Cold Harbour

‘Yes.’ Munro put the letter back in his pocket, picked up his Burberry raincoat and umbrella.

Lawrence said, ‘My God, you want to send him back in.’

Munro smiled gently and opened the door. ‘I’ll see him now, Commander, if you please.’

Munro looked out on to the balcony across the garden to the lights of the city in the falling dusk. ‘Very pleasant, Washington, at this time of year.’ He turned and held out his hand. ‘Munro – Dougal Munro.’

‘Brigadier?’ Hare said.

‘That’s right.’

Hare was wearing slacks and an open-necked shirt, his face still damp from the shower. ‘You’ll forgive me for saying so, Brigadier, but you are the most unmilitary man I ever saw.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Munro said. ‘Until 1939, I was an Egyptologist by profession, a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. My rank was to give me, shall we say, authority in certain quarters.’

Hare frowned. ‘Wait a minute. Do I smell intelligence here?’

‘You certainly do. Have you heard of SOE, Commander?’

‘Special Operations Executive,’ Hare said. ‘Don’t you handle agents into occupied France and so on?’

‘Exactly. We were the forerunners of your own OSS who, I’m happy to say, are now working closely with us. I’m in charge of Section D at SOE, more commonly known as the dirty tricks department.’

‘And what in the hell would you want with me?’ Hare demanded.

‘You were a Professor of German Literature at Harvard, am I right?’

‘So what?’

‘Your mother was German. You spent a great deal of time with her parents in that country as a boy. Even did a degree at Dresden University.’

‘So?’

‘You speak the language fluently, I understand, or so your Naval intelligence service tells me and your French is quite reasonable.’

Hare frowned. ‘What are you trying to say? Are you trying to recruit me as a spy or something?’

‘Not at all,’ Munro told him. ‘You see, you’re really quite unique, Commander. It’s not just that you speak fluent German. It’s the fact that you’re a naval officer with a vast experience in torpedo boats who also speaks fluent German that makes you interesting.’

‘I think you’d better explain.’

‘All right.’ Munro sat down. ‘You served on PT boats with Squadron Two in the Solomons, am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, this is classified, but I can tell you that at the urgent request of the Office of Strategic Services your men are to be transferred to the English Channel to land and pick up agents on the French coast.’

‘And you want me for that?’ Hare said in amazement. ‘You’re crazy. I’m all washed up. Christ, they want me to take a medical discharge.’

‘Hear me out,’ Munro said. ‘In the English Channel, British MTB’s have had a very rough time with their German counterparts.’

‘What the Germans call a Schnellboot,’ Hare said. ‘A fast boat. An apt title.’

‘Yes. Well, for some contrary reason we call them E-boats. As you say, they’re fast, too damn fast. We’ve been trying to get hold of one ever since the war started and I’m happy to say we finally succeeded last month.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Hare said in astonishment.

‘I think you’ll find I never do, Commander,’ Munro told him. ‘One of the S.80 series. Had some engine problem on a night patrol off the Devon coast. When one of our destroyers turned up at dawn, the crew abandoned ship. Naturally, her captain primed a charge before leaving to blow the bottom out of her. Unfortunately for him, it failed to explode. Interrogation of his radio operator indicated that their final message to their base at Cherbourg was that they were sinking her, which means we have their boat and the Kriegsmarine don’t know.’ He smiled. ‘You see the point?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Commander Hare, there is in Cornwall a tiny fishing port called Cold Harbour. No more than two or three dozen cottages and a manor house. It’s in a defence area so the inhabitants have long since moved out. My department uses it for, shall we say, special purposes. I operate a couple of planes from there, German planes. A Stork and a Ju88S night fighter. They still carry Luftwaffe insignia and the man who flies them, gallant RAF pilot though he is, wears Luftwaffe uniform.’

‘And you want to do the same thing with this E-boat?’ Hare said.

‘Exactly, which is where you come in. After all, a Kriegsmarine boat needs a Kriegsmarine crew.’

‘Which is contrary to the rules of war enough to put the same crew in front of a firing squad if caught,’ Hare pointed out.

‘I know. War, as your General Sherman once said, is hell.’ Munro stood up, rubbing his hands. ‘God, the possibilities are limitless. I should tell you, and this again is classified, that all German military and naval intelligence traffic is encoded on Enigma machines, a gadget the Germans are convinced is absolutely foolproof. Unfortunately for them we have a project called Ultra which has succeeded in penetrating the system. Think of the information that would give you from the Kriegsmarine. Recognition signals, codes of the day for entry into ports.’

‘Crazy,’ Hare said. ‘You’d need a crew.’

‘The S.80 usually carries a complement of sixteen. My friends at the Admiralty think you could manage with ten, including yourself. As it’s a joint venture, both our people and yours are searching out the right personnel. I’ve already got you the perfect engineer. A Jewish German refugee who worked at the Daimler-Benz factory. They manufacture the engines for all E-boats.’

There was a long pause. Hare turned and looked out across the garden to the city. It was quite dark now and he shivered, for no accountable reason remembering Tulugu. When he reached for a cigarette, his hand shook and he turned and extended it to Munro.

‘Look at that and you know why? Because I’m scared.’

‘So was I in the belly of that damned bomber flying over,’ Munro said. ‘I’ll be just as bad when we fly back tonight though this time it’s a Flying Fortress. I understand they have a little more room.’

‘No,’ Hare said hoarsely. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘Oh, but you will, Commander,’ Munro said. ‘And shall I tell you why? Because there’s nothing else you can do. You certainly can’t go back to Harvard. Back to the classroom after all you’ve been through? I’ll tell you something about yourself because we’re both in the same boat. We’re men who’ve spent most of our lives living in the head. Other men’s stories. All in the book and then the war came and do you know what, my friend? You’ve enjoyed every golden moment.’

‘You go to hell,’ Martin Hare told him.

‘Very probably.’

‘What if I say no?’

‘Oh, dear.’ Munro extracted the letter from his inside pocket. ‘I think you’ll recognise the signature at the bottom there as being that of the Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces.’

Hare looked at it in stupefaction. ‘Good God!’

‘Yes, well he’d like a word before we go. What you might call a command performance so be a good lad and get into your uniform. We haven’t got much time.’

At the White House, the limousine stopped at the West Basement entrance where Munro showed his pass to the Secret Service agents on the night shift. There was a pause while an aide was sent for. He appeared after a few moments, a young naval lieutenant in impeccable uniform.