The British Consul tugged his long nose and said somewhat ponderously, ‘How could it happen, you ask? How could obviously Hun planes from the last show attack you from Swedish territory? I shall tell you.’ He stared hard at the two young men in their salt-stained civilian clothes.
‘In this year of 1924 anything can happen. Europe and the Near East are in total disarray. The old empires, the German, the Russian, the Turkish, have disappeared. With them the certainties of politics have vanished, too. In their place we’ve got lots of little states. Look at the Baltic seaboard alone: we’ve got four new national states. Here race fights race and religion fights religion or creed.’ He sighed like a sorely tried man and mopped his brow with a big flowered silk handkerchief. ‘None of the surviving great powers are prepared to do anything about the situation. Even if we, the British, have to do what we can, unofficially. So what do countries like Sweden do? I’ll tell you. They turn a blind eye to things, especially if by doing something they might endanger their trade with Germany.’ He looked through the window of his office at the snow falling outside in a solid white sheet, as if the snowstorm was yet another burden he was forced to bear, and sighed. ‘I expect the old Empire will come through in the end. But it’s all very difficult, very, very difficult.’
The freighter had finally gone down half a mile out of Malmö, the port at the most southerly tip of Sweden. With a violent lurch which had nearly thrown the shivering, frozen crew of the Swordfish from their perch on the two bullet-holed crates, the ship had started to take in even more water. For a few minutes Smith had feared the freighter might well keel over, but luckily for them and their precious crates it hadn’t. Instead it had gone down fairly evenly and the crates had simply floated away, while all around the Swedes had threshed the freezing water frantically in their attempts to get into the lifeboats before they froze to death.
In the pitch-darkness it had been difficult to steer the unwieldy crates using boat hooks as oars. But once they had spotted the lights of Malmö harbour, it had been easier. At two in the morning, chilled to the bone, and exhausted from the back-breaking work of keeping the crates going in the right direction, they had landed on the strand just outside the harbour, where they had managed to light fires from driftwood and warm themselves. ‘Heaven help a frigging sailor on a night like this,’ Ginger Kerrigan had proclaimed as he had held his frozen, chapped palms up to the first flames of the fire. ‘Why didn’t I join the frigging brown jobs?’ He meant the army. It was a sentiment with which they had all heartily agreed.
At first light Smith had ventured into the port and with the aid of those much-sought-after ‘Horsemen of St George’, he managed to get one of the many stallholders who catered for the local seamen to sell him two large thermos flasks filled with hot water and tea, plus a generous portion of rum. ‘Teepunsch,’ the stall owner had chortled happily after pocketing the sovereign. ‘Very good… very good.’
It was indeed. It had put new heart in the men. Their spirits had risen immediately. Now, full of teepunsch and the ham rolls which Smith had bought later, they were sheltering in a makeshift lean-to between the crates, while Smith and Bird reported to the Consul.
The Consul, who also acted as the local passport control officer, which was the usual cover for one of C’s agents abroad, had already reported their whereabouts to Queen Anne’s Gate. Now he commenced their briefing. ‘I have already made arrangements for halftracks—’
‘Halftracks, sir?’ Smith broke in almost immediately. ‘What are those?’
The Consul said, ‘In the kind of winters we get out here, nothing but tracked vehicles can move on the roads. So the Swedes have lorries which are wheeled and tracked – only way to get about in this damned snow.’ He sighed yet again. ‘What I wouldn’t give to be on some desert island at this moment, surrounded by dusky maidens! God, all that damned snow. No wonder the Swedes are always killing themselves. ‘Where was I, now?’
‘You’re providing us with these – er – halftracks,’ Smith prompted.
‘Oh, yes. They’ll get you across the country to Sundsvall. There you’ll find a coastal freighter waiting to take you across to Finland. The sooner you’re out of this damned country the better. The Finns are, on the whole, pro-British. At all events, since they freed themselves from the Russians, they’ve been anti-Russian. You’ll be safer there.’
Smith nodded his understanding and asked, ‘What about the drivers of the halftracks?’
‘My own people,’ the Consul replied promptly. ‘Jose and Pedro – brought them back with me as servants when I was posted here from Portuguese Africa. Most reliable.’
‘Africans, sir?’ Dickie Bird asked, a little surprised.
‘Of course, utterly loyal. Wish some of our own people in Africa and India were that loyal. Trust ’em with my life.’
Smith shot Dickie a glance and knew he was thinking the same. God knows what Chiefie Ferguson’s reaction was going to be. ‘Do they speak the lingo?’ he asked the Consul.
‘Yes, some. Enough at least to get whatever you may need till you get to your destination.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Just one more thing.’
‘Sir?’
‘At Sundsvall, you’ll be joined by someone important, namely,’ he lowered his voice even further, ‘the wife of Sidney Reilly. She knows his plan. She’ll give you further instructions.’
‘Have you met her, sir?’ Smith asked quickly.
‘Yes, I have. She is a very beautiful woman indeed. A swell dish, as they used to say when I was in the States.’ He smiled for the first time since they had met him, as if at some fond memory. ‘But a dangerous woman. Can’t put my finger on it exactly.’ The Consul pursed his lips. ‘But dangerous… just like her husband, I suppose. All right then, I’ll ring for Jose and Pedro.’
The two huge half-tracked trucks churned to a stop. The snow was pelting down in a white fury. Jose and Pedro, muffled up in cheap furs, grinned from behind the wheels of their heated cabs.
Smith looked at the sky, heavy with snow, and said, ‘Thank God for those tracks. This little lot looks as if it’s going to continue all day.’
‘Yes,’ Dickie agreed. ‘All the same, it’ll give us the cover we need. Remember what his nibs the Consul said, ‘Don’t trust anyone in this damned country. And mind your backs.’
‘Yes, a lot of people seem to have said that to us of late. All right, let’s get on with it…’
One hour later they were on their way with the two Africans hunched over their wheels, peering through the whirling snow, while next to them, one in each cab, Dickie Bird and Smith worked the newfangled windscreen wipers by hand, trying vainly to keep the plate of glass clear.
In the back, the men hunched around the big crates that took up most of the space in the two halftracks, with sacks pulled over their heads trying to keep warm the best they could. Most of them had lapsed into a cocoon of silence. It was too much of an effort to attempt to talk in this freezing snowstorm. But the two old shipmates Ginger Kerrigan and Billy Bennett talked and smoked their beloved Woodbines as their halftrack followed the first one, its tracks churning up a white, flying wake behind the vehicle.
Ginger said, ‘I think this one is gonna be real hairy, Billy. Won’t have much time for the old grumble and grunt.’
‘Not much grub either. I can’t stomach that raw fish these Swede-bashers scoff.’ He sighed and added, ‘They’re allus hairy ones, Ginger, but the skipper’ll get us through like he allus done afore. Him and Mr Bird are real gents.’
Ginger rubbed the snow off his face yet again. ‘Yer,’ he agreed, ‘I ’spect yer right. But our luck can’t hold out for ever—’ He stopped short and sat up suddenly. ‘Hey, what’s that?’ he said sharply-
‘What’s what?’
‘I thought I saw summat out there, you great pudden,’ Ginger answered and pointed to the left, to where they knew the mountains of central Sweden started to rise.
‘And what’s the matter with ye, mon?’ CPO Ferguson asked, alerted by the sharpness of Ginger’s voice.
‘I thought I saw something out there, Chiefie.’
‘Ye ken what thought did. He thought he’d shat hissen and he had.’ The old petty officer laughed at his own humour. ‘Weel then, mon, what did ye think ye saw?’
‘Something moving fast like we are. Just caught a glimpse of it, Chiefie. Now I’ve lost it. But I swear I did get a butchers of it.’
CPO Ferguson could see that the young Liverpudlian was not trying to take a rise out of him, as he often did. Ginger Kerrigan was sincere. So he said, ‘Och, who’d be out in this wilderness an’ in this weather? All the same, we’ll keep our eyes peeled.’
‘Like tinned tomatoes,’ Sparks said cheekily and then fell silent when Ferguson looked at him – hard.
‘We can nae afford to take chances. We’ll take turns as lookout. You can start off, Kerrigan. First watch.’
‘Allus ruddy me!’ Ginger exclaimed, but without rancour. He wrapped the sack more closely around his shoulders and then, sheltering behind the cab the best he could, he commenced his watch. But the snowy waste, what he could see of it, remained obstinately empty.
Just before darkness fell, they came to a hamlet; a collection of wooden huts on the edge of a fjord, with upturned boats everywhere and nets hanging up, ready to be mended when the storm abated. But as Jose, who was driving Smith’s halftrack, started to slow down, the latter wondered that there was no one in sight. Surely, he told himself, despite the snowstorm there should be somebody in sight. There were no lights in the windows of the huts either. Nor was there any smoke coming from their chimneys.
Smith turned to Jose, hunched over his wheel, his face set and intent on driving, for in the soft fresh snow the halftrack tended to skid. ‘Jose, have you any idea of how far it is still to Sundsvall?’
Jose flashed a look at his speedometer and did a quick sum. ‘He eighty kilometres away perhaps, boss,’ he answered, still not taking his eyes off the way ahead.
‘Eighty kilometres… that’s fifty miles,’ Smith said to himself and made his decision. He couldn’t subject the men to a night drive in these terrible conditions. Besides it would be too risky. They would see if they could find shelter and some warm food, even if it was only fish, in the lonely hamlet. ‘All right, Jose,’ he commanded, ‘stop over there – near that bigger hut.’
‘Don’t like him, this place, boss,’ Jose said. ‘He smell bad.’
Smith laughed softly at the driver’s obvious fear. But he told himself there was something strange, perhaps even a little uncanny, about this little place in the middle of nowhere.
Jose braked to a stop and with a groan of relief, Smith opened the cab door and dropped stiffly to the snow. Behind, the second big halftrack slithered to a halt as well. ‘Everybody out,’ Smith commanded, wiping the wet snowflakes from his face. ‘CPO Ferguson, you stay behind and keep an eye on the halftracks with the drivers, please.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ Ferguson answered.
Smith shook his head in mock wonder. Then, followed by the rest, he stamped through the ankle-deep snow to the first hut. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. Finally, as all around him the crew shivered and stamped their feet in the freezing cold, Smith turned the door handle.
It opened to reveal a large room, bare of furniture save a table and chairs and a rough couch in the corner. But the place was agreeably warm due to the tiled oven in the comer with a heap of split logs piled up next to it. Hastily Smith walked over to it and felt the tiles. They were still warm. Someone had obviously been heating the stove quite recently.
Dickie Bird pushed in from outside. ‘Just had a dekko at the other places – and they’re all empty. Bit like the mystery of the Marie Celeste, ain’t it? And, oh, I found this.’ Suddenly his bantering tone had vanished as he held up what he had been carrying behind his back. It was a small axe, probably used for chopping up the firewood for the stoves. But this particular axe had been used for more than chopping up wood, for its blade was red with congealed blood. ‘It could have been used for doing some animal to death, or it could…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but all of them knew what he meant.
For a long moment there was a heavy silence. Finally Smith broke it with a decisive, ‘Well, we’re staying here all the same. We’ll bunk down in this one hut. We’ll post a double sentry, changed every hour, and be on our way at first light tomorrow. Now come on, lads, let’s get some of those tins of M and V opened and get a good hot stew going. That’ll put some life back into us. We’ll wash it down with tea and whisky.’ He tapped his pocket which contained his hip flask.
But even Billy Bennett, the crew’s glutton, was not cheered up by the prospect of hot food and drink. His face remained as glum and apprehensive as those of the rest. Somewhere outside in the snowy waste a wolf began to howl. Ginger Kerrigan shivered violently and it wasn’t just with the cold.