A New Kind of War (24 page)

Finally he stood back and surveyed his handiwork for a moment, before stepping forward again to readjust the beret, tugging it round and down savagely until the cap-badge was at the regulation level above the German’s left eye.

‘I beg your pardon, sir!’ He glanced at Audley, and then bent down and came up with the Sten. ‘Best I can do, in the circumstances. Everything’s a size too big, but I’ve laced the boots up tight—and the belt too. So he’s not going to come apart right away, any road.’ He plucked the Beretta out of Fred’s grasp with his free hand and held up the Sten with the other. ‘Shall I give it to him, sir?’

‘Thank you, Sar’ Devenish—yes.‘ Audley spoke with curious formality as he moved to get a better view. ’Yes-esss … he doesn’t look exactly like the spearhead of the British Liberation Army. But I’ve seen worse. And it’s a dark night.‘ He sighed.

‘Huh!’ Devenish grunted throatily, and thrust the Sten towards the German. ‘Here you are, Jerry—take hold of this then!’

The
ersatz
Corporal Keys stared at them uncomprehendingly, breathing heavily as though he’d been running to keep up with a forced march which had left him behind. And suddenly Fred felt for him, in his incomprehension.

‘Please—?’ He spoke in English, ‘What is this—?’

‘Go on, Jerry—take it.’ From the slight change in Devenish’s voice, from rough to gruff, there was also some human understanding. ‘We’re going to get you away from here, is what we’re going to do—understand?’

The German took the gun unwillingly, looking at Audley as he did so.

‘Not like that!’ Devenish’s harsher voice came back as the German accepted the weapon. ‘Hold it properly—not like a bleeding lavatory brush!’

‘Please—?’ The German fumbled with the Sten, as though it was too hot to hold, blinking at them. ‘But … ’ Then he took hold of it and himself, squaring his shoulders. ‘But I do
not
understand, I am telling you, sir—captain!’

‘Of course not.’ Audley accepted the appeal. But then he nodded to Devenish. ‘Jacko—get outside and see what’s happening … Look for Major de Souza—’ In the half-light of their torches, he lifted his arm (with his umbrella hooked over it now) to consult his wrist-watch, shining his own beam directly on to it ‘—we’re two minutes over schedule. So he should be in the offing out there now—right?’

Fred realized that he had lost track of time altogether, ever since they had first moved out of the safe darkness of the forest into the naked light and confusion of the assault on the hunting lodge: there were, as always, two separate times—the fast time of pleasure and happiness, and the slow, elongated time of pain and fear, which seemed to last forever. And they had been in the stretched concertina of it, within this room, with six hundred seconds to every minute.

‘Now then—’ Audley addressed the German with that curiously formal voice of his ‘—the sergeant is right, of course—as always: we are going to get you out of here, sir. Which is for your own good and safety—you have my word on that. Do you understand?’

What Fred understood was that, with Audley’s flashlight shining straight into the man’s eyes, never mind that British officer’s promise, the German could understand nothing at all—and least of all because of that strangely deferential ‘
sir’
which Audley had thrown in. Better by far, at this stage, to have stuck to Devenish’s approach.

‘No!’ The German dropped one hand from the Sten to shield his eyes. ‘Please—’

‘Sir!’ Devenish barked the word from the doorway. ‘Major de Souza is here, sir—now! He is with the American officer, and he says to tell you that he has a prisoner for us to escort to the assembly area …
sir!’
The bark increased to a stentorian military shout, raised to reach the other side of any parade ground.

‘Thank you, Sar’ Devenish.‘ Audley matched Devenish’s shout. ’The corporal and I have processed everyone from here. So we’ll take the major’s prisoner!‘ Then his torch came back to the German. ’
We have to go, sir
—
now! So
…
you are a British NCO
—
non-commissioned officer
…
You are “Corporal Keys”, if anyone asks you who you are
—
“Corporal Keys”
—?‘ He stepped forward and caught the German by the arm. ’Come on, sir—we must
go
—‘

‘No!’ The German resisted him, pulling away.
No
!‘

‘What the devil—?’ The beam of Audley’s torch gyrated over the room, across sharp angles and damp-stained walls, down to the tangle of blankets in which a uniformed corporal in the British Army was now rummaging desperately.

‘
My spectacles! My spectacles
—
!
’ The corporal was on his knees beside the ammunition box, scrabbling desperately with searching fingers in the blanket folds. ‘Without my spectacles
…
I cannot see
!’ The search stopped suddenly. ‘I have them!
Gruss Gott
!’ The German held something up high, fumbling with it.

‘
Don’t put them on
!’ Audley’s voice cut through the man’s action decisively. ‘
You mustn’t look like yourself, sir
—
we can’t risk that! Put them in your pocket
—
don’t put them on: that’s an order
!’

A light came in from the doorway, silhouetting Audley and the German before blinding Fred himself.

‘Sir … ’ The slight pause encompassed Devenish’s surprise on finding Fred among the probably flea-ridden bedding ‘ … if you please, sir
—
?’

‘Right, Sar’ Devenish.‘ Audley started to move. ’Major Fattorini—Corporal Keys—
MOVE
!‘

Fred moved all the faster, to be free of the bedding before he inherited its inhabitants, pushing Corporal Keys ahead of him all the more unmercifully.

The corridor outside was crowded with people. And there was David Audley, using his size and weight to shoulder his way through them—bulldozing an opening down the passage to the entrance hall, with its an tiered trophies and cobweb-drooling heads at the top of the staircase—And there was Major Macallister too—or was it the Crocodile?—with British and American soldiers in attendance, and a crowd of ghosts dressed and half-dressed, but all outraged and protesting their innocence as Audley smashed through them regardless—

God! It was like Paddy’s Market on Quarter Day! Except that he caught sight of Major de Souza suddenly, at the head of the stairs with the hint of a smile on his face, holding back all the criminals and deserters, and displaced persons, and homeless bombed-out refugees who had found this roof over their heads, when there were so few roofs anywhere to be found umbombed in Germany; and alongside Major de Souza, larger and wider, and built like a brick shit-house, was Sergeant Huggins, with one meat-plate hand grasping the shoulder of one of the ghosts—a terrified ghost, draped in a field-grey blanket—

Audley reached the de Souza-Huggins block, and Huggins released his prisoner to him, and Sergeant Devenish accepted the prisoner, pushing him down the stairway just ahead of Corporal Keys and Major Fattorini: and Audley’s incongruous umbrella was lashing out ahead of them, to clear the way for the snatch-squad; and Fred could hear Sergeant Devenish swearing as they cut into the maelstrom of the hunting lodge with British and American uniforms like currants and sultanas in a swirling suet pudding of civilians—

The black opening of the main doorway gaped ahead of them, at the foot of the stairway where the main door had come off its hinges. But Audley wasn’t going that way: he was turning back round the last carved banister, to lead them again towards the passage to the rear entrance, through which they had come: that had been the way in, so now that was the way out—
right? Right
!‘ And …
right
, because Devenish was urging their new prisoner in that direction, relying on Major Fattorini to encourage Corporal Keys, with his useless Sten and clumping over-sized boots. And whatever blurred images of chaos and panic were left to Corporal Keys without his spectacles, whatever they were, they didn’t matter. What mattered was that their way was not impeded: either the inhabitants of the rooms in the passage were still inside them, or they’d been chivvied out to join the terrified crowd in the entrance hall—all that mattered now was that the passage was empty …

Or almost empty. For there in the doorway ahead of them, caught in the beam of someone’s torch, just inside it and silhouetted against the fierce mock-daylight of the searchlights outside, was an American soldier, rain-caped and armed.

‘Make way there!’ Audley’s voice was loud and offensively British. ‘Out of the way, soldier!’

Corporal Keys bridled just ahead of Fred, as though unwilling to take part in the charade at this last and most important moment, so Fred gave him a brutal shove to get him moving again, conscious at last that he was a full and paid-up member of the TRR-2.

‘Get on, you bugger!’ Devenish, ahead of Corporal Keys, admonished their newer prisoner angrily—that poor confused devil had also baulked momentarily, like Corporal Keys, at the prospect of finally exchanging his smelly freedom for the bright uncertainty of captivity beyond the doorway.

The American soldier stood aside, blank faced and holding his carbine close to his chest, and Fred caught an incongruous whiff of eau-de-cologne as he pushed by the man, as distinctive against all the doss-house smells as the perfume of roses in a midden. And then they were outside, in the open chiaroscuro of night-and-searchlights.

For a moment the bushes on each side of the doorway protected Fred’s eyes from the harshness of the searchlights, but after two or three strides the delicate tracery of leaves was gone, and he was suddenly blind in the full glare, transfixed by it as though it was focused on him only—

This way!‘ shouted Audley. ’Follow—‘ The ear-splitting explosion overwhelmed the rest of the shout, seeming to come from all around them in the millisecond of its concussion, but then galvanizing Fred to grab instinctively at Corporal Keys, to pull him down on to the wet ground.

The next elongated fraction of time was filled with the aftermath of the explosion, beyond rational thought. Then in the midst of its confusing echoes, as he began to think and hear again, Fred knew that the explosion hadn’t harmed them, and that they must get moving again.

But now there was another sound: where there had been a continuing babel of noise behind him, coming out of the passage from the entrance hall, now there was a terrible mixture of shrieks—which together became a thin wailing—
God! He had heard that wail before, in Italy: it was the appalling distillation of maimed surviving flesh-and-blood on the edge of a bomb’s impact in a cellar crowded with human beings
!

He raised himself slightly, above the body of Corporal Keys, which he had pulled down with him. First, the pitiless continuing glare of the searchlight blinded him; then Audley was on his knees ahead of him, cutting off the beam.

‘Get up—for Christ’s sake, get up!’ Audley was up now, and gesturing at him. ‘Get him up, Fred!’

Fred felt the wet earth under his hand, and the cold damp through his trousers at his knees as he levered himself up.

‘Jacko! Help him!’ shouted Audley.

Fred was suddenly aware of Corporal Keys beside him, and that only Corporal Keys mattered. But when he grasped the German’s arm, it was a dead weight, tensed against him: the man was hugging the ground almost literally, for the illusion of protection it gave him when everything else around him had gone mad.

Sergeant Devenish appeared out of nowhere, on the other side of the German.

‘Come on now, sir—let’s do like the officer says then, shall we?’ The sergeant addressed the German in a voice quite different from any he had ever used before in Fred’s hearing: unhurried, gentle, almost as though wheedling a frightened child. But without the slightest effect, nevertheless.

‘Right, then—’ Devenish spoke the two words to himself, and then his chest expanded ‘—take my weapon, if you’d be so good, sir—’ he thrust his gun into Fred’s hands a second time across the inert body ‘—
LET’S BE HAVING YOU THEN, YOU BUGGER
!’

Whether it was the effect of the sudden transition from gentleness to roaring anger, or the grasping hand-on-the-collar with every ounce of the sergeant’s muscle-power in the lift, or both, Fred never knew. But in the next second Corporal Keys was on his knees, and in the second after that he was moving, even before his legs were fully straightened, with one of Devenish’s hands still grasping the collar, and the other pulling his battle-dress blouse.

‘Fred!’ Audley gesticulated as he came alongside Devenish. ‘The other one—bring him!’

Fred followed the direction of the boy’s hand. Major de Souza’s prisoner, who had been lately Sergeant Devenish’s, was now all alone in the open and in the glare of the searchlights, hunched under his blanket and imprisoned by the same fear which had rooted Corporal Keys to the ground.

‘Right!’ He heard his forced acknowledgement of the boy’s order, and felt angry with himself for the inadequacy of his performance so far, for which the excuse of six peaceful months in Greece was no bloody excuse at all—
damn, damn and damn
!

The prisoner was no more than half-a-dozen yards away — the prisoner who, for a guess, didn’t matter a damn, compared with Corporal Keys—
damn, damn and damn!
But at least he’d get this right, damn it!

‘Come on!’ The wretched fellow had rolled sideways, into a twitching blanket-covered ball, even as he covered the distance between them. But Audley’s much-admired Sergeant Devenish was his model now, even though he couldn’t match either of the sergeant’s voices. ‘Get up!’

A bare foot, emaciated and filthy-white in the unnatural light, kicked out from under the blanket.

‘Damn you—
GET UP!’
Fred seized an edge of the blanket and ripped it aside. ‘
DAMN
—
’ But then the Devenish-words died on his lips as he saw the blood, black as ink, bubbling out of the man’s mouth and streaming to join the great spreading wound on his chest—
God
!