The long midnight, p.1
The Long Midnight, page 1
The Long Midnight
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Next in Series
About the Author
Also by Alan White
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
for
FRANK, who flew a glider,
FRANK, who tapped a key,
FRANK, who jumped,
and all the others.
Chapter One
He was still there, standing on a rock at the edge of the fjord. The moon marked out the steel helmet which fitted low over his ears, and glowed from the buckles of his leather-strapped equipment, the signet ring on the middle finger of his right hand, and the magazine of the machine gun he carried loosely under one arm ready to lift and fire. He was wearing a dark green uniform and knee-length boots that would be padded inside for warmth. He’d need those boots before dawn broke. I had never been so cold.
Though it was impossible, as I kept telling myself, it felt as if water from the fjord had seeped inside my pod, the one-man submarine built of packing-case plywood and sewn together with string. You caulk them with tarred canvas melted with a blowlamp and moulded to fit. You can make them any shape you like.
I’d never made one for sub-surface work before but with a simple air escape valve to send me quickly down and an air bottle to bring me back up again, I had been confident I could get into the Norwegian fjords. And I’d been right: this was the Sognefjord, and I’d brought myself all the way along it! That’ll be one in the eye for Commander Disbelieving Carter of the Royal Navy, I thought.
The air bottle I carried was made of neoprene rubber and had been invented in 1942 by a boffin in Manchester University. My escape valve was also made of rubber. A wooden shell without nails, a rubber bottle and valves, Innsbrucker boots with specially glued and sewn soles, and me lying full-length inside the pod: nothing metal to give a blip on the radar we knew the Germans now possessed. The snag was that I couldn’t take a gun or a knife, or even a piano-wire garotte with me. With luck I’d find them, if ever I got out of the fjord, beneath the rock where that blasted German was standing. He had a black Labrador beside him, and they’re the worst kind of dog. They’re not vicious, they’ll never attack you, but they have a nose as keen as a bloodhound and a lolloping run that carries them barking to wherever you’re hiding.
My arms stretched out of the holes in the sides of the pod, clad in rubber sleeves and mitts sealed to the wooden frame. I located the picture cord that connected me to Sergeant Milner’s pod. One pull meant stay down, two meant get the hell farther down, three meant come up. I pulled once, then started forward again. Damn, my arms were exhausted; I couldn’t use the foot pedal that operated the vanes in the tail of the pod because the shaft seemed to have jammed and I couldn’t risk forcing it free in case I broke the rubber seal.
We were two miles from our launching point off the coast of Norway above Bergen. It was February 1943; and at twenty-six I must have been one of the youngest lieutenant-colonels in the British Army. I’d been promoted from lieutenant, acting captain, and I hadn’t quite believed them when they told me why.
The German was looking out over the water, but I was sure he couldn’t see me. The pod was covered with bark that extended even over the observation bubble on the top of each side, giving me a row of slits through which I could see clearly when the small waves didn’t splash. On the surface, even from close up, the pod would look like a half-submerged log floating in the fjord. The boffins had even designed a vane on the air release valve that chopped up the bubbles and spread them less conspicuously over a larger area. The pod was weighted all along its spine with a length of concrete. In our early tests on Ellesmere some clown had reinforced the concrete with half an inch of iron bar, and the pod had winked at the radar screens from two miles away.
The German didn’t seem in any hurry to move. The dog squatted beside him, licking its front paw. What the hell was a Labrador doing in Norway, anyway?
I drove the pod slowly along the surface. The German was about a hundred yards away; I was well within range of that automatic. Once or twice Sergeant Milner’s pod dragged on the line, but he quickly adjusted his pace to keep a loop in front of him, the way we’d practised. I didn’t want him dragging my pod down, making ripples where no ripples ought to be. I dared not go too far along the fjord; I’d passed Vik some time ago and the bank ahead swung out to the Balestrand ferry. My major sight bearing was to line up the tip of the Jostedalsbreen six thousand feet high to the left and ahead, with the tip of land where it curved out from the right; once I lost that sight line I’d have no easy way to locate the exact arrival point on the bank and a cache of food and weapons.
The pod wasn’t fitted with a zipper; it’d take many helpless moments to get out of it. I stopped paddling, took my right arm back into the pod and for the hundredth time reached down to grasp the suitcase latch with which the two halves were held together. One good pull and the latch would spring inwards, the rubber seals would burst apart, and I could push the top of the pod backwards over my head then scramble out of the bottom half. When we’d rehearsed this move on Ellesmere they’d fired Bren guns over our heads; it was terrifying to realise how many bullets they could put around us during that one simple move.
I’d have felt better if that damned moon hadn’t been glaring down on us, if the German hadn’t been standing on the rock with a Labrador by his side, if I were still on Ellesmere, and if Sergeant Milner hadn’t beaten me out of the pod by at least half a magazine every time… I hadn’t notified Milner that I’d stopped, and he’d carried on ahead of me. His line jerked me forward, yanking my chin against the strap of the head cradle. I put my arm back into the sleeve, located the taut line, and pulled it to tell him to stop. The line came slack in my hand as I used its tautness to ease forward. Then I started paddling again and gave him the signal to follow.
His was the hardest job, number two on the line, submerged for part of the way with no idea of where he was or what was happening, using his air bottle all the time and wondering just how long it would last, how much air was left in there to breathe. Most of the way along the Sognefjord we’d travelled on the surface, side by side, breathing through ventilator tubes with our bottles switched off. Three times he’d submerged when German-driven powerboats had come too close for comfort. Once I’d submerged with him when one boat, inexplicably, had stopped close by and it had seemed as if one of the ratings was going to throw a grapple anchor across my pod. Apart from that incident, our journey had been cold but uneventful. I didn’t mind that; I didn’t crave excitement, only to arrive in one piece.
I manoeuvred the pod closer to the shore. Ideally, we needed a rocky shelf on which to land. A man could lift his own pod if he could get a good grip and we’d become quite skilled at rolling across flat rocks out of the water. Under the lee of the rock I lost sight of the German and hoped I would be out of range of his dog’s nose. I trundled slowly along the shoreline, looking for a place to land. There were fifty yards of shingle but that was useless, ten yards of towering rock which doubtless ran sheer down through the water. Then I came on the sort of place I was looking for, low rocks at the water line, rock beneath the surface. The pod bumped gently as I eased it forward across a flat rock table with my arms stretched out. A jagged rock lay ahead, but to its side was a long low channel, with rocks I could use to drag myself along. Quick look in all directions. No one in sight. Dammit, we ought to have worked out a way to hear inside the pod, maybe with an acoustic funnel we could have fitted into our ears like a gramophone horn in reverse. Look again through the vision slits; moon’s bright and that means some Charlie could be watching through a rifle sight from fifty yards away, tucked in snug behind a rock, or lying on a pine-needle carpet at the base of those trees directly ahead. What would he think of a tree trunk that brought itself ashore? Even if my sleeves were covered with artificial moss? If ever I do this again, I thought, I’ll make the pod in four sections joined together like the scales of a cocoon, so the pod can bend along its length.
I was stuck between two rocks. I reached as far ahead as I could, grasped the rocks and pulled. No, the back of the pod was stuck. Lie absolutely still and don’t panic. Push backwards to try to free the pod. No, it won’t go backwards either. Right, turn your arms round, don’t panic, and try to twist yourself free. Left hand down, pushing, right hand up, pulling. Still the pod wouldn’t move. Sweat poured along my back. Damn. The inside of my rubber gloves was clammy, and my hands slipped. Damn! I withdrew one hand. The glove tried to turn itself inside out, sticking to my hand, but I managed to pull it off. Close the air bottle; close the valve. Release the other hand. I felt for and found the neoprene suitcase latch. We’d practised all kinds of release, under water, on the water, half in the water. Though you don’t realise it your body becomes comparatively warm inside the pod and the first rush of cold air can make you gasp. You feel cold, but in reality you’re a lot warmer than the cold outside. I sprang the latch, heard the rub ber seals part and the phrrt of air being released, and then felt the chattering cold as air gushed in around my middle. I pushed the top of the pod backwards and upwards and jerked myself forwards, sliding along the flat stone, forwards and out.
Quick look around. Nothing. No sign of anyone. No crack of bullets. No shouts from the trees, no whispers from the rocks. I tried crouching; my legs held me though they’d had no real exercise since the vanes packed up ten miles back. I dragged the pod across the stones, tipped the ends to pour out the water, then sealed it again with the outside suitcase latch. I crawled to the lip of the rock to where I could look along the shoreline in the direction of the German. No sign of him. The shoreline was strewn with rocks. Mostly the rock went sheer down into the fjord, but occasionally a fall of rubble had built a promontory which had settled down, fifteen or twenty feet into the water. Still no sign of anyone. Watch and wait, watch and wait.
So far, if anyone is watching me, they only know one man is here. They don’t know that another man in another pod lurks out there. I was wearing an ordinary khaki tweed uniform. We’d tried all manner of oilskins, but they had all overheated inside the pod; we’d tried long combinations, but they had proved too cold. My uniform was wet with sweat, even though I’d had the minimum of liquid for the few days before departure and had exercised strenuously to get the water content of my body as low as possible.
The air was cold and crisp; there was snow on the hills immediately above the tree line, which in some places reached down to the water’s edge. Dark shadows in the pines; a quiet, intensely quiet night. It must have been about four o’clock. A flight of mallard came down the far hillside and swooped silent across the water. Mallard, or were they teal? Perhaps that was what the German had been waiting for; perhaps he was a bird fancier.
So far as we had known back in England, the shores of the Sognefjord were not patrolled along this south side. A small German garrison was stationed at Vik, another at Leikanger across the fjord with a section, three men only, in Fresvik. This man could be from Vik, which didn’t seem likely, or from Fresvik, though that was at least twelve miles away. What the devil was he doing there, standing on the very rock beneath which my supplies had been hidden? The rock was unmistakeable from the fjord – that’s why we had picked it. Flat in the centre, with two pinnacles like devil’s ears, one at each end. It looked like the flat top of a head. I hadn’t been wrong. Dammit, I’d seen a photograph of it, and I couldn’t mistake it.
One last look around; nothing in sight. Nothing. I grasped the cord from my pod and gave the signal on it. Then I started to haul him in, slowly. Now he’d have his bottle open to blow air into the pod to give him buoyancy. I stopped pulling to give him time to rise to the surface, and though I was expecting him, I felt a small shock when he suddenly rose through the water. Part of the bark had stripped off the celluloid window on the near side. The moonlight would shine on that. He was about twenty feet out. I drew him slowly in, looking constantly about me, along the rocks, back into the tree line. Night-time searching is a matter of instinct more than vision. You don’t have a hope in hell of seeing a man, even in bright moonlight, if he stays still in a patch of shadow. The blacks are black as pitch and the whites are too bright to help you. Instinct, however, will usually give you the feel of a piece of ground. You know if a human being is watching you, if unseen eyes are focused on you. Your skin knows and prickles; your hair knows and sits wrong on your scalp; your fingers itch. I had no reaction to the ground about me. That’s dangerous. My nerve ends could have been dulled after such a long time in the boat. We’d been in those pods for forty-eight hours. We’d slept in them, eaten in them, and performed our natural functions in bags strapped front and back in them.
When Sergeant Milner’s pod broached the rock there was a slight bump and another segment of bark tore away. I could see where my pod had caught and steered him clear. He fastened the suitcase latch of his pod without speaking and we took off our boots, gaiters, trousers and underpants. I rolled my shirt up round my waist then slithered forward over the rock into the water. Sergeant Milner stood beside me, the relief on his face obvious as we tore off the bags and dropped them into the water before washing ourselves. He was a fastidious man and to live in contact with his own excreta must have appalled him.
We pushed the pods back into the water and watched them sink under the weight of the concrete stiffeners. I brought the cord up under an overhanging rock face and secured it there. It was heavily oiled and waxed; it would hold for a few days. We were wading out of the water, shirts held round our waists, and bottom parts of our bodies exposed, when the German stepped out from behind a rock. The Labrador was at his side, growling.
‘You will put up your hands,’ the German said in English. As I did so my shirt dropped to curtain my exposed parts. Too late I told myself I ought to have continued farther down the fjord round the point. But I’d been scared of losing the line between the mountain and the tip. Once past that line, I’d thought we’d never find the exact rock under which my supplies, food and weapons were hidden. And I badly had needed the comfort of a pistol in my hands.
All this way, for nothing. How long had we been in those damned pods, for nothing? We could have jumped in by parachute, or they could have landed us in a light plane. But no, the brigadier had said in his office in Maida Vale, cups of army tea every hour on the hour in private Minton, no, you must get in with no chance whatsoever of detection by either the Germans or the Norwegians themselves. That was why we’d practised day after day on Ellesmere, gone through a physical hardening course, brought our pods through the defences that spanned the mouth of the Sognefjord, the minefields, the radar scanners, and all the long way up the fjord itself for what I estimated to be forty hours, since they don’t make rubber watches. Only three men of unimpeachable reputation knew a job was on, and not even they knew the details. They’d been instructed by clandestine radio to put arms and supplies under that rock on which the German had stood. Had they been clumsy? Had they led the German, on a suspicion, right to our arrival point?
Now I knew why they’d promoted me to lieutenant-colonel. To boost the pension they’d pay to that wife of mine.
Chapter Two
I married Betty in 1941, shortly after I got home from Denmark in an escaped fishing boat. I was supposed to be in the bag with thousands of others left behind to fight the rearguard action at Dunkirk; but I’ve never been much good at accepting my fate without making a fight of it. I stayed with the Royal Artillery as long as we had a unit, and then took off on my own. Most of the escapees were heading for Spain and Portugal. I knew the Germans had a net around the southern side of the carnage on the beach, so I went north through Belgium, up into Germany by Neumünster, Kiel and Schleswig, and crossed the border at Flensburg. I’d worked in Swedish and Danish tanneries before the war; I’m six feet one inch and have blond hair; I had no problems so long as I stayed in the crowds. I finally got onto a boat at Agger, up in the north of Denmark near Nykobing, and we landed at Great Yarmouth.
Betty was waiting for me in Gillingham, and we were married in a tiny church overlooking the Medway. If I’d known what was good for me, I’d have jumped in the river. There’s a poem in Spanish called ‘The Unfaithful Wife’. One of the lines is, ‘she told me she was a virgin when I took her by the river’. Lorca had the man in the poem give her a basket of silks and ribbons to show he knew she was a tart; I didn’t hear what a tart Betty was until we’d been married six months and I was training recruits back in the depot at Maidstone. I took Betty to the regimental dance one Saturday evening. She was doing the foxtrot with my company commander and I was standing at the bar getting myself some Dutch courage, when an officer who’d been away on a long course and didn’t know me said to his drinking pal, ‘Oh, she’s back in circulation, is she? The mess will be pleased.’
‘Sergeants’ or officers’?’
‘It never used to matter to Bedworthy Betty in the old days. She’d even take ’em out of the Naafi.’
Bedworthy Betty. My wife.
I broke the man’s jaw. Poor bastard; it wasn’t his fault he’d ridden the regimental bicycle.
