‘German,’ James had decided to be brazen. ‘I was born here, in Berlin. I have spent many years in Switzerland, where my family moved a long time ago. But…’
‘And how can I help you, Herr Franke?’
James did not allow his eyes to unlock from those of the officer. ‘I have returned to Germany. There is work to do for the Fatherland… I thought…’
Joseph Stoerkel pushed back his chair, and stood. ‘Come, Herr Franke. I usually take an hour or so for luncheon about this time. You know Habel, on the Linden? Excellent for luncheon.’
Habel’s menu was comprehensive, for the restaurant had an international reputation, particularly for luncheon; and a bowing, obsequious waiter took them through the throng to a table in the far corner of the main room.
The Major was obviously well known at Habel. The waiters spoke to him correctly by rank and name. They drank the Leberknodelsuppe, and ate a main course of Königsberger Klopse – meatballs in caper sauce. It was only when the head waiter brought the ordered Berliner Pfannkuchen that Joseph Stoerkel began serious conversation.
‘I always order these. In fact they make them especially for me, even out of season.’ The doughnuts were traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve, and normally only served between Christmas and Lent. ‘Now, Herr Franke, what do you wish of me?’
James lowered his voice, ‘In Friedrichshafen you gave the impression that you were disillusioned with this war.’
‘That was said to a Swiss businessman.’
‘Pretend you’re speaking to the Swiss businessman.’ James experienced a surge of fear, as though he had only just realized the risk he was taking. A few words exchanged about the war with a man back from the front, was not enough upon which to base trust.
‘If I did, how could I be of assistance? The doctors have pronounced me unfit for active duty, so I glance through random letters written by our fighting men, to make certain they are not indiscreet,’ he gave an apologetic smile. ‘They may, perhaps, tell the truth about the hell of war.’
‘There are two things,’ James could do nothing but commit himself now. He would move straight out of the Minerva, and go to one of the addresses they had given him in London. Possibly people there could advise him of somewhere to live – an earth, for a fox. ‘First, I really should do something to help the Fatherland, otherwise people will take me for a coward, or an indolent fool.’
‘And second?’
‘I am looking for an Englishwoman.’
‘Oh, my dear fellow, aren’t we all? Mind you a French girl would be a change.’
James ignored the remark. ‘She could be thought of as French. Her married name is, or was, Marie Grenot.’
‘She is in Berlin?’
‘I don’t know. She left Paris, the day before war was declared, with a German officer, Klaus von Hirsch.’
‘Then she could be Frau von Hirsch, or the Grafin von Hirsch by now. I presume we speak of the old Count von Hirsch’s boy? The one who spent so much time at the Paris Embassy?’
James nodded.
‘And you wish to serve the Fatherland by finding this lady?’
‘She is English. A distant relation.’
Stoerkel gave an amused smile, ‘Just like the Kaiserin and the British Queen Mary, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘There are a number of English, French, even Belgian ladies married to German officers. There are even some who are not married, but live in style. I will see what I can do. At the same time I shall enquire to see if you can be employed in any way.’ James had told him of his aeronautical qualifications. ‘Where can I reach you?’
James said it would be better if he made contact with the Herr Major.
‘Yes? I have a telephone number at work, and at my home. It would be best to call yourself by some fancy name – say you are Baron Hellinger. If I have news I will tell you. The details will be addressed to the Herr Baron at the Alexander-Platz Post Office, Post Restante. Does this satisfy you?’
‘For the time being. I trust we shall meet again.’
The Major laughed, then, suddenly, leaned forward and whispered, ‘Our Army is about to use a terrible weapon. Probably in the Ypres area, in the Spring. It will be an attempt to break through and dash for the Channel ports again. Remember CL2, and COCL2. Soon.’
Herr Franke paid his bill at the Minerva late that afternoon, and travelled over to Bayreutherstrasse, near the Zoo. On the second floor of an apartment building he found Frau Dimpling, a lady who, they had told him, hailed originally from Eastbourne. She had married Herr Dimpling, a young German engineering student, in 1909. Letters, C said, had been passed to him from the Foreign Office.
Before leaving the Minerva, James went to the nearest Post Office and sent a cable to Switzerland. It was an innocuous message concerning the availability of various consignments of watch and clock mechanisms, together with a request for details of docket numbers. The message was signed by a Helmut Gatti, and the return address was Post Restante at the Zoo Post Office.
The real message was contained in the consignment and docket numbers, and it was this, decoded, signal that arrived on Caspar Railton’s desk.
*
She had striking red hair, and looked as though she was recovering from an illness, her face white above the smart blue dress. She spoke German with a strong English accent, and later admitted to having been a schoolmistress.
‘Frau Dimpling, I have to speak with you,’ James said, in German.
‘Is it about Wolfgang? Is it?’ As if pleading.
Once inside, and certain there was nobody else in the apartment, James spoke in English. ‘I have to trust you. In London they said you could be trusted. I’ve just come from London.’
She gave a kind of cry, her whole body trembling, and she threw her arms around him, sobbing, ‘Thank God!’
Wolfgang Dimpling, her husband, had been reported missing, presumed killed, near Antwerp during the battles of the previous autumn. She had no friends in Berlin, her parents-in-law were both dead, so she had written again and again to London. Hetty Dimpling, née Fairchild, had waited, going out only for food. Germany had taken away her husband; she was homesick and frightened, so this tall good-looking young man came as a godsend.
She smothered him with the affection usually reserved for her husband. She drew a hot bath, ran out to the shops, after enquiring about his favourite food, and then shut herself first in the kitchen, and later her boudoir. Dinner was candlelit and delicious, and Hetty Dimpling became a changed woman: vivacious and attractive, with her hair let down to her shoulders. James marvelled over the transformation.
He also marvelled later that night when she came to his room, slipping into the bed and moving close to him, lips cool as cucumbers, and passion, pent up for so long, like a waterfall at full flood.
It was the first time that James had been unfaithful to Margaret Mary, but he felt no guilt or shame. The sad-faced red-head saw to that. Berlin and his assignment had suddenly taken on new dimensions.
*
‘He’s made some kind of contact,’ Smith-Cumming told Giles. ‘That’s all I can tell you. There’s no mention of any lead on Marie Grenot.’
‘Well, at least he’s there.’ Giles showed no hint of emotional involvement.
C mentioned the reference to poison gas. ‘Chlorine and Phosgene, my people tell me. The Military men do not appear impressed.’
‘They are impressed only by what they see with their own eyes. The number of corpses impresses me, by God. I understand that the Salonika business is to go ahead, even though the initial Gallipoli landings have not been an unqualified success.’
Smith-Cumming shrugged. ‘Typical of Churchill, though. He fought against that particular way in through the back door. When he lost to the Gallipoli plan, he adjusted and has put all his power behind it. If it comes unstuck, he’ll pay for it.’
Giles did not appear to hear. ‘We know Peewit’s location?’
‘The Zoo. That
woman’s a shot in the dark, but one of the few we could offer. You ever get worried about your family, Railton?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Well, Peewit, and his first subject, they’re…’
‘Railtons, yes. Doing their duty, that’s all. It’s something we do. Everyone in our position. It’ll go out of style soon enough, what with incompetent government, and incapable General Staff. We could end up with a bankrupt country, and people looking for a new way. We could even lose Empire. Our kind have heard the chimes at midnight, C. We may be the last generation to do so.’
‘The damned Military’ll go on resenting us for a long time to come. I just hope to God someone has the sense to take the gas business seriously.’
But nobody would take it seriously, in spite of the special information supplied by Peewit and later in the field by French agents, together with German prisoners under interrogation. Spotter aeroplanes reported no signs of any odd equipment. The commanders in the front line, around the Ypres salient – the most likely spot for the German armies to try and breach for a dash to the Channel – warned company and platoon commanders ‘for what it’s worth’ of what they called a rumour.
*
Nurse Mary Anne Railton saw her first gas cases on St George’s Day, 23 April, at a casualty clearing station a few miles south of Ypres.
There was no doubt about the battle. For almost a week the ground had shaken, while smoke coiled over the city itself. Mary Anne, who had arrived there on 17 April, separated from the nuns, and detached, with two other girls, from the hospital train in which she had been working, felt that she was now as near to the war as she would ever get.
She had also become a hardened veteran. Her first day on the hospital train brought her up against the horror of shattered bodies still numb from the shock of wounds.
Wounded or dying, Mary Anne treated them the same, with as much skill and compassion as she could muster. There, among makeshift, crowded, wards, she soon learned the art of detaching herself from the terror and reality.
Then, wakened at dawn one morning, a senior medical officer told her, together with Nurses Dora Elliott and Jenny Cooper, that it was ‘Up the line’ for them. The trio did not question their orders, saying goodbye to the nuns and clambering into the back of the lorry where the same medical officer waited, showing littie patience.
She had known the other two nurses since almost her first day of training, and they were, if not firm friends, at least close acquaintances – Dora, short, blonde and bubbly, originally of Irish extraction; and Jenny, always in trouble.
It took almost two hours to reach the clearing station, where they were greeted by Sister Price, whose personality would have done credit to a drill sergeant.
‘Nurses Railton, Elliott and Cooper?’ Sister barked; and the girls, crumpled and sweaty from the uncomfortable journey, looked around, seeing flat ground, arid four large tents with a small cluster of khaki bell tents nearby; and felt more than heard, the noise of pain and death.
‘Well?’ Sister Price snapped, and they realized she was asking for their identities. Each answered by giving her name, and the Sister immediately fitted names to faces. Once she had met her nurses for thirty seconds, Sister Price never forgot names, or muddled faces. She told them her name; that this was the most forward clearing station; they would see things here they had never seen before; they would work longer hours; they would do as they were told, and use all their skill.
‘If any of my nurses shows the slightest incompetence she goes home. Bags packed within five minutes. Now, that tent,’ pointing to a small bell tent about fifty yards away, ‘That is your home. You have fifteen minutes to settle in.’ She whirled, pointing to the Reception Area – the smaller of the four long tents. ‘Fifteen minutes!’ and she was away. Three ambulances chugged up the track towards them, as if to underline the urgency.
‘There’s no place like home.’ Dora stood inside the small tent, looking at its three pathetic ‘biscuits’, lockers, and the metal bar for hanging their clothes.
Jenny and Mary Anne dumped their battered cases beside the ‘biscuits’ which would be their beds. ‘Well, I prefer the Jerry shells to Sister.’ Dora always talked a great deal.
‘It’s what we volunteered for,’ Mary Anne said primly.
‘I volunteered to get away from my dreadful parents.’ Jenny tried to tuck her hair inside her cap, but it promptly tumbled out.
‘Your hair’s dropped again, Jenny.’ Dora moved to help. ‘So’ve my drawers,’ Jenny turned away. ‘Several times. It’s something to do with the ageing process.’
‘Well, don’t blame me if you get a bollocking from Sister.’
‘Sister can go and fuck herself.’
‘Jenny!’ Mary Anne looked shocked for a second.
‘Oh, come on, Railton. Be your age. If Sister doesn’t do it to herself, she won’t get it at all. Frigid old crone.’
‘I don’t see how “language” helps.’
‘Railton’s nanny wouldn’t like it,’ Jenny laughed.
‘Railton’s nanny isn’t going to get it,’ sniggered Dora. ‘Mary Anne, it does help. It’s a safety valve.’
‘Yes,’ Mary Anne bridled, ‘we hear the men use that kind of language, but half of them don’t know any better. We’re nurses first, but we’re also ladies.’
‘I’ve never been a lady in my life, Railton. You try living in a Liverpool hovel with seven brothers and sisters. I bet your Papa didn’t come home drunk of a Saturday night and virtually rape your elder sister in front of your eyes. We’re not all ladies, Railton.’
‘Nurses! Nurses!’ Sister Price’s strident voice penetrated the fabric of the tent.
Dora looked at her watch. ‘We’ve still got five minutes.’
‘Nurses!’ Sister calling again.
‘Oh God.’ The three girls, still soiled by the journey, hurried from the tent. They did not return to it for almost fifteen hours.
Altogether there were three doctors, two sisters – Price and Beamish – and seven nurses, at the casualty clearing station; and Sister Price stood head and shoulders above everyone. Even the doctors feared and respected her. Martinet though she was, Sister Price’s bark was much worse than her bite. Mary Anne soon found the incredible reserves of both skill and compassion within this woman. She also discovered the first frightening effects of gas.
That morning, as they ran to the Reception tent, all three girls felt a new anxiety: not exactly fear, but a sense that they were about to confront unknown horrors.
“A” Ward, in that tent: the Sister pointed. ‘Gas cases. Do what you can. I’ll be with you in a moment.’
The sign on one of the flaps told them which was ‘A’ Ward, and Mary Anne was the first to step inside.
‘Jesus!’
There were about twenty patients – brought in by the ambulances. They lay in rows, their noise breaking above the steady rumble of nearby guns. It was like a ragged, frightening, wind in an old chimney – a crackling, forced gasping noise from the worst nursery nightmare.
The men were full of movement, as though inflicted with a terrible twitching of the limbs, and it took a moment for the nurses to realize that their movements were of desperation as they tried to grasp for air. Their faces were blue, and they panted, fighting nature to relieve the distress of lungs irritated and filling with fluids.
The faces of the other nurses, and the two doctors on duty, showed that they were appalled. One, a Captain who looked about Mary Anne’s age, grabbed at the girl. ‘Nurse, help me with this one, he’s drowning in his own lung fluid. Help me.’
Together, they propped the terrified man against the wall, Mary Anne bundling blankets behind the patient’s back. Together they worked for an hour, trying to give the soldier some relief.
‘He’s got all the symptoms of acute bronchitis,’ the doctor said quietly. ‘If we could only drain the lungs.’
Mary Anne, called away constantly, returned to the lad again and agai
n, but they were fighting a losing battle. He died at around five that afternoon, as Mary Anne sat by the bed. He just opened his poor tired eyes, took the deepest breath he managed all day, smiled and died, she wrote to Mildred. She did not say that she had cried for him. It was the last time she was to shed tears for the dead or dying.
Of the twenty men brought in as gas cases that day, all but six were dead before midnight. The rest coughed, wheezed and fought their way slowly back to a kind of life. Other wounded were arriving all the time, and there seemed to be a procession of ambulances coming and going.
When they were finally relieved, the three nurses went to the small mess tent, ate a few spoonsful of stew, and staggered to their tent.
In the darkness they could hear the clunk of spades against the earth and knew that the detachment of troops, there to protect and assist, were busy, digging graves.
Mary Anne sat down heavily on her ‘biscuit’ and looked up at Dora. ‘Fuck Jerry,’ she said. Dora nodded.
Day merged into day, and night into night. Men came, were treated and sent on, labelled with recommendation for further surgery, treatment, or ‘A Blighty’ – to be sent back to England. A lot of men came, and went nowhere except into the earth.
Within two weeks the battle, which became known as 2nd Ypres, was over, and men simply fought for a few yards of ground. At the end of the first week, Otter arrived.
He came at night, just after dusk, shambling into the Reception tent, blackened, scarred, with caked dirt and blood all over him. He was naked, except for the tattered fragments of what could have been a vest, and part of his right boot.
Mary Anne was on duty in the Reception tent, and, in some ways, was responsible for the loss of any clues about him; for she stripped the rags of clothing from him, and threw them into the metal container into which soiled or infected bandages and dressings were placed to be burned.
She cleaned him up, noted that he had two very slight wounds – a scratch across his scalp, and another down the right thigh. They needed dressing, which she did by herself. He had the wild, frightened animal look that came with shock, and she talked to him quietly; but all he could mouth was, ‘Ott… Ott… Ott…’ Hence the nickname they gave him: Otter.