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    Over And Out
    Over And Out
    Over And Out
    Ebook272 pages3 hours

    Over And Out

    By Michael Gilbert

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    About this ebook

    The slaughter of World War I in the trenches continues unabated. Luke Pagan finds himself in the Intelligence Corps, investigating an illegal organisation controlled by a Belgian, which is encouraging British soldiers to desert and move across to the German side. What began as a trickle now threatens to develop into a flood in the fourth year of war. Pagan enters dangerous territory and faces disaster.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHouse of Stratus
    Release dateSep 30, 2012
    ISBN9780755132362
    Over And Out
    Author

    Michael Gilbert

    Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel 'Death in Captivity' in 1952. After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism. HRF Keating stated that 'Smallbone Deceased' was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. "The plot," wrote Keating, "is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings." It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code. Much of Michael Gilbert's writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: "I always take a latish train to work," he explained in 1980, "and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.". After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for 'The Daily Telegraph', as well as editing 'The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes'. Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as 'one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity', he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers' Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime 'Anthony' Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London. Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

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      Book preview

      Over And Out - Michael Gilbert

      Chapter One

      Lance-Corporal Terence Mungeam of No. 2 Platoon, ‘C’ Company, the sixth Royal East Anglian Regiment was helping five other men to carry a stretcher from the regimental aid post in the front line – a dignified name for a chain of sodden holes in the ground – back to the forward dressing station in the rear line.

      The distance between the two lines was just over 1,000 yards, all of it along a narrow track formed by duck-boards, sinking into or sunk in the ground. Four of the men carried the stretcher, one walked ahead examining the track for breaks or declivities, the sixth took a brief rest. Places were changed every 200 yards. Being, for the moment, spare man afforded Mungeam a brief interval for thought.

      Two fears were preoccupying him.

      He was an experienced soldier. He had taken part in the disastrous battles of Aubers Ridge and Loos, and had survived the even more disastrous affair on the Somme. Compared with the purgatory they were now enduring in front of the German line between Langemark and Zonnebeke those earlier affairs had been almost enjoyable. Here, everything was ruled by one paramount fact, one overriding reality.

      Mud.

      This was not the ordinary friendly mud they had so often plodded through, cursing it as it sucked at their boots, but otherwise ignoring it. The mud of Passchendaele, which lapped both sides of the track and spread as far as the eye could see, was not ordinary mud. It was an obscene yellow slime, a bottomless cesspool, mixed with excreta from a hundred overflowing latrines, and with effluvia from the thousands of bodies which it concealed.

      The first of his fears centred on the battery of German morsers, stubby 21 centimetre cannon which threw a shell weighing nearly 200 pounds. Tucked safely away behind the Hooge ridge, and with good observation from the top of it, these pestilential guns had systematically registered the three available tracks. If a shell landed on them it would kill them all. Almost worse, if it landed near them it would throw them, and the burden they carried, off the duck-board track. Once he went into the foulness beside the track, maimed or whole, could he climb out, could anyone pull him out?

      Even if he succeeded, the instant before he went in, in slipping the rifle off his shoulder, the cumbersome infantry equipment, the thick coat and heavy boots would combine to drag him down and keep him down and he would die, quickly or slowly, in the stinking filth.

      The man lashed to the stretcher, who would die more quickly and inevitably than them, was their platoon sergeant, Chilham. He had been hit in the chest by a German Maxim, when out on patrol the night before. The men who had been with him had succeeded in dragging him back to the forward dressing station where the RAMC corporal, after one look at the damage, had used two out of his precious stock of morphine injections. Happily the sergeant was now unconscious.

      Two hundred yards to go.

      Mungeam dared not voice, even to himself, the hope which had been edging into the corner of his mind. He knew that in moments like this, if you said anything, even to yourself, the malevolent deity who ruled their lives would hear it, and would take prompt measures to avenge their presumption.

      One hundred yards; and now, at last, the comparative safety of the reserve line. For the fiftieth time they had got away with it. And now that he had preserved his life once more, was he going to take advantage of the chance of continuing it that had recently been presented to him?

      It had arrived, two days before, a farewell gift from his friend, Bert Winser, who had been lying beside him in a narrow slit in the front wall of the trench, a slit not much bigger than a grave. Bert had been hit by a splinter from a German shell which had carved out most of his stomach. Mungeam had rolled him into the slit and crept in beside him. His friend was dying and Mungeam, who had seen much death in the last three years, knew that there was no hope for him. Nothing left to add to the three years which had passed since Bert had lied his way into the recruiting centre at the age of seventeen. When the bombardment died down, he would fetch the medical orderly, who would be as helpless as he was.

      Then, just before his life left him, his friend had whispered the address into his ear: the address in the back streets of Béthune that opened a possible avenue of escape. When he was certain that Terry had got the address correctly, he had felt inside the front of his jacket and fiddled out an old tobacco pouch, soaked in blood from his torn body. This he had pressed into Mungeam’s hand, contriving at the same time to squeeze it in a gesture of friendship and farewell.

      Then he had died.

      Later, when Mungeam found an opportunity to open the pouch, tearing off the tape with which it had been sealed, he was not surprised to find that it contained French currency, of an equivalent value in English money of approximately £250. He had not been surprised, because, although neither of them had confided fully in the other, he had guessed that his friend was planning to desert, and that, during his last spell of home leave, he had made the necessary preparations.

      He was under no illusions about the danger involved. A number of men known to him had tried it. All had been picked up by the military police on their way to the coast, and most of them, after a brief and farcical court martial, had been shot.

      It made no difference how excellent their previous conduct had been, how shell-shocked the doctors had certified them to be, the result had been inevitable. The General Officer Commanding, General Haig, God rot his guts, had signed the death warrant, before sitting down, no doubt, to a well-cooked dinner in his nice safe château.

      Would families, he wondered, continue to buy and enjoy Haig’s whisky after the war; or would they be choked by the thought of their sons, scythed down by the German machine guns, in the futile attacks he had ordered?

      Put such thoughts aside. He now had a chance, a fair chance, a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the war and returning home, to weigh against a much slimmer chance of avoiding an obscene finish in that filthy slime. It might end in a court martial after the war, but it was inconceivable that once the war was over such proceedings would end in a sentence of death. Imprisonment, maybe. But who cared about that? One fact only was diverting him from this perilous course: it was the news which had come to them that morning. They were due for a break. They had all heard that it was their last day of front-line duty. They would go back for a time to base camp, and take up life where they had left it off.

      There might even – golden thought – be a forty-eight hour pass when he would hope to find Marianne, the girl that Bert had introduced him to. He had lain beside her, on the previous occasion, and talked to her about his hopes and fears. She seemed more interested in them than in what he had come to her bed to do.

      Such pleasant thoughts and hopes were now shattered.

      ‘You six men,’ said Captain Causton, ‘as soon as you’ve seen the MO about Sergeant Chilham, about turn and get back as quick as you can.’

      Guessing the reason for their surprise and resentment – with relief coming next day they had expected to remain overnight in the reserve trench – he added, ‘Our relief’s been postponed. Maybe two or three weeks before our replacements can get here. Some fuck-up in the staff work.’ He had as little use for the staff as the other front-line soldiers. ‘Bad luck. The fortune of war.’

      Lance-Corporal Mungeam turned round without saying what he thought – which may have been as well – and followed five unhappy men onto the filthy duck-board track.

      He was no longer in any doubt. Fate had stepped in and made up his mind for him.

      Captain Causton had been unduly pessimistic. They were relieved six days later and three days after that Mungeam secured his precious leave pass.

      The dusk had already closed down as they drove into the outskirts of Béthune. Sergeant Samways, who was in charge of the party in the truck, announced, ‘We start the evening with a drink in that little caff in the corner of the square, right?’

      ‘If it’s the one I’m thinking of,’ said Corporal Berry, ‘it’s the only bloody place in this whole bloody town where they don’t charge you double for every bloody drink and pick your pocket while they’re wishing you a fond farewell.’

      Mungeam interrupted the laughter to say, ‘I’ll join you later. There’s something I want to do first.’

      This was no surprise to anybody. They all knew about Marianne.

      ‘Bear in mind what the padre told us,’ said Berry. ‘A clean mind means a clean body’

      They were still guffawing about this piece of advice when Mungeam dropped off the back of the truck. The directions Bert had given him were easy to follow. Straight through the meat market, down the long street that runs out of the end of it. Second on the left, fourth on the right. Second house on the left in that street. Ask for Henri.

      In the piping times of peace the meat market had been a busy, prosperous place. Now it was an empty, shabby square bounded by a line of shops, most of them with windows and doors boarded. The few that were still open announced the sale of horse meat.

      Trying to look as though he had important business at the far end, Mungeam plodded steadily ahead. The long straight street that led out of the northern end of the square was easy enough to locate, as was the second turning to the left, which ran downhill into the growing darkness. By the time he had fumbled his way down it, past three openings that were more passages than turnings, he assumed that the fourth one must be the one he wanted.

      He felt his way by counting the front doors, all of them flush with the pavement. It was as dark as the nether pit. Looking up he could see a few stars in the narrow space between the houses on each side. He thought of the stars which had guided the wise men, but these ones were not sent to guide him. Rather they were signalling his departure from the fearful clarity of life as he had known it, to the even more fearful uncertainty of the future.

      Was it too late to turn back, even now?

      He could find Marianne and, once more, pour out into her ears all his hopes and fears. She would be sympathetic, he was sure. More than sympathetic. It had seemed to him that she had almost been encouraging him, as she had encouraged Bert, to take the decisive step.

      No. No going back.

      The windows of the house he had now reached were all shuttered, but there was a chink of light, showing that someone was at home.

      He raised the heavy knocker and let it fall with a thud that seemed loud enough to wake the dead. No one stirred. Wrong house, perhaps.

      After a long minute he lifted the knocker again, and brought it down angrily, once, twice, three times.

      Then he saw that the door was opening. Inside, in the dusk of the passage, an old woman was crouching. She was carrying a lantern, which she held up while she examined her visitor. Then she said something in French, which Mungeam assumed was her opinion of people who hammered on her door at night. Then, in clipped, but understandable English, ‘What do you want?’

      ‘I wish to speak with Henri.’

      ‘You wish for his help?’

      ‘Yes. I am looking for help.’

      ‘And you have the money to pay for it?’

      Bert had warned him about that. He had divided his money into two separate wads, of equal amount. Now he handed one over, returning the other to his pocket.

      Without troubling to count the money, the old lady turned round and moved off down the passage. Mungeam guessed that he was being invited to follow her, through the door at the end of the passage and into the room at the back of the house.

      Here the window was not only shuttered, but a blanket had been nailed over the shutters. The crone turned up her lantern a little and placed it on the shelf above the fireplace.

      ‘Well,’ said Mungeam impatiently. ‘What now?’

      ‘Now you remove all your clothes.’

      Chapter Two

      ‘It sounds to me,’ said Tom Braham, as though you’re treading on the skirts of the White Lady.’

      ‘I’m afraid we are,’ agreed Luke Pagan. ‘And she on ours. We try not to trip each other up. Luckily, she works on the north of the railway; we’ve started to concentrate on the south.’

      ‘But it’s the same railway?’

      ‘Certainly. Our bosses seem to like it that way. Now they get two independent sets of reports, it means they can check them against each other. And you have to remember that we can’t, either of us, cover the whole line every hour of the day. There are blank spaces. But, one way and another, not much gets past us.’

      ‘So you and the White Lady co-operate, and don’t compete.’

      ‘That’s right. They’ve got more men on the job, they’ve been longer at it, and they’re better organised. The one way we beat them is that our reports arrive more quickly – much more quickly. Theirs go first to The Hague, then to London, and from there out to France. It’s a totally safe method, but, Lord, it’s slow. Best time ten days. Often two or three weeks. Our reports, when collected, are usually not more than a day or two old.’

      ‘When collected,’ said Braham thoughtfully, ‘Yes, I see. And that’s your job?’

      ‘I’m one of the collectors,’ agreed Luke.

      When he had transferred to the Intelligence Corps from M.I.5 he had found it much to his liking. Hastily stitched together by Colonel Macdonogh at the outbreak of war, it was largely composed of businessmen from the City and the industrial north, with a leavening of dons, public schoolmasters, artists, actors, musicians and lawyers. Distrusted at first by the regular soldiers, it had come, within a year, to be recognised as the most efficient intelligence gathering arm of all the embattled nations.

      A recent change had improved its efficiency even further.

      It had been extracted from piecemeal attachment to different corps, an arrangement that had never worked well, and was now centralised under the army, at Montreuil-sur-mer. Here it had found a settled and adequate home for its operations in the many-storeyed, endlessly passaged, building of the École Militaire.

      Tom Braham, with whom Luke had established an immediate entente, was a barrister with a criminal practice that was just starting to take off. He had joined the Inns of Court Regiment, as a private soldier, within days of war being declared, and had been one of the first men extracted from the ranks by Macdonogh and commissioned into Intelligence.

      The White Lady, the Dame Blanche that he and Luke were discussing was the railway-watching organisation based on Namur and keeping a watch on the line from Lille to Metz; the same important section that British Intelligence now had under observation from the south.

      ‘Speaking for myself,’ said Braham, ‘I prefer quiet stay-at-home jobs. Jobs that I can do from behind a desk. Not chancy expeditions behind the enemy lines. Unless you’ve a positive craving for excitement—’

      ‘Not really,’ said Luke. ‘And it was simple enough to start with. The Air Force dropped you in and picked you up again. Now they’ve started to make difficulties.’

      ‘I’ve always maintained that an independent air force was a nonsense. Air Force and Army should all be part of one organisation.’

      ‘A pity you’re not running the whole show.’

      ‘I’ve often felt the same,’ said Braham modestly.

      That same morning Macdonogh, who had come over from London, summoned Luke to brief him about these changes.

      He said, ‘I suppose one can’t really blame the Air Force. They’ve lost two planes recently, on both occasions doing pick-ups. I took it as high as Trenchard, but he’s an obstinate bugger. You could as easily change his mind, once it’s made up, as change the shape of Table Mountain. Very well. He’ll allow his boys to take you in. Provided they don’t have to go more than fifteen miles over the line they’ll drop you anywhere you like, but he won’t risk a plane to pick you up again.’

      ‘In that case,’ said Luke, trying to sound cheerful about it, ‘it’s up to us to make our own way out. Is that it?’

      ‘In a nutshell. If you don’t think it’s possible, we shall have to devise some other way of getting the reports back. They could go under some sort of neutral cover to London—’

      ‘And be out of date by the time they get back to us here.’

      ‘I’m afraid that’s right. Speed is becoming more important every day. Once Russia threw in the sponge, it was clear that the Germans could and would move troops back to the Western Front and mount what they hope will be a decisive assault. But they’re not stupid. They won’t bring them back openly, or all at once. They’ll concentrate them in forward positions slowly and piece by piece. Then, when they’re quite ready, blow the whistle and come in. I expect you knew that the French nearly got caught that way at Verdun.’

      ‘A rumour to that effect,’ said Luke with a grin, ‘did percolate down to the lower ranks. We understood that it was Papa Joffre who carried the can.’

      ‘He was subject to formal criticism in the Chamber of Deputies, and was lucky to get away with it. If the weather hadn’t broken unexpectedly, the assault would have started a fortnight earlier, before any of his reserves were in position. And the Germans would have been in Paris. So you see—’

      ‘Yes,’ said Luke, ‘I do see. Speed and accuracy. Both essential.’

      ‘Some of the best of the Dame Blanche reports come from watching the stations rather than the line. If a train stops for any length of time, no power on earth is going to keep the men inside the carriages. They swarm all over the platform and the watchers can identify the units.’

      ‘We can’t do as well as that yet,’ said Luke. ‘But we’re learning.’

      ‘You’re doing a good job,’ said Macdonogh, surprising Luke who knew that he was as chary of praise as his fellow Aberdonians of their pennies. ‘And if you can convince me that you’ve a reasonable chance of getting out without Air Force help, I’ll let you go. If not, you stop right where you are.’

      Luke said, ‘When we heard the rumour about the Air Force getting sticky, we all started to work out alternatives. We came to the conclusion that the best way out was through Switzerland. As you know, sir, they aren’t fenced round tight, not like Belgium and Holland. A friend of mine, John Hanover, who’s been that way, tells me that the frontier is marked by trig points and, sometimes, by a single line of wire. But not patrolled, or not regularly. And there’s that very convenient boot-shaped piece—south of the Belfort gap, between Delle and Feldbach—’

      Macdonogh, who was examining the map, said, ‘Yes, I can see it.’ ‘You walk in on the German side, walk across and walk out on the French side. Five or six miles.’

      ‘Aye,’ said Macdonogh, scratching the tip of his large and aggressive nose with his thumb. ‘The way you put it, it looks simple enough, but you’ve got to get down there first. It’s a long way to walk.’

      ‘I wasn’t actually thinking of walking,’ said Luke mildly. ‘Once I’m there, I go everywhere by train.’

      ‘No difficulties?’

      ‘Thanks to your excellent back-up organisation, sir, no real difficulties.’

      He added, with a smile, ‘When

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