Dust On the Sea (20 page)

Porter was suddenly wide awake.

‘As you see by the notes, Marine Finch was wounded in the arm and in the neck during the final stages on the Irrawaddy, and has been in a pretty bad way. But he's out of hospital now, and due for a medical discharge. There was also damage to his vision. He can only use one eye.'

Porter read rapidly through the typed notes and various scribbled initials and signatures. The marine must have been about twenty at the time. The other man moved
away from the desk, and looked up at the wall map with its little paper flags.

‘He played dead until some natives found him and took care of him. Otherwise he would not have survived.' He gave a dry laugh. ‘And we wouldn't be stuck with a headache.' He paused. ‘Marine Finch has stated that during the retreat he saw an officer shoot dead four soldiers and a wounded marine, who were unable to stand or move.'

Porter said slowly, ‘Do we have a name?' It was like stepping on a trap. He already knew.

‘Major Gaillard. He might be mistaken, of course, or it could be his way of working off an old grudge. He has nothing to lose now.'

Porter reached for a cigarette. ‘The Judge Advocate of the Fleet would see it differently. There would be an inquiry, perhaps a court martial. And if the allegations were true, it would certainly wreck the plans already in motion for our people in North Africa. Gaillard would be recalled, he'd have to be, and Captain Blackwood would also become involved. He was there, and he was the last one to see Gaillard before he was wounded, and thought to be missing.'

The warning voice seemed to murmur,
except a twenty-year-old marine called Gerald Finch
. Porter recalled Blackwood's genuine surprise when he had been told of Gaillard's survival, and the ‘invaluable information' he had gleaned during his escape from the enemy. He could not even discuss it with the forthright Commander Diamond. Another mystery: Diamond had been temporarily replaced by another, without explanation. Porter was getting angry again. This was the part of the work he
loathed. Courage and honour standing shoulder to shoulder with deceit and treachery.

But this was different. It concerned the Corps, and had nothing to do with the hotch-potch of staff officers who controlled Special Operations. Later, it might come to that, but now something far more important was at stake. He looked around the spartan office. A decision was necessary.
And it has to be mine.

He crushed the cigarette, still unlit. ‘I'll make a signal to the general right away, Jack. It will be scrambled. You'll be in the clear.'

The other man regarded him curiously. ‘It's that important?'

‘Yes.' It would be, to Vaughan. It felt like disloyalty even to think it, but Porter had never liked Gaillard, although he was an officer with a flawless reputation, a man of action and initiative. He had proved it several times, and had been awarded the D.S.O. And there was Blackwood. Could only two officers make such a difference to the next operation? Thank God Vaughan was out there, he thought; he might be able to judge for himself.

The other major, Jack, smiled for the first time, and seemed a young man again.

‘Rather you than me, Claud.' He picked up the folder and said bluntly, ‘Could you shoot one of your own men to prevent his being captured, by the Japs for instance?' Then he shook his head. ‘Unfair question. Sorry.'

Porter reached for his pen, thinking of the signal.
Passing the buck.

‘It's not unfair. I think I'd want somebody to do it for me, but I'm not sure.'

‘I'll come back in half an hour, Claud. I know a little dive where we might have a couple of drinks.'

‘At this hour?'

‘Like the Windmill, it never closes!'

Major Claud Porter was alone again, the
Most Secret
lettering glaring up at him.

When his friend returned it was two-fifteen in the morning, and there was an air raid warning south of the Thames.

A quick drink at the ‘little dive' was out of the question. But the signal had been despatched.

Joanna Gordon stood quite still, half in the shadow of navigation buoys which had been hoisted on to the jetty, her cap shading her eyes from the forenoon sun. She had noticed that one of the brightly painted buoys had been punched full of bullet holes. It was something you had to take for granted, like the patrol vessel which had entered Alexandria yesterday morning when she had been on her way to the sick quarters to speak with Mike for the first time. The patrol vessel had been expected, and there had been ambulances on the jetty to meet her. There were three corpses laid on her deck, covered with canvas, sharing a solitary flag. People had turned to look, but nobody had commented. Like the youth who had tried to be friendly on the bus, lying dead in the road, his eyes staring into the lights.

She watched while Major-General Vaughan completed his inspection of the newly arrived company of marines. He took his time, and had a few words for almost everyone. Unlike most senior officers or visiting celebrities, she thought, who usually spoke to every third man or
woman, so that the previous ones would not overhear what was always the same question.

Vaughan appeared to be really enjoying it, and there were several laughs despite the rigid shoulders and blancoed webbing. She had seen people looking at her, also, but had become used to it, especially amidst the khaki and navy blue. She had intended to wear the light drill uniform Mike had ordered for her in the
souk
. Had that really been so short a time ago? But her arm was still painful, slow to heal, and short sleeves were forbidden. She had already had a quiet telling-off from one of the doctors.

He had tried to soften it by saying, ‘Your R.A.F. people are doing fine work with burns. You might consider an operation when things heal a bit more.'

She could feel it now, a constant reminder, if she needed one. She had tried to confront each lurking memory as it prepared to take her off guard. The iron grip forcing her over the table under the glaring lights, so she could be shown the drawer underneath, the neat lines of shining instruments, as if in a doctor's surgery. But those had been for causing unspeakable pain, on and on until death brought an end to it. If you were lucky. The woman had enjoyed every moment. Telling her that the interrogators who were arriving shortly were experts; forcing her to look at the straps where they would hold her down.

And somehow, inside that madness, she had thought of the people who made those instruments somewhere. Had designed them, knowing for what purpose they would be used.

Most of all, the nightmares brought back the hate. The woman searching her body, probing into her. Like being raped. Something obscene . . .

The operation could wait. She had seen many of the young men who had been shot down. They all seemed to have the same face; and saw the same world, and felt invisible.

She moved slightly, and saw Mike standing a pace away from Major Gaillard. She did not want him to see her, and yet she needed him to know she was here. She thought he looked tense, but less strained than at the hospital; he must be feeling his wound. She shivered.
As I feel mine.

It was almost over; the ranks were breaking up, the rigid lines becoming individuals again.

It was something quite new to her. She had been used to the brave, casual informality commonplace on most combat air stations. Young faces coming and going, no time to put a name, or remember a voice. Like her young brother, who had gone so quickly. A few weeks, a few months. It was painful to remember. Better to forget.

And the ones who lived day by day, while others disappeared. Like the pilot who had awakened her to passion, always demanding, but now, in retrospect, as vulnerable as the rest. He had known, recognised it, perhaps remembered her so briefly when his plane had spiralled down like a fiery star in the last moments of his life.

Vaughan was walking away now, Gaillard and some other officers with him. They would never know the man she had come to like and to trust so much. He never asked questions; he gave her work not merely to keep her busy but because she was efficient. He would have packed her off back to England if he had thought her incapable.

She watched the groups of marines breaking up, talking with their N.C.O.s and some of the officers. She
had seen Despard, probably the oldest man here apart from the general, but like a rock. It warmed her to know that he would be with Mike.

She thought of the too short moments together at the hospital. The embraces, the hint of a kiss, while nurses and staff bustled around them as if they were not there.

He had been deeply concerned for her, with only an impatient shrug when she had mentioned his wound, and the secret mission which had almost cost his life. She was a part of it now, and it meant everything to her.

She saw one of the sergeants, a tall man with a tanned face, putting his hand on Mike's shoulder, with a genuine pleasure she had never witnessed before. As he turned he saw her across the sergeant's shoulder, and smiled at her. Others were pausing to speak to him, and the realisation came to her like something physical. This was not ordinary discipline, or doing your duty because you were so ordered. It was like the sergeant's grin; it was genuine, and touched her heart.
They needed him
. Injured or not, they needed him. Because of his name, because of those qualities of leadership at which she could only guess. All the things which troubled him and had been shared with her alone, on that one night at the house in Rosetta.

Someone coughed discreetly, and she turned to see a slightly built marine watching her; Mike had introduced them on the day he had returned to duty. He was Marine Percy Archer, his M.O.A., something else new to her. A marine officer's attendant was servant, orderly, guardian, all of these, and many more.

Archer was not old, but he had an old-fashioned face, pointed and quizzical, like a knowing fox. A Londoner, from the East End's Bethnal Green, which he pronounced
Befnal Green
, he had joined the Corps after several
narrow shaves with the law, which was odd, as his father had been a policeman in ‘Befnal Green'.

Archer seemed to run his eyes right over her without moving them. She thought she could guess.
My officer's popsie
, or something less flattering. But she knew he was right for the job. Archer himself had qualified it by saying, ‘I'm also the best shot in this bunch of cowboys!'

‘Sorry, miss,' he said, ‘but the General wants you. Don't want to keep
'im
waitin' now, do we?'

‘Have you known the General long?'

Archer eyed her, liking what he saw. ‘What, miss, old Boxer Vaughan? I knew 'im when he ran a jellied eel pitch in Dalston market!'

He watched her laugh; he had heard that she hadn't had too much to laugh about recently. Very dishy, he thought, even the uniform couldn't completely conceal the girl underneath. Old Blackie was a lucky bloke.

He stepped aside while she looked across at the figures by the old yacht station, and saw her put her fingers to her lips and then turn them towards one man.

Archer had served a lot of officers in the Corps. Good, all right, or plain bloody awful. But he had never envied one of them, until today.

The Chief of Staff stood up and walked directly to the wall map in the operations room and waited for the usual scraping chairs and shuffling feet to fall silent. He was a tall man, a full four-ringer captain who was directly responsible to the Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean. His face was severe and his hair almost grey, but one lock of it hung loosely above his eyebrow, and Blackwood found it possible, even easy, to see the ambitious young lieutenant who had once served in destroyers, and at some time married a lady called ‘Tinker'.

As his eyes travelled across the assembled officers they paused only momentarily on Blackwood. Had Tinker told him about his visit to the deserted house? Somehow, he knew that she had not.

He concentrated on the map and its coloured markers. The Eighth Army was still advancing, while in the west the Americans and the British First Army were holding their own. Due to faulty intelligence and the foul weather, there had been several setbacks on the Tunisian front and the Americans had suffered heavy casualties, and had been forced to give ground to the enemy. A certain amount of bad feeling between the allies had resulted; some said that the Americans had talked big, but when it
had come to a real fight they had been too green to recover their positions.

As Vaughan had said at their one brief meeting, ‘We were all green when this lot started! Let's not forget it!'

Now there it was, the last stretch of coastline under German control, with Cape Bon pointing towards Sicily, the last line of defence. At any other time it would have been unthinkable. The armed forces had become too used to foul-ups, ‘strategic withdrawals', as retreats were euphemistically described. To the west, the port of Bone was fully operational, and the main point for landing thousands of tons of supplies, despite the relentless air raids which had put many ships on the bottom. And on the eastern side of the peninsula, Sousse had been taken. Although the enemy had attempted to destroy the port's facilities before abandoning it, it was already being used by the light coastal forces and minesweeping flotillas.

The Chief of Staff was saying, ‘It has to be soon, and it has to be effective. The Germans will have to pull out of North Africa.' His sunburned hand touched the cluster of markers. ‘Cape Bon is the gateway, and the enemy is well aware of our determination that no attempt at evacuation will go unopposed.' He waited, as murmurs of approval broke the silence. ‘Recent progress by our inshore patrols have been severely hampered, even at night. One M.T.B. was lost, and two destroyers badly damaged by shellfire, almost always under cover of darkness.' He let the words sink in and added, ‘A new detection device at this crucial stage would make things serious for us. Plans are already being completed for an attack on Sicily, but if it were to be further delayed, even for another year, almost anything could be thrown at us. Intelligence has already reported German progress on rockets which can be fired from
aircraft, and homed on to surface vessels which might be carrying troops for such an invasion. I don't have to spell it out for you. And if a new radio direction finder is available to match our own advanced radar, we could be facing even more losses and delays.' He looked suddenly at Major Gaillard, who was sitting with Commander St John. ‘We already knew they had something in the testing stage. Operation
Lucifer
and the information brought back from that raid was a godsend to the boffins at H.Q.' His hand rested on the map again. ‘And now we've found it, right here on Cape Bon. Aerial reconnaissance has been almost impossible, and we've lost some fine pilots in the process. But we're as certain as we can ever be.' He glanced around at their faces, and finally his eyes rested on Blackwood. ‘We simply cannot afford any delays or setbacks. That site is the target. It is vital. I only wish I were free to tell you
how
vital!'