Doctor Who: War Games (3 page)

Before he could utter the word ‘Fire! ‘ a single shot broke the silence. One of the kneeling soldiers fell backwards. Zoe looked up at the trees. For a second she saw a tattered British army uniform, a grimy unshaven face and the glint of a rifle. Another shot rang out. The sentry holding her fell to the ground.

‘German sniper!’ shouted Ransom. ‘Fire at will!’

Now all members of the execution squad knelt to take aim and fire into the tree. Zoe raced across the grass to Doctor Who. She started to untie his hands.

‘What’s happening?’ he said. ‘Get this stupid blindfold off me, whoever you are. I want to see what’s happening.’

Zoe released his hands first. He dragged off the blindfold himself. ‘Who are they shooting at?’

But she didn’t answer. She had already formed a plan of escape in her mind and this was no time for discussions.

Grabbing the Doctor’s hand she tugged him with her into dense bushes.

Jamie banged with both fists on the door of his prison cell.

‘Hey,’ he shouted, ‘if you’re going to return me to a regiment I never belonged to, hurry up and return me! I don’t want to stay in this filthy hole.’

The only item of furniture in the cell was a straw-filled palliasse. The small, heavily barred window was far too high for anyone but a giant to look out of.

Footsteps were coming along the corridor outside. He thumped on the door again. ‘I wasn’t to be put in a place like this,’ he called. ‘I was told to go and die for my country.’

A key turned in the lock. Jamie stood back, hoping his pleas had been heeded. The heavy door swung into the cell.

Outside were two British soldiers struggling to subdue an English redcoat.

‘You get in there,’ one of the soldiers shouted. ‘We’ve got no time for deserters here! ‘

The redcoat was thrown bodily into the cell. By the time he had scrambled to his feet the door was closed.

‘I’m no deserter,’ the man started to say. Then he saw Jamie. He looked down at the kilt. ‘A Highlander! Keep away from me, you barbarian.’ The man cowered back into a corner.

Jamie could not believe his eyes. ‘You’re... you’re from my time.’ The long red coat, with its blue cuffs and white trimmings, was all too familiar to a Scottish lad who had fought for the Young Pretender over two hundred years ago. ‘How did you get here?’

‘I got lost,’ said the Englishman. ‘I don’t rightly remember.’

‘Listen,’ said Jamie, ‘what year do you think it is?’

‘Only a Scots barbarian wouldn’t know what year it is,’

said the redcoat snidely.

‘All right,’ said Jamie, ‘what date is it?’

‘I don’t rightly know the exact day of the month,’ said the redcoat, ‘but any fool knows this is the year of 1745.’

The Doctor lay on his stomach in tall grass looking down at the valley below. ‘They were going to send him to some regiment or other. How do you know he was sent to a military prison?’

‘I heard one of the officers tell one of those sergeants,’

said Zoe. ‘Do you think that could be it?’

The only sign of life in the valley was a grey, sombre building with rows of tiny windows. The Doctor produced a telescope from one of the many pockets of his black jacket. He fixed it to his eye.

‘We may have struck lucky,’ he announced. ‘It’s surrounded by sentries.’

‘That doesn’t sound very lucky.’

‘It’s a first step,’ he said, pocketing the telescope. ‘You need to recognise your target before you can hope to hit it...’ He trailed off. His attention had been taken by a khaki military car coming along the road just below them.

‘Quick,’ said the Doctor, springing to his feet. ‘We’ve got to stop that.’

‘How?’

But the doctor was already racing down the slope of grass towards the road. By the time Zoe reached him he had signalled the car to stop and was talking in an imperious voice to the startled corporal driver.

‘About time! Where have you been?’ the Doctor demanded.

The driver looked at him blankly. ‘Sir?’

‘Don’t argue. We’re from the War Office. Take us to the military detention centre immediately.’

The driver gulped. ‘The prison, sir?’

‘Come along, my dear.’ The Doctor helped Zoe into the back seat. ‘The lower orders have no idea of punctuality.

We have to do all the thinking for them.’

The driver was still looking at the Doctor. ‘I was sent to meet you, sir?’

‘Of course you were,’ said the Doctor. ‘Any more lip from you, my man, and it’ll be the cells with only bread and water for three months, followed by twenty lashes while you are tied to a gun wheel, and after that you will be posted to the front line.’

The corporal cringed. ‘Yes, sir. I was sent to meet you.’

He put the car into gear and drove forward along the winding road.

The Doctor looked sideways at Zoe and grinned.

Beneath the chandeliers and cracked ceiling, Captain Ransom and Lieutenant Carstairs stood poring over maps of the area. Ransom was a very worried man.

‘We’ve searched everywhere around the château,’ he said. ‘Not a trace. General Smythe will be furious.’

‘Incidentally,’ asked Lady Jennifer, ‘where is the general?’

‘He’s...’ Ransom was always forgetting things these days.

‘He’s attending a conference at high command. Look, I’d better take a search party towards the German lines. That’s where these spies will be making for.’

‘And I had better return to my unit.’ Carstairs reached for his cap.

‘Must you? I would rather leave an officer in charge here.’ Captain Ransom picked up his swagger cane. ‘Be a good fellow and stay until I get back, will you? Perhaps you could telephone all command posts and tell them to be on the look out for these people.’ He hurried out of the office, terrified of what General Smythe would say when he heard the news of the escapes.

‘I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes,’ said Carstairs when Ransom had gone. ‘Better the front line any time than be adjutant to a general.’

Lady Jennifer regarded Carstairs a few moments before saying what was on her mind. ‘Didn’t you think there was something strange about that court martial, Jeremy?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I suppose military justice can be a bit rough, not like the Old Bailey.’

‘How much do you know about General Smythe?’ she asked.

He tried to remember. ‘Can’t say I’d heard of him till I arrived here. What are you getting at?’

‘Things have started to come back to me,’ she went on.

‘I can remember joining the Volunteer Ambulance Drivers and coming out to France to drive ambulances. I remember driving through a forest, then all of a sudden I was in a strange mist or fog. After that I was in a field dressing station, tending some wounded soldiers. But where was I between that mist and the field dressing station?’

‘The mist you mentioned...’

‘Yes?’

Carstairs smiled. At last his memory seemed to be returning. ‘I remember a mist, but I don’t know when.

Perhaps the Germans have invented a new type of poison gas, one that affects our minds.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked. ‘And do you believe that was a fair court martial?’

He looked worried. Then his face cleared. ‘Good gracious, the Captain asked me to telephone the command posts about those escapees. I’d better get on with it.’

He picked up a field telephone and cranked the handle to get attention. Jennifer watched him.

Colonel Gorton stood at his office window while an orderly poured his afternoon tea. His view was pleasant: lush green fields and beyond, swathes of long grass gently rising up one side of the valley. If he cared to look down at a more acute angle he could see the barbed wire entanglements of the detention centre’s outer periphery, and even closer at hand the parade ground where prisoners carrying full packs were marched and drilled, usually at the double. But he preferred to look straight ahead at the pleasant French countryside that reminded him so much of his boyhood in... Was it Wiltshire, Oxfordshire or Berkshire? He couldn’t quite remember.

‘Will that be all, sir?’ asked the orderly.

‘Yes, thank you.’

The man hobbled out. The domestic orderlies were all wounded soldiers. Gorton felt sorry for the man, who would never walk properly again. For his prisoners, though, he felt no sorrow or pity. They were all deserters or men who had refused an order to go over the top to charge at the enemy’s machine-guns. He was proud that it was his job to make life as uncomfortable as possible for these cowards. The telephone broke into his thoughts.

‘Gorton here,’ he said.

‘Sir,’ said a sergeant’s voice he knew well, ‘there’s a gentleman here from the War Office. He says he has to see you, sir.’

‘He’s made no appointment with me,’ said Gorton. ‘Are you sure he’s from the War Office?’

The sergeant lowered his voice. ‘He seems a very educated gentleman, sir. I didn’t ask for his papers, sir.’

‘You’d better send him in.’ Gorton replaced the telephone thoughtfully. It was unnerving to have an unexpected inspection, if an inspection was the purpose of the visit. Everything, so far as he knew, was in perfect order in the prison. There had been that little problem with the French deserter who insisted he had been fighting for Napoleon Bonaparte. The man was obviously mad and had been taken away to a hospital. Apart from that everything was running smoothly. Even so, it was irritating to have civilian officials suddenly arriving like this.

The orderly tapped and opened the door. ‘Your visitors from the War Office, sir.’

The Doctor strode in, followed by Zoe. ‘I am an inspector from the War Office,’ the Doctor announced.

‘This young lady is my secretary. I take it you were expecting me.’

Colonel Gorton was surprised by his visitors’

appearance: the man wore an extravagant, long black jacket and the girl was wearing trousers. But what surprised him most was that they were both spattered and caked with mud.

‘As a matter of fact I wasn’t,’ he replied. ‘May I see your identification papers?’

‘How dare you,’ said the Doctor. ‘You send no car to meet us, we have had to walk miles in the rain, and now you doubt my authority! ‘

The colonel wondered if there had been a message that he had not received. If the visitor was an inspector he did not wish to cause offence. He liked being in command of a prison and was secretly terrified of ever being sent to the front line.

‘Would you care for some tea?’ he asked.

‘We have no time for tea,’ the Doctor blustered. ‘We want to inspect your security.’

‘My security is second to none, sir. Take a look at this map.’ Gorton led the Doctor to a wall map of the entire prison. ‘We have barbed wire, concealed trip wires, everything to make escape completely impossible.’

The Doctor studied the map. ‘Hm, not bad. Let me see your list of new arrivals.’

‘That’s always kept up to date.’ Gorton went to a desk drawer. ‘Here are the latest,’ he said, offering the Doctor a list.

The Doctor ran his eye’ down the names. ‘What’s this one,’ he said, ‘ “Scottish Highlander awaiting re-turn to regiment”?’

‘Exactly what it says, sir.’

‘I wish to question this man.’

Gorton was amazed. ‘Speak to a prisoner?’

‘It is my duty to learn both sides of how this prison is run. Kindly have the man brought here immediately,’ said the Doctor, adding, ‘in chains if you think it necessary.’

Gorton picked up his desk telephone. ‘With an escape-proof prison as I have here, sir, such barbarities as chaining prisoners are entirely unnecessary.’ He spoke into the telephone. ‘Sergeant, bring the Highland deserter to my office immediately.’

‘Sir,’ said the sergeant’s voice, very subdued, ‘he’s just escaped.’

Gorton’s knuckles went white as chalk as he clenched his fist. ‘What?’ He was aware of the War Office inspector looking at him. ‘What did you say?’

‘There was the two of them fighting in their cell, sir,’

the sergeant replied. ‘They were shouting about Scotland versus England or something. It sounded like they was going to murder each other. So two of my men barged in to quiet them. But it was a trick. They set on my men and both got out. We’re hunting them down in the grounds now, sir.’

‘Bring him to me as soon as you can.’ Gorton cradled the phone.

‘Some little problem?’ asked the Doctor.

‘He’ll be here in a moment,’ said Gorton. ‘I could have another pot of tea brought in if you wish?’

From outside, came the sound of a volley of shots. Zoe ran to the window. ‘What are those soldiers shooting at?’

‘I imagine a little target practice,’ said Gorton. ‘My guards like to keep their hand in, in case they’re ever needed at the front.’

‘They’ve wounded someone,’ Zoe exclaimed. ‘They’re carrying him.’

The Doctor rushed to the window and looked down.

There was no one in sight now. ‘Who was it?’

‘He had a red coat.’

Colonel Gorton came to the window, pretending to share their interest. ‘We get chaps in all sorts of uniforms here. From different regiments, don’t you know. What about this spot of tea?’

‘I want to know,’ said the Doctor, ‘what or who those soldiers were firing at.’

‘I imagine I could find out...’ The colonel made a pretence of returning to his telephone, but before he had lifted it there was another tap on the door. It opened and two soldiers entered with Jamie.

‘The Highlander, sir,’ said one of the soldiers.

Jamie stared. ‘Doctor!’

‘Dismiss your guards,’ the Doctor told Gorton. ‘Get rid of them.’

‘Dismiss,’ said Colonel Gorton. The two soldiers hurried out.

‘Doctor,’ Jamie said, grinning, ‘what are you doing here?’

The Doctor replied sharply to him. ‘You speak when you’re spoken to, my man.’

‘Who’s side are you on?’ Jamie blurted, hurt by the Doctor’s sharpness, ‘I and another fellow had just escaped—’

‘Escaped?’ The Doctor swung round to Gorton. ‘You didn’t mention this. Is that what the shooting was about?

And you claim this prison is not barbaric?’