Secret Army (7 page)

‘How’s your head?’ Marc asked, managing a slight smile.

‘Ghastly hangover,’ Henderson said. ‘Not good at all.’

Marc was in pain, but he was more worried about Henderson than himself. He seemed a shadow of the daring secret agent Marc had first met in France the previous summer.

A nurse said good morning, took Marc’s temperature and told him to try getting by without breathing the oxygen until the doctor came to examine him. Marc said he was hungry and was slowly eating a bowl of porridge when a naval officer came into the room. He wore the thick and thin stripe of a rear admiral, which was three full ranks senior to Henderson.

‘Sir,’ Henderson said brusquely, as he bolted to attention and saluted. The admiral was in his early fifties and Henderson vaguely recognised the face from his past.

‘Commander Henderson, at ease.’

Henderson stood at ease, but didn’t feel it. He suspected that the admiral was here to give him a rocket for his drunken behaviour at the club the night before.

‘To what do I owe the honour, sir?’ Henderson asked. ‘I believe we’ve met, but I’m sorry to say I can’t recall where.’

‘James Hammer,’ the admiral explained, as he placed a package wrapped in dark-green paper on the end of the bed. ‘I wondered if you were the same Sub Lieutenant Charles Henderson who served on HMS
Skipton
with me.’

Henderson smiled warmly. ‘A long time ago, sir. That was my first posting after officer training and I’m surprised you remember me. So what brings you here, sir?’

‘This fellow,’ Admiral Hammer said, as he smiled and pointed at the patient. ‘He saved my father’s life last night. Young Marc is a spectacularly brave young man.’

The admiral reached across the bed to shake Marc’s hand.

‘I’d rather not,’ Marc said awkwardly, as he showed the admiral his bandaged right hand.

‘Ahh!’ the admiral smiled. ‘Still, a young fellow like you will heal up in no time.’

‘I hope so,’ Marc croaked. ‘How is your father?’

‘He’s in considerable pain from his burns, but he has his wits about him. He had me call Harrods and arrange to have this driven over.’

Admiral Hammer passed Marc the package. It was the size of a small suitcase, but weighed very little. Marc pulled the shoelace bow on the gold twine tying the package together. Inside were two tins of fudge and a tin of nuts, lying atop a pair of luxurious cotton towels and a quilted blue bathrobe.

‘My father said you’d understand,’ Admiral Hammer explained. ‘He told me to say that you’re a bloody good fellow for a Frenchie and that in his book you can use whatever towel you like from now on.’

Marc laughed, but stopped abruptly because it hurt his throat. ‘Tell General Hammer that I said thank you. I don’t have many nice things like this.’

As Marc unfurled the fancy robe, he imagined the other trainees laughing at him if he wore it, but he liked it all the same and it was big enough that he’d take a few years to grow into it.

The admiral turned towards Henderson. ‘I heard all about your adventure on the French coast last year,’ Hammer said. ‘I saw the reconnaissance photographs after the bombing raids. The damage your team did to the German barge fleet was
phenomenal
.’

Henderson nodded, but spoke formally. ‘Sir, I must respectfully ask whether your current role is appropriate to the discussion of intelligence matters.’

‘Quite right,’ the admiral nodded. ‘I’m attached to the war office. I advise the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on all naval, military and intelligence decisions. The Prime Minister took a personal interest in your last operation. It was a real tonic at a time when the whole war seemed to be going against us.’

‘Marc was there too,’ Henderson said brightly. ‘He was responsible for the action at Boulogne and even recruited a couple of coloured prisoners to help with the operation.’

‘Remarkable!’ Admiral Hammer said. ‘This country could do with a few more like you, young man.’

‘That’s why it’s a shame they’re shutting us down,’ Marc said, straining his throat as his voice rose above a whisper for the first time.

Under normal circumstances Henderson wouldn’t have needed the prod from Marc, but he wasn’t himself with the hangover and the loss of a night’s sleep. ‘Yes,’ Henderson stuttered. ‘It’s a crying shame that we’re being shut down. I really wanted to get back on the other side and give the Boche another black eye.’

‘Who’s shutting you down?’ Admiral Hammer gasped indignantly.

‘Air Vice Marshal Walker is holding a review of our operations,’ Henderson explained. ‘He’s not letting me take my boys on parachute training and to be frank, sir, he’s made it abundantly clear what the result of his review of operations is going to be.’

‘Has he, indeed!’ Admiral Hammer said. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t bring this to my attention sooner. Walker has been in charge of the Special Operations Executive for eight months with precious little to show for it and now that RAF twerp has the
cheek
to try shutting down a naval intelligence unit run by the only person to have successfully staged an operation behind enemy lines.’

‘It’s intolerable in my view, sir,’ Henderson said. ‘But SOE is an interservices unit. Walker is my commanding officer.’

Admiral Hammer huffed. ‘We’ll see about this, Commander Henderson. I’m going to raise this issue at the highest level. Make sure my secretary in Whitehall knows your whereabouts and I’ll be in touch before the end of the day.’

The admiral left the room in such a hurry that Henderson didn’t even get a chance to salute him. Henderson raised his hands up towards the ceiling.

‘The Lord works in mysterious ways,’ he grinned.

Marc smiled. ‘You told McAfferty that you were an atheist when she tried getting us to go to church on Christmas Eve.’

‘Shush!’ Henderson put a finger over his lips. ‘God might hear you.’

Paul fought for breath as the muddy embankment squelched under his boots. The rocks inside his backpack knocked against his spine with every running pace. The slope became harder as he neared the brow of the hill. The first time Paul slipped he stayed upright by grabbing the branches of a tangled shrub. On the second there was nothing to save him.

Mud spattered Paul’s face as his knees hit the ground. He dug his fingers into the earth, but kept on sliding as his striped shirt rose up over his belly and claylike silt drenched his army-green trousers.

As Paul gasped from the cold, a huge black arm grabbed hold and effortlessly wrenched him to his feet.

Khinde was a colossus. Born twenty-two years earlier in the French colony of Senegal, he’d joined the French army, been imprisoned by the Germans during their invasion of France and then escaped to Britain after working on a successful espionage operation with Charles Henderson.

‘Having a bad day, kid?’ Khinde smiled.

‘I’m so rubbish at everything,’ Paul complained, close to tears as he wiped the mud from his eyes. His legs ached and he shuddered violently from the cold.

‘Find some heart!’ Khinde said, as he put a hand against the kit bag at the top of Paul’s back and began shoving him on towards the top of the hill.

As Paul gained speed, Khinde’s weight pushed him through the pain barrier. His face twisted and he gritted his teeth as his calves and ankles felt like they were going to explode. They reached the top of the hill and the wind coming up the other side hit him hard.

Paul faced a long vista of overgrown fields and trees dusted with snow. In the far distance lay mangled cars and buildings taken out during artillery practice. But Paul’s concern was a steep channel into which drained the snowmelt from the higher ground on either side. Beyond this, a low sun fired glare across a partially frozen lake.

‘Off you go,’ Khinde shouted enthusiastically. ‘All downhill now!’

He gave Paul a push that nearly sent him sprawling head first into brambles and rocks. Twigs snapped and ice crunched as the freezing snowmelt rose to his knees and flooded his boots. Two months earlier Paul would have waded slowly through the channel, warily holding the sides and watching where he placed his boot, but instructor Takada expected them to attack the stream fearlessly and at speed.

Sometimes you fell and banged your knee, or cut your hand, but as well as improving fitness, Takada’s training programme taught you to ignore fear and shut out pain.

‘Faster!’ Khinde shouted, as he splashed down the channel behind Paul.

Paul stared into the distance, but the other four trainees were out of sight. The glare caught his eyes and as he focused back upon his path he splashed down on to a medium-sized rock that turned beneath his boot. For a horrible instant Paul found himself plunging face first towards a jagged rock. He closed his eyes, fearing for his skull, but strength and instinct somehow enabled him to throw his weight to one side. His knee buckled but he managed to stay up and keep moving.

Little triumphs like this made training exhilarating. Paul was much stronger and fitter than when the training programme began two and a half months earlier, but no amount of effort saved him from being the youngest and weakest of the six trainees in Group A.

As Paul neared the lake the slope eased and the icy water rose as high as his waist. The lake was over a hundred metres across. Paul’s path was a quarter that distance and marked out by a taut length of rope hovering a few centimetres above the lapping water.

The rocks in Paul’s kit bag made swimming impossible, so the crossing was a test of his slender arms. Paul plunged on until the near-freezing water reached his neck. He turned backwards and grabbed the rope with both hands, then pulled up his legs and wrapped them around the rope.

This left him hanging off the rope with most of his body submerged and the bag of rocks pulling him down. If he let go he’d plunge to the bottom of the lake and risk drowning if he didn’t free the backpack and kick his way to the surface.

Going along the rope strained Paul’s hands, but the really hard work was done by his stomach muscles. The technique was to shuffle your knees forward as far as your wrists, then clamp your legs tightly around the rope and push forwards with your thighs and stomach while moving hand over hand.

None of the trainees had mastered this technique quickly. In the early days they regularly fell off, even when crossing half the current distance with no weight on their backs. Paul was in agony before he was even halfway across, but once you’re suspended over several metres of near-freezing water there’s no alternative to carrying on.

‘Get some speed up!’ Khinde urged, as he took an easier route around the edge of the lake. ‘Don’t stop. Fight the pain.’

After two excruciating minutes, Paul peered down and saw that he was in shallow water. He clutched his stomach and was almost doubled over as he staggered up the muddy embankment at the side of the lake.

‘You’re a fighter,’ Khinde said encouragingly, as he reached out and gave Paul an extremely welcome tug.

A few metres beyond the lake’s edge was a hand cart with rocks mounded on its wooden platform. Paul exhaled with delight and exhaustion as he pushed the kit bag off his shoulders and tipped out the rocks.

He was breathless and soaking wet, but running felt a hundred times easier without the rocks on his back, and from here he’d be back in the warmth of the school building within ten minutes.

Paul was used to finishing last. He came into the school building through the emergency exit at the back of the hall and found Rosie, PT and Joel stripped down to muddy underclothes and sitting close to the radiators holding enamel mugs filled with tea.

‘Hot cuppa?’ Joel’s ten-year-old brother Sam asked, as Paul hitched his sodden rugby shirt over his head.

‘Yeah, fantastic,’ Paul nodded, squelching as he sat in the doorway and pulled off his boots. ‘I’ll grab it in a second, but I’m
busting
for a piss.’

Paul raced up, taking two steps at a time. His olive trousers were dripping and he was leaving damp sock prints up the staircase that would enrage Takada if he got caught.

He decided to get a cloth and wipe them on his way down, but for now he was consumed by a burning bladder. He cut into the boys’ bathroom and groaned with relief as steaming yellow pee blasted the back of the urinal.

‘So beautiful!’ Paul told himself. ‘Ahh!’

The cistern flushed in the stall directly behind and Luc emerged. He’d stripped down to his shorts after the training run and his torso bulged in all the places where Paul wished his did.

The instant Luc saw Paul, he looked left and right to make sure no one was around before charging forwards and splattering him against the wall.

‘Bugger off,’ Paul moaned, as Luc clamped a beefy hand around the back of Paul’s neck and squished his cheeks out of shape.

Luc put his lips close to Paul’s ear and spoke slowly. ‘How’s my new training partner?’

‘I’m not scared of you,’ Paul said unconvincingly, as he tried not to inhale Luc’s rank breath.

‘I’m gonna slam you down on that training mat,’ Luc said menacingly, as he pinned Paul’s chest against the wall with one knee and gripped his slender wrist with both hands. ‘I’m not going easy on you like Marc always does. I bet I can have you in tears within five minutes. Then, when Takada’s not looking, I’m gonna break your fingers.’

‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?’ Paul said, as Luc’s grip on his wrist tightened.

Luc laughed. ‘Because it’s
way
more fun beating the snot out of a girly little wimp like you.’

With that, Luc twisted his hands in opposite directions, delivering an excruciating Chinese burn.

‘See you on the training mat, wimp,’ Luc sneered as he swaggered out of the bathroom.

Paul made a low moan as he buttoned his trousers and blotted a tear from the corner of his eye. It seemed grossly unfair that someone like Luc not only found the physical training comparatively easy, but then got to rub in his superiority by pushing him around.

Paul felt sorry for himself: he’d made things worse by faking the injury and part of him was tempted to go downstairs to McAfferty’s office and tell her that he couldn’t take it any more. It had been made clear to all trainees that Espionage Research Unit B was made up of volunteers. But while there was nothing to stop Paul from leaving, his sister Rosie and his best friend Marc lived here and quitting now meant that ten weeks of training would be for nothing.