A Good Clean Fight (54 page)

Mike Dunn was getting his breath back after some hard shoveling when Sandiman strolled over to him. “You might as well know what was in the signal,” he said quietly. “Can't do any harm now, can it?”

Dunn grunted agreement. There was sand in his ears.

“To tell the truth, I'm a bit worried,” Sandiman said. “You see, the signal recalled Captain Lampard to Cairo immediately. I mean, it was a direct order.”

They looked at the man. Lampard was laughing at something Sergeant Davis had said. He seemed completely at ease, utterly sure of himself. “Who from?” Dunn asked.

“Well, GHQ Cairo gave the order. The regiment sent the signal but GHQ want him.”

“Could mean anything. Promotion, posting . . .” But Dunn knew that it would take more than that to turn the heavy wheels of GHQ and drag Lampard back to Cairo in mid-patrol. Sandiman knew it too.

“I think I recognized the ident for the source at GHQ where the signal originated,” Sandiman said. “I think it was the Provost-Marshal's office.”

Dunn picked up his shovel and gave the Sahara a couple of angry whacks. “It can't be that scrap at the Black Cat,” he said. “They'd have to recall the whole patrol for that.
Anyway, since when did anyone give a damn what goes on at the Black Cat?”

“Thought you ought to know.”

“The army always catches up with you,” Dunn said. “Jack must know that.” He wished Sandiman hadn't told him.

After the soft sand they had to negotiate an awkward stretch of rock. Erosion had sharpened its edges and although the drivers trundled gently in bottom gear, there were two punctures. While the wheels were off, Malplacket asked Dunn what would happen if enemy aircraft caught the patrol like this. Dunn said he supposed they would be killed. Malplacket stopped watching the sky.

On the third day, rocks gave way to serir. The patrol put on speed and cruised comfortably until noon, when Gibbon's sun compass lost its shadow and they stopped for lunch: pilchards, beetroot, cheese and pears, all out of tins. Henry Lester took his mess tin and sat next to Dunn. “This is flatter than Kansas,” he said. “And I never thought I'd say
that.”

“Bloody good going.”

“I feel like a bug on a tennis court. How much more?”

“A fair bit. Calanscio Serir's about two hundred miles long.”

“That's like New York to Boston.” Lester ate a bit of pilchard. “Anything interesting likely to happen?”

“Shouldn't think so.” Dunn chewed as he thought. “Of course, the place to go for excitement is Benghazi. Well . . . Not
excitement
, perhaps, but . . . Benghazi's sort of different. So they say, anyway.”

“Wait a minute. Benghazi . . . The Germans have Benghazi.”

“Yes. Didn't stop Stirling and Churchill and Maclean having a dirty weekend there, not so long ago. You never heard? I thought everyone knew.”

“I heard a rumor,” Lester lied. “Tell me more.”

Dunn told him. The Prime Minister's son, Randolph Churchill, had persuaded David Stirling to let him join an SAS patrol. Also in the party was a tough ex-diplomat called Fitzroy Maclean. Stirling's patrol drove into Benghazi with the aim of planting mines on enemy ships. The plan failed, but they bluffed their way past Italian sentries and walked the streets openly and freely. Then they drove out again.

“Wearing what?” Lester asked.

“British army uniform. Same as this. Nobody gave them a second glance, so they said.”

“That's amazing.”

“And on the way home, Stirling put the car in the ditch and they all ended up in hospital.” Dunn laughed.

At the same time, Malplacket was talking to Gibbon. “Extraordinary terrain,” he said, gesturing at its utter flatness. “Seemingly innocuous, rather like the open sea, yet who knows what menace lurks just over the horizon?”

“What, over there?” Gibbon aimed a chunk of cheese in the same direction. “Anyone who does any lurking over there is a damn fool. Over that horizon is the Sand Sea. Not a place to take your holidays.”

“All the same, one feels oneself part of the English buccaneering tradition. Confounding the king's enemies by slipping ghost-like through these arid wastes as once our ancestors held sway over the high seas. The same blood throbs in your veins, surely?”

“Dunno about that. My family have been in the paint trade for generations.”

“Ah.” Malplacket drank some pear juice. “The Scarlet Pimpernel, perhaps? They seek him here—”

“Yeah, I saw the film, in Cairo. Leslie Howard. He was wearing
lipstick.
You could tell.”

While the fuel tanks were being topped up and the tires checked for damage, Lester took Malplacket aside. “Did you ever hear a story about Randolph Churchill walking
through Benghazi? In British uniform? With Stirling and the rest of a patrol?”

“I believe Blanchtower may have mentioned it. Why?”

“Why?
The Prime Minister's son, strolling around Benghazi? Being saluted by krauts and wops?”

“I suppose it has a certain style. Blanchtower said the Cabinet were quite amused when they heard.”

“Hell of a story.
Hell
of a story.”

Dunn made sure his jeep was ready to move and walked over to Lampard. “Well, I told him,” he said. “It was like giving a lump of sugar to a horse. Now tell me why you told me to tell him.”

Lampard shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“No, I'm just curious. Why didn't you tell him yourself?”

“Was he interested?”

“Fascinated. Nearly spilled his pilchards.”

“Yes. I thought it might appeal to him . . . Thank you, Mike. Let's move on, shall we?”

The patrol drove northwards over the gravel plain all afternoon. Nothing changed except the power of the sun and the angle of the shadows it cast. The noise of engines never varied and there was a huge superabundance of utterly empty sky to look at. Lester and Malplacket had seen more than enough of it already. They dozed off.

At about four o'clock the vehicles drifted to a halt. Nobody got out, which was unusual. Lester and Malplacket stood up. Everyone was looking ahead, where a stick of black smoke stood on the horizon like a factory chimney.

Lampard sent Dunn and Trooper Peck in a jeep to reconnoiter. Everyone else had a brew-up and a rest.

Gibbon did some calculations, and then went in search of Lampard. He found him cleaning the interminable dust and grit from his tommy-gun. “There's something interesting you ought to see,” Gibbon said.

Lampard followed him to his maps.

“There's nothing interesting for you to see,” Gibbon said. “I just wanted to make an idiot of myself in private.” He was quite serious.

“Is this about that signal I got at Kufra?”

Gibbon sighed. “I don't know, Jack. Maybe it is. Look: I'll tell you, and then you can tell me. Tell me to go to hell, if you want.” He raked his fingers through his beard, which was already long enough to hide his expression. “I don't know where to start.”

“Try the beginning.” Lampard seemed completely composed.

“OK. The beginning was Harris. How he died. And where. Then Waterman. How
he
died, also where. And
when
, too, if it comes to that.” Gibbon wasn't enjoying this, but he soldiered on. “All the details—precisely what killed them, and who saw it happen, if anyone.”

“You've been talking to Captain Kerr.”

“He's been talking to me,” Gibbon said sharply.

“Of course. I apologize, Corky.” Lampard made a crooked grin, irresistibly boyish. “I should know better. You don't get an MC by chatting with the adjutant, do you? Forgive me. So . . . Kerr wanted chapter and verse on our last patrol, did he? Well, he's entitled to play devil's advocate. After all, there's the little matter of decorations to be considered. Is that all?”

Gibbon looked at the horizon. It told him nothing. He felt the pressure to stop now, to say it was none of his business, but that would be a lie; it was the business of them all. “From the adjutant's questions,” he said, “it was pretty obvious that the official version of the way Harris and Waterman died was a long way from the . . .” He was about to say
the truth.
“From the facts.”

“Extraordinary,” Lampard said, and cocked his head.

“Officially, it seems, Harris got stabbed by a sentry and Waterman got Stuka-ed.”

“But that's ludicrous.”

“You mean your report didn't say that?”

“Certainly not. Did the adjutant tell you it did?”

“Not in so many words, no. But—”

“Corky,” Lampard said. “Forget it. Some asshole in Cairo has garbled the whole affair. I expect a typist mixed up two separate reports from two different patrols. Anyway, it's all history. What matters is
now.
Agreed?”

Gibbon hesitated. This wasn't what he was good at; he was a navigator, for Christ's sake. “And that signal at Kufra?” he said.

“My little secret,” Lampard told him, and winked. “Don't believe everything you hear. All is not what it seems.”

Trooper Peck drove the jeep slowly and cautiously. He and Dunn made frequent use of their binoculars. After ten miles, they could see that the smoke came from a burning oil drum, and this was odd enough to make them even more cautious. It was Trooper Peck who noticed a wink of light from far to the west, the dying gleam of a chance reflection from a windscreen caught by the setting sun. They worked toward it and eventually picked out a sprinkle of dots on the horizon. They left the jeep and walked for an hour: a calculated risk that brought them five miles closer, near enough for their binoculars to reveal a cluster of trucks. The blaze of light behind the trucks washed out all detail.

*   *   *

Captain Lessing knew that placing a smoke marker for Jakowski to home in on was dangerous: anything that attracted Jakowski's men might attract others. But he had no choice. Captain di Marco had underlined what was already obvious, that Jakowski's navigation was a mess; and Lessing could think of no other way to help guide his commanding officer toward the rendezvous.

Meanwhile, he ordered more trenches to be dug and organized a permanent watch, one man guarding each side of the camp, changed every two hours. After sundown the change was every hour. Staring into the desert at night was wearying work. Even the best sentry lost concentration.

Lessing discussed tactics with Lieutenant Fleischmann. “What do we do if a British force attacks us?” he asked.

“By day? Let them get within range of our mortars and see how many trucks we can knock out, for a start.”

“They may have mortars too.”

“True. All right, we disperse our trucks and—”

“So now we've got no means of moving our mortars quickly, unless you intend to carry them on your shoulders at the double.”

“No.”

“The men would admire and respect your amazing devotion to duty.”

“I think not, sir.”

“Neither do I. So we keep a couple of trucks to enable us to shift our firepower. What if they attack at night?”

Fleischmann hunched his shoulders. “All depends,” he said. “Do we know how strong they are?”

“Do they know how strong
we
are?”

They stared at each other, and suddenly both men laughed.

“If it's bigger than an armored brigade it's not fair,” Fleischmann said, “and I shan't play.” They settled down to work out fields of fire for the heavy machine guns.

*   *   *

The burning oil drum was a mystery, and Dunn refused to guess at the identity of the trucks. Lampard spent ten minutes alone. When he came back he had decided to attack. There was total silence from the other officers.

“Nobody is cheering,” he said.

“I just don't see the point, that's all,” Gibbon said. “We know precisely where they are. I can steer us well clear of them in the dark. Even if they hear us they won't interfere. Not in the dark.”

“There's no other SAS patrol in this area,” said Sandiman, “but that doesn't prove it's Jerry, does it? And if it
is
Jerry and his radio op gets a message out, it'll be Stukas tomorrow, a pound to a penny.”

Lampard tugged his left ear-lobe and looked at Dunn.

“You're the boss, Jack,” Dunn said.

“You're against it too.”

“Beda Fomm is our target.”

“Oh, we'll hit Beda Fomm. I don't like the idea of a Hun ambush waiting for us on our way back.” Lampard could see they were not impressed by this argument. “Besides, it's time the chaps had a bit of fun.” That made Gibbon stare and Sandiman sniff, but Lampard didn't care. He had made up his mind. He sent for the men and began his briefing.

*   *   *

Lessing, Fleischmann and the senior NCO took it in turns to supervise the watch throughout the night. At four a.m. Fleischmann accompanied the new sentries as they replaced the old. Nothing had happened. The moon was down and the blackness was absolute.

The new sentry on the northern side was a twenty-one-year-old Berliner called Manfred. He took over the light machine gun, acknowledged Fleischmann's sharp reminder to stay alert, and for seven or eight minutes he did just that. Then his girlfriend Tania slid into his imagination as sweetly as she had once slid into his bed, and after that his military duty was always on the losing side.

Her real name was Hannah. Tania suited her much better. She was built like a dancer, but a dancer with real breasts instead of the flat blisters which most dancers had.
Manfred had first seen her in a leotard at the gymnasium where he trained, and it was her outspoken nipples that made him gasp. They gave point to breasts that were firm, neat and circular, like her buttocks. A little later he discovered a stunning pair of legs at one end and a delightful face at the other. Manfred was a shy, handsome boy, very good on the horizontal bars, but hopeless at making small talk with any goddess who had outspoken nipples, so he made friends with her brother, Adam, instead. Adam was a cheerful lad and very keen on table tennis.