Women of Courage (64 page)

If all went well tomorrow he would have fulfilled every jot of the plan he had submitted to von Falkenhayn. Carson would have vanished — spirited from the very gates of the Unionist headquarters, Craigavon, into nowhere. The Unionists would be shocked, furious; they would be certain that the British government were behind his disappearance and no amount of official denials would convince them otherwise.

Tomorrow morning, to reinforce this belief, an article, already written by Werner, would appear in the
Neue Zuricher Zeitung
at the same time as Carson’s abduction. The article would say that the paper’s correspondent had exclusive information that the British Special Branch were planning to arrest Carson and keep him incommunicado in a police station near Belfast for several days. Werner had arranged for copies of this article to be sent to the London
Times,
the
Daily Telegraph,
the
Irish Times,
and the
Daily Mail
. When the news of Carson’s disappearance broke, one of these would be bound to report on Werner’s article even if they did not believe in it completely.

No amount of government denials would destroy the avalanche of suspicion which, Werner felt sure, would lead to a flood of attacks by Ulster Unionists upon police stations and British Army barracks throughout Ulster. The remaining Unionist leadership would be powerless to resist it. The civil war would have begun.

Carson, meanwhile, would be in one of two graves already dug in a bog on a side road not far from Craigavon. Charles Cavendish would be in the other. It was an isolated, lonely spot; the bodies might rot there undiscovered for years. By late afternoon Werner, Adolf, Karl-Otto, and Franz would be on the ferry to Stranraer, and Simon on a train to Dublin, from where he would take a ship direct to Germany. Their tickets were already bought.

No one would return to Glenfee to free the boy Tom, as Werner had promised. It was too risky. Instead the keys would be posted to the house with a note, in block capitals, telling Mrs Cavendish where to look.

Of course, it could still all go wrong. But Werner did not at the moment see how. The most dangerous moment might be at Craigavon, when Charles might be tempted to do or say something to arouse Carson’s suspicions. But Werner had looked into Charles’s eyes tonight when he had told him of the danger to his son, and he felt sure that Charles Cavendish would put his love for his son first, his duty to Carson second.

After a while he dozed and fell asleep. He dreamt that he had returned to Germany, and that the Kaiser himself was awarding him a medal. He raised his right hand to salute, and as he did so he realised that it was whole again, undamaged. He was seated on a gleaming black cavalry horse being honoured by Kaiser Wilhelm II in front of a review of the entire German Army, and his dead father was beaming at him proudly from behind the Kaiser’s right arm.

The shot awoke him instantly.

He sat up, staring around the room, the automatic in his left hand, pulling back the safety catch with his thumb. But there was no one here; the room was silent, empty. Probably the shot had not come from inside the house at all. He tried to remember exactly what the sound had been like, but it was hazy, confused by his dreams. Had he really heard a shot, or only dreamt it?

Then there was a cry, thin, high, distinct, from somewhere out in the grounds.

‘HiIfe! Hier! Adolf! Schnell!’

He ran to the window and looked out. But it was dark — a thin rain falling, wind. He could see nothing. He forced himself to think. Clearly someone had disturbed Franz or Karl-Otto. Either someone coming towards the house from the village, or someone going away from here, trying to take a message. Which he had believed Charles would not dare to do.

If there was someone coming towards the house then it was important to get hold of Charles. He could order whoever it was to stop, go away, tell them that it was all a mistake and everything was all right.

If it was someone going from here to the village then he still had to get hold of Charles. To find out if he had sent anyone — to check if the man was still here at all!

Werner hurried out of his room into the corridor. He had forced Charles to show him where he slept earlier that night. Perhaps he should have kept Charles with him all night but he had thought that would be too provocative, and make Charles so angry that he would attack Werner out of simple rage, forgetting the consequences. Werner had decided to leave him alone in the hope that he would cool down.

That could prove to have been my worst mistake, he thought as he hurried along the corridor, past the main staircase.

As he had feared, Charles’s room was empty. The spears and assegais hung on the wall, the fire was cold in the grate, the bed unslept in. Werner’s feet echoed on the bare floorboards. He thought: damn!

Now what do I do? He hurried down to the library and the study but they were empty too. Someone had lit the oil lamps in the corridors and main stairs. In the front hall, he met the butler, Smythe, in a dressing gown.

‘Ah, good evening, sir. I thought I heard a shot, and someone shouting, in the grounds.’

‘Yes. I heard the same.’ What do I do about this, Werner wondered. He noticed that the butler was staring at the automatic in his hand. ‘It’s all right, don’t worry, Colonel Cavendish has already gone out to deal with it.’

‘Perhaps I should wake Johnson, the chauffeur, and go out to help him,’ Smythe suggested.

‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Werner said quickly. ‘Colonel Cavendish gave express instructions to me, in fact, that everyone was to go back to bed and not trouble themselves. I am here to guard the house if there is any . . . ah, good evening.’

They both turned as a young man came in the front door with a rifle in his hand. Simon Fletcher. He looked cold, damp, frightened. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘It’s nothing.’ Werner stepped quickly towards Simon, so that the butler was behind him and could not see his face. He stared at Simon meaningfully and flashed a glance over his left shoulder. ‘I was just explaining to the butler here that there is a UVF night exercise taking place in the grounds, and so there is no cause for concern.’

‘What? Oh, I see - yes.’ Simon took a deep breath and got a grip on himself. ‘Yes, it’s all right, Smythe. It’s just night training, that’s all. No need for concern. Didn’t Colonel Cavendish tell you?’

‘No sir, I’m afraid he did not. I fear that the cook and the chambermaids . . .’

‘Yes, that’s right. You go and explain to them now, would you? And tell them all to stay in bed - that’s the safest place to be, by far.’

‘As you say, Mr Fletcher.’

Smythe went out, with, Werner thought, just the faintest show of suspicious reluctance in his manner. When he had gone, Werner dragged Simon through one of the side doors into the library.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ he asked furiously. ‘You’re supposed to be guarding the boy!’

‘I came because of that shot, of course. Someone’s out there - one of your men’s in trouble. What’s going on?’

‘It’s Charles Cavendish, I think. He’s not in the house.’

‘Oh Christ!’ Simon gazed at Werner incredulously. ‘You mean you let him go?’

‘I didn’t tie him down, if that’s what you mean. I told him the boy would die if he tried to get help. I thought he would have enough sense . . .’

‘Well, if he’s gone out and got past your men, your scheme is wrecked anyway,’ Simon said bitterly. ‘You can kill the boy or not, it won’t make any difference. I told you, you should have let me come into the house and talk to him . . .’

‘Quiet!’ Werner said. ‘What’s that outside?’

There was the sound of feet, dragging on gravel, and a sort of sick moaning. They both rushed to the window and looked out.

In the light from the oil lamps in the main hall, a group of men appeared moving slowly across the gravel drive. There were three of them — two apparently strong and healthy, supporting a third with a bloodstained, bleeding face, who stumbled feebly between the others, with an arm around each of their necks.

The shot seemed to go on and on for a long time. Whenever Charles tried to think, the only picture in his mind was the shot exploding out of the night in front of his face. There was yellow and red and white fire and a noise that went on and on and on, straight through both eardrums and round and round inside his head and down his spine and through every part of his body. He tried to think of something else but there was only that, the rifle shot exploding out of the night in front of his face, yellow and red and white fire . . .

Then once there was the sense of falling. Down over a cliff through midnight air, turning and turning with the noise still in his head and the sense that there was nothing below him or above or in any direction at all, just an endless vacuum through which he fell and . . .

A blade of grass up his nose.

It tickled. He shifted his head and sneezed, and he realised his head was wet everywhere. Cold wet underneath because he was lying on grass or mud or leafmould, and hot sticky wet on top and all across his face. He didn’t know what that was and he didn’t like it. He had a sense that he should keep the cold wet and the hot wet apart, but to do that he would have to split his head in two and
Ah God the noise again!
And the shot in front of his face, yellow and red and white fire . . .

A shout, somewhere above him:
‘Hilfe! Hier! Adolf! Schnell!’

Where did it come from? He realised he had hands and tried to move one. It crawled in the leafmould near his face like a crab. In order to see if it was really one of his own he pushed against it with what might have been his arm, and it lifted his face up so that he could see for the first time. The moon had come out and there was a boot a few inches away from his nose. He opened his mouth to speak, but the hot, wet, sticky stuff trickled in, and before he could swallow it the boot lifted up out of his sight and came down between his shoulder-blades, crushing his face into the leafmould again.

‘Lie still.
Hilfe kommt.’

The weight of the boot was many thousands of times stronger than any strength he might have, so he lay and felt the hot wet trickle down from somewhere on his right forehead to join the cold wet under his left cheek. After a while he opened his right eye again and saw shadows and silvery bits of leaf and grass, so he decided he was not blind. He decided he was not dead either, because neither heaven nor hell could be like this. He tried to remember what there had been in the world before the shot, but the noise came back and his head throbbed and he closed his eye and prayed
please God stop it now!

And God answered with a small voice that said: Tom.

Tom is my son. He will be killed now. I have to rescue him.

He was not sure yet why Tom would be killed or who would do it or where he was, but he knew immediately that it was very urgent and he tried to get up, but that only resulted in his head turning over and more pressure from the boot and the hot sticky liquid trickling straight down over his right eye and his left eye being free to see things for a change.

What it saw was a knife blade.

The knife blade was about a foot long and two inches wide, bent in two at an angle halfway along. It was one or two feet away from his head, and the point was stuck in the ground. The moonlight shone on it and was reflected straight off the gleaming blade into his eye and it went on into his brain, where it dispelled the noise and the fog and illuminated his memory.

Charles thought: Kukri. That knife is a kukri and I used it to try to kill this man, this German spy who has his foot in my back and was trying to prevent me from going to the village to raise the alarm. I have to raise the alarm because they are going to kidnap Sir Edward Carson and start a war, and to persuade me to help them do that they have kidnapped my son Tom. Oh God, what will they do to him now?

There was a crashing noise through the leaves and then two more boots came and stood by his face. There was a conversation above him in German and then someone bent down and struck a match and held it close to his head. Then there was more conversation and then they picked him up.

‘Can you stand?’

‘No, I . . .’

Charles staggered and flopped against one of the men. Each of them put an arm round his waist and laid his weak floppy arms across their necks, and they began to move through the wood. They were more or less carrying him, but occasionally one of his legs moved, and after a while they both did, and one of the Germans said: ‘Is besser now, uh?’ and let him down a little so that he bore a bit more of his own weight himself.

As they came out of the woods and onto the drive, Charles thought: maybe my strength is returning a bit. If I really had to now I might be able to stand. I’ve got an arm round the neck of each of these two bastards — if only I was strong enough I could throttle them both.

But that was utter nonsense, as he found when he tried to move his right arm even a few inches. Someone seemed to have unstrung all the muscles inside it, as though it belonged to a rag doll. And the Germans were built like a pair of buffalo, they weren’t even breathing heavily after carrying him almost a mile.

They carried him up the front steps of Glenfee, and as they came into the hall the library door opened and there were Werner and Simon. Oh sweet Jesus in heaven, Charles thought, perhaps they didn’t need to send me to hell when I died, they just sent me back here . . .

‘Put him down over there,’ Werner said. ‘Under that lamp.’

Franz and Adolf carried Charles into the library and sat him in a chair. His uniform was filthy; there were streaks of blood like matted hair all over his face and neck, and his skin was as white as paper. When they let go of him he slumped against the back of the chair as though he would have fallen out of it had there not been a headrest there. But his eyes were still alive. They moved from Werner to Simon, dark with hatred.

‘What happened?’ Werner asked Franz in German.