The Herrenhaus Forfeit: Chasing Mercury Book Two, page 24
As he came out of the stairwell penthouse, he spotted Marjorie in between two gangsters in their REME craftsmen’s uniforms. It looked like one of the men was having to support her.
“Bring a chair up, dammit,” he said to Gerry.
While Gerry, momentarily taken aback, directed one of his men to do so, Bradley took Marjorie’s arm and led her away from the henchmen.
“We gotta put on a show,” he told her. “Are you up to following my lead?”
“Lead away, Mister Bradley!”
“You’re shivering. Stupid of me…” He shrugged out of his ‘refugee’ coat and put it around her shoulders.
“I’m afraid I’ve become an awful burden,” she said.
“Don’t think like that,” he said, surprising himself with the fierceness of his tone. He squeezed her arm apologetically as he led her toward the waiting mess chair. “It isn’t any of your damn fault – it’s all theirs…”
Gerry had perched on the housing of some piece of equipment opposite them. He had his hands in his pockets but his manner was anything but casual. It was time.
Bradley extended both hands, palms up, in a gesture of honesty and helplessness.
“My guess is she’ll want to come in sneaky, that’s her style. But I can’t tell you how. I told you, I don’t know her that well.”
Gerry turned to Marjorie and raised an eyebrow. Bradley’s heart went out to her when he realised how well she was going to back him up, without any training or time to prepare.
“I should say so, yes. You have noticed, I’m sure, how she keeps her hair short, so as to be able to wear any wig or military hat without hairdressing… That is her modus operandi: disguise, pretence, trickery.”
Gerry scoffed.
“It ain’t Jack’s way.”
“Oh, absolutely not! A bull in a china shop is my Jack. But he will defer to her. He’s in awe of her.”
Gerry nodded slowly, but still looked unconvinced.
“Ain’t much chance of working a scam seven mile offshore neither.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Marjorie said primly. “I thought you simply asked for my prognostication of her preferred methods. But if you mean a grand villainous scheme such as telling an old lady you’ve come to read her gas meter, well, do you never receive visitors here? Someone from the coastguard perhaps, or the lifeboat service…?”
Bradley realised he was starting to smile and had to recompose his features. The woman was a natural at sowing doubt and distrust! As for turning the inarticulate bastard’s taunting back against him, using a word like prognostication to puncture his self-assurance just when it mattered, that was the mark of a fighter.
“It’s a thought,” Gerry said. Except he didn’t. Being Gerry, what he actually said was: It’s a fort.
“It certainly is,” Marjorie replied without so much as a blink.
Bradley winced. She had gone too far. Before the understanding sank in, he needed to get Gerry’s thoughts onto a different track.
Doubt and distrust: she had shown him the way. And Doyle, whatever the hell his game was, had given him the opening.
“Listen,” he said urgently. “It’s one thing speculating whether or not Miss Slavík is going to play fair at the rendezvous, but what about that guy at the proving grounds? Operating on behalf of the British Government, ain’t he? If I was in a sweat about who’s going to turn up on the next supply tender, it’d be the cops, after Doyle’s turned you in. Or did he sell you some story about him reequipping the Irish Republican Army?”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. Gerry seemed mostly irritated at the interruption.
“What? No, ’course not! Me and Jimmy’ve always known ’e’s working for the Government. They don’t want no one to let the weapons and the crown get to Palestine – and they need an unofficial channel to supply the Japs and Frogs they’re setting up to fight the commies in South East Asia or something…”
From the way he parroted certain phrases before pulling up lame, it was clear he left that side of the business to Jimmy, or rather Jimmy kept his brother well away from it. That limited the extent to which Bradley could sow his doubt and distrust, which was a shame, but at least he had distracted him from noticing Marjorie’s sarcastic response – and just possibly from deciding that his prisoners had outlived their usefulness.
“Yeah, well,” Gerry said now, getting to his feet. “I ain’t got time for this, I’m a busy man.”
He gestured for his henchmen and pointed to the two of them.
“Take ’em below again and lock ’em up.”
Without waiting, he headed off down the stairs. Bradley watched him go.
“I think you rattled him,” Marjorie said.
“No, I think you did.”
“I hope it was a good idea. He’s not a very stable person.”
“Mrs Jessop,” Bradley said with a smile. “He’s a goddamn lunatic. And you’re a goddamn revelation.”
They were getting her upright and manhandling her towards the penthouse. Bradley clenched his teeth at the Sten in his back again. Marjorie caught his eye. Her strand of grey hair had come free and was blowing across her face. She brushed it back into place.
“My Peter would have been about your age.” She reached out her hand to cup his cheek. Her fingers were freezing. “Do try to stay alive, won’t you, Mister Bradley?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
She had been dozing. That was the real surprise. Despite her conviction that she would never again sleep properly, the change in her spirits after having seen Mr Bradley – or perhaps it was just the accumulated fatigue – had enabled her to drift off at last.
The wonder was that she had come back from it. She would not have wanted to, but something had penetrated the precious oblivion and summoned her. What had that been? As she recovered her wits, she recalled the sound that had woven itself into her dreams. An alpenhorn, resounding from the cloud-darkened mountains menacing Namsos Fjord. An alpenhorn, blasting out six haunting notes.
She sat up with a start. She had not imagined that.
Six notes, but actually only three tones. The first three notes all the same pitch, with the first slightly longer than the others. Then up a half step. Up a step from there. Back to the first note again.
Un – der – neath – the – lan –tern.
Not an alpenhorn. Of course not. A foghorn.
She heard boots on the metal floors. Shouting. Doors creaking open and banging shut. Mr Bradley’s voice, from what must have been his open cell. Others from one of the armoured doorways leading out onto the walkways. An explosion of daylight illuminated her shutters. A squall of cold, damp air blew under her door and made her shiver.
Then her door opening – and Mr Bradley was there, reaching down for her.
“They’re here,” he said, grim-faced. “And we are wanted.”
Before she knew it, she was being ushered out onto the balcony and across one of the catwalks. Perhaps because of her dream, perhaps because of the freezing whiteness of the sea fret all about, the impression of being high in the mountains was hard to shake off. Her legs nearly gave way but the American kept ahold of her. Behind them trotted two of the gang members with two mismatched but equally evil-looking machine guns.
“Mr Bradley,” she tugged at the sleeve of his ragged pullover, suddenly conscious of the fact that she was still wrapped in his overcoat. “Did you hear the horn?”
“Mmmm. Just a passing vessel in the mist.”
“Yes, but…”
There wasn’t time to say anything more. Marjorie gasped and nearly swooned as they were manhandled into the next tower and up its stairs to the roof.
This was the one with the two, smaller, anti-aircraft guns on elevated platforms hanging out either side. On the raised structure between them she saw Gerry Lonsdale surrounded by half a dozen of his cohorts. Gerry and two men were examining something through their binoculars. Another of the gang was manning a piece of equipment like a seaside coin-operated telescope that she recognised from countless newsreels as a signalling lamp. And what were they all looking at? She squinted in the bright light and thought she spotted a number of ghostly shapes rising and falling in a heavy swell, several hundred yards off to the side.
“Jacob?”
“Oh, it’s ’im alright, Mrs Jessop,” Gerry lowered the glasses to throw her an ugly sneer by way of a greeting. “But ’e’s playin’ silly buggers is what ’e’s doin’!”
She saw a bright light flash intermittently from one of the low, indistinct forms and heard Gerry confer furiously with his signaller.
“Come on then!” Gerry gestured for her and Bradley to join him on the raised section. “Soon as ’e turned up, ’e stood off and threatened to jettison the ’ole cargo, unless we produced you two... WELL HERE THEY ARE! Go on, give him a wave…”
When Gerry went back to his signaller, Marjorie pressed close to Bradley.
“The foghorn was a message too,” she mouthed. “From Mila.”
He stared at her.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“I just heard a few blasts. Do you know what it means?”
Marjorie pulled a face.
“Only that it’s Lili Marleen. It was a private joke between us. ‘Underneath the lantern...’”
She saw his mind working frantically.
“Our secret…” he said, but not to her. “You can count on it…”
“I don’t know what that means.”
He grinned, suddenly. Marjorie had the notion that if he had been that sort of man, he would have given her a peck on her cheek.
“No, but I do, now.” Then he frowned. “How long ago would you say we heard the foghorn?”
“Heavens! I was fast asleep… I don’t know. Perhaps three quarters of an hour?”
He nodded.
“Good enough for me. Then we have fifteen minutes left.”
“Until what?”
“I don’t know. Neither did she when she gave me the cue, but she managed to give it to me anyway. A countdown from an hour. We have to be ready.”
“Do you think she’s on one of those barges? Do they have horns like that?”
“I don’t know. They’re bigger than they look and the one at the front has a proper motor. Possibly.”
“But what can either of them do from there?”
Marjorie saw that Bradley was surreptitiously looking around the fort: at the other towers, at least those he could see from here without turning right around; at the gantries that suspended the catwalks and the peculiar arrangements of braces beneath the towers; at the hazy surface of the sea.
“Maybe she’s not on the barges anymore.”
* * *
“Right, that’s enough of that…” Gerry Lonsdale said.
Picking one of his men who had been watching the prisoners and another who had been watching the barges, he stepped up to the outboard Bofors platform and climbed onto the gun, choosing the left hand seat with the elevation controls and the foot trigger. The others took up positions in the traversing seat and standing at the breech, ready to fill the autoloader with blocks of cannon shells like giant Enfield rifle clips.
“Point it just be’ind the front barge,” he yelled to the man in the right hand seat. It was hardly the way the gun was meant to be operated, with its electrical predictor taking charge of the gun-laying. But it would do well enough against slow moving targets and even better if they were stationary.
As the whole gun and mount swivelled around, he wound his crank handles rapidly, lowering the barrel to fire over open sights. He didn’t quite understand the fusing, but it was sure to make a big enough splash if it hit the sea, and to go off if it hit something solid.
He pressed the pedal and the gun automatically discharged all eight rounds they had loaded so far in what seemed like a couple of seconds. With his heart thumping and his eardrums ringing, he watched wide-eyed as six impacts stitched the rising wave about ten feet abaft of Jack’s barge. The first two must have gone over the top of it.
He dropped the handles and grabbed his field glasses. So bloody difficult to fix on the trio of sailing barges, let along focus on them. But wait a moment… yeah, there was Jack Penny stepping out onto the long flat superstructure of the Dutch barge and going over to cling to the mast. Presumably he was about to make some signal that he was coming to tie up and unload.
Except he wasn’t. Through the mist and the spray, Gerry saw him swing a crooked arm and catch it with the opposite hand in a gesture he recognised all too well. Before he could react, Penny pointed to the rear of the barge, where two unidentified figures in sou’westers had lifted a long crate onto the gunwale. Triumphantly, he slapped his hand downwards and Gerry saw what looked like a dozen rifles tip into the sea, followed by the empty box, which floated. The rifles did not. In horror he realised that other hands were performing the same task with crates of machine guns and silenced carbines on the other two barges. Crate after crate after crate.
“Load it again!” he shrieked at the man behind the breech.
It was at that moment that he heard the ship’s horn once more, shockingly loud and close. Leaping up onto the seat to look behind the gun, he saw the huge shadow loom out of the sea fog and resolve itself into the oncoming bows of a merchant vessel, canted over in a futile evasive turn yet bearing down on them at what seemed like breakneck speed. There was a thud and a crash as it swept past the outlying searchlight tower and the whole fort shook, causing the Bofors gun to traverse on its own. Incredibly, the first thing Gerry saw when he recovered his balance was the complete No.2 gun tower – a tower almost identical to this one – tilting over, twisting around and toppling like a barstool, its gun falling off into the water. The next was the ship still coming on, with the rigid steel catwalk that had linked the searchlight tower to the adjoining No.2 tower now draped across her prow like a snapped twig caught in the fender of a lorry.
He looked for the other men on the gun but they had disappeared, tossed into the sea when it spun around, most likely. Over the screech of rending metal and the echoing rumble of the earthquake that was shaking the whole fort, he heard another of his men yell out: “Guv! It’s gonna hit the control tower and that’ll pull us over with it!”
It was Andrews, the guard with the Lanchester submachine gun from the navy’s locker. But where were the two prisoners he had been guarding with it? Nowhere to be seen. Escaped the instant Andrews had been distracted by an effin’ great ship ramming into the fort, no doubt – as though prepared for it, as though forewarned.
The ship was slowing and turning in a turmoil of churning water and impossibly moving structures, yet still ploughing forwards under its own inertia. A word popped into Gerry’s head, a word he had never felt confident to utter but which seemed to capture the motion perfectly. In – ex – or – bly.
He stared in mute dread at the tarnished, battered superstructure of the vessel. It had come from nowhere. Perhaps it had no living crew… But then he spotted darkened figures moving on the bridge.
“Shoot at them!” he called to Andrews, pointing.
As he raised and aimed his heavy, wood-stocked gun, there was a flash from somewhere above the ship’s bridge windows. Just a blink of light, brighter and briefer than Jack Penny’s signals, scarcely visible in the spray – but Andrews dropped the Lanchester and clutched his arm.
The bows crashed into the far side of the control tower and Gerry had to cling on for dear life as everything rocked.
She’ll come in sneaky, he thought.
* * *
Mila clambered onto the fo’c’sle deck, which was strewn with broken rigging and wreckage from the fort. One cable, in particular, coiled violently as it snagged on the windlass and the foremost pair of cowl vents, now creased and bent over like cardboard. Wasting no time, she picked her way to the rail just aft of the tangle where the jackstaff had collected the walkway.
Although it was slowing now, the Heliopolis was not going to stop, that much was obvious – at least not until it had sliced through the connections to the two remaining gun towers seaward of the control tower, which it had just struck with a glancing blow. There would not be a better time to get onto the control tower roof.
She had misjudged the height difference though. As the ship’s hull ground against the concrete legs and the encumbered bows butted and scraped the armoured steel structure, she realised that even at high tide and with a relatively light load, the fo’c’sle deck was going to pass beneath the upper storey of the tower, too low to jump across. She would have been better using the lifeboat deck or the bridge, but it was too late to change position now. Trusting to her tough gloves and boiler suit, she shinned up the remaining anchor davit and leaped for the outside edge of the tower’s parapet. The landing knocked the wind out of her and one hand slipped, but the other held. Now all she had to do was to pull herself up by brute force, get a leg onto the ledge, and grab hold of the parapet proper.
When, somehow, she had completed this, she raised herself up and was met by the astonished face of one of Lonsdale’s fake REME craftsmen.
His astonishment turned to anguish as ‘Uncle’ Ludvík, lying atop the bridge, put a rifle bullet in his shoulder.
Mila vaulted the parapet and made sure that the man was in no condition to cause further trouble. She raised her head again in time to see the bridge team go past at her level. One of them, dark-bearded, grimacing at the damage he was doing to his ship, gave a brief salute.
Captain Valerius. What an asset he had proven to be! It was he who had identified the coordinates as belonging not to the location of a rendezvous on the open water but that of an actual structure, which he was able to describe in some detail, together with the remaining boom defences and mine loops. It was even he who had proposed the course of action they’d adopted, with Jack Penny drawing the villains’ attention toward the lee side of the fort while the Heliopolis turned in from the main channel, benefiting from weather which Valerius could not guarantee but had done a miraculous job of predicting.
