Authors: Robert Ryan
Watson used his staff to steady himself as he made his way across the open ground. The crisp air and the breeze, icy though it was, seemed to clear his head. Now the only trace of the damned
alcohol was a slight fuzziness. He had been both foolish and lucky, it seemed.
‘Watch where you’re going,’ he found himself saying to the hunched figure that veered in from his left, his motor skills apparently forgotten as he barged in front of Watson.
The man stumbled and fell headfirst into the snow.
‘Steady on, old man,’ Watson said as he leaned over to help him up. ‘The breakfasts here aren’t worth breaking a leg for.’ He recognized the face of the man who
turned to look up at him, but couldn’t place it.
‘I’m Hulpett,’ the man whispered. ‘Captain Hulpett. I was at the séance.’
As the man gained some purchase and stood, Watson brushed some of the snow off the man’s greatcoat, trying to remember where he had seen him before.
‘Then you know what happened?’
‘Not now, later.’
Watson gave the man a good stare, taking in the thin moustache, the sunken cheeks, and the sharp blue eyes. He was also missing part of one ear, an old war wound by the look of it. ‘Later
when?’
‘Chess club.’
Watson felt something thrust into his hand and he quickly pocketed the slip of paper.
‘Thank you, Major,’ said Hulpett as he dislodged the last of the snow from the skirt of his coat.
‘You watch your step, lad,’ Watson said loudly.
‘I will. Looking forward to that Holmes story.’
Watson smiled now. He had him. Hulpett. He had been the third member of the Escape Committee when Critchley had pointed them out during the walk around the camp. Link, Boxhall and Hulpett. This
could be promising, he thought. I have a turncoat to match the spy they have put in with me. He looked around but none of the figures moving through the bleached landscape were paying him any
attention. Head down against the strengthening wind, he continued in his quest for an early breakfast.
Winston Churchill watched Clemmie speaking with the head gardener through the rain-streaked window of his study. She was discussing the spring planting already and had decided
one of the hedgerows needed to be taken down. The old man was shaking his head. He didn’t like change. The gardens had been as they were for decades. Why muck about with them? Churchill gave
a grunt of sympathy for the man. Clemmie would simply steamroller his objections.
He turned away and looked down at the photographs that were splayed out across his desk. There were twenty of them, clearly showing the stretch of the river where the German border bulged into
the Netherlands and the folding bridge that could be used to span the Meuse.
These were expensive photographs, he thought. The flying distance from Houtem in Belgium to Venlo in the Netherlands was around 270 kilometres, he had been told by his old colleague Robert
Groves at the Air Department of the Admiralty, right at the edge of the Sopwith One-and-One-Half Strutter’s range. And part of the route would be patrolled by the Germans’ lethal new
D.III Albatros. Churchill, it was implied, was asking a great deal of any Royal Naval Air Service pilot who agreed to do a reconnaissance over-fly of the bridge. I need a man to try, he had told
Groves, for the good of the nation. Volunteers had been found, the mission flown, a life lost when the gunner/navigator was hit. The pilot who nursed the bullet-ridden Sopwith home was unlikely to
fly again. It was, he mused again, all a very high price to pay for a few photographs. He hoped it was worth it. He made a mental note to find out the dead man’s name and write personally to
the family.
After a few more minutes’ studying the grainy images, he asked his secretary to get Jackie Fisher on the line. When he came through they exchanged cautious greetings and talked about the
Dardanelles inquiry – Fisher had resigned from his post as First Lord of the Admiralty after the fiasco at Gallipoli – and the expected slant of its findings.
‘I have it on good authority,’ said Fisher, ‘that it’ll be more rapped knuckles than being put up against a wall at dawn.’
He didn’t sound too disappointed. There was a time when Fisher probably would have liked Churchill shot. But the acrimony had faded somewhat over the past months. Churchill made a
non-committal noise at the news of potentially lenient treatment by the inquiry. He didn’t want a whitewash, just an acknowledgement that the whole enterprise might have worked and, if it
had, he would now be a hero, rather than cast out into political limbo. And if Fisher had had his way with a Baltic landing? Churchill suspected that would have been more bloody and futile than the
Turkish adventure and the tables could well have been turned.
‘God willing, you’ll be back in harness soon enough,’ said Fisher. The man was deeply religious and Churchill always had to rein in his tendency towards blasphemy when in
conversation with him.
‘And you’d welcome that, would you?’ Churchill asked.
‘I don’t like to see talent such as yours going to waste. All you need is a firm hand on your tiller.’
Which was more than Fisher had provided, the old boy alternating from support for to opposition to the Gallipoli landings. But Churchill didn’t want to antagonize the man. ‘Thank
you. I, too, hope I can be of service once more.’
‘Now what can I do for you?’ Fisher asked. ‘I can’t add to my evidence—’
‘It’s not about bloody Gallipoli,’ snapped Churchill, hoping against hope he would never have to mention the name of that cursed spot ever again. ‘It’s about
Holland.’
‘What about it?’ Fisher’s voice was full of suspicion, worried that Churchill had another madcap scheme, this time involving the Low Countries. ‘It’s neutral,
remember.’
‘No, not that Holland,’ said Churchill. ‘The one you have at Dunkirk.’
‘Ah, I see.’ If Fisher was surprised that Churchill knew about one of the Board of Invention and Research’s secret projects his response betrayed nothing. ‘Well, what
about it?’
‘Let me start at the beginning. Do you remember the Poruce– Partington affair?’
Ernst Bloch, formerly one of the Kaiser’s finest sharpshooters, had settled into a quiet life at Camp Belmont in Kent. The POW stockade was situated in the grounds of a
house being used as a recuperation hospital for British wounded. Because he wasn’t an officer Bloch had to work, but as this mainly consisted of hospital duties in the kitchen or the laundry,
he had few complaints. The damaged men who came to the hospital would never be posted back to the front line. So Bloch had no compunction about assisting the work of returning them to something
approaching good health.
If he were honest with himself, he was quite content. He received regular letters from home, from his father and from Hilde, his faithful sweetheart who, since their one stolen night in
Brussels, had promised that, no matter what happened, she would wait for his return. Other prisoners had received letters telling them that their romance, engagement or marriage had been blown off
course and had foundered on the jagged rocks of this war. But Bloch felt certain he would see Hilde again and they would have a future – and a family together.
So he wasn’t exactly welcoming to the two men who turned up at the camp asking if he would accompany them to an unspecified location. One was a captain in the King’s Royal Army Rifle
Corps, who introduced himself as Carlisle, the other a burly sergeant from the Honourable Artillery Company. Bloch didn’t like the look or the sound of either of them. The regimental titles
suggested to him they had come because of his sniping ability. He had already told them at Bisley that he would not assist in any programme that led to the death of German soldiers.
They took him to one of the interview rooms, where he was provided with tea – it was a better option than what the British had the audacity to call coffee – and cigarettes.
The captain affected a nonchalant air, smoking with his hand to one side so the smoke curled away from him, one leg crossed over the other showing boots polished to a mirror gleam. The sergeant
parked his bulk by the door and glared at Bloch from under his peaked cap, as if daring the German to try to get past him. Bloch had no intention of doing anything so stupid.
‘Would you prefer English or German?’ the captain asked.
‘How is your German?’ Bloch asked in English.
‘Adequate.’
‘English will be fine.’
‘Good.’ Captain Carlisle took a puff on the cigarette. ‘Scharfschütze Bloch, we have a favour to ask you,’ he said. ‘A favour that might develop into something
to your advantage.’
‘Favour?’ The Englishman had made it sound as if he simply required a lift to the station and was offering to pay for it. Yet the use of his ‘sharpshooter’ title
suggested otherwise. ‘What kind of favour?’ he asked. ‘You understand, I cannot help the British war effort. That would be treachery.’
The captain uncrossed his legs. ‘I promise you, we are not dealing with anything that would result in the death of a single German. You have my word.’
Bloch made a face that suggested disbelief.
‘Initially, we simply want you to make a shot. To prove it can be done.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it pains me to say this, but you are the best sniper we have on home shores at the moment.’ He flicked the ash off the cigarette. ‘The best of our chaps are, of course,
over there.’
‘Killing my comrades,’ Bloch said.
‘If they aren’t killed by those comrades first.’
‘True.’ For a moment he caught an echo of the sharp tang of decay that had been his constant companion during those months out on the front line, where every day was spent trying to
get a British officer in the crosshairs. And where, for a few fleeting moments, he had framed Winston Churchill, the former First Lord of the Admiralty, in his graticule. The very man who had later
ambushed him out on no man’s land.
‘If you do this exercise, hit or miss, we will pay you. Initially, twenty pounds. If you repeat the exercise under certain conditions we will pay you . . . considerably more.’
Although Bloch wasn’t particularly interested in the cash, he found himself asking: ‘How much more?’
‘More than money can buy.’
Bloch laughed. ‘And what is that?’
Carlisle dropped the cigarette on the concrete floor and leaned forward. His features seemed to harden, the air of foppishness banished, and the brown eyes fixed Bloch with a piercing stare that
made him want to squirm. He kept stock-still, waiting for the Englishman to speak. ‘Follow this through,’ Carlisle said quietly, ‘and we’ll give you your freedom. You can go
home and see . . .’ he clicked his fingers, ‘. . . what’s her name, Sergeant Balsom?’
‘Hilde,’ the big man grunted.
‘Ah, yes. Hilde. Play your cards right and you’ll spend the rest of the war fucking your beloved little Hilde till the cows come home.’
Bloch resisted punching the man in the face for his crudity but the sergeant noticed his body stiffening and took a step forward. Nevertheless the words conjured up an image of him and Hilde in
the hotel room in Brussels and he swallowed hard. He did want that again, more than anything.
He licked his lips. ‘Tell me more.’
Carlisle took a piece of paper from the top pocket of his tunic, unfolded it and laid it out. On it was a drawing of a stretch of water, a bridge and a series of buildings, one of which, on the
left bank, was marked as an observation post.
‘The target is on the bridge,’ said Carlisle. ‘You will be up here. It’s an old observation post built by the Dutch when they had this land. It is now on the German side
of the border.’
‘You want me to go into Germany?’
‘Yes. We can get you across easily enough. The target will be here, as I say, but we do not want him, um, eliminated until he is on the German side. That is, well past halfway on the
bridge – after the concrete support in mid-stream. Understand? It must not compromise the neutrality.’
‘Actually, I don’t understand,’ Bloch began.
‘You don’t have to. You just have to do the job. You will have papers on you saying you have been released by the British authorities on compassionate grounds. Once you have made the
shot, you will be free to pick up the various travel documents you need to get home.
After
you have made the shot.’
Bloch squinted at the map once more. He could iron out the details later. Hilde! He could almost taste her. ‘There is no scale. What is the distance from tower to bridge?’
‘Around nine hundred yards – say, eight hundred and twenty metres.’
‘With what weapon? Not an SMLE? I don’t want to be in Germany with one of those.’
‘No. We have a captured Gewehr 98 with Oige optics.’
Bloch preferred the Görtz telescopic sights. Whichever he used, the distance was still at the far end of guaranteed accuracy. He tried his best to stay focused on the matter at hand, but
his pulse was racing at the thought of going home. He had been happy to sit out the war, but these bastards had opened a door to temptation and he wasn’t sure he could resist.
‘It has been some time. I would need to practise.’
Carlisle gave a quick smile. ‘That’s why we are here. That is the first part of the favour. Show us it can be done. Show us
you
can do it. There is a setup at Gravesend that
mimics the actual conditions. Bridge and tower, the same. We can practise there with dummies. You manage the shot, twenty pounds is yours. Then if you agree to the real thing . . . well, it’s
home, young man.’
Unease squirmed in Bloch’s stomach. The British were famously skilled at reeling in their prey with blandishments and enticements, delivered with a sorry-to-trouble-you-old-chap air of
slight distraction. The next moment, a steel trap slams shut. ‘I will need to know more.’
‘About?’ asked Carlisle. ‘It’s very straightforward.’
No, he thought, it is anything but. ‘About the target. About whether I am aiding the enemies of Germany. About why you are doing this. Why do you need me?’
Carlisle banged the table, his patience seemingly exhausted. ‘What you are doing, Bloch, is saving an old man from many hours of torture. It is Sherlock Holmes walking across that bridge
and believe you me, you will be doing him a great service if you end his life there and then.’