Operation White-Water 1

Five Men

The whole thing was insane. It was crazy, it was mad, it was unthinkable, impossible, and somehow, undeniably, absolutely essential.

Captain Francis Holbourn knew that beyond a doubt. This mission was in his hands, and it was up to him to make it succeed.

He clutched the strap of his knapsack, which rested between his knees on the platform of the Bucharest train station. The calm, confident and just slightly moody air which hung about his whole bearing showed no sign of his inner turmoil. He was as cool as steel — as cool as always.

He turned at the voice of his second-in-command; Captain Richard Scott, DSO, that blond, professional, pure Anglo-Saxon with the blue eyes like ice — but that always, somehow, had a bit of soul lingering in the very back of them. He now stood behind Holbourn, knapsack over his shoulder, speaking English as if he were at London Euston and not in the midst of hazardously hostile territory. ‘Couldn’t be simpler, could it, sir?’ he asked. ‘We get a train ride all the way. I tell you, what do we need professionals for in a war like this?’

His ‘sir’ was a mere off-hand address, more an acknowledgement of Holbourn’s official appointment to leadership than anything else.

‘Not on your life,’ said Holbourn, in encouraging German. ‘Don’t expect it to last.’

Scott shrugged and smiled. ‘Lead on,’ he said, in his incorrigable English.

Holbourn paused a moment in the doorway of a nearly empty train-car and ran his cool grey eyes over the platform. They missed no detail, no movement, no face. ‘The others?’ he asked, shifting his gaze momentarily to his subcommander.

‘Saw them get in three cars down.’ Scott never missed anything, either. Holbourn nodded and climbed into the car.

The occupants, as stated, were few. There was an old woman with a brown package under her arm who looked as if she had come a long way and was going a long way more. There were two soldiers near the end of the car. One was smoking, ignoring the clearly legible sign which forbade it, and the other was reading a cheap novel and apparently falling asleep over it.

Holbourn and Scott  sat down on opposite sides of the car. They were both attired in the uniform of the medical corps — a quiet pair of corporals going back to their posts after leave.

Holbourn knit his brows as he leant his arms on his knees and dangled his knapsack between them. The insanity of the situation didn’t disturb him. He almost enjoyed it, in a stoic, masochistic sort of way. Anyway, he had to do it. He couldn’t let this mission fail.

He knew what would be the loss if he failed. It meant more than just the five lives of he, Scott, and the others. Failing this mission meant more lives to be lost--dozens in the immediate future, thousands for as far as anyone could see. There could be years more of war.

What did it matter? There would be anyway. One single action couldn’t stop the steamroller that was crashing across Europe on an unrestrainable course of destruction. Holbourn was insane himself, to think that this could do anything. It was tiny, infinitesimal, compared to the things others were doing that minute and he had done before. But there are times when struggling powers, like struggling men, must use survival tactics.

Besides, this was more than a tactical measure — anyway, it was for Holbourn. It meant more than just the removal an entire army, navy, and air force from the pressure against Russia. It meant freedom for an entire people, and thus, morally as much as strategically, it had to succeed.

He leaned his head back on the seat and let his mind fly back to the night before. Had it only been six hours since the five of them had been sitting around the table, lit by a single lamp, tracing out their journey? It was too insanely easy, as Scott had said. He had declined from commenting the night before because of the presence of the other three men. But what the young captain had stated that morning when he and Holbourn were alone on the platform quite revealed that Scott felt much the same as his leader. Something had to go wrong. Funnily enough, Scott didn’t seem to mind very much.

Holbourn had barely met Richard Scott, but he had known of him for a long time. Scott had a record that stretched across Europe, and couldn’t, incidentally, speak a word of Rumanian. But that wasn’t, Holbourn knew, quite enough of a handicap to exclude him from the party. He already felt like they needed him, and they’d only just set out.

He remembered the four faces illumined in the lamplight of the previous night, looking at him in serious concentration. There was Steven Maddux, the Canadian strategist and assassin with amazing memory, solemn and silent, as always. How you could have so quiet, affable, and human a man as a professional assasin, Holbourn had no idea. But you could, somehow, because Maddux was it.

Next him was South African Michael Emerson, the skier and Rumanian dialectician who knew the map of the Carpathians like the back of his hand. An odd, heroic type, way above the average, but then again, all of them were. Like Rene Lupin, the French underground agent who had been involved in multiple abductions and whose love for explosions and thirst for adventure was only surpassed by his almost old-fashioned chivalry. Of course, there was Scott, the English double agent with a brilliant head for forgery and codes who practically couldn’t be killed, and lastly Francis Holbourn, who knew how to keep his head — and that was about all.

Operation White-Water. It might as well be called Operation Bedlam. Some head at Whitehall or Broadway had come up with it, from Braşov, the city of white water. Even the white about the whole thing reminded Holbourn of lunatics. Braşov, the city of industry; home of oil refineries, German expatriates, textiles, machinery, aircraft factories — and Constantin Albescu.

A government official, Albescu’s permanent residence was on the south side of Braşov. His position in government was not high enough to really make much difference to the Allies, but he had of late become an increasing threat because of one thing he knew about — the King’s plotted coup.

How he had discovered the secret behind that no one quite knew. But it was a substantial fact that he knew about it — about the one thing that would drag Rumania out of the Axis powers.

There was, though, another player in the game — Sorin  Ardelean. He, too, was a government official. He was much higher, much more important than Albescu. And Albescu had him under his thumb. There was nothing Ardelean could do without Albescu’s say, because Albescu knew what Ardelean would die before let Ion Antonescu discover.

Albescu was blackmailing Ardelean; there was something he wanted to get out of him. But when would Albescu give up? When would he hand that information over?

It had been perfectly clear to Holbourn even before his chief at Broadway had finished speaking that Albescu had to be gotten rid of. Abduction wasn’t Holbourn’s strong point — by a technical interpretation, he had done it before, a fellow of his own service and a friend, but it wasn’t something he considered himself good at. Still, he was in charge, and considering what Scott was like — tough, probably, professional, without a doubt, but not exactly cautious — perhaps it was a good thing.

Holbourn looked up casually as the door in the back of the car opened and three men entered. They were talking rapidly in Rumanian and laughing. One sat down, waving his hand to the others, and the last two passed through the car and into the next. Holbourn leant back, and was almost immediately asleep. The last thing he saw was Scott across the aisle, his eyes apparently on the ceiling and his smoke curling up around his head.

The train whistle blew, rousing the sleeping grandma and Holbourn with a jolt. Holbourn raised himself on his elbow and looked out the window.

‘What station?’ he asked. The civilian in front of him turned.

‘Gorgota,’ he said.

‘Mulţumesc,’ replied Holbourn. He picked up his knapsack as the train slowed. A glance at his companion was enough to convey his intentions, and Scott rose and followed him between the seats through the car. They climbed down the steps of the carriage onto the platform.

‘It’s a surprise the car was so empty,’ said Scott, in a deadpan voice, watching the people stream out of the other carriages. The words were clear but scarcely audible. No one passing could have heard unless he was looking straight at him and as close as Holbourn was. He added, a bit more warmly, ‘Did you see what I saw?’

‘What?’

‘That trio that came through half an hour ago.’

Holbourn, with his usual cold efficiency, walked over to a newsstand and bought a paper. ‘SSI?’ he asked, leaning against the wall of the station to read it.

‘Definitely,’ said Scott.

‘What do you think they’d be here for?’ He didn’t need to ask it, and Scott didn’t need to answer. He was looking down the platform, and replied rather abruptly;

‘Just as I thought. No, don’t look.’ He stayed Holbourn’s hand as he made as if to lower his paper.

‘Who was it?’

‘Our civilian carriage friend. Watching us, of course, but pretending not to.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘As taxes.’

‘Well that’s lucky,’ said Holbourn, with as much sarcasm as he ever let leak into his voice. ‘Come on.’

They mounted the steps to their car, but were surprised to find it had filled with more rowdy soldiers and some patriotic schoolboys. The old woman had gone — the civilian was still there, and so were the two original book-reading and cigarette-smoking soldiers. Few of them paid any attention to the two medical corps men.

The journey was fairly quiet for some time, until the schoolboys broke out into a loud and rapid version of a popular song.

‘I’m going to complain to the company,’ said the book-reading soldier, suddenly, when there was a pause in the melody. He didn’t seem to have gotten anywhere in his book, as the well-trained Scott remarked quietly to Holbourn.

‘Such activities shouldn’t be allowed on the train,’ grumbled the smoking soldier. ‘It’s disruptive to the public peace.’

‘Oh, let them alone,’ said the civilian gentleman.

The two soldiers remained cross, but at Holbourn’s invitation, didn’t leave the car. ‘The others are full,’ said one, sharply.

Holbourn gave Scott a significant look. Scott, though, tactfully ignored it.

‘Maddux,’ he said, silently. Holbourn read his lips and looked up without blinking an eyelash as Maddux came down the middle of the car. Whether Holbourn’s bag just happened to be in the aisle or if he imperceptibly slid it there, one cannot know. Maddux, at any rate, tripped over it and sprawled on the floor. Holbourn snatched it up and gave the infantryman a dark glance.

‘Be careful, can’t you!’ he snorted. ‘There are important instruments in there.’

‘Shouldn’t have left it lying there,’ the dark young man returned annoyedly.

‘I suppose I can leave it where I want,’ said Holbourn.

‘Not if it obstructs traffic!’ said Maddux.

‘Well, look where you’re going and step over it next time.’

‘There’d better not be a next time,’ said Maddux, and walked off huffing.

Scott had watched the proceedings indifferently, noticing mostly that neither the civilian nor the book-reader had appeared to look up, but the cigarette-smoker, now on his fourth or fifth, raised his eyes first to Maddux’s retreating back, and then to Holbourn, who was examining the contents of his knapsack and grumbling about blind elephants.

Scott’s hand moved to his breast pocket, and he found that Holbourn had already slipped a small paper into it. It was written in Maddux’s loopy handwriting;

‘Capitan Korzha boarded at Gorgota.’

Scott glanced at Holbourn and Holbourn nodded.

‘Korzha,’ said Scott, silently again.

‘Yes,’ said, or rather, mouthed, Holbourn.

‘But he’s--’

‘One of the biggest brains in the whole blasted bunch.’

‘And he’s on this train?’ Scott was indifferent almost.

‘Yes,’ said Holbourn. ‘And now I’m certain.’

‘They’re on us.’

‘Yes.’

‘Our smoking friend has gone.’

‘Which way?’

‘Back.’

‘Following Maddux.’

‘Indubitably.’ The smoking soldier had barely disappeared through the door than one of the civilian’s friends entered through it and passed along the length of the car. Scott looked up casually, impartially, as the man walked by, and met his eyes.

‘Yes,’ he said to Holbourn. ‘They know we’re here.’

Holbourn gritted his teeth. ‘How could they know?’ He would never have said it aloud, not with Scott there, not Scott the agent of Bavaria, Italy, and Austria. But he asked it of himself. ‘How in the name of all that’s impossible could they know?’

All thoughts were interrupted by the whistle of the train.

‘Another station,’ said Scott. ‘Ploiesti, must be.’

It was Ploiesti. Scott stuck his head out of the window and watched as they pulled into the station. He noticed that even before the train had completely stopped a man in a trenchcoat and another in uniform stepped off and disappeared into the crowd.

‘We get off,’ said Holbourn.

‘Yes,’ said Scott. ‘We get off.’ His voice matched Holbourn’s perfectly — mild, indifferent, professional.

The station was crowded, and became more so as the passengers poured out of the cars. The bustle of people pressed around the two men as they stood on the platform.

‘I don’t like it.’ Scott imagined rather than heard the apprehension in the leader’s voice behind him.

‘That man with the conductor? And those two on the corner? Neither do I, cap,’ he said.

‘There’s more of them, too,’ said Holbourn. ‘I don’t claim to be any sort of magician, but I can feel it.’

‘Voice of experience,’ said Scott. ‘The others?’

‘Emerson’s over there, in the station house,’ said Holbourn. ‘Find Maddux and Lupin.’

‘Right,’ said Scott, and disappeared like a ghost into the fluctuating mass of people.

Holbourn pressed his way through the people towards the station house. He paused in the door and scanned the crowd for Michael Emerson.

‘Excuse me,’ said a sudden voice beside him. Holbourn turned slowly to find a young locotenent at his elbow.

‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘Do you want me?’

‘There are special security regulations in place,’ explained the officer. ‘May I see your papers? You’ll forgive me. It’s just my orders. One moment, and then you may go.’

‘Certainly,’ said Holbourn, reaching into his pocket. This was it, then. His mental machinery chattered away rapidly as he thought, calmly, dispassionately. They knew who he was — this was just a guise. His eyes scanned the milling crowd and he knew he saw more than one armed soldier. He did not fail to see the sharp flash in the officer’s eye as he reached into his pocket, either. If anything should come out in his hand besides his papers, he knew that he could count on having a bullet through his middle. The officer took the papers Holbourn handed him and looked them over. His brow furrowed.

‘One moment, Mr. Cornea,’ he said. He beckoned to an armed police officer, who approached. ‘Call the Capitan,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what to do about this, Mr. Cornea,’ he went on. ‘We’ll straighten it out in a minute. If you’ll come with me--’

‘Certainly,’ repeated Holbourn, stepping out of the doorway.

‘They’ve got the captain.’ Emerson snapped it out in the southern dialect, sharp and businesslike, yet even though Scott didn’t understand the words, he heard the something in Emerson’s voice that warned of danger.

‘What is it, Emerson?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened?’

‘They’ve arrested Holbourn,’ said Emerson.

‘Arrested him?’ demanded Rene Lupin.

‘Where?’ asked Scott, the tension in his voice as controlled as his face. ‘Where is he?’ Emerson waved a hand. At the end of the platform, Holbourn was facing off with a dark-haired Rumanian capitan. Scott took one look. Obviously Korzha.

‘Take the other two and hide,’ he said. ‘Wherever, it doesn’t matter, but stay out of their reach.’

‘And you, sir?’ That sir, until then neglected, was more than a convention. Scott was now in charge. He didn’t choose to answer, though.

‘Go,’ he said.

‘Your papers are not right,’ said Capitan Korzha, handing them back to Holbourn. ‘You’ll come with us to the police station, if you please.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Holbourn. ‘My papers certainly are right. I don’t understand why they must be examined here, anyway. It’s certainly very uncommon.’

‘It will be straightened out,’ said the dark capitan.

‘But, capitan--’

Korzha gave his locotenent a glance, and the man pulled out an evil-looking machine pistol.

‘You will come with us, Domnul Cornea,’ said Korzha, with the patience of a cow. ‘Security is being tightened, and your papers are not right.’

‘Very well,’ said Holbourn. His eyes scanned the platform once more, and then came back to meet Korzha’s — dark and unconquerable. Korzha’s own eyes narrowed. He had seen the glance, had read the meaning, and knew that Holbourn was looking for his men.

The other soldiers had begun to unsling their machine guns, ready to shoot should Holbourn try to escape. Korzha turned away and started to speak to another officer. The locotenent remained with his gun pointed at Holbourn’s head.  He was a young fellow, probably just out of school . . . The chatter of the station had not subsided in the least. Holbourn looked coolly over the crowd. To be arrested, just when it was starting, in the middle of a bustling world that knew nothing of him — nagut, he would say in German. Oh, well.

With a sudden, lightning-quick move, Holbourn’s right hand flashed out and struck the locotenent on the side of the head, knocking him over and sending the bullet of his Luger rocketing harmlessly towards the sky. Holbourn did not wait either for the locotenent to fall or for the soldiers to get their fingers on the triggers of their machine guns and shoot him down. In the same movement he made a nosedive around the corner of the building, past a pile of luggage carts and crates.

His chest slammed against the cement of the platform, and he lost his wind as a fountain of bullets shattered the crates behind him and whistled by inches from his head. He rolled over in time to see an armed guard looming over the heap of rubbish which had been Holbourn’s only shelter. The soldier raised his gun, and his finger touched the trigger.

Holbourn’s hand already held his Mauser. He jerked to one side, raised his pistol, and pulled the trigger even as a stream of bullets skittered past his shoulder. The bullets abruptly stopped as the soldier dropped his gun with an oath, fell back against the wall, and clutched his arm.

There was no time either to think or to delay. Holbourn scrambled to his feet and took off like a modern day Achilles. Machine guns rattled and feet clattered behind him, and he expected any moment to see that flash of light, and after that, darkness. He tore down a back alley and stopped as he noticed that running into the next street would put him in plain sight for the police squads Korzha had certainly sent around to apprehend him.

The Scotchman didn’t pause to think through anything. He ran and dodged by instinct, and his instinct was pretty good. He refused to be driven farther from the station by the advancing enemy. He had to get back to Scott and the others, and he knew that his separation from the group was what Korzha most wished.

The streets were quickly filling with soldiers. Holbourn drew back into the shadows of the alley, and noticed that they had grown longer. Time was slipping by. The soldiers were closing in, groups of two or three choosing their alley and heading for it. Holbourn hesitated to fire. Any such action would tell them beyond a doubt where he was. He glanced up at the high, windowless walls around him. He was walled in on two sides and about to be walled in on four. Well, at any rate, when they found him he’d show them he didn’t die until all his bullets were gone. He leaned grimly against the wall, his Mauser aimed at the nearest soldier, ready, at the first sign of discovery, to die with bullets whizzing around him. He had lost his hat — his loose blond hair ruffled in the heavy wind which came sweeping down the alley. He realised that his knapsack was still on his shoulder. He lowered it to the ground and then waited, tensed, silent, teeth gritted.

The soldiers were shouting to each other, running about in the street. Holbourn could hear the thud of their boots and their officers giving orders.  Two minutes passed, but Holbourn felt them only as minutes. He was excited — there was a sense of wildness and adventure in him that all his stoicism could never overcome. He was a Scot — and Scots die hard.

Korzha would be picking up the other lot of them — no, but not if that man Scott had any sense, and Holbourn was pretty sure he did. Korzha mustn’t get them.

He heard a rattle of a machine guns very close by at the end of the alley. Holbourn swung around, expecting at the same time to feel the bullets bite into his chest. But there was no sensation of lead slamming into him. There was a single figure approaching him, visible only partially from the shadows. It was a figure in a medical corps uniform with a knapsack slung on its shoulder.

‘Alive, cap?’ it asked in the voice of the archangel Michael, or perhaps St. George, or at least Sir Launcelot.

‘And kicking,’ said Holbourn, and lowered his pistol.

Scott sped up his pace to an easy, swinging lope and reached Holbourn’s side.

‘Glad I found you,’ he said, patting his shoulder. As if he were picking him up at a train station — that impassive, yet there was something laughing underneath his eyes. He stood, opposite Holbourn, feet apart, machine gun cradled in his arms. His finger massaged the trigger.

‘You’re bleeding,’ said Holbourn, detachedly.

‘Grazed,’ said Scott, tersely. ‘Come on, there’s a way out of here.’

He darted down the alley, his eyes sweeping from left to right, his feet making little noise on the pavement.  

‘Keep a guard at the back door, ‘ he said. As if he were in charge, the blighter! ‘Don’t want any unexpected visitors.’

They went for a few seconds, but Scott flattened against the wall as he heard simultaneously the crack of Holbourn’s Mauser and the clatter of MG machine guns.

‘We’re in for it now,’ he said.

‘I don’t know about you, Scottie,’ said Holbourn, ‘But I’ve been in for it these twenty minutes at least.’

‘I should say. I thought it was over myself for a few minutes, there.’

‘Nothing is over until I say it is.’

‘Then maybe it’s not so serious,’ grinned Scott, firing his own machine gun down the alley. The guns at the other end silenced only a moment, then picked up again.

‘Do we run for it?’ asked Scott, as Holbourn looked at him.

‘Don’t know where we’re running to,’ said Holbourn.

‘At least we’ll know where we’re running from.’

‘Thanks, but I rather like to draw out my life. Make it last as long as possible.’

‘Whatever you say, captain.’

‘We’re safe here, anyway,’ went on Holbourn, ignoring the bullets that passed just a handbreadth from his chest. ‘That is, until they get a grenade. But I don’t much fancy staying here until they do.’

‘Wouldn’t be such a good idea. Stay here.’ Scott threw himself to his stomach for the second time that afternoon and wriggled to the end of the alley.

‘More soldiers making our way,’ he said. ‘On the double.’

‘And?’

‘Korzha is at the end of the road. With three officers and a staff car. Those soldiers are getting close, captain.’

‘And a what?’

‘And a staff car. Listen!’

A train whistle blew not far away, shattering the eardrums of the two in the alley.

‘What about it, Scottie?’ asked Holbourn.

‘Do you hear that?’

‘Train?’

‘No, listen!’

Holbourn listened. In a faraway street he could hear the sound of machine guns. But they were a long way off.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Maddux and Emerson!’ said Scott.  ‘And Lupin.’

‘But —’ Holbourn squeezed against the wall as bullets whistled again. Scott chose not to return fire.

‘But they think it’s  us, my dear captain,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be Emerson. Good old fellow!’

There was a silence for a while, only broken by the distant gunfire. Scott saw a movement at the far end of the alley, and three soldiers left and dashed around the corner.

‘They’re gone!’ said Scott, calmly. ‘Confused ‘em.’

‘On the subject of staff cars,’ said Holbourn ‘Let’s have a look.’

He did. Korzha was conversing with one of the officers, when a very young soldier ran up, saluted, and blurted something out. Korzha said something more to the officers, and all three of them crossed the street and disappeared beyond the train station.

The street was not quite empty. There were about five soldiers on the other side of the street, their eyes scanning the alleys. The afternoon was growing late — the sun had begun to disappear behind the buildings of the town.

Scott raised himself to his knees and bit his lip. He glanced around, as if forming a plan. ‘Come on, captain,’ he said, standing up. ‘When I signal, run. Run like you had a pack of German Shepherds after you. German Shepherds who haven’t had anything to eat in a week.’ Machine gun resting gently in his hands, he stepped into the open street.

‘Rapide!’ he called to the soldiers, waving an arm and shouting incoherently.

The soldiers could not see his uniform clearly, but they could see it was a uniform and that he carried a machine gun. Obedient to his tone of command, though his words were inaudible, they followed his urgent beckoning and dashed down the alley he indicated. Holbourn, at the signal from Scott, seized both knapsacks and dashed across the street to the staff car.

‘You idiot!’ said Holbourn, kindly, his glance only landing a second on Scott’s bloody hand before he shoved him out of the driver’s seat. His excitement was, for once, plain in the thickness of his Scotch burr. ‘Hoo did ye get awa’ wi’ tha’ one? An’ wi’ only one word o’ Rumanian!’

‘Don’t know what kind of fool I was to think it would work,’ said Scott, with a debonair shrug.

‘Just your golden touch,’ said Holbourn.

‘Luck,’ said Scott. ‘It’ll fail someday, you’ll see.’

‘And what about the others? I left you in charge, and you left them?’

‘They’re all right. Remember, Maddux is a master strategist. Think he’ll let the Rumanians get the better of him? And Lupin’s used to this kind of shoot and dodge work. They’ll be all right.’

‘If they don’t it’ll be my fault.’

‘Must make you feel important.’

‘No, I’m just in charge.’

‘I don’t quite feel safe in this thing,’ said Scott, banging his head against the window as the car turned sharply again.

‘I value my life too,’ assured Holbourn. ‘But I never have been a good driver. If any German SS agent wanted to discover my true identity all he’d have to say is, “Drive me round the corner, bitte,” and he’d know.’

‘But I can’t quite believe he’d be that devoted to his country.’

‘You are the most impertinent fellow.’

‘Right of my rank, captain.’

‘You don’t have to remind me.’