SS-GB (43 page)

An Englishman – Major Albert Dodgson – left the briefing room, nodding to the armed sentry at the door. He’d heard it all before. In fact he’d helped to write that part of it that described the countryside behind Bringle Sands, so near to his parents’ home.

Major Dodgson had been attached to the 1st Marine Division, at its base at Quantico, Virginia, ever since it was first alerted for an amphibious attack upon the French island of Martinique (just after that French colony declared itself loyal to the pro-Nazi government of Vichy). By the time President Roosevelt had authorized this armed raid on Bringle Sands, these Marines – with their amphibious assault training and specially designed landing craft – were the only men who could do it.

Dodgson made his way along the dimly lit passage. One of the turbogenerators had failed for the third time. With only 2,000 kilowatts, the ship was reduced to emergency lighting and one hot meal a day. Thank goodness the ship’s heating came from auxiliary boilers and so was not affected. They’d been at sea twelve long, cold, winter days. Even when this liner was launched in 1931, it had taken her seven days to cross the Atlantic. Now the ’tween deck space forward, designed for cars and general cargo, held two large landing craft. Another two LCMs were fitted into what had once been the aft cargo hold and twenty thousand cubic feet of refrigerated space. And inside each of the landing craft there was a curious hybrid vehicle; front-half heavy truck, and rearhalf tank. And inside two of these newly invented M.3 half-tracks, there was a piece of machinery designed and built in the Marines’ engineering workshops at Quantico. There, a month earlier, a demonstration
had proved that the ‘iron maiden’ could rip the back from even the strongest German filing cabinet in under ten minutes. Without damaging the papers inside.

Major Dodgson was not a Marine. He’d won his DSO with the Royal West Kents in France in 1940. He’d always hated the sea and this voyage had done nothing to lessen that prejudice. He could not adapt himself to the ceaseless movement, to the cramped accommodation that gave him mild feelings of claustrophobia, and to the loud metallic groans and rumbles that came from the bowels of the ship. But most of all he hated the vibration. One of the screws had been slightly damaged in the first day at sea, and the ship had not been still since. Now, as he made his way up to A deck, and what had once been the cabin-class promenade, the great white marble staircase shuddered underfoot.

It took Dodgson several minutes before he could discern, through the heavy rain, the dark shapes of the other ships. They were wallowing along with no more than station-keeping lights to prick the grey overcast sky that pressed down upon the smoke from their funnels. He found the other American officers exactly where he’d left them, staring through the wet windows. There was a smell of cigar smoke.

‘Have they nearly finished the briefing?’ asked Captain Waley, who would be in the first landing craft. Like most of them he was a regular officer. He’d been integrated into the Corps from the Reserve, and frequently complained that he’d have been a Major by now, except that his group had been given seniority in alphabetical order. Waley’s task was to join a party of British Resistance men, who would take them by a specially prepared route across country to the Research Establishment. Three of the
half-tracks would be under his command. His orders were to take the Establishment, and hold it until a man called Ruysdale told him to retire or until his entire force was eliminated. No one who knew Waley doubted that the order would be interpreted quite literally. Significantly, every man in Waley’s party had filled out and signed the printed Last Will and Testament forms that had been given to them.

‘Can you spare me a cigar, Jakie?’ Dodgson asked Hoge, an officer who was reputed never to be without a pocketful of them.

‘Sure thing,’ said Hoge. Dodgson got along well with the Americans. His experience fighting the Germans had won him respect; his modesty and some calamitous encounters with Virginia’s high society, had won him their friendship. ‘Seems to me,’ said Hoge in the Alabama drawl that, in his cups, Dodgson tried to mimic, ‘that these here Krauts have got to be plumb crazy to have this secret laboratory near the seashore.’

Hoge and Dodgson would be together in the diversionary attack, calculated to draw the Germans away from the Research Establishment, while the main force attacked it from the other side.

‘Unless the sons of bitches have relocated it to somewhere safer,’ said Waley, voicing a fear that was an echo of those in Washington.

Then the last of the group spoke. He was much older than the others, a small, awkward, unsoldierly man, with a harsh German accent. ‘An atomic reactor, of the sort they will have built, needs water, lots and lots of water.’

‘Wouldn’t a river do?’ asked Dodgson.

‘The recirculated water will contain radioactive material,’ said the German. ‘It would not be safe to release it into a river.’ The others nodded. He was
the only one of them who understood the real purpose of their unprovoked aggression. His papers described him as Lieutenant Ruysdale, a Canadian citizen of Dutch descent, but no one knew his real name. The others usually called him ‘Professor’. All they’d been told about him was that, after Waley captured the Research Establishment, Ruysdale would be giving him his orders about which filing cabinets got the embrace of the ‘iron maiden’, and which documents, what material and which people were to be put into the half-tracks and taken back to the ships; with or without consent.

‘Professor,’ said Waley without turning away from the rain-splashed windows of the promenade, ‘they say that Hitler could knock out the USA with this brass-knuckle we are going to snatch out of his glove. Is that the truth, Professor?’

The others did not look at him, but Ruysdale knew it was the question to which every man on the ships needed an answer. ‘It’s true, my friends,’ he said. But even to him, who’d stood alongside the great Otto Hahn at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry that day just before Christmas 1938 when he realized that he’d split the nucleus of the uranium atom into two, even to him the promised destructive power of an atomic explosion was scarcely conceivable. The man they called Ruysdale wanted to tell them that this was a mission for which it was worthwhile sacrificing their lives, but he’d learned that Americans do not welcome such speeches. Instead he accepted one of Hoge’s cigars and said, ‘What time are they showing that Betty Grable movie?’

‘Two-thirty,’ said Waley. It would bring them right up to the time when they must prepare for the landing, unless they encountered German naval forces first.

Now all the men looked through the windows and watched the other transport. That too had once been a ship of the French Line, carrying 643 cabin-class passengers between Le Havre and New York in considerable luxury. But she had none of the jumbo derricks that were needed to take the weight of the four big landing craft. She had only the Assault Landing Craft, small enough to be suspended from the regulation 99-person lifeboat davits. But most of these LCAs had been damaged by the mountainous seas of their Atlantic crossing. The new plan used only two of them. After Waley and his main force were landed, the four LCMs would have to return to the second transport to get the second wave of men, who would move up through the beach parties to deliver the diversionary attack.

Ruysdale had the mind of a scientist rather than that of a soldier, and he found it difficult to reconcile himself to the fact that there would be only half as many places on the landing craft as there were men in the assault force.

You can see Bringle Sands, and the mouth of the River Frane, from the very edge of the steep cliffs. The wind off the sea cripples the scrub, stunts the trees and erodes the cliff face, so that the narrow footpath down to the seashore is marked with danger signs.

Half a mile inland there is the railway line. It comes through gently rolling farmland from Bringle and Bringle Sands to Frane Halt before joining the main line and continuing eastwards to Exeter and on to London.

But the men in the railway signal box could see nothing beyond the reflections of the shiny levers and the instruments, and the flickering of the coal fire. The King was stretched out on a folding bed, Harry Woods was demonstrating his ability to sleep standing up, and Danny Barga was sitting in the corner, hands clasped round his knees and head slumped forward.

‘Tea?’ said the signalman quietly to Mayhew and Douglas. He’d already perched a dented tin kettle on the embers of the coal fire. Douglas nodded his thanks and moved aside as the man placed more coal there.

‘It falls off the wagons,’ said the man, nodding at the bucket of coal. He was a small, narrow-chested man with a pale face and lank brown hair. It was surprising to see the effortless way in which he pulled the huge signal levers almost as tall as he was. Like so many other veterans of the first war, he’d sewn medal ribbons on the front of his black serge railwayman’s jacket; ‘Mutt and Jeff’ – War Medal and
Victory Medal. There was a forlorn defiance in wearing them.

‘What’s the damned time?’ said Mayhew sleepily, too tired to unbutton his overcoat and consult his gold pocket watch. But before anyone answered he twisted round to get a look at the railway clock that was fixed over the big windows.

‘You should try and get some sleep, Colonel,’ said the signalman. For a moment Douglas thought that the man had recognized Mayhew, but then he realized that this was no more than the way that many ex-servicemen addressed well-spoken strangers.

Mayhew’s reply was interrupted by the sudden sound of the bell-signal: two rings, a pause, two rings. The signalman reached across and repeated the signal on the plunger under the block instruments. He grinned at Mayhew. ‘Don’t be alarmed, governor. It’s a light engine coming down the line. That will be old Bob Swanick, he was driving the train I stopped to get you off.’ He set the block instrument to the line-clear position, so that this would show in the next signal box along the line.

The kettle on the fire began to sing gently. He warmed an old brown teapot, and opened the door to throw the water into the chill wind that was roaring outside. ‘It’s bloody cold tonight,’ he said.

‘I’ve never been so cold,’ said Mayhew, pulling the collar of his trench coat up round his neck.

‘You should have been with me in 1915 then,’ said the signalman. ‘Plugstreet, that second Christmas of the war. Real brass-monkey weather that was!’

The bell rang twice. The signalman answered with a double ring and set the instrument to ‘train on line’. ‘He’s passed Charlie’s box,’ he said. ‘If he’s got any of your people on board he’ll stop here by the box.’

Mayhew got to his feet and pressed his face to the
windows, but saw no more than the lights of the railway signals.

‘Royal Scots Fusiliers,’ said the signalman.

‘I beg your pardon?’ mumbled Mayhew without looking round.

‘Sixth battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers. We had Winnie as the battalion commander at one time.’

Mayhew grunted. He had his hands cupped round his face to see the locomotive. Suddenly they heard the noise of it above the screams of the wind. It passed, leaving a shower of sparks and an acrid smell of smoke. Mayhew bit his lip and looked again at the clock. The signalman hit the plunger a couple of rings, on his way to pouring water into the teapot. ‘So what mob were you with?’ said the signalman.

Mayhew turned to look at him stirring the tea in the brown pot. The signalman stared back at Mayhew. ‘You
were
in the war?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mayhew carefully. ‘I was in the ninety-ninth Württemberg Regiment, and my friend here was on Kaiser Wilhelm’s personal staff.’

Embarrassed by Mayhew’s harsh sarcasm, Douglas said, ‘It’s good of you to spare some of your tea ration.’

‘I like a joke,’ said the signalman as if in reply to Douglas’s unspoken apology. He busied himself with the teapot and then turned to Mayhew. ‘We should have polished off all you bloody Württembergers in 1918,’ he said, ‘and we wouldn’t be in the bloody mess we’re in today.’

The two men stared at each other, then Mayhew laughed. ‘Too right, old son,’ he said and put his hand on the signalman’s shoulder.

‘Sergeant Major’s tea,’ said the signalman. ‘Lots of tinned milk and so much sugar you can stand the spoon up in it.’

‘Can I have mine black without sugar?’ said Douglas.

‘Certainly, chum,’ said the signalman with that quiet friendliness with which Englishmen address foreigners and lunatics. ‘If that’s the way you like it.’ He looked at the heavy coat that Mayhew had loaned to Douglas, and decided that he must have served in the Royal Navy. The warmth of the fire brought a curious odour from the fabric. Perhaps the signalman could smell it too, a pungent spicy perfume. Douglas wondered where the coat could have been to have picked up such a smell.

The brewing of the tea, and its attendant rituals, took five minutes that were otherwise only punctuated by the bells and signals of a goods train passing down the line.

‘Fifty different bells there are,’ said the signalman proudly. He handed Mayhew the best china mug – King George V Silver Jubilee 1935 – and the pilgrim-pattern spoon. ‘More like seventy now that the Huns are here.’

‘Twenty more?’ said Mayhew politely.

‘That’s how we keep tabs on what they are, and where they are; military patrols coming down the track, ammunition trains supplying the coastal batteries…’

‘Or coal trains…’ said Mayhew archly. They were friends now, these two old soldiers, and Douglas was not of their world.

‘They get stopped at every section,’ said the signalman with a grin, ‘while the boys help themselves to a bucket or two.’ He handed Douglas his black tea in a chipped enamel mug. ‘You should see the sacks of it that Charlie takes down to the village. Of course Charlie’s new, he’s only a Leading Porter Temporary Signalman.’

Mayhew nodded sagely at the revelation about Charlie being only a Leading Porter. ‘Your tea all right, chief?’ the signalman asked Douglas.

‘Very nice,’ said Douglas. Suddenly there was the creak of the steep wooden steps and the cold draught that came with the opening of the door. The coal fire roared as it fed on the cold air. Mayhew and Douglas were visibly startled. The signalman laughed. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only Sid. He knows I make tea about this time.’ To the newcomer he said, ‘You smell the tea, don’t you Sid?’