To Touch the Clouds : The Frontier Series 5 (2 page)

1

Office of the Secret Service Bureau
London
December 1913

A
light flurry of snow was falling outside the plainly decorated office of the young, studious-looking man. He was in his early twenties, with thinning sandy hair. Before him on his desk lay sheafs of paper both in German and his own translation handwritten in English. Although the man was dressed in a well-cut civilian suit he was in fact a British naval officer and held the lowly commissioned rank of ensign. Ensign Rutherford placed his pen by the bottle of ink and rubbed his eyes. Outside his office he could hear the clop-clop of horse-drawn carriages and wagons making their way through the fall of soft snow. He had worked diligently on his translation of the German naval papers for most of the day, to ensure that he had not made any mistakes. It had been a valuable intelligence coup. The translated document had to go upstairs to the commander of the Bureau before he could sign out and join his family
for the Yuletide break away from his naval service to His Majesty.

Ensign Rutherford stood to stretch his long legs. He walked stiffly to the window of his office to gaze down on the light traffic of the London street. He was deep in thought about what he had just translated and wondered how important the Imperial German naval operational order was to the welfare of the British Empire he served. After all, the documents did not relate directly to a threat to England’s naval security. He was not aware that the original volume of German papers had arrived on his desk via a tortuous path from a French brothel to the British naval attaché in Berlin, and then on to London through diplomatic couriers. They referred to a plan by the Imperial German Navy to attack specified targets in far-off Australia and New Zealand in the event of war between Great Britain and Germany. As a mere ensign who happened to be fluent in the German language, he guessed the translated documents would most probably be filed and forgotten. How important could the former colonial towns of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart be? And as for some place called Gladstone in Queensland and Westport in New Zealand, who in Hades had ever heard of them?

Ensign Rutherford returned to his desk and shuffled the papers into their respective piles. Since they were classified as
Top Secret
he knew that he would still have to handle the task he had been seconded to very carefully. When the papers were collated he placed them in a Bureau-issue leather satchel and left his office, locking the door carefully behind him.

‘I need to deliver these documents to the Chief,’ he said to a tough-looking former Royal Marine, now wearing civilian dress and sitting behind his desk screening
people coming and going to the secretive offices of Britain’s counterintelligence.

‘Very good, sir,’ the former marine replied. ‘Just wait here.’

Obediently, Ensign Rutherford stood stiffly by the desk while the guard disappeared down a dimly lit corridor to return moments later.

‘He will see you now, sir,’ the guard said, resuming his post.

Rutherford marched smartly down the corridor. At a door he knew was the office of Commander Mansfield Smith Cumming, he knocked. A voice bade him to enter.

Rutherford stepped inside. The office was more elaborately decorated than his own and had a coal fire in the corner, warming the room sufficiently to make it comfortable. As he was in civilian dress he was not obliged to use the traditional salute, but braced as required by military etiquette.

‘What have you for me, Mr Rutherford?’ the middle-aged naval officer asked gruffly, placing a pen down beside papers he had been signing.

‘Well, sir, I have completed the translation of the German papers and gleaned that it is an operational order by the Imperial Navy concerning their intentions towards some of our former colonies in the Pacific in the event of war between Kaiser Willie and the King.’

The senior officer looked sharply at the tall young man standing before him and the young ensign regretted that what he had said could be perceived as flippant. ‘Our good regent and the German Kaiser are related, and the Kaiser deserves the respect due to him, Ensign Rutherford,’ Mansfield Cumming Smith rebuked. ‘Kaiser Wilhelm was, after all, our late Queen’s favourite grandson.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir,’ Rutherford said, blushing. ‘I meant no disrespect.’

‘Anyway, man, what did you conclude from your translation?’ the head of the Secret Service Bureau asked, changing his tone.

‘Well, sir, from what I read the Germans have a plan to destroy the towns of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart using cruisers from their fleet on the China Station. They also intend to capture the coastal ports of Gladstone in Queensland and Westport in New Zealand to supply coal to their warships.’

‘Westport has a particularly high grade of coal,’ Smith Cumming muttered, looking down at the translated documents Rutherford had placed before him. ‘That will not do.’

Rutherford did not really care. His mind was already on making his way to his parents’ home in Portsmith for the Christmas festivities. ‘Yes, sir,’ he replied dutifully.

‘Anyway, Mr Rutherford, you have done a good job and please accept my good wishes for the season,’ the secret service chief said. ‘That is all.’

Rutherford braced once again, thanked the senior officer for his good wishes, turned on his heel and marched out of the office leaving the British head of intelligence to ponder the significance of what lay on his desk. An attack on the former British colonies in the Pacific region in the event of war could seriously jeopardise a British victory against the growing might of one of their main rivals in Europe. Australia and New Zealand provided much of England’s imports of primary produce, along with other essential war material. The Royal Navy might have to divert precious resources to defend the shipping channels across the Indian Ocean, leaving the North Atlantic denuded of essential
warships. Something had to be done to counter any German implementation of such an operational order.

Smith Cumming quickly scribbled a memo, signing the document in green ink with the letter C. Colonel John Hughes, currently attached to the relatively new Australian Army, was a man he had satisfactorily dealt with before. All he had to do was locate his current whereabouts and bundle off the information to him. For an army man, Hughes was relatively intelligent, Smith Cumming mused. He would leave it in his hands. Now he could also leave the office, go home for a Christmas of good cheer and look forward to 1914 as a year of goodwill towards all men.

2

April
1914

I
t floated rather than flew, Colonel Patrick Duffy mused as he watched the fragile Bleriot monoplane rise over the desiccated paddock. The nose of the canvas-covered, timber- framed, single-seat aircraft dropped and the tiny machine dived at a shallow angle towards the ground.

‘What the Dickens is he doing?’ Colonel Duffy asked the tall young man in his early thirties standing beside him.

‘Just watch and see, Colonel,’ the man replied in the distinctive Yankee drawl that had earned him the nickname Texas Slim from his Australian friends. He had in fact been Randolph Gates when he had been born on the vast plains of Texas to a struggling cattle rancher and his school teacher wife.

As Patrick Duffy watched he saw a small object disengage from beneath the belly of the Bleriot and hurtle on an angle towards the dusty paddock. It smashed into the earth and exploded in a puff of white powder. The aircraft was
already raising its nose and drifting into a circle overhead so the pilot could observe the point of impact.

‘Not bad,’ Randolph Gates observed. ‘Looks to me he was only about five yards off his target.’

‘What caused the white dust?’ Patrick asked.

‘Matt used a bag of flour,’ Randolph answered, waving his arms above his head.

The signal to land brought the little aircraft into a sweeping circle overhead as it approached a cleared area of the paddock. The Bleriot touched down, bounced a few times and came to a halt only twenty yards from where the two men stood. Dust trailed its landing as the bamboo tail skid-ploughed a small furrow in the earth. The engine spluttered into silence and Matthew Tracy – now better known as Matthew Duffy – eased himself from the cockpit to clamber to the ground. He wore goggles and a leather skullcap and his face was splattered with black oil. Beneath the grime of the flight was a face many women found appealing and the young man also had the muscled body most men envied. Matthew walked towards the two observers, taking off his goggles to reveal his eyes still untouched by the oil from the engine.

‘We have a visitor,’ Randolph said, walking towards his friend. ‘Colonel Duffy.’

As he approached the tall, broad shouldered man in his early fifties Matthew held out his hand. There was no mistaking the bearing of the military man he had been – and still was – when he returned Matthew’s firm handshake.

‘Sir, it has been a few years since we last met,’ Matthew said with a broad smile. ‘It is good to see you.’

‘It is good to see you, young Matthew,’ Patrick said, releasing his grip. ‘What, ten, twelve years?’

‘Thirteen, I think,’ Matthew answered just a little
sheepishly. ‘I should have kept more in touch with the family.’

‘At least your mother has kept us up to date with news of your adventures,’ Patrick said, reaching into the pocket of his jacket that he’d slung over his shoulder. He wore expensive suit trousers, a clean-starched shirt, braces and a straw boater hat. ‘Can I offer you a cigar?’ he asked, producing three fine Cubans.

‘No thank you, sir,’ Matthew replied. ‘I am just a little dry in the throat after the flight.’

‘Kate, your mother, wrote from Queensland to say that you were doing something with your Bleriot down our way,’ Patrick said, offering the third cigar to Randolph who accepted it gratefully. ‘Although you took great pains to conceal the importation of your aircraft into Australia I was informed of its existence. As you had not broken any regulations with our Customs the matter was not of any concern to the civilian authorities. But it did pique my interest – especially as it was by a cousin in the family of a well-known adventurous character. You know, you worry my Aunt Kate to death with your escapades overseas.’

‘I don’t mean to,’ Matthew said. ‘My mother is a good old stick.’

Patrick smiled at the young man’s reference to his mother. Even in her late fifties Kate Tracy was a very good-looking woman with considerable wealth and power in the state of Queensland. Many eligible men attempted to court her but Kate Tracy, once also known as Kate O’Keefe and originally Duffy, thwarted all advances. Her life was lived for her only son and the financial empire she ruled over.

‘So, what was that all about?’ Patrick asked, gesturing with his cigar towards the paddock where the bag of flour had been dropped.

‘I was experimenting with the idea of using aircraft to drop bombs,’ Matthew answered. ‘Texas rigged up a latch system that I could operate from the cockpit to release the bag, which under other circumstances might have been a modified artillery shell with fins to assist a more accurate flight.’

‘You realise that Harry Hawker has just last week flown his Sopwith off the Caulfield race course in demonstration flights and has made some good money for his efforts. You could have done the same.’

‘That Yank Harry Houdini beat us all to the first demonstration flights in Australia.’ Matthew shrugged. ‘What I have in mind here will be more important than financial gain when we go to war with the Germans.’

‘So you believe war is imminent in Europe?’ Patrick asked, drawing on his cigar.

‘I have toured Europe – even Germany – and I can feel it coming,’ Matthew answered, glancing at his tiny monoplane parked only a few yards away. ‘I know aeroplanes will be vital in winning the war when it does come.’

Patrick smiled. ‘Maybe, as a means of observing the enemy and directing cavalry formations against them.’

‘More than that,’ Matthew said with passion creeping into his voice. ‘They will be used to bomb and machine-gun the enemy in places where we cannot reach them with our current arms. Only the lack of development of better aircraft prevents us from equipping planes to carry out those tasks already. We both saw what those rapid firing weapons could do to us in South Africa,’ Matthew continued, referring to the time when he had enlisted under-age and fought as a mounted infantryman at Elands River while his cousin Patrick Duffy served as an officer with the mounted infantry in many battles of the Boer War. Matthew’s youth had
been eventually revealed and he was sent home to Australia. ‘I think the days of the mass cavalry charges are over. Aeroplanes will become the new cavalry to swoop on targets and support our infantry.’

‘You know, you are talking military heresy,’ Patrick cautioned, grinning. ‘The gentleman of the cavalry will never admit to being upstaged by mere machines.’

‘Mounted infantry will still have a role,’ Matthew consoled. ‘I just see that the invention of the aeroplane is going to change warfare beyond our wildest dreams.’

‘Matthew,’ Patrick said, ‘it is getting late and I have to return to Sydney for an important company meeting but I need to talk to you at more length about your ideas. There are people I want you to meet and I am offering for you and Mr Gates to come to my place on the harbour. You know where my house is. If it is possible I would like to have you both attend – say, next Sunday at 3pm. We have important business to talk about.’

Matthew sighed. He always felt that the time might come when he would eventually be forced into a meeting with his estranged Sydney family. It had been many years since he had met with Fenella Macintosh on a beach at Manly to say farewell. He vividly remembered the pain in her eyes as he walked away and out of her life.

As if reading Matthew’s thoughts Patrick added with a smile, ‘Fenella will be at dinner that day with her young man.’

‘I am glad to hear that, sir,’ Matthew answered.

‘I am your cousin,’ Patrick continued. ‘You may as well call me by my name. After all, you no longer have any connections to the army that I know of.’