti.’ The youth’s German was slow but correct: Stengel wondered where he’d learned it.

  He glanced at the boy obliquely, realized he was terrified but making an effort to conceal it.

  ‘As far as I can ascertain,’ Grolsch said, ‘there is no citizen in this town called Marco Luchetti. There is no Luchetti family. If this boy is really called that, then it seems he has no mother or father, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles or cousins. He is alone in the world.’

  He turned back to the youth. ‘But that isn’t your real name, is it, boy?’

  The youth drew himself up: his hands were shaking.

  ‘My name is Marco Luchetti.’

  ‘Then why, Signore Luchetti, were you wearing this when you were arrested?’

  Grolsch brought something out of his pocket, showed it to Stengel. It was a gold signet ring bearing a shield with a double-headed hawk in a laurel wreath. Stengel gasped, took the ring, weighed it in his hand. There was no doubt about it, he thought: it was the Falconi family crest. One of an identical pair. Been in my family for generations. This ring was, in fact, indistinguishable from the one he’d seen on the finger of Countess Emilia Falcone, only an hour before.

  Chapter Ten

  Jesi, Le Marche, Italy

  4 October 1943

  Jesi lay east of Orsini, another hill-top town standing on a granite panhandle, overlooking a patchwork of fields and forests inflamed with a blush of blood – red, copper and bronze. The prison-camp stood at the edge of an adjacent plateau a couple of miles distant, joined to the town by a cinder track lined with trees and telegraph poles. The camp itself was a set of rectangles bounded by fences of rusting barbed wire, dominated by watch-towers on stilts – a series of compounds containing regimented groups of wooden huts, and a few permanent buildings – cookhouse, messes, administration, punishment blocks.

  When the car pulled up outside the gates, a squad of Sipo-SD troops sauntered out to take custody of him. Caine felt almost sorry to leave the Airborne Division men: these Gestapo troops looked an altogether more grim-faced, moodier lot. They handcuffed him, marched him through the gates, manhandled him up steps into a hut of bare boards furnished with only a table and a chair. A swag-bellied corporal sat at the table, armed with a clipboard and pencil. He had cropped platinum hair, skate’s eyes, thick lips, a raw, hairless face. He smiled when Caine was brought before him. ‘Welcome to Jesi holiday camp,’ he said in smug English. ‘We hope your stay here will be pleasant, and that you will leave us a different man.’

  ‘Thank you, Kamerad,’ said Caine. ‘I can hardly wait.’

  The corporal’s smile vanished. ‘Remove your clothes,’ he snapped.

  Caine held up his handcuffs. ‘I’d love to, mate, but I seem to be a bit handicapped.’

  The corporal nodded grimly to the guards: one of them smashed a rifle-butt into Caine’s kidneys. He felt a searing shock in his side, doubled over, gasped for breath, gritted his teeth, tried to stand up straight: another Sipo-SD man kicked him hard in the shins.

  ‘That’s enough,’ the corporal purred. ‘If you are insolent again you will find yourself in solitary confinement for twenty-eight days. Do you understand this?’

  Caine was tempted to inform him that the mistreatment, humiliation or torture of POWs was illegal under the Geneva Convention: he felt the blood pound in his ears, nodded, kept his mouth shut.

  One of the guards removed his handcuffs: others grabbed his arms, tore away his bloodstained battledress, yanked off his boots. When he was naked, the fat corporal stood up, snapped a rubber glove on his right hand, moved towards him grinning, flexing his middle finger. The guards behind him laughed.

  Caine’s arms were restrained, but not his legs: as soon as the corporal moved into range, he delivered a withering kick straight into the Jerry’s groin. It was a barefoot kick, but it was sent with all the force Caine could muster – enough to make the corporal stagger back squealing and clutching at his balls with both hands. Caine ducked a swinging rifle-butt, took the blow on the shoulder, felt air explode from his lungs, tried to use the momentum to break the clutches of his guards. Half a dozen hands jerked him back: a fist slammed into his nose, filled his head with birdsong: a club cracked his skull, sent him reeling into the red-black folds of night.

  When he came round he was lying on a palliasse in a cell about twenty feet square: light fell in a single shaft through a narrow window. He tried to sit up: for a moment the light-shaft was a gramophone needle: the cell revolved around it, scraping in his head like a broken record. He choked back vomit, realized that his hands were swollen: the bastards had stomped on them when he was down. His nostrils were plugged with dried blood: his head was an egg-shell trapped in a vice.

  He was still naked, but a blue drill shirt and a pair of shorts lay next to him on the floor.

  He groped for the shirt: putting it on was relatively easy – it was the shorts that were the problem: his hands were like softballs. He eased the garment painfully up his legs, closed the waistband, couldn’t button the flies.

  At that moment the door cracked: two Germans in battledress shuffled into the cell bracing between them what looked like a sagging bundle on stumpy legs. Caine tried to focus, saw that the bundle was a man in khakis – a keg-shaped figure in a pair of ragged shorts and a British battledress tunic. He had major’s crowns o
n his shoulder-straps, and, to Caine’s astonishment, SAS wings on his sleeve. Caine had to blink to make sure he was seeing right.

  The guards rammed the apparition hard against the wall, pinned him there. Caine saw a head like an enormous, grey-stubbled billiard ball lolling on a broad chest under a BD top that was smeared with bloodstains. The man’s face was badly bruised, one eye so swollen it was almost closed: a thin dribble of blood ran down his chin. His legs quivered: Caine noticed that one knee was livid and melon-sized.

  The fat major moaned: one of the guards punched him in the belly: the other cracked his legs with his rifle-butt. He spluttered, sank to his knees, drooled bile. The guards held him up by the arms. They were obviously about to kick him when a man in a suit entered – a man with fish-eyes, a pointed nose, a full set of dark whiskers. He waltzed through the door, delivered a sweeping kick into the kneeling man’s midriff with a wedge-shaped toe. Caine heard a carpet-beater wallop, saw the major topple over slowly, saw his bulging body hit the floor with a low thump.

  ‘You have three days to tell us where it is,’ the bearded man shouted in English. ‘After that, I cannot guarantee your safety.’

  It looked to Caine as if the major was out cold. The bearded man must have thought the same, because he turned, glanced at Caine. ‘Ah, another saboteur. Don’t imagine you will be spared. You will all be subject to special handling.’

  Caine’s hair stood on end. Special handling? That was in my dream. Five sacred ibises with broken wings. Five graves in the forest.

  The man gave him a hard look, turned on his heels, stalked out. The two uniforms followed, snapped the door closed.

  Caine crawled over to the major, slipped his swollen hands under the fat man’s armpits, rolled him on to his back. It was darker now the door was closed, but the shaft of light showed Caine a figure like an overgrown cherub from an oil-painting – pot-belly, pole-like legs, short arms, tightwad hands. Caine examined the SAS wings on his sleeve. They seemed genuine, but the major didn’t look like any SAS officer he’d ever seen. Without the uniform, Caine would have taken him for a bank manager – perhaps a pastry-cook.

  The major’s lids flickered: he opened his eyes wide, stared at Caine’s face. ‘Water!’ he gasped.

  Caine shook his head, helped him sit up, propped him against the nearest wall. He used his shirt-tail to wipe blood off his face.

  ‘How about a smoke?’ the man croaked.

  Caine shook his head again. ‘Fritz took them.’

  The officer lifted a hand so small and fat it was almost a child’s. He fumbled wearily in his breast pocket, came out with a cigarette and a match. He stuck the cigarette between hamburger lips, handed the match to Caine. ‘Be careful, old boy. It’s the last one.’

  Caine tried to strike it on the wall, found his fingers were too clumsy: he dropped it, picked it up, struck it on the floor, cradled the flame in his hands, lit the cigarette.

  The major puffed smoke: his eyes didn’t leave Caine’s face. For a moment Caine felt self-conscious: then the major winked, and for an instant it seemed that the whole bloated mask of his face crumpled up like wrapping paper.

  The wink put Caine on his guard. He’d been told the enemy used stool pigeons among POWs: the man’s accent was cut-glass, but maybe it was too good to be true. But what about the bruises, the blood, the swollen knee? Fritz really laid into him. They couldn’t have faked that.

  ‘You’re thinking I might be a stoolie, aren’t you?’ the major wheezed. He smoked, coughed, tried to catch his breath. ‘Don’t blame you, old sport. I could be, but, as it happens, I’m not.’

  ‘How do I know that?’

  ‘Look here – you don’t have to tell me anything about your operations, how you were captured, what your objective was, all right?’

  Caine nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

  The major passed him the cigarette with a tremulous hand. ‘My name is Butterfield. Major, Int. Corps. You can call me Bunny. You don’t know me, but I do know you. You’re Captain Thomas Caine DCM, DSO, 1st SAS Regiment.’

  Caine was so surprised he let the fag drop out of his hand: it landed on his knee, burned his skin. He grabbed at it, brushed burning ash off his leg.

  ‘You’re a well-known name, Caine – one of our most decorated officers, in fact. From what I’ve heard, you’ve brought off some remarkable stunts.’

  Caine narrowed his eyes. ‘Thanks, but it still doesn’t explain how you recognized me.’

  The major took the remains of the cigarette back. He sucked smoke greedily into his lungs without holding it in his mouth, blew it out in jets through his nostrils.

  ‘You were pointed out to me once at Shepheard’s Hotel, Cairo. I would have introduced myself, but they told me you were in recovery from a serious trauma, not to be disturbed. If I remember rightly, there was a rather nice-looking redhead with you – Int. Corps insignia, as it happens. She didn’t seem to be disturbing you.’

  Blaney. Caine smiled, thought of how Celia had cared for him following the Nighthawk op. If he knows about Blaney, he must be telling the truth.

  ‘If you’re Regiment,’ he said, ‘why haven’t we met before?’

  The major smirked. ‘I’m 2nd Regiment, dear chap. You know, that other unit you desert boys don’t think about. At least that’s what your Major Mayne told me. “Sure we never think about you at all,” he said.’

  Caine chortled. ‘That sounds like Paddy.’

  ‘We’re based in Algeria, so our paths don’t cross much. I was in Cairo to meet my counterpart in 1st Regiment. You see, I’m Assistant IO, 2nd SAS.’

  ‘IO?’ Caine raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a headquarters job, isn’t it, sir? If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing in the field?’

  Butterfield stubbed out the fag. ‘I was dropped in a month ago, with an officer and four other ranks. Jerry was waiting for us on the DZ. The officer, Howard, copped one in the goolies – wounded rather badly, poor fellow. They bagged us, brought us here, shoved Howard in the hospital wing, dumped me in this place – the punishment block. The men were in the ORs’ compound until three days ago: I used to talk to them through the wire in the exercise-yard. Then they vanished – poof – just like that. Jerry carted them off – poor Howard as well, I was told. There were a couple of prisoners from 1st Regiment hauled off, too.’

  Caine pricked up his ears. ‘Who were the 1st Regiment boys?’

  ‘Don’t recall their names. This was all gleaned in a few moments of whispering across the wire, you understand. I remember my sergeant, Bob Cameron, telling me they’d been captured in Tunisia. Been here for months.’

  Captured in Tunisia. Like Wallace and Trubman. But, no: Fred and Taff weren’t captured, were they? Their names never turned up on any War Box list. Whoever these chaps were, they couldn’t be Fred and Taff.

  ‘Where were they taken?’ he asked.

  ‘No one knows, but I’ve got a damn’ good idea where they are . . . Dead as dodos, old man, that’s where. Krauts call it special handling.’

  A cold hand brushed Caine’s neck. That phrase again.

  ‘You mean the Krauts murdered them? Prisoners of war? That’s a war-crime, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sshhh, not so loud, old boy. Of course – it’s against every rule in the blinking book. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, though. You heard what Stengel told me?’

  ‘Stengel?’

  ‘Fellow with the beard: eyes like a Moray eel. He gave me three days to tell him what he wants to know. If I don’t spill my guts by then, I’m next in line for special handling.’

  His voice remained casual: a knot of gristle in his cheek twitched.

  Caine was about to ask another question when Butterfield raised his puppet-like hand. His good eye narrowed to the width of the bruised one. ‘They’re coming,’ he hissed.

  The door sprang open: two Jerries in coalscuttle hats barged in, rifles first. Caine and Butterfield jumped: one of the Krauts elbowed the major aside, the other belted Ca
ine in the stomach with his rifle-butt. Caine buckled: before he could stand they were hustling him by the arms out of the door, down the corridor. They used his head to ram through another door, sat him down on a chair facing a battered desk. A Nazi officer sat behind it.

  Chapter Eleven

  The officer was smooth-faced, with a strong, dimpled chin, penetrating blue eyes and receding fair hair. He had the slightly amused, he’s-a-jolly-good-chap expression of a country vicar.

  The room was dimly lit, the windows blacked out with hessian: the place smelt of stale hemp and tobacco. There was another desk to Caine’s right, where a blocky young woman with curly golden hair sat at a typewriter, smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee.

  The officer shuffled a sheaf of papers, drew a pencil from an inside pocket, tapped it on the desk. ‘I am SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Grolsch, Sipo-SD,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Thomas Edward Caine, Captain 2566798, born 17 January 1920.’

  The pencil scratched. ‘And which is your unit, Captain?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  Grolsch looked up: laugh-lines crinkled round his eyes. ‘Of course you can’t, but I do not need your answer anyway.’ He lifted something off the floor, threw it at Caine. It was his bloodstained battledress tunic with SAS wings above the breast pocket. ‘You are a parachutist of the 1st Special Air Service Regiment, founded by Colonel David Stirling, now residing in our facility at Colditz.’

  Caine had never heard of Colditz. He put on the battledress quickly, kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Tell me, Captain. Why do some of you wear wings on the sleeve and others on the chest? Take Major Butterfield, for instance. He wears wings on the sleeve, not on the chest. He appears rather – how do you say? – green? Not at all what one would expect of a commando officer. Could it be that he was sent here for a special purpose?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  Grolsch sat back in his chair, contemplated Caine thoughtfully.

  ‘You, however, are different. Your chest and shoulders are unusually well-developed. You have powerful hands: they are swollen, of course, but one can still see that the knuckles are scarred and pitted, as if you are accustomed to fist-fighting. Your arms and legs show scars of gunshot and shrapnel wounds, some of them serious. I would say, Captain, that you are a veteran fighter, that you have been wounded many times, and that you have killed many of our men. Would this be correct?’