Authors: John Drake

Agent of Death (34 page)

BOOK: Agent of Death

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‘Seeking his confirmation that we should fire.’

They nodded.

‘We must assume deception from the enemy.’

‘So we shall almost certainly fire the missile.’

‘But Herr Svart must have the final word.’

So they contacted Svart, and Svart replied, giving the numerical code that specified
Confirm
Fire
Missile
.

CHAPTER 39

Sir
Donald
Trent’s
Office,

Bletchley
Park
,

Milton
Keynes
,
Buckinghamshire
,
England.

Thursday
8
June
,
10
.
40
hours

‘Madam,’ said Trent, looking at Lady Margaret, ‘and sir,’ he said, looking at Brigadier Sanders, ‘the answer is a definitive and final
no
!’ Trent was exhausted, exhilarated, stressed, and pitched to the limit of what a man can do when very tired. So this further demand upon his resources was one demand too much. Beyond that he had excellent and justifiable reasons for saying no. But from the bottom of his heart he was going to say no – whatsoever no – to these two people.

He looked round his office, now converted into a control room, hung with huge maps of the Normandy beaches: eighty miles of French coast from Quineville in the west, to Honfleur in the east. The room was full of telephones, and of people: his own staff and liaison officers from Britain, America, and Canada; from army, navy and air force, and a couple of Free French as well. Everyone was busy and the noise was overwhelming; he was in shirtsleeves, with waistcoat unbuttoned, collar removed, and trying to drink a mug of tea. He was sharing his desk with six other people, the room was hot, the windows were open, and the light was going.

Trent abandoned his mug and stood up.

‘Look,’ he said, and pushed through the press to a big map, with Lady Margaret and Sanders following. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘the Americans at Utah beach are facing the German 91st Infantry Division under General Falley. And here, the Americans at Omaha beach are facing the 352nd Infantry Division under General Kraiss, while our chaps on Sword beach …’ But he was interrupted. A uniformed Wren officer rushed into the room, weaved around the desks and phones and uniforms, and thrust a paper at Trent.

‘Sir! Sir!’ she said. ‘We’ve broken intercepts from Panzergroup West, main HQ! We know where it is!’

‘Splendid!’ said Trent. ‘What about the regional HQs?’

‘That’s it sir,’ said the girl, ‘we need another Colossus. Then if we find them all, we can direct
Warspite
to shell them with fifteen-inch salvoes, one after another, before they can move their staff around. We can get the lot! All their senior people in one go, and cripple their tank command.’

Trent glared at Lady Margaret and Sanders. ‘See?’ he said. ‘See? This is where our duty lies.’ He turned to the Wren. ‘Take the Colossus. Take it at once!’ He raised his voice. ‘Maggie!’ he said, and a formidable lady secretary looked up from her work. ‘Give her the chitty,’ he said. ‘Sign it for me. Get it done!’ and the Wren was out of the room and running in seconds.

‘But Donny,’ said Sanders.

‘No!’ said Trent. ‘It’s still no! There are one hundred and fifty thousand allied soldiers fighting to hold the beachhead. They have already suffered four thousand dead, and they look to us for minute-by-minute guidance on whatever communication passes between the enemy. They need that, and any other help we can give, and by George they will get it!’

‘But we’ve intercepted another signal coming out of the Mem Tav submarine,’ said Sanders.

‘I don’t care,’ said Trent, ‘the answer is still no.’

‘But sir,’ said Lady Margaret.

‘Not you, madam!’ said Trent, and being very tired he admitted what normally he would never have done. ‘Not you of all womankind,’ he said, ‘because there is far too much about you that I dislike!’

‘Sir,’ she said, pleading, ‘the sub sent out a second signal. One we can’t crack, and we think it’s had a reply from somewhere, because we’ve picked up a signal sent ten minutes later in what looks like the same code, and we think the sub is talking to someone.’

Trent hesitated. He knew about the threat to New York. He knew it was real. ‘So what are they saying?’ he said.

‘We don’t know,’ said Lady Margaret. ‘We need another Colossus: one of the new Mark IIs.’

‘Oh, God Almighty,’ said Trent and his decision trembled. But an American colonel got up from a telephone and approached Trent.

‘Sir Donald?’ he said, ‘A moment of your time, sir?’

‘Colonel?’ said Trent.

‘See here, sir,’ said the colonel, pointing at the map, ‘the US 4th Division needs to take Montebourg if we’re going to capture the port facilities at Cherbourg, and we think – we fear – the enemy knows this and may be reinforcing the Montebourg defences so we need to know what they’re saying. So if you can help, sir?’ Trent nodded, fell into conversation with the American, and, bit by bit – consciously or unconsciously – he turned his back on Lady Margaret and Sanders.

‘Donny,’ said Sanders, ‘Please.’

‘No!’ said Trent. He never even looked round.

USS
Saint
Mihiel
,

The
North
Atlantic,

Friday
9
June
06
.
45
hours
.

She was laughing at me again; I could see it. She knew exactly what she was doing and she was laughing at me with a straight face. Helga Karlsson was supposedly delivering a lecture on the unreliability of the Junkers Jumo engine: the world’s first operational turbojet, which is not an amusing subject unless you are lying back in a ship’s bunk while the lecturer sits on your hips wearing a pair of silver dog tags and nothing else.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘the prototype – the 004A – was made without restriction on scarce metals chosen for ideal function, such as nickel, cobalt, and molybdenum. So that model had a prolonged service life. But the production model, using only mild steel, suffers badly, and may run for only a dozen hours before catastrophic failure of …’

But there I spoilt the lecture with a move not listed in the Me 262 service manual, and she gulped and shut up, and wriggled and bounced quite a bit and was hard to hang on to. We’d have been on the deck if the bunk hadn’t had sides built up to keep you in when the ship moved, which it certainly seemed to do in this case, proving that Lieutenant Bushey was wrong in his implication regarding the spanner in Helga’s back pocket. Yes, she did have one, but it was exclusively dedicated to aircraft.

Soon after, we got dressed and went to breakfast, as more sorties flew off the flight deck, and then, at about 08.30 ship’s time, an Avenger thumped down, back from a mission, the crew leapt out, ran to their debriefing and the ship went barmy. First the loudspeakers:

‘
Now
hear
this
!
Now
hear
this
!’ then orders followed, and the ship’s turntable played non-stop martial music in all compartments. I didn’t know if that was normal US Navy procedure, but that was what happened on Captain Harry P. Fenner’s
Saint
Mihiel
as the crew went to action stations, which is something to see aboard a ship of war because it’s a drama like no other. It’s one for connoisseurs and I’ve seen it done by the men of several nations, and they all do it slightly differently.

Germans run double-time, in disciplined boots with few words. The French chatter and laugh and shove. The British blow bugles and put on the soup-bowl helmets that only they would wear, while Russians blunder and yell slogans. But Americans do it by choreography, slipping past one another, swinging left and right as if directed by Fred Astaire, pausing only to slap Betty Grable’s pin-up on the butt, and, in the middle of it, a marine runner found me still in the canteen, with no action station to go to, and nothing to do. He saluted.

‘Wing Commander Landau, sir!’ he said. ‘Captain’s compliment’s, and would you join him on the bridge?’ I translated for Helga and she stood up as if to come with me, but, ‘Just you, sir,’ said the marine, ‘not the lady.’ I shrugged, said sorry to her, got a deep, black look which may or may not have resulted in her later behaviour, and then I was running after the marine.

It was a long run. Even a small aircraft carrier is a big ship, and a place designed to trip you up at every step: hatches, ladders, inclines, elevators, equipment, pipes, and gear of every kind, with men running in every direction, the ship’s music playing everything from
Yankee
Doodle
to
King
Cotton
, and all at full volume.

The bridge was full, manned and ready, when I got there, with Captain Fenner on his chair, who waved at me as I came in.

‘Found it!’ he said, and pointed to where I should stand, beside a teenaged ensign – their most junior officer rank – who was there to look after me. After that, Fenner was busy, Bushey was busy, everyone was busy, with reports coming in from the ship’s various departments; men needing orders, decisions and commands, and it was noisy, busy, steady work. The ship was heeling as she worked up full speed with engines pounding, and came into the wind to launch an air-strike of heavily laden machines.

The ensign politely drew me to where a line of windows was open over the flight deck, and I saw two Avengers ready with engines rumbling and crews climbing aboard, to cheers and waves from the deck crew. The planes were huge and heavy: the biggest single-engined machines in service anywhere, and the men looked tiny inside the long, glazed cockpits, with their white flying helmets, goggles, overalls, life jackets, and parachutes. Then a third Avenger came up on the elevator, the deck crew hauled it into place, and the elevator sank to bring up another.

It was utterly, totally different from any equivalent on a runway ashore where you have limitless room to get out of each other’s way, and park your kit, and move your transport vehicles, and especially to keep dangerous fuel and ammo out of reach of the enemy. Well, you can’t do that on an aircraft carrier, which might be big for a ship, but is minutely, horribly cramped for an airfield, such that you can’t get anything very far from anything else, and can’t do anything at all unless the ground crew teamwork is awesome, which it was aboard USS
Saint Mihiel
. I can’t claim to have noted how it all worked, but it certainly did.

I looked at the ensign.

‘Where’s the sub? Who found it?’

‘That was
Needs
Must
, sir, Lieutenant Deutcher’s ship. They spotted the sub. Kept radio silence, had a good look and flew straight back. It’s three hundred fifty miles south of our position. It’s on the surface, going dead slow, and it’s huge, sir, it’s a monster! Biggest sub anyone’s ever seen, and …’

But I didn’t listen to him very much. Not with such a piece of theatre acting out below me: not with a carrier launching a strike, the aero engines thundering, men waving, and the big, fat Avengers loaded to maximum with fuel, torpedoes, and ammo; the wind was shrieking over the ship, and the loudspeakers were blaring out their music. I doubt the flight crews could hear it, but I certainly could, and, as the first Avenger roared off the deck, dipped, and rose lumbering into the air, the US Navy’s march was playing:
Anchors
Aweigh
, a piece of music that now completely chokes me with emotion every time I hear it.

So it wasn’t me that took off to save New York. It was
Saint Mihiel
’s baby aviators: those their navy didn’t want. It was them in the only four aircraft that were fit to fly, and some of those only just. For the record I name them all, men and machines:

GREEN WING

Grumman TBF Avenger
Bucket
of
Bolts

Pilot: Curtis J. Derby, Naval Aviation Pilot, Commander

Gunner: Robert L. Politt, Aviation Machinist

Radio/bombardier: Arthur D. Cannock, Aviation Machinist

Grumman TBF Avenger
Sheila’s
Shennigans

Pilot: Samuel D. J. Cohen, Lieutenant (Junior Grade)

Gunner: Kenneth T. Burrage, Aviation Machinist

Radio/bombardier: Santino S. Milano, Aviation Machinist

RED WING

Grumman TBF Avenger
Bring
’
em
Back

Pilot: Max A. Schultzer, Naval Aviation Pilot, 2nd Command