The White Guns (1989) (31 page)

He had protested. 'You might need me, Herr Leutnant! You are my officer now! It is my
place
also!'

How right he had been, he thought. Something slid from a catwalk and seemed to fall for a long while before it clattered down below.

Beri-Beri groaned, 'You've still got time ... if you jump for it, you could make it to the top –'

'I thought you'd dropped off again.' He hugged him tightly. 'Forget it.'

Beri-Beri seemed to relax. Then he said hoarsely, 'That girl.'

'What girl?' He felt it probing through him, already missing what he had never shared. 'It was hopeless.'

Beri-Beri gritted his teeth. 'How long have we got?'

But Marriott would not remove his arm to look. It would be quick anyway. If it was enough to take out a ship's keel.. .

He stared with disbelief at a rope bowline as it dropped down by his legs. He stared up and saw the boy's face peering at them, another shadowy figure beyond, the sound of feet on metal.

Marriott struggled to his knees and dragged the bowline around Beri-Beri's shoulders. He did not know what he was saying to him; the words just seemed to flood out as he tried to secure the line. All he could think was that they had not left them to die.
They had come back.
It might be too late already but... He gasped,
'Haul away!'

Beri-Beri cried out just once, and then mercifully fainted as they dragged him up and over the rim of the hatch. Marriott took a deep breath and then jumped for the upper part of the ladder. Hands reached down to guide him through, and then they were all lurching along those same eerie catwalks, pausing only to haul and thrust Beri-Beri's limp figure through one hatch after another until Marriott saw daylight, tasted salt spray, and felt almost sick with gratitude and disbelief.

He saw the tug's tall funnel rising and dipping close alongside, the master peering up at the ship's bulwark, his real feelings hidden by a mask of watchfulness.

Orders were barked, lines cast off, and then with powerful dignity the tug
Herkules
thrashed stern-first clear of the side.

Marriott saw his friend being wrapped in a blanket, while someone placed a lifejacket under his head like a pillow.

The explosion when it came was surprisingly subdued, but the tell-tale bubbles and spreading pattern of floating rust told him that the explosive charges had done their work.

Marriott walked into the spacious chartroom and leaned over the same calculations, before marking the position and initialling the deck-log.

He was vaguely aware that the tug had gathered way and was forging ahead once more. The master's shadow fell across the chart and for a long moment their eyes met and held.

Marriott had faced death many times. He had persuaded himself he had been able to accept it, if not the actual dying.

Today he had surprised himself. He had accepted both without hesitation.

The master nodded very slowly.

'I send radio signal, Herr Leutnant. They will have doctor waiting.' He gave a rare smile so that his weatherbeaten face seemed to be all wrinkles.

'Now I know the war is
kaputt!'

Marriott saw the bare-footed boy staring at them through the door and replied, 'You took a great risk, Kapitän Krieger.'

The older man shook his head. 'To go to sea is a risk, Herr Leutnant.' He held out his hand. 'I have some schnapps. It is a good moment.'

'None better.' He saw them carrying Beri-Beri to the shelter of the bridge.
Leave him to die? Not in a thousand bloody years!

He did not see the expression on the German's craggy face, nor did he realise he had spoken so fervently, and aloud.

Captain Eric Whitcombe of the Army's Special Investigation Branch was sipping his first mug of scalding tea of the day while he read slowly through a copy of the
Daily Mail.

He was a big man, with a sun-reddened face and a dashing ginger moustache. His battledress was neatly pressed, and he was still unused to the comfortable quarters and German servants which had been available to him since his arrival in Kiel.

Through the door he could hear his department coming to life, somebody whistling, while out in the yard one of his MPs was unsuccessfully trying to start a motor-cycle.

The headlines on the front page were huge. Larger, if anything, than those on VE-Day. It was all over. Officially. August 15th would henceforth be remembered – 'celebrated' hardly seemed suitable – as VJ-Day. The Japs had finally thrown in the towel. But for the bombs' horrific casualties, Whitcombe doubted if the war would have ended even next year. He straightened his back and walked to the window. He walked and stood like a policeman, which indeed he had been before joining up for the duration. His last nick had been a busy one in North London, Jews, the rag-trade, and clashes with Mosley's blackshirts every Sunday. A kind of local entertainment, and always busy for a newly made-up inspector.

It would be strange to begin all over again, he thought. School-crossings, pickpockets, Saturday night punch-ups, drunks, and vagrants. A copper's lot. In many ways he would be sorry to go back. This was a different world which even some of the occupying forces did not know existed. The black market, troops flogging stores and petrol, officers who were not slow to make a dishonest quid when the choice offered itself. But deeper still there was depravity and squalor which made a London knocking-shop seem like a kindergarten.

He was proud of his team. Most of them were ex-coppers, and the majority were from the Met like himself.

The door swung open after a brief tap and Sergeant Jim Thornhill walked in and saluted.

'Morning, Jim.'

Thornhill slumped down in a chair and gratefully took a mug of tea.

'Thanks, Guv.'

To the army they were captain and sergeant. To one another they were the Guv'nor and his Skipper. It was their own defence against the rest, their world within a world.

Thornhill was unshaven, and there was dirt on his battledress elbows and knees.

'How'd the obbo go, Jim?'

The sergeant suppressed a yawn. 'Caught a couple of the buggers out by the Ravensberger Wasserurm. Pair of displaced persons, Poles again. Had a load of gear on them. Ration cards
and
faked petrol permits.'

'Hmm – bad business. The Poles seem to be trying to get their own back. They won't though. A couple of them are being topped today. That might help to cool them down.'

The sergeant was looking at the newspaper's front page.
'They'll
not be around to celebrate VJ-Day, that's for sure!'

Thornhill frowned and said, 'I've been thinking about that navy bloke, Petty Officer Evans –'

'Ah!' The captain tugged a file from his briefcase. 'I've been looking into it while you've been away on the job.'

Thornhill raised his dark eyebrows. 'I thought we'd done with that case. Major Helmut Maybach of the SS is just a bit of dirty linen now, surely?'

Captain Whitcombe put on his glasses, something he hated to do in company. 'I had the forensic boys go over it all again. They even exhumed the corpse, or the bits which were available.' He grinned, knowing it was pointless to try and shock his sergeant. He had been a CID officer in Bethnal Green and had seen just about everything. What he had missed there he had certainly made up for in Germany. He continued, 'Managed to get one good fingerprint. A bit messy for our lads, but they got a really clear dab.' He looked at him impassively. 'That man Evans was right. It wasn't Maybach after all. We already had his prints with his other details. The SS were very methodical, even – or should I say especially – with their own lot.'

Thornhill put down his mug, the tea, the long nights of observation, even bed, forgotten.

'That means he may still be here? Christ, I'd like to feel
that
bastard's collar!'

Whitcombe took out another sheet of neatly typed information. 'You know about Evans's background, but you may not have seen this.' He held the paper to the light. 'Evans's father had been using his fishing-boat to pass messages to the Maquis on the French mainland – he was good at it apparently. Then one day he had to bring half-a-dozen members of the Maquis to Jersey, to hide them before using his fishing permit to smuggle them to England. Can you imagine that? In a twenty-five-foot boat? It must be all of a hundred miles, and with their patrols everywhere.' He gave a deep sigh, picturing it in his mind. 'He took them to Guernsey first. He had friends there.'

Thornhill nodded slowly. 'But somebody shopped him?'

'Yes. The Channel Islanders had their collaborators too. Maybach did the interrogation himself. He knew Evans's father wouldn't crack so he tortured his wife right before his eyes, didn't even stop when he spilled everything. She died under the torture, and then Maybach took his men over to Guernsey and captured the others. He did the same to them, and from their agony was able to send information to the Gestapo on the mainland, then even more members of the underground and their families were arrested. Most of them ended up in the gas chambers.'

Thornhill asked quietly, 'And his young sister?'

'She was just sixteen then. Maybach had her stripped and raped in front of her father before they took him out and shot him. Hung him from a tree in his garden so that everyone would know the penalty of non-co-operation. Then she was taken away to some French brothel used by German troops on leave from the front. Reports say she lost her mind there, so she followed the others to the death-camp.'

Thornhill pictured Evans's intent features, his carefully worded questions and explanations. He must have always been preparing himself in case he was captured and his true identity revealed.

'You think Evans knows?'

Whitcombe removed his glasses. 'I'm bloody sure he does. Something you must have said to him triggered it off in his mind.'

'Well, I'd better have a word with him, Guv. Together we might –'

'No. I think I've a better idea, Jim. Pick a good man to tail him, two if you think it best. The best you've got. If we show our hand to Evans he might blow the gaff, and Maybach will go to ground. My guess is that the bastard's trying to fix a passage out of here, maybe to join some of his mates in South America. Remember, Jim, plenty of ships run from Hamburg to the South Atlantic, or they did, and they will again if Mil. Gov. is going to get things moving.'

'I'd like to be on this detail. I'll take Taffy Hughes along with me.'

'Fine. But just catch him, eh? A nice feather in our caps. Won't do any harm when we get back to the Job, will it?'

They both laughed. In their work they had to, to keep sane.

Not very far from the S.I.B.'s local headquarters stood an old artillery barracks, or the half of it which had not been bombed flat. It was walled off from prying eyes, and any gaps left by the many air-raids were filled with sandbags and barbed wire. Off-limits to civilians and servicemen not actually on duty, it was a dismal place which smelled of charred wood, damp and decay. Even its former owners had not used the place since the heaviest raid had made it uninhabitable.

In a small army hut another of MGB 801's small company was waiting, standing quite still, like an actor about to move on stage and still uncertain of his lines.

Acting-Lieutenant Mike Fairfax RNVR, Mentioned-in-Dispatches for bravery under fire and still only twenty-one, was facing the worst morning he could remember.