Gold From Crete (16 page)

When it was over, the whole battle was finished. There was no fight left in the Italians. The desert had already vomited out three fierce attacks - first the major’s light tanks, then the infantry, and last the cruiser tanks, and no one could guess what next would come forth. And from the rear came the news that the pursuing British were pressing on the rear guard; at any moment the sea might bring its quota of death, should the British ships find a channel through the sandbanks which would bring their guns within range of the huddled army. Front, rear and both flanks were open to attack, and overhead the air force was about to strike. Nor was that all. Thirst was assailing them, those unhappy fifty thousand men massed without a single well within reach. There was nothing for it but surrender.

The major watched the fifty thousand men yield up their arms, he knew that he was witness to one of the great victories of history, and he was pleased about it. Through the dreadful fatigue that was overwhelming him he also was aware that he had played a vital part in the gaining of that victory, and that somewhere in the future there would be mentions in dispatches and decorations. But his eyelids were heavy and his shoulders drooping.

Then came the gunner; his faded, oil-stained overalls made more shocking than ever by the stains of the blood of the wounded driver, and that horribly fluffy yellow beard of his, like the down on a baby chick, offending the sunlight. Now that they had reached the sea, the distillation plants would supply them with a sufficiency of water and that beard could be shaved off. But the gunner was grinning all over his face, his blue eyes nearly lost in the wrinkles round them, lines carved by the blinding light of the desert. The gunner had heard a cock crowing down beside the solitary white farmhouse towards the sea on the edge of the battlefield, and he had walked there and back on stiff legs. The gunner held out a big fist before the major, and opened the fingers like a man doing a conjuring trick. In his hand was an egg.

When the German police came aboard the
Lek II
that May morning at Dusseldorf, Jan Schuylenboeck thought that they had found out about his activities, and he set his hand to the pocket where his pencil was; concealed beneath the rubber eraser at the end of that pencil was enough poison to ensure for him a death much more rapid than the Gestapo would allow him. But it turned out that there was no immediate need for the poison, because the arrival of the police was not the first step in a personal tragedy; it was part of a national tragedy, of a world-wide tragedy, for that was the morning that the Germans invaded Holland, and the police were arresting, not a spy - which Schuylenboeck had been for a long time - but an enemy alien; Schuylenboeck had been that for only a few minutes, after the German planes had dropped their first bombs on the Dutch civilian population.

The
Lek II
was a tugboat, almost new; since long before the war began between Germany and England, Schuylenboeck, as her owner and captain, had been taking vast tows up the Rhine to supply the German war machine. It had been a profitable contract, but the money had been no sort of compensation to the tug’s captain; instead, he had found his reward in reporting to London all the numerous things that a tugboat captain can discover during voyages to the German munition towns on the Rhine.

The police officer was quite apologetic about arresting Jan Schuylenboeck; odd though it was for a Gestapo man to be apologetic about anything at all.

‘The purest formality, Captain,’ said the police officer. ‘We are under orders to arrest every Dutchman and Belgian in the country. But I am quite sure that it was not meant to include you, because you have been known too long as a friend of the party. A pity that you did not join along with your brother-in-law, but in any case, I am sure you will soon be released. We cannot spare either you or the
Lek II
for long.’

‘I am glad to hear that,’ said Schuylenboeck.

Years of practice had already taught him never to allow his expression to change, never to say anything that might betray him. The fact that his hated brother-in-law had for some time been a member of the Dutch Nazi Party had been of considerable use to him, even though it had not made his life any happier. Schuylenboeck kept his face expressionless while the radio poured out its tremendous news - of how the German army was pouring almost unchecked over two frontiers; of the breaking of the Belgian defence line on the Albert Canal by a panzer division from Aachen; of the descent of parachute troops everywhere, forestalling the cutting of the dykes, which might have let in the sea and saved the country; and later on, the news of the bombing of Rotterdam and the surrender of the Dutch army. Schuylenboeck could not manage to make himself appear pleased at the news that both the Netherlands and Belgium were conquered, that France was tumbling into ruin, but at the same time he managed to conceal his delight at the news that the British army had escaped at Dunkirk. Everybody knew him as a stolid, stodgy Dutchman, and violent demonstrations were not expected of him.

Even before the Dutch surrender, arrangements had already been made to continue Schuylenboeck and the
Lek II
in the employment of the Third Reich. Now there were huge quantities of loot to be got out of the prostrate country. For a time, until the Dutch should be reduced to utter misery, the shipments up the Rhine would be heavier than ever. Schuylenboeck nodded when he was told. He could not trust himself ever to speak, it seemed to him.

And yet, when the time came and he met that brother-in-law of his whom he had always disliked so intensely, the one who had been a Nazi for years, he nerved himself to be quite cordial to him.

‘I’m glad to hear you’ve made up your mind to cooperate, Jan,’ said Braun.

‘It’s the only logical thing to do,’ grunted Schuylenboeck.

‘Exactly. Look at me. Head of a whole district already. When peace comes and the New Order is fully established, I shall be the ruler of thousands, millions. And meanwhile - meanwhile I have enough to eat and plenty of money to spend. It will be the same for you.’

‘So it seems.’

‘The people think they’re very clever, not speaking to me. You’ll find the same thing, but don’t let it worry you. I’ll attend to that. Old Mrs Honig - she’s some relation to me, you know - didn’t invite me to the party to celebrate her golden wedding. Didn’t invite me, although I’m her cousin, and in my official position. To tell the truth, I have an idea that she started the idea of a golden wedding party just so as to be able not to invite me. Well, much good it did her and her doddering old husband. I suppose you’ve heard where they spent their precious golden wedding.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ said Schuylenboeck. He automatically fingered his beloved pencil with the dose of poison hidden under the eraser. If he were ever in danger of being sent to the same place, the poison would be useful. A pity that the old Honigs had not had such a poison in their possession when they were arrested.

Four times the
Lek II
and her captain took big tows of loot up the Rhine for delivery in the industrial towns. On one occasion the British bombers raided Ruhrort while Schuylenboeck was there, and one bomb burst on the quay not very far from the
Lek II
, and started a beautiful fire among the very stores she had brought up the river. Schuylenboeck thought to himself how glad the people to whom he used to report would have been to receive that piece of news. But Schuylenboeck had no intention at all of risking detection in order to convey what would be, after all, a very minor piece of news. He was saving himself for something more important than that; he did not know what, but he thought the opportunity would come one of these days - that is, unless he was compelled to use the dose of poison which lay concealed under the eraser in his pencil. If that bomb had hit the
Lek II
and killed Schuylenboeck at that time, the fading memory of him would have been merely that of one more of the few pitiful traitors who betrayed the Netherlands.

And then came a change of duties to Schuylenboeck and a change of scene for the
Lek II
. The long journeys up the Rhine - somehow pleasant despite the torrent of unhappy memories which they evoked - ended for good. It was not because there was no more loot to be extracted from Holland; there was still plenty, but it could be entrusted to tug masters of less ability and less reliability than Schuylenboeck.

Flushing was a scene of boiling activity. For the defensive - to guard against an English attack - there were minefields being laid and big guns being mounted and concrete blockhouses being erected. For the offensive there was a German army to be trained in embarkation and debarkation; also there was a motley flotilla of tugs and lighters and shallow-draft steamers to be trained in the same operations.

Schuylenboeck had often devoted some of his thoughts to the problem facing the Germans of invading England. To start with, there was the question of obtaining, even temporarily, the command of the sea. Schuylenboeck dismissed that from his mind; the Nazis might by some astonishing combination of circumstances be able to bypass it. But after that came the question of ferrying over a large number of men and a huge mass of material. Schuylenboeck could make calculations about that; he had spent his life dealing with questions of water transport. Before his eyes here in Flushing he could see some of the steps the Nazis were taking to solve the problem. First he scratched his head, with its thinning straw-coloured hair, and then, finding little inspiration in that, he pulled at his fat pink cheeks and stared out over the crowded harbour, narrowing his eyelids over his slightly protuberant blue eyes. He was not a handsome man, nor did he appear to be a particularly intellectual man. And certainly he did not appear to be a man who could evolve and cherish through months of intense danger a deep design.

About a hundred men to a lighter, Schuylenboeck saw that the Nazis were allowing. What would be the total force they would try to employ? Schuylenboeck had little idea, but he fixed arbitrarily upon three hundred thousand. That meant three thousand lighters. That meant - Schuylenboeck was not good at mental arithmetic, but he dared not risk putting such calculations on paper - a string of lighters one hundred and fifty miles long if in single file, taking about twenty hours to pass a given point at their best speed - doubtful when there were intricate channels, through shoals and minefields to be traversed. But of course every harbour from Emden down to Cherbourg, or beyond, would be employed. Then came the question of equipment, of tanks and guns. Schuylenboeck groaned in misery at the thought of all those unknown quantities intruding themselves into his calculations. He had no idea how much space they would require. Schuylenboeck was reminded of the little boy who asked his father how much a million pennies made, and, being told that it made the devil of a lot of money, got into trouble next morning in school because it was the wrong answer.

The Nazis had the devil of a problem on their hands - a problem depending on the utmost nicety of timing, on the most accurate planning, on the most careful consideration of navigational conditions of tides and wind. And he was well aware that they were doing their usual painstaking best to eliminate all the possible unknowns.

Colonel Potthoff was in charge of the embarkation arrangements in the Flushing sector. Schuylenboeck came to know him well, a man almost as bulky as Schuylenboeck himself, with a good deal of the bulk protruding over the back of his collar in naked, fleshy rolls. Potthoff used to sit at his desk in the harbour-master’s office and wheeze heavily over timetables.

‘Six hours for the troops to file into the lighters, Major Roth!’ said Potthoff. ‘That is too much. Then four more to get the lighters clear of the mole. Quite impossible ... Captain Schuylenboeck, you must see to it the lighters get to sea quicker than that.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Schuylenboeck and Roth dutifully; presumably, Roth’s tone was sincere.

It was an intricate, difficult job to arrange for the troops, on the word being given, to march out of their barracks and take their position in order in the waiting lighters - the harbour was chock-a-block with them - and then make up the tows and get them out of the harbour through the narrowed entrance. Nor was the situation eased by the fact that half the tug masters were Dutch and did their best unobtrusively to muddle the business; the captain of a tug with six lighters in tow can cause a quite amazing tangle, if he is so inclined. There was one Dutch captain who managed to get his tow into the minefield outside the entrance and blow one lighter of troops to fragments. But the Germans shot him even though he pleaded that it was an unavoidable accident.

Schuylenboeck approved of the blowing up of the lighter, but he never indulged in the petty obstructionism of the other captains. He was hoping, deep down in the stolid bulk of him, for larger game. His helpfulness in the matter of manoeuvring tows won him still further the confidence of his Nazi tyrants; it won him the responsibility of handling a tow of no fewer than ten lighters - the
Lek II’
s fullest capacity - and it won him the hatred of all those who had once been his friends. Schuylenboeck was reduced to drinking his evening beer - thin wartime stuff - in the company of his brother-in-law, eyed askance by the loyalists. There were small compensations; Braun still had a stock of the thin Sumatra cigars with a straw up the middle that Schuylenboeck loved, and he told Schuylenboeck scraps of information that Schuylenboeck stored up in his mind, ready to tell when the time should come, if he did not have to use the poison under the eraser first.

It was not only in embarkation that the Nazi troops had to be drilled. They also had to practise disembarkation. The tows, when they had crept out as far to sea as they dared, turned about and headed for shore again; there to practise, some of them, running around in the shallows, where the troops leaped out waist deep and poured up the beaches, and some to practise running alongside the jetty in what, for the purposes of the manoeuvre, was assumed to be a captured port. There were times when the Royal Air Force came over, raining bombs, and with the fighters spouting 20-mm shells, wreaking destruction on the flotilla and killing the hapless soldiers in the lighters. Yet after each such attack, more lighters crept round from the German shipbuilding yards, more troops came to fill the gaps, and the rehearsal went steadily on. And during this dreadful August, when the RAF was fighting to preserve England from Goering’s bombers there was not much strength to spare to harass the invasion forces.