The Dead Can Wait (31 page)

Swinton had arranged for a series of ammunition boxes to be lashed together to make a small stage for Watson to address the troops. Watson was dreading this. He was well aware that he was no great orator. He could deliver a lecture and a clinical appraisal to a packed room, but here he was asking for men to risk their lives. He had to appeal to their hearts and minds, their patriotism and sense of duty. And to what end? He wasn’t sure.

Cardew, Levass and Thwaites were clumped together near the makeshift podium. Cardew had a grease-stained face, as he had been putting the finishing touches to
Genevieve
. As usual, there was a rag in his hand. Levass was smoking a small cheroot, enjoying the sun on his face, while Thwaites slapped his leg with his swagger stick, as if impatient to be elsewhere.

From the far edge of the field of rye came a low thumping sound, and all felt it transmit through their feet. A second, higher note as an engine revved, then a thump as gears were engaged. As a man they turned to see what was making the noise, which was soon joined by the threshing of plant material. Above the agitated necks of the plants they could just make out the landships coming towards them, like agricultural machinery reprogrammed to destroy, flattening the crop before them, sending up a column of grain and chaff. The pair of tanks didn’t exactly burst out of the rye field, more pushed the stalks aside like curtains: heavy-set Wagnerian sopranos of riveted metal making an operatically grand entrance.

Even though he had seen one before, Watson felt a surge of panic as the pair turned and wheeled towards him, those linked tracks rotating hypnotically, whisking the soil into a yellowish dust, as if intent on crushing him and grinding him into the ground. If he were a German soldier, he’d run.

They juddered to a halt in unison, the doors in the rear of the sponsons swung open and most of the crew de-tanked, leaving the drivers, visible through the open front visor, in place.

This pair had, according to instructions, been running with all ventilation open. The two were slightly different: one had machine guns, like
Genevieve
; the other had wicked-looking naval six-pounders poking from the side sponsons, so it looked like a ship’s turret turned on its side, one on each flank. A female and a male. The male had a cage-like structure over its top, sloping away from the centre in an inverted V, as if it were a shallow roof awaiting slates. It was, Watson decided, a device to deflect grenades and bombs.

Cardew walked over, rubbing his dirty hands on the rag. ‘What’s this, Major?’

‘Colonel Swinton allowed me two more, one male and one female. These are our controls, Mr Cardew.’

‘Controls?’

‘Controls. The question is, was what happened in
Genevieve
a function of that one tank, or will it be repeated in each of the machines? There is only one way to find out. If the problem is
Genevieve
’s alone, well, you know better than I, but I am sure she can be stripped down and rebuilt. If it is all the tanks . . .’

‘It’d put us back months,’ Cardew said glumly.

‘Yes,’ said Watson, ‘because Haig won’t be best pleased if you send him what turn out to be mobile coffins, will he?’

‘I should think not. The whole idea is for the tanks to kill the enemy, not the poor buggers inside,’ agreed Cardew. ‘Excuse my French. How will you decide who goes in which tank?’

‘We’ll draw lots, apart from two places.’

‘Which are they?’

‘There are two men I want in
Genevieve.’

Cardew laughed. ‘Let me guess. Me and you?’

‘Indeed. I shall look for any medical anomalies. You for mechanical defects. One of the crew will be wearing a gas mask and have extras ready to hand out at the first sign of trouble.’

‘A gas mask?’ Cardew asked. ‘So you think it’s the engine fumes?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Watson, truthfully. ‘But we’d best be prepared for all eventualities. Now, I have to ask for volunteers to run with all hatches closed over the testing ground.’

‘I’d better warm
Genevieve’s
engine up to the same temperature as those,’ said Cardew. ‘Otherwise we won’t be comparing like with like.’

‘Good idea,’ conceded Watson. He turned to Swinton and nodded that he was ready to proceed.

‘Gentlemen!’ Swinton bellowed. The assembled soldiers snapped to attention. ‘At ease. I would like to introduce Major Watson of the Royal Army Medical Corps. He has been brought in to get to the bottom of what happened in
G for Genevieve
recently – events that have given rise to wild speculation and rumour. Major Watson is a man of science and a man of medicine. Also, a few of you might have heard of him in a previous career, Dr John H. Watson of Baker Street.’

Someone actually applauded, a rather lonely sound in the open air, but there was a murmur of recognition. Watson waited for the inevitable disappointment when they realized they had the cart but not the horse. Sherlock Holmes cast a long shadow, even when he was incarcerated in some high-security prison.

Watson stepped onto the ammunition boxes, rewriting his words as he went. The opening seemed feeble; he needed something with power, something to stir the blood.

‘Soldiers of the tanks! Sailors of the landships! It seems you might have made enemies. Good! It means you are doing something right.’

The words boomed over the field and Watson, like every other man, looked in the direction of their origin. For one moment it seemed as if the sycamores had spoken, but then, from the shadow of one of them, stepped a familiar figure. Winston Churchill. Behind him was Mrs Gregson and, next to her, leaning slightly on her, was a beaming Captain Fairley, his face still pale and drawn, but shell-shocked, Watson hoped, no more.

Churchill, too, was grinning, loving the theatricality of his entrance. Watson had expected – indeed requested through the post-mistress – the captain, but Churchill coming was a total surprise. And how on earth had the pair got to Elveden so quickly?

‘Can I have the floor for a few minutes, Major?’ he asked Watson. He lowered his voice. ‘Before you ask, I still have friends in the RNAS.’ Of course. He’d have flown up with pilots of the Royal Naval Air Service. ‘You solve puzzles, you cure men. Me, I make speeches. Mrs Gregson told me the gist. Do you mind?’ Watson shook his head. ‘Excellent. And I hope there are no hard feelings about my technique for getting you up here? Perhaps you appreciate now—’

‘You did what you thought was necessary,’ said Watson flatly.

‘As I always do.’

Churchill puffed on his cigar as he surveyed the tankmen before him. At once the atmosphere had changed. The wily politician, well fed and red-faced, had the air of a Roman general about him. The soldiers, still at ease, now seemed taller, and leaned forward, as if to catch every word, every nuance of what the former First Lord of the Admiralty was going to say.

‘I am not going to take credit for that marvellous creation.’ He pointed the glowing end of the cigar at the two parked tanks, still clicking and creaking as they cooled. ‘But I will take some credit for nursing it to life. I am the midwife, not the father. Yet I still fill with pride when I see it. Yes, it’s crude and noisy and slow. But so am I sometimes.’ A ripple of laughter. ‘But I can build up a head of steam for those who get in my way. When I know I am right, there is no force in the world can stop me saying so. God give me strength to admit my failures and I do, I do. But the tank, gentlemen, is not one of them. I will not allow it to be one of them. It will take its place alongside the horse, the lance, the musket, the Martini-Henry, the Maxim, the aeroplane, the submarine and the dreadnought as a weapon that changed the face of war. And that weapon is ours, it is Great Britain’s.’

A cheer. Watson stole a glance at Levass, who, as expected, was frowning. Surely he couldn’t expect subtlety at a time like this. Then Churchill wrong-footed them both.

‘And, of course, it also belongs to our gallant Allies in this struggle – France.’ Levass inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘But our problems are here, now, not in France or Belgium. What we ask you to do is no less than going over the top, just as brave, just as valuable. You are fighting for our way of life. I say this machine can save our way of life and, if used properly, can save millions of your countrymen’s lives. Tommies crouching in the trenches, with bullets flying over their heads and gas in their lungs, don’t know we are trying everything to break out, to push the Hun back where he belongs and keep him there. This is our Kraken, our firedrake, the monster that will put ice into our enemy’s hearts. I say to you this day, we did not want this war. But once a country is so unfortunate as to be drawn into a war, no price is too great to pay for an early and victorious peace. There will be losses, there have been grave losses. There have been, I hear, eight men lost on this very ground, before a shot in anger has been fired. But looking at those losses squarely and soberly, you must not forget, at the same time, the prize for which you are contending. It is civilization. It is the British Empire. It is your home towns and villages, your wives and children. That is why we need victory. We are fighting with a foe of the most terrible kind, and we are locked in mortal struggle. To fail is to be enslaved, or, at the very best, to be destroyed. Not to win decisively is to have all this misery over again after an uneasy truce, and to fight it over again, probably under less favourable circumstances and, perhaps, alone. Why, after what has happened, there could never be peace in Europe until the German military system has been so shattered and torn and trampled that it is unable to resist by any means the will and decision of the conquering Power. That is why we need a decisive victory. When I speak of victory, I am not referring to those victories which crowd the daily placards of any newspapers. I am speaking of victory in the sense of a brilliant and formidable fact, shaping the destinies of nations and shortening the duration of the war. Beyond those few miles of ridge and scrub on which our soldiers, our French comrades, our gallant Australians, and our New Zealand fellow-subjects are now battling, lies the downfall of a hostile empire, the destruction of an enemy’s fleet and army, the fall of a world-famous capital, and probably the accession of powerful Allies. The struggle will be heavy, the risks numerous, the losses cruel; but victory when it comes will make amends for all. You deserve to get from your leaders, be they military or civilian, the courage, the energy, the audacity and readiness to run all risks and shoulder the responsibilities without which no great result in war can ever be achieved. And, in return, we ask the same of you. Long speeches are not suited to the times in which we live, and, therefore, I shall detain you only a very few moments more. I have known Major Watson a great many years. He has worked, for no fame and no reward, along with his illustrious colleague, Mr Sherlock Holmes, for the benefit of this great country time and time again, for which we thank him. We have had a small setback here at Elveden. I say to you, let us pick up the tattered flag from the field, and go forth once more, as proud members of the greatest nation and the greatest army this earth has ever known! You want proof of this? No nation has ever at any time in history found such a spirit of daring and sacrifice widespread, almost universal, in the masses of its people. Britain has found millions of citizens who, all of their own free will, have eagerly or soberly resolved to fight and die for the principles at stake, and to fight and die in the hardest, the cruellest, and the least rewarded of all the wars that men have fought. Why, that is one of the most wonderful and inspiring facts in the whole history of this wonderful island, and in afterdays, depend upon it, it will be taken as a splendid signal of the manhood of our race and of the soundness of our ideals. Major Watson, you have the, um, floor.’

The applause was loud and ringing, with men clapping until their hands stung, and Churchill doffed his hat and puffed some more on his cigar as he sucked up the adulation along with the smoke. He leaned over to Watson and whispered, ‘Bit long-winded, I am afraid. Just rehearsing for an address tomorrow. Hope you don’t mind. But I think you’ll get your volunteers.’

And when Watson asked for them, as far as he could tell, every hand went up.

The three tanks stood on the edge of the faux battlefield, the bodies within rattling from the vibrating hulls. Apparently starting the engines was sometimes tricky, if not downright dangerous – a naked flame to the carburettor – so Cardew had suggested Watson and most of
Genevieve
’s crew stay outside. Watson chatted to Fairley while he waited. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Fairley, pointing to the wire and the trenches.

‘Impressive. Gives me the willies, still,’ Fairley admitted.

‘Me, too. But?’

‘Too neat, don’t you think, sir?’ Fairley said, confirming Watson’s initial diagnosis. ‘Men have been fighting in these holes for two years. Shells have knocked them into strange shapes.’ He kneeled down. ‘This is sand, isn’t it?’

‘Very sandy soil, yes.’

‘Good drainage then. No mud.’

‘Not much, no,’ agreed Watson. The unholy trinity of trench, machine gun and barbed wire had a fourth horseman – the sticky filth that covered the land out there. ‘Also I detect a lack of machine-gun emplacements on the German side.’

Fairley peered. ‘Well, I’ll have to take a closer look.’

‘Will you? I want you to map out a proper defensive German position. How the machine guns will rake the tanks. I know they look shocking at first, but the Germans will recover. I want you to stay here and help Thwaites and the others put the tanks and their crews through as genuine a war as possible. Import mud if you have to. Collect farm slurry; it can’t smell worse than the trenches.’

‘Lord, no.’

Watson looked Fairley straight in the eye. ‘There isn’t a man here who has been through what you have been through, seen what you have seen.’ He laughed. ‘Smelled what you have smelled. With them, it’s all from books and newspapers and Mafeking. Can you do this without . . . well, without a relapse?’