‘Nothing, sir, at present. Thank you.’
‘Oh. I see. Courtesy call. Good of you. Carry on . . . with whatever you’ve got to do.’
When I didn’t move he gave me an eye lock, with a quizzical expression fixed to his face. I decided to talk before the muscles locked up.
‘I rather thought of offering something to you, sir. How would you like to lose that fucking great castle in the valley, sir?’ Interest. He waved the fat man away again: he walked backwards away from us, slightly bowing, like a courtier in the presence of royalty.
The Colonel said, ‘Interesting. Go on, please.’
‘I thought a couple of Lancasters with a couple of cookies and eight one-thousand-pounders apiece would crack the place open for you. It will be a pity if you have to wait a fortnight for the Yanks to do it, sir. Then there’s the problem of American bombing.’
‘What problem?’
‘They’ll clobber your target OK, but they’ll do it with at least a squadron, from a very high altitude. They will drop more than a hundred bombs, and some of those will fall as far as five miles away. It’s the way they do things these days: they call it overkill. You’ll have to pull back every living thing around five or six miles from the target to guarantee no casualties.’
‘. . . and you think we can do better than that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I have asked the RAF, of course, but they say No: it’s an American job. Have you any reason to imagine they might change their minds?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll ask them, this time, sir. Sorry, sir.’
‘. . . and that will make a difference? I realize that you’re in the same club, of course, but . . .’
‘You have nothing to lose, if I try, sir.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose not.’
He had to give it the pretence of some thought, so as not to lose face. Then he said, ‘OK. I’ve got one of those special RAF listening stations in a radio van parked round the back. See if you can use them to connect through to whoever you need to speak to.’
I’d heard of those types, and rather approved of them. They were RAF corporals and sergeants who connected into a special intelligence source somewhere, and told generals to piss off now and again. They were the best source of battlefield information the Army had, so it had to put up with them. This quartet of sergeants wasn’t terribly impressed with me, but couldn’t find a decent enough excuse to refuse to let me use their gear to speak to England. I gave them Cliff’s name. I gave them the telephone number for the Guard Room at Tempsford, and another fall-back number Cliff had given me. I think that they would have kicked me out, but that fall-back number clinched it. The senior Sergeant recognized it. His mouth got all twisted, as if his tongue had turned to worm-wood, and had started to lick itself. They told me to hang around, and that they would call me.
I walked back to the command vehicle. It was the fat ADC at the table now, smoking a curved pipe. He motioned me to a chair across from him. I produced my straight billiard, and accepted a fill of dark tobacco. The sun had broken clear again. There was a travelling chess set on the table.
When he finally came on the line Cliff sounded tetchy, but his voice in the heavy black handset was as clear as if he was in a room with me,
‘What do you want?’
‘Hi, Cliff. Nice to hear you too. I’ve missed our little chats.’
‘Fuck off, Charlie. What do you want?’
‘I want a couple of Lancs, with a cookie and eight one-thousand-pounders in each. I want them to crack open a castle full of Jerry Paras on the Holland and Germany border; tomorrow at the latest.’
‘Why should I help?’
‘It’s holding up the brown jobs’ advance, and I think that Grace might already be on the other side. Heading off into Germany with a band of mad sods.’
‘Nazis?’
‘No; doctors and nurses.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘The point is, Cliff, I am moving behind the advance with James and Les, and the advance has stopped. If Grace is already on the other side then she’s getting away from me. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. Let me think about it for a minute.’
He thought a minute; then he said, ‘I’ll call you back.’
‘That’s what I thought, Cliff. If Winston can’t whistle us up a couple of Lancs what’s the point of him being Prime Minister?’
I heard him give his little coughing laugh, and momentarily remembered the Cliff I had liked when I first met him.
He said, ‘Don’t get too good at this lark, Charlie. I might have to keep you on.’
I was called back to the little Austin radio van half an hour later. Cliff asked me, ‘Can you give me the coordinates for this place you are responsible for killing?’
I liked the you are responsible bit. I said, ‘I’ll hand you over to someone who can, as soon as we’ve finished.’
‘OK. It’s ordered for 10.20 your time tomorrow morning, and just to make sure you take requests like this seriously, I’ve asked your old squadron to do it. It’s going to be your mates up there being shot at, and there’s bugger-all on paper. They’re going to love you when they find out it won’t even count as a trip for them.’
‘Thanks, Cliff. What do I need to do now?’
‘Nothing. Make sure that the brown job leader has pulled all his people more than a mile back from the target, and has a company ready to go in and mop up as soon as the RAF’s finished. Anything else?’
‘I should confess that I didn’t tell you that the RAF had already been asked, and had turned the
