Midnight Never Comes

13

Donner stood in front of the fireplace in the library, adjusting the collar of his uniform. He fastened the top button, placed the peaked cap at a slight angle on his head and nodded in satisfaction.

Behind him, the door opened and Asta entered, Stavrou behind her. Donner turned with a grin and held his arms wide. 'Will I do?'

Asta's eyes burned with hate. 'If I had a gun, I'd kill you, Max,' she said flatly.

He took off his cap and crossed in two quick strides, holding her shoulders gently. 'Asta, I love you. I've always loved you. Just a few hours and I'll be back and we'll fly away from this place-far away where no one can touch us.'

She shook her head. 'I won't go, Max.'

'Give yourself a chance. You'll come round,' he said confidently.

'You murdered my mother,' she said. 'When you touch me, I want to be sick.'

He took an involuntary step back and there was real horror in his eyes. 'Now look, Asta, you've got it all wrong….'

She didn't give him a chance. 'Ruth told me. It's no use trying to deny it now. And I saw what you did to Fergus. I can believe anything after that.'

His face hardened. 'You don't leave me much choice, do you?' He nodded to Stavrou. 'Put her in the cellars with the rest of them and send Munro in here.'

She turned without a word and went out, Stavrou at her heels. Donner walked across to the desk, picked up the Mauser with the bulbous silencer on the barrel and checked the magazine.

The door opened and Murdoch entered with Boris Souvorin. The Russian wore the uniform of a sergeant-major in the German Army and Murdoch, who was to take Bailey's place, had Intelligence Corps insignia on the shoulders of his battledress tunic.

'We're ready when you are,' he said.

Donner nodded. 'Get the men into the truck. I'll be with you in five minutes.'

They went out quickly and he slipped the Mauser into his hip pocket and lit a cigarette. The door opened and Hector Munro came in followed by Stavrou.

Donner turned to face him. 'We're leaving now. Stavrou is staying, but he has things to do, so I want you and your son to help guard the prisoners in the cellar.'

'Well now, I'm not so sure about that,' the old man said. 'I don't like the way this thing is shaping up and that's a fact.'

'And what do you intend to do about it?' Donner said. 'Go to the authorities?' He shook his head. 'I thought you had brains, Hector. You're already in this up to your neck. No turning back now.'

The old man stood there, indecision on his face and Donner slapped him on the shoulder. 'Five hundred apiece for you and Rory when I get back this evening. After that, you can go where you want.'

Munro's eyes brightened. 'By God, that's money, Mr. Donner. Real money.'

'Get to it then.' Donner said and the old man turned and went out quickly.

Donner put on his cap and picked up his gloves. 'You are leaving now?' Stavrou said in Russian.

'I've one small thing to attend to first,' Donner said. 'Come with me.'

He went out into the hall, mounted the stairs quickly and moved along the landing. When he opened the door to Ruth Murray's room, she was lying on the bed, a glass in her hand.

She put it down and got to her feet. 'Max, darling, I haven't seen you all day.'

When she was close enough, he struck her heavily in the face, knocking her back across the bed. She got to her feet again, dazed, blood on her lip.

'What is it, Max? What have I done?'

'You bitch,' he said savagely. 'You told Asta about her mother-about what happened at Lesbos.'

She looked genuinely bewildered. 'No. Max! No-it isn't possible.'

He picked up the brandy decanter and held it front of her face. 'It was this-don't you realise? You were drunk, as you always are. So damned drunk you didn't know what you were doing.'

He tossed the decanter across the room and shoved her back on to the bed. She was completely sober, her eyes wide with horror. 'I didn't mean it, Max. I didn't mean any harm.'

'You never do, angel.'

'What are you going to do?' she whispered hoarsely.

'Do?' He smiled coldly. 'I'm going to give you to Stavrou.'

She shook her head several times from side to side. 'No, Max, you wouldn't do that.'

'Wouldn't I?' Donner said and he turned and went out, closing the door behind him.

Stavrou stood looking down at her, no expression on the cold, cruel face and then he did something she had never known him do before. He laughed.

As he took his first step towards her, she screamed and staggered to her feet, pushing a chair between them. He kicked it to one side as negligently as one might kick a football and she turned and ran to the French windows, wrenching them open so violently that a pane of glass shattered.

But there was no way out. The balcony led nowhere except to the stone terrace at the front of the house forty feet below. She turned and as Stavrou appeared in the window, gave a heart-rending cry and flung herself over the rail.

The cell into which they pushed Chavasse had a barred grill in the door, but no window and when the door closed behind him he found himself in almost total darkness. There was a rustle on the other side of the room and he was aware of a darker shadow against the wall, the white blur of a face.

'Who's there?' he said sharply.

'Ah, English,' the other said, speaking with a slight accent. 'How interesting. Presumably you are on our side?'

'That depends very much on who you are,' Chavasse said.

'Allow me to introduce myself. Gunther von Bayern, Colonel, Military Intelligence Corps, German Army. You don't mind if I call it that, do you? As far as I'm concerned there is only one.'

'Chavasse-Paul Chavasse.'

'Ah, French?'

'And English. You wouldn't have such a thing as a cigarette would you?'

'Be my guest.'

The face that leapt out of the darkness when the match flared was wedge-shaped, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones. The eyes were black and flecked with amber and seemed to change colour in the flickering light. He was about forty-five, a handsome, smiling man with a deceptively lazy drawl that didn't fool Chavasse for one minute.

'Wasn't there a Captain Bailey with you?'

Von Bayern nodded. 'Our liaison officer. Poor fellow, when we drove into the courtyard of this damned place and found ourselves under the guns of men who were apparently soldiers in my own army, he tried to make a run for it.'

'They gunned him down?'

'I'm afraid so. Don't you think it's about time you told me what this is all about?'

Chavasse crouched down beside him and started to talk. It took a surprisingly short time and when he finished, von Bayern chuckled softly. 'You know, one really must give credit where it is due. The plan has all the simplicity of genius.'

'And it will work,' Chavasse said. 'It will work and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.'

Footsteps sounded in the passage outside and when he hurried to the grill, he saw Asta going past with Stavrou. When he called, she turned and hurried across.

'Are you all right, Paul?'

'Fine, angel.'

Von Bayern's face appeared beside him. 'May I have the pleasure of an introduction?'

'Asta Svensson-Gunther von Bayern.'

'Distinctly my pleasure,' von Bayern said, and Stavrou, scowling, dragged her away.

They heard a door slam further down the passage, a key turn in the lock and Stavrou went past on his own.

'A nasty looking piece of work, that one,' von Bayern observed.

'Stavrou?' Chavasse nodded. 'He's supposed to be Greek.'

Von Bayern shook his head. 'Definitely from east of the Urals. I fought too many of his breed in my youth to be mistaken.'

He offered Chavasse another cigarette and they sat down on an old wooden packing case. 'A charming girl, by the way. Are you in love with her?'

'You don't pull your punches, do you?'

'My dear Paul-you don't mind if I call you that, do you? There really isn't time for any other approach. Life is always cruel, usually unjust and often very wonderful in between. It pays to recognise those moments.'

'You're a strange one,' Chavasse said. 'Here we are, condemned to rot in this dump for an unspecified period while the world crumbles around us and you philosophise. What does it take to depress you?'

Von Bayern chuckled. 'I was in Stalingrad-in fact I am one of the few men I know who actually got out of Stalingrad. Everything else in my life has been a distinct improvement. It would be impossible for it to be anything else.'

There was a sudden rattle at the door and when Chavasse turned, Hector Munro leered in at them through the grill. 'Well, well, now, isn't that nice?' he said. 'Is it warm enough for you, Mr. Chavasse?'

Chavasse moved across to the door and looked out at him. 'Where's Donner? I'd like to speak to him.'

'He left better than an hour ago,' Hector Munro chuckled. 'You're in my care now, my brave wee mannie. Now I am going to eat my fill of Mr. Donner's good food and drink my fill of Mr. Donner's fine whisky. Maybe in a couple of hours or perhaps three I'll be back to see if you've frozen to death.'

His laughter echoed back to them as he went up the steps and the door at the top shut with harsh finality.

Donner stood in the wheelhouse of the LCT and looked through a porthole at the length of the ship. The hold was a steel shell and the Bedford troop carrier and the olive green staff car belonging to their party seemed to be the only cargo. Beyond were the great steel bow doors of the beaching exit.

The sea was choppy with a slight breeze from the north-west and although the mist and the rain had reduced visibility, they had made good time from Mallaig.

The captain, a second lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Transport, a fair-haired young man in a heavy white polo sweater, came in from the bridge and gave the helmsman an order.

'Port five.'

'Port five of wheel on, sir.'

'Steady now.'

'Steady. Steering two-o-three, sir.'

Donner opened his silver case and turned to Murdoch. 'Cigarette, Captain Bailey?'

'Thank you, sir.'

The young lieutenant turned. 'Not long now, sir. About another twenty minutes.'

Donner moved to the porthole and looked out. In the middle distance and looking surprisingly large, he saw the islands; Barra, Sandray and Fhada to the south.

'Perhaps I'll have the chance to offer you a drink when we land, lieutenant,' he said.

The young man shook his head. 'I'm awfully sorry, sir. I'm only stopping here for long enough to put you and your party ashore, then I proceed to Lewis. I'm carrying electronic equipment they've been waiting rather impatiently for at Guided Weapons H.Q.'

Donner nodded. 'I understand. Duty, after all, must come before everything else.'

His accent was just right and he went out on to the bridge, wrapping the oilskin coat they had loaned him about his shoulders. Not long now and as Fhada moved closer out of the mist, he stayed there watching it, so still that he might have been carved out of stone.

The harbour was not very large and the landing craft beached beside an old stone jetty. One or two small sailing dinghies were pulled up on the sand above high water mark, but the only sizable craft were an old thirty-foot lobster boat and a beautiful power boat-a twenty-five footer, painted white and green.

When the bow doors opened, the staff car went out first, driving across a specially constructed concrete apron to the start of a tarmacadam road. A Land Rover was parked there and as the staff car approached, a tall, greying, middle-aged man in heavy jeep coat and black beret got out.

The staff car braked to a halt and Donner went to meet him. 'Von Bayern,' he said, holding out his hand.

'Major Charles Endicott.' The other saluted briefly then shook hands. 'I wonder whether you'd like to drive up to the mess in my Land Rover?'

'A pleasure.'

Donner climbed into the passenger seat and Endicott took the wheel. He grinned as he pushed the starter and drove away. 'Strictly against regulations this, but we're pretty easy-going out here.'

Behind them, the troop carrier was already moving across the beach and Donner turned to see the bow doors of the LCT close. A moment later, it was reversing into the harbour.

'They don't waste much time, do they?' he said.

Endicott shook his head. 'They're good lads.'

Donner nodded and lit a cigarette. 'A beautiful boat there in the harbour. She is yours, I understand?'

Endicott smiled. 'The pride of my life. Built by Akerboon, steel hull, twin screws. She'll do twenty-five knots any day of the week.'

'Ah, an enthusiast.'

'Something like that.'

They topped the hill above the harbour and emerged on to the great sloping plateau that was the western half of the island. Donner could see the station at once, a scattering of flat-roofed concrete huts built to withstand the fury of the storms that swept in across this small island too frequently for comfort. Beyond them, a row of ugly concrete mounds faced the Atlantic.

'The missile pens,' Endicott said. 'As you can imagine, this place makes an ideal range, but because of the extremes of weather, we're compelled to site the weapons themselves underground.'

'You have been having some real success with Firebird, I hear?'

Endicott grinned. 'Even the Americans are going to have to sit up and take notice of that little baby.'

As the staff car slowed behind them, he released the brake and drove on across the barren landscape towards the scattered buildings.

'I'm afraid we don't have a great deal to offer in the way of comfort,' he said as he drew up outside the officers' mess, 'but I've seen worse.'

The staff car pulled up alongside and as they went up the steps into the mess, Murdoch joined them. It was pleasant enough inside, like similar places the world over. A scattering of armchairs, magazines on the tables, the Queen's portrait behind the bar.

'Whisky suit you, Colonel?' Endicott asked, and when Donner nodded, turned to the barman. 'The rest of my staff will be along in a moment. Only five officers here, of course. We've a very small establishment.'

Donner accepted the whisky, moved to the window and looked out to where his men were dismounting from the troop carrier, each with a canvas military hold-all in his hand. A young Battery Sergeant-Major was talking to Souvorin as the senior German N.C.O., obviously telling him where they were to be quartered.

Donner turned. 'I'd like my men to hang on for a few minutes if you don't mind, Major. I want a word with them before they disperse.'

'Certainly, Colonel,' Endicott replied and at that moment his officers started to arrive.

There were three subalterns, a full lieutenant and Endicott's second in command, a Captain Harrison. Donner was introduced to each in turn and the younger officers particularly were obviously rather nervous.

'When do we start work, Major?' Donner asked when they were all on their second drink.

'Oh, I thought the day after tomorrow, Colonel,' Endicott said. 'That should give your men plenty of time to get acclimatised.'

Donner moved to the window and nodded to Souvorin. Two of his men walked up the steps, entered the mess and closed the door behind them.

'No, I'm afraid the day after tomorrow will be far too late, Major,' Donner said.

The two men at the door unzipped their holdalls and produced machine pistols. There was a moment of stunned silence and Endicott put down his glass and moved forward.

'Look here, what in the hell is this?'

'We are taking over, Major Endicott,' Donner said. 'And if you know what's good for you, you'll co-operate.'

'You must be mad,' Endicott said angrily and he turned towards the bar. 'Jackson-ring through to the Orderly Room.'

Donner took the Mauser from his pocket, cocked it and shot Endicott through the back of his head at short range, killing him instantly, blood and brains spattering across the floor as he fell.

The obscenity of his death was somehow intensified by the almost complete lack of sound from the silenced Mauser and one of the young subalterns turned away and was sick on the spot.

'Captain Harrison,' Donner said calmly to the second-in-command. 'We're going to dismantle Firebird and you are going to help us do it.'

'I'll see you in hell first,' Harrison said.

Donner shook his head. 'Oh no you won't because if you don't co-operate, I'll parade this unit and give every fifth man what I've just given Endicott.'

He meant it and Harrison knew it. He sagged down into a chair and Donner turned to Murdoch. 'All right. Take over the camp and don't forget to make sure of the wireless room first.'

Murdoch went outside, the door banging behind him. Donner turned and lit a cigarette. He looked down at Harrison for a moment, grinned and patted him on the shoulder.

'Cheer up, sport,' he said in his normal voice. 'You could be like Endicott. You could be dead.'