“What?” Captain Francis Fairburne made first to the table to take up the field glasses before joining Corporal Winters at the more powerful tripod-mounted binoculars. The observation point was in an apartment in the third floor of a block in Marseille’s 2e arrondisement, not far from the docks. It was easy enough to see the blue of the Mediterranean from here, and the Frioul archipelago a couple of miles out to sea. The view, however, was not the reason the British Secret Service Bureau had posted them there.
There were four of them: a captain and a sergeant seconded from the Naptonshire Regiment, and two corporals from the Royal Signals. They were surveilling an apartment some two hundred yards away across a small square, where an agent of the SSB was supposed to be in possession of some documents that the SSB’s German counterparts—the Abwehr—had very unkindly taken from a British courier, and which the agent had rather more gently taken back from them.
There was good reason to believe the Abwehr had not taken this reversal in good humour, and were scouring Marseille to abscond with them once more. Obeying his orders, the agent (codenamed “Malvolio” by a bored clerk somewhere in the Admiralty) had gone to ground in an assigned safehouse. There he was to wait until contacted. That was Fairburne’s job, but it was his orders to make sure that the safehouse had not been compromised; a couple of days’ surveillance should answer that one way or the other.
Reports indicated that, after a frantic few hours, the Abwehr abruptly halted their investigations, suggesting either that they had given up—unlikely—or that they had found some useful intelligence and were acting on it more quietly. Yet in the first thirty-six hours of observation, nothing untoward had been noted. It would have been useful if Abwehr agents were as thunderingly unsubtle as their Gestapo counterparts and wandered around in black hats and leather overcoats, but they were not. In all likelihood they were using local assets—Frenchmen with Nazi sympathies, born and bred in the city. All the SSB team could do was look for unusual activity and familiar faces. So far, nothing.
Another commanding officer might simply have assigned each of the NCOs under his command an eight-hour shift and wandered in and out as he liked, but Fairburne was a great believer in leading from the front. He had assigned three eight hour shifts, yes; but as each man came off observation, he stayed awake and rested for the next shift, to be there to take over for necessary breaks and provide a second pair of eyes and a second opinion. This pattern meant Fairburne took on the same duties as the others and, if it didn’t make them like him exactly, at least they respected him for it.
Fairburne was not, in truth, an easy man to like. He came from a military family that regarded him as a paragon of their blood. A pure soldier, he was dedicated to the crown, to his country, and to his regiment, although not necessarily in that order. His soldiering in the field was sans pareil, to an extent that even worried his superior offices. Every man, when confronted with the decision to take a life in battle, may hesitate for a heartbeat before committing to the deed; that is what it is to be human. Fairburne never had, and likely never would. He would squeeze a trigger as soon as think it when an enemy stood framed in his sights. His colonel had commented once that Fairburne had “the coldest eyes in the Empire,” not altogether in admiration.
This, then, was Captain Francis Fairburne; “Frank” to his friends, of which there were vanishingly few.
Fairburne stood in the shadows by the sun-bleached curtains and looked out into the street. He spotted Malvolio instantly, already halfway across the street and heading towards the waterfront. More worryingly, he saw the soft brown leather briefcase the man held firmly under his arm and strongly suspected he knew what was within.
“What the blazes is the fool playing at?” Fairburne ran to the door. “Whistle up Control on the radio set. Tell them what’s happened and that I’m going after Malvolio. Await instructions.”
He hardly heard the corporal’s confirmation of his orders. He was already out on the stairwell landing, shrugging into the slightly grubby pale brown jacket that was part of the disguise and checking the soiled red ’kerchief at his throat was in order. At least he already had a tan and so passed easily amongst the locals; the corporals had both come freshly assigned from Britain and were as pale as cave fish.
He was hardly aware of the descent down the flights of stairs, only how long it took and how far Malvolio might have got in that time. Fortunately, the 2e arrondisement was not unused to seeing dock workers running late for their shifts, and—as the clock struck two—no one gave Fairburne more than a sympathetic glance as he sprinted across the road and down the path he had seen Malvolio take. After a minute or so, he saw the figure with the brown briefcase ahead of him on the other side of the street; he slowed his stride so as not to attract more attention than need be. That said, Malvolio was employing little in the way of tradecraft, barely bothering to look around him for signs of pursuit or performing any of the tricks that agents are taught to keep themselves alive in the sometimes brutal game of spies.
He was just walking.
It was the damndest thing Fairburne had ever seen. One would think he was taking a packet of top secret documents out for a stroll because they had grown fractious, like a bored dog.
Malvolio took a sudden turn into an alleyway, and Fairburne crossed the road quickly to get closer while unobserved, not that Malvolio seemed at the top of his game that afternoon. Fairburne leaned on the corner, lighting a cigarette, and took a sideways glance down the alleyway. There went Malvolio, off to the left into what looked to be a tenement of the Victorian period, or whatever it pleased the French to call the Victorian period. The building was a big, ugly block, walls stained black, windows broken by the stones of ill-bred children, and looked like it was well overdue for demolition. Evidently the local authorities agreed: it was surrounded by a battered wooden fence upon which hung Entrée interdite! signs. Fairburne saw Malvolio shift a loose plank aside and enter. Not a stroll, then.
He tossed the barely smoked cigarette aside and followed, loosening the Webley Mk 1 he wore in a concealed holster at the back of his belt as he did so; a model specially customised for the SSB with a shorter barrel and a smaller grip, to aid concealment. He had a strong feeling things were about to turn very nasty, and he had no desire to get into a fight that didn’t involve him returning fire.
He slid aside the loose planks much more quietly than Malvolio had managed, and moved cautiously towards the isolated building beyond. He was used to the sense of heightened reality combat or the threat of imminent combat could instil in a man, but the curious sense of isolation behind that wooden wall, the utterly cloudless blue sky, the black slab of a building with the empty eyes of its windows looking down upon him, engendered a sensation he did not often feel. Fairburne realised he was afraid.
Not at the growing likelihood of violence, but at the sense that matters were not quite right, and that there was something occurring that he did not understand. He feared no man nor beast, but Fairburne had a healthy respect for the unknown. The unknown drew men into darkness and sucked their bones dry. He had experienced some matters during tours of Africa and India that were not easily explained by parochial English education. Almost unaware of his actions, he slowly drew the revolver.
There were few places Malvolio could have gone, and Fairburne went to the most obvious first; an archway leading into the tenement’s courtyard. Even before he reached it, he could hear voices in conversation, speaking French. He knew the language well enough to discern accents, and was slightly baffled by what he gleaned from Malvolio’s interlocutor. He’d only ever heard one person speak like that before, and he’d been Belgian. Malvolio’s contact was a Belgian? Curiouser and curiouser.
Fairburne eased his head around the corner of the archway a couple of inches; just far enough to get the lay of the land without exposing himself to fire—or, he hoped, even being spotted at all. There was Malvolio, and a small man in a grey suit and a very neat homburg. He did not seem at
all at home in the wonderland of debris and building refuse the locals had enthusiastically dumped in the courtyard before the fences went up. If he had to guess, Fairburne would have said the man looked like a minor governmental functionary. He certainly wasn’t a player; he was nearly in a flop sweat, dabbing repeatedly at his brow with a large white handkerchief while Malvolio explained what was in the files he was handing over.
Fairburne had previously lived in blissful ignorance of the papers’ contents, but now as he listened to Malvolio’s description, he suddenly understood why both the Germans and the Belgians were keen to have them. He briefly wondered if the SSB was perhaps playing a deep game, and the papers were a feint, placed to misdirect. No matter; he was here to recover them and he did not intend to fail.
Fairburne considered his options: he could march in and take the briefcase at gunpoint, or he could let the exchange take place and then relieve the worried-looking Belgian subsequently. The latter seemed a much better idea to him, not least because he did not trust that courtyard. All those empty windows might conceal a small army of Belgian intelligence agents.
It struck Fairburne that he had no idea what the Belgian security or intelligence arms were called. He wondered if even the average Belgian knew.
At last an exchange was performed, with Malvolio showing the Belgian the papers within the briefcase before handing the whole thing over, and the Belgian handing Malvolio an envelope doubtless stuffed with bank notes or negotiable bonds, or something else of the sort. The Belgian passed the envelope over very abruptly, as if glad to be rid of it. He seemed to regard this business as unseemly and likely to besmirch his dignity. He was certainly right about that, if Fairburne had any say in the matter.
Then matters went west in an unexpected way. Malvolio and the Belgian were startled by a man emerging from one of the doorways onto the courtyard. His accent was rough and local, but the pistol in his hand was a P.08, an expensive piece of artillery for a street thug. So this was why the Abwehr had seemed to lose interest in matters so suddenly; they had already learned that this exchange was to take place and very sensibly reasoned it was the ideal moment to take back their spoils. Fairburne braced himself in preparation for a meeting that was surely about to turn bloody.
The Abwehr agent—definitely a local French fascist recruited to the role—seemed very pleased with himself, as well he might. Fairburne scanned what windows of the courtyard he could make out from his vantage point; the Abwehr man would hardly have exposed himself like that unless he had at least one partner lurking at a window. He could see no one. Time to shift priorities.
Previously, the plan had simply to deprive the Belgian of the documents when he was alone, and deal with Malvolio later. With a couple of Nazi agents in play, however, he would have to become more involved, and sooner. His only real tactical advantage was surprise, which he would preserve until the last possible moment. His primary objective must remain recovering the documents, but to do that, he had to deal with at least four men. Of those, the Abwehr agents would cheerfully shoot him on sight and consider it part of their job, so they must be dealt with first. Malvolio was an unknown quantity; yes, he had betrayed his country, but would he kill a fellow Briton to cover up that betrayal? Quite possibly, given that treason was a capital crime, so Fairburne would have to keep an eye on him, but with any luck Malvolio wasn’t an immediate threat. The Belgian was plainly not cut out for this line of work and had emitted a strange terrified squeak at the appearance of the Abwehr man. Fairburne suspected he would present of the least trouble of the four.
Targets prioritised, Fairburne moved to deal with his foes.
Going through the archway would simply serve himself up to the enemy on a plate, so he went back to find one of the many shattered windows at the ground floor level. He didn’t have far to go. He clambered through the frameless window into the dark corridor beyond.
Now he had to make a few assumptions. Firstly, that the Abwehr men would have nothing larger than handguns. That meant they would want to keep range to a minimum. It was also likely that they would be needed in the courtyard at some point, and probably rather urgently. All in all, he doubted they would go above the first floor. Fairburne found a staircase, climbed the first flight, and started hunting.
It did not take extraordinary tracking skills to find indications of the German agent (singular, to judge from the evidence). He’d climbed through the self-same window as Fairburne had—most likely due to its lack of jagged glass—then climbed up the stairs and gone left, looking for an apartment with a commanding view of the courtyard. Judging by the disturbed gravel and plaster dust with which the corridor floor was strewn, he had found it in the corner apartment. Being careful where he placed his feet, Fairburne went to beard him in his lair.
The door of the apartment was lying across the floor, and Fairburne stepped cautiously around it, his pistol up and ready. There was the Abwehr man, crouched by the far window. His weapon was something else again from his partner’s; a Mauser C-96 with an attached butt, converting the pistol into a sort of short-barrelled carbine. Another German weapon; whoever was handling these men for the Abwehr did not especially care if anyone guessed their allegiance.
He was still formulating a plan to deal with the man as he silently advanced across the room. Capturing him would be useful, if he could only—
The floor creaked sonorously beneath his step, and the Nazi agent looked back at him. He stood no chance; the Mauser was pointed away, and both his posture and the bulk of the weapon slowed him. Fairburne, nerveless in such circumstances, shot the man twice in the chest, took a long step to ensure no possibility of a miss, and shot the collapsing man once through the brain.
There went the element of surprise, but as it had taken half the Abwehr contingent with it, he was content. Holstering the Webley, he took the Mauser from the dead man’s hands and stepped up to the window. He had worked through the situation in his mind based on what the other Nazi agent was likely thinking—that his colleague had fired accidentally or was just generally trigger-happy. The possibility of other agents in the equation would occur to him shortly, though, so Fairburne didn’t waste time. He shouldered the Mauser and opened fire on the Abwehr man in the courtyard.
Malvolio and the Belgian were as startled by the change in circumstances as their persecutor. He already had the briefcase in his hand and was backing away from them when the shots rang out. Now it was all happening at once. He looked up as the first round whined off the courtyard floor. Fairburne shifted his aim accordingly as the Belgian shouted an imprecation to an unhelpful God and ran. Malvolio drew his own gun.
That was a surprise; Fairburne would have expected the Abwehr agent to have searched him as a known British agent. It also worried him, since he had no idea where Malvolio’s real loyalties lay; it was a small relief when Malvolio aimed it at the Abwehr agent’s back, and...
...and didn’t fire. His brow creased as if a terrible thought had happened upon him, and then he steadied his aim as if steeling himself to squeeze the trigger. Again, he did not. The Abwehr agent looked back, saw the gun in Malvolio’s hand and, without a moment’s hesitation, shot him. Malvolio staggered back, his pistol falling to the floor, then followed it down a moment later.
The Nazi returned his attention to the window just in time for Fairburne to shoot him three times in the chest. He collapsed beside Malvolio.
Fairburne gauged the drop and leapt down from the window, then ran to where the two stricken men lay.
The Nazi agent was plainly dead, which hardly surprised Fairburne. Malvolio, however, still breathed; the bullet had been a snapshot and not well placed. But the man was losing blood rapidly. Fairburne could see his death had only been deferred.
“Why?” he asked, not unsympathetically. A man’s death is no small matter and he didn’t care to badger someone standing at that last threshold. “Why did you take the documents?”
Malvolio’s gaze slid onto him and past him, his
eyes becoming unfocused. It was already too late to expect any cogency from him. All Fairburne could do was sit by Malvolio that he might not die alone. Fairburne was not a sentimentalist, but there is a rough sanctity in the moment of passing, and he would not begrudge a fellow creature his vigil in that time, freely given and fully felt.
Malvolio’s breath was rasping, becoming irregular as his body lost the knack of living, stumbling its way to an untidy quietude. He convulsed briefly, his head juddering back and forth, his jaw rattling like a castanet. All that was human was passing from him, leaving only the failing machine. A spray of blood erupted from his mouth and splashed onto the concrete, and Fairburne was surprised to see it was watery, with pieces of grey meat caught in it. He was minded of a spray of cerebral matter. But how? Malvolio had been shot once in the chest.
Malvolio hacked a single violent cough, half rolling onto his side, and then ceased to move altogether. His jaw sagged open, and a thin rivulet of diluted blood ran from the corner of his mouth to pool on the concrete. Fairburne was about to rise when something else fell from the dead man’s mouth, splashing into the growing red puddle. It made him think of a shard of bone, and for a moment he tried to rationalise it as coming from the dead man’s skull. Unlikely, but then he had seen some very curious wounds over the years.
The thought vanished from his mind the next moment, because now he saw the strange thing—bone-white, yes, but with a faint silvery patina to it, like a thin layer of mother-of-pearl—had legs. Like a ghost crab in form, but too many legs. Too many legs by half. It unfurled them and tried to find a footing in the bloody filth, fully alive and possessed of a wilfulness that Fairburne found atavistically intolerable. Without another thought, he stood up and stamped the creature flat, grinding it into extinction beneath his sole with a shuddering satisfaction.
When he searched Malvolio’s body, he found a small glass jar in his pocket, its stopper sealed with wax. Inside the jar was another of the crablike creatures, plainly alive although the jar had no ventilation holes.
The True History of the Strange Brigade Page 4
