A Gathering of Saints

by A Gathering of Saints (retail) (epub)

  ‘I could be the spy, you know.’

  Volk shook his head. ‘You’re not. And even if you were, I couldn’t tell you anything you wanted to know.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ sighed Claus. He smoked and looked up at the window. The other man was right. They were just a couple of pilots unlucky enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  ‘Shit,’ said Volk after another silence.

  ‘Um,’ agreed Claus.

  Volk got up and went to the sink. He checked his socks with a thumb and forefinger. ‘Still damp,’ he grunted. ‘I hate damp socks.’

  ‘Me too.’ If Claus had been alone he might have cried. As it was, he stared at the floor. Idiotically he found himself thinking about a girl he knew in Neukolln, on Burkner Strasse. Her name was Lena and she’d been the first girl to let him do it to her. All he could remember about her now was the smell of the peppermint schnapps he’d used to get her drunk. He wondered how long it was going to be before he had either a woman or peppermint schnapps again. He let out a long fluttering sigh then cleared his throat, embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Volk stubbed out his cigarette into the ashtray on the table, then crossed to where Claus was sitting. He patted him on the shoulder. ‘I know exactly how you feel.’ He sat down on the bed beside his new friend. ‘The worst of it is I was looking forward to playing a little night music on Thursday.’

  ‘Were you part of Mondscheinsonate?’ asked Claus, interested. Moonlight Sonata was the operational code name for the biggest operation to be mounted since the first London bombings in September.

  Volk nodded. ‘Yes. We were going to be the escort for KG100. It would have been exciting.’

  ‘Which target do you think is going to be first?’ ‘Regenschirm. Birmingham is the most important target.’

  ‘I thought it might be Korn. Coventry’s not as big but the Cornercraft Works is making the new Spitfire engines; at least that’s what they told us at the briefing.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Volk shrugged. ‘Not that it makes any difference to you or me anymore.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. We’re out of it now. Shit.’ Claus took a last pull on his cigarette, then put it out. ‘I wonder what happens next?’

  ‘An interrogation. Then off to a proper camp, I guess.’ Volk let out a long, shuddering yawn. ‘I think I’m going to sleep now if you don’t mind. I’m still pretty slagged from yesterday.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  The two men spent a few minutes arranging their bunks, then lay down, listening to the rain. Before he knew it, Gustav Claus was asleep. An hour later he was roused by the sound of footsteps outside the door to their room and then the rattling of a key in the lock.

  The sergeant in the beret appeared, roused Oberleutnant Volk and marched him off. Claus tried to stay awake until his friend returned but his eyes closed of their own accord a few moments later and then he was asleep again, dreaming of Lena on Burkner Strasse and peppermint schnapps.

  * * *

  ‘Bloody marvellous!’ gloated Col. John Masterman. The uniformed ex-Oxford don was sitting behind a cluttered desk in a dimly lit office on the main floor of the Trent Park ‘Cage.’ On the desk in front of him there were piles of prisoner dossiers, several grey Flugbuch flight logs and a special Air Ministry edition of the 1939 Michelin Guide for France. Across from Masterman, Dr Charles Tennant was sprawled in a leather-covered armchair, smoking a cigarette and taking occasional sips from the steaming mug of tea resting on the edge of the desk.

  The psychiatrist was still wearing the Luftwaffe flight suit he’d worn while playing the role of Oberleutnant Volk, a real ME 109 pilot who’d been shot down the day before and who was now occupying a room three doors down from Gustav Claus on the third floor of the Cockfosters mansion. According to Masterman, the two men would be taken from their cells separately then sent on to different camps. Claus would go to Grizdale Hall in Lancashire, while the real Jurgen Volk would be interned at the Hayes, a converted resort hotel in Staffordshire.

  ‘Frankly, I was scared out of my wits,’ said Tennant, his voice weary. ‘He was very suspicious. He almost caught me with that question about the Beausejour.’ The psychiatrist glanced at the Michelin Guide. ‘I didn’t have much time to bone up on things and I also thought my German might be a bit rusty.’

  ‘You did a wonderful job, Tennant, and on very short notice. I’m very grateful, old man. That bit about the damp socks was a stroke of genius and your idea of the preliminary physical examination was bang on.’

  ‘It’s a variation on a very old theme. Frighten the subject then quickly put him at his ease. Make him feel safe and you gain his confidence. Basic Pavlovian technique.’

  ‘Um, of course. Whatever the case, it seems to do the trick. We’ll have to do it again.’

  ‘You’ll have to find another actor.’ Tennant smiled. ‘I don’t think I could do it very often.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody self-effacing, man. You could have a career on the stage. He swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.’

  ‘An interesting experiment.’ Tennant shrugged. ‘I’m not sure how valuable it might be in the long run.’

  ‘Valuable enough, long run or not. As it is, our friend Claus has given us confirmation of their big Moonlight Sonata raid.’

  ‘So that’s what you meant when you mentioned ‘a little night music.’ I was wondering about that. You told me what to say but I didn’t understand it.’ The psychiatrist paused. ‘Confirmation?’

  ‘Um.’ Masterman nodded. He began gathering up bundles of dossiers. ‘Always nice to have a second source.’ He made a little grunting noise under his breath and scowled. ‘Should get up their noses a bit in B Department. One nose in particular.’ He looked up at Tennant briefly, light from the gooseneck lamp on the desk reflecting off his glasses. ‘I really shouldn’t say too much. Telling tales out of school and all that.’

  There was a knock at the door and an Army corporal entered. He saluted Masterman, placed three spools of recording wire on the desk and left the room.

  Reaching down behind the desk, Masterman brought up a fat War Office-issue briefcase and began filling it with the files and dossiers. He topped it off with the spools of wire then snapped the satchel shut.

  ‘You will be discreet about this, won’t you, Doctor?’ There was a faint note of anxiety in the older man’s voice. ‘It was very short notice. I suppose I should have gone through channels but…’

  ‘Don’t worry, Colonel.’ Tennant waved a hand. ‘My lips are sealed.’

  ‘Good show,’ said Masterman, relieved. He brightened. ‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. As soon as I change out of these damp socks.’ Tennant smiled and then both men laughed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tuesday, November 12, 1940

  9:30 p.m., Greenwich Mean Time

  Katherine Copeland climbed up out of the Oxford Circus tube station and took a deep, shuddering breath as she stepped into the night. The station below was a pest hole of foul, barely ventilated air and even this early the platforms were already awash in excrement. The newly installed bunks were filled to overflowing and hundreds more shelters were crowded onto the stalled escalator steps.

  The noise level was appalling: mothers calling to children, screaming babies, the screech of arriving and departing trains, whistles being blown, cries, moans, hysterical laughter, layer upon layer and underneath it all a steady muttering, mindless chatter like some mythical slumber beast beneath the ground.

  Certainly not the stuff of Priestley’s regular radio ‘chats’ with his ‘indomitable cockney cheerfulness’ and his ‘getting on with it,’ his grinning omnibus driver with a ‘Morning, gov’nor,’ and the pudgy writer’s relentless stout-hearted optimism.

  Instead of sitting in his cosy BBC studio, maybe he could try ‘chatting’ from one of the makeshift toilets in the Oxford Circus underground, Katherine thought, or attempt to interview a cheerful cockney who’
d just seen his wife and children blown to bits in front of his eyes. It grated on her; they were already trying to make the war into a myth of good and evil.

  People like Priestley were casting the British people as St George, and Hitler and his Luftwaffe as the fire-breathing dragon. White would triumph over black, fairies wouldn’t die if you clapped hard enough, and if we were all good and true, King Arthur might just come back, wielding Excalibur against the jackboot swarms.

  And it just wasn’t true. This war was about people cowering in the shit-stink of subway stations, waiting for their lives to be snuffed out in the blink of an eye, not knights in shining armour. It was about people like Larry Bingham and Wild Bill Donovan.

  ‘To hell with them,’ Katherine said quietly. She’d been taken off the case and that was just fine with her. If Larry Bingham didn’t want her services, perhaps Morris Black would. So a peace offering was in order and hence her late-night visit to George Buckman at the BBC.

  She found him on the roof of the pale, art deco building. Partially hidden by a set of large, softly moaning blowers, Buckman, a tall, totally bald man in a tweed suit, was holding a large microphone out over the bars of the safety railing that ran around the edge of the building. Several boxes of equipment were at his feet. From that distance, silhouetted against the flashing, fire-lit sky, he seemed to have a pair of enormous teacups over his ears, but as she edged around the blowers and approached him, Katherine realised that he was wearing headphones.

  Sensing her presence behind him, the tall man turned slightly and held a finger to his lips, gesturing for silence. He went back to what he was doing, his arm extended over the railing, gripping the microphone. Katherine tiptoed to the edge of the roof, joining him. She looked out, trying to orient herself.

  They were standing at the south-west corner of the building, overlooking the squat clock tower and one of the soaring transmission masts, looking like a Texas oil derrick that had somehow found its way to the top of the building. On the rounded balcony two floors below was the canvas-shrouded bulk of the giant loudspeaker that transmitted the natural-strength sounding of Big Ben once a day.

  To her right, on the far side of Portland Place, was the dark, château-like rectangle of the Langham Hotel, while to her left, partially screened by the transmission mast, was the spire of All Souls. A little farther east, vanishing and reappearing in the cloud-reflected flashes of the ack-ack guns, was the oblong dome of Queen’s Hall with Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell beyond, a jagged sea of rooftops and chimney pots, black, spiked shadows flaring in the pink and yellow hellfire sky.

  The air was filled with the moaning of the sirens, the banshee wail of falling bombs, the rip and tear of the pounding ack-ack and the shrill clatter of racing fire engines and ambulances on the streets below as they rushed wildly towards the spreading threads of brilliant white that marked each new fire. It was a scene from Dante. Staring, Katherine Copeland felt her mouth go dry and her heart begin to pound as she tried to take in the terrible sights and sounds of a city being destroyed before her very eyes.

  From somewhere in the distance on her right, far away to the south-west, there was a sudden, incredibly brilliant flash of light followed by a massive explosion so powerful she felt it shudder up through the building beneath her feet. It felt as though a dozen bombs had detonated together on a single target, and the rising multicoloured mushroom of roiling smoke and flame was so intense that she could make out the hulking rectangle of Victoria Station, more than a mile and a half away.

  ‘Jesus!’ she whispered then realised what she had done. The man next to her turned slightly, shook his head and pulled the headphones off his ears, letting them dangle around his neck. He bent down and switched off the wire recorder at his feet. Unhooking the microphone, he placed it carefully in its own box and stood up, looking in the direction of the stunning explosion.

  ‘Gas main. Maybe two,’ he said firmly, lifting his voice above the surrounding din. ‘Can’t mistake it. Bombs go, “Whiiizzzzzz! Thump! Kabang!” Gas main goes, “Kerrack! Whoomph!”’ He squinted into the darkness. ‘Looks nasty.’ Turning back to Katherine, he smiled pleasantly. ‘You’d be Miss Copeland, I expect.’ He held out a small, delicate hand.

  ‘And you’re George Buckman.’

  ‘That’s right. If you’ll give me a hand with this equipment, we can go down to my office for a chat.’

  Buckman’s office turned out to be a small room on the seventh floor of the building, just down the hall from the two-storeyed sound effects studio in the central core. Not only was the entire core soundproofed, it was also insulated by the outlying offices, meeting areas and conference chambers that ringed the various studios, totally isolating it from the outside world.

  Buckman’s room was lined floor to ceiling with steel shelving enamelled in a revolting apple green that was probably supposed to be cheerful. The shelves were choked with hundreds of objects, some obviously musical instruments, others less recognisable: strips of wood studded with small nails, a tin can filled with pebbles, sand paper glued to table tennis paddles, thin metal disks threaded with lengths of string, bunches of keys, an assortment of megaphones, balled-up sheets of cellophane, a metal throat-lozenge box filled with odd coins. Junk collector’s dream and a housewife’s nightmare, Katherine thought.

  There were two chairs in the room, both of the wooden swivel type, no desk and a small pass-through window with a glass slider that looked into another room, brightly lit, lined with fibre insulation that looked like the inside of an egg container and fitted out with half a dozen microphones mounted on metal brackets that looked like kitchen lazy tongs.

  ‘The sound effects studio,’ Buckman explained, seeing Katherine peering through the little window. ‘I call it my laboratory.’ He put his boxes of recording equipment on the floor and dropped into one of the chairs. Katherine took the other.

  ‘I’m sorry if I caused you any problem on the roof,’ she apologised.

  Buckman shrugged. ‘Not to worry. Just gathering a bit of wild sound. Comes in handy.’

  ‘Bombs exploding?’

  ‘The correspondents seem to like it. Especially your American colleagues. Gives their broadcasts a bit of verisimilitude. A bomb in the background now and again fleshes out their reports.’ Buckman smiled and ran one hand over his bald scalp. ‘But I gather you’re not interested in sound effects, exploding bombs or otherwise.’

  ‘I was talking to a friend of mine at the newspaper. He said you were the local expert on rural Germany. He thought you could help me.’

  ‘Bit of an overstatement, calling me an expert.’ Buckman cleared his throat and Katherine smiled, trying not to laugh. The man was blushing, the pink flush running right up to the top of his head. She’d never seen anything like it. ‘I’m really just an amateur rambler.’

  According to Katherine’s colleague, Buckman was indeed a rambler but far from an amateur. As well as being a recording engineer for the BBC, he was also past president of the British Federation of Rambling Clubs, chairman of the Continental Ramblers Association and an associate member of something called the Commons, Open Spaces, and Footpaths Preservation Society. Under the pseudonym of Walker Miles he had authored more than a dozen rambling guides including More Rambles for Londoners, Rambling Through Bavaria and Shanks Mare: The Compleat European Rambler. Apparently, given a pair of stout boots and a rucksack, George Buckman would, and did, walk anywhere.

  Katherine opened her bag and took out an eight-by-ten enlargement of the photograph Morris Black had taken from the wall of Ivor Dranie’s house in Southampton. She’d had the darkroom technician at the newspaper blow it up, concentrating on the central portion of the picture, keeping the foreground figures in focus and making the sign on the building behind them legible. She handed the photograph to Buckman.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know where this is, do you?’ Buckman held the photograph close to his face, examining it carefully. He nodded then handed it back to her. ‘The Gasthaus Stro
beck. They do a lovely schnitzel as I recall.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’ said Katherine, astounded.

  ‘’Thirty-six and again in ’thirty-eight.’ Buckman nodded again. ‘Dull little place, actually. In the Harz Mountains, near Halberstadt, between Berlin and Weimar. Not much to recommend it really, except for the chess.’

  ‘Chess?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I thought that’s what you were interested in.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Look at the photograph. The figures in the foreground.’

  ‘They look as though they’re going to some kind of costume party.’

  ‘They’re going to a chess tournament. The woman in the front is the black queen and the man beside her is the king. The fellow in the tall square hat with the spear in his hand is a rook – castle I think you call it in America. The one with the horse headpiece is a knight, and so on… pawns, bishops, another knight.’

  ‘My God,’ Katherine whispered, looking down at the picture. ‘You’re right.’ It was so obvious she’d completely overlooked it.

  ‘From what I can remember, they’re quite mad about the game in the town. There’s some legend about its being the first place chess was played in Europe. Teaching it is even part of the school curriculum. They had a thirteen-year-old grandmaster at the Stockholm Chess Olympiad in 1936. Every year they have a festival with games played using human pieces like the ones in your picture. Bit of a tourist attraction, I suppose, but they take it all quite seriously.’

  ‘And you say there’s nothing else of any special interest in the town? Nothing else important?’

  ‘Not really. It’s a bit off the beaten track except for people like me.’ Buckman flushed again.

  Katherine looked down at the photograph. ‘So there’s no other reason for someone to hang this picture in his parlour except for its connection to the game?’

  Buckman shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Anyone displaying that photograph would almost certainly be a chess player. And probably a bit of a fanatic at that.’