Code of Combat

by Michael Asher

  He retrieved the Schmeisser, checked that it was ready to fire, stood up, listened to the forest, heard leaf-rustle and the pulse of cicadas. Which way’s south? The road from Jesi ran east–west, and he was on the north side of it: south was back the way he’d come, which meant retracing his steps to the area of the ambush. He must have run away from the road for a good sixty minutes, he thought: it had to be four or or five miles away. He slung the SMG over his shoulder, took a breath. Better get going. It’s a long walk back.

  He’d only taken a few steps when he heard someone whisper his name. He stopped, let the SMG drop into his hands, cocked his ears. Nothing stirred: the whisper didn’t come again. It was a girl’s voice, he thought. It reminded him of the girl in his dream – the figure in the bloodstained white dress, with the black velvet hair, the coffee-coloured skin, the Chinese eyes.

  ‘The man in the mirror is not himself. The five dandelion seeds are buried in the forest, at the place marked “B”. What is sought lies in a room with no doors or windows. I am the door. Another holds the key.’

  He shivered. What had any of that rubbish got to do with him? He paused, swallowed, realized that he knew exactly what it had to do with him. I’m the man in the mirror. I walked through a mirror and became a mirror-image of myself. The dandelion seeds were parachutists. A five-man SAS team, carted off by the Hun and murdered. Buried in the forest, at the place marked ‘B’. ‘B’ for Butterfield – Bunny’s men? But what was sought in a room with no doors or windows? Butterfield had come for the Codex: that was what he sought. And there was only one person who knew where it was: Countess Emilia Falcone, who lives at the Villa Montefalcone – a castle in the mountains. Caine remembered the signpost they had passed on the road just before the last climb. Villa Montefalcone. It must be near. He recalled guiltily what he had promised Butterfield: ‘If I see a chance, I’ll get you out. If not, I’ll find the countess and the Codex, if it’s the last thing I do.’

  He felt a sudden pang of rejection. I got Butterfield out: I kept my word. I don’t have any further duty to him. It’s his task, not mine.

  He thought of the head-wound Butterfield had taken. He won’t be in any fit state to go after the Codex: even if he were, he’d never do it alone, not with all the Huns who are supposed to be guarding it. The partisans could do it, but why the hell should they? Why should I? Why should I risk my life carrying out someone else’s mission? What has it got to do with me?

  He thought of Butterfield’s determination to snatch the Codex, his stoical acceptance of his fate, his faithful attempt to pass the mission on. The major might not be his idea of a fighting soldier, but he had guts and he was SAS: whatever the real value of the Codex to the war, this was an SAS task. Caine might be wearing enemy insignia, but he was still Regiment, and he’d given his word. You also gave your word to Hitler, remember? You promised to fight for the Nazis.

  On the other hand, Caine knew it wasn’t only his word that mattered: Countess Emilia Falcone was in danger of being tortured to death by Stengel. Caine didn’t know the countess, but he couldn’t help associating her with the woman in his dream – the girl in white, with the bruised neck and bound hands. She’s in for some rough handling, Butterfield had said. It can only be a matter of time till she talks.

  It wasn’t just his honour, or the honour of the Regiment, but also the life of an innocent woman that was at stake. Caine couldn’t turn his back on that. He had always blamed himself for his mother’s suicide, convinced that he could have saved her had he been there. He’d struggled with every nerve and sinew to save Betty Nolan, and he’d failed. He’d never met the countess, but the thought of deserting her stuck in his craw. You’ve got this thing about women and children first, Harry Copeland would have told him. On the other hand, if Stengel murdered Emilia, that would be another sin of omission Caine would have to live with, and he was living with enough of those already.

  How would he find the villa in this dense woodland? He would need a guide: he shied away from the idea of enlisting a local, though. He had to regard the natives as hostile until proved friendly: his best chance of success lay in remaining out of sight. In these forests and hills that was at least possible. His first priority was water: his mouth felt as if it had been scoured with a sander. Finding water in the forest at night wasn’t going to be easy, but he reasoned that he could at least follow the slope into the valley: if a stream existed, it was likely to be down there.

  He descended the gradient, pushed through spiky underbrush and hogweed until he found a narrow track leading downhill. There was just enough moonlight to allow him to see it. The path meandered around tree trunks, passed under foliage so low that Caine was forced to crawl on his hands and knees. It was hard going: his hands had swollen up again, and his wounded finger was becoming painful. At least, though, the earth under his palms was damp: there ought to be water nearby.

  He crept down the path, watching, listening: every ten paces or so he halted, trying to catch any sound, any smell, that was out of place. The heartbeat of the forest had increased in intensity: there was a distinct in-out rhythm to it, a warm pulsation of energy in the heaving of leaves, the creak of branches, the insect-trill. It gave Caine the feeling the forest was alive – a sense that was menacing and comforting at the same time.

  A nasal growl came from the underbrush ahead: his heart jolted: he heard twigs snap, heard a heavy body tumble through the thickets, heard a series of exasperated grunts like clipped explosions. It was an animal, and it was moving away from him. Wild boar; he thought. I startled it. He realized that he’d been smelling the rich, sour-dung odour of pig ever since he’d joined the track. He heard the scuffle of hoofs, then the unmistakable plop of a body hitting water. There is a stream down there. My pig friend’s just gone for a dip in it.

  He smelt moss and the odour of waterlogged leaves long before he saw moonlight streak the oil-black rivulet that tunnelled through the foliage. The trees were bigger here: huge grey trunks two men couldn’t have joined hands around, with roots like dark tentacles that trailed into the water across a low bank. Caine hunkered by the edge near a nest of boulders half submerged in the stream: it was muddy, and he could clearly see the scuff-marks of boar in the moonlight: it was evidently a regular pig crossing-point. He felt an instinctive disquiet, but not because of the boars. At the stream’s edge he was exposed, vulnerable to anyone with the nous to move silently through the woods. He knelt on both knees in the mud, took the Schmeisser in his left hand, held it like a pistol, balanced the long mag against his knee. He bent down, used his painful right hand to scoop liquid.

  When he’d had enough, he wiped his mouth, wished he had some sort of vessel to carry water in. One thing he’d had learned in the desert was that water was life: he didn’t intend to get that thirsty again.

  He stood up, passed his weapon to his right hand: studied the place in the darkness. He could make out another path, running parallel with the stream, curling around clumps of trees and nests of reeds. His best guess was that the Villa Montefalcone lay on his left – the direction the vehicles had been going before the partisan ambush. He turned and began to move silently along the track: the undergrowth was denser here, and the going slow. He would never get to his destination in darkness: his best bet was to lie up till first light. The path widened out into a clearing, where he found a rickety wooden footbridge spanning the flow. He moved to examine it, saw that there were wide paths leading to it from both banks. In daylight, this would be a place frequented by locals. Not far from the bridge lay a patch of low grass with a drop of a few feet into the water. The stream seemed to run deep here: it looked as if it might be a bathing-place for local villagers. The grass was clean and comfortable-looking: Caine was tempted to lie down on it and go to sleep again. He nudged the thought out of his head: this was the last place he wanted to be found sleeping.

  He forced himself on, realized suddenly how tired he was: a little downstream the bank grew higher and was topped
with a thick tangle of bramble and stunted trees, like a solid mass in the darkness. Caine slung his SMG, took to his hands and knees, forced himself through rasping thorns, deep into the thicket. There was a convenient space inside, just large enough to accommodate him. He wriggled his body round until he was facing the direction of the bridge: it was too dark to see it from here, but he would be able to at first light.

  He lay awake for a while, listening to the sounds of the forest. Despite his precarious position, he began to feel peaceful, almost safe. He was in enemy territory, yet the forest felt familiar, like home. It brought back vivid childhood memories: the smell of earth and trees, the sound of branches rustling in the wind, of birdsong, chittering fieldmice, foxes coughing in the thickets. No matter how bad things had become at home with his stepfather, he’d always been able to escape to the woods and fields: there, amongst the plants and wild creatures, he’d understood that he need never be alone.

  He wasn’t aware that he was asleep, or even that he’d closed his eyes, only that he could hear a plaintive sobbing, so clear and insistent that the sound felt like claws dragging down the inside of his skull. He knew what it was, remembered it from his childhood: the crying of a half-witted little Gypsy-girl named Anna-Maria, who, like him, had been a pupil at the village school. He’d been nine years old, the girl no more than seven, small for her age, with a brown face wrinkled like a little old lady’s, and shiny black hair that fell almost to her waist. She wasn’t really half-witted, he knew, just shy: the village children used to call her monkey and nigger, and insisted that she was filthy and smelt of rancid fat. Caine knew what it was like: ever since he’d started school, they’d been calling him dirty smithy because his dad was a blacksmith. People, even the adults, had seemed both to despise and fear his father.

  It was worse for Anna-Maria, though: she didn’t even live in a house but in a decrepit old caravan on Mr Weatherby’s land: her father, an itinerant tinker, was frequently in trouble for poaching. Tinkers and blacksmiths, Caine had often thought: why is it that folk are afraid of people who work metal? Because they think it’s a kind of magical power, perhaps?

  That day he’d been walking back from school when he’d heard her sobs coming from behind the tall hedge that ran along Robertson’s meadow. Caine recognized the sound – deep, urgent, like the wail of an injured animal. He had climbed over the stile, and found them there – Arthur Weatherby and two other big boys of twelve or thirteen, all farmer’s sons. Anna-Maria was on her hands and knees, wearing only her underpants: the boys were gleefully engaged in smearing her small body with cow-dung.

  Weatherby was a strapping youth with a head like a slab, and a shock of ginger hair. ‘Well, if it isn’t Tom Caine, the dirty smithy’s kid,’ he said, grinning, holding up a hand slathered in cowshit. ‘Maybe you’d like some of this, too, eh, Tommy?’

  Caine was scared but couldn’t take his eyes off the girl: it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen. He wanted to run away, but found he couldn’t move. ‘Leave her alone,’ he’d said: to his surprise his voice hadn’t sounded as shaky as he felt. ‘She’s just a little girl.’

  The boys tittered nastily, nodded at each other, cruised towards Caine, towered over him – or so it had seemed at the time. They peered down at him, jeered with leering mouths: he’d never felt so terrified in his life.

  ‘You’re dead, Tommy,’ Weatherby sneered, shaking a dung-daubed fist at him. ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘Sergeant Tiverton will put you in prison,’ Caine piped up. ‘You’d better make sure I’m dead, because if I’m not, I’m going to tell him what you did to Anna-Maria . . . and I’m going to tell the vicar, and the headmaster too. I won’t say anything if you let her go.’

  Weatherby scowled, held his fist under Caine’s nose, so near that he could smell the cowshit. ‘I’m going to . . .’

  One of the other boys elbowed him in the side. ‘Come on, Artie, let’s go.’

  Weatherby’s eyes narrowed: he raised his fist at Caine once more. ‘If you ever –’

  ‘Come on Artie, leave the little prick.’

  Weatherby spat, lowered his fist. ‘What is it, fancy her, do you, Tommy? Why don’t you go and wallow in the shit with her? Pigs like wallowing in shit, don’t they?’

  Caine said nothing. He didn’t take his eyes off Weatherby until the boys had climbed over the stile. For a long time afterwards he’d wondered why Weatherby and the others hadn’t beaten him up. It was the first inkling in his life that it was possible to defeat bullies just by standing up to them, by showing courage and resolution. It wasn’t till much later that he’d realized that Arthur Weatherby was actually his half-cousin: they had the same blood in their veins.

  That day, though, he’d carried Anna-Maria back to her father’s caravan on piggy-back. Her parents accepted his explanation but expressed no feelings about Caine’s intervention. Anna-Maria hadn’t returned to school: the caravan had vanished from Weatherby’s field, and Caine never saw her again. Arthur Weatherby had joined the Gunners at the beginning of the war: he’d been killed in action at Dunkirk.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Near Montefalcone, Le Marche, Italy

  9 October 1943

  A girl was screaming in his head, but this time he wasn’t dreaming. He woke with a start, found himself lying in the thorny thicket in bottle-green light, heard the wail of precocious birdsong at its high crescendo. But it wasn’t the birdsong that had woken him: the girl’s shriek came again, and for a moment Caine thought someone was being tortured. But no, these were shrieks of excitement: He peered through the foliage and saw a boy and a girl frolicking in the stream just below the bridge: he could make out their bobbing heads, their clothes and a basket left on the grassy bank. He guessed they were dipping naked: that would explain the excited shrieks and the early hour.

  His eyes fell on the discarded clothes again. He had no idea whether they would fit him, but they were just what the doctor ordered. Providence, that goddess of good soldiers, had come up with what he most needed and handed it to him on a plate. He simply had to get out of his hide and take the garments without being seen. He didn’t want the couple to raise the alarm, but he certainly didn’t want to kill them. Stealth if possible, force if necessary? No, it was stealth or nothing this time: if they clocked him he’d have to make himself scarce.

  The swelling in his hands had gone down and the throb in his injured finger was less insistent: he was ravenously hungry. He found his gaze drawn back to the basket on the stream-bank: surely there must be some rations in there? He hated to deprive people of their breakfast, but he was desperate: and, anyway, it was no worse than nicking someone’s clothes and making them walk home in their birthday suit.

  He crawled painfully out of his hiding place, kept his eyes on the couple in the water: their heads were close together now. Both had dark hair: the boy’s short, the girl’s hanging in long braids across one shoulder, the tousled ends straggling in the water. The boy had his back to Caine: the girl was facing him, but still too far away for him make out her features. The couple kissed: by the time their mouths had separated, Caine was near enough to hear the girl’s groans: whatever the boy was doing to her under the water, she seemed be enjoying it. Caine banished the thought: his name might be Tom, but he wasn’t a peeper. It was to his advantage that they were focused on each other, that was all – that way they wouldn’t notice him. Who would they imagine had stolen the clothes? Probably a passing tramp.

  It took him ten long minutes to crawl as far as the shelter of the bushes nearest the grassy bank. The couple had moved a little further on, almost under the bridge. They were engrossed in each other: the girl had thrown her head back, letting her hair float on the rippling surface. She was gasping shrilly, the boy snorting in a way that wouldn’t have shamed last night’s wild boar. Caine crouched behind the nearest bush, slung the Schmeisser: the girl’s gasps were building up to a climax. Caine waited two more beats, sprang a couple of ya
rds, grabbed the pile of men’s clothes with one hand, the basket with the other: he turned and retreated fast. No shout of rage followed him, only the pants and moans of satisfaction.

  He ran parallel with the stream until he was sure no one was following him. He left the path, found a large tree half fallen across a dense thicket by the water’s edge. He crouched behind the trunk, examined his prizes, found they were a pair of faded brown corduroy trousers, a parchment-yellow shirt, a corduroy waistcoat. He’d inadvertently picked up a pair of lady’s pink bloomers too, which he put down gingerly. In the basket he found fresh bread and a paper packet of white cheese and salami: there was also a bottle of red wine and a rubber condom. He decided to keep the condom. His stomach growled: he tore off a chunk of bread with his teeth, bit into the cheese: still chewing, he stripped off the Kraut field-grey, threw the garments down, pulled on his new attire.

  The trousers were too slack, the shirt tight around the chest, but they would do, and he was grateful for them. If caught dressed in civvy clothes, he might be shot as a spy, but that chance was better than bearing the stigma of a Nazi stool pigeon. He wondered what to do with the uniform. He had matches, and could burn it, but that would only attract attention to the spot. Burying it would be better, although it would probably still be found, and it would take a lot of work anyway. He clocked a couple of loose boulders in the stream, decided to tie them up in the uniform and submerge the bundles. The water was muddy here: if he pitched them in the middle of the stream it was unlikely they’d be noticed.

  He was about to dispatch the second bundle when he remembered the woman’s bloomers. He wadded them up and stuffed them into the bundle reluctantly: it came over him that he’d done the young couple a bad turn. He didn’t imagine their passionate encounter was something they’d want the world to know about: returning home without clothes would mean exposing their secret. Or maybe they’d be cunning enough to get away with it, in which case they wouldn’t be very quick to inform anyone that there was a voracious tramp in the woods.