SS-GB (44 page)

Sid was a broad-shouldered man with unnaturally black hair and a carefully trimmed moustache. He wore a railway peaked cap and black uniform overcoat that had been neatly patched at the elbow and hem. He looked round at the folding bed where the King slept, the upright Harry, his heavy breathing nasal enough to show that he was asleep, and the slumped form of Danny Barga. ‘Quite a crowd in here tonight,’ he said. He took the offered cup of tea after placing his peaked cap on the mantelshelf with a genteel care that was probably in deference to the presence of well-dressed visitors. He nodded to Douglas and Mayhew, and warmed his hands round the mug of tea.

To Mayhew the newcomer said, ‘In this matter of football, sir. What takes your fancy, Wolverhampton Wanderers?’

Mayhew looked at him for a moment without speaking. The signalman watched both men. Mayhew said, ‘Woolworth’s versus Wolverhampton Wanderers, you mean? Woolworth’s every time, my dear chap. What varlet would vote Wolves when Woollies will walk away with it?’

Sid laughed. It was a common type of challenge. Few Germans could pronounce Wolverhampton Wanderers without one of the ‘w’ sounds becoming a ‘v’. Mayhew’s improved tongue-twister removed Sid’s caution, although he might have been alarmed to hear how
many Germans, in the more sophisticated echelons of the occupation army in London, could have passed his test with flying colours. Sid sat down on a box and took off his rubber boots.

‘Well?’ said Mayhew impatiently.

‘Boats have been coming and going from the beach, near the river mouth. Special boats…landing craft, by the description. No one can get down there without being fired at.’ He looked at the two men to make the most of his dramatic news. Harry Woods and Danny Barga were awake and listening. ‘One of the porters said he heard machine-gun fire – lots of machine-gun fire – at that German army camp at Bringle Sands.’

Mayhew exchanged a glance with Douglas, and was relieved to know that the raiders had found their objective.

‘Lots of machine-gun fire,’ said Sid again. ‘He tried to come round by the main road, but the Germans turned him back. There’s an unexploded bomb there somewhere.’

‘No, they’re our people,’ said Mayhew. ‘A chap in policeman’s uniform and a couple of men in army uniforms. It’s a way of closing the road. The firing is probably automatic-rifle fire; to the civilian it would sound like machine-guns.’

‘You won’t be able to stop the German reinforcements with a bobby and a couple of fellows dressed as German soldiers,’ said Sid, as though irritated at the way the porter had been fooled by the impostors.

‘Of course they won’t,’ said Mayhew. ‘There are other plans to deal with reinforcements. But the checkpoint will be enough to halt them while our bombing teams go in.’

‘People have been killed in Bringle; women, children and old people, as well as Germans.’ Sid kneaded his cold feet.

‘Don’t go spreading that sort of story,’ said Mayhew. ‘You know as well as I do that the curfew keeps everyone indoors. Is this another story from your railway porter?’

‘He went down on his bicycle.’

‘You’d better make sure he learns to keep his mouth shut,’ said Mayhew. ‘Or I’ll start thinking he’s playing the German game. Now what about Frane Halt?’

‘The American soldiers are there,’ said Sid. ‘Only half a dozen of them. They’ve got an armoured car…a funny-looking thing, a sort of tank with wheels at the front. They must have brought it off the boat. Some of the soldiers are walking down the railway line. They are coming this way. That’s what I wanted to tell you.’

‘Harry,’ said Mayhew, ‘you’re in charge here. None of these people may leave. Archer and I will go down to meet the Americans.’ Danny Barga glared at Mayhew but didn’t object. His twisted ankle still troubled him.

Douglas and Mayhew were only a few minutes’ walk along the railway when they caught sight of the soldiers. ‘Halt!’ shouted Mayhew.

‘Teddy Bears!’ challenged one of the soldiers.

‘Picnic,’ replied Mayhew.

‘I’m Major Dodgson,’ said the tallest of the three soldiers. From the direction of Bringle Sands there came three flashes that lit the horizon. No sooner had the third flash appeared than three explosions rumbled across the dark fields.

‘Colonel Mayhew,’ said Mayhew.

‘We’re about ready for you now, Colonel. Where is the King?’

‘He’s in the signal box just a few hundred yards down the line.’

‘Then let’s get going,’ said Dodgson.

Mayhew put his hand on Dodgson’s arm. ‘There’s something you’d better know, Major. The King can’t walk.’

‘Can’t what?’ said Dodgson.

‘The King is a sick man, Major. You’ll have to get a vehicle.’

‘No, the plan is to take him down this side of the river. It’s a steep footpath. No vehicle could get down there.’ There were more flashes and more explosions.

‘Then get two of your heftiest lads to carry him.’ Colonel Mayhew turned back towards the signal box.

‘Yes, that will be the only way,’ said Dodgson.

Suddenly there was the sound of distant shooting, and a couple of flares lit the sky over Bringle Sands. ‘It will have to be you,’ Major Dodgson told the two soldiers with him. ‘The withdrawal of the main party must have started earlier than planned. It will be very unhealthy along this route in another fifteen or twenty minutes. We must hurry.’

Douglas had never seen a battle before and he was ill-prepared for the confusion and the disorientation. During the first exchanges of fire, both sides had been sparing in the use of ammunition. But now, as the raiders withdrew to their boats, they fired longer bursts and the black night was punctuated with explosions as the bombing parties went into action, destroying vital equipment in the laboratories.

The two soldiers carrying the King stopped and half fell into the spongy field as a burst of tracer fire whipped across their heads. They remained still only long enough to snatch a few breaths, and then grabbed the King and began looking for the tapes that marked the precipitous track down the steep bluff. Douglas was immediately behind them. He heard the man at
the cliff edge yell, ‘Hurry it up, you guys. The boats are waiting. This way, this way.’

Douglas looked for Harry. He was carrying the torch he’d carefully shielded with red paper and was close behind. ‘Douglas,’ he said, ‘not so fast, I can’t keep up.’

‘Too much smoking, Harry,’ said Douglas, although he too was almost out of breath, and pleased at the chance to stop for a moment.

The flares were exploding continuously, crackling and spitting in the sky as they hung in the black void. Twice Germans on the other side of the river had tried to illuminate the scene with mobile searchlights but each time someone had shot out the arcs, and the personnel too, with a burst of automatic-rifle fire. Now the light flickered on again. Douglas wondered that men could be so brave or so foolhardy.

‘Hurry up, you guys,’ said the same voice from the darkness.

Now the searchlight was turned this way, a blinding glare that frosted the grass and made delicate haloes on the warped trees and bushes. From somewhere down the track shots were fired, but it wasn’t easy to handle the big automatic rifles while balancing on the muddy path that was in places polished away by the rain and wind. Douglas heard a shout and a cry as some unfortunate lost his toehold and slid down the rocky slope, bludgeoned by his equipment and strangled by its straps.

‘I’ve twisted my foot,’ said Harry. The searchlight left them in darkness as its beam moved down to illuminate the cliff path.

It was at that moment that Douglas realized that the voice calling ‘Hurry up, you guys’ was a German one. It was the voice of Standartenführer Huth. Before he could call a warning, a fusillade began. The noise
of it hurt his ears, and he felt vibration under his feet as the bullets ripped into the earth, slashed the vegetation and shrieked through the wet air.

The soldiers’ cries were audible over the sounds of the guns, but the noise grew louder until the bullets were detonating so fast that it seemed to be one long roar of explosive.

‘Come back, Douglas.’ It was Harry’s voice.

Douglas saw the light sweep across the King and the two men carrying him. They disappeared into a cloud of flying earth clods, as the machine-guns followed the beam of light. Douglas ran forward but he was downed by a flying tackle that knocked all the air out of his lungs. By the time he’d recovered it was all over. Bodies were strewn in every direction. The Germans had timed it to perfection; not more than a half-dozen men of this party of raiders had got down to the sea in safety. The mangled bodies of two dozen or more of their companions marked the pathway. Among the dead were Major Dodgson, Danny Barga and King George the Sixth, Emperor of India.

When daylight came, one of the landing craft was still on the beach, its loading ramp twisted round the armoured car that had been blown up at the very moment of embarkation. Bodies floated gently in the oily sea and others made contorted shapes on the sand. Everywhere there was the debris of war: steel helmets, life jackets, ropes, a rifle and hundreds of brass cartridge cases gleaming in the early light.

At the German army’s Research Establishment at Bringle Sands, the three laboratory buildings were blackened shells, still being hosed down by the army’s fire fighters. Its medical department was crowded to overflowing as the only surgeon there worked without stopping, and the ambulances provided a shuttle service to the German hospital at Exeter.

Swift retribution had come to the civil population of the district. By eight-thirty the following morning, twenty-seven local men had been shot for assisting the enemy, or failing to account for their movements over the previous twenty-four-hour period. Another hundred-and-sixty-two persons had been moved to a compound near Newton Abbot, the first stage of a journey that would take them to forced labour camps in Germany.

The raiding force suffered nearly 30 per cent casualties and half of those were fatal. But the Marines had done their job well. Guided by a Resistance team, who had studied the Bringle Sands Research Establishment for weeks, they took possession of the whole place after only twenty-five minutes of
fighting. Under Ruysdale’s instructions they demolished the most vital buildings and equipment, and carried away a heavy load of paperwork in their half-track vehicles.

Now a German scientific team was checking the ruins for radioactivity while burial parties were removing the dead. There were no prisoners to interrogate, as even the badly wounded had been taken back to the ships. Waley was dead, killed in the mortar attack that came near the end, just before the Marines withdrew. Major Dodgson was killed in Huth’s carefully arranged ambush, but his friend Hoge came through without a scratch and boarded the last landing craft with a lighted cigar in his mouth. The man they called Ruysdale had found himself curiously unmoved by the fighting and unafraid. He did his job calmly, and took his time inspecting the laboratories. He, too, was on the last landing craft to leave. With him was the aged Professor Frick. The two men had met before, at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen.

Douglas Archer spent those early-morning hours in a small uncomfortable cell under a Feldgendarmerie barracks in Bringle Sands. It was very cold and he was grateful for the heavy overcoat Mayhew had loaned him. It was about eight o’clock the next morning when the noise of the bolts being withdrawn awakened him. Into the cell came General Kellerman. He was dressed in SS uniform, complete with double-breasted overcoat and sword. He swept into the tiny cell like a replete bird of prey, greeting Douglas with a cheery ‘good morning’, scratching his pink, newly-shaven chin, and bringing a strong smell of cologne.

‘Of course,’ said Kellerman, ‘when I heard that you were in custody I almost – please forgive me – I almost laughed. “You
Dummkopf,”
I said, “you’ve arrested one of my finest officers.”’

‘But they didn’t release me,’ said Douglas.

‘No,’ said Kellerman, quite undismayed by Douglas’s unappreciative demeanour. ‘They needed me to provide them with a positive identification.’

‘Can I have something to eat?’

Kellerman stepped outside the door of the cell. ‘Coffee and breakfast for this officer,’ Kellerman told the young SS man standing at attention in the corridor. He brought a tray of food so fast that Douglas suspected Kellerman had arranged the whole thing beforehand, but one could never be quite certain with Kellerman.

‘Your friend Sergeant Woods was not detained,’ said Kellerman.

‘He sent me a message,’ said Douglas.

‘You’ve probably got Sergeant Woods to thank for saving your life,’ said Kellerman. He bent over, sniffed at the coffee and pulled a face.

‘He knocked me down when the shooting began,’ said Douglas. Kellerman looked at him for a long time as if trying to see something in Douglas’s eyes, but then he nodded and said, ‘Exactly.’

‘And Standartenführer Huth has been arrested,’ said Douglas.

‘You seem to know a great deal,’ said Kellerman.

‘No,’ said Douglas. ‘Only what Harry Woods told me when he tried to get me released this morning.’

‘I grieve for his parents,’ said Kellerman suddenly. ‘Professor Huth, the Standartenführer’s father, is a most respected scholar.’

‘But why?’ Douglas drank his coffee.

‘Ah, you did not see what was going on, my dear Superintendent. You are a fine and loyal officer, and no blame could ever attach to you – certainly not in any police force that I commanded.’ Kellerman smiled. When he was quite certain that the implication of this
remark was not lost on Douglas, Kellerman continued, ‘The Standartenführer seemed to be carrying on some perverted crusade against the German army. I do believe he resented the powers the army acquired when martial law was declared.’ Kellerman said this as if he found it very difficult to understand such resentment.

‘Really?’ said Douglas who interpreted it to mean that the army and Kellerman had conspired against Huth. ‘What form did this perverted crusade take, sir?’

‘He openly assisted your friend, Colonel Mayhew, in a conspiracy that released your King from custody in the Tower of London. Also in this terrorist raid, with the tragic consequences that you witnessed. I can understand, and sympathize with, your Colonel Mayhew, who was obviously motivated by feelings of patriotism and loyalty towards his King.’ Nervously Kellerman smoothed his tunic. ‘Very commendable,’ he nodded. ‘But I found it difficult to say anything in defence of Standartenführer Huth’s part in this disgraceful plot.’