SBS, page 9
Lara laughed. ‘Orders? Of course it was bloody orders. You see, my dear, dear Jimmy. I told you that you were a spook. I knew all along.’
Hunter shook his head. ‘I am not a spook.’
‘Well, whatever you are, darling, you bloody well stood me up.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry. I really am. What else can I do?’
‘I’ll tell you what you can do. You can prove it. Prove to me that you’re really sorry.’
He looked into her eyes as she spoke again, smiling, and he knew he was forgiven.
She whispered, ‘Let’s go, darling, shall we? My apartment?’
He looked down at her. ‘Do you really mean that, or are you just drunk?’
She shook her head, smiled again, and pouted at him. ‘You silly, silly man. I’m both actually. But mostly I think I’m drunk. Of course I mean it. Oh God, really… Come on, Jimmy. Can’t you see? Stop being a tease. Let’s go. I really can’t wait for you any longer.’
He stared at her, unable to believe that he had been forgiven, and suddenly in his mind they were back in London. In that lovely, incredible summer.
Lara wobbled to stand up straight and, as he reached to put his arm around her shoulders, Hunter glimpsed behind her head, framed in the doorway, the figure of Peter Woods. He was looking directly at Hunter, his face a mask of surprise and bewilderment. Woods walked towards them and, as he approached, Hunter made sure that he could see quite clearly that his arm was on her shoulders and hers on his neck. He made sure that he spoke first: ‘Peter, there you are. Lara and I were just chatting about you.’
‘Really? Didn’t look like that to me. It rather looked as if you were chatting about something else. As if you were about to leave. Together.’
‘Really, Peter? How very clever of you. That’s exactly what we were doing.’
Lara seemed quite suddenly to snap out of her romantic mood. ‘Jimmy, darling. Do be careful. No one wants to fall out. Least of all over me.’
Woods was bristling with anger. ‘Hunter. I thought that I had made myself clear. She’s spoken for. Why don’t you just back off? Don’t you know when you’re beaten?’
Hunter had seen Woods like this before. On Rhodes. He stepped away. ‘Perhaps that’s just it, Peter. I don’t know when I’m beaten. When to admit defeat. And neither do you.’
Woods shook his head. ‘Why don’t we just go outside?’
‘What?’
‘We could just go outside and settle this properly. Once and for all.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re acting like children. Both of you,’ Lara shouted.
Hunter shook his head. ‘I don’t think that’s the answer. I’m not backing down, Peter. And you had better not try it on again.’
It was too much for Woods, who took a swing at Hunter, who again stepped back, this time into a passing waiter. The blow connected with the air and hit no one. But it unsettled Woods, who fell against the piano.
‘Fuck.’
Hunter tried to help him up, but Woods shook him off.
‘Don’t touch me.’
Woods took another swing and this time hit Hunter hard in the chest, sending him back into another waiter who was unfortunately carrying a full tray of drinks, which crashed to the floor. Leigh Fermor stopped his recital, which he was now attempting in Arabic, and yelled at them, ‘Oh please. I’m trying to sing.’ Then, seeing Woods circling Hunter he launched himself over the top of the piano towards them. ‘A fight. Now that’s more like it.’
Hunter moved quickly, dodging through the crowd, away from Woods and the growing mêlée as fast as he could go. Somehow, he made it to the top of the staircase where, much to his surprise, he collided with the naval commander who had recruited him. The man was out of uniform, dressed in a beautifully cut dinner jacket that proclaimed Savile Row.
‘Lieutenant Hunter. I say. You seem to be in a bit of a hurry.’
‘Hello, sir. What are you doing here? Yes I am. Bit of a problem with a girl.’
The commander smiled at him. ‘Looking for somewhere to hide?’
Hunter nodded.
The man beckoned him to a door cleverly disguised as a bookcase and pushing it open, revealing a billiard room laid out as another bar. An Armenian waiter greeted them, as the commander shut the door, ‘Drinks, sirs?’
The commander spoke: ‘Yes, another of these and the same for my friend. They’ll never find you in here. Now. The girl. Let me guess… Lara Heatherly.’
‘What? How did you know about her?’
The officer laughed. ‘When will you realise, we know everything about you, Hunter?’
Hunter thought fast. Realised that the eve of a mission was no time to proclaim an attachment. ‘In that case you’ll know that I’m not involved with Lara.’
The man laughed. ‘Oh, but you are, Hunter. Believe me, you are.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I’m just giving you a bit of advice. I would stay away from her.’
‘But why? Don’t tell me you’re keen on her too?’
‘Keen on her? Me? Good God no. Not my type. Far too bluestocking.’
‘So what is the problem with Lara, sir?’
‘She’s trouble, Hunter.’
‘Yes I know that. She always has been.’
‘No. I don’t mean like that. She works for SIS.’
‘Oh I know that too.’
‘No you don’t. She works for a very different branch of SIS than we do. She’s trying to get you to talk.’
‘She’ll have some bloody chance, after all that bloody interrogation training.’
‘I’m not joking. They want to know what you’re doing and they want to know all about the Greeks.’
Hunter shook his head. ‘Are you by any chance drunk, sir?’
The commander pointed to the door from behind which rose the noise of a fight.
‘No, not yet. But I do intend to be quite soon.’
‘Well it’s lucky that I met you then, sir. I have a problem.’
The commander looked serious. ‘Problem?’
‘With the mission. With Crete.’
‘Problem? Oh, I shouldn’t worry about it at all. Piece of cake. You lot are more highly trained than the winner of the St Leger. Wish I was coming with you in a way. But someone’s got to man the desk while you lot get covered in glory. It’s quite brilliant, what you’re doing. First class.’
The man was in his element, waxing lyrical about the role of the new unit. How it was going to ‘revolutionise warfare’ as they knew it.
‘You see what we’ve done, Hunter – and this is what’s really clever – is to pitch you somewhere between a spy and a saboteur. You’re not a real spy like the spooks at SIS and you’re not just a saboteur like SOE. Well that’s not to say that SBS aren’t also saboteurs, but they’re in and out. SOE well, they’re in, and they’re staying in. For the long term. But they’re definitely in the business of sabotage.’
‘Are you listening at all, sir?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Then listen to me, please. I really don’t think I can go on the mission.’
The commander smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand, Hunter. What’s up. Are you ill? Are you unfit?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’m putting in a request to be relieved from the mission.’
‘Sorry? What do you mean?’
‘You heard what I said, sir. I want to be stood down.’
‘You’re drunk. I’m not sure I understand you, Hunter. What the devil are you talking about?’
‘Incompatibility, sir. I can’t go into action with Captain Woods. You saw him down there. Once he gets like that he’s beyond either reason or logic.’
‘Then it’s Woods who needs to be stood down.’
‘No, sir, it’s the trigger that’s the problem and I’m the trigger. You saw it, sir. We have… personal differences. If he gets into one of his red moods then God knows what’ll happen.’
‘Personal differences be damned. There’s no option to stand down I’m afraid. Particularly over something as immaterial as a girl. You’re the best man for the job – and you’re trained to do it. Plus the fact you’ve already been briefed. Besides you were hand-picked. You were on Crete when the Jerries invaded. You know your way around the place. Plus the fact that you survived that bloody fiasco on Rhodes didn’t you? That was the test.’
There was a pause as Hunter tried to assimilate the bombshell. ‘That bloody mess was a test?’
‘Of course it was. You didn’t think it was an actual mission did you?’
‘But a man was killed. Several men. We all almost died.’
‘Collateral damage. But you made it back alive, didn’t you, and that’s exactly what they told us would happen. That you and Woods would make it back. And they were right.’
‘Who? What? Who told you? You are drunk. That’s nonsense. I was selected for this unit because of my skills and my attitude.’
The commander took a sip from the cocktail glass in front of him. ‘Yes, in a way you were. But we’d had our eyes on you for a long time, Hunter. You were promoted. But we had to be sure that you would behave the way we had thought you would.’
Hunter said nothing at first, but gritted his teeth. He had been used. Just as they were using the poor bloody Greeks. ‘You’re outrageous. All of you.’
‘We’re fighting a war, Hunter. We do what it takes.’
‘I won’t go. I… I refuse.’
‘Can’t refuse, I’m afraid. You’ve no choice, old man.’
‘But if I do refuse to go?’
‘In that case you’ll be court-martialled and ruined. And there’ll be a scandal. We’ll think of something suitably sordid. Rest assured. We’re good at that.’
Hunter was silent. The waiter appeared with more drinks.
The commander drained his glass, grabbed a fresh one and pushed the other cocktail glass into Hunter’s hand. ‘Don’t sulk. Here, try one of these. Best Martinis in Cairo. Recipe perfected at Shepheard’s, by a friend of mine, the bartender, Joe. Well you know how hard it is to get the good stuff here, don’t you? Awful bloody hangovers. So Joe, dear fellow, has come up with a real winner. Try it.’
Hunter took a long drink and then paused, allowing the exquisite mixture to trickle down his throat. ‘That’s extraordinary, sir.’
‘Yes, isn’t it. Who would have thought that one little change could make such a difference? Six parts forty-two-per-cent-proof vodka to one part vermouth. And a fresh black olive. That’s it. Oh and, vitally important, it has to be shaken, with ice. Never stirred. Any further questions?’
He took another drink and shook his head before speaking again: ‘Actually, sir, I do have just one question for you. Can you tell me who exactly it is I’m working for?’
‘Why, you’re working for us, of course.’
‘Yes, I see that, but who’s my actual CO?’
‘Oh, I see. What you’re actually asking me is who was it who gave you the job?’
‘Yes that’s exactly what I mean. That’s it. You see all I want to know is, who I can blame when it all goes wrong. When everything falls apart. Whose name do I curse when the Gestapo and the SS are squeezing the information out of me inch by inch? Who exactly do I tell to go to hell?’
The commander smiled. ‘Oh. Me I suppose.’
‘And, with all due respect, sir, may I ask who you are?’
The commander smiled at him and took another sip from his Martini, before replying, ‘The name is Fleming. Ian Fleming.’
6
They had left the camp at Athilt a day ago, slipping away shortly before midnight in a convoy of four five-tonners bound for Alexandria, and had travelled down on the old coast road through Port Said. The first leg of the journey was just under two hundred miles to Port Said and it took them a good five hours. Sitting alongside the driver Hunter felt sorry for the men of his troop in the back as they felt every bump and rock on the road. This, Hunter knew, was the hardest part of the journey. There would be little sleep for any of them.
There were forty men in all on the operation. Larger than usual for a raiding force, but then, in effect, he realised, there were actually two raids taking place. The main commando force of twenty-nine men consisted of three sections of Royal Marines under Captain Sandy Wilson, a genial, soft-spoken Scot, whose family had an estate in the Highlands.
Hunter and Woods’s own raiding force, the so-called ‘intelligence commandos’, was composed of just ten of them. Of course, Hunter had not really had a chance to get to know all of them well. He was sure though that each of them would be good to have around when they went into action.
All had initially been selected by Vickery and Fleming, with the final say-so being given to Woods and himself. There had been more of them in the bunch who had gone through Athilt. But some had been weeded out and others had left of their own volition, as the training had intensified and become more brutal and demanding. Those who were left were, he thought, probably among the fittest, best-trained and most intelligent fighting men this war had yet produced. He wondered how many would survive the coming days.
There was Jack Knox, of course, the Glasgow safe-cracker. Hunter watched him as he puffed on a woodbine and knew that he now had a definite bond with him, an instinctive thing. He felt an affinity too with his corporal, Lennie Russell, a weasel-faced petty criminal from the East End of London, known to his mates as ‘Squirrel’.
Russell had worked for a while as a barman in Soho and he and Hunter had soon discovered that they shared common ground in their memories of that long-distant nirvana of poets, painters and pimps. There was little too that Russell didn’t know about mixing a cocktail and he was equally good at making things disappear. Put down your wallet for the briefest moment and you could be sure that minutes later ‘Squirrel’, grinning, would produce it from his pocket. He was also the wise-cracker of the section. There was always one of them and quick-witted Russell had a gag for every situation.
Russell’s wit was rivalled by that of the lance corporal, Bryn Fletcher, a curly-haired Welshman from Merthyr Tydfil. Fletcher was a career soldier. Having enlisted in the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a boy of seventeen, he had managed to survive Dunkirk, just. His battalion had been almost wiped out, losing 780 men. Just three officers and eighty men had made it to the beaches.
Fletcher had been promoted to sergeant, only to be broken down to corporal after a particularly rowdy night on the town in Colchester.
The problem was that Fletcher exuded charm. He could freeze you with his smile and oozed a smooth self-assurance that the ladies seemed all too ready to lap up. Although that might also have had something to do with the fact that Fletcher’s mates knew him as ‘Todger’ Fletcher. In fact he had lost his second stripe after a fight with a woman’s husband in the street while on leave in Cardiff. Though why anyone would have considered fighting Fletcher was beyond Hunter. He had also played in the second line of the scrum for the army and had scored when they beat the Royal Navy 14:3 at Twickenham in 1937. To top it off the man was a fine singer and his baritone could often be heard belting out a heady combination of bawdy rugby songs and Methodist hymns.
Both Russell and Fletcher had been selected from existing commando units. Russell had served in France and been in the raids on Vaagso and Lofoten in 3 Commando. At Vaagso he had personally brought out a complete copy of the German Naval Code, along with three prisoners. The experience had also toughened him up and given him reactions that were razor-sharp. On the downside it had also left him with a degree of mental trauma. But both Woods and Hunter reckoned the one was worth the other.
Fletcher, after surviving Dunkirk, had been involved in Operation Ambassador, the bungled 1940 raid on Guernsey. Like Hunter, he had seen first-hand what happened when things went wrong.
Hunter also had much in common with Dave (Chalky) White, an ex-Scots Guardsman. Like Fletcher and Russell, he had been selected for the commandos, back at the start of the war. White had been on Crete before, back in ’41, in Layforce under Colonel Bob Laycock, and had proven himself then during the retreat, when he had met Hunter in the pass at Babali Hani, both of them split up from their units. That had been a day. Hand-to-hand fighting that took both sides back to the Middle Ages. Hunter had himself watched White kill two German mountain troops with nothing but rocks and his bare hands. That wasn’t something you ever forgot.
Then there was Brian Miller, a six-foot-six, red-haired ex-policeman from Bristol, who spoke in a broad Somerset accent and punctuated his sentences with unintelligible words. Miller was blessed with the ability to sniff out trouble at a thousand paces. He literally had a nose for it. His colleagues had said he could smell a criminal halfway down the street. Woods and Hunter reckoned he was now able to do the same with a Nazi. Miller was the eyes and ears of the unit. First in, last out.
Sid Phelps, a motor mechanic from Croydon, had lost his wife and two young children in the London Blitz. He had been away at a camp with the TA and arrived home to find the local shelter destroyed and all those in it dead. Now he just wanted ‘to take as many of the bastards with me before I go too’ as he had told Hunter in his cups one evening, at Athilt. Phelps was a genius signaller. What ‘Sparky’ Phelps didn’t know about comms wasn’t worth knowing. He was good at Morse and was constantly learning about codes and ciphers.
But in real terms, the only thing that Sid had left now apart from his elderly parents, was his dog, Sally, a racing greyhound who lived with his mum and dad in Pinner and who before the war had won at Catford and White City. He carried one of her racing collars in his kitbag along with a photo of his family.
And lastly there were a pair of unlikely misfit boffins: Duffy and Martin.
Bill Duffy had been studying at Cambridge for a degree in chemistry when war had broken out. He had enlisted and had immediately been transferred to the Intelligence Corps. Duffy was no less than a genius, a natural academic who, in any other times, would have been a Fellow of All Souls, proving some unlikely theorem, but who was now the unit’s explosives man. However, despite his public school and university background, the army was also certain that Duffy had absolutely no officer potential. He simply wasn’t cut out to lead. But what he did have was a huge and brilliant mind and, having been a rowing blue at Cambridge, a physique to match. If anyone seemed to have been cut out for the new unit, it was Bill Duffy.
