Henderson's Boys: Grey Wolves

  ‘I’m looking for Alois Clement,’ Henderson said.

  The boy pointed out a shabby bistro. Alois wasn’t there, but the waitress told him to wait. The outdoor tables had a good view over the harbour and the afternoon sun was warm enough to sit outside. Henderson got coffee, which tasted like battery acid, and a shot of brandy to settle his nerves. The man who joined him shortly afterwards was ancient-looking with a ragged beard, leathery skin and rubber boots spattered with fish blood.

  ‘Hortefeux?’ he asked.

  Henderson nodded. The man said he was Nicolas. His brother Alois was arranging a boat and would arrive shortly. Then he told the waitress to throw Henderson’s coffee away and bring two cups of the good stuff.

  Henderson pointed at three large boats across the harbour. They looked modern, but were rusting badly. ‘Why are the big boats laid up?’

  ‘Diesel engines with no diesel to put in ’em,’ Nicolas explained. ‘Not much coal either, so we’re mainly back to sail-boats.’

  ‘But you must get a decent price for your catch with so little food around.’

  ‘It’s a living, but not much of one,’ Nicolas said, as two fine-smelling espressos arrived. ‘Rules up to our ears: daylight fishing only, got to stay within six kilometres of the coast, which keeps us out of the best fishing grounds. Most of our young men are held prisoner. I’m seventy-three and my crew is two grandsons aged seventeen and fifteen.’

  As they kept chatting, Henderson took in details, from women standing on the dockside gutting fish, to the unmanned 20mm cannons mounted on the jaws of the harbour. When the cups were dry, Nicolas glanced at his pocket watch and stood up.

  ‘Don’t know what’s keeping Alois,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a walk around to his workshop.’

  Fishing had kept the old man fit and Nicolas moved briskly up a cobbled street, took a right and then ducked under an overhead door. It was a workshop, with tool racks, engine parts and the smell of shaved metal and lubricant. A man stood up by the workbench, but Henderson didn’t see the one lurking behind until the shotgun barrel was being waved in his face.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A chair slammed down. Henderson got frisked before they ordered him to sit in it. They found his gun and ID papers, but missed the small knife in the lining of his jacket. Alois led the interrogation. He was thuggish and at least ten years younger than his brother, with hairy nostrils and grease-blackened hands.

  ‘Madame Mercier is too trusting, Mr Hortefeux,’ Alois began. ‘If that really is your name.’

  ‘My real name is Henderson.’

  Alois laughed. ‘You claim to have come ashore last night, but you’ve got no boat and no radio.’

  Henderson shifted uneasily. ‘If I was a German trying to catch you out, it would be easy enough to have those pieces of equipment.’

  ‘And the boy, what is that all about?’

  ‘Father and son is less suspicious,’ Henderson said.

  ‘The photograph of the three men in front of Big Ben looks fake,’ Alois said. ‘I think the three Poles were captured at sea and interrogated by the Gestapo. They spilled Madame’s name under interrogation and rather than arresting her, they’ve sent you here to see who else you could unearth.’

  Henderson tried to keep his cool as Alois picked up a large wrench.

  ‘That’s plausible,’ Henderson said. ‘Do you have a background in police work?’

  Alois was flattered. ‘I’m smart enough to know when something is fishy, Mr Henderson, or whatever your name is. You’re an Englishman, yes?’

  ‘Born and bred,’ Henderson said.

  ‘Get our man,’ Alois shouted.

  A door from a side room came open. The man had a ferocious-looking burn over his right cheek and the upper part of his neck. He wore a French peasant’s shirt and trousers, but Henderson immediately spotted RAF flying boots and a neat moustache that was characteristically English.

  ‘Hello, old man,’ Henderson said in English. ‘Shot down I suppose?’

  ‘Ran out of fuel and ditched,’ the airman said. His accent was upper crust and he seemed wary, having been told that Henderson was probably a Gestapo agent. ‘We were damned lucky to get pulled out of the sea by this lot.’

  ‘We?’ Henderson said. ‘How many others are there?’

  A look from Alois stopped the airman from answering.

  ‘They want me to ask you some questions,’ the airman said. ‘Things that only an Englishman should know. Are you a cricket man, by any chance?’

  ‘More football,’ Henderson said. ‘Grammar school boy, you see. Rather fond of the Arsenal.’

  ‘That’s awkward,’ the airman said, scratching his moustache and looking disappointed. ‘I was going to ask you the names of the squad that played the last Ashes series.’

  ‘I can tell you who won the cup last year,’ Henderson said. ‘Portsmouth four, Wolves one.’

  ‘Association Football’s not my cup of tea,’ the airman said. ‘I’m just trying to think. Could you tell me the last four University boat race winners?’

  Henderson smiled. ‘I’d be prepared to narrow it down to either Oxford or Cambridge.’

  ‘National anthem, third verse?’

  Henderson racked his brain. ‘Not in God’s land alone, but be thy mercies known?’

  ‘That’s the fourth verse,’ the airman said. ‘How about the rest of that verse?’

  ‘Used to sing it on Empire Day at school twenty years back. Can’t say it’s in my head now.’

  Alois looked impatiently at the airman. ‘Well?’

  The airman’s French was absolutely awful. ‘Difficult,’ he said warily. ‘He’s speaking like London. If he is German, he’s a good actor.’

  Henderson had two problems. First, Alois had clearly staked his credibility on the idea that he was a Gestapo spy. Second, there was no piece of information about Britain that couldn’t be memorised by a German.

  Alois waved the giant wrench. ‘I say we tie an anvil to this bastard’s ankles and throw him in the harbour.’

  ‘If the Gestapo are on to us, it wouldn’t make any difference,’ Nicolas pointed out. ‘He would have told people that he was coming here. They might even be watching us right now.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Henderson said hopefully, as he pointed at the airman. ‘You’ve nothing to lose by taking a chance on me being who I say I am. You trusted the airman, didn’t you?’

  Nicolas managed a tense smile. ‘We found them half drowned in the Atlantic. The Krauts would have had a hell of a job setting that up.’

  Everyone looked around as the side door opened again. The three Frenchmen were half expecting a Gestapo raid and were relieved to see the waitress from the café, with Edith and Marc. Marc hurt from the beating, but sensed the tense atmosphere and felt for the knife in his pocket.

  ‘What are you old lunatics doing?’ Edith yelled, eyeballing Alois furiously. ‘They’re here to help us.’

  ‘He’s Gestapo,’ Alois shouted. ‘I’d bet my right bollock on it.’

  ‘The Germans just beat him half to death,’ Edith said, pointing at Marc. ‘He took pictures of the bunkers.’

  ‘They’re cleverer than you think,’ Alois said. ‘It’s a scheme to root out as many of us as possible.’

  ‘In which case we’re doomed anyway,’ Nicolas repeated. ‘We’ve got nothing to lose by trusting them, apart from your pride, Alois.’

  While the Frenchmen bickered, Marc plotted. They didn’t think he was a threat and hadn’t bothered searching him. If he stabbed the man with the shotgun, Henderson ought to respond quickly and take out Alois. Nicolas didn’t look too fast, so they’d probably be able to get away.

  ‘The Englishman can’t prove he’s English,’ Alois shouted.

  ‘How can I prove it?’ Henderson said. ‘He said I had a perfect accent.’

  Marc’s hand tightened on the knife, but he was only going to move if he had to. There were too many things that could go wrong, with Edith, and the waitres
s, and the airman.

  The airman.

  Marc thought he looked familiar and spoke desperately, in his heavily accented English. ‘Have you got a brother named Walters? He’s also a pilot. Looks just like you, maybe a year or two younger.’

  The airman shook his head, but then raised a curious eyebrow, as if he’d just worked something out.

  ‘My name is Jarhope, but when I was training the instructor mentioned a man named Walters,’ the airman said uncertainly. ‘Apparently he’d been through training a few months previously and the fellow looked just like me.’

  ‘Well I’ve met Walters,’ Marc said jubilantly. ‘He was the pilot when I did parachute training up in Scotland.’

  Jarhope stepped in front of Alois. ‘I’m convinced they’re for real now,’ he said. ‘Nobody could possibly have known that.’

  Marc had to translate so that Alois understood. He signalled reluctantly and the shotgun was tilted away from Henderson’s head. Marc loosened his grip on his knife, Alois put the wrench down on his workbench and there were a few wary laughs.

  *

  While Henderson went off with Nicolas and Alois to find a boat and plan the best strategy for finding Madeline in pitch darkness, Marc and Edith found themselves being mothered by Alois’ twenty-something daughter, Therese.

  The two kids stripped and washed the worst of the dirt away in cold buckets on the back porch. For Marc, this was a day’s sweat and a welcome relief from the coal dust. But Edith battled furiously, refusing to scrub several weeks of grime away until Therese threatened her with a wire brush.

  Stripped of clothes and dirt, there wasn’t much to Edith. Puberty hadn’t kicked in and she was whip thin. Inside they got a hot bath. Marc chivalrously let Edith go first, but when she’d finished the water was so filthy that Therese tipped it away and Marc stood wrapped in a blanket for twenty minutes while more was boiled.

  By this time it was early evening, with the temperature plunging as the sun vanished. After their baths the two kids drew chairs up to a wood fire and toasted their tired legs and the palms of their hands until it was time to eat.

  Jarhope, the airman, was first to arrive for dinner.

  ‘Good job you knew that Walters chap,’ Marc whispered, as Edith dozed beside him. ‘Otherwise I might have ended up getting chucked in the harbour.’

  ‘To be honest, I’ve never heard of the fellow,’ Jarhope confessed in a whisper. ‘But I’ve been stuck here for over a month while my burns heal up. The rest of my crew have gone south already and I reckon I’ve got better odds shipping out with you two than trekking down to Spain with no French and this mess for a face.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dinner was a proper show. Madame Mercier came by car, Nicolas brought out his best brandy. Only Alois was subdued, embarrassed by his behaviour earlier on. The waitress who’d served lunch at Le Chat Botté gave Henderson a remarkable stash of original blank documents, from bicycle permits to ration cards, but she also brought bad news. The body of the OT worker had been found. Security at checkpoints around Lorient had been stepped up.

  Everyone agreed it was a grave business. The Germans would clamp down. Arrests, searches, days of tightened curfews and possible revenge executions of French prisoners.

  Madame Mercier stood up as gloom settled over the diners. ‘To make the omelette, you break the egg,’ she told them resolutely. ‘This is a war and worse things will happen before we win.’

  Henderson was impressed and raised a toast. ‘To victory for France,’ he said.

  ‘And a safe trip home for our guests,’ Madame Mercier added.

  *

  ‘It’s like two pins manoeuvring blindfold through a haystack and hoping to bump into each other,’ Henderson explained to Jarhope, as they sailed away from Kerneval.

  Nicolas and Alois had done them proud, locating a four-metre sailing boat and safe spot to cast off outside the harbour wall well away from German eyes. Henderson was a confident sailor and reckoned the boat was good enough to reach Britain if they didn’t find Madeline. They’d brought food and water just in case, but five days in an open boat would be no fun, and if a storm didn’t get them, the Germans might.

  Jarhope was no sailor and would have looked green if it hadn’t been pitch dark. Marc lay at the bow, trying to ignore all the places that hurt as he cupped his ears, listening for the distinct rumble of Madeline’s propeller shaft. He had a flashlight and a pair of luminous wands to help attract Madeline, but they’d all be for it if he made the wrong call and flashed a German boat.

  There wasn’t even a guarantee that Madeline was coming. It was a fifty-hour voyage from Porth Navas to Lorient, so the little tug had been forced to spend the day drifting seventy kilometres offshore, risking the attentions of German patrol boats and fighter planes.

  Henderson sailed in a zigzag pattern. If Rufus was doing his job, Madeline was sweeping back and forth along a two-kilometre channel. They’d practised the technique off the Cornish coast and Madeline had met the canoe four times on four consecutive nights. But that didn’t account for sinkings, mechanical faults, or the possibility that Rufus had navigated to completely the wrong section of coastline as he’d done the previous night.

  Midnight passed by, then one, two and three a.m. Henderson decided that he’d give up at four, because if he left it any later he wouldn’t be able to sail clear of the coast before sunrise. The breakthrough came with less than a quarter-hour to spare.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it’s her,’ Marc said.

  Henderson put up the sail and pointed the bow towards the noise. They had to be careful, because Madeline was expecting a canoe not a sailing boat. Marc made a V with the two luminous wands and held them up high. His eyes squeezed shut as a powerful light swept across the water. This was a huge risk so close to the French coast, but the crew aboard Madeline were also getting desperate.

  Henderson smiled as a gust caught the sail and they finally recognised the little tug. The crew comprised Rufus, a slender Moroccan-French soldier, Troy LeConte, a thirteen-year-old from a seafaring background who’d recently completed training with Henderson’s second batch of recruits, and Elizabeth DeVere, a nineteen-year-old who’d trained as an undercover radio operator, but discovered that you did a bit of everything in a small unit like CHERUB. Everyone called her Boo.

  Jarhope passed up the bag of equipment and clothing as Troy gave Marc a hand on to Madeline’s deck.

  ‘Any trouble?’ Henderson asked Rufus.

  ‘Nothing to speak of, Commander,’ Rufus said with a smile. ‘But I’m sure I’ll find you some.’

  ‘Let’s winch that sailing boat up on deck, then I want full steam ahead. It’ll be sunrise in under forty minutes.’

  *

  Madeline had been stolen by Henderson’s team when they’d escaped France the previous autumn. She was now officially HMRS Madeline of the Royal Navy Reserve, and part of a small fleet of trawlers, tugs and passenger boats used for espionage based in Porth Navas Creek on the River Helford in Cornwall. Unofficially, nobody but Henderson was interested in a forty-year-old French tug and he’d spent most of the winter scratching together the equipment and manpower needed to get her in shape for undercover operations.

  She was no warship, but she was much improved. A larger boiler for speed, a new keel fitted for stability at sea, high-powered binoculars on the bridge for navigation, an armoury of hand weapons and most importantly a 22mm machine gun that could be hauled from below and attached to a bracket on the rear deck.

  The voyage from Lorient to Porth Navas would take thirty hours in peacetime, but in war this doubled because you had to stay away from the coast, out of main shipping lanes and well away from the British minefields you knew about, and the German minefields that you hoped you knew about.

  So Marc faced two more sleepless days. Always noisy, wet and swaying from side to side. He sat up the back of the deck with Troy, using a coil of rope as a rock-hard pillow.

  ‘I spy with my li
ttle eye, something beginning with D,’ Marc said, as he prodded the bruises under his shirt.

  ‘Darkness,’ Troy said.

  ‘Shit,’ Marc laughed. ‘How did you get it so fast?’

  ‘If you’re awake, one of you can go below decks and take over from Boo shovelling coal,’ Rufus shouted from the bridge.

  The two boys hunkered down and tried not to laugh as they faked snoring noises, but Marc was exhausted and fake sleep eventually turned real.

  Henderson’s boot woke him three hours later. Marc stretched out to yawn, but Henderson yanked his arm. ‘Get below decks, we need the sniper rifles. Quickly.’

  It was light, but the main thing that hit Marc as he scuttled across the deck was the roar of diesel engines. Á German E-boat2 was blasting towards them, throwing up a huge bow wave. These high-speed craft were thirty-five metres long. They carried torpedoes and two heavy-calibre deck guns capable of blowing Madeline out of the water.

  ‘They’ll know we’re up to no good if they board us,’ Henderson shouted, as Troy passed guns and weapons up from below deck. ‘Our only chance is to act innocent until they’re right next to us. Keep calm, remember your training and be ready to shoot if they try to come aboard for an inspection.’

  Marc grabbed a sniper’s rifle. It came in five pieces, which he fitted together in barely twenty seconds, then he looked through the sight to check the scope was aligned properly. He slung an ammunition belt around his neck and ran up to the front of the boat, hunkering down in front of the anchor hole. Troy was down at the stern, and now nestled in the spot where Marc had been sleeping a few moments earlier. Boo had fitted the cannon on the deck and slid over a wooden frame built to disguise it. Jarhope crouched in the deck hatch with a Sten machine gun.

  Madeline rocked from the wash as the German patrol boat pulled alongside. Everyone kept out of sight except Henderson on the rear deck and Rufus inside the tiny bridge. They acted innocent, but both had Sten guns within reach.