Take or Destroy! (3 page)

As he finished speaking, Loftus stepped forward and saluted. ‘Colonel Hockold, sir,’ he said.

The narrow head seemed to duck and lift, and the pale blue eyes stared piercingly upwards. ‘Still up to your tricks, I see, Hockold,’ the general said. ‘I seem to remember a nasty little night exercise when I was instructing at Camberley in 1930. You won, if I remember rightly, with rather a dirty trick.’ The thin severe face cracked into a frosty smile. ‘Just the type we need, because we’re fighting some pretty tough customers out here.’ He patted a folder on the table alongside the map. ‘I’ve read your report.’

He paused and Hockold waited. The general’s head ducked again and the pale eyes came up once more to his face.

‘Not keen on sideshows,’ he went on. ‘Waste of time. Waste of time. Didn’t think much of the one on Benghazi and Tobruk in September. A frontal assault on a heavily defended base seems unnecessarily hazardous. Are you sure about that swept minefield?’

‘Certain, sir,’ Hockold said. ‘The harbour clearance units are still busy at Bardia and Mersa Matruh for the next sweep forward.’

The general frowned. ‘There’ll be no sweep anywhere if I have anything to do with it,’ he observed acidly. ‘The only sweeping that’s going to be done will be done by me.’ He stood for a moment with his hands behind his back, his sharp nose thrust forward, then he looked up again. ‘So perhaps we’d better set something up, if only to make them think we’re coming in by the back door. And you’d better handle it yourself since you know where everything is. It’ll take about a week to organize, I imagine, and that’ll work out just about right, because I’ll be ready around the night of 23 October.’

He stared thoughtfully at his feet. ‘You must accept that we’re a bit stretched at the moment,’ he went on. ‘And there are one or two other things to take into consideration, too, because in early November I gather we’re going into Morocco, Tunis and Algeria.’ He turned to one of the officers behind him, a thin good-looking man in shorts. ‘Freddie, see that he gets full authority for this thing and have the navy and the RAF warned that he’s coming.’ He swung back to Hockold, lean, tense, and excited by his own imaginings. ‘We’ve got to pull it off this time, Hockold, but I think we shall do it all right. I think we shall. We’re going to knock him clean out of Africa this time, so that there can be no coming back for more. Get him down to Gorton, Freddie. He’ll fix him up.’

As it happened, however, when Hockold arrived in Cairo General Gorton was in no position to fix anybody up. He had been whipped off half an hour before to hospital with an agonizing ear infection he’d been fighting for days, and in his place was an entirely different officer who was still a little lost in his new job. He didn’t seem very willing to make decisions and Hockold had a suspicion he wouldn’t last long under the new regime.

‘Go and see General Pierson,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him you’re coming.’

General Pierson, however, was busy near Ismailia, and Hockold was shunted through several officers with Baden-Powell shorts and chests like the contents of a paint box to see a Major-General Murray, a heavy-featured man with a bulldog jaw and a hostile frown who stared at him discouragingly as he entered. ‘Qaba,’ he said at once. ‘They tell me you’re going to put on a bit of a show there. Do a bit of damage and all that.’

Hockold swallowed. There was always an enervating lassitude over Cairo; the tropical rain from the highlands of Ethiopia and the swamps of Uganda swept down to distribute the muddy water in a thousand and one canals across the Delta, so that out of the steamy soil the foetid heat intensified in a pall of dust and filth that lay over the streets of the city. The dirt was persistent and Cairo -- corrupt, lackadaisical, easy-going and flashily romantic at night, despite the war only a hundred miles away -- showed no sign of a spartan warrior existence. Too many battles had already been lost there, too many plans ruined, and Hockold, still only a lieutenant-colonel, felt he had to come to the point quickly.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘please don’t pass me on again. This operation’s been authorized by the army commander himself and I’ve only just over a week to set it up.’

Murray scowled back at him under his heavy eyebrows; then a sudden unexpected smile changed his whole face.

‘Better sit down and tell me what you want,’ he said.

Hockold drew a deep breath. ‘I want transport -’ he began.

‘Lorries?’

‘No, sir. We’re going by sea.’

‘Can’t be done!’ Murray sat up briskly. ‘The navy’s got nothing to spare.’

‘It’s the only way it
can
be done, sir.’

Murray’s smile came again. ‘Well, we’ll leave that for the moment,’ he said. ‘What else?’

‘Men, sir.’

‘How many?’

‘Five hundred, sir. Trained men. Not people who’ve just arrived.’

The frown returned to Murray’s face. ‘General Montgomery got rid of all specialist sub-units,’ he pointed out. ‘And we’re already scraping the gutters for his battle. Every decent outfit we could find’s already moved up into the blue.’ He paused, his face thoughtful. ‘You’ll have to rehearse. Where are you going to do it?’

‘Gott el Scouab. There are ravines there, one of them steep like the Shariah Jedid at Qaba.’

‘Gould you do it in a week?’

‘If they’re the right chaps, sir.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. Go on.’

‘What about naval support fire, sir?’

‘Not a chance.’

‘The general said there had to be no mistake, sir.’

Murray’s heavy body sagged. ‘Unfortunately, Monty’s not an admiral.’

‘Sir, there are three 47s guarding the harbour.’

Murray wrote something on a pad. ‘Well, we won’t start shouting “Abandon ship” till the bloody thing goes down,’ he said. ‘Anything else?’

‘Signallers. Medical people. Demolition experts.’

Murray thought for a moment then he gave an unexpected grin and tapped Hockold’s plan. ‘Sounds all rather worthwhile,’ he said. ‘I’m told you’ve been behind Jerry’s lines for three months.’

‘Four, sir.’

‘Well, you can’t sit around with your thumb in your bum till I’ve talked to everybody. How’d you like to nip out for a drink with my planning officer? I’d laid it on to go myself but I suspect now I’m going to be busy for an hour or two.’

Hockold smiled, grateful that out of all Cairo’s armchair warriors he’d found one who was prepared to forsake his evening gin to do some work. ‘I’ve a little drinking to catch up with, sir,’ he admitted.

Murray nodded. ‘Good. My planning officer’s got transport. Sound operator. B.A., Aberdeen. But see you’re back by seven o’clock because I suspect we shall be whipping you off to see the Navy or somebody.’

He pressed a bell and an ATS officer appeared. She had a splendid figure and Hockold was quietly admiring it when Murray gestured. ‘Kirstie,’ he said. ‘This is Colonel Hockold. Hockold, this is my niece and my planning officer - Kirstie McRuer.’

It was decided the attack should involve all three services and take the form of a Combined Operations raid.

Kirstie McRuer was twenty-five, tall and straight-backed, with green eyes and thick chestnut hair. She had been in the Middle East for eighteen months and was wary of predatory officers.

‘Because I’m with the army,’ she explained, ‘most of them seem to think I’m a sort of camp-follower. In fact, quite a lot of us are in Planning now and doing very well at it, too.’

They were sitting on the terrace of the officers’ club, and in the odd moments of silence they could hear the grumble of the guns to the west. It seemed a strange sound in the light-hearted atmosphere about them, which was like that of an expensive Thames-side pub on a Sunday morning in peacetime. There was even a Cairo tennis professional in white flannels watching a group round the pool where a few Egyptian girls smiled, beautifully dressed and poised. Kirstie wondered how much they detested the British.

She was unobtrusively studying Hockold as they chatted over their drinks. He had sat in silence as they had driven from Murray’s office through endless lines of ammunition trucks -- even a column of German prisoners, singing the song that every army in North Africa sang.

‘Deine Schritte kennt sie, deinen zieren Gang,
Alle Abend brennt sie, doch mich vergass sie lang.. .’

At the club Hockold had helped her from the jeep with an old-fashioned solemnity which was strange in Cairo where everybody accepted women officers as equals. It told her he’d been a long time away from female company and was faintly embarrassed by it.

Nearby, two cavalrymen in faded drill were playing table tennis as if the result of the war were at stake. They were both burned black and looked as though they’d just come in from the desert. There was something of the same worn look about Hockold. He was tall and slender, thin-hipped in a pair of old doeskin trousers bleached almost white, but under the mixture of nonchalance and professionalism which made up the side of him that was a soldier, there was also an uncertain discomfort that told her he was shy.

A young officer in neat khaki was eyeing her hungrily from a nearby table, and she decided he’d probably been on a troopship coming round the Cape for two months and was desperate for female company. Trying to draw Hockold out, she indicated him with her eyes.

‘You’d be surprised how often one of them tells me I’m beautiful,’ she pointed out. ‘If I were, I might be flattered. But I’m not.’

‘You look all right to me,’ Hockold said with a brisk enthusiasm that was overstressed enough to tell her that he wasn’t in the habit of paying compliments to women.

‘You’ve been in the desert a long time,’ she smiled. ‘It’s what you’d call a good Scots face. Scotswomen have a tendency to look better as they grow older.’

‘At least that’s something for Scots husbands to look forward to.’ Hockold’s comment was brusque. ‘Often in England it’s the other way round. Leads to quite a lot of ill-will after about twenty years.’

He sipped at his drink, staring into it as though he were searching for something else to say. He still looked grim and ill at ease, and she guessed that some of his awkwardness had come from being lanky and ungainly in his youth.

‘Are you engaged or married or anything?’ he asked.

‘I’m a widow.’

‘Oh!’ He looked uncomfortable and she saw to her surprise that he was actually blushing. ‘Rude of me to ask.’

It was a long time since she’d seen a mature man blush in front of her and it oddly endeared him to her. ‘It’s a normal enough question,’ she said quickly, encouragingly. ‘I don’t mind.’

He tried to make up for his gaffe. ‘Was your husband army?’

‘Yes,’

‘Dunkirk?’

‘No. Bomb. He was with Bomb Disposal. One of them killed him.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s history now. We didn’t know each other long and we were only married two months. What about you?’

‘Much the same as usual.’ Hockold gestured with his glass. ‘Regular cavalry. Got a little tired of swanning up and down in the blue in a tin box on wheels so I did a bit of long range stuff for a change and finally found myself attached to Loftus’s lot. They left me behind in June to see what I could find out.’

‘When did you come out here?’

It was the question everybody asked sooner or later and he smiled because he’d arrived in the Middle East even before Dunkirk, one of Wavell’s small and rather amateur force which had deluded Graziani into believing it was twice as strong as it was and in 1940 had even smashed him back beyond Benghazi.

‘I was one of the first,’ he said slowly, and she knew he wasn’t shooting a line. ‘But they’ve decided now that I’ve had enough, and there’s talk of bringing me back after this next little business.’

‘Do you want to come back?’

He sat for a moment thinking of the wastes of shaly soil and trying to exist on a meagre quarter of a gallon of water a day.

‘Yes,’ he said in the clipped way he had of speaking to her, so different from the way he spoke to Murray. ‘Been spitting sand out for three years now almost without a break. Should be pleasant to be able to take a bath regularly.’

‘At least you’re honest.’

He shrugged. ‘No. Just frightened. Can’t go on for ever. Been nicked twice. Nothing much, but it’s a sign. We all catch it in the end if we go on too long. This time Loftus insists.’ He smiled again. ‘If I survive.’

She didn’t know what to say, sensing an honesty that had become unexpected in Cairo where everyone still contrived to live as if it were peacetime, dining and drinking and apparently not connected at all with the war in the desert.

‘Is it going to be difficult?’ she asked.

‘Well, it’s not going to be easy and I have a suspicion it’s already become bigger than I originally intended.’ Hockold paused and finished his drink. ‘Suppose we ought really to be getting back now,’ he said. ‘Time’s up.’ He hesitated, then went on in a breathless, stumbling rush. ‘Any chance of buying you another drink sometime?’

She looked up at him. His skin seemed to be burned to the eyebrows so that it looked beaten and raw, and his eyes were tired. He was a severe individual, meditative and brooding, a pensive, lonely, quiet man, but she suspected that he was also uncompromising, unflinching and honourable.

She deliberately put on her best smile to encourage him. ‘I’d like that,’ she said.

When they got back to Murray’s office, he was on the telephone. He waved at Hockold and went on talking.

‘No,’ he was saying loudly. ‘The bloody man can’t take compassionate leave! Every other poor bugger’s having to work his guts out and a few of ‘em are going to end up dead, so why should
he
get away with it?’ He slammed the telephone down and closed the file in front of him; as he smiled at Hockold his whole face changed. ‘Take a pew,’ he said. ‘I’ve laid on a meeting with the navy and the RAF. We’ll go straight along. I’ve also got a few facts for you. None of ‘em very encouraging, I’m afraid.’

‘Better tell me the worst, sir.’

‘Right. Bad news first: there’ll be no warships. That’s a dead cert. According to a staff appreciation made only a week ago there’s nothing anywhere until Monty’s battle’s over. The navy’s had a rough time in the last two years and everything they’ve still got at this end of the Med’s earmarked for the advance. That means there’ll be no naval support fire. One other thing: Freddie de Guingand says Monty can contribute nothing either. He says he needs everybody he’s got and I expect he does because he’s determined that when he punches his hole in Rommel’s line he’ll have enough men for the follow-through.’ He glanced at Hockold’s taut face and his cheerful smile appeared again. ‘But don’t worry, my boy. We’ll find your men even if we have to turn out storekeepers, clerks, cooks, elderly staff officers like me, and the man who fought the monkey in the dustbin.’