Copyright & Information

The Fox From His Lair

 

First published in 1978

Copyright: Juliet Harris; House of Stratus 1978-2011

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

 

The right of John Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

 

This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

 

Typeset by House of Stratus.

 

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

 

 

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

 

 

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

 

John Harris, wrote under his own name and also the pen names of Mark Hebden and Max Hennessy.

He was born in 1916 and educated at Rotherham Grammar School before becoming a journalist on the staff of the local paper. A short period freelancing preceded World War II, during which he served as a corporal attached to the South African Air Force. Moving to the Sheffield Telegraph after the war, he also became known as an accomplished writer and cartoonist. Other ‘part time’ careers followed.

He started writing novels in 1951 and in 1953 had considerable success when his best-selling The Sea Shall Not Have Them was filmed. He went on to write many more war and modern adventure novels under his own name, and also some authoritative non-fiction, such as Dunkirk. Using the name Max Hennessy, he wrote some very accomplished historical fiction and as Mark Hebden, the ‘Chief Inspector’ Pel novels which feature a quirky Burgundian policeman.

Harris was a sailor, an airman, a journalist, a travel courier, a cartoonist and a history teacher, who also managed to squeeze in over eighty books. A master of war and crime fiction, his enduring novels are versatile and entertaining.

A Song

…For the sound of his horn brought me from my bed

And the cry of his hounds which he oft-times led,

For Peel’s ‘View Halloo’ would awaken the dead

Or the fox from his lair in the morning.

 

Yes, I ken John Peel, and Ruby too,

Ranter and Ringwood, Bellman and True;

From a find to a check, from a check to a view,

From a view, to a death in the morning…

‘John Peel’

Old English hunting song

Author’s Note

The Allied invasion of Europe on D-Day, 6 June, 1944, was plagued in the planning stages by a number of mishaps which came very close to causing its postponement. Papers were mislaid or misdirected; men, caught by excitement and enthusiasm, talked too much; even the crosswords in the Daily Telegraph put Security on the alert by using among their clues and answers code names which had been set aside and guarded with the closest secrecy.

The night action off Slapton at the western extremity of Lyme Bay at the end of April provided one of the biggest of all the scares. Ten officers, all of them well briefed as to the plans for the invasion and for the events of the following weeks, were found to be missing, and it was with the greatest alarm that the Allied chiefs viewed the possibility of their having been picked up by the Germans. This disaster was one of the most closely kept secrets of the war – little of it leaked out even to Torquay and the coastal villages round Lyme Bay – and few people know what it led to in the following weeks and its climax on the D-Day beaches.

Little has ever been written about the affair of the Fox and most of it recently came to light in the papers of the late Colonel Linus C Iremonger, of Providence, Rhode Island, USA, on which this novel has been largely based. Colonel Iremonger was the man most heavily involved in the affair but he never spoke about it. He had obviously intended at one time to write a book about it himself as his papers were detailed and frank in the extreme, even to his opinions on the people he worked with. These details have since been confirmed – and embellished – by his old friend, Colonel Cuthbert William Randall Pargeter, of Milton Abbas, Dorset, England, who as a young officer became Iremonger’s deputy in the weeks preceding the invasion.

Colonel Iremonger remained a bachelor without as far as can be ascertained any close relatives. Because of his lifelong taciturnity, further details have had to be sought elsewhere. For information on the virtually unknown disaster in Lyme Bay I am indebted to Mr D B Nash, of the Imperial War Museum’s Department of Printed Books; Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Invasion of France and Germany 1944–5; and General Omar Bradley’s A Soldier’s Story. The information on Ultra was obtained from The Ultra Secret, by F W Winterbotham. For obvious reasons certain names have been changed and the shadowy figure of Colonel Ebert Klaus Reinecke cannot be filled in completely. Inevitably, little was uncovered about him beyond what Colonel Iremonger’s team dug up or reconstructed, and in the holocaust that descended on Germany in 1945 any German papers there might have been referring to him vanished completely.

Part One

From a Find to a Check

 

One

 

As the destroyer drove westwards across the waters of Lyme Bay, the two officers standing by the Carley float lashed to the side of the bridge huddled deeper into the high collars of their khaki coats against the wind that bit sharply at their flesh. As they searched the misty coastline, the ship bucked, taking the tip off a wave, and a slash of spray lifted across the deck, blurring their night glasses and the view of a landing ship packed with infantrymen just visible to starboard, pitching in the heaving sea.

Ashore, a cluster of cottages on a narrow strip of land marked the village of Slapton Sands. Obscured by darkness, it was silent and empty of villagers because the inhabitants had been moved away to enable the troops training for the great invasion of Europe, that everyone knew was coming before long, to practise on a beach as much as possible like the ones they were to attack in France. Nobody liked the added realism of live shells and bullets or their effect on property – least of all the villagers – but in a country which in April, 1944, was bulging at the seams with troops, it had been accepted that if the invasion on which the future of the world depended were to succeed, then sacrifices had to be made.

Indeed, the whole south coast of England had become one vast armed camp, packed with men, all speculating on the date and destination of the assault, and worrying whether, when it came, they would be killed. Perhaps the only things they didn’t know at this late stage of their training were these very facts, and security was so strict that a few days before, at the beginning of the month, a strip of coastline from the Wash to Land’s End had been restricted so that no one, neither civilian nor soldier, could move in or out without a high priority pass.

One of the two officers, wearing the single star of an American brigadier-general, peered at a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘“Slapton,”’ he read. ‘“Unspoiled beach of coarse red gravel, fronting a shallow lagoon and backed by grassy bluffs. Nearby village evacuated.”’ He looked up and stared towards the shore. ‘I guess it’s not so goddam unspoiled now, Linus,’ he said. ‘Not after the first wave hit it yesterday.’

Colonel Linus Iremonger, the second officer, turned. ‘How’d it go, sir?’

‘Okay.’ Brigadier-General George Orme shrugged. ‘The air force was late and everybody was scared in case they hit the infantry as they went in. But it went okay on the whole, I suppose. It’s easier tonight. All the back-up wave has to do is go in and unload as if it was the real thing.’

He stared at the shore. ‘I guess we don’t appreciate what the British are putting up with, with these rehearsals,’ he observed. ‘Now that the blitzes have stopped, the poor bastards have got us.’

Iremonger grunted. Certainly, the Luftwaffe had been driven from the sky in this part of the English Channel and even he was aware of the sense of relief the British felt after enduring the bombing ever since 1940. Now the Luftwaffe was restricted only to desperate snap reconnaissances to discover the route of the invasion and, though recce planes were said to be still getting in over the Thames estuary, west of Dover nothing was ever allowed to approach the build-up of shipping in daylight. When they came at night, the barrage threw up such a weight of steel they were forced inland, to drop their bombs on coastal towns in raids that were mere fleabites compared with the blitzes of 1940 and 1941. There was little talk nowadays about bombing – as though the British preferred to put it from their minds – and, like Orme, Iremonger knew that the growing number of American troops – with their demands on transport, space and the younger female population was taking its place with them as Number One Problem. Not unnaturally, the Americans resented it because they considered they had arrived to save the British from defeat and expected their due toll of admiration, gratitude and tolerance for their different approach to things.

It was something which appeared to worry Orme a great deal.

‘If we win this war,’ he went on, ‘it’ll be as much due to the endurance and good temper of the British civilian as it will to the strength of our army. Travel restricted, communications restricted, whole areas of the countryside restricted. God knows what the poor bastards will find when they come back after it’s all over. Doors kicked in, windows smashed, belongings gone, unexploded bombs and shells and Christ knows what.’

The leaden sea heaved and the mist seemed to thicken with every minute that passed, so that it was barely possible to see the ships to port, starboard and astern. The danger of collision had increased enormously and the voice of the destroyer’s British captain came harshly over the creaking of the vessel and the surge of the water. ‘Warn all lookouts to be on their toes! This is supposed to be only a rehearsal and we don’t want trouble.’

Wisps of sea smoke lifted off the undulating surface of the bay, the mist lying like a grey wall between sea and sky. Out of it the superstructure of a landing craft materialised briefly to port, floating in mid-air as though detached, with its lacing of halyards and aerials. The two Americans stared into the darkness, worried, anxious that nothing should go wrong. With the resources in ships stretched to the limit, they daren’t think of the risk of damaging any of them in an exercise.

Irritatedly, Iremonger brushed at the damp which was gathering in tiny globules of moisture on his coat. It came from the wet West Country mist, which had so often plagued their rehearsals, blurring the horizon, dimming the view of ships and shore; damp, clammy and grey, like ghostly fingers pawing through the darkness, chilling the body and depressing the soul.

‘England,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Goddam weather’s always the same here! If it’s not raining, you can’t see a thing.’

He tucked his head deeper into the collar of his coat, cold, bored, hungry; wishing the war were over and he were back in the States; wishing the invasion had come and gone; in particular, wishing that this specific exercise, Exercise Tiger, were finished and done with.

‘I hate these goddam rehearsals,’ he growled. ‘Nothing ever happens.’

This time, however, something did.

Almost as though to contradict him, as he spoke there was a flash of fire astern of them, a red glow through the mist and spray, and his head jerked round as the thump of an explosion came across the water.

‘What the hell was that?’ he said.

Orme was staring with his glasses, trying to penetrate the darkness. ‘That’s a ship,’ he said.

The glow in the distance seemed to be increasing. Then another came, further away, and they heard the hammer of weapons.

‘Those guys are firing,’ Iremonger said.

‘I didn’t think they were playing craps,’ Orme observed dryly.

Iremonger’s voice became louder. ‘What the hell are they up to? They’re not supposed to be firing yet.’

Orme was staring through his glasses again, his head cocked, listening. ‘That’s a Spandau,’ he said sharply.

‘Here?’

‘I was in North Africa before they sent me here. I know what they sound like.’

As Iremonger turned to look at Orme, he became aware of sudden activity on the bridge above him.

‘Port ten! Full ahead both!’ The captain’s voice barked an order and the officer of the watch repeated it to the engine room. Immediately the deck began to vibrate. The ship heaved as it leapt forward like an excited horse, the eager rumble of its engine room blowers giving it a living animal sound. The bow wave rose, the stern sank, and a plume of white foam lifted fanlike in its wake.

As the vibration increased, Orme and Iremonger stared at each other, puzzled. Then the hammering of gunfire started again, jerking their heads round once more, thumping against their ears. Over the noise of the sea they heard shouts. They were faint, almost like the mewing of herring gulls on the wind, but even so it was possible to distinguish in them a note of fear, panic and bewilderment.

‘What the hell’s happening over there?’ Iremonger snapped. ‘Where the hell did they get a Spandau?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Linus–’ Orme’s voice was harsh and angry ‘–they didn’t! That’s a German gun and I expect it’s a German who’s firing it.’

Iremonger stared at his companion, startled. From the bridge someone shouted and he took a staggering step sideways and clutched for a handhold as the destroyer heeled unexpectedly.

As the ship burst through the murk at full speed, a motor launch, also turning at top revolutions, appeared in front of them. The bow of the destroyer swung, jerked almost, and the launch slid past.

‘Jesus H Christ!’ Iremonger said. ‘That was goddam close!’

The destroyer was swinging now round the stern of a lumbering landing ship wallowing at low revolutions in the heaving sea. A gun banged astern, making them jump, and the ship swung again, laying over on her beam ends as she turned. Then, over to port, they saw a landing craft low in the water and men dotting the misty surface of the sea around it.

‘That goddam thing’s sinking!’ Iremonger said.

The landing craft was burning and men were jumping from it into the water. Further away they could see the second glow, brighter now. Tracer shells whipped by like little slots of light sliding past on rails out of the mist, and the ship’s guns began to bang again, firing into the slots of light which sped through the superstructure. There was a crack and a flash above their heads that made them duck. Flakes of paint fell on them and, as they raised their heads, the ship swung wildly again, one engine going astern to drag her round. Not far away, in the beam of a searchlight, they saw a small boat on fire and sinking.

‘That’s an E-boat!’ Orme snapped. ‘The goddam Germans have got among the convoy!’

‘Here? Right off the English coast, for Christ’s sake?’

‘For God’s sake, why not? It’s the one thing they’ve been trying to do ever since they heard we were coming!’

The burning boat was flat and square and carried the number 151 on its bows. As they watched, a man jumped from its stern, then there was a flash as the petrol tanks blew up with the ammunition. The boat seemed to disintegrate in a coiling cloud of black smoke, and the air was suddenly full of splintered planks of wood, pieces of metal, and parts of human bodies. Burning fragments began to rain down on the destroyer.

‘Get that boat away!’ the destroyer’s captain shouted from the bridge. ‘There are men in the water there!’

The davits whined and the boat dropped, full of shouting men wearing lifejackets. A few minutes later it was back alongside the ship.

A searchlight came on and the two Americans watched, aghast. The landing craft in the distance was just beginning to roll over. They saw the stern lift then slip quietly beneath the waves, leaving the sea covered with scattered debris and the bobbing heads of yelling men laden down with equipment.

‘Those guys are drowning!’ Iremonger shouted furiously.

As he spoke, several small launches appeared, rushing in among the bobbing figures, scrambling nets over the side, their crews busy with lines and boathooks to haul the dripping, gasping soldiers aboard. Other vessels were moving towards the second stricken landing ship and they could hear guns thudding away in the distance.

The destroyer’s boat was bumping against the ship’s side now, and the sailors were pushing at a German, clad in canvas trousers and a white jersey, his soaked cap still on his head, its wet ribbons stuck to his cheek. As he reached the deck, a petty officer grabbed him and dragged him over the rail so that he sprawled in a pool of water. Immediately, he was hauled to his feet and slammed against a bulkhead.

‘Get those other men up here,’ the captain yelled.

‘Sir–’ it was a beardless young sub-lieutenant who shouted back, ‘–they’re all dead!’

The captain turned to the officer of the watch. ‘Have ’em hoisted aboard, anyway,’ he said. ‘Let the sawbones see ’em. Get that boat in. Fast. There’s a war on.’

Iremonger stared over the side at the sailors bent over the sprawled figures in the boat, at the German who was now being pushed along the deck, and then across the water to where ships’ boats, cutters, DUKWs and other small craft dotted the water among the bobbing heads where the landing craft had disappeared.

‘A war on?’ he said in an awed voice. ‘By God, there sure is!’

Two

 

London was grey under the racing scud of cloud. After four and a half years of war, the buildings had a weary look, dark, heavy and scarred with bomb splinters from the blitzes. The people had the same shabby look about them. Their clothes were drab and too well worn, so that the few Americans in the streets looked like wealthy relations in their well-fitting uniforms. Here and there, eagle-eyed American military policemen waited in twos in the entrances of buildings, their white helmets, spats, belts and pistol holsters bright against their dull clothes. Their British counterparts, in their uglier, less comfortable uniforms and clumsy red-topped caps, eyed them with a faint resentment for their better conditions and rations and the success they undoubtedly enjoyed with the girls.

Watching from his window four storeys up from the street, Major Cuthbert Pargeter was frowning. On the other side of the desk, another man stood with his eyes on him. ‘Murder’s always awkward,’ he was saying doggedly. ‘And when it’s connected with the invasion of Europe it’s doubly awkward.’

Pargeter turned. He was a slightly-built man, young, pale-faced and oddly intense. His eyes were pale too, like his hair, so that everything about him had a neat but curiously anonymous effect.

‘You don’t have to tell me, Superintendent,’ he said.

The superintendent’s burly shoulders lifted in a shrug and Pargeter took out a cigarette, offered one to the superintendent and sat down.

The policeman produced a light and sat down opposite him. ‘I think we’re in a hurry on this one, Major,’ he suggested.

Pargeter nodded. ‘I think we are,’ he agreed. ‘And they sent you to me because it was army, not civilian. Right?’

Mollified by Pargeter’s failing to rise to his own bad temper, the superintendent nodded. ‘Bit more than that,’ he said. ‘It’s murder and that’s what I deal with. I brought in that Canadian who killed that kid in Essex–’

‘So I’ve heard,’ Pargeter said. ‘Jolly good show.’

The superintendent was almost beginning by this time to like Pargeter, because praise came rarely from his own superiors. ‘But this is different,’ he said.

‘Why, Superintendent?’ It hadn’t escaped the policeman’s notice that Pargeter never failed to give him his title, something the army persistently failed to do.

‘The murdered man was a British officer.’

‘There’ve been other murdered British officers.’

‘This one had been hanging about the American camps in Devon, doing a lot of talking and asking questions. That area’s been sealed since April 2nd, as you know. And on the night of April 27th and 28th there was a rehearsal off Slapton Sands. The Germans got among the landing craft.’

‘I heard that.’

‘Down there now, security’s so tight nobody wants to know us. So I’ve been told to turn over everything I’ve got to your department. It’s in your lap, Major. The Americans are making it too hard for us. They’re keeping things so secret down there, they’re having to spy on each other to find out what’s happening.’

Pargeter’s thin nose gave an audible sniff. ‘What makes you think they won’t make it hard for me?’

‘At least you’ve got the War Office behind you.’

The superintendent shrugged and Pargeter sighed. ‘Better tell me what you know,’ he said. ‘Motive for a start.’

The superintendent gestured ‘Well, his wallet was found beside him – empty. But it wasn’t robbery because his watch was still on his wrist and it was a valuable one.’

‘Name?’

The superintendent pushed a file across. ‘It’s all in there. Everything we know. Name of Dunnaway. Captain Arthur Clarke Dunnaway. Pay Corps. He was supposed to be stationed up here in London. So what was he doing down in Portsmouth?’

‘Is that where he was found?’

‘On a bomb site near the docks. For a man who was stationed in London he seems to have spent a lot of time moving about. His unit says he was an accountant and his job was to check accounts. There’s been a lot of fiddling with funds – there always is, of course – but his work had nothing to do with the Americans and he seemed to spend a lot of his time in hotels and he always seemed to be in the company of American officers.’

‘Homosexual, do you think?’

‘That’s as far as I’d got when I was told to hand it over to you.’

‘Any suggestions as to where I should start?’

The superintendent shrugged. ‘Down there,’ he said. ‘We’ve checked here in London. It’s in the file. Before he was called up into the army, he had a job with a firm of accountants in Woking. Thirty-three years old. Degree from Cambridge as well as his accountancy letters.’

‘Sounds bright.’

‘I think he was bright. He must have been. Immediately he joined the army, he was posted to London. He didn’t do initial training like everybody else, but went straight to the War Office.’

‘Do they have anything on him?’

‘They say he was an accountant. Full stop. They say they know no more about him than we do. Because of his ability, he was given a sort of roving commission and had been on the move round the country ever since. He didn’t seem to do a lot of accounting.’

‘Oh?’

‘There was a team worked with him. A lieutenant, a sergeant and two men – all Pay Corps.’

‘Do they know anything about him?’

‘No.’ The policeman stubbed out his cigarette. ‘His men seemed to do the nose-to-the-grindstone stuff while he just wandered about talking to people.’

‘Sometimes that’s a good way for a detective – any sort of detective, even an accountancy detective – to work. As I’m sure you’ve found out more than once yourself.’ As the superintendent shrugged again, Pargeter leaned forward. ‘Home background?’

‘Nothing very unusual. Father was a top civil servant who’d retired but returned to work in 1939. He was killed with his wife in the blitz in 1940. Dealt with foreign affairs, it seems. The son did very well at school and his degree was in European languages.’

‘Was it now? Which?’

‘French, Spanish – and German.’

‘Married?’

‘No.’

‘Girlfriends?’

‘None we’ve found. Seems to have been a loner.’

‘Wonder what American officers had, that our people didn’t have.’

‘Money, I expect.’

‘Or information. Where was he last heard of?’

‘Plymouth, April 24th.’

‘I’ll start there. Who’s the American I should contact? There must be one.’

‘Chap call Iremonger. Colonel Linus C Iremonger.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Security.’

‘I’ll go and see him.’

The superintendent grinned unexpectedly. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said.

Three

 

‘One hundred ninety-seven sailors; four hundred forty-one soldiers. That’s a lot of men, Colonel. That’s a lot of men to die in something that wasn’t the real thing!’

Colonel Iremonger looked round at the speaker, his mouth twisted sourly. The other officer had come down from London and, since he was a logistics specialist and unlikely ever to risk his own neck in battle, the comment had a bitter flavour for Iremonger.

‘They weren’t even trying to get ashore on French soil,’ the officer went on. ‘They were trying to get ashore here. On Slapton Sands! And nobody was shooting at them. Except, that is, those goddam E-Boats. And six hundred thirty-eight men is a lot of dead men, especially since most of ’em were engineers who’re going to be badly missed when the real thing comes up.’

Colonel Iremonger scowled and turned away to stare at the dead man at his feet. He was an officer, lying in a pool of water left by the receding tide, face down in the sand, still wearing a lifejacket and still carrying the equipment that had not given him a chance when he had found himself swimming for his life.

Iremonger lifted his head and looked at the steep slopes of the Devon and Dorset hills, purple under the low cloud, then he turned to the sergeant who was kneeling by the corpse. ‘Got his name, Weinberger?’ he asked.

‘Yessir.’

‘Ticked him off?’

‘Yessir.’

‘How many’s that make?’

‘Six, sir.’

Iremonger frowned. He was a short burly man with a blue emery of beard on his square chin. He looked like a boxer and though, like all Americans, he wore a well-cut uniform, his somehow didn’t seem to fit him and looked as though his muscles were bulging out at every angle. His eyes were hot and dark and angry.

He lit a cigar and straightened up. Along the tide line in the easterly wind were other groups of men, mostly Americans but also a few British and Polish who’d been brought in to help, grouped about sprawled figures lying on the sand. There was a huddle of jeeps higher up the beach, an ambulance and several covered lorries. Another group of men was busy lifting a corpse wrapped in a blanket into the back of one of them.

‘Nearly seven hundred men,’ the logistics officer went on with the persistence of a terrier at a rat hole. ‘For God’s sake, that’s a pretty high rate even for a shooting war, let alone an exercise! Seven hundred, Colonel! Seven hundred!’

Iremonger took his cigar out of his mouth. ‘Listen, son,’ he said with ill-concealed impatience. ‘For Pete’s sake, stop saying that! You sound like a professional mourner. If we have no more than seven hundred dead when we go into Europe, I don’t think anybody’ll complain, except the guys who’re dead. Now shut up and go away. I’ve got things to do. Important things.’

The logistics officer’s eyes flashed; then he gestured at the dead man. ‘More important than this?’ he demanded.

‘Yeah!’ Iremonger’s jaw stuck out. ‘More important than this. Much more important than this.’

The logistics officer turned away, affronted, and went to find someone who was more prepared to listen to his indignation. Iremonger stared after him; then he realised the sergeant kneeling by the corpse was waiting for him. He turned and clicked his fingers. The sergeant handed him a waterproof packet he’d taken from the inside pocket of the dead man’s blouse and he pushed it into a canvas bag he held.

‘Four to go,’ he said half to himself. ‘Four to go.’

 

The wind was still cold, whipping along the broad stretch of sand, full of dampness and chill. Along the tide line, as Iremonger and his sergeant moved towards them, men were collecting lifebelts and equipment, which had been washed up by the sea.

‘How many have they found, Sergeant?’ Iremonger asked. ‘At the last count.’

‘Pretty well all of them now, sir,’ the sergeant said.

‘Except the four we want.’

‘Think the Germans got a tip-off, sir?’

Iremonger’s eyes narrowed. ‘They were certainly prowling around looking for something.’

‘What’s General Bradley think, sir?’

Iremonger chewed his cigar. ‘What do you think he goddam thinks?’ he snorted. ‘He was at sea like I was and didn’t even know what had happened till he was told. He knows what we’re up against. It was the general who insisted on a thorough count being made.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Orders from the high altar. We’ve got to account for everyone who’s missing.’

‘A dead man’s a dead man, sir.’

‘I guess these are different.’

A jeep detached itself from the group of vehicles higher up the beach and headed towards Iremonger. The man beside the driver was Orme, the brigadier-general who had been aboard the destroyer with him.

Iremonger lifted his hand in salute and Orme nodded in reply as he climbed out.

‘’Morning, Linus,’ he said. ‘How are we doing?’

‘Four to go, sir,’ Iremonger said. ‘We’ve just picked up number six.’

‘I don’t have to tell you how important it is that we account for every one of them.’

‘No, sir, you don’t.’

‘You know why, of course?’

‘Some of it, sir. They’re Bigot officers.’

Orme took Iremonger’s arm and drew him aside beyond the hearing of the sergeant and the driver of the jeep. ‘Know what Bigot officers are?’ he asked.

‘No, sir. I have their names, ranks and numbers but I guess I don’t know what they are.’

‘I’ll tell you,’ Orme said. ‘With the invasion, the usual top secret classification was considered inadequate for the more critical details, and these were placed under a super-secret classification known as “Bigot”. Officers authorised to have access to such plans had special clearances which entitled them to be known as “bigoted”. Ten of them were lost on Exercise Tiger and every one of them knew the invasion plans.’

‘All of ’em, sir?’

‘All of ’em. Most people – me, for instance – know bits. A little here and a little there. We each know our own particular area and our own particular job. These guys knew the whole lot and they had their documents with them.’

‘The plastic packets, sir?’

‘Sure. The plastic packets. They were the guys who knew where everything fitted, how everything co-ordinated, times, places, numbers, how we’re going to get ashore, where we’re going to get ashore, how we’re going to whip the Germans, and which way we’re going to go when we break out of the beachhead.’

Iremonger whistled. ‘That sure is some responsibility they were carrying,’ he said.

‘Exactly. There were ten German E-boats and we only sank one, so, for all we know, one of the others might have picked up survivors, one of them one of our Bigot officers. He might have been dead but it wouldn’t matter either way because most of them had enough documents on them to blow the whole show. We therefore have to know whether they were picked up or not because, if they were, the whole goddam plan for the invasion’s on the line.’

Iremonger frowned. ‘Will it have to be changed sir? That sounds one hell of a job.’

‘Not impossible, Linus.’ Orme shrugged. ‘Difficult, but not impossible. The point is that if the Krauts did pick up one of these officers, then things must be changed. If they didn’t, we’d be wiser to leave them as they are. That’s why we have to account for every goddam one. Changes now could ruin the whole shebang, because we don’t really have time this year to set up anything different.’

Iremonger chewed on his cigar. ‘Well, we’re doing what we can, sir. I’ve been working with the Limey navy at Plymouth on currents and drift, getting their advice on where to look. They’re just beginning to appear in numbers. I guess we’ll find them all in the end.’

‘If the Germans didn’t find them first.’ Orme turned back towards the jeep. ‘Keep me informed, Linus.’

‘Sure will, sir.’

Orme began to climb into the jeep; then he stopped and turned. ‘Oh, one thing,’ he said. ‘There’s a British officer waiting to see you when you’ve finished for the day. He’s Security same as you, so you’ll maybe have something in common.’

Iremonger doubted it. He hadn’t so far discovered that he had anything in common with the British. Their goddam country was too small and the British were stuffy, slow and lacking in what he called get-up-and-go.

‘Guy called Pargeter,’ Orme said.

‘Is he going to work with me?’ Iremonger asked.

‘No, Linus. He’s following a line of enquiry of his own. It just happens to cross ours, that’s all.’

‘I’m busy, General,’ Iremonger objected. ‘Can’t he wait?’

‘No, Linus, he can’t. I know you’re not very fond of the British but you might remember occasionally that they were fighting this war – in the front line – for two years before we came into it.’

‘If they’d been ready, they’d not have got in the mess they did.’

‘For God’s sake, Linus, we didn’t do so damn well ourselves at Pearl Harbour! And you might not have noticed all the housewives queuing up with their ration books for food. Have you seen American housewives queuing up for food? We’ve invaded their country. American privates earn three times as much as the British. An American staff sergeant’s pay equals a British captain’s. And a lot of that dough’s invested in chasing British girls – even British wives. It’s a tribute to their civility that they endure us with good will. So see this guy, Linus, and give him what he wants.’

 

Since bodies had been found along the whole coast from Start Point as far east as Lyme Regis, Iremonger had established a temporary headquarters at Dawlish on the coast south of Exeter, which was about halfway between the two extremities of his search. It was a room in a set of offices belonging to the town council and his equipment consisted of little more than a table and a telephone, with two or three men to man them. The officer cradling an ash plant and waiting on a stiff-backed chair as he returned looked English enough with his pale hair and eyes to make Iremonger feel ill, and he knew at once that he was certainly not his type. Iremonger’s types were all burly men, strong-drinking men handy with their fists, headlong men who knew where they were going. The Englishman was slight, quiet and colourless, and Iremonger decided sourly that he probably hadn’t even started to shave.

The Englishman rose and offered his hand. To Iremonger it felt like a warm dead fish, and maliciously he grasped it and squeezed hard. To his surprise, the Englishman squeezed back with equal vigour and the two of them stared at each other, their hands locked, each trying to sum the other up.

‘Pargeter,’ the Englishman said quietly. ‘Cuthbert Pargeter.’

Oh, Jesus, Iremonger thought. Cuthbert!

‘Iremonger,’ he growled. ‘Linus Iremonger. Linus C Iremonger.’

‘I’m investigating the murder of a British officer,’ Pargeter went on. ‘A Captain Dunnaway. He seems to have had a lot of friends among your people. He was always with them.’

‘Yeah? What can I do?’

‘Probably nothing. Just making my number with you, that’s all. Mustn’t tread on any toes, y’know. Might have to ask for a little help.’

Iremonger looked quickly at the Englishman, suspecting a leg pull, but there was no hint of amusement on the solemn face and he noticed suddenly that, in spite of the narrow head, Pargeter’s face had unexpected sharp planes and angles and that there seemed to be a bursting energy about him.

‘I’m pretty goddam busy,’ he said. ‘Involved with the invasion.’

‘Pretty busy myself,’ Pargeter pointed out mildly. ‘And I’m involved with the invasion, too.’

‘I thought you said murder.’

Pargeter blinked. ‘At the moment we’re wondering if the feller was a homosexual. You’ll be aware that homosexuals are always pretty tricky. Chatter too much and all that. Lay themselves open to blackmail.’

‘I know that,’ Iremonger growled. ‘I was a policeman before I got into this outfit.’

‘So I heard.’ Pargeter blinked. ‘The general told me. He also told me what you were doing and why you weren’t in the office when I first called.’

It seemed to Iremonger that the general was a bit too quick to shoot off his mouth.

‘How many have you found?’ Pargeter asked.

‘More than half. Around four hundred.’

‘I meant Bigot officers.’

Iremonger scowled. ‘Nine, now,’ he said. ‘Why?’

Pargeter blinked. ‘Occurred to me that our friend, Captain Dunnaway, might have been blackmailed into passing on information. If he was a homosexual, that is, and if he had any information.’

‘About Exercise Tiger?’

‘Hadn’t it occurred to you, Colonel?’

AzaleaAzalea

Iremonger paused. ‘I was aboard HMS Azalea,’ he said.

Pargeter sat staring at his feet for a while as Iremonger finished. ‘Nasty,’ he commented.

Iremonger scowled. He had long since privately laid the blame at the door of the Royal Navy. In his heart of hearts, he wasn’t sure that he was being fair, but he was a headlong man and he didn’t often stop to think of fairness.

‘Somebody slip up?’

‘Christ knows,’ Iremonger said. ‘Mebbe someone was depending too much on radar while the Krauts were using Mark I eyeballs, and when one of the destroyers had to turn back with engine trouble, it wasn’t thought necessary to replace it.’ He scowled. ‘We’ve identified the Germans – they came from the 5th and 9th E-boat flotillas at Cherbourg.’ He indicated the paper he’d passed over. ‘You have the casualty figures there. Most of ’em came from the 4th Combat Engineer Battalion and they’re going to be missed when we land in France.’

As Iremonger became silent, there was a knock on the door and Sergeant Weinberger put his head round.

‘Number ten’s turned up, Colonel,’ he said. ‘A Polish unit with the British Second Army east of Lyme were brought in to help and they’ve just reported it.

‘Is it complete?’ Iremonger asked. ‘Papers there?’

‘Far as I can make out, sir. I told them they weren’t to touch a goddam thing. They said they hadn’t. It’s at the Weymouth end of the bay and there’ll be a jeep-load of Snowdrops waiting outside Lyme Regis to guide us to it when we arrive. They’re fixing lights, screens, and all the necessary vehicles.’

Iremonger gave a sigh of relief. ‘Well, thank God for that,’ he said. ‘Tell ’em in the office to inform the general. He’ll want to know. Then have the jeep brought round. I’m going over there.’

As the sergeant’s head disappeared, Pargeter reached for his cap and walking stick. ‘Mind if I come, too?’ he asked.

Iremonger minded very much, but he remembered the general’s warning. ‘I guess I can’t stop you, buster,’ he said ungraciously.