‘Something like that.’
He straightened, placing his hands behind his back. ‘You are familiar with the Kommand- obefehl?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Then you will know that under its provisions, all members of the so-called commando units must be executed as soon after capture as may be.’
‘You’re certainly taking your time about it.’
I didn’t even strike a spark. He nodded gravely. ‘As it happens this action is the responsibility of the commanding officer in the particular area and I am not he, Colonel Morgan. General Muller, the last governor, was killed by a mine four weeks ago.’
‘That was rather careless of him, wasn’t it?’
‘The new governor, Korvettenkapitän Karl Olbricht has not yet arrived.’
‘So you’re just filling in?’
He permitted himself that wintry smile again. ‘Something like that.’
‘And I can expect to be shot only when the real governor flies in to sign the paper? What happens in the meantime?’
‘You forfeit all privileges of rank.’ It was at this point that he sat down. ‘You work, Colonel Morgan. There is plenty of work for you here. You work in chains with the rest of your companions.’
There didn’t seem much point in quoting the Geneva Convention, but in any case, Steiner was speaking. ‘I must again stress the gallant nature of Colonel Morgan’s conduct this morning …’
‘Which is noted, Steiner,’ Radl said calmly. ‘You are dismissed now.’
Steiner stayed where he was for a long moment while I prayed for him to get out of it. His face showed real emotion for the first time since I’d known him and he started to speak again.
Radl cut in on him again and gently, perhaps because of that Knight’s Cross that hung from Steiner’s neck, the one medal for valour they all respected, the one that meant the wearer shouldn’t really be here.
‘You are dismissed, Steiner.’
Steiner saluted, swung on heel and Radl said, ‘You may take Colonel Morgan to join the others now, Brandt.’
‘Hasn’t anybody bothered to tell you how the war’s going?’ I said. ‘In case they didn’t, it’s just about over and your side lost.’
Punctilious to the last, he saluted me gravely. I laughed in his face and walked out.
We drove up to Fort Edward on the point above Charlottestown. It was the largest of the four Victorian naval forts built in the eighteen-fifties during the period when the English government of the day was worried about its relations with France.
There was a sentry at the gate beside a machine gun in a sand-bagged emplacement and he waved us through the granite archway with Victoria Regina and the date 1856 carved above it.
Inside, grass grew between the cobbles which was nothing new, but several concrete gun emplacements were and there were trucks parked across the courtyard and a notice that indicated the presence of some kind of artillery unit. We got out of the field car and Brandt waved me on politely towards the wooden doors of the old blockhouse which stood open.
One of his police corporals hurried ahead and when we went inside, he had the leg irons ready. Brandt turned, face pale, and said in English, ‘I am sorry, Colonel. A bad business, but a soldier’s duty is to obey orders.’
‘Get on with it, then,’ I told him.
The corporal dropped to his knees and quickly snapped the steel collars around my ankles and tightened them with a screw key. The chain between them was a little over two feet in length which allowed me to shuffle along at quite a reasonable rate.
‘Where to now?’ I demanded.
Brandt led the way without a word. We mounted the stone steps at the side of the blockhouse to the lower ramparts and walked towards the end of the point. As a boy of fourteen I had stood up there once a thousand years ago and watched the sea take my father. Now it was an artillery position and the walls were considerably knocked about, presumably by the naval bombardment of the previous year.
I could hear someone singing softly in German, a slow, sad old song from the first war. Argonnerwald, Argonnerwald, a quiet graveyard now thou art. We mounted to the second terrace and surprised a young sixteen year old masquerading as a soldier, who lounged beside an ammunition store, his rifle against the wall.
He jumped to attention rigidly and Brandt sighed and patted him gently on the head. ‘One of these days, Durst, I will really have to put you on a charge.’
I liked him for that, which is something to be able to say about any kind of a military policeman. He unbolted the door and stood to one side. ‘Colonel,’ he said.
I moved in, the doors closed behind me. There was plenty of light in there from the old gun ports. Plenty of light and good sea air and rain pouring down the slimy walls. They were all waiting to greet me. Fitzgerald, Grant, Sergeant Hagen and Corporal Wallace. So Stevens and Lovat had been the unlucky ones, depending, of course, on how you looked at it.
‘Christ Jesus, it’s the colonel,’ Hagen said.
Fitzgerald didn’t seem to be able to think of anything to add to that and I smiled amiably at him. ‘What was it your orders said? You will not repeat not attempt to land or provoke any incidents of a kind liable to alert the enemy to your presence. Enjoy yourself, did you?’
If he’d had a gun, he would have shot me dead, but all he did have was his fine aristocratic pride and it wasn’t going to allow him to quarrel with riff-raff like me. He walked to the other end of the room and sat down.
Grant took a quick step towards me, those great hands of his clenched, forgot his leg irons and fell on his knees.
‘Now then, Sergeant,’ I chided him. ‘That’s the trouble with you Rangers, No respect for rank.’
I scrambled up to the old gun platform. Rain drifted in a fine spray through the open ports and I produced my faithful waterproof tin, selected a cigarette, lit it and tossed the tin down to Hagen.
The view was really quite magnificent. On a good day it was possible to see Guernsey on the horizon thirty-five miles to the north-east, but not on a morning like this. And to the north-west, a hundred miles or more away across the Channel was the Cornish coast and Lizard Point where it had all started. Four days ago. It didn’t seem possible.
1
The King of the First Four Hundred
The beach below the cottage on the cliffs two miles from Lizard Point, was blocked by the usual tangle of rusting barbed wire and the notice half-way down the track warned of mines.
It was an empty threat and something of a joke in the area, for the sergeant in charge of the operation, back in 1940, a local man, had seen little point in ruining one of the best surf fishing beaches in Cornwall.
It was thanks to this that I was able to swim from its white sands on that fine early April morning. It was unbelievably warm for the time of the year and