Death on the Rhine

by Charles Whiting

  ‘The damned country’s going to the dogs!’ the Chief had snorted at their briefing in that mysterious rabbit-warren of a place in Queen Anne’s Gate. ‘But we’re going to stop the buggers getting their way. The King-Emperor has not appointed me to this post in order to allow the country to slip into revolution, begad!’ He had looked at the two young officers standing rigidly to attention in front of the big desk that had once belonged to Nelson, jaw jutting out like the prow of the dreadnought he had once commanded. ‘I want one of those Red buggers nabbed, caught red-handed, sneaking into the country. Once we’ve got one of the treacherous swine, we can put pressure on Moscow. Understood?’

  As one he and ‘Dickie’ Bird had snapped, ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘Then get on with it,’ he had barked, ‘PDQ,’ which meant, as in all things with their impatient Chief, ‘pretty damned quick’.

  It had not taken the two young officers, who had been fighting the Reds ever since 1918 when young Smith had won his Victoria Cross, long to find out how the Russians infiltrated the country. Gold sovereigns had changed hands in some of the more seedy pubs along Hull’s Hedon Road, frequented by Russian seamen. There, away from the prying eyes of the freighters’ political commissars, they had told Smith and Bird how they hove to just off the mouth of the Humber to allow a ship’s boat to carry an agent to the coast. In this way there was no risk of an agent being discovered by customs or immigration.

  Last week they had learnt that the Russian freighter the SS Moskva had sailed from Murmansk and was heading for Hull with timber – and also an agent. The information was reliable and had been brought from a disgruntled Russian stoker at a cost of twenty sovereigns, or ‘Horsemen of St George’, as he called them, his red eyes lighting up when he saw the gleaming gold coins. Now, they patrolled the North Sea off the Humber estuary, waiting for the Moskva and its undercover passenger to arrive.

  Two hours had already passed in the freezing fog and there had been no sign of the Russian ship, which would have to enter the shipping channel in order not to arouse suspicion. They stamped their feet, longing for a mug of steaming hot cocoa laced with rum, and peered into the grey gloom until their eyes hurt with the strain.

  Twice Dickie Bird had said mournfully, ‘I think we’ve missed him, old bean. You could run the Titanic through this peasouper and we wouldn’t spot her. Let’s get back to jolly old Withernsea and curl ourselves around some very large whisky toddys in the Commercial Hotel’s snug.’

  And twice Smith had replied, displaying the determination and steel which had won him the VC at Kronstadt, ‘Not on, Dickie, just not on. They’ll turn up like the proverbial bad penny, never fear.’

  Now, when even he was starting to despair, they began to hear the steady throb of engines going very slow, followed by the clatter of the davits being let out. Up on the bow of the fast motor-boat, Ginger Kerrigan sang out in his harsh nasal Liverpudlian accent, ‘To port, sir… craft to port!’

  The two young officers, standing there with their mufflers tucked around their throats, brought up their glasses. At the wheel above, CPO Ferguson, the Swordfish’s tough old bosun, who the crew maintained was so ancient that he must have sailed with Nelson, tightened his grip, ready for instant action.

  Now the expectant officers could just make out a dark shape edging its way through the grey, rolling fog, an engine purring softly.

  ‘Can you make out how many, Dickie?’ Smith whispered.

  ‘Can’t, at the tiller… just vague shapes, the rest,’ Dickie Bird answered.

  Hastily, Smith turned to hulking, fat Able Seaman Bennett, nicknamed ‘Billy’ after the famous rotund vaudeville comedian. ‘Billy, close up the Lewis gun.’

  ‘Ay, ay, sir.’ Bennett cocked the big, clumsy machine gun effortlessly with his paw of a hand, though to Smith he seemed to make a devil of a noise. ‘Keep it down to a loud roar, Billy, will you?’ he snapped.

  ‘Sir.’

  Now they waited tensely as the craft drew closer. Was it the Russians? Or some local fishing boat from Withernsea or Bridlington that had blundered into the maritime shipping lanes by mistake? Smith, his nerves tingling electrically, though in full control of himself as always at moments of extreme tension, knew there was only one way to find out. When the unknown boat was perhaps some twenty feet away, still shrouded with the same fog that covered the Swordfish, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ‘What boat are you?’

  The man at the tiller reacted immediately. For the first time, he saw the sharp outline of the motor-boat wallowing in the trough. Now he pulled the tiller hard right and began to disappear back into the fog.

  ‘Heave to!’ Bird commanded desperately.

  No response. The little craft kept on going.

  At the wheel, CPO Ferguson didn’t wait for orders. Time was of the essence. If they lost the little boat in the peasouper, they’d have a devil of a time finding it again. He jerked back the controls. The Swordfish’s engines burst into throbbing, excited life. Ferguson urged her forwards. In an instant the sharp prow was out of the sea and those on deck had to catch on to something to prevent themselves from overbalancing. She shot after the other craft, furious white sprays of water curving up from her screws.

  ‘There she is!’ Ginger yelled and pointed to starboard.

  Smith didn’t hesitate. ‘Give her a burst, Billy!’ he commanded.

  ‘Ay, ay, sir!’ Billy Bennett yelled back. He slapped the wooden butt of the Lewis gun into his shoulder, squinted down the thick, ugly barrel and pressed the trigger.

  Tracer zipped in a lethal red and white morse towards the fleeing craft. The slugs hissed angrily just above the heads of the men in the boat, but still the man at the tiller didn’t stop; and Smith could see why. Looming out of the fog now there appeared the ship which had brought the Russians to this place – and there was no doubt that it was a Russian ship. At its stern hung the new flag of the Russian Republic, the red flag, complete with gold hammer and sickle, the flag of world revolution.

  ‘The stinker thinks he can escape back to that old tub!’ Dickie Bird cried above the roar of the Thorneycroft’s engines.

  ‘Then he’s got another think coming!’

  ‘But we’re still outside the three-mile limit. These are international waters, Smithie,’ Bird protested urgently. ‘We’re not entitled to stop anyone out here.’

  ‘Let the Foreign Office worry about that. Give those smarmy stripe-panted twits something to do for a change. CPO Ferguson,’ he yelled at the bridge, ‘give her all she’s got!’

  ‘Ye’ll burst the engines, skipper,’ CPO Ferguson yelled back urgently. For the sandy-haired Scot with the incredibly wrinkled face dearly loved the Swordfish and every piece of machinery in her.

  Smith ignored the remark. Now he could see the davits being lowered down the rusting sides of the Soviet freighter. A Jacob’s ladder was also being unrolled midships. If the Russians could reach that before they reached them, they’d abandon their boat and scramble up the rope ladder. Then it would mean tackling the Moskva, and with the handful of men under his command, Smith knew that could be dangerous; he had no illusions about the Russians. He had fought them for too long now. ‘Give ’em another burst, Billy!’ he cried. ‘And if you hit them – well, it’s just too bad.’

  ‘Ger on, yer big pudden,’ Ginger urged, ‘hit the gits!’

  Billy Bennett squeezed the trigger once more. Tracer hissed angrily from the heavy machine gun. Up on the deck of the Moskva someone yelled something angrily in Russian and hurled a black object at the speeding Swordfish. Next instant it exploded in a burst of threshing, foaming water just off the craft’s port bow.

  ‘Oh, I say,’ Dickie Bird commented in that deceptively fruity upper-class voice of his, which hid a will of iron, ‘they are being a tiny bit naughty. They’re throwing grenades at us.’

  At the gun, Bennett cursed. Just at the very last moment, the fleeing craft had swerved and his burst had gone wild. Now the escapers we
re flinging themselves out of the little boat and were scrambling up the Jacob ladder like terrified monkeys. ‘What shall I do, sir?’ he asked, as another grenade exploded and the Swordfish rocked violently. Icy water swept over the deck and drenched them.

  But it was CPO Ferguson who made the decision for them. The Moskva was looming up ever larger. He could see the patches of rust and oil on her plates too clearly. He was on a collision course. With an angry curse and a wild jerk, he hauled the wheel round. The Swordfish slewed to one side. For a moment her wireless mast seemed to touch the surface of the sea. Hastily, Smith grabbed a stanchion and cursed.

  Ferguson throttled back the engines. The Swordfish slowed down, barely moving now, while Bennett tensed behind the machine gun, waiting for orders to open fire again. But for the moment Smith was undecided what to do. Dwarfed by the size of the 10,000-ton freighter, there didn’t seem much hope of tackling it with their three machine guns. Could he board her by bluff and try to find the agent or agents? He was certain they were on board. Why else had someone flung grenades at them? But what did the agent look like?

  While he agonised, a small burly man in a leather coat, which he could hear creaking even at that distance, approached the rail. He put his mouth to an ancient megaphone and said, first in Russian, ‘Stoi? What you want with ship? Outside three miles limit, bozhe moi.’

  Smith bit his lip. He knew he had to say something, but what?

  He tried to bluff the Soviet captain, ‘You have an illegal passenger aboard, Master. Release him to me and you can proceed into the Humber.’

  There was no reaction. Instead there was a whispered conversation on the deck of the Russian vessel and an impatient, frustrated Smith imagined that the captain was having the demand translated for him in detail.

  Next to Smith, Dickie Bird said, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to manage this one, old house.’

  ‘We’ll manage,’ Smith answered grimly. ‘The Chief needs bodies. He’s going to get one – or two.’

  The Russian skipper came back to the rail and peered down at the Swordfish. ‘What ship you?’ he demanded suspiciously. ‘Davoi, what nationality?’ He surveyed the length of the blue-painted, streamlined motor-boat, obviously looking for a flag. But the Swordfish, which officially didn’t exist, for obvious reasons, didn’t have one, though Smith knew that anyone who knew anything about naval craft could recognise her as one of the Royal Navy’s high-speed motor torpedo boats which had fought throughout the war in the Channel.

  He didn’t answer the Russian skipper’s questions. Instead, he snarled savagely. ‘I have instructions to take off an illegal passenger, or passengers. Please hand him or them over and then you can get under way, Captain.’

  ‘Njet!’ the Russian said firmly, shaking his head to make his meaning quite clear. Down below in the big freighter the engines started to throb again and Smith knew the ship would be under way in a few minutes. What the hell was he going to do?

  But suddenly and surprisingly the decision was made for him. In that same instant that he stared up at the defiant little Russian skipper in his squeaky leather coat, Sparks, the Swordfish’s radio operator, popped his head out of the hatch, and said, ‘Signal, sir. A most urgent. Got to report back at once. You and Mr Bird are expected in London at ten hundred hours prompt!’ He emphasised cheekily, getting a charge at indirectly giving an order to the skipper.

  Smith overheard the remark. His mind was elsewhere, the Russian forgotten now. He knew who had ordered them to London so urgently and what that entailed for the Swordfish and its hand-picked crew of volunteers.

  Opposite him Dickie Bird winked. ‘Looks as if the balloon’s gone up somewhere or other, old bean,’ he drawled. ‘Just hope it’s in a warmer climate than the ruddy North Sea.’

  Smith nodded, his mind too full to speak. They were going on active service again…

  Four

  ‘This way, gentlemen,’ the old servant, in the rusty black tailcoat and old-fashioned wing collar, croaked. In the years since 1918 when they had first entered this mysterious building in Queen Anne’s Gate, the servant had seen them many times, but as always his lined face was like a mask, revealing nothing.

  He ushered them into the lift. It soared upwards noisily at high speed. They arrived at the same old passage, so narrow that a modestly fat man could never have passed through it. It was lit by two naked bulbs and, in the shadows on both sides, they could hear the rats scrabbling. Dickie Bird shuddered dramatically. He could never get used to this secret HQ; never shake off the feeling of apprehension whenever they entered the place.

  The servant led them through a steel door onto a narrow iron bridge which led across the gap, linking the roof of the big Georgian house with that of its neighbour.

  Again they entered another network of passages. Finally, the old man stopped in front of a door with no name on it or any indication of what its purpose was. He tapped and a hearty voice responded immediately. ‘Come!’

  He opened the door and Smith and Bird filed in.

  A bluff, hearty major with a large moustache, a chestful of medal ribbons and the red brassard of the staff on his sleeve, rose to greet them, with ‘Which one of you two chaps is Smith?’

  ‘I am, sir.’

  The major held out his hand. ‘Give me the pleasure of shaking your hand, Smith. Tremendous VC you won when you sank that Red battleship or whatever it was at Kronstadt in eighteen. We all had a damned good chuckle in the mess when that newspaperwoman, dressed as a nurse, got into the dock where they were treating your wounds and got that quote from you – what was it again?’

  Smith’s handsome young face flushed slightly with embarrassment. The episode had rankled ever since. The damned woman, whom he had thought was a nurse, had asked with such sweet innocence that he had been completely fooled, ‘I believe you are the fourth son of the Earl of Beverly?’ He had nodded and she had said: ‘Well, does that make you an honourable or something?’ To which he had answered with a remark that he had regretted ever since, ‘No, Miss, I am just Common Smith.’ Next morning the name had hit the headlines and he had been ‘Common Smith, VC,’ ever since.

  ‘So you must be Bird then?’ The hearty major continued and stuck out his hand again. ‘Now take a pew, chaps, for a few moments till the Chief’s ready for you.’ He beamed at them and indicated the half-filled bottle of whisky on the table in front of him. ‘Fancy a stiff ’un? Don’t be vague, ask for Haig,’ he chortled, using the whisky firm’s advertising slogan.

  They shook their heads. They were both too excited to find out what their mission was to waste time drinking.

  The major seemed able to read their minds for he asked in that bluff, no-nonsense manner of his, ‘Are you game?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Smith said quickly. ‘Not much fun trying to catch Reds in the North Sea at this time of the year.’

  ‘Don’t expect so,’ the major said, pouring himself a generous measure of whisky. He went across to the little sink in the corner and added a little water to the drink, staring at them in the mirror above the sink. To him they seemed the very best of the Empire’s youth. Both barely out of their teens and handsome in a public-school sort of way. But the VC on Smith’s chest and the DSO ribbon on Bird’s indicated that they were veterans and that they had seen plenty of action since they had left Harrow-on-the-Hill together to volunteer for the Navy.

  He took a hearty drink of his whisky, coughed throatily and returned to his desk. ‘’Spect you want to know what kind of show you’re getting into, what?’ he snapped.

  ‘Yessir,’ they said in unison.

  ‘It’s the Huns. They’re acting up again. You know how bloody-minded the Huns are? Well, they’ve been up to all sorts of nasty tricks in the Fatherland, especially against our forces of Occupation.’ He took another drink. ‘Got to be stopped toot-sweet, as the Froggies say.’ Behind him, the little light above the double leather door began to wink a bright green. The major put down his drink hastily. It did
n’t do to keep his boss waiting. ‘All right, the Chief’s ready to see you now,’ he said and rose.

  He opened the two doors and barked, as if he were on some barracks square, drilling recruits: ‘Lieutenants Smith and Bird to see you, Sir!’

  They went in. The room was large but by some trick of the lighting every object in it seemed to appear in silhouette. A line of red telephones on extensions stood on the great desk which had once belonged to Nelson. To the right there was a smaller desk littered with maps, models of aeroplanes and submarines and a row of bottles which suggested chemical experiments. The evidence of scientific investigation always seemed to the two young officers to heighten the overpowering atmosphere of mystery, in this secret world up in the rooftops of Queen Anne’s Gate.

  They waited a little nervously, as the Chief, known to a few as ‘C’, the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, continued to write. Over the chair behind him was slung the khaki tunic of a colonel in the Guards bearing the red tabs of the Staff, though he had been known to wear any uniform from that of a sub-lieutenant in the Navy to that of a general in the Royal Marines. Next to it was propped up his black Malacca cane with its polished silver head.

  C was a small man, going bald. What remained of his hair was already grey. But his face was set and hard as he concentrated on his papers through a gold-rimmed monocle. There was no mistaking the air of authority about him, the most mysterious man in the whole of the British Empire.

  It was rumoured, for instance, that on one secret mission during the war he and his son had suffered a very serious accident just behind the front (some said on the German side of it). His son had been killed instantly, and C had been trapped by his leg underneath the overturned car. While the German Uhlans on their horses had begun to search for him less than half a mile away, he had coldbloodedly sawn off his mangled leg with his penknife and had crawled to safety, trailing blood behind him on the snow, just in time.