Code of Combat

by Michael Asher

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Angostina led them through the moonlit dapples of the trees, around the base of a gnarled black cliff where moonshine caught the inked-out waters of a brook, to a rock overhang concealed in a deep thorn thicket. It wasn’t much of a shelter – just a shallow recess where fallen slabs of volcanic rock had poised themselves in precarious positions. The place smelt of goats: it had a smooth, sandy floor scattered with loose boulders, bone fragments and the black pearls of animal droppings. They sat on their heels, while Angostina gave them water and the leftovers of food from Caine’s knapsack – bread, cheese and olives – washed down with slugs of wine from the bottle. Afterwards Caine handed Emilia a cigarette, took one himself: Angostina waved them away. He lit both cigarettes with a match, wondered how far away from the villa they were. It couldn’t be more than half a mile, he guessed. Smoking wasn’t tactical: the Germans would almost certainly be searching this area soon. Caine decided that morale required a cigarette, though: right now, morale was more important than tactics.

  Emilia coughed, removed the cigarette from her mouth, studied it. Even in the overhang, there was enough moonlight to turn the place into a weft of silvery shadows. ‘Do you think we’re safe here?’ she said.

  Caine took a deep drag of his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs, let it out slowly. ‘For a while, maybe – unless they found that tunnel. Even then they’d have a problem getting through that door after we locked it from the outside.’

  Emilia shook her head, took a tentative pull on her cigarette, coughed again, patted her chest. ‘God, what do they put in these things – donkey crap?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Those catacombs are a maze. I wouldn’t mind betting that the Krauts who followed us are already lost.’

  ‘They’ll start searching these woods come daylight, though. We’d better get moving soon.’

  ‘Ma dove sono i miei vestiti?’ Angostina wailed suddenly ‘Where are my clothes? You say you bring them back.’

  Caine noticed that the old woman was shivering under the poncho: he remembered guiltily that he’d sacrificed her garments for greater freedom of movement. ‘I’m sorry, I had to leave them. They were covered in blood – Kraut blood. You wouldn’t have wanted to wear them, believe me.’

  ‘Ma erano i miei vestiti?’ Angostina complained. ‘How I go back home without my clothes? Now Cabbage-Heads find them and know I help you, no? They take me to Jesi and shoot me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We could leave you tied up so the Krauts think I stole them. I’m not sure they’d even believe it, though. And they’d know we came this way. You’ll just have to go home like that.’

  ‘Ma cosa dici? Non posso tornare a casa senza vestiti . . .’

  She launched into a long and plaintive dialogue in Italian with Emilia. Caine drifted off for a moment, found himself wondering whether Stengel had been killed in the grenade attack, whether Bunny Butterfield had survived. He thought about the horrific buried alive experience he’d been through in the shaft: he shuddered.

  Emilia broke off from her conversation with Angostina, sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell burning?’ she asked, holding the smoking cigarette away from her face. ‘I’m worried about those grenades you threw in the hall. The whole villa might have gone up.’

  Caine sniffed, smelt only tobacco smoke. ‘Those chaps looking for us in the tunnels wouldn’t have been so calm if the whole place was on fire. If there was a blaze, they’ll have put it out.’

  Emilia toked her cigarette, puffed smoke without inhaling it. ‘Parts of that house go back to the twelfth century. God only knows what damage you might have done.’

  Caine flushed. ‘Well, I’m sorry: I was trying to get you out.’

  ‘Yes, but if you’d arrived on time, none of this need have happened. Why were you so late?’

  Caine glowered at her. ‘Late? I only escaped from Fritz yesterday. At least I think it was yesterday . . .’

  Emilia blew a thin blue line of smoke from turned-down lips. ‘You were supposed to be here a month ago. It was all arranged through Savarin. A party of British parachutists, he told me, in uniform, led by an officer who was meant to be an expert on antiquities. Instead I get a man in women’s clothes who tries to burn my house down. I mean, I’m grateful and everything, but don’t even know who you are . . .’

  Caine pulled fiercely at the bristled skin on his jaw, bit back a caustic remark. He couldn’t say that the countess hadn’t worked her passage: she’d kayoed Stengel with that bottle right on cue: she’d shot the bald Nazi. She was certainly no wallflower: she’d led him through the tunnels without hesitation, even kept him going when he’d flagged. But what did she mean by saying he should have been here a month ago?

  Then he got it: she was talking about Butterfield and his stick: the five-man 2nd SAS patrol who were now almost certainly pushing up daisies.

  ‘You were supposed to tell them where the Codex is?’ he asked.

  ‘They were supposed to get me, and my brother, and the Codex, out of the country.’

  Caine sighed. ‘The scheme went cock-eyed. The Krauts were waiting for them on the drop-zone.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Either pure coincidence, or somebody let the cat out of the bag. I know which idea I’d favour.’

  He wondered suddenly if the date of Butterfield’s drop had been known only to Emilia and Savarin, or if others had been in on the secret.

  ‘What happened to the parachutists?’ Emilia asked.

  ‘Disappeared, probably shot. The only one left at Jesi was the officer you mentioned: the expert. I met him while I was a prisoner. He was afraid you were in danger from Stengel. I promised him that if I escaped I’d come and get you. I did manage to escape, and here I am.’

  Emilia had let the ash build up on her cigarette: she stared at it for a moment, flicked it off. ‘Angostina said there was a partisan ambush on the Jesi road yesterday. Is that how you escaped?’

  Caine nodded.

  ‘How come you aren’t with the partisans?’

  Caine stubbed out his cigarette in the dust, picked up the butt, put it in his pocket. He didn’t want to go into the matter of his Nazi uniform, or to discuss Amray and his British Free Corps.

  ‘I got separated from the others in the firefight. I decided to make my own way here.’

  Emilia watched his face closely, her eyes dark pits in the moonlight. ‘But did you come for me or for the Codex?’

  ‘Both. I had to reach you before you talked, or before Stengel . . . did something to you.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that.’

  Caine saw the silver oozing of tears in the corners of her eyes, remembered what Angostina had told him, about how Emilia had been abused by Stengel. He felt awkward. Whatever Stengel had done to her, it wouldn’t have happened if Butterfield’s mob had got here on time. Caine had been helpless to prevent it: he hadn’t even known her name until three days ago. Yet still he felt guilty. The fact that the 2nd SAS op had been compromised, too, had been beyond Butterfield’s control. Someone had blabbed, and he found himself wondering again who it might have been. If only Emilia and Savarin knew about it, there must be a chance . . . But, no. It couldn’t have been her. It would have been against her interests.

  They sat in silence: Emilia stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette.

  ‘It’s too late for back-jobbing,’ Caine said. ‘We need to pick up the Codex and get out. Is it far from here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Codex. Where is it hidden?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Caine’s first thought was that she was stonewalling him. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? You must know.’

  ‘That’s what Stengel thought. I wasn’t holding out, though: I was telling the truth. I couldn’t have told him where the Codex is even if I’d wanted to: I simply don’t know.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Near Montefalcone, Le Marche, Ita
ly

  10 October 1943

  Fred Wallace and Taffy Trubman laboured up the forest slope: Wallace was hefting two jerry cans in his saucepan-sized mitts: Trubman was toiling under the weight of a third, lagging way behind. Sherbet sunlight fell through the canopy, dropped in long elliptoids along the grassy path: there were white butterflies here, and starlings hovering in the foliage. Wallace laid the jerry cans by the roots of a big beech, sat down, waited for Trubman to catch up. He pulled a twist of tobacco from the pocket of his waistcoat, rolled cigarettes with squares of newspaper. He watched Trubman lurch over the brim of the slope, panting and sweating, suppressed a chuckle. The trout-faced, bespectacled Welshman hadn’t put on weight since they’d been captured in Tunisia, but he hadn’t recovered completely from his wounds either.

  He watched as Trubman dumped his jerry can unceremoniously, sidled over to him, sat down in the grass, heaved a long sigh. ‘Daft time to go for water, crack of dawn,’ he wheezed. ‘Should be a night job, see: no movement during the day.’

  ‘Savarin doesn’t know his arse from his elbow,’ Wallace grunted. ‘The all-singin’, all dancin’ “A” Force agent? Ain’t got a bleedin’ clue.’

  He handed Trubman a roll-up: the signaller adjusted his glasses, studied it in the palm of his hand. ‘Newspaper? That’s not good for you, see. Mess your lungs up something chronic, that will, boy.’

  ‘Shut up and smoke the bloody thing. Better than nowt, innit?’

  Wallace lit his fag ostentatiously with a match, watched the end-paper flare, took a long, satisfying drag. Trubman shrugged rounded shoulders, set the roll in his mouth, held out his hand for a light. Wallace passed his own fag, took it back, smoked, massaged his left calf where he’d been wounded in Tunisia: it was still giving him trouble. Not surprising really, he thought, after that bastard of a Totenkopf warrant officer tortured him by sticking the twin-muzzles of his own weapon into the wound. Still, you had to give it to Fritz: by the time they’d got them to the field-hospital, Trubman had been on the way out: the Kraut MOs had saved his life. On the other hand, the Nazi bastards had also executed five of their SAS comrades in cold blood, damn’ near scragged him, and Taffy too. He was no barrack-room lawyer, but bumping off soldiers captured in uniform wasn’t cricket. Problem was, nobody seemed to believe them, not even Savarin.

  Trubman coughed violently over his fag. ‘Savarin’s edgy after the convoy ambush,’ he choked, ‘and the Kraut comb-out before that. They picked up six of his lads, after all.’

  Wallace scratched in his shock of gypsy hair: he hadn’t shaved in days, and his chunk of a chin was prickly with the makings of a stiff black beard. The Nazi arrest of half-a-dozen young partisans at Orsini over a week ago stank, he thought, especially as they’d included the youths who’d found Trubman wandering round the woods half delirious, and the two lads – including Ettore Falcone – who’d saved Wallace’s bacon by slotting the Krauts.

  ‘Don’t tell me that comb-out weren’t fishy. ‘’Ow did Fritz know them lads was in Orsini? Sounds like Savarin’s got a problem with big ears.’

  ‘Big mouths, you mean: someone singing lullabies to the Hun.’

  ‘Wot about Howard’s drop? Fritz was waitin’ for them on the DZ, wasn’t ’e? Somebody must ’ave tipped ’im off.’

  ‘Makes you wonder if you’re safe with the partisans.’

  Wallace spat out a shred of tobacco. ‘Don’t trust nobody, mate. Don’t tell ’em nothink.’

  ‘I mean, why wouldn’t Savarin let us take part in that convoy job? We’ve done more vehicle ambushes than he’s had hot dinners.’

  The giant gunner snickered. ‘Prob’ly thought we’d show ’im up.’

  ‘Good idea, that dying horse.’

  ‘Poor thing,’ Wallace grumped. ‘Why the ’ell they ’ad to use a dumb creature, I don’t know. And talkin’ of dumb creatures, that Major Butterfield ain’t said a word yet.’

  ‘Give him a chance, boy. He’s still out of it, see.’

  Wallace stubbed out his fag in the grass. He had once glimpsed Butterfield through the wire at the Jesi camp: the 2nd SAS lads had told him that he was their Assistant IO, on special assignment. He’d wondered why the major hadn’t been with them in the execution party, put it down to senior-rank privilege. Now it occurred to him that the convoy the partisans had attacked must have been taking Butterfield to his own private execution.

  ‘What about the one that got away?’ Trubman said. ‘Savarin reckons he was a traitor, a British chap gone over to the Hun. Can you believe that?’

  ‘One of Amray’s lot. You remember ’ow that creep came sniffin’ round us at Jesi, offerin’ us Itie girls to shag if we joined ’is . . . what were it called . . . Free Corps?’

  ‘Yep, but I didn’t believe anyone would really join it. He tried all the 2nd Regiment boys. They gave him the cold shoulder.’

  ‘An’ ’oo wouldn’t? Can you imagine any sane Englishman . . . I mean, British person . . . puttin’ on a Nazi uniform? Of his own free will? Makes you shudder. The disgrace of it. Anyone who’d betray his own country deserves to be hung, drawn and quartered.’

  ‘Amray got his come-uppance anyway. The partisans cut his throat, so they said. I didn’t see the body myself, but they were sure it was him. Said he was wearing his Hun uniform with a Union Jack shield on it.’

  ‘Christ!’ Wallace spat. ‘If I ever get me ’ands on that joker that ran away, I’ll bleedin’ throttle ’im, I will. Can you imagine what Tom Caine would of said?’

  Trubman straightened his specs, focused on the remains of his cigarette. Wallace thought about Caine, wondered where he was now. His memory of events in that gunpit on hell’s highroad, in the Matmata Hills, was dim. All he recalled was that Caine and Copeland had been there one minute, gone the next: he’d woken up a prisoner of the Nazis. Caine might be dead for all he knew. He doubted it, though: it would take a lot to kill Tom Caine. At Jesi, Wallace had pumped the 2nd SAS lads for news of him: they’d heard no report of his death.

  Wallace heaved his colossal body up: at six feet seven he soared above the short, tubby Welshman. ‘Come on, they’ll be wantin’ this water back at camp.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The camp was sited in a deep vale in the forest, in dense thickets at the foot of a steep, grassy bank: the partisans had made rough tents by slinging canvas sheets and parachute-canopies under the spreading boughs, covering the floors with bracken. It was only a makeshift camp, but in the two days they had been there Savarin’s crew had made it ship-shape, building a cookhouse of deadwood, digging refuse pits and supply caches. Wallace and Trubman approached the place cautiously: the security system was good: booby traps on the main approaches and watchers hidden in the bush.

  The first thing that struck Wallace, though, was how quiet it was: when they’d left to get water at first light, the place had already been bustling with men and women boiling cans of water on open fires, frying eggs and sausages, cleaning teeth, darning socks, buffing weapons, wandering off with spades to dig their own latrines. Now there was an eerie silence: no chatter, no movement, not even the smoke of a cooking fire. Wallace set down his jerry cans, crouched in long grass among the tree dapples: when Trubman arrived he placed a finger the size of a candle across his lips, motioned him to ditch his burden, slipped out the Webley .38 revolver the partisans had given him: it looked like a cap-gun in his giant hand.

  Trubman checked his own weapon – a half-rusty Beretta pistol: they left the jerry cans and moved down the grassy bank. Wallace whistled tunelessly – the usual signal of approach. No one answered. The sun was still low and the thickets were a mass of shadows and alternating sequences of bronze light: the silence, though, was unsettling: not a branch rustled, not a blade of grass stirred. They moved unchallenged into the main camp-area, found a scene of disorder. The makeshift tents were gone, leaving only flattened bracken flooring: the cookhouse enclosure had been dismantled, store-pits had been dug up: haversacks, bits of equipment, coo
king-cans, ration-bags lay scattered around the ashes of cold fires. Wallace called out softly: when no answer came, he shouted more loudly, heard nothing but a sudden flush of wind in the tallest trees.

  They halted, confused: Trubman spotted an open box of chocolate bars among the debris, made towards it. Wallace stopped him with a tug of his massive hand. ‘Too good to be true, mate,’ he growled. ‘Pound to a pinch of dog turd it’s a booby trap. Don’t touch it. Don’t touch a damn’ thing.’

  Trubman squatted down, looked disconsolate. ‘They’ve done a bunk,’ he said. ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Fritz must have come callin’. Savarin prob’ly got tipped off at the last minute.’

  ‘He knew where we were. He could have sent someone.’

  ‘Yep, he could. I’m wonderin’ why he didn’t. Like you said, it was a queer time to send us on water-detail, anyway.’

  ‘The whole thing stinks, boy.’

  ‘Yep, an’ if Fritz has been here, where is he now?’

  ‘Hey! You hear that?’

  Wallace cocked his ears, picked up a low moaning coming from the direction of the thickest trees. ‘Somebody in there.’

  Trubman tweaked his specs. ‘Could be a trick. Could be them.’

  The moaning came again, louder this time: Wallace thought he could make out the fading syllables of words among the groans. He swallowed hard. ‘Cover me, Taff. I’m goin’ for a dekko.’

  ‘I’m coming too.’

  The man was lying on the bracken under the tree where the hospital tent had once stood, surrounded by discarded medical packs and furls of soiled bandage. He was dressed in peasant clothes: they recognized him from the blood-soaked field-dressing, the Buddha head, the pudding-shaped torso: Major Bunny Butterfield, large as life.

  Butterfield was dazed but conscious: they dragged him over to the tree, propped him against the trunk. Trubman gave him water from his canteen: Butterfield gulped it down so fast that Trubman had to stop him. He coughed: his eyelids fluttered. He tried to speak: his words came out as almost voiceless gasps.