SBS, page 19
After a few moments Martin reappeared and signalled the all-clear. Phelps and Knox entered and Hunter remained outside and lit a cigarette. There was little movement in the camp. A few guards were walking the perimeter and others were still in the mess while, from the sound of it, it seemed some were attending a movie show in one of the huts. From further away, towards the airstrips, Hunter could hear the sound of engines and presumed that ground crew were working on servicing the fighter-bombers.
It was, in all, a far calmer scene than he recalled when he had last been standing here, some sixteen months ago. He could still see the frantic attempts of the radar unit to destroy their equipment, as officers ran in all directions trying to restore order and to affect an orderly retreat as it became clear the Germans were about to surround them. The German bullets thudding into men around him, some of them his friends. He recalled talking to one of them one minute – Jock Thompson, a plasterer from Fife – and the next minute he had dropped to his knees, a sniper’s bullet clean through his forehead. That couldn’t have been more than thirty yards from where he was now. And he remembered the mortar rounds crashing in and throwing men into the air and the occasional whiz and crump of a huge 88 shell, fired horizontally, taking out an entire building or transforming a group of soldiers into a pile of bloody body parts and mutilated wounded, shrieking for their mothers or pleading for death.
Hunter lit another cigarette and as he did so, he realised that his hand was shaking. He thought of Phelps and how very fragile they all were. Then he tried to forget his own ghosts and to concentrate on the job in hand.
*
With Knox stationed in the narrow corridor leading from the front door, his Schmeisser at the ready, Martin and Phelps were now standing at the doorway of the commandant’s personal office. Martin looked closely at the room from the doorway and then, very slowly entered. As he did so he looked around himself, taking in every detail he could. He walked to one wall and then back to the door, before walking to the opposite wall. Finally he walked to the window, opposite the doorway and then turned around. He moved to the commandant’s desk and scanned every item on it with his eyes.
Phelps stood in the doorway and watched, looking towards where Knox was standing on guard, all the time listening for the slightest footstep or warning noise of anyone approaching. There were none. But Phelps was sweating heavily now. Wishing that Martin would hurry up. But there was no hurrying him. This was a vital moment. Martin’s extraordinary mind was assimilating the visual information before him and banking it in his brain so that when they left, everything could be set back just as it appeared now.
At last it appeared that Martin had finished. He turned to Phelps. ‘Right, Sid. Come on. Look sharp. Go and fetch the sergeant.’
Phelps stared at him. Martin stared back. ‘Sid. Snap out of it. Go and get Sergeant Knox.’
Phelps suddenly realised what was happening. ‘Yes, thanks, mate.’
He turned and walked to the door and found Knox who saw his staring eyes and sweaty brow. ‘You took your time. You alright, lad?’
‘Yes, Sergeant. I’m fine. Martin wants you.’
‘Righto. You stay here, lad, and listen out.’
Knox hurried past Phelps and into the office, where he found Martin. ‘You’d better swap places with Phelps, Martin. Get him back in here. He’s all over the place. No use to us, like that. You stand guard. Send him to me. Where the hell’s Mister Hunter?’
Martin nodded and left the room. He found Phelps leaning against the wall of the corridor. He was breathing heavily.
‘Come on, Sid. The sergeant wants you back with him. I’ll take over here. Well, go on then.’
Phelps smiled at him and pushed past, hurrying back down the corridor to the office, where Knox was waiting. The sergeant was kneeling on the ground in front of the safe, which stood in the far corner of the room. In one hand he held a stethoscope, which he had placed against the door of the safe, close to the combination lock. He was listening intently as Phelps entered. He looked up. ‘Sshh. Not a sound.’
Phelps froze. Knox moved his other hand to the dial of the lock and very, very slowly and gently, began to rotate it. Phelps could hear it click as Knox moved it round from number to number, each click to him sounding louder and louder. Bound to bring the enemy crashing in on them.
Martin, standing on guard in the corridor, looked at his wristwatch. It was almost time. He listened at the front door of the hut and heard what he thought sounded like a footstep. Then another. A single man was approaching the hut. This was it. Martin slung his Schmeisser on his shoulder and drew his fighting knife, then, as quietly as possible, he moved to a position in the space where he knew the door would open and from where he could take the intruder by surprise. The handle of the front door began to turn and Martin got ready to move. As it opened, he tightened his grip on the cross-hatched hilt of the razor-sharp, double-edged dagger. The door was opening more fully now and a figure stepped inside, wearing the uniform of an officer in the Afrika Korps. Martin sighed with relief.
‘Mister Hunter. Thank God it’s you.’
Hunter quickly closed the door behind him. ‘Martin. Where’s Phelps? I thought he was on stag.’
‘He was, sir. Change of plan. I’ve done what I had to do, first off. Sergeant Knox is busy with the safe – and Sid… Well, he just didn’t look too good, sir. If you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do know what you mean. Damn it. I should have got here sooner. Right. You go and help them. Reckon they’ll need you in a mo’. Once Sarn’t Knox has done his stuff. I’ll stand guard here. Give me your machine gun.’
Martin handed him the Schmeisser and went to find the others.
He walked in just as Knox managed to open the door of the safe. The sergeant looked jubilant. ‘That’s it. Got the bastard. There you go. Over to you, Harry.’
Martin smiled. ‘My pleasure.’
He looked at Phelps. ‘Right, Sid. Come on. Sooner it’s done, sooner we’re out.’
Knox, rummaging around in the safe, began to hand out documents. Sid Phelps had knelt down beside him now and took each of the documents as Knox handed them to him. He looked at them and in silence sifted through them, discarding the majority in a pile on the floor and passing the rest up to Martin.
The accountant was clinically methodical, analysing each piece as it appeared. He had produced the tiny camera from his pocket and was dutifully snapping every item, even though in Martin’s case, of course, a camera wasn’t really necessary.
While Knox and Phelps worked in silence, Martin had begun jabbering away quietly to himself, becoming increasingly excited by the sheer quality and quantity of all the material Phelps was handing to him.
‘Geheim. Geheim. Geheim. It’s all bloody secret, boys.’ He showed one of the documents to Phelps. ‘There you are, that one’s for you, Sid. Blimey another one. Looks to me like a cipher code. Not my thing, thank God. You’d know more about that, Sid, wouldn’t you. Bloody hell, this place is a right treasure trove. A regular Aladdin’s cave, this is.’
Then he stopped. ‘Oh, hang about a minute. What have we got here then? Geheime Kommandosache, this is. Top secret, brass hats only.’
He looked at it again and used the camera.
Knox pushed another bundle of papers at Phelps. ‘’Ere, lad. You cop these. This is the last lot. That’s it. Where is the bloody thing? Sod it. Look, Sid, I’d just take the whole lot if I were you. Here. What do you say?’
Phelps took the bundle and began to sort through it, but then he felt the bottom of the pile and, realising that the paper there was somehow different, pulled it out and looked at it. It was a piece of blotting paper, stained with blue ink spatters. He was about to discard it when, on looking more closely, he realised that it was not one piece of blotting paper but two, which had somehow become stuck together. Intrigued he began to peel them apart and found between them another thin bundle of documents, typed on brown tracing paper. He ripped the blotting sheets apart and freed up the papers inside. He handed them to Martin.
Martin looked at them and suddenly froze. They were in English. He read the heading:
MOST SECRET EYES ONLY BIGOT
OPERATION GYMNAST
ALLIED INVASION OF NORTH AFRICA AND SICILY
For a moment Martin was lost for words. Then he found his voice: ‘Christ, boys, this is it. Bigot. Gymnast. We’ve only gone and found the bloody thing. Sid, go and find Mister Hunter while we finish off here. Bloody hell, Sarge, we’ve done it. Sid, go on, get Mister Hunter.’
But Sid Phelps didn’t move. Sid did nothing. Said nothing. Sid Phelps couldn’t speak. Sid Phelps had panicked. Because Sid Phelps was afraid. Very afraid. Fear had gripped him early on and now it wouldn’t let him go. He felt immobile. Lifeless. Unable to move at all. Sid Phelps was lost, drowning in fear.
It seemed to Phelps that he was thinking in slow motion. He felt calmer now. Just thinking. Someone, somewhere seemed to be calling out his name, but it didn’t matter right now. Sid was thinking. He was thinking how it took him like this sometimes. About how he had always been prone to it. How as a boy he had suffered from dreadful nightmares and had woken up screaming. How the dogs had helped. His greyhounds. When he was with his dogs, his boys and girls, his greyhounds, everything had seemed alright. They had become his world. Had helped him with the endless, echoing emptiness.
Then he had met his Mary and everything had changed. And when they had had Robbie and little Daisy, life had been complete. Wonderful, wonderful Mary and his little ones. They seemed a million miles away. Another life, and another world. And so it was. For he knew that those days would never come again and after that Phelps’s nightmares had returned and they were worse than he had ever known as a boy. And sometimes like now, they wouldn’t just be in his sleep. He would be in a living nightmare. Would see their faces. The faces of Mary and the kids. There in front of him. Calling out to him for help. And when that happened, well then he just froze. He had told no one about it. The MO would have had him kicked out of the regiment. And that was the last thing he wanted. To feel useless.
He had volunteered for the commandos. Partly to try to get involved and get rid of the nightmares, partly to avenge the deaths the bloody Jerries had caused. The deaths of his world. Mainly he wanted to kill them. He wanted them to feel his pain. But it hadn’t worked. He had had a moment on the caique when they were getting ready to attack the German boat.
He had tried to conceal his fear behind a veneer of bravado. But it had crumbled all too quickly under pressure. He was sure that Hunter had seen it and that worried him. But Hunter had said nothing. The action had jolted him back to reality and in fact he had enjoyed the killing. Perversely, taking the life of one of the enemy made him feel human again. But now this. Phelps stared at the wall and said nothing.
It was Harry Martin who was the first to realise that something was badly wrong. ‘Sid? Sid, mate, you alright?’
Phelps still said nothing. He was now staring at a photograph on the desk beside the safe. It showed an officer in a neat Nazi uniform sitting in a meadow in the lee of a mountain. Beside him was a pretty girl and between them a small blonde-haired child, a girl. She was wearing a white dress and had flowers in her hair.
Martin tried again: ‘Sid. What’s wrong, mate? You’re as white as a sheet. Come on, snap out of it. We’ve done it. Now we’ve got to scarper, mate. Got to get out of here. Our time’s almost up. Oh fuck it.’
Knox took charge. ‘Martin, you go and get Mister Hunter.’
Martin ran out into the corridor, searching for Hunter.
Knox stood up and put a hand on Phelps’s shoulder. ‘Now, lad. Come on.’
Without warning, Phelps lashed out and brought the framed photograph crashing to the ground, smashing the glass. At that moment Hunter and Martin entered the room. Instantly Hunter bent over Phelps and picked him up, dragging him out of the room. Phelps made no attempt to resist, but hung limp and wide-eyed in Hunter’s arms. From the doorway, Hunter turned to Martin and Knox.
‘Martin, make sure you bring whatever it was you found. Too bad, when they see this mess but there’s nothing we can do. Just make sure you’ve taken snaps of everything of any use and then stick it back in the safe. We’ve only got a few minutes before the ADC comes back. I’ll get Phelps out and try to keep him out of sight. Just do whatever you can and get the hell out of here.’
Hunter left them, half-carrying Phelps, and as he left, Knox and Martin were already busy refilling the safe with papers. Martin folded the brown tracing sheets and tucked them into his pocket as Knox shut the safe door and turned the dial to lock it. Martin stared at the desk. The picture frame had knocked over a number of other objects and he delved into his memory to find their original positions. He straightened four pencils and moved a lead paperweight in the form of a swastika two inches to the right before slightly shifting the position of a crystal water glass. Knox watched Martin with fascination and moved towards the office door.
‘Right, Harry, son. That’s enough. Let’s go.’
‘But what about the picture and all that glass?’
‘Too bad, mate. Perhaps they’ll think they’ve got a ghost. Anyway by the time Captain Wilson and his crew have finished with this place it’ll all be blown to atoms. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
They left the office, crunching across shards of broken picture glass and the shattered wooden frame. Their boots leaving dirty imprints on the photograph of the idyllic mountain scene. Mud and sand and broken glass had scarred the smiling faces of the perfect Nazi family.
*
On the other side of the compound, Duffy and Russell were lost. Duffy had found Russell some minutes ago and they had headed towards the signals hut that had been indicated on Leigh Fermor’s plan. The plan had shown that the building was two blocks away and to the right of the commandant’s office. But when they had got there it had turned out to be just another accommodation hut. Unsure as to what to do, they had turned around and walked straight into a group of Germans, who had offered Duffy a cigarette, which he had accepted. The man had wanted to chat. Had asked them their unit and Duffy had bluffed it out quite well, he thought. He had even spoken to him about his (bogus) hometown of Essen and they had discussed the local baker.
But the encounter had taken time and had also put them off course again and now they were desperately trying to find the line of huts they had been in before, at the same time as not arousing any suspicions. At last Russell found it and they strolled along the line of buildings, but none bore the slightest resemblance to a signals hut. Then, as they came to the end of the row, Duffy pointed. There, on top of the last building in the next row of huts was a radio aerial.
‘That’s it. There. We were in the wrong bloody row. Come on.’
They walked towards the hut but stopped dead as an SS colonel emerged from it. He turned back towards the building, clearly talking to someone inside. Duffy whispered, ‘Bloody SS. That’s not right. What the hell is he here for?’
Russell shook his head. ‘Not a bloody clue.’
‘Damn it. We’ll never get in there now. They should all be shovelling scoff in their mess hall. What a balls-up.’
‘Well, he’s obviously got them on extra duties, hasn’t he. Too bad, Bill. We had a go. Can’t be helped.’
‘We’d better get out of here a bit sharpish. Wonder if Mister Hunter’s had better luck.’
‘Well, I bloody hope so. Or all of this has been for nothing.’
11
Hauptman Eric Finck was in his element. He was having the most wonderful of evenings. As the recently appointed aide-de-camp to General Kellner, he had been singled out that day by his new CO for particular praise and had been invited by him to join not only the Herr General but his distinguished visitor, a highly decorated colonel in the Waffen-SS. They were to have cocktails in the mess, prior to dinner. Annoyingly, Finck’s only chore now was that which he enjoyed the least. He had to leave the officers’ mess and return to the commandant’s office to tidy up. But, immediately that had been done he would go back and rejoin the general and his guest. He felt that he had been accepted as one of their number. Truly one of the elite.
All in all it promised to be one of the best nights Eric had ever known. How his dear mother would have loved to see him with them. She would be so very proud. And his father. His poor, dear father. Eric had never really known his father. Johannes Finck had lost a leg in the Great War, fighting the British on the Somme and on his return from the military hospital had eked out a hard living in Potsdam as a cobbler. A one-legged cobbler, for God’s sake. Life had been unbelievably hard for them all under the outrageous terms of the Allied reparations and his father had cursed them all. First the French and the British, then the Americans and then all capitalists. Then his venom had been turned against the Communists and finally, and with most hatred in his eyes, against the Jews. And they all knew now of course that it was the Jews who were really to blame. For everything.
It had come as no surprise that his father had gone to an early grave. Still cursing. And then the Weimar Republic had come. Republic? How he had hated it. Democracy was the last thing that Germany had needed back then. The Führer had so clearly been the answer. Had brought them salvation. The Führer had saved the German people and given them back their honour.
