Steele was a brigadier when war started. There had been innumerable attempts at promotion, all successfully resisted. Brigadier Steele was sitting in his office in a house in Maida Hill overlooking the canal. He was awaiting the arrival of another brigadier, from the War Office. What a bloody waste of time on a summer’s day. He watched the large green Humber pull up on the road outside the house two doors further up the street. A civilian-clad figure climbed out of the back seat when the driver had opened the door. The uniformed driver saluted, got back into the Humber, and drove it up the street.
‘Bloody pantomime,’ Steele growled. Damn it, they’d been told not to send official cars here time and again. What was wrong with taking a taxi, except you don’t get a poncy salute when you climb out! He pencilled a note on the top of his day pad. ‘Security of Premises?’ It would remind him to pretend to an appropriate display of anger. It took the other brigadier five minutes to get through Steele’s underground defences; good, that’d show the bastard a thing or two about security. Finally, Major Heseltine opened the door and admitted him. ‘Brigadier Forbes,’ he announced, as if he were a toastmaster at a Masonic dinner. Forbes came in, rush and bounce, pink fingernails, stiff collar, mouth full of teeth. ‘My dear Steele!’ he said, pronouncing the last ‘e’ as a ‘y’. Steele waved him into an arm chair. ‘My dear Forbes,’ he said.
Forbes gave him a slip of paper. Steele signed it, handed it back. Mumbo-jumbo land. Forbes gave him a folder tied with thin yellow string and sealed. The walls of the tents he and Emily used in the Lake District were tied with that colour of string, back in ’35. He broke the seal after giving it a cursory examination, opened the file. In it was a transcript of Belfière’s message. He glanced at the datetime, only three hours previously. ‘Not wasting time, are we?’ he said. When he had read the message, and the notes scrawled on it, he put the signal back into its folder and retied the string. He took a wax wafer from his top drawer and pressed it on the knot. He took the metal insignia from its chamois leather cover in the special pocket of his trousers, placed it in the sealing machine, switched it on, allowed a few seconds for the machine to warm up, then pressed his insignia onto the wafer. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked as he examined the wafer. ‘Are you going to give them the incendiaries they ask for?’ He handed the file back to Forbes, who placed it back on Steele’s desk.
‘We’re going to send in some men,’ he said, quietly.
‘SOE?’
‘This isn’t a job for SOE, old man,’ Forbes said. ‘They need someone they don’t mind losing. Some kind of person up there has wished this job, I’m afraid, onto you!’
Brigadier Steele and Major Rhodes were sitting in the front room of a boarding house in Sittingbourne, Kent, the only house in the street which led to an army barracks of hastily constructed Nissen huts. The camp was a known training ground for infantrymen who had passed the first six weeks of army indoctrination, and there was a constant flow of all ranks and officers up and down the road. No one would have spotted the few men walking towards the barracks who turned off into the drive of the boarding house. The same War Office tabulator that had sifted the personal details of these men also prepared a schedule of their arrivals. All were on time to within a minute. Since the brigadier and Major Rhodes were dressed in civilian clothes, few of the men knew their rank; one or two faces, however, were well known to the major and received a special smile of recognition. By the end of the day the major had seen all he wanted.
‘I could do with a drink now,’ he said.
Together they drove up the A2, then turned off the road into the old world village of Bredgar. It would be their last moment of intimacy until the job was completed.
‘Why do you always give me these jobs?’ he asked. ‘Why don’t you go yourself? You’re a damned sight better at this sort of caper than I am, and a trip abroad would do you good!’
‘Chains of command. Some high-and-mighty in the War Office sets it up, I get you to knock it down. You set things up, and any one of twelve men, selected by tabulator, knocks ’em down again. Believe me, it’s a great temptation to do everything oneself. Don’t think I enjoy sitting here while you swan off abroad. It’s hell sitting here, wondering if you’re bungling something I could have handled perfectly myself. Same way it’s hell for you to watch one of your lads make a balls of something. But that’s the way it has to be.’
‘Why can’t the SOE do this one?’
‘I asked that, but you know what they say, SOE men are in too short supply, too valuable, too specialist, for this sort of job.’
The time had come to break off their intimacy. ‘What are we calling this caper?’ Rhodes asked.
‘404, that’s the job name. You’ll be Special Group 404. Good luck. We’ll give the men you select a pay parade and let them make their way to your training camp after seven days’ leave. You come to my office when you’re ready. And let me repeat it.’
‘What?’
‘Good luck. This time, I get the feeling you may need it.’