Merlin at War Read online

  MERLIN AT WAR

  A DCI FRANK

  MERLIN NOVEL

  MERLIN AT WAR

  A DCI FRANK MERLIN NOVEL

  MARK ELLIS

  Praise for

  PRINCES GATE

  ‘A thumping great plot… packed

  with heart… a real treat!’ Oxford Mail

  ‘Superb entertainment.’ Eurocrime

  ‘Nostalgia, sex and intrigue all

  rolled into one – great!’ 50Connect

  ‘An interesting character and era… I’d like to read more.’

  Thriller writer Adrian Magson, Shots magazine

  Praise for

  STALIN’S GOLD

  ‘A real treasure.’ Author Bill Spence, The Yorkshire Gazette

  ‘Masterly… compelling… one of the most attractive

  characters to emerge in recent detective-thriller fiction.’

  Andrew Roberts, bestselling historian

  ‘Atmospheric and wonderfully written… a plethora of terrifically

  compelling characters… another gripping tale from a talented

  author… highly recommended and thoroughly entertaining.’

  Milo’s Rambles

  ‘Exciting… vivid… I found it very difficult to put this

  very gripping story down until the extraordinary end…

  I look forward hopefully to reading many more books

  by this very gifted author… strongly recommended.’

  Eurocrime

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Praise for Princes Gate

  Praise for Stalin’s Gold

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Author’s Note on Currency

  Prologue

  PART 1

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  PART 2

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  Also by Mark Ellis: Princes Gate and Stalin’s Gold

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am very grateful to Geoffrey Barclay, Jon Thurley and Patricia Preece for their detailed advice on my draft manuscripts. Thank you, Audrey Manning, as always, for your sterling work on the typing front and thanks to my copy editor, Maria Ainley-Taylor, and cover designer, Madeline Meckiffe. I am very lucky to have such great supporters of Frank Merlin as Norman Lang, Brian Murray and Gregg Berman in the USA. My family provided great support and encouragement throughout the writing process and I am grateful to Victoria and Kate for their helpful comments. Finally, many thanks to Fiona Marsh, Eve Wersocki and all at London Wall Publishing and Midas PR for their hard work and help with this book.

  To David Meurig Ellis

  AUTHOR’S NOTE ON CURRENCY

  A pound, of course, went a good deal further in 1941 than it does today. There are different ways of analysing equivalent values but, as a rule of thumb, a 1941 pound would be worth 40 times more today. The 1941 exchange rate for dollars to sterling was roughly four to one. Thus £1,000 in 1941 would be worth approximately £40,000 or $160,000 in today’s money.

  PROLOGUE

  Crete, May 1941

  It was nearly five o’clock when the three soldiers reached the end of the olive grove. The dust-filled air shimmered in the late-afternoon heat. Their bodies ached, their uniforms were caked with dirt and sweat and they were hungry, thirsty and exhausted. The sensible thing now would be to lay up where they were for a few hours’ rest, then finish the journey under cover of darkness. But there was a tight deadline to meet. The evacuation vessel was scheduled to leave at midnight and they had been warned the captain wouldn’t wait for stragglers.

  There had been eight of them at the start of the day. During the hard slog over 15 miles of rough, hilly terrain, the company had lost five men. Corporal Johnny Thomson had been the first. Just after 10 o’clock they had halted at a deserted farmhouse to make a late breakfast of their meagre remaining rations. Thomson spotted a rabbit on the far side of the farmyard and, despite the sudden growing engine sound, stepped out from the shade of the small verandah at the back of the house and ran after it. When the soldier was halfway across the yard, his head had exploded in a mess of blood, bone and brain matter as he was struck by a burst of fire from a diving Stuka. Corporal Harry Goldsmith automatically hurried to his friend’s aid and was cut in half by a following Messerschmitt.

  The captain had said they had no time to bury the bodies in case the aircraft returned. He left the dead soldiers to the swarm of insects already buzzing over them and led the way across the yard and into the trees. An hour later, they were making their way across a narrow path above a mountain gorge when Sergeant Eric Jones had slipped on some loose stones and fallen headlong the 70 or so feet between the path and the jagged rocks beneath. There being no response from below to the men’s shouts, the captain had grimaced, shrugged and pointed ahead.

  The other two men had been lost when the party stopped at around two o’clock for a drink in a little glade, where a clear pool of water was fed by a small mountain stream. Privates Jack Peterson and Sid Moore were very close friends. Their attachment to each other had become a source of amusement and ribaldry to the others. The two men were lying on their fronts, sleeves rolled up, bobbing their heads in and out of the pool.

  Suddenly Peterson had squealed. “Oww! Something’s just bitten me arm. What the…?” His friend lashed out at something green he had seen slithering into a bush. “Was it a snake, Sid?” Peterson looked down to see that his arm had started to swell and was taking on a bluish tinge. Within seconds, he was sweating profusely and his breath was coming in short starts. The lieutenant tried to help Peterson to his feet but the man’s legs were like jelly. The captain gave Peterson a hard look and reached a quick decision. “You’ll have to stay here, Private. With luck some locals might find you. At worse the Germans will pick you up. Someone will have an antidote.”

  Peterson tried to speak but his voice failed him. His panicked eyes sought out Moore.

  “I’ll stay with him, sir.”

  “No, Moore. Good of you to offer but you must come with us.”

  “I’m not budging, sir. Someone will come, as you say.” Despite the captain’s increasingly fierce commands, Moore persisted in his insubordination. “I’m staying or you can shoot me. It’s one or the other.” The captain briefly looked as if he was giving the shooting option careful consideration before turning on his heels and beckoning the two remaining members of his company away.

  And so Captain Simon Arbuthnot, Lieutenant Edgar Powell and Private Matty Lewis stood at the edge of the olive grove. A long, wide and exposed expanse of sparse scrubland faced them. The lieutenant calculated that they had another six miles to cover before they reached the port. At the far end of the scrubland were some pine woods that he knew covered the greater part of those six miles.

  “How do you want to proceed, sir?”

  “I don’t think there’s any particularly clever way to do this, Lieutenant, do you? There are about a thousand yards of open land to cover. I suggest the three of us get out of these trees and run like the clappers for the other end. Unless you have a better idea?”

  Powell found the captain cold and difficult. The two had been together in combat for several months, first in Greece and then in Crete, but h
e felt he knew the man little better than on the first day they had met at camp back in England. Arbuthnot was a good-looking, middle-aged man with small neat features and strikingly blue eyes. Just under six-foot tall, his body seemed to have weathered the deprivations of recent days better than his companions’ and retained a certain healthy solidity.

  Powell had yet to see the man smile and conversation was difficult and certainly not encouraged. In his one and only moment of unguarded conversation, Arbuthnot had let slip that he was a businessman with substantial interests and property in England and South America. Further enquiries were batted away firmly and Arbuthnot evinced no interest in Powell’s own background. Powell did hear some gossip in the mess suggesting that the captain had enjoyed a reputation as a playboy of sorts back home. Whatever he was, however, Powell had realised he was no coward. Despite their antipathy, Arbuthnot had earned Powell’s grudging respect.

  Before the war, Matty Lewis would not have been a man you would expect to run like the clappers. As a portly young East End butcher’s boy, his figure had reflected a healthy appetite for his employer’s products, particularly sausages, pies and pork scratchings. Now, after the general rigours of military service and the particular rigours of Crete, he was a shadow of his former self and as capable of running at speed as any athletic – if exhausted – young man. Lewis flicked a finger of salute to acknowledge his readiness.

  “Give me your binoculars, please, Lieutenant. Thank you.” The captain scanned the ground ahead of them. “Do you see there is a small collection of rocks about halfway across, just to the right?”

  Powell and Lewis nodded.

  “The rocks look like they could provide a little cover. Why don’t we make them our first target? About 400 yards. Only a quartermile sprint. I can’t hear any engine noise.” Arbuthnot scanned the horizon with the glasses again. “No movement that I can see anywhere. Shall we?” The three men paused a second for breath, then set off as fast as they could. The lieutenant got there safely first, the captain and Lewis a second behind. As they rested on their haunches and looked around, they realised that the few boulders and rocks set amidst a clump of bracken afforded little meaningful cover. The captain took a moment to recover his breath. “Better crack on then, chaps.” As they got to their feet they heard a buzzing noise. The captain looked hard at his two companions. “Come on!”

  They had run about 100 of the 600 yards remaining when the two Stukas appeared from out of the sun in the west. The buzz of their engines became a roar as they sped down on the running men. A burst of bullets from the first plane cut a neat line in the earth between Lewis and the two officers. The second plane’s bullets thumped into the ground behind them.

  There were 200 yards to go. The aeroplanes disappeared into a solitary, puffy white cloud ahead of them before wheeling around to attack again. One hundred yards away the pines beckoned them. The lieutenant heard a strangled cry behind him but kept on running. He felt his lungs were going to burst. A trace of bullets pounded into the ground to his left. With a gasp of relief, he reached the wood and crashed down into a bush behind a tree just as another burst of bullets rattled nearby.

  Struggling to get his breath back, he looked up through the leaves to see the planes banking and then disappearing to the north. The pounding of his heart slowed and he was able to concentrate. He turned to look out on the expanse of ground he had just miraculously covered without harm. Forty yards out, he could see Lewis sprawled on the ground. He was not moving or making any noise that Powell could hear. Twenty yards to his right, under the cover of the trees, he saw the captain. He was on his knees, his head down, a hand to his chest. Powell shouted, “Are you all right, Captain?” There was no reply.

  The lieutenant struggled to his feet and walked over to Arbuthnot. By the time he got to him, the captain had slumped to the ground. His breath was a harsh rasp. He was on his back, eyes closed, his arms wrapped tightly around his body. Carefully, the lieutenant pulled the captain’s arms apart and was able to see the damage. It was bad. The Stuka’s bullets had ripped into his back and there were three exit wounds in his chest. There were other wounds in his legs and his left hand. The captain’s eyes opened. He grasped Powell’s wrist with his good hand and, to the lieutenant’s surprise, winked at him. “Powell.” The captain’s grip tightened. “In my jacket. Inside,” he croaked. “In my jacket. Inside. Letter. Take it.”

  Powell knelt down and reached carefully inside Arbuthnot’s blood-stained jacket. It was impossible to do so without touching some of the captain’s wounds. The captain cried out and Powell withdrew his hand.

  “No. Go on. The letter. Inside left pocket. Take it. Please.” The captain shuddered with pain. “Important. Bad things happen if letter doesn’t get to…” The captain’s eyes closed for a moment then reopened. “Please… Edgar.” The captain patted the top left part of his jacket. “There… please.” Powell reached in again, this time hurriedly so as to get the task done as quickly as possible. There was something in the inside left pocket and he withdrew a blood-soaked envelope. The shadows of the trees were lengthening and Powell struggled to make out what was written on the envelope. He found a shaft of sunlight. There was nothing.

  He leant back down to the captain, whose chest was making a nasty gurgling noise. “Give it to… matter of life and death. Give to my…” A trickle of blood dribbled out of his mouth. Arbuthnot managed to lever himself up and mimicked a scribble with his good right hand. Powell found a pencil in one of his pockets, put it in the captain’s hand and held out the envelope. With a look of intense concentration, Arbuthnot managed to scrawl a few spidery letters before he dropped the pencil and the letter. He released his grip on Powell’s wrist and fell back. With a small sigh, he died.

  Powell closed Captain Arbuthnot’s eyes. He wasn’t a religious man but felt he ought to say something. He stood up and recited the Lord’s Prayer then made a sign of the cross. When he had finished, he ran over to Lewis. As expected, he was dead too and the insects were already congregating. The Lord’s Prayer was spoken again. He went back to the captain and picked up his letter. The scrawled addition to the envelope was, unsurprisingly, not very clear. It looked like ‘Give to my s…’ There was one other letter following the ‘s’. It was hard to decipher. “Perhaps ‘u’, perhaps ‘a’,” Powell muttered to himself. He turned the envelope different ways in the light. “Maybe an ‘o’ or even an ‘i’?” He grunted then pocketed the letter, and retrieved his binoculars from another of the captain’s pockets. He would have to worry about the letter another day. His watch showed it was five-thirty. Powell had to make the boat. After surviving this day, he really deserved to.

  * * *

  Vichy France, May 1941

  The birds were chattering melodiously in the plane trees of the Parc des Sources. The two men, one in uniform and flourishing a white military baton, the other in a baggy but expensive civilian suit, sauntered out of the Hotel Splendide, followed at a distance by a small group of military men and secretaries. The outside tables at the Grand Café were crowded in the balmy late-spring sun. Several of the male customers rose to tip their hats to the strollers while as many ladies, some young, some old, smiled by way of respect.

  The civilian, short and dark, with a cowlick of oiled hair and a thick black moustache, acknowledged the signs of deference with a nod of the head and the crinkling of an eye. His stiffly erect companion responded with a raised eyebrow and a baton tap of his kepi. They walked in silence under the café awnings towards Les Halles de Sources before turning into the park. Fifty yards on, they found a park bench in a secluded area of rhododendron bushes and fuchsias and seated themselves. Their attendant party took up position nearby, just out of earshot, beside a small clump of chestnut trees. In the distance, a brass band was playing a selection of military airs.

  “So, Admiral, the marshal tells me your trip to Paris was a success.”

  Jean Louis Xavier François Darlan, admiral of France and the senior min
ister in Marshal Philippe Pétain’s Vichy government, stroked his cheek. “Yes, all went as planned, Pierre, although little has been finalised as yet.”

  Pierre Laval, former prime minister of France and, until recently, vice-president of Vichy France’s Cabinet of Ministers, chuckled and patted his companion on the knee. “The marshal mentioned no qualifications. He told me you had got everything he wanted from the Germans. Said you had got the occupation costs to us down from 20 million reichsmarks a day to 15 million, the return of nearly 7,000 of our best people from the German prisoner-of-war camps, and a considerable improvement on the current restrictions in our dealings with the other France.”

  “By the other France, Pierre, I take it you mean occupied France?”

  “Do not be a pedant, my friend. You know that is what I mean. We need to free up the limitations of our trade so that the French state can benefit to the maximum from our partnership with the Germans.”

  The admiral pursed his lips. “You use the word ‘partnership’ Pierre. Others use the word ‘collaboration’, which has a less satisfactory ring.”

  Laval rose stiffly to his feet and circumnavigated the bench. When he regained his seat, Darlan noted the unhealthily red flush on his cheeks. “Partnership or collaboration, what does it matter? We were in a mess and we have found a way for some kind of France to survive. At least Herr Hitler provides us with a bulwark against a worst danger.”

  “And, pray, what worst danger is that, Pierre?”

  “Why, Bolshevism, of course. The local Bolshevism, which we had to combat before the war, and the greater Bolshevism represented by that maniac Stalin. Hitler is by far the lesser of two evils in that context.”