Gunner Kelly (16 page)

He stuffed the torch back into his pocket and reached for the rope-ladder, fumbling in the dark over the rough chalk wall of the pit until his fingers closed on it.

Already his mind was ranging freely above him, mapping out his route to safety: straight up the nearest ridge to the south was the shortest way, but he no longer trusted any part of Duntisbury Royal along which he hadn’t travelled this night, so back along the path by which he had come was the way he intended to leave, wading the River Addle below the footbridge. The SAS cylinder with his wet-suit inside it was safely moored out of sight and could be left to Colonel Butler to recover at his leisure as his problem: the rule now was the same rule for any operation which had gone sour, with the priority on getting the human material out, regardless of loss of equipment. And this time
he
was the human material—

Get out quickly, or go to ground if you can’t get out!

He grasped the vertical of the rope ladder firmly, at full stretch, and felt for the lowest rung with his left foot—
by God, he had gone to ground literally already, but it was out of ground and away that he wanted to go now
!

The rope-ladder stretched under his weight, tapering and twisting as all rope-ladders did, but he was ready for its distortion from his training—compared with that these few metres would be a piece of cake—

His left shoulder banged against the hard wall of the pit— this was the crucial moment when he would really find out whether the damn thing was properly anchored, as he raised his right foot to find the next rung.

It was holding—his foot found the rung—

He was going to get out of the pit—

More of the debris from above cascaded down on
him. But one more stretch, and he would be at ground-level again—out of the man-trap at last.

The rope-ladder gave way not quite in the same instant of time when the tremendous concussive
bang
exploded above him: he was already in mid-air, falling backwards, when the sound of it enveloped him, so that in the moment he had no understanding of where the sound came from—above, or below, or inside—

Then he was on his back, bouncing off the wreckage which cushioned his fall for half another instant, until his head hit the chalk wall behind him, starting another explosion inside his head to mingle with the echoes of the explosion outside—

He came back to full consciousness in a matter of seconds, but into total confusion: he was aware only that he had threshed about wildly, half-stunned and enmeshed equally in panic and the rope-ladder, which had followed him down into the pit, twining round him like a living thing in the darkness.

Yet it was the awareness—the understanding that he was still alive—which created the confusion. His head hurt, but it hurt high up at the back, where it had struck the wall of the pit: it didn’t hurt because it had been blown to pieces by that shot from above.
That shot
—?

But, anyway, there was no sound from above now. The echoes of the explosion and the ringing in his ears had both died away into an unnatural silence.

Yet he wasn’t dead
—he could move his legs and his arms and his hands and his fingers—he could feel the leaves and branches beneath him, and he could hear them rasp and crunch beneath him … against that other silence—

God damn! It hadn’t been a shot at all—there was no one up there, above him.
God damn
!

He shook the blasphemy from his head and sat up, fumbling in his pocket for his torch.

Of course
there were other pits like this—other man-traps waiting for their quarry. But they couldn’t cover all of them, so they had rigged up a trap-within-a-trap: the convenient rope-ladder offering its help to any thinking animal which might fall into the pit by day or night… Only the other end of the ladder wasn’t anchored at all—it was simply attached to some sort of explosive device, set in the same fashion as a trip-flare, but attached in this case to a warning maroon which would betray the intelligent prisoner as soon as he put his full weight on it.

Benedikt ground his teeth in anger with himself—and with Audley—Colonel Butler had warned him that Audley would be
tricky
—and then with Colonel Butler, and everyone from Herzner at the Embassy—
just a little job for Colonel Butler, Captain S
chneider
—to Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith and Benje’s Dad … and even Thomas Wiesehöfer—

Thomas Wiesehöfer—

Now they would be coming, summoned by that ear-splitting warning— and coming quickly—

Still no sound from above.

He brushed the dirt from his face. There was an egg on the back of his head which was tender to the touch of his fingertips—and … and a slightly raised contusion on his cheekbone, where the lump of chalk had hit him: it even boasted a sticky crater where the chalk had cut into his flesh—

But there was no more time for thought: someone was coming—he could hear voices—

“
Help
!” shouted Thomas Wiesehöfer, lost on his evening stroll in a foreign country and trapped in an incomprehensible pit.

And now there was light as well as sound above—and he must get rid of his own tell-tale torch—

“Help!” He stuffed the torch under the debris beneath him, and stood up on top of it, steadying himself on the nearest wall. “
Help
!” He achieved a note of desperation which was too close to the truth for comfortable analysis.

The light intensified, finally shiningdown directly into his eyes.

“Grüss Gott!” exclaimed Thomas Wiesehöfer fervently. “Please! I haff fallen into—into this place—this hole in the ground! Please to help me—I am wounded and bleeding.”

The beam of the torch explored him.

“Please to help me!” appealed Thomas Wiesehöfer.

There was a pause above.

“Please—”

“It’s that bloody Jerry.” The voice ignored his appeal.

“What?” Another voice.

“That Jerry—from this afternoon … the one that was nosing around … the one that was in the
Bells
.”

“What?” A second light entered the pit, fixing itself on Thomas Wiesehöfer. “You’m right.”

“Please!” Thomas Wiesehöfer was running out of steam.

“What’ll us do with ‘im, then?” The rich country voice behind the second torch also ignored his appeal.

“Knock the bugger on the ‘ead an’ fill in the bloody ‘ole, I would, if I ’ad my way,” said the first speaker uncompromisingly.

“Looks like someone’s already given ‘im one for starters. See ’is face there?”

“Ah, I see’d it. Must ‘a done that when ’e went in. Serve ‘im right!” The first speaker was clearly unmoved by the state of their captive’s appearance. “Serve the bugger right!”

Thomas Wiesehöfer decided to get angry. “You up there— do you not hear me? I haff fallen in this hole—you will help me out at once, please!”

“Arr! So you fell into the ‘ole, did you now, Mister?” The first speaker echoed him unsympathetically. “An’ what was you doin‘ out ’ere in the first place, eh?”

“Poachin‘ on the Old Squire’s land, that’s Miss Becky’s now, mebbe?” The second speaker chuckled grimly. “Bloody foreigner—poachin’ on Miss Becky’s land! This’ll learn ‘im, then!”

“What?” They were playing with him, the swine! “I do not understand—?”

“Arr? Nor you don’t, don’t you?” The first speaker chipped in. “Well then … you just bide where you are, Mister—you just bide there—see?” The torch flashed out. “Keep clear of anyone we catches, is what they said—just make sure they stays where they are ‘til we can cast an eye on ’em—so that’s what us’ll do.”

They?
Damn them
!

“You down there—” the words descended through the darkness, which was once again complete “—I got a 12-bore an‘ I knows how to use it. So you stay quiet then … understand?”

Benedikt suddenly understood all too well. If the situation in the Chase was as Colonel Butler had believed it to be … and everything which had happened to him confirmed that now beyond all doubt … then this trap had been built for a very dangerous animal, and the night-guards would have been warned to take no chances with it. Of course, being the amateurs they were, they had forgotten half their instructions immediately and had taken a careless look at their catch, chattering like monkeys; but now native caution had reasserted itself, edged with apprehension.

So … however Thomas Wiesehöfer might have reacted to that threat in all his injured innocence, Benedikt Schneider wasn’t about to argue with a shot-gun in the hands of a nervous peasant. Even the prospect of crossing swords at a disadvantage with Audley was to be preferred to that: here in England, with Colonel Butler as his last resort (however humiliating that might be, and more so than his present predicament), he could survive failure there. But a shot-gun was something else, and there would be no surviving that.

So … better to use what time he had to compose himself, and to rehearse the Wiesehöfer story, weak though it was.

Audley wouldn’t believe it, of course. But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t accept it, if he judged the risk of turning the mysterious Wiesehöfer loose more acceptable than detaining him, which carried the equal risk of alerting whoever had sent him to—

No
. That was wishful thinking, because the risks weren’t equal—because he already knew too much about the Chase’s defences.

So Audley
must
detain him … at least so long as he stuck to his Wiesehöfer cover … until the real target came into sight.

Therefore, at the right moment, he would have to abandon Wiesehöfer for Schneider, in the role Colonel Butler had prepared for just such an emergency—

Benedikt frowned in the darkness as the thought struck him that Colonel Butler might have reckoned all along that his tricky Dr David Audley
would
catch him. In which case—

His ears, attuned to the slightest variation in the pattern of occasional sounds from above, caught something different, diverting him from further contemplation of the idea that Colonel Butler might have been playing a deeper game: someone else was whispering up there—but stretching his hearing to its limits he still couldn’t make out individual words, only the contrast of the new sound with the gravelly undertones of the two countrymen—it was softer, almost liquid …it was a sound which, if amplified, would become a clear, high-pitched cry, where theirs would become an Anglo-Saxon bellow.

“Well now, let’s be seeing you then!”

A light shone into Benedikt’s face, blinding him again. But it came from a different direction—the light came from one side of the pit, the voice from the other.

“Easy now!” The voice tightened as Benedikt raised on£ hand to shade his eyes. “Let’s be seeing the other hand then, if you please! Because there’s a gun on you—
slowly now
—and I wouldn’t like for it to go off.”

Benedikt raised his other hand automatically.

Kelly—

The Irish voice was overlaid with years of English-speaking, but it was unmistakable.

Gunner Kelly—

“Please?” He packed the whole of Thomas Wiesehöfer into the appeal. “What is happening? I do not understand—?”

“Of course you don’t.” Kelly agreed with him. “Mr Wiesehöfer, is it? Or
Herr
Wiesehöfer—so it is!”

He hadn’t bargained on Gunner Kelly. With Audley he would have known where he was, but the old Irishman was an unknown factor.

“Yes.” No—not quite an unknown factor, more an unexpected one at this stage of the confrontation; and he must not let mere surprise stampede him into error. The essential script still applied, subject only to appropriate amendment where necessary. “Who are you?” He sharpened his voice.

Gunner Kelly—Michael Kelly, manservant to the late General Herbert Geo
rge Maxwell—

“Who am I?” The question seemed to surprise the Irishman.

Who was he? Colonel Butler’s Special Branch officer had answered that all too sketchily, with the sort of facts a routine police inquiry might have unearthed about any honest citizen who had never tangled with authority until pure bad luck had placed him near the scene of a crime.

Michael Kelly, born in Dublin 62 years ago, when Dublin had still been part of the still-mighty British Empire—

“Who am I, you’re asking?” The note of surprise was edged with banter, as though it ought to be obvious to Thomas Wiesehöfer that such a question had no priority, coming from the bottom of a man-trap.

Michael Kelly, formerly of Kelly’s Taxis in Yorkshire—but … Kelly’s Taxis was one broken-down Austin C
ambridge until it ran off the road … but, much more to the point—formerly Royal Artillery, long-service enlistment—

“Yes,” snapped Thomas Wiesehöfer stoutly, ignoring the reaction to his own question. “Are you the Police?”

Silence.

“Are you the Police?” Thomas Wiesehöfer, encased in the inadequate armour of injured and angry innocence, might take enough courage from that silence to repeat the question even more stoutly.

“Am I the
Pol-iss
?” Incredulity. “The
Pol-iss
?” Derision. “Now, for why should I be the
Poliss
, in God’s name?” Derisive incredulity.

What should Thomas Wiesehöfer do now—also in God’s name? Most likely he would not know what to do! And all Benedikt himself could think of was to consult his memory of Colonel Butler’s image of Gunner Kelly, based as it was more on the Colonel’s old soldier’s memory of old soldiers than on any precise and worthwhile intelligence about that man.

“A long-service regular—twenty-one years… and the son of a soldier too … And mustered out in the same rank he started w
ith.”
(A curious softening of the expression there, at odds with the harsh bark: Colonel Butler recalling other faces from happier times?)
“But don’t make the mistake of thinking him stupid, if you come up against him, Captain Schneider. You must have come
up against the same type in the Wehrmacht—the old sweats who knew more about the service than you did, and knew what they wanted—the ones you tried to promote, who knew exactly how to lose their stripes short of a court-martial… If you could ever beat one
of them at his own game you’d get the finest non-commissioned material of all—better than the ones who hungered for promotion, even … the villains, if you like—but it was St Paul who spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, remember—the biggest villain of all—n
ot St Peter … So don’t you underestimate him, Captain … And an Irishman too—because with them it’s the heart they give, not the head, when they make the break: you can’t reason with them, and they’re ready for the best and the worst then—they’ll charge mac
hine-guns head-on to save you, or they’ll shoot you in the back—and you ‘II never know which until it happens, because they’re what God made them, which is smarter than a cartload of monkeys, and not what you’d like them to be—”