Kingdoms Fall - The Laxenburg Message (8 page)

Suddenly the door opened, and a smartly-uniformed
officer with dark wavy brown hair entered the room. His eyes sparkled as he
took a look at Gresham and chuckled. “Christ, you look awful, David,” he said,
sitting across the table from Gresham. “How are you?”

“As soon as I heard ‘Intelligence,’ I guessed
it would be you, Mackenzie. I suppose you expect me to thank you for taking me
off the peninsula, but I don’t think I will.”

“And here I believed you would be pleased to
see me. You surely can’t hold me responsible for what happened in Egypt. It was
Archibald who asked you to escort Lawrence to Jidda; that was not my idea at
all. But everything worked out well in the end – very well, I’m told.”

“It’s not that, as much as, you see, I can’t
just go running off from my regiment whenever you call. I have my duty and my
career in the army to consider. How am I ever to get advanced if I run off on
someone else’s errands? It irritates my superiors.” Not that they seem to have
any fondness for me anyway, Gresham thought.

“Of course I understand, but officially you’re
here under General Mahon’s orders to provide intelligence, so there shouldn’t
be any bother. Tell me, has Stopford mucked up the landing as badly as I hear?”

“It’s a complete disaster,” Gresham said
bluntly.

“I
am
sorry to hear that. Bob Graves
will be devastated – if you can believe it, he came all the way from London to
be the British Administrator of Constantinople. That’s assuming we ever capture
the illustrious city, which seems more doubtful with every passing day. I
daresay Graves will have to continue waiting. But you seem to have had some
success with Lord Bartlett’s son, is that right?”

“If you heard that I had something to do with
it, then you’re better informed than most.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, but an
unnecessary one. I know only what I am told. As I understand it, Mister Wilkins
asked you to command the company onto the ridge and you brought the men back
safely from behind enemy lines. Is that correct?”

“Yes, more or less.”

“I applaud your foresight in saving Mister
Wilkins’ life. That was good in very many ways. Did you know that he is fluent
in seven languages?”

“I had no idea.”

“Captain of his class at Eton, too. Well,
anyway, it’s yet another instance in which you have shown both resourcefulness
and insight. What is your opinion of Mister Wilkins?”

“He’s young, but he will make a suitable
officer eventually. I rather like him, to be honest with you.”

“It seems to me that Mister Wilkins is not
being used to his full potential. I’d love to have him in intelligence and out
of the line of fire, but, with his connections, well, everyone seems to want
him.”

“What is the point of this interview,
Mackenzie?”

“Ah, well, David, you have no need to be
envious of James Wilkins. You have your own remarkable skills. You may rest
assured they have been noted. And they are ones which my colleagues and I
sorely lack.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You are a damned clever soldier, for one. I am
not a soldier. In fact, my sciatica is flaring up and I could barely walk here
from my house today.”

“We call it a billet.”

“Yes, of course. It’s all well and good for men
like me to collect information and read reports, but we need men in the front
lines to make decisions and to take action when an opportunity presents itself.
Sometimes an opportunity arises which needs a man of your particular talents
and skills to be properly completed.”

“There’s a whole bloody army right over there
on the shore, Mackenzie. You can get any soldier you like.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t care for just any
soldier, David. I am looking for a man of quality, and you happen to be here
so, I thought, why not ask you?”

“Ask me what?”

“I would like to ask for your help on a small matter.
But I can also see that you rushed to be here and perhaps I should let you
clean up and we’ll talk over supper. However, if you would rather go back to
the Manchesters now, I can have those orders written for you instead.”

“I suppose it would be ungracious of me to
decline your hospitality, and as I have eaten nothing but hard biscuits for two
days and am covered with blood and the stench of fish, you may talk to me as we
eat.”

“Excellent. Let me get my batman then.”
Mackenzie walked to the door and poked his head out. “John, please take the
Lieutenant to my house and prepare him a bath and find him a fresh uniform.
I’ll be back in an hour for our supper.”

“Yes, Sir,” replied the orderly. Gresham rose
and extended his hand to his former tutor, who shook it, and followed the
orderly out the door.

Compton Mackenzie, formerly of Magdalen College
at Oxford and an author of several popular novels, reviewed the coded telegrams
on his desk again and scratched notes on a sheet of his personal stationary.
There were so many problems to address that he could barely keep it all
straight. He was accustomed to doing one thing at a time, and the rules of war
were new to him. For example, he had just learned from an agent in Athens that
a German officer was disguised as a Turkish woman and living in a house less
than a mile from the British base on Imbros. The German would have to be arrested
and questioned, of course. But then what? Should he be hanged as a spy?
Exchanged? Turned? Why would the agent in Athens know about him at all? What
was going on in Athens? How long would Greece remain neutral in this war? Would
Greece be more beneficial to England as an ally or as an enemy? The politics
were astonishingly new to him.

Lieutenant Gresham was another matter for
consideration. Mackenzie liked David and always saw the young man’s potential.
His military record was strong and his background was fairly clean,
notwithstanding the false last name of “Gresham.” Apparently, the young man was
no longer permitted to use his father’s name and had elected not to keep his
mother’s controversial Irish name. He was, in effect, no one at all. He appeared
to be completely apolitical and had no family and no connections whatsoever. He
would survive by his own strength of will alone. Hadn’t he done just that as a
mere boy in Manchester? But what were his weaknesses? Could he be trusted?

Then there was the matter at hand. Mackenzie
knew he would be of no personal use at all, and neither would any of the other
I-Branch men. None of them could do what needed to be done – indeed, none of
them had ever fired a weapon in combat or fought hand-to-hand with knives or
hidden in dark places. A new sort of man was needed; that’s exactly what he had
told intelligence director Cumming during their meeting in London. Now David
had shown great resourcefulness and discretion during his recent adventure in
Arabia, and the present matter would be a further test of his steadiness,
certainly. But with any luck, David Gresham would prove to be just the man that
Mackenzie and Cumming were seeking.

Night had fallen at Suvla Bay. Sergeant Hart
kept the company entertained after their meal of tea and stewed Bully Beef and
biscuits. Hart was telling bawdy jokes, pretending the officers could not hear.
Lieutenant Keeling found the jokes hilarious, but he was so tight that he would
have laughed at anything. Hart simply ignored him: He knew better than to muck
around with officers, even an officer as affable as Keeling. Others played at
cards, some were hiding from the flies under their oil sheets, and some were
singing lustily:

When this lousy war is
over,

No more soldiering for
me,

When I get my civvy
clothes on,

Oh, how happy I shall
be!

No more church parades
on Sunday,

No more putting in for
leave,

I shall kiss the
sergeant-major,

How I'll miss him, how
he'll grieve
!

Keeling
soon became tired of being ignored and wandered into the tent to find Wilkins
sitting on his camp bed beside a single candle, re-reading a letter from home.

“I rather like your girls, there, James,” said
Keeling when he saw the portraits by artist Harrison Fisher tacked to the post.
“I don’t suppose you could introduce me to any of them, could you? The one with
the cap and the sergeant stripes there, she has quite a lovely mouth.”

“Have you decided which of your three girls to
marry, yet, Keeling?” Wilkins said with undisguised sarcasm.

“Hardly, no. One of them has money, one has
land, and one is very pretty. I deeply fear she is the one that will win out,
but I am mortally uneasy with the thought of poverty.”

“Perhaps you could take her into India and earn
your fortune there.” Keeling came from a good family, but their money was all
bound up in their estate. As a result, Keeling’s personal prospects were fairly
poor and he had no plans for after the war.

“Say, I was just chatting with a couple of the
ANZACs up here looking for supplies. Perhaps the life of a sheep baron in the
antipodes would fit me.”

“What did the colonials have to say for
themselves?”

 Keeling collapsed on his camp bed. “Oh,
James, those fellows have been sweating and eating flies here for months. They
look rather far gone, to be honest with you.” He got a serious look, which was
unusual for Keeling. “They told me a very interesting story,” he continued. “It
seems they had six men out on patrol one night, checking to see if old Abdul
had been cutting the wires between the trenches. The men got pinned down in a
shell hole by two snipers. One of the bastards was on either side of them. So
the men waited a while for the snipers to move on, and then tried to get out of
the hole. But every time they tried to get out, the snipers chased them right
back in. A full day went by, then another, then another. Their commanding
officer didn’t know where the men had gone and chalked them off as missing, but
the men were actually still in that shell hole and the snipers were still there
keeping the men pinned down, taking turns themselves to eat and rest.

“So anyway, a week later, another patrol was
sent around to check the wires. Well, they found those six men still in the
shell hole, every one of them, and they were all dead from dehydration. Do you
see? Those two snipers, they sat there and waited, day after day, for those men
in that shell hole to die. . . . So where do you think
we
are now,
James? I think we’re in the hole.”

“It’s not like you to get a wind up, Charlie,”
said Wilkins. “When we advance, we’ll still have many more men than the Turks.”

“I’m not afraid to advance, James. I just don’t
want to sit in this heat for months, eating bugs, drinking putrid water, and
dying of the bloody flux.”

Wilkins could not disagree.

On Imbros, Gresham and Mackenzie sat together on
a breezy porch outside a small, freshly-whitewashed house; they were concluding
a light supper of fresh tomatoes, onions and roast lamb. Gresham was wearing a
clean uniform without insignia or rank or regiment; he brushed his long hair
from his face and wiped the crumbs from his shaggy black mustache. “I am deeply
indebted to you for the bath, the uniform, and the first decent meal I have had
since Egypt, Mackenzie, so I suppose you have every right to expect me to
listen to your proposal,” he said happily.

“As for the proposal, I can be brief. There is
an Ottoman officer from Damascus, an Arab, here on the peninsula, and he wishes
to cross the lines. The Turks suspect this officer of being a traitor, so he
has been sent to Gallipoli in the hope that he will die there. I would like you
to assist him to our side before that happens. We would also like it to appear
as though he has been captured against his will or possibly killed, if that can
be managed.”

“You’re being obtuse again. Tell me why you
want this fellow so badly.”

“That is not relevant to you.”

“It is bloody relevant to me. Now look, I know
you can get my orders written however you like, but if you want me to be your
errand boy, then I think I deserve to know why this officer is so important to you.”

“I really don’t see how that helps you. You’re
a clever young man, David. Surely you can put two and two together and see why
we want this officer
from Damascus
brought over. Now you demand reasons,
yet, earlier, you insisted that your sense of duty motivated you. Or was it
your advancement in the ranks? Do you really place so much value in promotion?”

Mackenzie snapped his fingers.

“There, you are now a Captain in some regiment
somewhere; I will have to check to see which one. As for duty, I’d like you do
some rather important work for our office. You can consider it fulfilling your
duty, as it will significantly contribute to the war effort. To speak bluntly,
the war has created tremendous opportunities which Great Britain must seize,
but this particular task is an opportunity
for you
, David. I would like
you to trust me as to the rest, as I am placing a very great deal of trust in
you.”