‘I hope you’re all right?’ Churchill demanded.
‘It seems so.’
‘It never occurred to me that you’d do such a damn silly thing as continue to live in that flat of yours. Suppose you’d been killed?’
‘That thought did cross my mind as I lay in that cellar. Several people were killed.’
‘I know, and I grieve for them. But it is the indispensable ones who must survive. Is Lee all right?’
‘Yes. Shaken. She’s gone back down to Somerset.’
‘Well, that’s a relief. Murdoch, there is misfortune everywhere. This Bismarck business...God knows we got the wretched thing, but it took everything we have available, and to lose Hood to a single salvo...I lost some sleep over that one. Now we are being thrown out of Greece. The Greek Army has surrendered, and we are being forced to leave, or surrender ourselves.’
‘Good God!’ Murdoch said. ‘That gives Hitler all Europe.’
‘Quite. Belgrade has been bombed flat, and the Yugo-slavs have also surrendered. They were our last hope of a European ally.’
‘Well,’ Murdoch said, ‘it was always likely to happen. But if we can take over North Africa...’
Churchill gave a brief, humourless laugh. ‘We have been walloped, in Cyrenaica. Or rather, right out of Cyrenaica.’ Murdoch could only stare at him in disbelief.
It’s a fact. The same Italians we had running like a pack of sheep, strengthened by a single German panzer division, have beaten us out of sight. O’Connor is gone.’
‘Killed?’
‘Taken prisoner. I believe Fergus is all right. But we’ve lost most of our tanks.’
‘How in the name of God did it happen?’
Churchill shrugged. ‘Complacency, perhaps. The troops were very dispersed, and were unable to concentrate in time to meet the surprise attack. Then there is talk about some new weapon the Germans have, which just eats up our tanks.’
Murdoch frowned. ‘I can’t accept that. I am sure we, I, would have heard about that.’
‘I am sure you would have, too. But I want you to work on it. I hate to say it, but there was also some superior generalship. This fellow Rommel seems to be quite brilliant. There’s to be a debate in the House. They’re very unhappy.’
‘There’s no chance they’ll turn against you?’
‘I doubt that. We still hold Tobruk. That’s a sally port on the German flank. A thorn in his side. And I’m sending out additional troops and replacement tanks just as quickly as they can be found. But...Wavell will have to go.’
‘Wavell?’ Murdoch asked in consternation. Archie Wavell and himself were contemporaries.
‘He’s a fine soldier, and we owe him a great deal. But there has to be a restoration of morale. And the quickest way to do that is to find a new commanding officer.’
Murdoch’s heart was beginning to pound. He was only two years the older. And he knew as much about handling tanks as any man; he had virtually founded the British Armoured Corps. But he had to protest. ‘That seems damnably hard. Would he have been beaten if he hadn’t had to send so many men to Greece?’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘Well, then...’
War, as you know as well as I, Murdoch, is a choice between horror and catastrophe, at every step. None of us can escape that, or the consequences. For God’s sake, I’m not sacking him. He’s too good not to employ. He just needs a change of scene, a change of objective. He’ll go to India as Commander-in-Chief there. That’ll frighten the Japanese.’
‘And who’ll go to North Africa?’
Churchill grinned at him. ‘Auchinleck.’
‘Auchinleck? He’s already in India.’
‘So they’ll swap. I know what you’d like me to say, Murdoch, and I wish I could say it. But it can’t be you. The House wouldn’t go for it. Not right now. We need a younger man, who will put pep into the men out there. One of the reasons I’m relieving Wavell is that he’s simply too old for the job. For all his talent, his brilliance, if you like, he has allowed himself to be worn down by the responsibility of running half a dozen fronts at the same time. Libya, Somaliland, Greece, Iran, Palestine...it’s too much. I simply can’t replace him with an older man. For God’s sake, Murdoch, you’re almost sixty.’
‘How old are you, Winston?’
‘Well...’
‘You are sixty-seven, all but. And how many fronts are you running?’
‘I feel it, I can tell you. I’m sorry, Murdoch. I’ve made my decision.’
‘Winston, you know, and I know, that I am the man to beat Rommel. Why not tell me the truth?’
Churchill sighed. ‘Try to understand my position. If the facts about Paul ever became known...’ Churchill was the only person other than Lee and Murdoch himself who knew of the relationship. ‘...and I had given you a fighting command, the Government would fall.’ He brooded for a few seconds. ‘It might anyway, even if you are officially retired. Anyway...’ his grin was softer. ‘I need you here. Find out about that German gun. And get me something concrete on where Hitler means to go next.’
‘Russia,’ Murdoch said. How that moment of madness forty years ago kept returning to haunt him. But there was no use being disappointed — and he did have a vital job of work to do.
‘So you said before. But he sent his troops into the Balkans.’
‘He was forced to, by that Greek business. He couldn’t let Musso take another black eye. That in turn caused the Yugoslav business, which involved another change of plan. But if you’re right, and Greece means to pull out...what’s going to happen to our troops there?’
Churchill’s shoulders were hunched. ‘I told you. We’re evacuating.’
‘Back to Egypt?’
‘No. Not unless we have to. We can’t just go into a place and then run like hell whenever a German army appears. There’d be the devil to pay, especially in America. Lindbergh is already accusing us of prolonging the war unnecessarily, dragging in neutral after neutral when we don’t have a hope of winning. Oh, Roosevelt has repudiated him, but there’s no doubt a lot of Americans feel like that. We don’t have enough men to hold Greece on our own. But we can hold Crete, and that I mean to do. They’ll have to come across water to get at us. That should give us a splendid opportunity to kill them.’
‘We’ll need all the air cover we have.’
‘All the air cover we can spare. I can’t guarantee it’ll be sufficient. We have to defend this island as well.’
‘Winston,’ Murdoch said, ‘why not pull out altogether, no matter what the Americans may say? If I’m right, and Hitler does mean to attack Russia, why not give him every encouragement to do so? That would be the most effective way of killing a lot of Germans. And a lot of Communist Russians as well.’
‘We don’t know you’re right, Murdoch. But we do know that he can’t let us sit in Crete and develop it into an unsinkable aircraft carrier moored on his flank. We’ll fight that battle first. And you get back to work. Now that the Germans have spread all over the Baltic, your field is doubled. Use it.’
*
Of course the Prime Minister was right, Murdoch knew: war was indeed a choice between horror and catastrophe.
But both needed to be inflicted upon the enemy as effectively as possible. And Russia and Germany were both, under their present regimes, enemies of everything Great Britain stood for; their mutual destruction could only be to Britain’s advantage.
And his own? Russia was the home of that vicious young woman Yasmin Bogoljubova, who had attempted to assassinate him before the war. No doubt she had had a very good reason: Murdoch had executed her mother, who had been a Mahsud princess, for the mutilation and murder of captured English soldiers on the North West Frontier. He still could not help but feel that Yasmin would be far better employed in resisting the German panzers than in planning his destruction.
Instead, from his desk he watched the destruction of the British force in Crete, the gallant and costly attempt of the Royal Navy to b
ring off another Dunkirk. At the end of the day only one thing mattered: Britain had suffered another heavy defeat.
As in France, it could perhaps be attributed to the collapse of an ally. It was the situation in North Africa which worried him most. A letter from Fergus did nothing to reassure him. The British had been in full flight before General O’Connor had been captured; the general’s disappearance had merely turned the flight into a rout. Fergus was perfectly frank about it. But unable properly to explain it — save that fear of the unexpected, and of superior enemy weaponry, was contagious.
This at least was his department, Murdoch thought. But what he turned up was even more disturbing. The Germans had no new secret weapon. They had merely used an eighty-eight millimetre anti-aircraft gun as an anti-tank gun, with devastating effect. And the British apparently had no comparable counter. He submitted his report both to Churchill and the War Office, and urged them to get on with developing one as rapidly as possible.
Meanwhile, as Churchill had pointed out, the whole of Europe, save only for the Iberian Peninsula, Switzerland and Sweden, was his field. And of course, Soviet Russia.
But he had never used Soviet Russia as a jumping off base or as a route: it was too dangerous. On the other hand, he had used Yugoslavia and Greece, and there he had some catastrophes of his own, as the Gestapo moved in behind the Wehrmacht and began rounding up suspects, who had perhaps been taking it too easy in their neutral hideaways.
‘Seven have just disappeared,’ said Commander Methuen, his Chief of Staff. ‘And four more have informed control that they no longer wish to be considered. I wonder we don’t turn them in as well. Bloody swine.’
‘We can’t blame them,’ Murdoch said. ‘What we have to do is replace them.’
‘Eleven agents, just like that?’ Methuen snapped his fingers.
‘We must have some available.’
‘We have. But they’re still training.’
‘Recruits?’
‘A little thin on the ground at the moment. There is one who is quite promising, but she’s French. Mind you, the more people we have in France the better. Would you like to see her?’
‘Of course.’ Murdoch insisted on meeting all of his potential agents personally, not only because that enabled him to sum them up more accurately, but also because he could not contemplate them being sent to their deaths by a man they had never seen.
He was seated at his desk next morning when Methuen opened his door. ‘I have Madame Monique Deschards with me, General Mackinder.’
*
Murdoch gazed at an intensely attractive young woman. She was not beautiful, in the way Annaliese was beautiful. Perhaps she was not even pretty; her features were too large and too strong. But her eyes, huge and intelligent, sparkled, and her wide mouth was used to smiling, while there could be no denying the probable splendour of the very full body beneath the blue serge suit and the blue and white vertically striped linen blouse.
‘General Mackinder,’ she said, in almost perfect English. ‘I think I have met your brother.’
‘Indeed?’ He gestured her to a chair. ‘Where would that have been?’
She sat down and crossed her knees. Her legs matched the rest of her. ‘In Cairo. Oh, before last Christmas.’
Murdoch smiled at her. ‘You are practising flattery, Mrs Deschards. I don’t have a brother. The man you met was my son.’
She also smiled. ‘I did not know that, truly.’
‘Fergus suggested you come to me?’
‘He never mentioned you to me at all, General. Is that not strange?’
Not really,’ Murdoch said. ‘He probably assumed I would be known to everyone.’
‘Then I must apologize for my ignorance.’
‘If my son did not send you to me,’ Murdoch said, ‘why did you come?’
‘I went to Cairo after my husband was posted missing in action,’ Monique said. Now I know that he is dead, and I would like to do something for France. I secured a passage to England, and went to General de Gaulle, and his Free French organization. But they are recruiting soldiers, and I am not a soldier. Nor am I a clerk. They suggested I come to see you.’
‘I am also recruiting soldiers, Mrs Deschards.’
She gazed at him. ‘But obviously women as well as men.’
‘My soldiers fight unsung and unhonoured. They seldom die in battle with the shouts of their comrades in their ears. Rather do they die in filth and squalor, in loneliness, and after suffering great pain and humiliation. Do you really suppose such a fate is worth risking?’
‘War is a risk for everyone, General. It is also filthy and squalid, for everyone. And I can tell you, it is also lonely for everyone.’
Murdoch studied her. Her personality was quite compelling. He could not blame Fergus for chatting her up in Cairo. Lucky devil. ‘There would be a period of considerable, and very arduous, training before I could use you,’ he said.
‘I understand that, General.’
‘And then you would embark upon an even more lonely life than you endure now. You will be able to have no friends, only contacts. And you will have to do many terrible things.’
Monique smiled for the second time. ‘I would have one friend, surely, General: you.’
*
The thought of her haunted him. He had not been so instantly drawn to someone since he had met the Princess Chand Bibi — and she had turned out to be a disaster. It was not a case of loving Lee any the less for being attracted to another woman; his love for Lee was constant, and strong enough to withstand any distraction. But he was a man to whom the occasional woman provided an immense impetus to his own life. There had only actually been three to do so: Margriet Voorlandt von Reger, Chand Bibi, and Jennifer Manly-Smith. He didn’t know if Monique Deschards would be a fourth, but he did know that he was impatient for another five days to pass so that he could make his weekly visit to his training establishment...
He was met as usual by Colonel Lowndes, and Mrs Bryant. Mrs Bryant looked after the female section of the ‘academy’, as they called the country house which had been given to him for his work; Murdoch believed that the sexes should be kept in strict segregation throughout training. She was a small, homely looking woman with grey hair and soft eyes — and she was the toughest human being Murdoch had ever encountered.
‘Monique Deschards,’ she said, without curiosity. ‘Oh, yes, General. She is quite a find. She is so eager. Would you like to see what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ Murdoch said, ‘I would.’
Mrs Bryant led him into the wing reserved for the women, and along various corridors, then down a flight of steps. He was surrounded by noises, and was reminded of his only ever visit to a girls’ boarding school, when, after his return from India, he had attended one of Helen’s speech days. But on that occasion Lee had been at his elbow. Now he felt strangely isolated.
The stairs took them below ground, which even in summer was centrally heated. Now he listened to more martial noises, including, his experienced ear told him, the sounds of revolver shots. Mrs Bryant led him along another corridor, and then carefully opened a door for him to step through.
Now he inhaled cordite, and human sweat — oddly overlaid with feminine perfume. He blinked in the half gloom, found himself in a large cellar, some twenty yards across. Immediately in front of him there was a table on which rested the revolver he had heard. On the near side of the table there were four people, a male instructor and three women; all wore singlets, shorts and tennis shoes. A fourth woman was engaged in trotting round the room, but she stopped when the door opened, and she and everyone else in the room came to attention. The girls at the table had their backs to the door, but Murdoch recognized Monique immediately, from the wealth of dark brown hair which was gathered in a ribbon on the nape of her neck. Like them all, however, she remained at attention, looking into the room and not at the door.
‘Carry on, Mr Hunt,’ Mrs Bryant said.
‘Yes, ma’am. Carry on,
Betty,’ Mr Hunt said.
The girl named Betty, on the far side of the room, resumed jogging. She made a fascinating sight, as, short and somewhat plump, and wearing no brassiere, she jogged past the table and continued on her way, sweat dribbling out of her hair. She did this five more times, and then Mr Hunt said, Now, Betty!’
Betty stopped at the table, breath coming in great gasps, picked up the gun, and turned to face the far wall, which was suddenly illuminated as Hunt pressed a switch. Over there stood the cardboard cut-out of a man, half turned towards them, hand thrust forward as if he too was armed; behind him the wall was padded with piled mattresses to prevent the risk of ricochets. Holding the revolver in both hands, Betty fired six times. The bullets thudded into the mattresses; two of them seemed to brush the target.
Betty lowered the gun in dismay, and made a remark in some foreign language; she was fair, and Murdoch recalled that she was Norwegian.
‘Yes,’ Hunt agreed. ‘I want you to be fast, but not so fast that you miss the target altogether. You are quite dead.’ He half turned his head, awaiting instruction from behind him.
‘Monique,’ Mrs Bryant said.
‘Monique,’ Hunt repeated. He took the revolver from Betty’s hand, and began to reload it with cartridges taken from a box on the table. While Monique began to jog round and round the room. And if Murdoch had found Betty fascinating, he found Monique breathtaking. Heavy breasts sliding up and down beneath her singlet, muscles trembling in her calves and thighs, dark hair swaying to and fro as she ran, sweat starting to trickle down her temples, she was an entrancing spectacle. And she was very fit; she did not pant as Betty had done.
‘Shooting accurately when one has just engaged in violent physical activity is difficult,’ Mrs Bryant commented, softly. ‘But it is what these girls will have to do, if they ever have to shoot at all.’
‘Yes,’ Murdoch said, watching Monique.
The Triumph Page 12
