Code of Combat

by Michael Asher

  Caine pointed at the pick-helve. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘This is your weapon. Have you forgotten you’re on duty today? We have to escort our old pal Butterfield on his final journey.’

  He studied the helve for a moment, handed it over. Caine hefted it in his scarred, fight-hardened hands: it was only a club, but it felt good. Amray watched him with a look of apprehension: Caine gripped the shaft, swung it with his right hand, fixed Amray with a stare so hard that the man took a step back.

  ‘What about a real weapon?’ Caine said. He nodded towards the Walther pistol holstered on Amray’s belt. They’ve given you one: what about me?’

  ‘Now, hold your horses, old man. Just because you swore an oath to Hitler doesn’t mean they trust you. You’ve got to prove yourself. That’s why they detailed you for the Butterfield escort. If you can do this without turning a hair, it’ll go a long way to convincing them that you’re in earnest.’

  Caine pulled at his newly shaved chin. ‘I’m not sure about this. I know Butterfield. He’s from my regiment.’

  ‘I get it, old boy.’ Amray’s mouth was a narrow slot between lean-bladed jaws. ‘But that’s why it’s a test, you see. If you can do it, then they’ll accept that you really are with us. If you refuse, they might think you joined us just to get better conditions for yourself, or even to escape.’

  Caine set the helve down. ‘So what do you think?’

  ‘How do I know, old chap?’ Amray made an effete gesture with a thin hand. ‘Why did you change your mind?’

  Caine thought about it for a moment, realized that he couldn’t remember having changed his mind. He took a breath. ‘I’m fed up with seeing men die thanks to the blundering of our command. I’m still loyal to my country, but not to commanders who are willing to sacrifice human beings for their own good. Russia is the real enemy, not the Germans. I’m a soldier: I’d rather be fighting the Russians than rotting in a prison-camp.’

  Amray nodded approvingly: Caine was astonished at himself. The explanation had come out in a rush, like a rehearsed speech, yet he couldn’t recall having learned it. There’s something going on, here, he thought. It’s as if I spent the whole of yesterday half asleep. He turned to Amray. ‘What’s the date?’ he asked.

  ‘Eighth of October 1943. Why?’

  Caine shrugged to hide his disbelief. Eighth of October? That’s impossible. I arrived here on 4 October, the day we landed at Termoli. The day they took Butterfield away was 7 October: Stengel had given him three days to talk. So what happened to yesterday – the day I joined the Nazis? It’s like I’ve got memories of a day that never was. I must have made a mistake somewhere.

  Amray picked up the helve, handed it back to him. ‘Let’s get to it, old boy,’ he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Karl Grolsch was standing by his Kubelwagen outside the punishment block when Caine and Amray arrived. Parked along the wire Caine saw a 3-ton lorry without a cover, and a couple of motorcycle combinations. The crews were loafing about, smoking, nursing Schmeisser sub-machine guns. Caine gave the vehicles the once-over: neither the jeep nor the lorry appeared to be armed, but one of the motorcycle sidecars carried a Spandau machine-gun mounted on a tripod, bolted to its frame. It didn’t look as if the Germans were expecting trouble: there was an air of jollity about the party, almost as if it were an outing – everyone but Grolsch seemed at ease.

  Amray saluted Grolsch as they came up: he returned the compliment fluidly, eyed Caine’s uniform with an amused air. ‘I want you two to sit next to him in the lorry,’ he said. ‘He’ll have some company, so to speak.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘What is keeping those people? We haven’t got all day.’

  It occurred to Caine that this might be a ruse: perhaps the whole BFC recruitment, the ceremony, everything, had been a trick to assure his compliance, to get him to the same place as Butterfield in the end. But no, it couldn’t be. Why go to all that trouble when they could have just overpowered me?

  They left the commandant, took up positions at the tailgate of the lorry, waited. The Sipo-SD guards glared at them with barely disguised hostility. They hate us because we’ve betrayed the code of combat, Caine thought. If they had the chance, they’d kill us too.

  He gripped the helve in his right hand, swung it a little. It made him feel better. He examined the barbed-wire perimeter: the high fence was rusty in places, overgrown with bushes, grass and vines. He followed its line with his eye to where it passed the foot of a watch-tower – a tin-roofed hut on four big stilts, with access by ladder, and both a machine-gun and a spotlight set up in the guard’s aperture. He glimpsed a face in there, the glint of a chamber-pot helmet in a stray band of light.

  Amray nudged him: a squad of four Sipo-SD men were escorting Butterfield through the gate, moving with the slowness of a funeral march. Caine couldn’t mistake the major’s figure: the drooping jowls, the slack bagginess of his physique. Otherwise, though, this was a different Butterfield from the one he’d last seen: he was wearing a shapeless mufti suit of grey flannel, a ragged shirt and broken shoes. The suit was too loose and he walked hesitantly, stumbling, bow-backed, hanging his head. Caine thought of sacred ibises: he’d seen them in a dream, but somehow that dream seemed more real than the events of yesterday. How come he’d taken an oath to Hitler? He was wearing a Nazi collaborator’s uniform, yet he felt no loyalty to the Hun. He was acting as a trustee, escorting Bunny Butterfield to what would probably be his execution: he felt no desire to do it, yet he was doing it, as if he were following the beat of an inaudible drum.

  When the party reached the tailgate, the guards ordered Butterfield to halt. He glanced up with effort, saw Caine standing there with a pick-helve in his hand. His good eye glimmered as if from the far end of a distant tunnel: Caine noticed livid marks, burns and bloodstains on his face that hadn’t been there before. He held Butterfield’s glance, nodded at him. Butterfield said nothing: Caine couldn’t tell if he’d even recognized him. It was only as the Jerries began hustling him up into the back of the lorry that he turned his head in Caine’s direction. ‘You betrayed your promise,’ he said chokily. ‘You, of all people, a traitor. You’ll burn in hell for this, Caine.’

  A guard elbowed him in the kidneys, cracked a joke that made the others hoot. Butterfield clung to the rope: two soldiers already on the lorry hauled him in like a big, flabby fish.

  Caine’s cheeks felt hot. I’m a traitor. The first time I’ve been called that. He noticed Amray watching him: he shrugged, gripped the rope, shimmied up into the lorry after Butterfield.

  He was glad the vehicle was open: it enabled him to get his bearings. The lorry occupied mid-place on the convoy, with the motorcycle combination scouting ahead, Grolsch’s car behind. They were heading west, Caine was sure of that: this road would eventually take them up into the Appenines. If they really were going to execute Butterfield – and all the evidence suggested it – they were likely to end up in a forest sooner or later. At first, the road crossed a plain of neatly manicured fields – flax yellow, rose madder, green – interspersed with long brakes of trees. Soon, the land dropped away and the road hugged the high ground of a ridge, arched gently around its contours on a trajectory lined with stark firs and thorny copses, and the hillside sloping steeply on both sides in olive-coloured meadows dotted with outcrops of rock. The day was overcast: cloud lay in thick wads across the dome-shaped sky, breaking up into ribs and puffball flurries, fraying at the edges into bristling swales of fibre, like unravelled basketwork.

  There were hard benches on both sides of the lorry. Caine and Amray sat with Butterfield between them. The major ignored them, balanced his cuffed hands on his knees, sank into silence. Two Sipo-SD guards sat on the seat facing them, and one on Caine’s right. The guards were armed with SMGs: they chatted, roared with laughter at wisecracks, pointed and nodded at Butterfield, drew fingers across their throats. The guard next to Caine was a rangy sergeant with a beak of a nose, bird eyes and a smug expression: his
cheeks were puffed out by the tightness of his chinstrap. Caine gripped his pick-helve across his knees, realized he felt boxed in.

  The truck rocked and wobbled down into the valley: Caine saw peaks and saddles of blue mountains along the skyline, saw sunlight glitter on cutstone cliffs like the facets of dull diamonds. The valley road ran through rippling hayfields, grassy patches hedged with trees, through spreads of forest so dense they looked like growths of fur. Sometimes they passed the junctions of dirt-roads that climbed steeply through the woods towards some unseen hill-top village: they passed a tiny redbrick church with fluted sides, standing amid poplars, and one-storey cottages with terracotta roof-tiles, pink stucco walls and shuttered windows. They passed squads of prisoners being marched to work by Jerry guards. Shortly, the convoy began to climb again, following a track that coiled through winding galleries of conifers: Caine was just quick enough to catch a signpost standing at the junction. Villa Montefalcone, it read.

  At the top of the escarpment the road flattened out, undulated between evergreens lining a high bank on the left and forest falling away on the right: in the far distance, above the treetops, Caine could make out a striated cliff-face, stretching beneath a hogsback ridge topped with knuckles and peaks. The convoy rounded a bend into a stretch where the trees thinned. Almost at once, Caine felt the driver apply the brakes: the soldiers on board craned their necks to see what was happening. Amray stood up to peer over the cab. ‘An accident,’ he said. ‘Overturned wagon, by the look of it.’

  Caine got up, glanced ahead, saw a big four-wheeled cart on its side in the middle of the road, with logs scattered everywhere, saw a grey carthorse lying in the shafts, saw it twitch: he saw red slashes of blood from its injuries on the gravel surface. There were a couple of people there – a dark man in a waistcoat and a battered hat and a petite woman in a calf-length dress, shawl and headscarf: they were trying ineffectually to raise the heavy cart.

  There was no way around the obstacle. The motorcycle escort drove straight up to it: the NCO in charge began to berate the Ities furiously. The peasants stared back with cowlike eyes: there was a split-second standoff, as both parties faced each other. The lorry-driver slammed on the brakes: the lorry came to a halt. Grolsch had his car creep past the 3-tonner, draw up behind the escort: Caine saw him step out, strut around the accident-scene, examine the dying horse.

  The motorcyclists parked up their machine: the NCO ordered the gunner to keep watch with the Spandau. He and the other two slung their SMGs, moved towards the cart. Grolsch drew his pistol, leaned over the horse’s head: his driver, a rotund man bulging out of his field-grey, stood at his shoulder. The Italian couple lurked together a few yards away: the woman had the figure of a young girl, Caine saw, but the crows’ feet around her eyes and mouth showed that she was older. The man held her arm as if to prevent her running away, his eyes heavy-lidded and watchful. He carried a shabby knapsack with a strap slung over over one shoulder.

  Grolsch tucked the muzzle of his pistol behind the horse’s ear, squeezed the trigger. The weapon cracked: the horse’s great frame went rigid. In the same instant, the woman strode forward with neat, tripping steps – a small, upright figure, slim, solid under the shawl and the shapeless dress, her fine features framed by the headscarf, composed, still, hard as flint. She drew an automatic pistol from beneath the shawl in a graceful sweeping movement: without even breaking step, she shot Grolsch twice in the upper chest: blammppp, blammppp.

  Grolsch’s eyes went wide: his lips worked. He toppled over on the dead horse. The driver reeled away in horror: the woman shot him once in the back, turned and ran.

  Caine saw the woman drift towards the trees as if floating, saw the Itie in the hat produce a short SMG from his knapsack, come up into a crouch, crackle a long burst at the three Sipo-SD men nearest the overturned wagon. The raw tack-tack-tack snapped at Caine’s eardrums: he saw Jerries grab for slung weapons, saw the Itie’s rounds punch black yawns in field-grey buttocks and chests, saw a Kraut go down, saw arterial blood spurt in gushes from his thigh. A machine-gun opened up: rounds heaved through the undergrowth in long spits. Caine saw Jerries kick and writhe, saw rounds gouge furrows across the pale dirt, heard the slow bomp bomp bomp of a second machine-gun, firing from another position, heard rounds go pphhwaaaattt against the body of the sidecar, saw patterns of redness crawl up the gunner’s arm, clocked the look of anguish on his face. An improvised bomb in a canvas sack sailed out of the bushes, hit the combo, went off with a deep-gutted slap like the whip of a wet towel. The combo tore apart in a fission of rods and shards: the fuel-tank ballooned out like a squashed sun: yellow fire-talons snaggled through wreathed black smoke. Caine saw man and machine fly and separate, saw the bike crash in a tumble of flame, saw a smoking body roll and shriek.

  Caine had no time to see what happened next: at that moment the lorry went into fast reverse: the standing soldiers were knocked sideways. Caine kept his balance, grasped Butterfield’s wrist with his left hand, jerked him up. He turned to the beaky sergeant on his right, saw the birdlike eyes narrow, saw the Schmeisser quiver as he released the safety catch. Caine drew the pick-helve back across his left shoulder, hit the sergeant a crumpling smack at the base of the neck, felt the collar-bone give. Just then, the lorry-driver hit the brakes: the sergeant fell heavily against the tailgate.

  The two Krauts opposite Caine were hurled on top of each other. Caine fought to stay upright on legs planted firmly apart: he dropped the pick-helve, snatched the sergeant’s Schmeisser with his right hand. He saw the other Jerries pivot towards him, clutched the pistol-grip, tickled iron, felt the gun vibrate, heard the deafening tack-tack-tacka-tack, saw Huns twist and scream, saw one of them pitch clear over the side of the lorry. He dragged Butterfield to the tailgate, wrapped the SMG sling around his arm, grabbed the rope, swung down, heaved the major after him. Butterfield landed in a soft heap, let out a short ooooffff.

  Caine pulled him to his feet: rounds clanged against the tailgate, squibbed off metal, roasted air. Caine ducked, saw Amray’s haunted face glowering down from the tailgate, saw the Walther pistol in his hand. The weapon cracked: Butterfield staggered, fell in a heap with a bloody rut carved across his temple. Amray swung down from the lorry: Caine smashed him across the jaw with the muzzle of the SMG, sent him sprawling. He shuftied right, saw Itie civvies emerge from the trees, letting rip with rifles and pistols. His first impulse was to raise his hands and shout, ‘Amico!’: then he became intensely aware that he was wearing Nazi uniform. These partisans had already killed Germans: they weren’t about to debate his loyalties in the heat of battle. Caine took a last glance at Butterfield: the wound was a graze, but the major was out of it. There’s no way you’re going to get him out of here, a voice in his head screamed. Beat it. Now.

  He pumped a burst into the air above the advancing partisans, hared off in the opposite direction, making sure he got the lorry between himself and them, only dimly aware of bullets twanging around him. It seemed for ever until he made the trees on the far side of the road, threw himself down on the slope. He rolled, crawled, peeked over the top, saw hard-faced men in ragged clothes gathered around Amray, jerking him to his feet. He saw them pinion his arms, snatch his pistol. He saw Amray struggle, saw his slim jaw-hasps work in furious protest, glimpsed the deep horror in the black eyes, just before one of the partisans cut his throat with a razor. Caine crawled a few yards down the slope, then, sure he couldn’t be seen, rose to his feet, dashed downhill through the trees.

  Chapter Twenty

  Near Montefalcone, Le Marche, Italy

  8 October 1943

  When he awoke it was already dark: he was lying on a bed of pine needles in the forest. He sat up: his limbs ached, his head was sore, his mouth felt like plaster of Paris. A cheese-paring moon cruised above him, clinging on the smooth, glossy night. Caine recalled his dream, wondered if this were still a dream: the place seemed familiar, as if he’d been here before. Abruptly, he recalled Butterfield ly
ing in a heap by the lorry with a red crease on his head: the terror in Amray’s pit-bull eyes, just before the partisans had slit his throat. Did that really happen? He recalled standing in front of a mirror, looking at the face of a stranger. ‘You ain’t Captain Caine, you’re the devil.’

  He scrabbled at his sleeves with crossed hands, found the BFC Union Jack armshield. I’m still wearing it. It wasn’t a dream: it was real. For an instant he strained to remember why he’d put on that uniform: he couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. Whatever his intentions had been, wearing the badge of the Waffen SS and swearing an oath of allegiance to Hitler were irrevocable acts of treason. He shuddered at the thought. How did it happen? He’d been looking in a mirror one minute, had found himself on the other side of it the next, in Nazi dress. He recalled the girl, Lucia, lying naked on his bed. ‘Should think the whole camp heard it. Was she a fitting reward for your conversion?’ Strange that he couldn’t remember having sex with Lucia, couldn’t recall having touched her at all.

  He began to focus. This wasn’t a dream: he’d joined the Jerries, and now he’d escaped. Amray was dead, Butterfield wounded. He was on his own. The Jerries would soon be hunting him, but after what the partisans had done to Amray, he wasn’t inclined to throw in his lot with them, either – at least, not until he’d got shot of the SS togs.

  There was only one possible plan: head south to Allied lines. He didn’t know how far that was. He had the Schmeisser with perhaps half a magazine of rounds: he had cigarettes and matches, but no food, and no equipment, not even a cup or a water-bottle. He probably wouldn’t make it without help from the locals, but he would have to be cautious: not all Ities sympathized with the partisans, or supported the Allies. And who was going to trust him dressed like this? His first mission would be to beg, borrow or steal a civilian outfit. Steal, preferably. Begging or borrowing would mean revealing himself to someone, and that might be a problem.