The three members of the Committee were seated on the bed; Colonel Lavery and Goyles had chairs. The Adjutant was perched on the table. Although it was after six o’clock the heat was still intense and all of them were in their shirt-sleeves.
‘What I’m going to say,’ said Goyles, mastering the feeling that he was facing a board of viva-voce examiners, ‘is every bit as much surmise as anything else you’ve heard. But I think, if you’ll hear me out, you’ll come round to my way of thinking in the end. I’d like to start by reminding you of a remark made by Colonel Shore – to the effect that when you have a situation which is starkly impossible, then
any
logical explanation stands a good chance of being the right one. So I’m going to start with what I might call my basic supposition. At all events it’s the key which seems to unlock the door. And that is that we have all of us greatly misjudged a very courageous and very loyal little man – Cyriakos Coutoules.’
Goyles paused, but the only person who broke the silence was Colonel Shore. He said something under his breath that sounded like ‘Check’:
‘I’ve done what I can to confirm this,’ went on Goyles, ‘but we shan’t know the truth until we can get in touch with one of the high-ups in our own M.I. But it seems the likeliest explanation. It’s common knowledge, I think, that there are a few “phoney” prisoners on both sides. The Germans use them, and so do we. I think Coutoules was a British agent. I don’t think his job was strictly military intelligence. I think that he was put in to keep trace of potential war criminals so that they could be dealt with promptly and effectively after the war. At each of the camps he was in before coming here there was at least one Italian whose conduct would be likely to bring him before an Allied tribunal. Here, of course, he was angling for the biggest fish of the lot.’
‘Captain Benucci,’ said Colonel Baird softly.
‘It’s an attractive theory,’ said Colonel Shore, ‘but can you explain one thing? How does any prisoner get moved round as he wants to?’
‘I’m no expert on these things, but if you sent me into Italy with a million lire carefully concealed about me and a few contacts I reckon I’d manage it,’ said Goyles.
‘So that’s what he meant when he said he’d paid to get here,’ said Colonel Lavery.
‘Yes. That remark was one of the things which confirmed my suspicion.’
‘And you’re saying that Benucci spotted him and had him put away?’
‘Benucci had him put away,’ said Goyles. ‘Whether it was he who spotted him I don’t know. I should say not. I should think it was probably Benucci’s assistant who spotted him.’
‘Assistant?’
‘I’m afraid there’s little doubt about it. Colonel Aletti, though indiscreet, was being perfectly truthful. There is, in this camp, a German Intelligence Officer. He worked under Benucci – or it may even have been that Benucci was subordinate to him. He was – and still is – close to the heart of our counsels. He is an excellent actor, and, I need hardly say, a brave and ruthless man. He escaped suspicion because it never occurred to anyone to suspect him.’
‘Do you know who he is?’ said Colonel Baird.
‘I think so,’ said Goyles. ‘In fact, it’s so perfectly plain that anyone who reasoned the thing out must come to the same conclusion as I have. For the purpose of what follows, once his existence is accepted, his identity is not of any great importance. If you don’t mind, I’ll take the traditional line for the moment and refer to him as X. X had at least one accomplice, among the orderlies. I have no idea who that orderly is, and unless X himself tells us I doubt if we shall ever know. They are a mixed bag. When I put this point, in a roundabout way, to Corporal Pearce, he said it was probably one of the South Africans. The South Africans no doubt equally suspect the Poles. And the Poles the English. The point is that they are not a homogeneous body, and it would be very simple for a traitor to exist among them. Also, in the peculiar way in which things are run in a prisoner-of-war camp, whilst the officers are segregated, the orderlies have every chance of talking to the guards. Amongst the orderlies was X’s assistant. He sent information direct to Benucci, or possibly through Benucci’s familiar, Mariescallo Butsi. Apart from the orderly, I fancy that Benucci was the only person who knew who X was. Once, in a fit of bravado, he revealed the fact of X’s existence to Colonel Aletti. He must have been kicking himself ever since.’
‘What was X’s job?’ said Colonel Lavery.
‘Military Intelligence, sir. Or so I think. He and Benucci weren’t really interested in camp security. Benucci had to pretend to be – that was his job. But in my view he was a genuine, Nazi-trained, case-hardened Intelligence man. One of Himmler’s own. Anything which X could tell him – it might be of Intelligence value, or it might more often be of propaganda value – would go straight to the top. We may not have any high-ranking officers here, but remember we’ve got a Cabinet Minister’s nephew, two pre-war MP.s and one of the Staff Officers who helped to plan the battle of Alamein – to say nothing of representatives of almost every arm in the service. A prisoner of war is taught to keep his mouth shut when he is first captured, but once he gets into a permanent camp, amongst his own friends – what subjects under the sun are not discussed in the long nights? It must have been rather like having an enemy microphone in the lobby of the House of Commons—’
‘More like the smoking-room of the Guards’ Club,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘But please go on.’
‘Well, the next thing is that Coutoules realised he had been spotted. He was nervous about it – but he may have reckoned that he could hardly be kidnapped from the heart of the camp. Here he underestimated his enemies. That is exactly what they did do. But before they did it, they had certain preparations to make. Benucci could have had Coutoules arrested and shot any time he liked. He wanted something more out of it. As has already been suggested, he wanted revenge. And he thought out an idea which appealed profoundly to his peculiar sense of humour. He and his own band of cronies started a little counter-sapping. At night they would climb the east wall of the camp – seen by the sentries, but, of course, not challenged – and would disappear into the Theatre Hut. That, by the way, is no doubt why they were so keen to stop “visiting” between the huts after dark. If they had been seen by one of the prisoners it would have blown the gaff. They cut a trap-door in the stage of the Theatre Hut and sunk a vertical shaft to meet the head of the Hut C tunnel. With plenty of time, all the tools they wanted, a good space under the stage for sand disposal, and no fear of interruption, they probably completed the job very quickly. It doesn’t take long to sink a shaft under those conditions.’
‘But, good God,’ said Commander Oxey, ‘if they knew enough to be as accurate as that—?’
‘Yes – ’ said Goyles. ‘I see that you take the point. I did warn you that once you examined the evidence the identity of X would not be in any great doubt.’
‘Go on,’ said Colonel Lavery sharply.
‘When they were ready – that is to say, when their shaft was just about to break into the Hut C tunnel – they carried off Coutoules. Two carabinieri came in with the laundry van. I fancy Benucci was actually talking to you, sir, whilst it was being done. Two caribs knocked Coutoules on the head, tied him up, gagged him and rolled him in a bundle of washing, and drove him out of the camp. There was one typical little incident at the gate. The sentry – who wasn’t in the know – spiked two of the bundles with his bayonet. I don’t know whether one of them was Coutoules or not. Possibly so. The caribs thought it was a tremendous joke. Their sense of humour was pretty well in evidence all that evening. Later that night they took Coutoules into the carabinieri office and questioned him. That was when his finger-nails came off.’
‘Not under the sand?’
‘No,’ said Goyles. ‘Not under the sand. There was a lot of loose thinking about that and it needed a ton or so of sand on my own head before I saw the truth of it. If ever you have been in a tunnelling collapse you will realise the fallacy of the suggestion. You are knocked flat and pinned. All your energies are spent in trying to breathe – and that doesn’t last long. Even if you did have your hands free you couldn’t pull your nails off – not in sand. It’s a pretty toughly rooted growth, a nail. You might bruise the tips of your fingers or even scrape them raw. But you wouldn’t pull a nail off. It was Benucci and his fellow humorists who did that. Incidentally that was why they had to have the wireless on so loud.’
‘Poor devil,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘When they’d got what they wanted out of him, I suppose they finished him off by holding him face downwards in a box of sand.’
‘That’s about it, sir,’ said Goyles. ‘The medical evidence suggests that. Then they carried him over the wall, by ladder – Biancelli and Marzotto were the only sentries close enough to see what they were doing. Marzotto was safe, but Biancelli wanted to talk later. That’s why he was removed. Then they dropped Coutoules down the shaft, and tumbled enough sand in on top of him to partly fill the hole and make it look like a fall.’
‘Benucci must have had a good laugh when we served up Coutoules in the Hut A tunnel,’ said Colonel Shore.
‘He had us on toast,’ said Commander Oxey. ‘And was he loving it!’
‘To say nothing of the fact,’ said Colonel Baird, ‘that with his microphone in our committee-room he could forestall any move almost before we made it.’
‘There’s one thing I can’t understand,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘Why are we still being allowed to use the Hut C tunnel?’
‘I think that’s quite easy, sir,’ said Goyles. ‘The whole Coutoules business was a Benucci ploy. It was him and his particular stable companions who plotted and carried out the whole thing.
They
knew about the tunnel – everything there was to know about it – to the nearest inch and the nearest degree. But neither they nor X cared much about escaping. If Benucci had stayed in power I have no doubt he would have stepped in at the last moment and staged a pretty little massacre at the tunnel mouth. The moment he went into opposition his feelings naturally altered. I don’t suppose he minds now if the whole camp escapes – I don’t mean that he’s become Anglophil, but anything that upset the existing regime would naturally be in his favour – as for X, now that all his contacts at the top have gone, I don’t quite know
what
his plans are. I expect he aims to escape with everybody else when the armistice comes, and carry on the good work from somewhere else – possibly from a German prison camp.’
‘I see,’ said Colonel Lavery.
‘Yes—’ said Colonel Baird.
‘Yes, but—’ said Commander Oxey.
‘Look here, Goyles,’ said Colonel Shore, ‘who is this chap X?’
‘See who that is, Pat,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘I said we weren’t to be disturbed.’
The Adjutant went to the door and opened it. He said something to someone outside. Inside the room everyone was silent with his own thoughts. The door closed and the murmur of voices went on.
Then the Adjutant reappeared.
‘It’s Captain Meynell, sir – I think you ought—’
‘All right,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘What is it?’
Tim Meynell looked with some surprise at the crowded room, then he said to Colonel Lavery, ‘I’m sorry to butt in, sir, but I thought you ought to know at once. I was under the Commandant’s office about half an hour ago. If everything’s just right it’s possible to pick up scraps of conversation. The Commandant was talking to someone. I guessed it was some sort of foreigner, because he spoke so slowly that even I could understand what he said, and I’m no wizard at Italian. Then the other chap said something and I caught that too – it was German—’
‘German,’ said six people simultaneously.
‘Yes. German’s one of the things I know. I got the gist of it quite easily. The German is C.O. of an armoured car unit in this area. Apparently they’ve got wind of the fact that the Allies are going to announce the Italian Armistice at eight o’clock tomorrow evening. At one minute past eight the Germans are going to take charge here. The Commandant has sold us up the river.’
Those who possessed watches looked at them. It was exactly eight o’clock.
Colonel Lavery said to the Adjutant, ‘I shall want the Hut Commanders over here. Tell them not to come over in a bunch. I think the Quartermaster is in his room. You might pass the word to him. Oh, and tell R.S.M. Burton I shall want him – but he’s not to come before nine o’clock.’
As Colonel Lavery spoke, Goyles realised one thing very clearly. Any chance that they had lay in the fact that the S.B.O. was a man who had mastered the technique of command. This did not imply that he was a captain of men or the leader of forlorn hopes – but simply that he was a professional soldier who, by long practice and usage, had acquired the ability – that deceptively easy, much under-rated ability – to formulate a plan and put it into operation.
‘I don’t think we need you any more, Meynell – thank you very much. You won’t say a word about this to anyone, of course. That’s right. You can stay, Goyles. We shall want someone who knows the ins and outs of that tunnel. Now then, Baird. How long’s it going to take you to break out?’
Colonel Baird pondered. ‘It’s easy to be too optimistic about a thing like that,’ he said. ‘I should say, at least four hours – not more than eight.’
‘Shoring it as you go and making a decent exit hole at the end?’
‘Certainly. I’ll guarantee we’ll have the whole of Hut C out of it before roll-call tomorrow morning.’
‘That you won’t,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘I’m not going to throw away eighty per cent of this camp unless I have to.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘I don’t quite see, sir—’ said Colonel Shore.
‘You might get half a dozen people from the other huts across in the dark tonight,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘Particularly if the sentries aren’t particularly alert.’
‘No one’s going to stir out of their hut tonight if I can prevent it,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘I shall evacuate the camp – tomorrow.’