by Thomas Wood
“Here we are sirs,” he announced as he raced round, pulling at Captain Jameson’s door first, before I found a wheelchair-bearing private at my door, ushering me to sit in it. I stared at the whacking great building before me, that was built in a commanding triangular shape on the corner of two incredibly busy streets, rising up to at least seven stories high.
Windows ran along at every storey, from as far back as I could see on either side, until they met at the pinnacle of the point where we had parked. I suddenly found myself feeling quite daunted and almost overwhelmed, at the sheer size of the building at the subsequent importance of the people who resided inside of it.
Captain Jameson arrived alongside me, his cap now firmly on his head.
“Impressive isn’t it? Opened in 1885 for European travellers and the like. Today it’s owned by the military. Come on in.”
The reception area was awash with all different kinds of military insignia as they rushed all over the place in a blur, throwing pieces of paper at one another, while also sharing the collective cigarette smoke that hung in the air.
The vast majority of the people there, the women included, were dressed in the British Army’s colours of dark khaki green, but there were a few blues denoting an Air Force presence, as well as one or two black uniforms of the Royal Navy. They all seemed terribly important and busy, but a few men, dressed in normal civilian suits, albeit smart ones, simply sat in the corner of the room, smoking and observing, as if they were far too important as to get involved in the hustle and bustle of all this war work.
I wondered which one Captain Jameson’s Uncle Rupert was. I began sniggering to myself as he waved to one of them enthusiastically, receiving a less than half-hearted wave in return.
“This way,” he announced unperturbed, and quickly ushered me across the room and into the nearby elevator.
“Ever heard of the Flying Prince?”
“The rugby player?”
“Yes, well, after his three tries against the All Blacks in ’36, the team retired here after the match, only to find that the New Zealanders were already here!”
He continued to chortle at his unimpressive story all the way up to the sixth floor, where we eventually stopped. Looking at his watch, Jameson suddenly became very excited, “Come on, come on, this way, this way.”
He began gallivanting down the hallway, where there were fewer doors than one would have expected from a hotel.
He stopped at one door and stood staring at me as I was wheeled towards him.
“You might want to ditch that thing now.” He said with a changed air of respect and decorum, I wondered if he would have maintained that same air if he had actually looked at me properly and realised that I was perhaps the filthiest visitor ever to this building.
As he began to knock on room number 424, I felt an overwhelming sense of occasion, like this was the moment that would define the rest of my life, and those three little numbers, 4-2-4, would come to mean so much more to me than three numbers on a hotel room door.
As the door was opened, I was greeted by such a high concentration of khaki, that I didn’t think I would be able to make it through, and as I squeezed through the doorframe, I got more than one or two looks of discontent at the putrid figure that had just stumbled in.
“Jimmy!” called Jameson, “Jim! He’s here!”
From somewhere in the room appeared a small, but authoritative figure, a small pencil like moustache stretched out expertly across his top lip and a piercing stare that struck fear in every inch of my being.
As soon as he laid eyes on me however, the steely exterior was gone, and a broad smile exploded across his face, as if he was some long-lost friend that he hadn’t seen for years.
“So, you’re the one that killed that treacherous so-and-so Captain Long are you?! We’ve been trailing him for months and then just like that he’s dead? You caused a right raucous amongst our intelligence I can tell you!”
I looked at him quizzically for a moment as he controlled his laughter, before he launched into a barrage of monologue explaining that the Captain that I had managed to ‘dispatch of’ had caused the British Military an almighty headache, apparently rounding up hundreds of French soldiers claiming that the British and French had capitulated, and were now fighting the Communists in the rest of the country. Until that is, one night he was found murdered in a forest in Northern France.
I found myself laughing at the sheer hilarity of the entire episode. I had walked hundreds of miles, cycled hundreds more and these people were interested only in something that took a matter of seconds in the hours upon hours of my journey.
“I want you to come and work with us.” He suddenly announced, “here in British Military Intelligence, Section Nine. MI9 to all of us lot.” He threw his arms open widely and began pivoting on the spot, indicating that he meant the whole room and not just where he stood.
“You are useful to us Lieutenant, you know what it’s like. We need someone like you to help us coordinate our efforts.”
“There’s one thing that I’d like you to help me with before I agree, Sir.” I asked, courteously.
“Anything you want, Lewis.”
“I was with a Franco-American nurse, Cécile Brodeur. Someone turned her over, I’d like to find out who and whether she’s still alive or not.”
“Of course, Lewis. We can certainly try. But, two things first, from here on in, you are Captain Lewis, British Military Intelligence. Secondly, we have got to get you in that shower!”
THE END
The Executioner
Alfie Lewis Thrillers Book 2
Thomas Wood
1
I had hopped off the train on my return from Kent and was immediately met by the most harrowing and toe curling wails like that of a Banshee, as people slowly picked up their pace and made for the nearest air raid shelters.
No one seemed to run, not a single person even broke out into a jog, but instead opted to leisurely stroll to somewhere that they could be relatively safe.
I had seen the devastating effects of the German bombs on the parts of London that I had managed to visit in the week or so that I had been back in Britain, immediately admiring the resolve of the Londoners who had to put up with it night after night.
Kent hadn’t got away with it totally either, the bombers frequently dropping their surplus bombs on the residents there, as they made their getaway back home, an incredible inconsideration on the Germans’ part I thought.
I had had a wonderful few days back home in Kent and it had filled me with the oddest sensation, an almost alien-like feeling, as I got back home after so long of being away. It wasn’t the fact that I was back home that had made me feel strange, but the notion that I no longer had to be looking over my shoulder every ten yards, checking for the Gestapo or German soldier, listening in to what I was saying.
I found myself still having to be exceptionally careful over what I said, and to whom, especially as I had been made to read the Official Secrets Act from cover to cover and back again, having the bleak reality of the punishment of death impressed upon me, if I were to break the strict code.
Room 424, the very door that I had stared at in my rags and in my filth, had now become my office, as I officially became part of MI9, the intelligence organisation tasked with liaising with various groups in France, to aid Allied servicemen in getting back to Britain. I had become one of the celebrities in the department; as one of the only people with active experience of what it was like over in France, I was given the job of briefing the rest of the department on what was most essential while on the run and how to avoid detection by the Germans.
I felt rather like a fraud whilst giving those lectures. I had, in truth, done very little in order to get my sorry state back to Britain, on more than one occasion taking up the assistance of various French civilians to acquire papers and money, that ultimately led to my arrest by the British military. But, as Jimmy Tempsford, commanding officer of the dep
artment had pointed out, even my limited knowledge of the situation was vastly beneficial to those who had never been there and so, I continued my lectures about my “little jolly to France,” with a renewed vigour and enthusiasm.
Captain Jameson, the man who had interrogated me for hours with no hint of whether he was a friend or foe, quite quickly became disgruntled with the fact that he could no longer laud his superior rank over me, as he had shown me to a lavish room in the hotel, apparently one of the only rooms in the entire building still used for its original purpose.
After a quick shave, a longer bath and an even more drawn out sleep, I soon began to feel more like Captain Alfred Lewis, Military Intelligence Section Nine, rather than Lieutenant Alfie Lewis, Royal Tank Regiment, who had spent the vast majority of his career as lost and scared.
I was granted a few days of leave by Jimmy Tempsford and I instinctively hopped onto a train heading for Kent, naturally buying a First Class ticket now that I had the additional luxury of a Captain’s pay, allowing me to stretch my limbs out in all directions, as they continued to recover from the cramp and exhaustion that they had endured in France.
Aside from the cramps, that were plaguing my limbs, the only other injuries that I still carried any evidence of was the scarring from the blisters all over my feet which, after yellowing and drying out, simply fell off and I found bits of dried skin floating around in my sock for the next few days.
The scar from the bullet wound that I had absorbed courtesy of the rat-faced traitor, had healed up nicely, now only a small patch of skin, that was slightly lighter and almost thinner than the rest remained. The bullet itself had managed to lodge inside me somewhere, but Monsieur Paquet had done a marvellous job at sanitising the area, somehow preventing an infection from the round that would now remain inside of me for the rest of my days.
A large chunk of the train journey south to Kent was spent with my skull crashing into the window frame beside my seat, as I dropped off into an unconscious trance, one that was littered with the hallucinations of the people that I had let down, most of whom I now knew to be dead.
I hobbled and winced my way down the streets that were so familiar to me, but somehow so new, before turning to head down Broad Street, the paved road that I had spent the first twenty years of my life kicking footballs up and down, or limping home after a day playing out in the fields.
Number 142 stood as it always did, the small lamppost still standing guard faithfully outside of it, the green door now noticeably lighter than it had been than when I last saw it, with some of the paintwork now beginning to flake off sporadically.
I stood at the door for what must have been hours, torturing my mind to the point that I made myself feel physically sick, recalling what I had done just to make it back here. I toyed with the idea of simply turning round, musing that it was probably best for my parents to believe that I was dead, particularly after they saw what had happened to their son, and the dark cloud that loomed over him. The thing that had haunted me the most was knowing that none of it would have been the same, there was no way of reverting back to that childlike innocence that I had left behind in the spring of 1939.
Without thinking, and feeling rather pleased with myself, I finally rapped on the door knocker that had been in my sweaty clutches for ten minutes prior, which was then met by a kind old face that I instantly recognised.
She had aged since I had last laid my sight on her, the creases that had clutched at her eyes when she so frequently smiled had morphed somehow, now showcasing a pair of tired eyes, eyes that had grown weary of crying every night and most mornings too. Her skin had paled, not the familiar tones of red and sun-kissed cheeks but a pasty, nasty white, a skin that had quite clearly struggled to have emerged from the house, for well over a year.
Despite all of this; the change in her face, the slightly more hunched frame from all the praying and the desperate-looking eyes, I could still see her, the woman who had spent hours teaching me, moulding me into the man that had left for war.
My eyes became awash with tears the moment I saw her, the downcast expression that she wore, opting just to stare at me for a second or two. The few grey hairs that now adorned her head, another new addition since we had last seen each other, began flickering gently in the breeze, as she took her first step out of the front door in an age.
“Mum…” I mumbled pathetically, before the crackles seemed to get the better of me.
She said nothing at all, but launched herself at me in triumph, which is how we stood, for the next ten minutes or so, as she sobbed and wept into my chest.
It was in those few minutes that I realised, in spite of all the changes that had been forced upon her over the last few months, she was still the same woman. She was still my loving, kind mum, the one who only ever wanted the best for me. It was the first time that I felt truly happy in well over a year.
“They told me you were dead,” she blubbed into my brand-new uniform, “why would they do that to me?”
I could find no other words other than a futile apology, which I repeated over and over until she ushered me into the house. Everything was the same, all the photos of me and Bill growing up through the years still hung patiently where they were, with one still missing the glass from the frame, as a result of Bill and me becoming slightly too aggressive one Saturday afternoon.
I hesitated momentarily, as mum charged through into the kitchen, going through the obligatory movements of putting the kettle on. I stood in the doorway staring, not wanting to put a foot inside the room as if it was some sort of minefield.
It too, was still in the same layout as I had left it, nothing had changed. It was also the same layout as it had been in my dreams; the dream where Cécile had told me she was dead. The dream where Alan Clarke had been waiting for me, the one where Red told me that it was me who had killed him, no one else.
But it was the chair nearest the door that held my gaze the longest, the one facing away from me and out of the back door. It was there that the mysterious, darkened figure had sat, the one in the car in Paris, part of the team who had bundled me into the back and away from the Hotel La Romaine.
I felt sick as I watched him turning towards me, drawing breath to speak to me, but never getting much further than a quarter turn, taunting me. I would wake in floods of perspiration as I had strained to see who he was, to hear what he was trying to say, before spending the next few hours worryingly queasy that I would have the same dream later that night.
My thoughts were interrupted as a figure joined us in the kitchen.
“Dad,” I stammered as we both went through the same emotional rollercoaster that Mum and I had experienced earlier. He gripped his kneecaps, as if he had completely lost his breath, waddling his way over to me in the same manner, before reaching up to touch my face, before finally looking up at me.
“My boy was dead…now here he is!”
He almost collapsed into his chair at the table, before beckoning me earnestly to tell him everything that had happened. I left out large chunks of my story, for fear of causing undue stress on my mother, giving them both the sanitised version of events. There would be plenty of time to talk after the war was over.
“Where’s Bill?” I queried, rather innocently, but immediately sensing that I had asked the wrong question for the occasion.
“He joined the West Kent Regiment after we were told you were dead. He shipped out with the First Division last week.”
My heart sank at the thought that I had been the one to send my brother into the army, and that it was now incredibly unlikely that I would see him at all now until after the war was over.
“Where’s he gone?”
“Egypt…we think.”
A silence ensued before we tried to carry on as if nothing had happened, the chattering and laughing becoming the soundtrack for the two days that I managed to stay with them. In those forty-eight hours that I had reconnecting with my parents, I realised that my soul had been unc
ontrollably happy, peaceful even.
The peacefulness and serenity had been shattered within a few minutes of being back in London, the banshee calls obliterating it with a brutal effectiveness.
I looked around in utter bemusement at what to do in this situation. I could already hear the enemy bombers ahead and this was the first time that I had been caught outside of the hotel, where the basement had been only a short stroll down some stairs.
Now, I had no other option, but to follow the swarms of people that all made for the same direction, apart from the occasional Air Raid Precaution warden that swam against the tide, pulling on their steel hats as they did so.
I was discourteously bundled towards the nearby underground station, where I stood totally bewildered for a moment or two.
“’Ere ya go guv’nor,” one man said to me, slapping a small piece of paper into the palm of my hand, “I’m needed down at the station. I ain’t gonna be needing this tonight.”
I looked down at the brilliant white piece of card that he had practically stuck to my palm and furrowed my eyebrows at the words.
‘Admit one person for shelter at Wood Green Station.’ I went to read on before I was interrupted by a shout.
“Oi, Captain! You comin’ down ‘ere or are you waiting for the Germans to blow you to pieces up ‘ere!”
I staggered my way over to the ticket inspector, who practically pushed me down into the station the second I was within arm’s reach of the bloke.
I thundered down the stairs as the moaning of engines grew louder and louder, before they were replaced with the hubbub of chatting and even the occasional laughter. Upon getting to the bottom of the staircase, I was utterly taken aback by the layout of the place, on either side of the walls, was row upon row of bunk beds, the vast majority of which had already been taken, and I could already see people lying out on the platforms on makeshift beds.
