Women of Courage (51 page)

Well, I’ve done the second, anyway, Charles thought. Now it’s up to the British Army officer down there. He glanced behind him as he heard the first of Sergeant Cullen’s barked orders and saw nearly fifty men hurrying into three ordered ranks. The three marksmen he had sent for came across the grass towards him.

‘Right, gentlemen. I don’t want you to draw attention to yourselves — and on no account are you to, fire unless I give the order. But the rest of us are going to parade openly in front of that advancing platoon of the British Army. Do you see them, there? If by any chance I should give the order, and only then, you understand, I want you to be in a position where their officer and sergeant should be the first to fall. But you do not shoot unless I give the express order or fall myself. Is that clear? Now, let me show you where to hide.’

One of them spoke English, of a sort. Enough to negotiate with Mrs O’Donnell, at least. When Werner brought them to her, fresh from the ferry, they stood in the doorway of the little hillside terraced house and smiled. Blocking out the sunlight with their bulk, their heavy kitbags slung over their shoulders. All the little woman could see was three hulking shadows, the flash of teeth, and a glint of sunlight in their fair hair.

To Werner’s relief she was undaunted. ‘So, away in with you then. It’s the three of them like you promised, Mr White, is it? Wipe your boots on the mat now and put your things in the two rooms upstairs — it’s the ones on the right, you’ll see them plain enough when you’re there. And then if it’s a meal you’re wanting, it’s on the table at half past six prompt, mind you, I don’t keep it waiting and it’ll go cold and be fed to the dog if you’re not there, good hot food too, you’ll see no better this side of the water.’

She kept on talking as she led the way into the narrow hall at the foot of the stairs, and had to back out of the way into the kitchen as the three big men followed her. Their shoulders scraped the walls and one kitbag brushed the single framed painting, of a little girl with beautiful curly yellow hair dancing on a beach in sunlight. At the foot of the stairs the first one, Franz, the only one who knew any English fit to repeat, stopped, clicked his heels, and bowed to Mrs O’Donnell as though she were a countess.

‘It is a fine house, Mrs. I think we shall be comfort here. I hope your food is plenty hot and good too, so your dog get hungry, eh?’

Then he smiled and held out his hand, and the little Catholic landlady shook it, scowling a little to maintain her dignity, but pleased nonetheless.

‘Don’t you worry about that, now. I know, what you boys like. I’ve two sons of my own in the merchant service and another in the King’s, and it’s their rooms you’re having while they’re away. My boys write to me from Rio and Boston and Hong Kong, they do, they see all sorts of wonderful things, but never any cooking to match their old mum’s, that’s what they say in every letter I get, I’ll show you sometime if you like, if you can read good English.’

‘You show. I like that,’ Franz said, and moved quietly away from her up the stairs, leaving the other two, monoglot Germans, to shake the old lady’s hand and mutter
‘Herrlich, gnadige Frau,
’ and smile in their turn.

The house was a three storey one on a corner of the terrace, and the two rooms upstairs were surprisingly large. Two iron beds in the front room, one ancient armchair, and a window giving a view down a line of steep cobbled streets to Belfast docks. Werner wondered if he had been wise, choosing a landlady as talkative as Mrs O’Donnell. But she lived in a Catholic area where there would be no support for the UVF. And there should be nothing to arouse suspicion about foreign sailors seeking lodgings so near the docks.

The three were called Franz, Karl-Otto and Adolf. They were all in their mid-twenties, six feet tall, and very broad across the chest. Franz had a charming smile and pimples on his chin; Karl-Otto had a nose that someone had pressed in, so that it zig-zagged puffily down his face. Adolf, the only dark one, had a thin face with receding hair and bony hands as strong as nutcrackers, with an anchor tattooed on the back of one and ship in full sail on the other.

They sat down on the beds and the chair and looked at Werner, and he felt simultaneously reassured and annoyed.

Reassured, because each of them was clearly capable of picking up two Ulstermen and putting them in his pockets if necessary; annoyed, because the job might take a little more subtlety and training than that, and he doubted if these boys had either.

Despite his rank as Major, Werner had almost no experience of commanding men. The very nature of intelligence work meant that he worked on his own. He was not even sure how much these men knew, or what he should tell them. He had still less idea how he should establish a good rapport with his team, or make them trust him. The thought that he might have to give them instructions every day about where to go, what to do, came as a great burden to him.

He launched into a lecture he had prepared about Belfast, the people in the city, and the political divide.

‘The Catholic people around this house, like Mrs O’Donnell, may be counted largely as our friends, because although they have little active interest or sympathy for Germany, they are a minority oppressed by the ruling caste which is divided against itself — the Protestants of the Ulster Volunteer Force on the one hand and the British Army on the other. It is our job to provoke a civil war between the UVF and the British Army, so that they destroy each other and provide no threat to the legitimate ambitions of His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm in Europe. Exactly how we are to do this I shall explain to you later. The first thing . . .’

‘Major von Weichsaker?’ Karl-Otto, the one with the zig-zag nose, raised his hand. Like a boy in school.

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Where can we hide the guns?’

‘Guns? What do you mean, man?’

‘Well, I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir, but that woman downstairs, I know her type. She’ll be in here searching through our clothes and cleaning up the minute we’re out of the house. If she finds the guns it won’t look good. Are we to carry them all the time or . . .’

‘No!’ Werner thought of the police, the way sailors could get into a drunken brawl, lose their temper. On the other hand . . .

‘It’s all right, Karl-Otto.’ Franz spoke, his smile calm, radiating competence and control. ‘I’ll go down later and charm her. While I’m doing that you and Adolf can prise up one of these floorboards and put them under there. I’ve already noticed a loose one in that corner.’

Werner felt irritated. The men were supposed to be listening to
him
, he thought. But on the other hand he should be glad they had come all the way from Germany with their weapons safe, undiscovered by the customs. Perhaps they do know their job, after all.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do that. And I’ll save the rest of the lecture until later, if you like. The main thing is to keep your mouths shut and your eyes and ears open. For the rest, behave like normal sailors. Franz can buy newspapers and translate them for you. I’ll be in touch most days, so if you want anything I can help you to get a feel of the place. But for the moment your job is to establish yourselves here — and wait. My job is to plan exactly what is best for us to do, where, and when. Until I am sure of that, we can do nothing. So you just settle in, enjoy the hot meals, and live in comfort. But be ready to move any time I want you. All right?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The three heads nodded in unison. They did not: salute — it would have seemed incongruous to all of them. But there was no sense in which they smiled or mocked him either. A small part of Werner expected that, always had done, because of his hand, which made him inferior to other men, unable to be accepted into the Imperial Army. To say nothing of what Charles Cavendish had done to him at school, all those years ago.

To his relief, these three, so far at least, seemed to accept him for what they had been told he was. A Major, a professional soldier in the service of the Kaiser. The leader of their operation.

He was beginning to sense, too, that they were not quite the boors they seemed. There was an air of quiet confidence about them, as though they had done these things before and we unworried by them. As though they knew their job, and trusted him to know his.

Let’s hope they do, though Werner. After all, to ask just three sailors and a man with a ruined hand to persuade the UVF and the British Army to destroy themselves, that’s not an easy task. If I do it, it will be the triumph of my career.

He left them, walking out into the smoky, cobbled street, feeling curiously alone, and excited.

‘What’s happening, Sergeant?’ Simon asked.

‘Show of force, sir. And the Colonel’s taking precautionary measures.’

‘Do you think they mean to fight?’

Sergeant Ian Cullen was a short solid man with a face like a seamed cannonball. He had fought the Boers, the Pathans, the Zulus, and the Catholic Irish, but his most formative military experience had been five years on the North West Frontier. There, as a young man, he had discovered that almost every rock could hide a bearded tribesman with a long flintlock rifle, any waterhole could be poisoned, any tempting glance from a veiled, sloe-eyed village girl might mean her brother was hidden behind a curtain with a slim curved knife, hoping to slit your throat and present your balls on a plate to his sister. The message was: trust no one but your comrades, and believe most of them are fools, too.

He glanced briefly at the sparkling eyes of Simon Fletcher. In Sergeant Cullen’s view, anyone with eyes alight like that meant trouble. The young ADC had just fired a high-powered rifle for the first time, and now he thought there was going to be a battle. Not only that, but he looked as though he might enjoy it.

‘They might mean it, but they’d be mad to try,’ he said shortly. ‘I should go to the Colonel if I were you, sir. He might need you.’

As he watched the young man cross the field, Sergeant Cullen saw the platoon of British soldiers come into sight along the country lane about a hundred yards away. Always, throughout his military career, it had been axiomatic that you trust your comrades; and now those comrades, British Army soldiers, were the enemy. Not only that, but Colonel Cavendish, like a Pathan chieftain, had snipers concealed in the hedge, to fire on them at any false move.

For a second the Sergeant felt a twinge of conscience. If this went wrong, he would be in open rebellion, liable, perhaps, to be hanged as a traitor. But that was all nonsense, he told himself. The government would never have the nerve, and anyway, it was they who were in the wrong, with their Home Rule that would hand the country over to a bunch of disaffected Fenian rebels. Some of the best men in the army were in the UVF. Colonel Cavendish, for one. The way he had organised the landing of the guns at Bangor was staffwork of a high order, and this training session showed a commendable attention to the needs of young recruits. Now, in Sergeant Cullen’s eyes, his instant decision to ensure their safety by covering the approaching men with an ambush showed a commendable mistrust of appearances.

If a man was ready for things to go wrong, the Sergeant thought, he was more likely to survive when they did.

Charles met Simon halfway as he strolled back across the field towards the main body of his men. He was in clear sight of hidden snipers all the way; he had a white handkerchief in his hand which he would drop if he wanted them to fire. But it was unlikely, he thought. There had been no reports of any other groups approaching to surround them, and it would be suicide for this single platoon to try to attack from the road. The most they might do was attempt some police action — demand the surrender of the guns, perhaps, which would make them look foolish. This is about propaganda and morale, Charles thought; I must manage this situation to gain the maximum psychological boost for my men.

He saw the young officer — a Captain — marching busily towards him at the head of his line. He’s in a fix, too, Charles thought. If he ignores us, he’ll look a fool; if he tries anything he’ll fail.

He wandered casually on towards his men, listening to the steady tramp, tramp of the British Army’s boots approaching. Sergeant Cullen had drawn up the UVF soldiers in three platoons of three lines each. All stood rigidly to attention. A few — about a quarter, maybe — wore military khaki; the rest were dressed in rough workmanlike jackets and coats which approximated as closely as possible to the same thing. Many were in flat caps, a few in trilbies or bowlers. Several had wrapped puttees around their trousers and most had some kind of military-looking belt, with ammunition pouches, and haversack.

And all, now — every single one of them — had his own brand-new Mannlicher rifle.

Charles thought: if I was that young British Army captain, I wouldn’t want to see that. I’d pretend I hadn’t noticed.

He smiled, and glanced sideways over his shoulder. The hedge at the edge of the field was less than three feet high, so the two sides could see each other very clearly. The British platoon was nearly opposite them now, about ten yards away from the rigid lines of the UVF. They had shouldered arms, and kept up a steady, well-drilled pace. But none of them were looking to the front, as the drill-book said they should be. Every single eye in the British ranks was straying sideways, taking in the details of the UVF men they were about to pass.

Every eye, that is, except those of the young Captain, who was affecting to ignore them.

In his best, clipped, Sandhurst-style tones, Charles said: ‘Sergeant Cullen! Order the men to present arms, if you please.’

‘Sir!’ Just as the tradition of the Army ensured that his commanding officer’s voice was quiet, casual, polite, assuming that discipline was so absolute that an officer’s request in the gentlest tones would be instantly obeyed, so Sergeant Cullen’s parade-ground voice, assiduously cultivated over the years, was a high-pitched bullroar, so ear-shatteringly loud that no private soldier, even if deaf, blind, and afflicted from birth with congenital idiocy, could fail to be affected by it, and jump to obey.