Agent of Death (21 page)

‘Yes, sir,’ said Lady Margaret. ‘He does, and we’ve agreed a code number that he will try to get the U-boat to transmit in acknowledgement. If we pick up that number, we’ll find the boat.’

CHAPTER 25

The
Führerboat,

The
North
Atlantic.

Saturday
3 June
,
07
.
00
hours.

The galley was a type XXI unit and highly advanced by U-boat standards. It was right aft of the control room in the same watertight compartment. It gleamed in stainless steel and aluminium; it had a fridge, a cooking range with four hot plates and a soup kettle, and twin sinks with running hot and cold fresh water. It was as crammed with pipes and tubes, valves and levers as everywhere else in the boat, and, in addition, every cubic centimetre that wasn’t full of pipes was stuffed with food in packets and tins and jars. It had all that, plus two white-clad cooks busy preparing breakfast, with an extractor hood humming over them, and a slave worker sitting in one corner where he was chained by his wrists to one of the pipes of the fresh water supply unit. He sat directly under a light fitting so it was easy to see him. But the cooks didn’t bother. They ignored him until
Oberleutnant
Kuhnke squeezed into their sizzling-hot, onion-stinking compartment followed by a man in Tommy clothes.

‘Sir,’ they said, and straightened their backs.

‘Carry on,’ said Kuhnke, and jabbed a thumb at the man behind him. ‘This is Herr Feldman. He needs to talk to the slavie.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the cooks.

‘And he’s
Herr
Feldman, right?’

‘Yes, sir!’ The cooks knew that already. Gossip ran round a U-boat like a rat with its tail on fire, just as it did on every other naval vessel that ever sailed. So Feldman squeezed past Kuhnke, who went out, and he knelt by the man crouched on the hard steel deck.

‘Landau,’ said Feldman, in Polish. ‘They can’t understand us. Talk to me, Landau.’ He shook Landau’s shoulder, but Landau just shuddered and wrapped his arms around his knees and looked away. ‘The captain’s a decent man,’ said Feldman. ‘He spoke to me. He says the war’s over and he won’t let the blackshirts touch us. He knows what we did with the torpedoes. He guessed. But he wants our help because we know the boat so well. Do you understand, Landau?’

But Landau just closed his eyes. Feldman sat down beside him and put an arm round him. The legs of the two cooks were within touching distance. The two Germans chattered and joked as they fried sausages and beans, and their pans rattled and banged. Feldman hugged Landau’s thin shoulders. It was like this sometimes with men who’d nearly died. Feldman had seen it before. A man was sent for execution, sent for some arbitrary reason, or for no reason at all, and then he came back, reprieved for some other reason, but he came back broken because he’d looked at death and could never be the same again. Landau had been like this ever since they brought him back from the boat’s casing, when the SSA had tried to kill him.

‘Look,’ said Feldman, fumbling for cheerful words, ‘they gave me proper clothes. Even a shirt and underclothes, and shoes and socks. I’m going to help them, Landau. There are three warheads still live in the bow, and I’m going to secure them. Nobody else can do it. Their chief engineer and all their torpedo men were killed when the torpedo went off. They’ve got a sub-lieutenant engineer, but he’s a boy and he doesn’t know how to do it.’

Feldman was pouring out words, trying to persuade Landau that what he was going to do would be right. He was even trying to persuade himself. ‘I built these boats,’ he said, ‘it has to be me. So I’ll go for’ard, but I need you to take over the firing board, in case the circuits fail again. I couldn’t repair them fully. Not after what we did to them.’

Landau stirred. He looked at Feldman, and his eyes focused. Feldman smiled, encouraged to see some sign of recovery from his friend.

Then Landau spoke. ‘Feldman,’ he said, ‘the Christians say their Jesus was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. Will you be a traitor for a shirt and a pair of underpants?’

CHAPTER 26

The
Härönskulle
Radar Mounting,

SSA
base
Härönholmen
Bay
,

Punno
Island
,
Sweden
.

Tuesday
6 June,
03
.
00
hours
.

They charged us with bayonets. In a war of machine guns, artillery, atom bombs, and Mem Tav, the SSA came screaming up the hill with fixed bayonets, black uniforms, jackboots, and square-head German helmets, all clearly visible in the floodlights which came on and stayed on as soon as the shooting started.

Our Brens and mortars stopped most of them but not all, because there were far more of them than we’d expected, and they absolutely wouldn’t give up. They got rapid fire – thump, thump, thump – from the mortar teams, and short bursts, accurately aimed, from the Brens, with Leonard yelling over the din and pointing out targets, letting off bursts from his Sten gun, laughing and joking and alive with excitement because this was the very thing his soul lived and breathed for, until the SSA grenades dropped among us.

The Germans could throw grenades a long way because their stick-grenade has a nice handle to give it a swing before you let go, and two or three landed in our Bren position, where Leonard instantly seized one and threw it back. Our gunners kept firing and the black-clad troopers went down, but there were still too many, and then BANG! BANG!

The grenades burst, and bits and pieces flew from the bodies of the Bren gunners next to me – they took most of the blast – and Leonard’s Sten was blown out of his hand. I was shoved over, face down, deafened and blinded, and my mouth filled with dirt and grass and the stench of explosion. My head was buzzing as I rolled over and tried to stand, then three SSA with rifles and steel were up among us, charging and bayonetting an already dead gunner. I lay on my back with my right hand shuddering and my ears hearing pop-pop-pop, so feeble among the battle noise, as my Colt.45 went off all by itself and dropped one tall, black figure the instant before he could stick me in the belly. Down he came, on top of me, and I shoved him clear, and the Colt pop-popped at a black figure who’d knocked down Leonard with his rifle butt and was drawing back to thrust, and the Hun went over. Then the Colt was empty, but a second magazine slid into the butt, my left hand racking the slide. The Colt fired again at a third SSA trooper coming at me, who yelled and thrust in hysterical rage, and missed me because he couldn’t see with my pistol blazing in his face and punching holes in his nose and cheeks and kicking his head back. He too dropped, and drove his bayonet right through the left side of my battledress blouse and pinned me into the ground, buried under his weight.

*

That was what it felt like.

My little battle.

I remembered nothing of drawing and firing the pistol.

It worked by itself with my hands doing what it told them.

That was what I thought.

That was what it felt like.

*

That’s how I remember it still, and what saved my life, and Lord Leonard’s too, was his choice of the Colt.45 (pattern of 1911) pistol as a sidearm, plus his policy that it should be worn cocked and locked in its holster. That meant a full magazine of seven rounds loaded, another round in the chamber with the hammer raised ready to fire but the thumb-safety engaged. So all you have to do is draw, push down the safety with your thumb, and you’ve got eight shots as fast as you can touch the trigger. If I’d had an empty chamber and had to work the slide to load, then in those first few seconds I’d have been stuck and gutted. And a revolver would have been no use because it takes that split-second longer to pull the trigger and I could never have reloaded a revolver fast enough to shoot the third man. That’s assuming, of course, that it really was me who reloaded the Colt and not the Colt doing it by itself.

‘Cocked and locked. That’s the way, sir. Lord Leonard’s way, sir,’ the sergeant armourer at Lympstone said when I was issued the Colt. He was old-school army, in his fifties, very different from the commandos, never used a swear word and took time to explain. ‘A pistol is a weapon of last resort, sir,’ he said. ‘You use the little tinker only when all other means of self-defence have failed, including running away, sir. But when you need it, then dear me but you need it fast, sir.’

I looked at the blue-black Colt and thought of gangsters on the Silver Screen: James Cagney, George Raft, and Humphrey Bogart. They used Colt.45s and I wasn’t impressed, because I was the man that dropped ten-ton bombs. So I looked round for something better and saw a row of short stubby Sten guns in a rack on the wall nearby. They looked as if they’d been bashed together out of old iron, but had big magazines that stuck out at the side and sprayed nine millimetre rounds fully automatic. The Sten was England’s very own submachine gun.

‘Can’t I have one of those?’ I said, then recalled the nasty rumour that Stens were prone to jams and misfires. ‘Or are they too unreliable?’

‘Oh, you’ve heard about it, have you, sir?’ said the sergeant with a tight little smile, teacher to pupil. ‘The Stench Gun? The Plumber’s Abortion? The Woolworth’s Gun? That’s what they call it, don’t they sir? Only it ain’t.’ He took one down from the rack and showed it to me. ‘Lovely little weapon, the Sten.’ He thought a bit. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they are once I’ve chucked out the bad ones. And once I’ve had a little go at the others with a set of needle files. Very reliable, sir. Lord Leonard loves his Sten gun, sir. Always takes one with him.’

‘So why can’t I have one?’

He smiled and put the Sten back where it came from. ‘’Cos you’re not s’posed to take part in the fighting, sir. You’re supernumerary, sir.’ And he picked up the Colt and put it firmly into my hands with a holster, a couple of spare magazines, and a large box of ammunition. ‘This is just for last resorts, sir. Lord Leonard’s orders, sir.’ And that was that. So we took the Colt to the firing range and he showed me how it worked and I blazed away.

‘Very good, sir,’ he said, later. ‘I’m very pleased to see you don’t think about it, sir. You just point and shoot. Which is very good, sir. It warms the cockles of me heart to see you, sir. You’re no great marksman, sir, but that don’t matter, ’cos if ever you need to use this particular weapon, sir, you’ll be close enough to stick it up the jumper of the man you’re shooting at, and all that matters is how quickly you shoot.’ He nodded. ‘And you’re good at that too, sir. You don’t even look when you load the magazine. You’ve got nimble fingers, sir, and, if you don’t mind my saying … I wouldn’t want to play cards with you, sir.’

So I survived, and Leonard survived, and I made a friend for life.

‘Well done, David!’ he cried, completely at ease, even after a smack round the jaw from a Mauser-butt. ‘You got three of the bastards!’ he said it with utmost delight. ‘Couldn’t have done better myself! Shame you can’t have ’em stuffed and mounted and hung on the wall in the mess.’ Then he hauled out the rifle and bayonet that was pinning me down and tried to pull me to my feet, but his hand was slippery and it crunched nastily as I tried to grasp it, so I got up by myself and stood shaking and dazed, too worked up even to speak. Whatever injuries I’d inflicted with all the bombs I’d dropped, I’d never killed anyone before. Not face to face. Not close enough to smell their body odour and the dry cleaning fluid used to clean their uniforms, and I’d just smelt both of those. But Leonard was enjoying himself. He was happy.

Then he waved his right hand at me. It was flayed of skin, oozing blood, and the severed tendons and broken bones were horribly visible. It was a dreadful injury and the hand was ruined. But Leonard just laughed.

‘Look at that!’ he said. ‘They’ll have to give me a hook – I’ve always wanted a hook.’ Then he threw his arms around me and hugged me quite hard. Margaret was right. He was mad. (Later on he did get a hook and kept the anniversary of the day he got it. He held a booze-up every year for his special chums and I was always invited. But they were an odd bunch; seriously odd, disturbingly odd, with some weird politics, so I didn’t go if I could get out of it.)

So we stood in the dark, looking down from Radar Hill – Leonard’s name for it – where the big dish still turned on its mountings, and the first-aid man dressed Leonard’s hand. They took the dog tags off the dead, and the surviving officers and NCOs of Leonard’s troupe stood round him. They talked and I looked down at the SSA base, which was still brightly lit and laid out in front of me like the model back at Lympstone, except that the Punnoshaus mansion was out of sight, in the darkness beyond the main base. There was a sharp sound of firing coming from it, indicating that Able Troupe was busy. But there was hardly any shooting on the main base; just odd shots and vicious grenade-bursts as Baker and Charley Troupes dealt with the stubborn remains of the SSA garrison. And stubborn they were. Every prisoner they took was wounded, and not one stopped fighting without being shot, stabbed, clubbed, or just blown senseless by explosions.

Then Baker Troupe cut through the wire around the slave huts immediately to the east of the hill, and khaki figures ran up and down the row of wooden shacks calling out to the civilians inside – except that there were none. The commandos went in but nobody else came out, and there was a sudden crackle of gunfire and a dozen of our men went down. The firing came from a building, separate from the wooden slave huts: a proper brick-built house, which went up with all inside it as the rest of Baker Troupe shoved grenades into the windows and the whole thing blew with a huge roar that was hot on my face even at a distance of several hundred yards. It must have been a guard-house and ammunition store.

Just north of Radar Hill, the brightly lit runway was nicely cratered by our mortars, just in case anyone tried to get away on an aircraft – not that anyone did – although there was a pair of tri-motor Ju 52 transports with their corrugated-aluminium fuselages, parked like Dinky toys at the eastern end of the runway and another actually on the tarmac as if ready to go. But that one had been hit by mortar bombs and was roaring, flaring alight and pouring out burning petrol. The runway had been the first target for Leonard’s mortars, both to put it out of use and to draw the garrison out and bring them under fire from the Bren and mortar teams on the hill, which tactic had succeeded only too well. There were dozens and dozens of black SSA lying on the ground. Some were dead, some were moving, and these were left alone by the commandos passing among them. But any that tried to get up and fight got a quick burst from a Sten.

Their attack had been ferocious and suicidal, like a Jap Banzai charge. But it failed because the weak point of fanatics is that while they’re invincibly brave they’re also invincibly stupid. Or perhaps I’m not giving enough credit to Leonard, whose well planned, highly disciplined raid achieved complete surprise and lured the enemy into a deadly ambush. I don’t know; I’m an airman not a soldier. But I’m damned if I’d charge uphill at a machine gun.

On the far side of the runway there was a cluster of buildings of plain, German concrete. One was obviously a control tower; the others of unknown purpose. On the near side there was a neat row of much bigger buildings, almost perfect rectangles, facing the runway. Charley Troupe was trying to get into these and failing, because even grenades couldn’t to blow open the steel doors. Then, just as we thought the show was over, there came a series of dull, flat thuds of explosions from the flat roofs of these buildings; not sharp, belting, bangs, and not even particularly loud, but concentrated, white-heat flames that raged so bright you couldn’t look at them, and a line of these miniature infernos soon ran along the roof of each concrete rectangle. At the same time, something similar was going off inside some of the buildings. But that was it. Nothing else happened, and there was no further organized defence by the SSA.

Then one of Leonard’s signallers came up to him. The man had a walkie-talkie radio on his back and the whip aerial waving above. He wore earphones and held a microphone on a wire.

‘Simon! Simon!’ he said, ‘Able Troupe’s got all the buggers the big house. They caught most of ’em runnin’ out the front an’ got the others still in bed!’

‘Good,’ said Leonard. ‘Give me that,’ he unthinkingly reached out with his much-bandaged right hand, then laughed and took the mic with his left, and spoke into it, as the signaller came close and helped him put on the earphones.

‘Leonard here! Report,’ he said, and winced as the earphones buzzed. ‘What casualties?’ He paused and grinned at the answer. ‘Very good,’ he said, ‘and what about Svart? Have you got him?’ He frowned at the reply. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’m on my way. Keep everything tight. Don’t allow any sabotage. Don’t shoot any more of them. I’m coming!’ He gave the earphones and mic to the signaller. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said to me.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they haven’t got Svart, have they?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘but they’ve got a lot of SSA brass. Senior officers. This is your bit now, David, we’re going to need your special knowledge, and your German because my German’s rubbish.’ I nodded, noting that I was
David
now. Leonard looked at his men.

‘Peter, you’re in command here!’

‘Yes, Simon,’ said a captain.

‘Keep searching,’ said Leonard, and don’t forget to turn over the dead and look at their faces. Look everywhere, look anywhere. Look up every hole and crack. We want Svart!’ He looked at a lieutenant. ‘Rob, you come with me and bring four men with Stens to watch my back, and another four to watch David’s. They’re to stick with him and mind him. Right?’