Love is the death of me

by Dick Hardman

  Dedrick was suitably shocked, but also reassured by the surprising reply.

  “Can you tell me how you plan to get to England? I know it won’t be by plane, because of the risk to the beacons, that only leaves water.”

  “I did not intend to use a submarine, it would be too slow. The spy would know when I leave, and would have plenty of time to warn the British. “Anyway, the British sonar system and coverage of the Channel is superb, so we would be sunk, in no time at all.

  “No, it needs to be quick and dirty, I am afraid. I will be using an S-boat. I believe it will come from Saint Nazaire, refuel here and make a dash for Southampton. I have a little surprise planned when we get there; hopefully our arrival will go unnoticed.”

  “I cannot imagine you will actually be able to land at Southampton, so you and your team will have a long swim ahead of you.”

  “I put together a little sketch for our engineers at Saint Nazaire, to cobble together something that will help us.

  “I propose two torpedo shaped floats with electric torpedo motors in each and plenty of batteries to give a 10 mile range. The parallel floats will be made from thin wall metal tube and will be bridged by a small deck and faring, where we will lie down. This should give us some protection from the cold water. It should also be low enough in the water to prevent continuous radar contact. I also expect the craft, if you can call it that, will be incredibly fast and plough through waves like a torpedo, rather than ride them.

  “When we get close to shore, it will be sunk and we will swim in underwater, using rebreather equipment. Depending on its weight, it will either be carried amidships, across the S-boat or be towed.

  “I am waiting to hear from Otto how we get to the safe house, from shore. He has a contact called Sundown who has proved very reliable, so a lot will be dependent on that agent.”

  “I don’t envy you one bit Pieter, I can tell you. Although your plan is so audacious and daring, that I am sure you will land safely.”

  By now the two men were approaching the harbour and talked only about general things.

  To catch a shadow.

  When Pieter returned to the training room, the team was engaged in heated conversation. Nothing about the cover stories, or their jobs, suited them. They had expected to be sneaking around, planting beacons and doing spy things. Pieter anticipated this and planned to take them through the reasoning, step by step. Then they would wish their cover job was their only job.

  “OK, listen up.

  “It is time to go down to the bay for our swim. It is a wonderful sunny day and the temperature is a couple of degrees above freezing. Grab your towels and jog down, we will sort out your questions later, when we return.

  “After that, we will start learning combat techniques that you, as spies, will need.

  “In the meantime, put every document and note you have in this steel locker. I have the only key, so everything will be safe in there.”

  ***

  The day went quickly, and no one raised the matter of Carina and Andreas. Horst didn’t even want to acknowledge it had happened, Carina was embarrassed that Pieter knew she was a whore, and Andreas was only glad he was not in trouble.

  That evening, Pieter washed and dressed up for dinner with Dedrick. Helga had excused herself for the night, saying she was still unwell and would be in her room, although she had been working at her desk throughout the day. Both men missed her company, but neither would admit it.

  “I hope you will excuse me Dedrick, I have to hunt for our elusive spy tonight, so I want it known that I have gone to bed early.”

  “Actually, I think that I also will have an early night. Come to think of it Herman, the cook and his assistant will all be out tonight, so the place will be very quiet.

  “I understand two members of your team were less than quiet or discrete last night, I trust that will not happen again.”

  “Ah! So you did hear about it. I will be warning them to exercise discretion in future.”

  “Hear about it, the whole island heard about it! Don’t you think you should put a stop to that sort of thing, Pieter?”

  “Ordinarily I would, but I believe their activities will be short lived. And it is better they stop it themselves, rather than me. They will only resent it if I intervene, and the mission comes first.”

  Dedrick sounded concerned. “I take it, it was not a threesome. Surely the odd man out will be angry at being rejected?”

  Pieter smiled as he replied. “Who is to say it will not be his turn tonight? He was fine with it today.”

  “Well, tell them to be quiet. I am having to go without, so should they.”

  “Goodnight Herr Oberst, sleep well.” Dedrick smiled, as Pieter got up and left.

  ***

  It was a bitterly cold night up on the cliffs. The steady breeze sent the few scattered clouds scudding across the starlit sky. The moon was bright enough to light his way, but this was actually a hindrance, as it meant him crawling along rabbit trails to avoid being seen. The great thing about rabbit trails is that they allow you to crawl quietly and unseen through the knee high grass and heather.

  Pieter had reached the little hollow, and wondered why the spy had not heard him and Carina making love and avoided them. Perhaps he would ask the question, if he ever caught up with the skulking traitor!

  It made him regret what he had done with Carina. He wished Helga had been with him instead. He would have been quite content to sit there just talking and gazing at the stars with her. What might they have said, as they cuddled together? He imagined her sat resting back against him, his legs either side of her, and his arms around her waist, keeping her warm. He could imagine her lovely smell of washed, warm skin as he nuzzled into her neck, and the comforting sound of her soft voice.

  The faint smell of cooking, and a slight sound of movement behind him, jarred him back from his thoughts, as some hard object smacked into the side of his head. There was a brief burst of bright stars as he slumped, unconscious in the heather.

  The spy, cloaked in the black cape, crouched over the body, deciding what to do next. It would be disastrous if Pieter recovered consciousness while the coded message was being sent. Klein had to be disposed of anyway; it would stop whatever he had planned in Britain, at a stroke. It must look like an accident and had to be well away from here, in case a search revealed the Raven’s light and the underground hide.

  Raven’s slight build was also a problem. Klein had to be carried, otherwise drag marks would leave a trail and point to murder. It was a struggle, but the Raven managed to carry Klein, draped over its hunched back like a sack of coal, towards Gannett Rock.

  The slope of the ground near the cliff edge was now too steep to safely carry the limp body down, so it was rolled along to the cliff edge and pushed over.

  The sound of the rolling, falling body was soon lost, amid the relentless, rhythmic chant of the birds and the loud crashing of the waves below.

  Merging with the ground, under the cape, and panting like an aged asthmatic in a marathon, the Raven tried to recover from the exertion and regain composure. The message tonight was long, detailed and more strategically vital than any sent so far; the image dots of Pieter Klein, for MI5.

  A rock and a hard place.

  Dawn was just breaking when Pieter regained consciousness and it took him a while to comprehend his predicament. He remembered being struck from behind, presumably by the spy, but why was he now wedged painfully, on his back, between two outcrops of rock? Try as he might, he could not work himself free. The clothes around his waist were snagged on the rough surface.

  Resting a moment, he looked around and saw he was right on the cliff edge. Somehow he had rolled down the steep slope and fallen heavily between the rocks. They had prevented him from falling over the cliff, and saved his life.

  He felt in the holster under his left arm, for his Luger. He cocked it and fired in the air to attract the attention of the guards. It took five well-spaced shots b
efore they could locate him.

  A voice ordered “get ropes and pull him to safety.”

  While he waited to be tugged free, he cursed his stupidity. He should have been considering how to catch the spy, not falling in love with Helga. She would be the death of him, and for what; she didn’t want a full relationship with Pieter, and was obviously avoiding him.

  Back at the fort again, he went to see the Oberst and explained the spy had jumped him, and attempted to dispose of him over a cliff.

  “You are very lucky to be alive, Pieter. We would never have found your body if you had fallen into the sea. With the fierce currents and sharp rocks around the island, you would have been torn to shreds, and eaten by the fish, and crabs.

  “Our spy now knows we are on to him, so he will avoid the cliff for a while, probably won’t return until you leave. I am sure he will not trust anything he overhears, either, so we are at quite a disadvantage.

  “We still don’t know how he is getting his information off the island, signals have not detected any transmissions and they are certain they would, being so close to the transmitter.”

  “Yes, I can understand that Oberst. We will just carry on as normal, but being very careful about communication. Once my team and I leave for England, anything the spy has to say will be unimportant routine movements.”

  Whitehall takes action. 8th December 1943

  In the busy offices of MI5 a phone jangled annoyingly: “Hello, can I help you?” offered a young man, anxious to ease the bedlam in the department. Everyone in the large office were under great pressure answering phone calls and managing their case load.

  “Good morning, Sir Philip Stern here, I thought this was John Caplin’s phone, be a good chap and put him on, it’s frightfully important.”

  “This is his phone, but he is on another call. Can I take a message or ask him to call back?”

  “No, you jolly well can’t, you impertinent boy. Tell him I am waiting on the line.”

  “Of course Sir, I will tell him now.” The handset clattered loudly on the desk and the young man dashed over to John.

  “Sorry to have kept you Sir Philip, I was just speaking with Richard Wallis at Bletchley, about the last message from Raven. Seems it is not any sort of code, but a mass of dots that match a grid. Depending on which way you hold it, it could be a face or half a face, actually, of our mystery man Pieter Klein, on Alderney. One of the chaps at Bletchley is some sort of artist and thinks he can join up the dots so we can see a likeness.

  “Probably be an hour or so and he will rush it over by courier. Then we can try and match it with our records.”

  “That’s the ticket! Let me know when you have the likeness, I want to see it.

  “Well done John, we’ll catch the bounder, now we can spot him. Jolly good show.” He hung up.

  Later that morning, Wallis sent through the sketch, and the original dot pattern, to John Caplin. He followed through with matching photos from his own records.

  When he had assimilated the information, Caplin thoughtfully picked up the phone, crystallising in his mind what he was about to say.

  “Good afternoon Sir Philip, I can now be sure which German agents we can discount, but still can’t actually identify our adversary. He is not in our records, but a new file has been opened for Pieter Klein, and his sketch has been issued to all relevant departments.

  “You should be getting your copy any moment.”

  “Splendid work John, keep looking for this man, he spells trouble for us and we need to nab him pronto.

  “I am relying on you John, don’t let me down.” The line went dead.

  ***

  Caplin pinned the image to the wall board and returned to his desk. From further away, it was more lifelike and was a face he was certain he had seen before, but could not quite place. Something about it kept telling him this was a dead man, but obviously he wasn’t. It just couldn’t be the same man.

  That night John Caplin was tucking his baby daughter Angela, into her cot. She lay there thrashing about and making endearing gurgling sounds; she was wide awake now, and both he and his wife Margaret needed an early night. He thought perhaps the sound of his voice would send her off, and he opened a box of his old childhood books he had been keeping for her. The first one he pulled out was Tales of Br’er Rabbit. That should do the trick, he thought.

  Suddenly it struck him, Rabbit! The German woman at Peenemünde who blew up Karl Strom. He had been heading some top secret project there.

  There would be no sleep for John Caplin that night and he was at his desk very early the following morning, sifting through the old file on Rabbit. She had taken a photo of Karl Strom in Peenemünde, down by the lake. This was the man whose face was now pinned to the message board, he was certain of it.

  ***

  He reached confidently for the telephone and dialled impatiently, drumming his fingers on the desk, as the dial whirred slowly back to its stop, between digits.

  “Good morning, my name is John Caplin. I must speak to Sir Philip immediately, can you get him for me on a secure line. Tell him it is about yesterday’s conversation.”

  “I am his personal secretary, he will be in at 9.00am. I will ask him to call then.”

  “I can wait, but when he finds out what I have to tell him, he will not be happy to have waited.”

  “Oh! Alright. I will phone him at home, but it had better be important.” She ended the call and John Caplin suddenly had doubts. Had he just thrown away a promising career by jumping the gun and not taking the time to check his facts?

  The phone rang, jarring him back from his doubts, which were replaced with the sick feeling of dread.

  “Good morning John, it’s a secure line, Sir Philip here. You have something devastatingly important to tell me that just cannot wait, so I am told. Spit it out lad, I am about to eat breakfast.”

  “I am reasonably certain the Alderney man is Karl Strom, who was blown up with a grenade in Peenemünde last June. We believed he was dead, but it looks as if he survived, and whatever he was working on there, was probably completed and will be used against us, here.”

  “By Jove man, are you sure?”

  “I am more certain each time I compare the photo and the image. Of course, the dots and artist’s rendering could be wrong, but I doubt that. It is a perfect match.”

  John thought he was pretty smart, insinuating Wallis was to blame if the information turned out to be wrong.

  “What put you on to it? It is a remarkable find.”

  “I was about to read a story to Angela, Br’er Rabbit actually. Then it hit me; Rabbit was our agent who took the photo and blew the blighter up. I sort of remembered the case, because we had no proof the man was actually dead. Rabbit was captured and killed, so we never found out what Strom was doing at Peenemünde. It all just came together.”

  “We need to move on this one, John. What is the status with Sundown?”

  “As you requested Sir, we have been following him, or possibly her, closely, but he has not led us to any of his contacts.

  “Slippery character, that one, by all accounts. I think he is on to us and giving us the run-around, while other German agents are free to do their evil work.”

  Sir Philip grunted his disapproval. He hated the suggestion his agents were being duped.

  John continued. “Sundown is one of the top German assets here and because he is in the London area, I think he will set up the infiltration of this Alderney bunch. All we can do is bring him in without delay and hope we are in time to leave Strom and his team stranded.”

  “If Raven can give us the date and infiltration point, we should be able to pounce and bag the damn lot.

  “What d’you think, eh John?”

  “I will put that in hand immediately Sir Philip. As soon as we have Sundown, I will tell you.”

  “Good work my boy, and remember stranded spies are vulnerable spies!

  “Do send my best wishes to Margaret and Angela.�
�� Once again, he slammed the phone down; it was symbolic of the metaphorical hammer blow, descending on Sundown, Karl Strom, his team and the whole bloody lot of them.

  Gone in a flash. 9th December 1943

  Sundown had received his coded message from Berlin in the usual public broadcast. He had already put in place transport, accommodation and secure storage for the equipment needed by Pieter and his team. All he wanted now was the date and time of their arrival.

  The cunning man had been aware for some time that he was being followed, but also was aware that initially at least, MI5 would not touch him. The British agents would want to round up his contacts, so he thought he would give them something to do, by planting dozens of messages at any place that could have been a genuine dead drop. The messages were purely random letters, but looked like a code. This occupied many agents who were watching the dead drops, and code breakers trying to decipher the nonsense. The arrival of the team from Alderney was imminent, so he could not afford to hang around any longer, playing games.

  That night, Sundown drove to a dead drop, knowing the British agents would be lying in wait; he stopped briefly and it looked as if he had collected a message. The British agents suspected something important was about to happen, because Sundown was acting out of character and in a frightful hurry. Now would be the right time to pounce and capture him.

  The British agents followed discretely as Sundown drove carefully to a terrace of bombed damaged homes in Poplar. He left his stolen car and walked furtively into one of the less dangerous houses. Thirty seconds later, the agents rushed in to arrest him, and the whole building exploded.