‘Verdammte Scheisse!’ Fregattenkapitan von Horn cursed angrily. ‘Damned shit!’ He threw the signal onto his desk, while the young radio officer watched him a little fearfully. ‘So the English swine have got away with it yet again!’
He pushed back his chair and strode over to the window. A group of cadets, totally naked with steam rising from their lithe young bodies, were rolling about in the new snow under the orders of a brawny petty officer. Von Horn nodded his approval. For the sight of all those naked young bodies gave him considerable pleasure.
Watching him as he viewed the candidates engaged in their hardening-up exercise, the young signals officer thought he had never seen such a sinister face as that of his commanding officer. Von Horn’s face was small and soft underneath the white-blond hair, with thin lips that looked as if they might have been painted on, yet no paint could hide their cruelty. But it was von Horn’s eyes which were the most evil. They were hooded and dark, as if they had no depth at all, with an expression of boundless sadism.
Von Horn forced himself to take his eyes off the naked boys rolling and whooping in the snow. He turned and faced the signals officer. ‘So what do we know?’
The other man didn’t answer, for he knew it was a rhetorical question.
‘We know from the signals from London and elsewhere in their accursed England that – one,’ he held up a well-manicured finger with its lacquered nail, ‘that they have seen their king. Two, almost immediately thereafter the two of them’ – again he held up another finger – ‘saw the head of that infamous English Secret Service. Finally, three, they head for the place where that vessel of theirs is berthed and where unfortunately our plans to do away with them at long last misfired. Now’ – he put down his hand and stared at the younger officer with those frightening, evil eyes of his, saying – ‘what does that suggest to you, Herr Leutnant?’
The signals officer felt himself flush slightly. He knew all about his CO’s sexual inclinations. There had been whispered stories in the kasino about young men with painted lips and plucked eyebrows being smuggled into von Horn’s quarters at night; and there was something sexual about von Horn’s look now. God, he told himself, I hope he doesn’t fancy me! ‘Well, sir,’ he stuttered uneasily, ‘they are being sent on a mission… and it must be an important one if they are received by their king.’
‘Genau,’ von Horn said. ‘But what is that mission? In three devils’ name what are those swine up to?’
The young signals officer hesitated, then he chanced it. ‘There’s just one thing, sir, that might be of some significance.’
‘Fire away, man,’ von Horn said eagerly.
‘Well, sir, over the last month the diplomatic wireless traffic between the English consulate and trade mission in Petrograd has increased considerably. The English diplomatic code is not difficult and our people cracked it last year. Most – nearly all these messages are routine. You know, promotions, trade figures and the like.’
Von Horn snapped his fingers impatiently. ‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’
‘Well, sir, but there is part of that traffic that we can’t crack. The code used is not the diplomatic one. We suspect it is a code used by their military intelligence.’ Von Horn was thoughtful for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Is there nothing you can tell me about these mysterious messages?’
‘Only that they have increased in number, sir, over the last month and that they are preceded by a single letter, which we think is the letter “R”.’
‘“R”! Did you say “R”?’ von Horn demanded excitedly.
‘Yes, at least that is what we think the coded first sequence means,’ the young signals officer said hesitantly. ‘Naturally we can’t be completely sure…’ His voice trailed away to nothing. He could see that von Horn was no longer listening.
Von Horn’s brain raced electrically. It had to be that infamous English agent ‘Reilly’. Everyone in the intelligence business had heard of the Russian Jew who maintained he was an Irishman born in Tipperary. He was a crack shot who spoke several languages and had worked for the English for a very long time.
‘Is there anything else, Herr Fregattenkapitan?’ the signals officer asked.
‘Yes. Is there any way that our listening service can detect whether these coded messages are being sent on – to a different place from Petrograd?’
‘Of course, sir. We have our people in Petrograd, too. We pass them the details of what we require and they can signal back what they have found out.’
‘How long?’ he demanded impatiently.
‘Bit difficult to say, sir. But we might have the information today. An “R” signal was sent from London to Petrograd this very morning.’
‘Then off you go,’ von Horn ordered. ‘Let me know the minute you find out. And yes, make our decoding people drop everything else. They have to give immediate priority to the breaking of one of these “R” signals, as you call them. Is that understood?’
‘Jawohl, Herr Fregattenkapitan.’ The young signals officer clicked to attention and went out hurriedly, leaving von Horn alone with his thoughts. It seemed to him that Reilly was still at large in Soviet Russia. There were two centres of power in that enormous country, and von Horn was sure Reilly would be operating from one of the two, either Petrograd or Moscow. Everyone knew that Lenin, the Soviet dictator, was dying in the latter place. Otherwise Russia, at the moment, was at peace; nothing much of import was happening. The balloon would go up once the dictator had died. Then the power struggle would commence. So why was Reilly receiving urgent coded messages now, before Lenin’s death?
Von Horn frowned and walked to the window. A fat sailor, with his beribboned cap at the back of his head, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, was making a half-hearted attempt to clean a path free of snow. Between each push of the broom, he straightened up and rested on its handle. Von Horn shook his head. How slack everything had become under this new socialist republic. In the days of the Kaiser, a lazy sailor like that would have long been in the guardroom.
The thought made him attack the Reilly problem with new urgency. Germany must be made great again, and the only way to do that was to wreck the power of her enemies, France and England and in particular, Russia.
Something was going on in either Petrograd or Moscow which interested the damned English greatly. Hence the increased wireless traffic. Somehow it concerned those two young swine who had wrecked his plans often enough in the past. So one thing was for sure. To reach Petrograd or neutral waters outside the great Russian port, where their mission would surely commence, they’d sail into the Baltic. He clicked his fingers excitedly, face hard, set and determined. That’s where he would take them.
They’d soon talk, once his men went to work on the Englishmen. Why, he had men who boasted they could make ‘even a mummy spill the beans’. Then if whatever they were up to in Russia was in Germany’s interest he’d exploit it. Mind made up, he reached for the red telephone, the one for emergencies. First he called the Water Police. Officially they were to check for illegal cargos and the like on Germany’s rivers and coastal waters. In reality, the police were made up of ex-regular officers and petty officers, who carried out illegal paramilitary functions at sea now that Germany’s navy had been cut so drastically by the victorious Western Allies at the Treaty of Versailles. Swiftly von Horn gave a description of the Swordfish and its two young officers, ordering, ‘They are to be taken alive. Remember, like most Englishmen, they are treacherous and cunning. No dirty trick is too low for them.’
He replaced the phone on its red cradle and glanced furtively around his office, as if he half expected someone to be lurking there, listening. Then when he was completely satisfied that he was really alone, he picked up the phone and said, ‘Operator, get me this number in Stockholm.’ He gave the operator the secret number and, listening to him dial it, he added, ‘Don’t listen in either, Obermaat, when you make the connection. This is most secret.’
Impatiently he waited for the call to come through. Outside, it had started to snow again. The fat sailor with the broom shrugged his chubby shoulders and gave up. He went back inside again. Von Horn shook his head.
The phone shrilled. Von Horn crossed the room and picked it up. ‘Goering?’ he asked. ‘Captain Goering?’
The reply seemed to take a long time in coming and when it did, Goering’s voice was slurred and lifeless. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s me. Goering.’
Von Horn cursed to himself. Captain Goering, the fighter ace who had been the last commander of the Richthofen Squadron at the end of the Great War and who had refused to surrender to the Allies then, was back on dope. After the failure of the Austrian Hitler’s revolt in Munich he had fled to Sweden where his wife lived. Now he was obviously consoling himself with that damned cocaine he sniffed.
‘Listen hard, Goering,’ von Horn said, his normally feline voice harsh and incisive as he tried to force his words through the drug addict’s haze. ‘How many planes have you currently available?’ He meant the remaining planes of the Richthofen Squadron which Goering had ordered to fly to Sweden when the Allies had ordered that the defeated Germany should possess no warplanes. For a while the neutral Swedes had impounded them, but in 1920, as money had changed hands and Sweden was pro-German, they had been released. Now they were kept on a small remote peninsula off the Baltic ready for unorthodox missions.
‘Four,’ Goering said thickly.
‘With pilots?’ von Horn snapped, telling himself it was probably time for Goering to snort another charge of ‘coke’ up his ruined nostrils.
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’ There was a note of interest in his voice.
‘I have a mission for you.’
‘Fire away,’ Goering said.
Swiftly von Horn explained the situation and said, ‘We’re patrolling the mouth of the Baltic with our small boats. I’d like you to run constant patrols, too. Twenty-four hours a day if you can manage it.’
‘Can do,’ Goering answered, and then, ‘What do we do if we sight them?’
‘If they won’t heave to, you will sink them,’ von Horn said harshly.
Goering chuckled malevolently. ‘That will give me the greatest of pleasure.’
‘Good. That’s all, Goering.’
The line went dead and von Horn put the phone down. He sat back in his chair. He had done all he could for the moment. Slowly, very slowly, an evil smile started to flit across his face. Suddenly he felt like a spider that had spun its web. Now his victims were gradually beginning to enter that web. It was a good feeling. This time there would be no escape for the damned Englishmen. On impulse he snapped his palm and fingers tightly together. He had them!