SBS, page 6
*
The following morning, having managed to decipher the spidery scrawl of handwriting on the cigarette packet that he had found thankfully was still in his pocket, Hunter was standing outside a building in Garden City, on Sharia Rustum. Rustum Buildings was a slightly shabby concrete block of purpose-built modern flats, all with iron balconies, not far from GHQ at ‘Grey Pillars’.
The handwritten note had directed him simply to: Go up staircase to first floor, room 7.
He entered past the two red-capped sentries, who noticing his pips, snapped up a salute which, unused to being an officer, he returned rather belatedly. The place was not the usual hive of activity, but seemed deathly silent in comparison to GHQ. There were far fewer people and all of them were going about their work in silence. Hunter walked to the staircase and after climbing it arrived on the first floor. It wasn’t hard to find the door of what had obviously previously been flat 7. He paused to gather his thoughts and then knocked. It was opened immediately by a stunningly pretty young WRN as neatly turned out as if she might have been in Whitehall.
She smiled at him then noticed his black eye. ‘Oh. Oh dear. I say that looks nasty. You here to see “V”?’
‘Who? Yes, I suppose I must be.’
‘He’s in there. On a call. You’ll have to wait.’
He looked around for a seat, but there were none, save for the one in which the WRN now sat herself, behind her tidy little desk.
There was another knock at the door. She tut-tutted and got up to answer it. To Hunter’s surprise the newcomer was the sergeant from the previous evening and for a moment he wondered whether they had been caught.
‘Hello again, Sergeant. What a coincidence.’
Knox looked as nonplussed as Hunter. ‘Good morning, sir. Didn’t think I’d have the pleasure of your company again quite so soon.’
There was a loud cough from the inner office. The WRN had sat down again and was filing her nails. She spoke without looking up. ‘He’ll see you now. Just go in.’
Hunter opened the door into what had previously been the apartment’s master bedroom. On one wall were a large framed photograph of the king alongside a smaller photograph of a Royal Navy corvette. On another hung an unintelligible timetable, with handwritten notes scrawled across it, and a huge map of the Mediterranean and Aegean.
In the centre of the room, in a leather-covered club chair, at what looked like a George II partner’s desk, with his back to a huge picture window, sat ‘V’, the man who had previously been Lieutenant Vickery. Now however, he had been transformed and was wearing a lieutenant commander’s insignia. He was dressed in an immaculately pressed naval officer’s white shirt and shorts.
‘Ah, Hunter, there you are. And the redoubtable Sarn’t Knox. Do come in, both of you. Take a seat.’
They sat down in the offered dining chairs opposite Vickery, who carried on speaking: ‘You need to meet your 2IC, Hunter. Sergeant James Knox.’
He smiled. ‘In fact, I believe that you two might already be acquainted. Am I right?’
Hunter wondered how the devil he could have known that. ‘Let’s just say, we’ve met socially.’
Knox smiled at him and nodded. ‘You could say that, sir. Good to see you.’
‘Yes, Sarn’t Knox. Good to see you again too. Didn’t know you were part of our mob.’
‘Couldn’t resist it, sir. I just seemed to be the right man for the job.’
Vickery smiled. ‘Sergeant Knox comes to us highly recommended… As an expert safe-cracker.’
Knox laughed. ‘Five years in Barlinnie jail can’t tell any lies, eh, sir?’
‘Quite so, Knox. He’s really very good, Hunter. Invaluable. And a good man in a tight spot too, I believe.’
‘Oh I can vouch for that, personally, sir.’
Vickery looked at him closely. ‘How’s the eye this morning?’
‘Surprisingly painful actually, sir.’
‘You want to avoid that sort of thing. You can never be quite sure who’s watching, can you?’
Hunter nodded. ‘It would appear not, sir.’
Vickery looked down at his notes. ‘We’re sending you to Athilt.’
‘Sir?’
‘Don’t worry, its nothing unpleasant. Well, not too unpleasant. It’s a training camp, near Haifa, on the coast. Most of the place is filled with SBS chappies. You’ll find Captain Woods is already there. He left this morning. And the other men you’ll be working with. You two are the last two recruits. Well done both of you.’
He looked down at his desk. There was a pause before Vickery looked up again, ‘Any questions?’
Hunter looked at him. ‘Yes, sir, as a matter of fact I do have a question. When might we go into action? I mean if we’re so important, then surely we need to be in the field as soon as possible. The commander himself said that thousands of lives were being lost needlessly every day. Surely we need to stop that?’
‘Of course we do, but all in good time, Hunter. All in good time.’
‘But I’ve already been trained. When I joined the commandos. Trained bloody well and damned hard too. What else is there to learn?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised, old chap. You’ve all got a lot more to learn before we let you loose on a mission. You too, Sergeant. Don’t worry. As soon as you’re ready we’ll know it. And what’s more so will you. No point in going off half-cocked. We want you to be able to deal with anything they throw at you. You’ll thank us in the end.’
He looked at his watch. ‘Right. You’d better go and get your kit together.’
Hunter frowned. ‘Sir?’
‘Well, your plane leaves in an hour. Goodbye and the best of luck.’
Hunter nodded. Well that put paid to his date with Lara. He wondered how it might have gone. Too late now. He supposed that he should get some sort of word to her and wondered if the pretty WRN in the office might help.
Vickery coughed, loudly, and the bedroom door was opened by the WRN, who showed them back into the anteroom. Knox opened the door and was already halfway into the corridor when Hunter turned to the WRN, ready to ask her if she might possibly get a message to a Miss Heatherly. But she spoke first, smiling at him disarmingly. ‘Better get that eye looked at, Lieutenant. You don’t really want to go into action looking like that, do you?’
Hunter returned her smile. ‘Depends what sort of action you mean, doesn’t it?’
Stupid thing to say. He cursed himself. Too late now for the message anyway.
The WRN smiled and looked away, going back to filing her nails. ‘Goodbye, Lieutenant Hunter. Do close the door behind you.’
4
Hunter came round slowly from unconsciousness and, with some difficulty, opened his swollen eyes. The room was black, save for the light from a single, bare light bulb that hung suspended from the ceiling, almost directly above his head. Seeing it, he quickly realised with a sickening clarity that it was not, after all, a dream. He shivered, partly from fear and partly on account of the fact that he was utterly naked and very, very cold.
He tried to move but found that he was tied to a wooden chair by his wrists and ankles. In that instant memory returned and, with it, the pain. He winced. His body felt as if he had been ruthlessly beaten, perhaps for hours. There did not seem to be a single area of his body that had not been attacked. His head throbbed with pain and his eyes felt puffy, as if he had been punched repeatedly. His body was coated in sweat but rubbing his forearm against his thigh he felt a thicker liquid and supposed that it must be blood. His blood. He tried to flex his fingers and toes and found to his surprise that nothing appeared to be broken.
He tried to concentrate. To focus his mind on the facts and away from the pain. Tried to recall how he had got here. How the men who had done this to him had managed to get him into this position. Surely, he thought, he must have fought. But he was unable to remember anything.
He panicked and struggled but that only made the ropes cut into his wrists and ankles.
The door of the room opened suddenly, flooding the room with white light and swinging back against the wall with a thud and from the periphery of his vision, he was aware of someone entering the room. The door closed and the room was again only lit from the single bulb. A man, no it sounded like two men, were standing behind him. He struggled again, determined to turn to see them. But it was no use. He could hear them speaking now, in German. He strained to make out what it was they were saying, but they spoke too softly for him to make out anything more than the occasional word.
‘Dead… want him alive… let him suffer… Plans… slowly.’
Every word filled him with a new horror.
One of the men appeared before him. Straining to see, he focused on a tall man in unmistakable Nazi uniform. Black tunic, trimmed in silver with a double lightning flash on the collar and the ribbon of the Iron Cross on the left breast pocket. SS political wing. A torturer. A thug. Not that he needed to be told that. The man was holding something in both hands. Something shiny, and before Hunter could see what it was it became all too evident. He was hit full in the face by a torrent of water, thrown with force from the bucket in the man’s hands.
The sudden shock made him gasp and he pulled his body away from the flood. In doing so he unsettled the chair, which toppled backwards and landed on the stone floor. Luckily Hunter managed instinctively to stop his head hitting the floor with maximum force. But the crash instantly renewed the pain in his limbs and back. He was aware of the other man, similarly dressed to his colleague. Standing over his face. Could smell the leather and polish of the black jackboot. Waited for the heel to kick him in the face or grind into his skull and eyes.
The two men were talking now. Of course he could not hear what they were saying. Nor did he want to. Hunter had gone beyond caring. They spoke together for what seemed to be an interminable time, during which Hunter’s body went from being red hot with agony to freezing cold.
The man walked across to Hunter and drew a long SS knife from its sheath on his belt. Hunter shivered and tried to close his eyes to its blade but so puffy and swollen were they that he found it hard to do so. He saw the double-edged straight blade glint blue steel in the cold light from the solitary bulb and waited, sickened, for the inevitable cut, wherever it might hit home. Tried to brace his body for the shock. But instead, the man used the knife to slit the rope that held his hands.
Christ in heaven, thought Hunter. What now? What had they in mind for him now? What new horror was this? Dozens of ghastly thoughts raced across his mind. The full panoply of the medieval torturer: fingernails being extracted, limbs being snapped like twigs, knees bored through, digits lopped off, slowly, eyes being gouged out, fingers being severed, castration. He felt utterly vulnerable and realised that there was absolutely nothing now that he could do about it. He was, he knew, going to suffer unbelievable pain. There was no option. No way out and as it sunk in the thought simply made him more determined not to tell them what they demanded to know.
With slow and deliberate steps, his jackboot heels echoing around the walls, the man walked away from him and Hunter, lying naked and foetus-like on the cold stone floor, instinctively began to try to move. New pain surged through his limbs, as he asked them, begged them to move again. He brought his hands together and gripped them tightly against each other, pushing strength into his weary arms. Feeling his strained biceps swell with what power he could muster. Feeling too the anger rise within him. And then he waited.
The two men stood at the other side of the room and watched him. He could feel their eyes boring into him, urging him to crack. This was the psychological way of breaking through. Of breaking him. They were allowing him to become even more afraid. Urging him to panic. To explore his worst fears and delve into their deepest darkest imagery. Playing with his mind. Well he wasn’t going to be played with. They had done what they had to do and, he knew, they had worse to do. But he was finished with them.
From now on he would be a dead man. He would will his body to feel no pain. Whatever happened. No pain. He tried to remember the techniques he had been taught in training. How to resist torture. You count in your head, he thought. Yes that was it, you count very, very slowly and that just somehow cuts out everything else that’s going on. That’s what he would do. He would count slowly. Very, very slowly. He prayed to God that it would work.
After what he thought might have been a few minutes one of the men walked over to him. He closed his eyes and waited for the kick that would herald the next awful tortures. But nothing came. He was aware of the man’s presence as he stood over him. But there was no kick. No punch. Instead he felt a hand on his shoulder and then another hand gently grasping his own. Helping him up and into the chair.
What was this now? he wondered. Was this the clever mind work they had warned him about in the training camp? When they fooled you into thinking they had finished. When they calmed you down so that your resolve on which you had worked so hard was instantly broken and when the pain began again it was as if it was all happening for the first time? Or worse. Was that what this was?
He heard a voice, but was at first unable to make out the words. He was sure it was German but his scrambled brain would not translate. Could not make the connection. And then he realised that the man was speaking in English. Another trick. He opened his eyes and looked at the man. Read his lips and was suddenly able to understand. ‘You see, as I said. I am most terribly sorry. It’s all part of the process. You do understand, don’t you, old man? Just a part of the training programme. In fact in our opinion it’s the most important part. I have to say you did rather well.’
Hunter stared at him. After a while he managed to speak: ‘Bastard. You, you… bastard.’
He spat the words from his blistered lips. The man spoke again: ‘Quite, well. Yes. Yes, they all say that. It is a thankless task, this, but someone’s got to do it, old man. You do understand.’
Hunter tried to express what he felt: ‘Understand? You almost fucking killed me you bastard. And fucking stop calling me “old man”. Shit.’
He had tried to stand up, but his legs were too weak and he merely slid to the floor.
‘Captain Rodney here will help you, old chap. Jolly well done. There’s no way any Jerry interrogator could break you, Hunter. Good effort. Very well done.’
Hunter grimaced. ‘Good effort’? It was like school sports day. Good bloody effort. For a moment he considered taking a swing at the man, but realised that he would fail and thought the better of it.
The other man, Captain Rodney, helped him up and slowly guided and half dragged him across to the room’s wooden door, which he noticed, with amusement, wasn’t locked. Outside he found himself in a small anteroom made of mud bricks. It smelt of stale sweat and damp. With difficulty, leaning his arm against a wall, Hunter managed to stand up on his own. He noticed his uniform, pressed and smelling fresh, hanging up above a wooden bench on which his boots and cap had been placed with precision. The man indicated a shower apparatus on the right.
‘You can wash there, Hunter. Take your time. Call out if you need anything. Then get yourself dressed. Debrief in an hour. Oh and see and get some scoff before that if you can keep it down. You know where the canteen is, don’t you.’
He sat down on the bench and watched as the man in Nazi uniform left the room and closed the door behind him. Hunter sat down on the bench, suddenly dizzy. Christ, his head was reeling. A few minutes ago he had been ready to die an agonising, slow death. Ready to die for his country, his king and all of that. Prepared for the very worst. He had really believed it all. Suddenly he felt very angry. Massively angry that he had fallen for it and that they could have done it. And then within moments the anger was replaced with a surge of relief. Real relief and joy at being alive. And at it all being a game. That’s what it all was. A great game wasn’t it? All this. The unit. The war. A bloody great game. A game that no one could win.
He shook his head and tried to grasp at reality. After a few strange minutes he started to understand what had happened and, willing himself to his feet walked into the shower. It was a primitive affair, but to Hunter it might as well have been in a suite at the Dorchester.
He stood beneath the tepid water for much longer than he usually did, luxuriating in its touch on his fractured skin. Looking down he could see the blood from his wounds mixing with the water as it ran into the uncovered hole that was the drain. Gradually the water ran clear. He turned off the shower and after grabbing the towel that lay on the bench, dried himself with care, trying not to disturb newly forming scabs.
He dressed with equal care, pulling on his bush shirt, shorts, socks and boots. Found his belt and beside it a small parcel of the personal effects they had taken off him: wallet, cigarettes, lighter, watch, a pile of coins and most importantly, the old St Christopher medal given to him by his nanny the day he had started school.
He winced occasionally when a movement caused a sudden twinge of pain. God, they had done their job well. He had been convinced that his end had come and of the horrible fate that awaited him. The relief he felt now was quite unparalleled. He had never felt so liberated. And so very, very thankful to be alive.
Hunter walked out into the brightness of the day and blinked. It was no trick. He was exactly where he had been, however many days ago it had been when they had taken him. Here, in the training camp at Athilt. As he stood there, slowly adjusting to the daylight, a man passed him by and waved. ‘Morning, Jim. Been away?’
He recognised him as one of the SBS officers, Jack Cartwright.
‘Yes. You might say that, Jack. I have been away.’
He had been away, alright. Away to somewhere that he never ever wanted to visit again. It had all happened so fast. One moment he had been walking away in the night from the officers’ mess tent, off to have a quick fag. The next he had felt a sharp blow and then blackness. He had woken up in that darkened room, stark naked. And then it had begun.
