Operation Heartbreak and The Man Who Never Was E-Book

Duff Cooper

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The greatest deception of the Second World War – and possibly in the whole of military history – took place in April 1943 when a body was found floating in the sea off the Spanish coast. The documents found on him would eventually find their way to Hitler's desk and send German troops hurtling in the wrong direction. The dead man convinced the Axis powers that the Allies were about to attack Greece and not the real target, Sicily. The course of the war was changed. In this volume is a story within the original extraordinary story. Duff Cooper's only fictional work, Operation Heartbreak, was based upon the emotionally charged decision to use an anonymous corpse to weave the web of deceit. The British authorities tried to suppress the book because it would show the Spanish in a bad light, with Franco now in power. A change of heart followed and Ewen Montagu was encouraged to tell the whole story. Anyone who read Ben Macintyre's best-selling Operation Mincemeat will have to read this double volume to understand the full story.

Leseprobe

Operation Heartbreak

The Man Who Never Was

OPERATION HEARTBREAK

A STORY BY DUFF COOPER

THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS

BY EWEN MONTAGU

With an Introduction by

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH

This combined edition first published in the UK by Spellmount in 2003.

Paperback edition first published in the UK in 2007; this edition published in 2010

Spellmount Publishers, the military history imprint of

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire. GL5 2QG1

This ebook edition first published in 2011

The right of The Authors, to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Operation Heartbreak copyright

© The Second Viscount Norwich 1950, 1973, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011

First published by Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd 1950

Republished by Leo Cooper Ltd 1973

The Man Who Never Was copyright

© Jeremy Montagu, Jennifer Montagu 1953, 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011

First published by Evans Brothers Ltd 1953

Introduction copyright © The Second Viscount Norwich 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 7632 2

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 7631 5

Original typesetting by The History Press

About the Authors

Duff Cooper (1890–1954) joined the Foreign Office in 1913 and was released only in late 1917 to take part in the First World War. During his six months in France he won the DSO. On his return he entered Parliament, holding several posts in successive Conservative governments including those of Secretary of State for War and First Lord of the Admiralty. He was Ambassador in Paris 1944–47. He wrote several books, among them a famous biography of Talleyrand and an autobiography, Old Men Forget. Operation Heartbreak is his only novel. He was created 1st Viscount Norwich in 1951.

Ewen Montagu (1901–1985) was educated at Westminster School, Harvard and Trinity College, Cambridge. Called to the Bar in 1924, he became a KC in 1939, the youngest of his year. He was Recorder of Devizes and Southampton, Chairman of Hampshire Quarter Sessions, Chairman and later Presiding Judge of Middlesex Sessions. From 1945 to 1973 he was Judge Advocate of the Fleet. He served in the Royal Navy during the War, from 1940 in the Navy Intelligence Division at the Admiralty. He was apppointed OBE (Military) for his work there and subsequently promoted to CBE.

John Julius Norwich was born in 1929, the son of Duff Cooper. He too spent time in the Foreign Service, but resigned in 1964 to be a fulltime writer. He has written the histories of Norman Sicily, Venice and Byzantium, together with other books on Shakespeare, architecture, music and travel. He has also made thirty historical documentaries for BBC television. For some thirty years Chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund, he has chaired the World Monuments Fund in Britain. His most recent books are The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (Chatto and Windus, 2006) and Great Cities in History (Thames & Hudson, 2009, ed.).

Operation Mincemeat in the News

Lt-Cdr Montagu inspired the secret plan, which resulted in fake documents ending up in German hands and persuaded them to move troops away from the South of Sicily where the Allied forces successfully invaded in July 1943.

After the war Lt-Cdr Montagu immortalised the episode in his book The Man Who Never Was, which was also made into an acclaimed film.

Daily Telegraph, 2003

The tale of the deception, codenamed Operation Mincemeat, became a best-selling book and a classic film – The Man Who Never Was.

Daily Mail, 2002

Perhaps the most decisive bluff of all time, Operation Mincemeat had but one purpose, to cover up the Allies’ true objective, to attack Southern Europe through Sicily … This operation was of course, top secret, however before long it became legendary.

Skirmish, 2004

Reviews of the Spellmount edition:

The factual and fictional stories of how the Germans were deceived into believing that the Allied invasion of Sicily would, in reality, take place in Greece, are gathered here in one volume for the first time … This volume is essential reading for all WWII buffs.

The Officer, 2003

The government had tried to suppress Cooper’s novel, but its publication prompted the intelligence services to pressurise Montagu to publish an official version. Running both volumes together the publishers have supplied a splendid read about this most curious scheme of World War II.

Nautical Magazine, 2004

Leo Cooper and Jamie Wilson at Spellmount have had the brilliant idea of publishing together two books that cover one of the most extraordinary stories of World War Two … In 1950, Duff Cooper published a fictionalised account of the early part of the mission called Operation Heartbreak. With its apprearance came pressure on Ewen Montagu to tell the real story. With these two titles published together, it is a wonderful opportunity to see how the two stories tie together.

Military Illustrated, 2004

Montagu’s tale is fascinating … Throughout, he is remarkably good at portraying the thought processes and judgments that he and his team put into the plan’s preparation and execution, along with the many unforeseen challenges they had to overcome, and he frequently displays a professional’s pride in the artistry it demanded.

The Spectator, 2004

Goebbels thought the documents were fake but he was eventually won round by the torrents of corroborating disinformation that the British were sending out.

The Daily Express, 2010

The creativity of so many would-be authors added nuance and credibility to the workings of official deception.

The Telegraph, 2010

Acclaim for Operation Heartbreak:

This is a rare book, written with wonderful economy and perfect timing.

Manchester Guardian

A work of jewel-like brevity and intensity more expected in French than in English.

New York Herald Tribune

Operation Heartbreak … should take its place beside other, similar classics such as Reunion by Fred Uhlman, Strange Meeting by Susan Hill and A Month in the Country by J L Carr – short novels about war which are quiet, domestic, poignant and understated.

The Persephone Quarterly

Introduction

by John Julius Norwich

On 30 April 1943, at half-past four in the morning, the dead body of a man in his early thirties was slipped overboard from His Majesty’s Submarine Seraph, 1,600 yards off the south-west coast of Spain. Picked up a few hours later by a fisherman, it was easily identified by the local authorities as that of Major William Martin, Royal Marines. At noon on the following day it was interred, with full military honours and in the presence of the British Vice-Consul, in the cemetery at Huelva. There the grave can still be seen, having been tended by a local Anglo-Spanish lady for the past sixty years.

What the Vice-Consul was not told was that there had also been found, chained to the body through the belt of its trench-coat, a locked leather briefcase. Now Spain, as a technically neutral country, had a clear duty to return this case unopened to the British Embassy in Madrid; and when after urgent representations by the Naval Attaché it was duly delivered to him nearly a fortnight later, it showed no sign of having been tampered with. Subsequent events, however, proved that in fact it had, and that within a week of its first discovery translations of the two principal letters it contained were being studied with some care by the German Intelligence Service in Berlin.

The first of these letters, addressed to General Sir Harold Alexander, in Tunisia, was signed by the Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Archibald Nye. The second was from Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of Combined Operations in London, to Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean. Both letters were genuine; it was only the information they contained that was not – for, read together, they made it clear that the Allies were planning two simultaneous attacks on Europe, one through Sardinia and the other through southern Greece, to cover which they intended to try to deceive the enemy into thinking that the real target for their attack was Sicily.

Since Sicily was indeed the target, this was a perfect double-bluff; and, thanks to the ingenuity with which it was planned and the meticulous care with which it was carried out, it worked superbly. Those responsible for it in London had counted on the strong pro-Axis sympathies of Franco’s Spain to ensure that the planted documents found their way into German hands, and on German efficiency to do the rest. As a result, the Allied invasion of Sicily on 10 July – just ten weeks after the finding of ‘Major Martin’s’ body – caught the Germans utterly unprepared, with the defence forces that had been intended for the island diverted at the last moment to Corsica, Sardinia and the Balkans. Even after the invasion was in full swing, the German High Command insisted on looking upon it as a feint; and as late as 23 July we find the Führer himself – always notoriously slow to change his mind once an idea had become fixed in it – appointing his most trusted general, Erwin Rommel, to the defence of Greece.

Such, briefly and baldly, is the story of ‘Operation Mincemeat’ – as the scheme was named, with a nice sense of the macabre, by its principal begetters, planners and executors, a team led by Lieutenant-Commander Ewen Montagu RNVR. A decade later Mr Montagu – no longer a lieutenant-commander but Judge Advocate of the Fleet – was to write the true story of the operation in a book which he called The Man Who Never Was; and it is that book which occupies the second half of the present volume.

It was an apt and admirable title, which was very wisely retained for the most successful film that followed; but it was also in one sense something of a misnomer. ‘Major Martin’, to be sure, never existed. His name, like the whole persona with which he was brilliantly and imaginatively endowed – by means of keys, photographs, an invitation to a nightclub, theatre-ticket stubs, a tailor’s bill (paid, somewhat improbably), letters from father and fiancée, a bank and a solicitor – was an invention of Lt-Cdr Montagu’s. But the body which was slipped from the Seraph that spring night – that, surely, was real enough. And if it was not William Martin’s, whose was it? Who was this man, obscure and nondescript as he must have been, whose single moment of glory occurred after his death, and whose dead body achieved more than most men achieve in their lives?

Speculation continues to this day. In 1996 previously secret papers became available in which it was suggested that the body was actually that of a Welsh tramp named Glyndwr Michael, who had died in January 1943 after drinking rat poison. Some doubts, however, still persisted: what if the Spaniards had carried out a post mortem and found traces of the poison? Such a discovery would have rendered the entire operation useless; would those who planned it really have taken such a risk? The book, The Secrets of HMS Dasher by John and Noreen Steele, claims that when that ship – an aircraft carrier – blew up in mysterious circumstances in the Clyde in 1943 with the loss of 379 lives, the number of recovered bodies officially listed was greater than that of those buried by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; they believe that ‘Major Martin’ was one of the former, possibly that of Sub-Lieutenant John McFarlane, whose father’s request for his son’s body for private burial was refused. In support of this theory they point out that according to Admiral Norman Jewell, who as a young lieutenant had commanded the Seraph, he had received last-minute orders to sail to Holy Loch, only eight miles from where Dasher went down.

At the time of writing, the most recent evidence to have come to light takes the form of a letter to the Daily Telegraph published on 13 August 2002. In it Mr Ivor Leverton, proprietor of a well-known firm of undertakers, tells of how some sixty years ago he had been instructed by the St Pancras coroner – secretly, and at 1 a.m. – to transfer a corpse from the local mortuary to that of Hackney. He adds that the body measured six foot four inches. But was it ‘Major Martin’? Would a body so unusually tall have been selected for such a mission?

All these questions remain unanswered; but let me quote Mr Montagu:

At last, when we had begun to feel that it would have either to be a ‘Burke and Hare’ after all or we would have to extend our enquiries so widely as to risk suspicion of our motives turning into gossip, we heard of someone who had just died from pneumonia after exposure: pathologically speaking, it looked as if he might answer our requirements. We made feverish enquiries into his past and about his relatives; we were soon satisfied that these would not talk or pass on such information as we could give them. But there was still the crucial question: could we get permission to use the body without saying what we proposed to do with it and why? All we could possibly tell anyone was that we could guarantee that the purpose would be a really worthwhile one, as anything that was done would be with approval on the highest level, and that the remains would eventually receive proper burial, though under a false name.

Permission, for which our indebtedness is great, was obtained on condition that I should never let it be known whose corpse it was.

Nor did he; and, as we have seen, historians have been speculating ever since. Even if we discount the rat poison and accept the facts as he gives them – as surely we must – we are still no nearer to the truth. Welsh tramps can easily die of ‘pneumonia after exposure’; so can young naval officers after disasters such as that suffered by the Dasher; so – given the right circumstances – can almost anybody. When Mr Montagu died in July 1985 he took the secret with him; and I for one am very glad that he did.

Reading his words, I cannot help thinking that if I were the next of kin from whom such permission were requested – or if authority to use my own body for such a purpose had been sought from me on my deathbed – I should not only have agreed with pleasure and pride; I should have wanted the whole world to know about it as soon as security considerations allowed. But that is by the way. There is another question, more challenging and infinitely more rewarding than the simple issue of whose the corpse was. Whose, ideally, should it have been?

This was the question to which my father, Duff Cooper, tried to provide an answer; and Operation Heartbreak – which takes up the first part of the book which you now hold in your hands – was the result. He began it on 21 October 1949, and five months later wrote to his nephew and publisher, Rupert Hart-Davis: ‘I have just finished the story – a moment of exultation – and had a drink on it.’ He must have felt that drink to be well-deserved; in later years he was always to claim that Heartbreak – his first and last venture into fiction – had lived up to its name and had proved, of all his books, the hardest to write. But his real troubles over it were only just beginning.

Word now reached Whitehall, probably through my father himself, of the subject of the story that he was intending to publish; and strong pressure was put on him not to do so. Just what form that pressure took I have not been able to establish, but I am virtually certain that the Prime Minister – Mr Attlee – was personally involved. On the other hand I remember perfectly well my father telling me two of the reasons – there may have been others – that had been advanced in an effort to make him reconsider. One was the harm that the publication of the story might do to Anglo-Spanish relations; he had replied pointing out that Generalissimo Franco was still in power and that there was no reason for us to be over-solicitous about Spanish feelings. The other argument was that in the event of any further outbreak of hostilities we might wish to repeat the operation. To this his answer had been that such an idea would be madness. The war had already been over for five years; the Germans had long ago woken up to the deception; and full details of the operation must by now be presumed to be equally well-known to the Russians. In short, this was the kind of trick that could never, by its very essence, be played twice. He had further pointed out that his was a work of fiction, containing nothing to suggest that the events described in the penultimate chapter had the slightest foundation in fact, and that meanwhile Winston Churchill himself was known to be holding dinner parties spellbound with his own distinctly baroque version of what had taken place. For all these reasons he considered the objections to be ridiculous. He would publish and be damned. Operation Heartbreak, a Story by Duff Cooper was accordingly published on 10 November 1950. It received one bad review – by John Raymond in the New Statesman, who wrote that a veil of rich fatuousness hung over it like a Scotch mist – but Compton Mackenzie hailed it as ‘a little masterpiece’, and within a few months it had gone into four editions and sold 40,000 copies. I am not aware that the national interest suffered, either then or later, in consequence.

My father described it as, quite simply, a story. He might have been more precise and called it a love story, for that is essentially what it is: the story of a man in love with his regiment and with a passion to serve his country who, partly through ill luck and partly through his own shortcomings, is disappointed and frustrated at every turn – until at last, after his death, he achieves his heart’s desire. The long, basically unsatisfactory affair with the girl he loves follows the same pattern in an interwoven strand, ending with the short but almost unbearably moving scene of her last letter to him – three pages which I can never read without tears.

That scene, with the short final chapter – a single paragraph – that follows it, rounds the story off with all the inevitability of a play by Sophocles. Suddenly, everything falls into place. One understands that although the great enterprise that gives the book its name is introduced only in the last twenty pages, nothing could be less of a deus ex machina; every incident that has gone before, every sentence almost, from those quiet opening words ‘Nobody ever had fewer relations than Willie Maryngton’ – points inexorably towards the plot’s culmination and is essential to it. This compression extends even to the style of writing. The whole thing is deliberately understated. There are no loose adjectives, never the suggestion of a purple patch. Not a word is wasted. As in the real-life Operation Mincemeat, every detail has its own reason for being there, its own contribution to make to the finished work.

And yet, for all the discipline in its style and construction, the book is written from the heart. It would be impossible for anyone who knew my father to see the faintest resemblance between him and Willie, but he had a rather touching affection for – and an absolute loyalty to – several of his friends who had turned out not unlike his hero, whose character he could therefore draw with understanding and at times even with love. And though he loathed war as much as Willie worshipped it, he too knew the frustration of feeling it passing him by. On 17 May 1917 he had written in his diary:

The Government want more men for the Army and we in the Foreign Office are all to be medically examined. I think they will have to let some of us go. If anyone is allowed to go I shall be, as I am the youngest of the permanent staff, unmarried and I should think perfectly fit. The thought fills me with exhilaration. I don’t own to it, as people would think it was bluff, and I dare say that I shall very soon heartily wish myself back. But I am eager for a change. I always wished to go to the war, though less now than I did at first. I envy the experience and adventure that everyone else has had. I am not afraid of death, though I love life and should hate to lose it. I don’t think I should make a good officer. The only drawback is the terrible blow it would be to Mother. I don’t know how l should dare to tell her. I think Diana too would mind.

She did. A few days later he continued:

I explained to her that it was no nonsense about dying for my country or beating the Germans that made me glad to join, but simply the feeling that I have had for so long that I am missing something, the vague regret that one feels when not invited to a ball even though it be a ball that one hardly would have hoped to enjoy.

Twenty-two years later, in September 1939, the frustration was far worse. He had resigned the post of First Lord of the Admiralty after the Munich débâcle and, though still a backbench MP, was otherwise out of a job. ‘I took Terence O’Connor out to luncheon at Buck’s. We both envied the people we saw there in uniform. He at least has something to do – and plenty to do. I have nothing.’

At this time, too, he tried to relieve his feelings in a poem:

As autumn fades and winter comes

With menace deep and dire,

We sit and twiddle useless thumbs

And chatter round the fire.

When young we fought with might and main,

Our comrades by our side.

They were the noblest of our strain –

Those friends of ours who died.

We mourned them, but we still believed

They had not died in vain.

And there was glory while we grieved –

The noblest of our strain.

But doubts begin to rise today

Like ghosts beside the grave.

Have we in weakness thrown away

All that they died to save?

We ask. We hear the answer bold

And know again the tone

Of voices that have not grown old

With years, as ours have grown.

‘Though much be lost which we had won,

Not yours, old friends, the blame.

The battle is but re-begun,

The quarrel is the same.

‘We fought that men might still be free,

As men have fought before,

Nor hoped for final victory

In any single war.

‘Man’s life, at best, is sad and brief,

What matters loss or gain?

Whoever dies for his belief

Will never die in vain.’

We hear their words; we know their truth,

And feel through ageing blood

The impulse of eternal youth

Surge like a rising flood.

Oh England, use us once again,

Mean tasks will match the old;

Our twiddling thumbs can hold the skein

From which the wool is rolled.

More gladly though would we give all

That yet we have to give.

Oh let the old men man the wall,

And let the young men live.

It may not be. Not ours to fight,

Not unto us, O Lord,

Shall twice in life be given the right

To serve thee with the sword.

Yet our deep love and fierce desire

Must aid our country still –

The steadfast faith, the quenchless fire,

The unconquerable will.

Willie Maryngton would have known what he meant.

So much for Operation Heartbreak. Its publication put, as was expected, the cat among the pigeons; and no one suffered more – and less deservedly than the one man who was, more than anyone else, responsible for that other operation which inspired it. Ewen Montagu would, I imagine, have been only too happy to tell the story of so superbly successful an enterprise, had he not known full well that he would never be given permission to publish it. But then, with my father’s decision to ignore the Government’s grotesque attempts to suppress him, everything changed overnight. Among its indirect consequences was that the journalist Ian Colvin sniffed a good story and set himself to find out exactly what had really happened. The Government in panic decided that if they couldn’t shut him up they must immediately mount a spoiling operation. Mr Montagu partially explains the situation in the second paragraph of his preparatory Author’s Note; he is too polite – and too modest – to reveal that the security authorities, having for years withheld permission to write the story at all, now ordered him to produce it at once. He accordingly wrote The Man Who Never Was in a single weekend – a tour de force second only to Operation Mincemeat itself. It was first published as a series of articles in the Sunday Express in 1953; Colvin’s The Unknown Courier appeared later the same year.

Now, for the first time, Heartbreak and Mincemeat are published in a single volume. I am endlessly grateful to my old friend Leo Cooper – whose idea it was – not just because they complement each other so beautifully but because I feel that their joint publication somehow sets the seal on the friendship between Ewen Montagu and myself. I first met him only in 1973, when – thanks again to Leo – Operation Heartbreak was given a second edition, to which I contributed an introduction on which the present one is closely based. He kindly invited me to lunch, and I was able at last to offer him family apologies for all the hot water in which, through no fault of his own, he had found himself immersed. He has been dead, alas, for nearly twenty years; but my gratitude to him – as well as my admiration for the patience and good humour with which he endured the ridiculous and quite unnecessary tribulations that he was called upon to suffer – remains as warm as ever, and it is to his memory that this first joint edition of two great books is dedicated.

John Julius NorwichLondon, 2003

OPERATION HEARTBREAK

A STORY BY DUFF COOPER

To The Lady Caroline Duff

Contents

Prologue

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

Epilogue

Prologue

It was a long way from the capital to the coast, and they had been obliged to leave very early in the morning. It had been cool then, but now, although it was not yet midday, the three occupants of the car were suffering from the heat.

The Military Attaché was also suffering from the wound which had incapacitated him for further active service. It still caused him, at times, acute pain. He would have thought it unmanly to say so, although it would have secured him sympathy and forbearance. He preferred to vent his misery by bullying his subordinates, being rude to his equals and insolent to his superiors. He had recently arrived at his new post, and was anxious to lose no time in becoming acquainted with his work. He therefore resented bitterly having to spend a whole hot day attending the funeral of a brother officer whom he had never liked.

The Chaplain was equally unhappy. During a residence of several years he had acquired the habits of the country, which did not include long drives over bad roads in the heat of the day. He had put on weight recently, which he regretted, but he had no wish to lose it in the way he seemed likely to do in the next few hours. He was beginning to wonder in what state his collar would be when it came to conducting the service. Not that it would matter much what he looked like or said, he reflected bitterly, as nobody except his two companions would ever see him again or understand a word he was saying.

The third occupant of the car had been looking forward to the day’s outing, and was determined to enjoy it. The Assistant Military Attaché was a very young officer, whose health had caused him to be sent abroad, in the hope that he might benefit from a dry climate. He was well aware of the growing discomfort of his elders, which afforded him a good deal of amusement.

‘It’s getting nice and warm,’ he said cheerfully, as the Chaplain for the third time mopped his brow. ‘I suggest we stop somewhere and have a drink.’

The Chaplain and the Military Attaché hesitated. Each was determined to take the opposite line to the other and therefore waited for the other to speak first.

At last the Military Attaché said, ‘There’s nothing fit to drink in this damned country, and there aren’t any decent pubs.’

The Chaplain pursed his lips. ‘I think that a glass of cold water would be very refreshing.’

‘As good a way of getting typhoid as any other, I suppose,’ grunted the Military Attaché.

‘The ordinary water in this district is singularly pure,’ said the Chaplain. ‘If you won’t take my word for it, you can doubtless obtain mineral water.’

‘Well, we should have to order something,’ said the Military Attaché. ‘It would hardly do if a great big British Embassy car drew up outside one of these miserable little inns, and three full-grown men, in their best clothes, jumped out and asked for three glasses of cold water for the good of the house. Remember, these people are neutrals, and we want ’em to remain so, and not to drive the whole country into the arms of the enemy. Use your imagination, Padre, if you’ve got any.’

The Assistant Military Attaché felt that he could accept the argument as qualified assent. ‘May I tell the chauffeur to stop at the next likely place, sir? I’ve got a flask of whisky in my pocket, if you’d care for a whisky-and-soda. We can easily get soda-water, and personally I like the wine of the country.’

Now, a whisky-and-soda was the one thing on earth that the Military Attaché most wanted, but all he said was: ‘Very well, you can do as you wish.’

A few minutes later the three of them were sitting in the cool shade of a great tree with two bottles before them, a jug of water and a bowl of ice. The Assistant Military Attaché, who knew more of the language than either of the others, had slipped into the rôle of master of ceremonies. He first half filled the Military Attaché’s glass with whisky from his flask and then poured in the mineral water. The Military Attaché saw that it was strong, but felt he needed it. He was in pain, but determined not to show it. He could sleep during the rest of the journey, and all he had to do at the end of it was to stand to attention.

The Assistant Military Attaché helped himself to wine and then, seeing that the Chaplain was gazing rather dejectedly at his glass of cold water, he leant over and poured some whisky into it, saying in reply to the feeble protest, ‘Come on, Padre, you know you like it, and it will kill those awful typhoid germs that Colonel Hamilton was talking about.’

The Chaplain allowed himself to be persuaded. The Assistant Military Attaché looked at his watch.

‘We’re well up to time,’ he said, ‘and can afford to relax for at least a quarter of an hour.’

Peace came to them as they sat there, stillness after speed, shadow after sunlight. Irritation and animosity were smoothed away. The Assistant Military Attaché was sensitive to atmosphere and felt that the moment was favourable for putting questions that he had long been wanting to ask.

‘It’s a strange business, this funeral that we’re attending,’ he hazarded. ‘It’s much stranger than you suppose,’ replied Colonel Hamilton, sipping his whisky.

‘He was in your regiment, sir, wasn’t he?’

‘I suppose so. There’s nobody else of that name in the Army List.’

‘Was he only recently promoted?’

‘You’re thinking of the telegram I sent two days ago. As they’re going to put a stone on his grave, I thought they’d better state his rank correctly. A month ago he was a captain, and one who had been passed over for promotion half a dozen times. He was out of a job, and so far as I could see had little chance of getting one. You saw the reply of the War Office to my telegram. “Rank correctly stated as major”.’

‘It does seem a bit mysterious.’

‘It’s as mysterious as be damned.’

‘Could it have been that he was employed by the Secret Service?’

‘No, it couldn’t. I don’t know much about the Secret Service, and the less you talk about it, young man, the better. I dare say they trip up occasionally, but I can’t believe they could be such fools as to employ this particular fellow.’

‘How about that packet that was found on the body? It was pretty decent of these people here to send it along to the Embassy without opening it.’

‘How do you know they hadn’t opened it?’

‘The seals were intact, sir,’ answered the Assistant Military Attaché confidently.

‘Proves nothing,’ grunted the other, ‘but they’ll know in London.’

‘Was he a good officer, sir?’

‘I never thought so. He was not a fellow of whom I thought very highly. But I suppose there was no harm in him. De mortuis nil nisi bunkum, or whatever the old tag is. I’m talking too much. We ought to be on the road. That damned clergyman has gone to sleep. Wake him up and get a move on.’