Artillery of Lies

by Derek Robinson

  “So what? And I don’t understand this crazy new anti-personnel mine of yours. So it’s made out of wood. So what? Anyway they were my clothes. If I hang them on the floor that’s my affair.”

  “It’s my affair when I trip over them. Why is it such a terrible burden to put your clothes away? I don’t understand you, I really don’t.”

  “Well, I don’t understand your obsession with toilet rolls.”

  “The whole point is they don’t show up on mine-detectors. I thought I made that clear,” Luis said. He frowned at the page. “I must have forgotten to put it in.”

  “Heavens above,” Julie said. “God has stumbled.”

  “I’ll write something. Also wooden splinters can be very lethal at close range. Wood is cheap. Satisfied?”

  “Very lethal?” Julie stuck her pencil in her hair and scratched her head. “I’d have thought a thing was either lethal or it wasn’t. Still, you should know.”

  Luis crossed out very. “Christ Almighty, for someone who can’t hang her clothes up you can be damn touchy.”

  She slid off the bed and stood staring at him. “You sure you want to go on with this? Or d’you just want to score points? I can think of—”

  “Here we go again. Same old—”

  “Am I allowed to finish?”

  Luis threw up his hands. “Go ahead. Make your little speech. I’ve heard it a dozen times.”

  “You’ve never heard it because you never listen because you don’t really care about anyone except Luis.”

  “See? Told you I’d heard it.”

  “Go ahead: score another point. You remind me of my kid brother. You think you win everything by scoring points.”

  “And your trouble is you never left home. I am nobody’s kid brother!” Luis was beginning to shout. “You would like it, wouldn’t you? Someone you could boss about! Not me, baby. Not me!”

  “More B-movie dialogue.” She put her shoes on.

  “Life is a B-movie,” Luis said sourly.

  “Yours, maybe. Not mine. And this is a lousy B-movie script.” She tossed the carbon copy on to the other bed. “Where did you get this crap about bomber-crew losses over Frankfurt? It stinks.”

  “I got it from Knickers. Can’t you read?”

  “Knickers is a jerk. Average nine percent losses per raid? If you think anyone’s going to believe that you’re dumber than my kid brother. Still, if you want Eldorado to look stupid, go ahead. Why should I care?”

  “No reason at all. It’s only a world war.”

  “You could have fooled me.” She went out. Selfish self-centered immature bastard, she was thinking when she met Freddy Garcia coming along the corridor.

  “I just knocked on your door,” he said. “There’s an extra treat laid on for tomorrow. A visit to Liverpool railway station.”

  “Shit-hot,” she said flatly.

  “I’m told it’s an architectural gem,” Freddy said.

  “Listen: when you put a new toilet roll in the holder, how do you fit it? With the tail hanging down the front of the roll, or the back?”

  He frowned. “To be honest, I’ve never given it much thought.”

  “Luis thinks of nothing else. If the tail doesn’t hang down the front it’s a capital offense. I discovered that in Lisbon. Can you imagine what it’s like living with that sort of paranoia?”

  “We all have our little quirks,” Freddy suggested.

  “Tell that to the 114th Division,” she said as she walked away. “I’m sure they’ll find it a great consolation.”

  “How can I?” Freddy asked. “They don’t exist.”

  “Very wise decision,” she called back. “Sometimes I wish I’d made it myself.”

  Nobody can feel rotten forever. Misery is like fear: eventually the last drop drains out of you and despite yourself you begin to feel almost halfway normal again. Laszlo maintained his misery all the way to Dublin, and even managed to stoke it up a bit on the little branch train that took them to the ferry terminal at Dún Laoghaire: speaking to nobody, taking a stoic pride in his aching hunger, loathing everyone, and courageously resigned to the utter failure of his high mission because of the selfish folly of others. I shall make the supreme sacrifice, he told himself over and over again, and only God will know. Then they were off the train and into the docks, and Docherty had bought four tickets to Liverpool, and the men in passport control didn’t look at them twice, and they were on board the steam ferry Maid of the Mersey. A strangely unfamiliar wave of optimism swept over Laszlo before he could stop it. He was going to land in England after all. His destiny would not be denied!

  The ferry fascinated him. This was the first time he had been on a ship, and it was a far more wonderful creation than the ocean liners he had seen in Hollywood movies. They had been like luxury hotels with views of the sea: spacious, bright, elegant, dotted with potted palms and never lacking a smiling steward to adjust one’s deckchair. The Maid of the Mersey was different. She was old and dirty and packed with servicemen returning from leave and as soon as she cleared the harbor all her outside lights went out, while the inside lights were dimmed and officers went around checking the blackout. Laszlo was impressed: the war reached right to the edge of Ireland. He could be sunk by a U-boat or strafed by the Luftwaffe. The thrill of risk raised his spirits. Somewhere deep in the ship there were hugely powerful engines making a rumbling thunder which (this surprised him) caused everything to vibrate. He rested his head against some hulking piece of multi-riveted steel and felt the trembling, and occasionally the shuddering, that possessed the ship as breathing possesses a great beast. No Hollywood liner had been like that. Laszlo enjoyed a quiet sense of superiority over those dumb Madrid movie audiences who thought they were watching the truth! But what impressed him most of all was the smell. It was a heady blend of ozone, burned oil, coal smoke and sea-salt, all laced with a whiff of fried onions. He filled and refilled his lungs until his ribs creaked.

  Ten minutes on deck was enough, however. There was nothing to see but black night and white wake. Laszlo grew bored and went back to the saloon. It was packed with men: playing cards, singing, reading magazines, writing letters. Docherty was dozing; Ferenc had gone to find food. Stephanie was looking after the suitcases. “Nothing can stop us now,” Laszlo told her. “Remember this moment. I think history will look back and say: That was the turning-point. Nothing was the same after that. Nothing.”

  “Good,” she said. Laszlo was almost smiling, so she smiled back. “I’m glad you’re happy.” On impulse she gave him a quick hug. It startled him. Nobody had hugged Laszlo since he was four. “Look, try and be nice to Ferenc,” she said. “He doesn’t mean any harm, you know. He just can’t resist a joke, that’s all.”

  “Ferenc is very funny.” Now Laszlo actually laughed, and it was Stephanie’s turn to be startled. Laszlo couldn’t laugh properly, he didn’t know how; the best he could do was a tight heh-heh-heh. But she was relieved to hear it: if Laszlo could laugh, perhaps things weren’t so bad after all. Ever since they boarded the ferry, and she had realized that from now on one little slip would be enough to hang her, Stephanie had known that her great mistake was in ever agreeing to come to England. She was no spy. She could never be a spy. She had been brought up to tell the truth; her family were Lutherans; her father even refused to go to the cinema because it was unreal, distorted, counterfeit. The first time she tried to tell an Englishman a lie she would blush like a beetroot, she knew it. This expedition was all a dreadful blunder. All done for love. She was here for the love of Otto Krafft. Her heart kept kicking like an angry infant in the womb and she wanted to forget the awful future she was being carried toward by this terrible, squalid ship. “We had a good time in Madrid, didn’t we?” she said. “Do you remember Ferenc at the bullfight when he bought all the peanuts?”

  Docherty said, “And the oranges, and the chorizos, and the sugar doughnuts.” He yawned. “I could demolish a sugar doughnut or five myself right now.”

 
; “That was a wonderful evening,” Stephanie said, eyes aglow. “I really enjoyed myself.”

  “So did I,” Laszlo said. “So did I.”

  “So did we all,” Docherty said. “Maybe not the bulls, perhaps, but …”

  “For the bulls, if they are brave bulls, it is the greatest moment of all,” Laszlo declared, and he lectured them on Brave Bulls I Have Known And Killed for five minutes, until Ferenc arrived, carrying four hot sausage sandwiches and four bottles of India Pale Ale. “I had to fight a whole company of British grenadiers to get these,” he said.

  Laszlo was salivating so strongly that he had to swallow. “Not much of a fight,” he said, “for a true Romanov.” The sausage sandwich tasted like prime rump steak.

  “In fact my father was a Hungarian gypsy horse-thief,” Ferenc said. “Killed by a tram in Budapest.” He was rapidly opening bottles and passing them around.

  “That’s a damn lie,” Docherty said comfortably.

  “You’re right, it wasn’t in Budapest,” Ferenc said, “it was in Nyíregyháza, but whoever heard of Nyíregyháza?”

  “I’ve seen his dossier,” Docherty told the others. “I know the truth.”

  “Well, tell us, then,” Stephanie said.

  Docherty took a long swig of beer. “All right,” he said. “Ferenc is really a woman. Ferenc is really Marlene Dietrich.”

  “That’s true,” Ferenc said, “but what you don’t know is that Marlene Dietrich is really Tito, the Yugoslav partisan leader.”

  “Oh, yes?” Laszlo challenged. “In that case, what were you both doing in Madrid jail?”

  “Screwing the head warder,” Ferenc said. “And his wife. On alternate nights.” Docherty laughed and Stephanie giggled but Laszlo only shrugged. He had asked a perfectly sensible question and as usual Ferenc had tried to make him look stupid. All his life, Laszlo had suffered because some worthless brainless shit had made people laugh at him. You watch, he thought. Now that he had some food and drink inside him he suddenly felt quite cocky, and the thought became speech. “You’d better look out,” he said. “All of you.”

  “Myself, I intend to look out for a rich widow,” Docherty said, “preferably a brunette. The trouble with blonds is they show the dirt. I might marry the widow of an English army officer; it would have to be a good county regiment and nothing under lieutenant-colonel, you understand.”

  “Docherty’s a snob,” Stephanie said.

  “I never denied it.”

  “I used to be a snob,” Ferenc said, “but the doctors told me to give it up, it was sapping my strength.” He looked down his nose and flared his nostrils. “See? I was a top snob once.”

  “Where was that?” Laszlo asked.

  “Barcelona penitentiary.” This amused Docherty and Stephanie, and Laszlo wished angrily that he had kept silent. “We had the best snobs in Europe in there until everyone rioted and burned the place down.” Stephanie wanted to know why. “Oh, pride, I suppose,” Ferenc said. “Natural arrogance. Scorn for the peasantry. Also, the food was shit.”

  “I never heard of a fire at Barcelona,” Laszlo said.

  “Maybe it was Valencia. I would have to consult my press-cuttings.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, Ferenc,” Stephanie said, and kissed him.

  “I was afraid you might see through me, sweetheart. It’s just as well. Poor Laszlo has been memorizing all this rubbish so that he can expose me to the proper authorities.”

  “Well done, Laszlo,” Docherty said. “The act of a truly second-rate snob. When I marry the widow you can be my best man. Or second-best. Would that suit you?”

  Laszlo got up and walked away. He knew they were mocking him, even if he didn’t understand exactly how or why. He had to go out on deck, in the fresh air, away from the crowd and the smell and the noise, but when he stepped out he found that it was raining hard.

  He came back inside. Only a few more hours and they would be in Liverpool. He felt a grim contempt for all the men in uniform around him. What did they know of war? They were just numbers. Numbers didn’t change anything. Laszlo felt the same exciting tightness in his throat, the same rapid breathing at the top of his lungs, the same clattering, runaway pulse that he had felt from time to time during the evening of the Brigadier’s farewell dinner party in Madrid. Not long now. Not long.

  Only two or three die-hard card schools survived, little islands of soft talk in a sea of sleepers, when he picked his way across the saloon. All three agents were asleep, Ferenc with his head and arms resting on the stack of suitcases. Laszlo squeezed his shoulder and whispered: “Don’t make a noise.” When Ferenc straightened up and gave a soft groan, Laszlo took the top suitcase. “Come with me,” he whispered. “Don’t wake the others.”

  Ferenc caught up with him as he went through the blackout curtains and on to the deck. The rain had eased but chilling flurries of wetness came slanting out of the night from time to time. “What’s going on?” Ferenc asked. His eyes felt like boiled sweets. His tongue belonged to someone he didn’t like. “What’s up?”

  “I’m going to throw this case into the sea,” Laszlo said. He carried it to the rail and heaved it into the night. Any splash was absorbed by the overwhelming rumble of the ship.

  Ferenc joined him at the rail. “Well,” he said. “So what? I don’t see what it’s got to do with me.” The wind chased his hair round his head.

  “That’s your trouble, Ferenc. You don’t see what anything’s got to do with you. Ever since we landed you’ve played the fool. I think you want us to fail.”

  “And I think you’re a piece of piss. No, you haven’t got the strength to be a piece of piss.” For once, Ferenc lost all patience with Laszlo. “You’re a small fart in a large room, Laszlo. Why d’you think nobody talks to you?”

  “I have friends. In Madrid—”

  “Oh, screw Madrid.”

  “Many friends. I am very popular in Madrid. Everyone wants to talk to me in Madrid. I am very liked and respected in—”

  “There you go again. Me, me, me. Nobody cares a damn about you.”

  That is not true. And why do you always interrupt me? I am as much entitled to my opinion as—’

  “Nobody’s entitled to be as boring as you, Laszlo.”

  “I warn you. Don’t interrupt me again or you—”

  “Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. Now I’m going back to sleep and you can stay and bore the seagulls.” As Ferenc turned, Laszlo raised the pistol and shot him through the ribcage, twice. Ferenc slumped against the rail as if he were about to be sick. Laszlo shot him a third time, in the back of the head, then stuffed the gun in his pocket. He made sure Ferenc’s arms were hanging over the rail, grabbed hold of his ankles and heaved upward. Laszlo was stronger than he looked. One final flourish sent the legs up in the air, and the body cartwheeled into black space.

  Laszlo thought he heard the splash but he couldn’t be sure. He unscrewed the silencer and stowed the weapon in his inside pockets. The time was five to two. He felt much better now.

  The whoop of the ferry’s siren as it entered the Mersey estuary woke everyone up. The saloon became a tangle of moving bodies. Dawn had not yet broken, and in the dim light it was some little time before Docherty and Stephanie realized that Ferenc and Laszlo were not there. No cause for concern. They were probably in the lavatories. Twenty minutes later Laszlo turned up, freshly shaved and very perky. Where was Ferenc? He had no idea. But during the small hours, Laszlo said, Ferenc had told him he had decided not to go to England. He had said he was going to stay on board and return to Ireland. And look: he’s taken his suitcase.

  By now the Maid of the Mersey was docking. It was impossible to search the ship; indeed it was hard enough to force your way along a corridor against the mass of troops and kit-bags. Docherty and Stephanie did their best, and then gave up. There were a hundred places where Ferenc might be hiding. On the dockside, Docherty said, “Why didn’t you wake me and tell me?”

  “
I thought he was joking,” Laszlo said. “You know what a funny man he was.”

  They stared at him. All around was loud activity; only their three figures were still. “This isn’t right,” Stephanie said. “This is all wrong.”

  “A nice cup of tea would be jolly nice,” Laszlo said. “Don’t you think, old sport?”

  *

  When Domenik produced a copy of Christian’s SD dossier, he grew enormously in importance in Christian’s eyes. Before, he had seemed a lightweight, even a bit of a wastrel; now he was clearly a man who had valuable contacts. Christian invented reasons to pass by Domenik’s office; the door was always open and usually he was invited in. Domenik puzzled Christian because he seemed all wrong for the Abwehr: too chatty, too disrespectful, not military enough. He was a great gossip. Normally Christian disapproved strongly of gossip but he made an exception because Domenik’s inside stories turned out to be pretty reliable. They were certainly a damn sight more useful than the stuff churned out by Goebbels’s Department of Propaganda to explain, for instance, the sudden death of Hans Jeschonnek, a man whom Christian had known slightly and admired enormously. Jeschonnek must have been the youngest-ever officer in the German Army—he was commissioned lieutenant when he was only fifteen. That was in 1914. Three years later he became a pilot. In the twenties and thirties he worked as hard as anyone at rebuilding the German air force, and by 1939 he was its Chief of Staff. Then, as the war turned sour, everything went wrong for Jeschonnek. While Marshal Goering neglected his duties as head of the Luftwaffe, he also failed to give Jeschonnek the backing he needed to fight the air war. As Domenik told Christian, all the talk inside the Luftwaffe High Command was of Jeschonnek’s impossible position. Day by day the Allied bombing of Germany grew worse, and week by week Hitler put the blame on Jeschonnek rather than on Goering because Hitler still liked Goering. Jeschonnek was an honorable man. In the end the pressure crushed him. He shot himself. Officially it was a stomach hemorrhage. Christian found Domenik’s version far more credible, and infinitely more depressing.