Authors: Robert Ryan
Watson waited until Levass was up top before he crossed to where the tank had smashed to a halt against the tree. Standing in the oak’s shadow, smoking a Wills, was Cardew, the young man with the prominent ears who had been too busy for dinner. He was dressed in a brown working man’s coat, such as a furniture remover or an ironmonger-shop owner might wear, and square-toed ankle boots. He pushed off from the trunk and threw the cigarette away. ‘Hello again, Dr Watson.’
‘Major,’ Levass corrected.
‘Sorry.’ Cardew smiled beneath his patchy moustache. In daylight Watson could tell he was around thirty or a little more, with a drawn but open face that suggested trustworthiness and honesty.
It makes a change,
Watson thought. Everyone else looked sly and shifty from the strain of keeping Churchill’s great secret. Cardew took a clean rag from his pocket and wiped his palms. ‘Slip of the tongue. You’ll always be Mr Holmes’s friend to me.’
‘It’s no shame to be recognized as such,’ said Watson, taking his proffered hand. ‘You said last night that you are the engineer of this beast?’ he asked with an inclination of his head towards the machine.
‘Only one of them. My full title is Assistant Consulting—’ Cardew paused and looked at Levass, fearful of having overreached himself.
‘Major Watson has been given full clearance.’
‘Assistant Consulting Engineer to the Tank Supply Department. Mr Tritton, my guv’nor, sends his apologies he can’t be here himself. There’s some quality control problems at Foster’s, in Lincoln.’ The accent was Midlands, Watson noted.
‘You’re a motor cycle man?’ Watson asked.
‘I am indeed, sir,’ said Cardew with some surprise, though in truth putting together the Midlands and engineering and coming up with motor cycles was no great feat of deduction. ‘I was with BSA initially, did the three-and-a-half horsepower.’
He said the name with pride, though Watson had not heard of it. He needed Mrs Gregson for such things.
‘But then when they linked with Daimler, I went to its engine division.’ Cardew glanced at the tank. ‘Which is why I became involved with this contraption.’ His face darkened. ‘Although I don’t think the engine had anything to do with—’
Watson raised a hand. ‘Please, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Who found the bodies?’
‘I was the first man in the tank.’ He swallowed hard. ‘It was . . . well, it was bloody awful, to be absolutely honest.’
‘I’m sure it was. Did you notice anything unusual?’
A nervous laugh. ‘Apart from eight men gone mad, you mean?’
Watson felt a flash of annoyance at such flippancy but then smiled. It had been a foolish question. ‘What position were they in? Lying down? Standing up?’
Cardew mimed putting his hands over his head and rocking back and forth. ‘And the sounds . . .’
‘What I meant was, did you notice anything out of the ordinary from the usual training sessions? A strange smell, perhaps? Or a noise? Was it hotter than usual?’
Cardew considered all this. ‘Not that I recall. But it wasn’t a usual training session.’
‘How do you mean?’
Levass jumped in. ‘A lot of our tanks do not have these sponsons, the side turrets.’ He pointed at the bulky protuberances on the flanks of the tank, designed to house its guns. ‘They are brought separately and there are . . . delays. So we train the men first of all on the tank without the sponsons, raised up on blocks. So they can familiarize themselves with the gears. Then, we drive them, but also without the sponsons. Then finally, we bolt them on and let them get used to the extra weight. But this was the first test under battle conditions with the sponsons fitted and fully enclosed.’
‘Meaning?’
Cardew resumed. ‘Normally, we run with all hatches open, to allow fresh air in. It can get a little rank inside. This time we were practising trench crossing under fire. Just a few rounds from Lee-Enfields to give it some authenticity. You see the marks?’ Watson nodded as the man pointed out the scattering of dents and chipped paint on the side of the tank. ‘It meant for the first time, the tank was fully battened down. Now the men are refusing to run with the sponsons on and hatches closed.’
‘For which,’ Levass said coolly, ‘the French army would have them shot.’
‘It’s not a direct refusal,’ Cardew said. ‘But Booth and Swinton know they are planning on cracking at least one opening every time we run. To keep the air fresh.’
Which sounded more like common sense than a matter for the firing squad to Watson. ‘And no more deaths so far?’
‘None. But we haven’t duplicated these conditions exactly. Colonel Swinton has suspended full battlefield-conditions training for the time being.’
‘So describe to me what happened that day.’
Cardew took out his cigarettes and offered them around. Levass took one but Watson refused. He wanted none of his senses blunted.
Once he had his gasper going, Cardew pointed across the clearing to a small wooden viewing platform. ‘There were about eight of us watching, wouldn’t you say, Colonel?’ Levass nodded. ‘Colonel Swinton, Major Thwaites, me, Mr Tritton, Lieutenant Stern, Flight Commander Harington – both RNAS – Mr Daniels of the War Office, Lieutenant-Colonel Brough of the Royal Marine Artillery. Oh, nine. Colonel Nicholson of the Royal Engineers was here, too.’
‘That’s a remarkably wide sweep of interested parties,’ said Watson, ‘for something supposedly the biggest secret of the war.’
Levass grunted an agreement. ‘You know I said that great inventions have many fathers? Well, there are many paternity claims on this one. Not just we French. This machine has been under the command of the Admiralty, the Landships Committee, the War Office, the Ministry of Munitions. Plus we have Tritton, Harington, Swinton, all laying claim to the final form. If this device works—’
‘
When
it works,’ challenged Cardew tetchily.
‘When it changes the war, then it will have many proud fathers.’
‘And if doesn’t?’ asked Watson.
Levass shrugged in his best Gallic manner. ‘Then it will be a sad, unloved bastard of a child.’
Watson could well believe it. But if this machine could prevent a repeat of the Somme, he didn’t care who claimed parentage and neither would the thousands of Tommies who wouldn’t die.
‘And your instinct?’ Watson asked. ‘About its effectiveness?’
‘Good,’ said Levass, ‘if used appropriately. And you? Now you have seen it?’
‘I have little faith in wonder weapons,’ admitted Watson. ‘The interrupter mechanism almost gave the Germans the air war, but, eventually, we came up with a response.’
‘The trick is to win the war before the enemy can develop a counterattack. Hence the importance of the element of surprise.’
Watson didn’t want to be drawn into further fruitless conjecture and so asked, ‘Is this the only training ground?’
Levass nodded. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘It’s all wrong.’
‘In what way?’ Cardew asked. ‘It was built by Royal Engineers. It’s based on—’
‘Loos. I know,’ said Watson. Everyone knew Loos; it was the first time poison gas had been used by the British. ‘A battle fought almost a year ago, and since that time the shelling and the rain have hardly stopped. Your battlefield is too clean. Someone must have pointed that out. Anyone who has seen the front line will know it’s much more challenging than this.’
Levass and Cardew exchanged shamefaced glances.
‘What is it?’
‘There’s nobody here who has actually, well, been at the sharp end,’ said Cardew.
‘Not in the top brass, perhaps, but . . .’ Watson watched their expressions turn sheepish. ‘What, nobody on the whole project? Churchill certainly has—’
‘Churchill is no longer involved on a day-to-day basis,’ said Cardew. ‘For better or worse.’
Watson let a sigh of disbelief leak out. Churchill might be a blackmailing monster when it suited him, but there was no doubting his bravery and experience. The man had been out at the sharpest end of all, leading patrols into no man’s land, snatching German snipers and recce patrols. He’d tell them in no uncertain terms to rough up their ‘playground’. ‘I’ll talk to Swinton about this later.’ A thought occurred to Watson. ‘Hold on, Swinton was an official journalist at the front, surely
he
has relevant experience?’
Levass managed a wistful smile at Watson’s naïvety. ‘Rumour has it, Major, between you and me, that he sat in a tent behind the line, debriefing officers and reading the daily action reports.’
‘Thwaites? Battlefield tactics. He must have seen that before.’ He pointed to the trenches.
Levass shook his head. ‘Sandhurst and books. He was in South Africa.’
‘That was another kind of war altogether.’ Watson took off his cap and rubbed his forehead. The sun was well up now, and he was feeling hot in his uniform and not a little weary. He had managed three hours’ sleep at best.
‘But that has no bearing on my immediate task,’ said Watson. ‘I am here to discover what in that thing drove eight men insane and killed all but one of them. Correct?’
‘Yes, Major,’ said Cardew.
‘Then would you like to give me a tour of the suspect?’
‘Of course.’
‘I have one question before we proceed,’ said Watson.
‘What’s that?’
‘Have you or anyone you know of ever been to Africa?’
‘No,’ said Cardew. ‘Well, certainly I haven’t.’ Watson looked to Levass.
‘No, me neither. Thwaites has, of course. Why do you ask?’
‘Thwaites, yes.’ He thought for a moment before pointing to the tank. ‘Shall we?’
The metal was hot to the touch, its strange paint scheme of pink, black and grey streaks slightly tacky under his fingers. Levass assured him the ‘camofleurs’ were hard at work on something more drab, less dazzling, than Solomon’s original patterns. But it was mostly Cardew who explained the working of the iron landship.
It wasn’t as large as the machines Watson had read about in H. G. Wells, but the sheer bulk was still terrifying. He could imagine the impact of this strange apparition rolling out of the early morning smoke from a barrage, spitting fire as it came.
‘This is
G for Genevieve
, a female,’ Cardew said, slapping the nose. ‘And it weighs just shy of twenty-eight tons. It has four Vickers and one Hotchkiss machine gun. The males have six-pounder naval guns in their sponsons.’ He pointed to the turret-like extensions on the side. ‘And they weigh slightly more. It is designed, using these tracks, to cross an eight-foot trench. It’s thirty-two foot long with that steering gear.’ He pointed to the mangled, spoked wheels at the rear. ‘Which we are beginning to think is more trouble than it’s worth.’
‘How fast does it go?’ Watson asked.
‘Four miles an hour. Which means infantry can keep up with it.’
‘That’s four miles per hour over even terrain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I suspect the infantry will have no trouble keeping up with it. This thing will have to cross a sea of mud and slurry. What is its journey range?’
‘We think about twenty-six miles.’
Watson knocked on the side with a knuckle. ‘How thick is the armour?’
‘Eight millimetre.’
Watson raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘The German SMK bullets can punch through ten.’ The SMK was designed to pierce the boilerplate that British observers and sharpshooters used to protect themselves in the trenches.
‘But only snipers have them, don’t they?’ asked Cardew.
Watson shook his head at the naïvety. ‘Not for long, once these appear.’ As Cardew well knew, one thing was certain in this war: every fresh weapon gave rise to an appropriate counterstrike. The shock of the new did not last long at the front.
‘Can we go inside?’ Watson asked.
‘You might want to take off your tunic and what have you,’ said Levass, pointing at his belt and lanyard. ‘It is hot and it is tight.’
Watson did as he was told, while Cardew removed his jacket and hung it on a branch. Levass offered to hold Watson’s. ‘I’ve been inside,’ he said. ‘There is nothing to see.’
Watson took out a torch from his tunic pocket before he handed it over.
Cardew ducked in through the opening at the rear of the sponson and his voice rang when he spoke. ‘In you come, Major. Watch your head.’
‘And everything else,’ said Levass.
Watson took a last deep breath of clear morning air and stepped into the dark interior. He switched on his torch.
‘There. Now get your bearings.’
The air was foul, he could taste metal on his tongue, but the inside wasn’t as gloomy as he had expected. The internal walls were painted white and there were enough hatches open to show the inside in half-light. His first thought was that it had been used as a storage dump: every inch around him was full of metal boxes. Only as his eyes adjusted did he realize they were full of ammunition for the machine guns. There was another stack of petrol cans. He tried to move and knocked his elbow on a rack holding fire extinguishers.
‘The males are even more cramped, what with six-pounder shells,’ said Cardew.
Just forward of the centre was the huge Daimler engine, bristling with tubes and wires. Everyone would have to manoeuvre along the two narrow aisles situated on either side of that monster.
Burns,
Mrs Gregson had said. The majority of the injuries she dealt with were contact burns. Now he knew why.
‘Is eight the normal tally of crew?’ asked Watson, already feeling the strain in his back and neck from being bent double.
‘Yes. I know, it seems a lot. You need four men to drive the tank – a commander and driver up there at the front, then two gearsmen on the box back there to control speed and direction of each track.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Watson, pointing at a chicken-wire-faced box, high on the steel wall next to the machine-gun positions.
‘Pigeon coop. Each tank carries two pigeons for communications with tank command.’
‘Pigeons? What about radios?’
Cardew grinned. ‘You’ll see. You can’t hear yourself think when she starts up. You certainly can’t hear anybody else, even over the radio.’
Watson looked around the interior, trying to imagine it once the engine had throbbed into life. He shone his torch on the contraption, tracing four exhausts that vented through the roof. ‘Could fumes be blown back in? Could that be a factor in the deaths?’ he asked.