The Danger of Life Read online

  For my grandson Alistair

  Prologue

  ‘Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.’

  Leonardo da Vinci

  *

  Stan had expected it to be easy. There had been no problems during practice on the ground in Norway. First you pulled the lever to open the hatch, then you dropped head first into the blackness below while facing towards the rear of the Junkers Ju 88 bomber. That way you avoided being hit in the face by the blast of the slipstream. Then it was simply a nice tranquil ride beneath your parachute down to an arrival in Scotland.

  Stan had spent the flight from Norway lying on his stomach with the weight of his parachute, his radio and his other supplies pressing down on his back. The aircraft’s gunner was positioned just above him, while equipment and aircraft systems hemmed him in on both sides. This was no place for anyone suffering from claustrophobia. Stan was thankful that was not something that caused him a problem. Especially not right now, when there were more important things to worry about.

  The main concern was the news over the radio that the diversionary air raid on Aberdeen, just to the south of them, had failed to find its target in the heavy cloud that had materialised in place of the forecast clear skies. The aircraft assigned to the raid were still looking for the city but were unlikely to continue doing so for much longer. If they turned back it would leave a single bomber flying steadily south west at 3,000m and looking very obvious to the British radar operators. The thought made Stan feel extremely vulnerable.

  It was no real surprise when the intercom suddenly came alive with shouted warnings of a night fighter. A member of the crew had reported he’d seen a silhouette of an aircraft hunting them through a hole in the cloud. The pilot took violent evasive action and Stan found it was all he could do to avoid vomiting up the brandy he’d consumed before takeoff.

  A little later they emerged from cloud for long enough to catch a glimpse of the coast, which confirmed they were over Scotland. But it was obvious to Stan that no-one on board the aircraft was certain which bit of coast they had crossed, or where they were in relation to his intended landing point. It was equally obvious that the crew was much more interested in evading the real or imaginary night fighter than they were in precision navigation. Stan had some sympathy for them.

  ‘Time for me to go, I think, oberleutenant,’ said Stan over the intercom to the pilot.

  The gunner tapped him hard on the shoulder and gesticulated frantically. ‘No, wait, we need to connect the static line first!’

  Stan realised that he’d been on the point of dropping through the hatch without the line that automatically opened his parachute being attached. As the instructor had said, gleefully, on the parachute course, ‘It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the bottom.’

  Once the static line had been properly attached, Stan took a deep breath, and before he had time for second thoughts he operated the hatch release lever, as he’d been shown in Norway. A bad night suddenly got much worse. Somehow, he tumbled rather than dropped, and found himself wedged in the hatch in the floor of the aircraft, upside down.

  Then Stan felt a Luftwaffe flying boot pressing down very firmly on his rear end, and suddenly he was falling free. The parachute opened while he was in cloud. Once clear of the cloud, he could still see nothing in the darkness below him. He was beginning to consider the frightening possibility that they had been wrong about the coast and he had been dropped over the North Sea by mistake when he caught a glimpse of what might have been a tree off to his right. He had barely braced when he landed heavily in a field, winding himself in the process.

  So far, so good, he thought, after recovering his breath and gathering his parachute. Now he just needed to find a telephone, and a strong drink, though not necessarily in that order.

  They said it always rained in Scotland. Private Hannes Lambrechts had seen pictures that proved that wasn’t true. But, in the short time since he’d arrived in this godforsaken corner of the country, the heavens had done little to prove the cynics wrong.

  If it had been quiet in the big hut you’d have been able to hear the rain now, beating down on its outer skin. But it wasn’t quiet. The largest available space at Achnacarry was crammed with khaki-clad men, talking, cheering and shouting. The building was perhaps three or four times as long as it was wide, and in its centre was a boxing ring. The early arrivals and the officers had been able to take advantage of the folding chairs set in rows up the sides of the ring and at either end of it. But much larger numbers were standing behind the chairs, some trying to see around the heads of the men in front of them, others making surreptitious wagers on the outcomes of the contests taking place in the ring.

  Hannes was standing at one end of the hut, where he could only catch glimpses of the action. He knew that he was witnessing ‘milling’. It was the sort of recreational activity that could only have been dreamt up in a place whose whole purpose was to prepare men to kill other men as effectively as possible and avoid being killed themselves in the process.

  The contests were a highlight of every course. Each troop picked their best ten men and they were matched weight for weight against representatives from another randomly selected troop. One team of ten wore black shorts and shirts, while the other team wore white. At the blow of a whistle, the first pugilist from each team entered the ring, wearing boxing gloves, and tried to defeat the other team’s first representative. At the end of a minute the whistle was blown again and the first man from each team was immediately replaced by the second, who carried on the contest without a pause. At the end of ten minutes all members of both teams had fought, and points were totted up on the basis of two for an individual win, one for a loss and none for a disqualification. The overall result for each troop versus troop contest was then announced, not always to the approval of the audience. It was boxing stripped back to its barest essentials, and it varied from the comical to the savage. As soon as one ten versus ten contest had finished, another was lined up to begin.

  Hannes wondered if the experience he was about to endure at Achnacarry would turn him into the sort of man who could flail away with boxing gloves at another man simply because he represented a different troop. But that wasn’t his primary concern right now. Hannes was looking for someone. He scanned the backs of heads and profiles of the men around him. He’d already tried the other end of the hut without success. Wartime training and diets, military haircuts and khaki uniforms gave a certain sameness to everyone present, but Hannes was sure he hadn’t been mistaken. He had only seen the man for a moment in passing that morning, and it was only the odd look on the other man’s face that allowed Hannes to believe that his first instinct had been right. But he needed to be certain.

  Then, to his right, he saw a pair of eyes turn swiftly away from his sweeping gaze. The man was off to one side of the throng. Hannes began to ease his way through the tightly-packed and highly excited crowd. If the man knew Hannes was approaching, he showed no sign of it. Then, when Hannes came within a couple of metres the man turned to look directly at him, and Hannes knew immediately that he had been right. Something was different, but this was the man he had been looking for. He paused, wondering what to do next, then realised that the man’s gaze had shifted, looking over Hannes’ shoulder at someone behind him. The man nodded and looked away. Hannes felt a sudden sharp pressure on his back, like a punch.

  The knife was swiftly withdrawn. As the life ebbed out of him, Hannes remained standing, supported by the surrounding crowd for just long enough to allow his assailants to move away unnoticed. Even after he had collapsed onto the floor and the medical officer had been summoned fro
m the ringside, it took a little while for the blood seeping from the small wound in his back to reveal that his collapse was due to anything other than natural causes.

  Chapter One

  Group Captain Robert Sutherland kept to a height of two thousand feet as he flew his Airspeed Oxford training aircraft along the southern coast of Fife. After taking off from RAF Turnhouse he’d flown north east to pass over Cramond Island before crossing over the Firth of Forth and picking up the coast near Kinghorn. It was raining, and they were being buffeted by gusts and turbulence, but the base of the cloud was well above the aircraft, and visibility was good enough for Bob to keep clear of the barrage balloons. A little later he watched the naval air station at Crail slip below his left wing before he turned left at Fife Ness and headed north west, beginning his descent as he did so. At this time of the morning, even in the latter half of October, Bob had expected a little more brightness, but wherever he looked there was nothing but grey gloom.

  ‘A lovely day for a flight, isn’t it?’ Bob glanced to his right, where Flight Lieutenant George Buchan was beginning to look distinctly uncomfortable in the seat usually used by the navigator or instructor on these aircraft. A little behind them the occupant of the third seat in the aircraft, Sergeant Peter Bennett, seemed to be dozing, although since he was facing backwards it was hard for Bob to tell.

  Buchan smiled. ‘If I’m honest, sir, I’m just grateful that all those anti-aircraft gunners back around the approaches to the bridge and the dockyards realised we weren’t a threat.’

  Bob didn’t admit that the same thought had crossed his mind. The aircraft he’d borrowed belonged to 289 Squadron, based at RAF Turnhouse, whose job was to help test and train anti-aircraft gunners across Scotland. At least that meant that the various types of aircraft flown by the squadron were very well known to the men on the ground in this part of the country. He glanced again at the flight lieutenant. ‘I take it that you’d have preferred to travel up by car?’

  ‘No offence, sir, but we’d have had priority in any queue for the ferry, and from North Queensferry it’s only 35 miles or so to Leuchars.’

  ‘Remind me who we are meeting,’ said Bob.

  ‘Flight Lieutenant Charles Rutherford, sir. He commands the RAF Police flight at Leuchars.’

  ‘You’d consider him your normal contact on the ground here?’

  ‘Yes, sir. As you know, the job is a bit of a mix. Our role is partly to advise on security measures, and partly to keep the military police on the ground on their toes with spot checks and exercises. But we also collect intelligence with a view to identifying any patterns or emerging threats. For all those things our first point of contact, in my case at each RAF unit in Scotland and northern England, is the officer, or in some cases the senior non-commissioned officer, in charge of the RAF Police flight. The important thing to remember sir, is that none of these people report to us. Flight Lieutenant Rutherford reports partly through the admin structure at RAF Leuchars to the station commander, and partly through a separate command structure to the RAF Provost Marshal.’

  ‘You are suggesting I should adopt a diplomatic approach?’

  Buchan glanced across the width of the cockpit at his new boss. ‘I’d not have phrased it quite like that, sir, but we tend to achieve a lot more by working with the men on the ground than we would by being heavy-handed. As far as most of them are concerned, MI11 is a bit of an oddity. A fifth wheel on the wagon, if you like. It makes their life much easier if we write favourable reports about the security at their establishments after we’ve made an inspection, and many of them recognise that our broader view, especially across different services, means we can offer advice they’d not get anywhere else. But they come in all shapes and sizes, and some are much more open and receptive to us than others.’

  ‘What about Flight Lieutenant Rutherford?’ asked Bob. ‘How does he feel about MI11?’

  ‘He’s one of the good guys, sir. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. But our visit today was his idea. It seems he felt the circumstances made this something we should look at rather than the RAF Police’s own Special Investigation Branch, and that was why he telephoned me first thing this morning.’

  Bob had cleared their approach on the radio with the control tower at Leuchars and after catching his first glimpse of the runway he lowered the undercarriage and flaps in preparation for their landing. ‘And the circumstances are that in the early hours of this morning one of his men shot and killed an intruder trying to access a parked aircraft at Leuchars?’

  ‘Yes, sir, apparently the intruder fired first when challenged, but missed. The RAF Police corporal didn’t miss when he fired back. The thing that made Rutherford decide to call me was that the intruder turned out to be a Polish Army sergeant, normally based at their camp at Tents Muir, just over there.’ As the aircraft swept in to land from the sea, Flight Lieutenant Buchan gestured towards the swathe of dark green forest visible behind the broad beach to their right. ‘The potential diplomatic and security complications mean that he wants the incident investigated by someone completely independent of the RAF Police, and I understand that the station commander at RAF Leuchars agrees with him.’

  Bob was directed to park the aircraft at the end of a line of Handley Page Hampden torpedo bombers, in front of one of the large hangars that clustered together on the north side of the airfield. It was still raining and Bob was thankful that a car had been provided to take them to the station headquarters.

  Flight Lieutenant Rutherford turned out to be a man in his forties who greeted them at the front entrance to the building before showing them to an office on the ground floor. Flight Lieutenant Buchan effected the introductions and the three visitors sat down around a wooden meeting table to an obligatory cup of tea.

  Bob could see that Rutherford was a little unsure of his own involvement in the meeting and tried to put him at his ease. ‘Don’t mind me, Flight Lieutenant. I took over MI11’s northern operations at the beginning of the week and am here mainly to get a feel for the work we do. George will take the lead, assisted by Sergeant Bennett.’

  Flight Lieutenant Buchan took this as his cue. ‘You told me what happened on the telephone, Charles. We’ll obviously want to talk to the corporal who killed the intruder.’

  ‘Corporal Fred Taylor,’ said Rutherford. ‘He’s a good man, and quite upset by what happened. He’s waiting to talk to you.’

  ‘We’ll also need to talk to the Poles in Tents Muir,’ said Buchan. ‘Do they know what’s happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rutherford. ‘They’ve been good neighbours over the past couple of years, and part of their role has been defending the coastline here, including our own coastal margin. But there’s a major reorganisation going on and the unit that’s been stationed there is moving out, with others moving in, though on a much smaller scale. The invasion threat’s no longer present in the same way of course, but one of the changes we’ve made has been to increase our own RAF Regiment presence to make sure our coastal boundary to the east and along the River Eden to the south is secured now the Poles are moving out.’

  Bob asked, ‘Do we know how the intruder got into the base?’

  ‘Yes, we do, sir,’ said Rutherford. ‘As they’ve been running down their presence in this part of Fife, we’ve been helping the Poles with some of the services that have been withdrawn. It seems that the gentleman concerned, Sierzant or Sergeant Jacek Winograd, had been on camp several times over the past couple of days to sort out mechanical problems they had been having with a lorry. Our motor transport flight was happy to help. As far as I can find out, Winograd came onto the base late yesterday afternoon and never left. He presumably hid somewhere and in the early hours of this morning made his way around the airfield to the 540 Squadron dispersal.’

  ‘540 Squadron?’ said Bob. ‘That’s not a unit I’ve come across before.’

  ‘Not many people ha
ve, sir. They were formed at the beginning of the week from two of the flights of what used to be No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit. They fly photo reconnaissance Spitfires and Mosquitoes. It was one of their Mosquitoes that Sergeant Winograd was showing a close interest in when he was spotted by Corporal Taylor.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bob, ‘I’ve sidetracked you. You were talking about the Poles.’

  ‘Yes, sir, the outgoing senior officer up at the Polish camp is Major Bartek Kaminski. Group Captain More, the station commander here at Leuchars, spoke to the major first thing this morning, and he is expecting a visit from us. I don’t know if the major still has field security police on his staff, or whether they have already moved out, but my betting is that he will have been doing his own check on Sergeant Winograd’s background.’

  Buchan put his teacup down and looked across the table at Bob. ‘Do you think we ought to talk to Corporal Taylor, sir?’

  Bob remembered he was supposed to be letting Buchan take the lead. ‘Of course.’

  Flight Lieutenant Rutherford stood up. ‘It might be most convenient if I brought him in here. As I said before, he’s a good lad and he’s had a shock,’ he said, looking at Bob. ‘Go easy on him will you, sir?’

  Corporal Fred Taylor looked like he hadn’t yet seen his twentieth birthday and wore his uniform and white-topped service cap as if it belonged to someone else. He was obviously extremely nervous.

  ‘Hello, Corporal,’ said Bob. ‘Take a seat. I’m Group Captain Sutherland and I’m here mainly as an observer. This is Flight Lieutenant Buchan, from Military Intelligence Section 11, based in Edinburgh, and this is Sergeant Bennett, also of MI11.’

  ‘Am I in trouble, sir?’ asked the corporal.

  ‘We are here mainly to find out what the intruder you discovered last night was trying to achieve and why he was here. Could you start by telling us what happened?’