Storymania - Russian Front by Aidan Steer

Russian Front (5)
Aidan Steer

They sat together in front of everybody at breakfast and she poured his coffee for him, a flattering but somehow pseudo-submissive gesture, since he had the feeling that she was completely in the driving seat of their nascent relationship.

‘You started to tell me last night,’ he said, although she hadn’t, ‘are you on your way home. At HQ they said you had gone on leave.’

‘A relative died. A maiden aunt. I’m the executor of the will. They gave me compassionate leave,’ she replied.

‘You must have a few more maiden aunts at HQ to get home leave for a bereavement like that,’ said Swayne, impressed.

‘Oh, you know,’ she said with what seemed like uncharacteristic vagueness. ‘One gets to learn to know how to pull strings. So!’ – changing the subject, brightly – ‘What shall we do today?’

An hour or so later a launch had deposited them at the harbor, with strict instructions to be back at midnight. At Swayne’s suggestion, they had gone after breakfast to the ship’s library for some information on Lisbon. Here they had been lucky enough to find a street map that someone had left on which was highlighted – in German, ironically – the main places of interest. Neither spoke or read German, but they felt they could find their way around.

During the rest of the morning, as they walked around the city. Hugh found out a little bit more about Sally - her Home Counties upbringing that gave her a strong sense of duty and responsibility. She had been Head Girl at boarding school. He was impressed by the fact that she had made the England women’s tennis team at the Berlin Olympics, where she had perceived the threat of Hitler’s Germany.

‘I knew there was going to be a war,’ she said, over lunch. ‘The whole country was being prepared for it, you could tell. The hostility, the aggression - despite the luxurious accommodation - it made you ill. They looked after us very well, but it wasn’t true hospitality. They were showing off. “Look how superior we are”, was the message everywhere. And meanwhile, we did almost nothing to prepare for it, like petrified rabbits.’

This was the most revealing comment she had made, and he searched for something to say that would make her go on. ‘You sound suitably patriotic.’

‘I am. I do love my country. But, then again, I know there are things wrong with it. For example, whatever else this war has done so far, it has helped women to do things that were simply denied them. The same happened in the last war, terrible as that was.

This didn’t mean a lot to Swayne. Why would women want to work in munitions factories or drive buses? He had assumed that getting the vote was the main battle, and that had been won, hadn’t it? Perhaps fortunately, he was saved the necessity of replying.

‘There is a journalist called George Orwell who writes for the Observer newspaper’,’ she continued. They were on safer ground now. ‘That’s my paper,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ve read one of his books, Coming Up for Air. It was excellent.

‘Ye-es. It was interesting. I prefer his journalism. He said that Englishmen – and women – should love their country but they should love it intelligently.’

‘That’s how I feel,’ he said.

She looked at him. ‘I think I like you, Hugh, difficult as that is to say.’ Then she leaned back to pick up her handbag and murmured, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you got us a hotel room?’

This caught him unawares. He had been enjoying talking to her, walking around, seeing the sights, and taking a break for a cup of coffee. It was all so soft and civilized after the desert and the flies and the fear. The way men and women were supposed to live. Not in uniform, biting back their emotions and killing like butchers. But, ironically, her sudden suggestion seemed over-purposeful, almost cold. But, of course, he would never have dreamed of saying so. Pass up a promise? Don’t you dare! Warned Music-Hall Demon.

Don’t forget the French Letters, murmured his conscience in a very-well-if-you-must kind of tone

Getting the room itself was a faintly embarrassing business. Hugh didn’t know how fussy the Portuguese were about couples who weren’t married sharing a room. To play it safe, he entered a middling-smart hotel, glad that he was wearing his best uniform, and asked for a double room with bath for himself and ‘Mrs Swayne’, who was presently shopping, he informed the clerk in his haughtiest tones, although the man responded as if he couldn’t care less. He then left the hotel, crossed the street to where Sally was waiting in a café, and returned with her. As he picked up the key and they walked to the marble stairs she kept her right hand over her left to hide the absence of rings.

In the room he ordered a bottle of Champagne from room service as she spent time in the bathroom. ‘Don’t start the bubbly without me,’ she called laughing. He walked out on to the balcony. It was late afternoon. He didn’t feel especially randy, but the opportunity was there. Then she was there beside him on the balcony, holding out a glass and smiling.

The chloral hydrate she had slipped into his glass worked very quickly. The last thing he remembered before passing out was seeing Chang walking across the room, then the two of them looking down at him. What was she saying?

Idiot, said Music-Hall Demon in disgust as he lost consciousness.

Chapter Four

LISBON TO LONDON

Some time later, exactly how long he had no idea, Swayne woke with a slight headache in an anonymous-looking bedroom. The furniture suggested that he was still in Portugal, or at least a Mediterranean country. He was lying in silk pajamas in a single bed. After a few seconds listening, trying to fathom what might have happened, he rose and padded over the wooden floor to the door. Quietly turning the knob, he found it was locked. Bending down, he looked through the keyhole and saw daylight. They - whoever ‘they’ were - had taken the key with them.

He stood there for a moment, wondering what to do, and looked around the room. It was bare except for the bed, a chair beside it, and a wardrobe. He stepped over to the small window, which was barred, although not shuttered. Through it he could see that he was on the second story of what looked like a smallish house in a suburb of what he presumed must be Lisbon. There were other houses beyond the trees, but all he could really see was a pretty garden enclosed by high walls of whitewashed stone. The sun was shining and he guessed that it would be about eleven o’clock in the morning. How long had he been unconscious?

He was looking at the garden when he heard the key being put back in the lock. Fear galvanized him. ‘They’ must have heard him moving around. He had tried to be silent, but the bed had squeaked loudly when he had moved off it – probably arranged that way. He looked for any kind of weapon. As the door opened he lunged to grab the chair by the bed only to find that it was screwed to the floor.

A blue-eyed, blond-haired man in his early thirties wearing a dark blue suit came into the room. Christ, thought Swayne, I’ve been kidnapped by the Gestapo. He threw himself at the gap between the man and the door, knocking the stranger against the wall, only to find the landing apparently filled with men. Briefly, he had time to glimpse a pale-looking Sally – was that really her name? – at the back of them. Strong arms gripped his and pushed him back into the room. There were in fact only three of them, two of who looked as if they could be Portuguese. The Aryan-looking type was talking to him, hands spread open, in a humoring kind of manner.

‘Lieutenant Swayne, please calm down. I do understand that you might be somewhat puzzled as to what has happened to you. Do settle down, old chap.’ He sounded English, upper-class, and patronizing.

‘Fucking puzzled!’ was all Swayne could manage to say. As much as anything, he felt a complete fool standing barefoot in silk pajamas while three men held him still. Sally was standing in the doorway and he couldn’t stop himself glancing down to check that he was decent. The three men relaxed their grip as he stopped struggling. He looked at their faces and their seemed to be no malice in any of them. They were cautious of him, but not hostile. The blond with the upper-crust accent seemed if anything nervous of Swayne’s obvious physical strength and capacity to create violence.

Swayne began to perceive that these people weren’t the Gestapo. Looking at Sally, so serious-looking, dressed now as if for the office in a rather formal gray suit, he suddenly just felt tired. He moved to the window and looked out.

‘Just tell me what the fuck’s going on.’

‘I say, Swayne, there is a lady present.’

That did it. ‘She’s not a lady, she’s a tart,’ he bellowed, spinning around, ‘Now tell me what’s going on before I start breaking faces!’

The blond man indicated that the rest of them should leave him alone with Swayne. After the door closed, he moved towards Swayne, pulling out a packet of Players’. ‘Have one of these, sit down, and I’ll brief you as far as I’m able.’

‘How far is that?’ Swayne sucked in the relieving smoke.

‘You know the rule: “Need to know.” All I need to know is that you were being set up for a Badger job so that you could disappear behind a false trail.’

‘What’s a Badger job? Who are you?’

‘Your second question is the simplest to answer. I’m something called a passport control officer with the British Embassy in Lisbon. Captain Lucas.’ He held out his hand and smiled.

Swayne took it and attempted to smile back. He was aware that ‘passport control officer’ was a euphemism for military intelligence. Even if he was lying, Swayne wasn’t giving anything away as long as he kept his mouth shut. He waited.

‘A Badger job is an espionage technique employing a young woman,’ Lucas began, ‘usually a woman, to lure an enemy into some kind of trap. The “Badger” is typically an older married man who is seduced by the woman. Their intimate moments are then photographed, or even filmed, and Badger is subsequently blackmailed. Have you read The Wind in the Willows? I believe the name derives from lonely old Badger living deep in the Wild Wood. You’re not the enemy, of course, but we needed you to be seen to be having a romantic attachment with a woman and then disappearing into the streets of Lisbon. That, of course, is where Sally came in.’

‘Your medical records will show that you were suffering from, ah, psychological difficulties as a result of your active service. The story will be put about that you, in your supposedly over-wrought state, and an attractive ATS sergeant decided to go AWOL together. Not desertion exactly; more like taking a few days off sick without calling the office.

‘Your comrades and superior officers in the LRDG will shake their heads sadly – all except your commanding officer, who is in the know – and you will be more pitied than blamed. A warrant has been issued for your arrest, but since you are at large in a neutral country blessed with an inefficient and easily-bribed police force, the fact that you won’t turn up for several weeks will not be seen as strange. And that’s all I know, because that’s all I need to know.’

‘What happens next?’

‘You will dress yourself in the uniform of an RAF Squadron Leader that you will find hanging in the wardrobe. You will find that it fits you perfectly. Downstairs, I have a suitcase with all your personal effects including your splendid pair of German binoculars. Your uniforms and other military insignia have been destroyed. Later this afternoon we will drive you to the airport where you will catch the BOAC civilian aircraft for England.’

‘What if someone recognizes me?’

‘The last thing we will do before leaving here is to bandage your face and hands. The cover story is that you are a fighter pilot, based in Gibraltar, who was forced to crash-land his Spitfire in the Algarve after an argument with some ME 109s while on a sweep out over the Atlantic. You were quite badly burned and have been in hospital here for several days. Ordinarily you should be interned for the duration but you are being repatriated on compassionate grounds since the extent of your burns mean that you will never be fit for active service again.’

Swayne felt panic. ‘You’re not going to drug me?’

‘No. Once you are on a British plane among other Britons you will see that I am telling you the truth. You will be escorted by a nurse.’

‘What happens when I get to England?’

‘I have no idea. It’s none of my business. I’m busy enough as it is. You have no idea how many members of the Abwehr and other types are active in Lisbon; enough to make your head spin, I assure you.’ Lucas smiled at him. ‘Why don’t you get dressed and come downstairs for a glass of wine and something to eat?’

Sally was the nurse, of course. Dressed in the prim, starchy uniform of a military nurse she looked sexier than ever, probably because the elaborate get-up made her seem unattainable. They didn’t speak on the drive to the airport and it was only when they had settled into their seats on the BOAC Douglas that his fury began to subside.

She didn’t apologize for deceiving him, which would have helped, but the realization that she had just been doing some kind of job trickled through his anger. So she had led him down the garden path. So what? It was all in the name of King and Country, he presumed, and, morally speaking, it was hardly any more dubious than blowing someone’s brains out from three hundred yards away.

He looked sideways at her. The bandages covered most of his face but he could speak as long as he didn’t move his mouth too much. All it meant was that he had to whisper, which was probably just as well, as the plane was completely full. He was in the window seat, and turned his head to gaze out at the propellers as they churned the air out over the Atlantic. It occurred to him that the weather at home might be rainy and even cold. What would London be like?

The prospect of a bit of leave – surely he deserved at least a day or two? – cheered him considerably. Two days in London with plenty of back pay! This made him consider that some company would make the jaunt even more pleasant. He glanced at Sally again, this time surreptitiously. A dispassionate observer, able to see beneath the bandages, would have noted that lascivious thoughts of good times in a West End hotel with a pretty girl had driven some of the noble righteous anger from his face. His conscience and Music-Hall Demon woke up simultaneously.

Sally had remained silent, but he didn’t detect any hostility. She simply looked tense and businesslike. Accompanying him to London in her pantomime nurse’s outfit was a job that had to be done, and done well, as he sensed she did everything well. Everything? leered music-hall demon, reminding him that he had been celibate for nearly two years. If he were going to have the slightest chance of even getting her to accept a date with him, much less anything more intimate, (“Tomorrow”! hooted music-hall-demon mockingly) he would have to make amends for calling her a tart. A woman of her background could reasonably expect to live a long life without ever being called such a thing. He began to compose a dignified apology.

And then the doe stepped into the clearing. She turned to him and spoke first.

‘How long will the flight take, do you think?’ In her voice was a submissive note, meant to flatter him, deferring to his presumed male technical know-how. Immediately sensing his advantage he ignored her, trying to project a look of scorn through his bandages.

‘Will it be today or tonight, I wonder …’ The pause was meant to put polite pressure on him to reply. She cares what I think of her, he sensed. He looked her in the eyes and, leaning over, scraped his middle finger as roughly and lewdly as he dared over the fold in her uniform dress where her belly met her crotch. ‘Or tomorrow, perhaps,’ he said in a low voice directly into her eyes and returned to staring out of the window.

She didn’t say anything but made a sighing noise which asked, was that really necessary? But she didn’t sound offended, the message was more like “I know I’ve deceived you, but let me explain, talk to me.” He guessed that she thought that he believed that she was some kind of prostitute. Hired for a private party, so to speak. It would be unbearable to someone like her to let him go on thinking that. He didn’t believe anything of the kind, but he wasn’t going to let her know that. Clever boy, said Music-Hall Demon approvingly. Hugh didn’t feel angry with her any more, but then he didn’t owe her anything either, did he? His conscience, always the quieter of the two voices, maintained a kind of watching brief.

A tentative touch on his arm. He didn’t move or say anything, he simply stared down at her hand.

She took her hand away but leaned near him to whisper into the bandage covering his ear. ‘It isn’t what you think. I was asked to do this as a special duty.’

He knew that to ignore her completely would be to throw away his advantage, to lose the ghillie suit hiding his feelings. He looked at her and said in the saddest whisper he could manage from inside the bandages, ‘How can I know you’re telling the truth? How can I trust you?’ (Oh, really! exclaimed his conscience in disgust)

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