Authors: Andrew Mackay
Hook was speechless. “I’m…I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t know.”
“There’s no need to be sorry, Richard,” Mason said. “The War was a long time ago. These things happen during wars.” He took another sip of whiskey. It felt as if a small fire was burning in his stomach. It was warm and reassuring. “If my step father had not met my mother then we may have all died.”
Stepfather, Hook said to himself. So Mason’s father as well as his mother were Boers. He had always assumed that Roger Mason was Paul Mason’s natural father. He had never had any reason to assume otherwise. “I guess so…terrible things happen in wars…” Hook said lamely. He knew that it was an inadequate response, but what could he say? It was perfectly true: terrible things did happen in wars.
“So, why did you come to see me?”
“Well, in light of what you’ve just told me, I don’t know if I should tell you,” Hook joked. At least, he hoped that it sounded like a joke.
Mason laughed good-naturedly. “I’m still the same person, Richard. I’m still my father’s son.”
Yes, Hook thought to himself. But that’s part of the problem-which father was he the son of?
“Trust me,” Mason said.
Oh well, Hook said to himself. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’ve been sent to recruit members for a Resistance cell…
“Go on…”
“A small, select four person team. You were to be the leader and you were to choose three other members. Edinburgh thought that your position as an Inspector in the Specials would be the perfect cover.”
“I see.” Mason swirled the contents of his glass as he thought. “Are there any other cells in Hereward?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Of course there are, Mason said to himself. How else would you have been able to get here? You certainly didn’t walk all of the way from Scotland. “You’re right, Richard. It would be the perfect cover. Especially now that I’ve been promoted to chief inspector. I do have a position of responsibility and power here and I agree that it would be the perfect cover for a leader of the Resistance…does anyone know that you’re here?”
“No,” Hook replied. Which was only partly accurate. Sam and Alan had seen him enter the grounds of the school, but they had not known where he was going.
Sam jumped up, cocked the machine gun and switched off the safety catch in one fluid and practiced movement. He traversed the M.G. 42 until it centered on the middle of the soldier giving the orders. He heard the reassuring clang and click of Alan cocking his machine gun and changing the safety catch to fire.
The platoon feldwebel’s ears pricked up at the familiar sound of an M.G. 42 being made ready to fire. The hair on the nape of his neck stood on end. “What the-?”
The machine gun bullets ripped through the soldiers standing on the river bank at the rate of one thousand two hundred rounds per minute, twenty rounds per second. The men collapsed at the edge of the bank, half in and half out of the water, their blood pumped into the river rapidly turning it red. More machine gun bullets raced into the river biting into bobbing heads and bodies. Sam and Alan methodically swept their M.G. 42s from side to side searching for survivors. Sam finished his belt of bullets and dived into the ammunition box to attach another belt.
“Sam!” Alan shouted.
“What?” Sam asked as he attached the new belt to the machine gun.
“They’re dead.”
“How can you be so sure?” Sam asked as he cocked the weapon to resume firing.
“Look at them.” Alan pointed at the river. The scene resembled what the Red Sea might have looked like when God brought it crashing down on top of the Egyptians. Dead bodies and debris floated everywhere.
“Alright, already!” Sam said with frustration. As far as he was concerned, the only good German was a dead German. He just wanted to make sure that they had all gone to meet their maker. “It’s twenty five to six,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of time yet.”
“To do what exactly?” Alan didn’t like the sound of that.
“To pour fuel on the fire,” Sam answered. “Come on. Let’s get these bodies into the river.”
“Would you care for another whiskey, Richard?” Mason asked.
“I don’t mind if I do,” Hook replied. Mason poured him another glass. “Thank you.”
Mason picked up the now empty whiskey bottle and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Do you have any suggestions whom I should approach to recruit?” Mason asked from the kitchen.
“I’ve got a few people in mind, but to be honest, I’d rather leave the choice to you.”
“Why?” Mason walked back through to the living room.
“For reasons of security,” Hook answered. “I don’t want to know the names of who you’ve recruited and neither does Edinburgh. In fact, Headquarters doesn’t want to know anything about you either.”
“I see. So you don’t know the names of the people who brought you here and they don’t know my name either. That makes it easier then.”
Hook looked at the box that Mason was carrying. “King Edward V Cigars” the box said. He approved. “I agree that the recruitment of another cell in Hereward is a cause for celebration.”
‘Another cell?’ Mason observed. So his was not going to be the first. There already were Resistance people in Hereward. Probably the very people who had escorted Hook to his house. The whiskey was beginning to loosen tongues and work its magic.
Hook was relieved to see Mason reach into the cigar box. He laughed. It was good to see his old friend relax and lighten up a little.
The bullet thudded into Hook’s chest. The glass of whiskey slipped from Hook’s fingers and shattered onto the floor spilling its contents onto the carpet. The pool of whiskey mingled with the blood that dripped from Hook’s fingertips. The cigar fell smoking onto the carpet and lay smoldering for a nanosecond before Mason casually ground it out with the heel of his jackboot. Hook lay slumped back on his chair with a look of utter surprise and shock on his face. His eyes were staring to glaze over as his life gradually ebbed out of him. His lips asked the silent question.
“Why?” Mason returned to his chair and sat down. “I’ll tell you why. Because the Uitlanders killed my father in the Boer War. Because you Uitlander scum let my elder brother and younger sister starve to death in one of their concentration camps. Because my mother became an Englishman’s whore in order to save my life. Because even though I grew up in England, living amongst the English, speaking English, in my heart I have always been a Boer.”
“Rebecca…Rebecca Templar.” Hook croaked.
“What?” Mason sat up in his chair. “What did you say?” He leapt up from his chair and grabbed Hook roughly by the shoulder. “What did you say, damn you?” He tried to shake the words out of Hook’s mouth, but it was no use. Hook was already dead.
“An accident, you say?” Sturmbannfuhrer Zorn asked.
“Looks like it, sir,” Hauptsturmfuhrer Ulrich answered. “The driver of the first A.P.C. probably fell asleep and came off the road here.” Ulrich pointed with his arm. “The driver of the second half-track probably wasn’t paying any attention and blindly followed the first A.P.C…”
“…And the first half-track ploughed straight through the fence and into the river and the second A.P.C. followed,” Zorn interrupted. “What a bloody disaster.”
Ulrich was sorely tempted to say ‘I told you so.’ The men were absolutely exhausted by the relentless round of round the clock anti-Resistance patrols.
“How many men did the Army lose?”
“We estimate twenty plus, sir.”
“Every cloud has a silver lining.”
So much for Inter Service camaraderie, Ulrich wryly thought. “Do you want the river dredged for bodies, sir?” He asked.
Zorn shrugged his shoulders dismissively. “No. We don’t need to find the bodies. We know what they died of. They drowned. Write that in the report. If the Army wants the bodies then they’ll have to dredge the river.”
“What about the A.P.C.s, sir?” Ulrich asked.
“What?”
“What about the A.P.C.s? I think that they can be salvaged.”
Zorn’s eyes lit up like Fagin’s. The penny dropped. Half-tracks were like gold dust. “Where’s the nearest S.S. engineer unit?”
“Cambridge, sir,” Ulrich answered.
“Ask them if they’re interested in laying their hands on a slightly waterlogged. A.P.C. with one previous owner.”
“And if they are interested, sir?”
“Tell them to get over here at the double with heavy lifting equipment. They get one half-track. We get the other. Finder’s fee.” Zorn smiled.
“What about the Army, sir?” Ulrich asked.
“What about them?” Zorn asked as he struck a match and lit up.
“What should we tell them if they ask about their missing A.P.C.s?” Ulrich let Zorn light his cigar.
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Use your imagination, Ulrich,” Zorn replied nonchalantly.
“How long did you wait?” Ansett asked the boys. The three of them were sitting on chairs in the underground bunker in the Cathedral Crypt.
“We waited for half an hour until a quarter to seven.” Alan replied. “We then left because an S.S. patrol drove by and we didn’t want them to see us in the area.”
“For all we knew, they could’ve been looking for us. The Huns might already have captured Ivanhoe and they could’ve squeezed our descriptions out of him,” Sam added.
Ansett winced at Sam’s choice of words. It was a very real possibility that the Germans had captured Ivanhoe and had squeezed the information out of him. Quite Literally. “You did the right thing, boys. Do you have any idea who he was going to meet?”
“No idea, sir.” Alan shook his head. “Only that we met him and escorted him to the gates of St. Johns as he requested. He told us to meet him back there at 6.15 p.m.”
“He could’ve been going to visit anyone,” Sam said. “There are half a dozen entrances and exits to the school. He could’ve been using the school grounds as a shortcut to go somewhere else.”
Ansett nodded in confirmation. “Alright. So, worse case scenario. Ivanhoe’s been picked up by the Police or Specials. What would they do?”
“If he’s not on the ‘Wanted’ list of known or suspected criminals or terrorists and his identification documents stand up to inspection then they’ll throw him in a cell overnight and release him in the morning with a stern warning not to break curfew,” Alan answered. He was very familiar with Specials’ standard procedure.
“I agree. If Edinburgh’s worth its salt, then the false I.D. should stand up to a casual examination,” Ansett said.
“Alan and I could go back to the Police station and casually ask if anyone interesting has been arrested,” Sam suggested.
“Good idea, Sam,” Ansett agreed. “But who’s Duty Sergeant at the station at the moment?”
“P.C., now Sergeant MacDonald. He was promoted to replace Sergeant Hitch,” Alan answered. “He can be trusted. He wrote the report regarding the deaths of the S.S. troops the night before ‘Bloody Wednesday.’”
“But will he be suspicious?” Ansett pressed.
“He may be suspicious, but he can be trusted not to ask scary questions and poke his nose where it doesn’t belong,” Alan said.
“I hope so. For both of your sakes,” Ansett said grimly.
“So that’s the Police taken care of,” Sam said. “What about the Army and the S.S? If they’ve captured him then it’s a completely different ball game.”
“If the Huns have captured him and they don’t suspect anything, then they’ll hand him over to the Police,” Ansett answered.
“And if they do suspect anything?” Alan asked rhetorically. He already knew the answer to that question.
“Then they’ll torture him until he tells them something.”
“But what can he tell them?” Alan asked.
“He can tell them about the Free North and the people who delivered him to you. But he can only provide them with descriptions and code names, but not real names. He can tell them that he met two Specials or Police in Hereward. How many are there now?”
“Hundreds…” Sam answered.
“Exactly. Hundreds of Specials and Police. The important thing is that he can’t put any names to the faces.”
Sam and Alan exchanged meaningful glances.
“Sir…” Alan began.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Ivanhoe is Mr. Hook.”
“What?” Ansett jumped out of his chair.
“Ivanhoe is Richard Hook, our Chemistry teacher, Lieutenant-Colonel Hook of the Fusiliers.”
“He can’t be! You must’ve made a mistake. Hook is dead. You told me yourself. He was killed at Fairfax!”
“He’s alive, sir.” Sam backed Alan up. “At least he was until late this afternoon. We both recognized him. We told him that Mrs. Hook was still alive.”
“My God!” Ansett put a hand to his head. “What madness is this? To send a man back to his home town where anyone could recognize him walking down the street…” He slumped back into his chair in shock.
“I guess that Edinburgh thought that a local man would know the area and know who to contact,” Alan suggested.
“But not whom to trust.” A thunderbolt of thought hit Ansett right between the shoulder blades as he grabbed Sam’s arm. “And Ivanhoe…did he recognize you?” He asked desperately.
The boys nodded their heads.
“Then we must assume the worst,” Ansett announced as he stood up. “They could be searching for the both of you at this very moment. You boys will have to stay here until I find out what happened to Ivanhoe.”
“But what about you, sir?” Alan asked.
“They won’t find out about me until they capture you, Alan. They’ve got nothing to link me to Ivanhoe at the moment. Sam, I’ll tell your parents that you’re staying with Alan at the boarding house.
“Thank you, sir,” Sam said.
Ansett nodded. “Now listen carefully, boys: If I’m not back by this time tomorrow then you must assume that the Jerries know about us. If I’m not back by 7p.m. tomorrow night then I want you boys to stock up with a week’s worth of weapons, ammo, food and equipment and break out of Hereward.”
“Where should we go?” Alan asked.
“To the Free North: to Scotland.”
“How will we know if it’s you coming back to the Crypt and not the Germans?” Sam asked.