The Winter Soldiers Read online

  Lovelace smiled. ‘I think we heard something, amongst the boom and blast of cannon and mortar.’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot there was a bombardment today. Yes, you’re right, the explosion would have been just another bang from here. Well, we did it all right. No one left behind, either. Look,’ for a moment he almost called Lovelace by his Christian name, but then stopped short of this leap towards unthinkable familiarity, ‘can I speak to you about a problem?’

  ‘Of course,’ Lovelace put down his scissors, ‘that’s what I’m here for.’

  ‘I don’t like having this man Gwilliams in the peloton.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Where do I start? He’s an American . . .’

  ‘He says he’s Canadian. Says he’s spent a lot of time below the border, in the west, but he has Canadian citizenship. That makes him loyal to the queen. Anyway, you’re not prejudiced against Americans, are you? You seem to like that correspondent for the New York Banner. Jarrard.’

  ‘I know an American accent when I hear one. He didn’t just pick that up while he was travelling. He’s American. He’s a civilian. I’m not prejudiced against any man’s nation. And Rupert Jarrard’s different: I don’t have to take him out into the field.’

  ‘Gwilliams was a corporal in the Canadian marines. He’s got his discharge papers to prove it. Now he’s one of the official army barbers. You know Colonel Hawke proposed him for our merry band of saboteurs? He said a barber must be good with a razor,’ he drew the blunt edge of the one in his hand across his throat, ‘and that will make him invaluable on assassination missions, now that our Irish-Indian Thug, Clancy, has unhappily drowned himself and taken his skill with the knotted cord to his watery grave with him.’

  Crossman realised this man Gwilliams told different stories to different people.

  ‘That may be so, sir,’ Crossman was growing frustrated, ‘but Gwilliams is not in the marines now. I have no control over him. Oh, he hasn’t done anything terrible yet, but I don’t want to find myself in a position in an emergency where I need instant and immediate response to an order only to have him blow a wet raspberry at me. The man’s positively menacing. And he upsets the others with his continual bragging about the famous characters he’s supposed to have shaved – Kit Carson, Henry Wells and Bat Robertson.’

  Lovelace’s eyes opened wide. ‘Never heard of any of them, myself. Who on earth is Bat? Does he play cricket? Or does he clear belfries of flying vermin?’

  ‘Neither. He was a criminal and is now what they term a lawman – and, I understand, well known to citizens of several isolated settlements of the American hinterland. Kit Carson was an army scout whose exploits caught the imagination of the ordinary populace. Henry Wells is the main founder of a new and rapidly growing stagecoach line which links the continental towns of North America. You would have to read some of these pamphlets Gwilliams waves under everyone’s noses. They have titles like The Cowardly Killers of Sheriff Dan Skerrit and Who Shot Black Jake of Cutler’s Creek? Jarrard used to write them at one time, before he landed a newspaper job. He said he made most of them up.’

  ‘They sound a little lurid for my taste. And this fellow Robertson – one can be both criminal and a policeman?’

  ‘According to Jarrard, one rarely becomes a lawman in the American west without first becoming an outlaw. The latter seems to be a prerequisite for the job of thief-taking and peacekeeping. Something about being one to know one. Apparently the lines are fuzzy between the areas of employment in any case. Ordinary decent American citizens, like Jarrard, distrust both outlaws and lawmen. And politicians, of course, but I think we share that bias with them. Jarrard also has grave misgivings about Gwilliams by the way. He speaks of him as “a low reprobate” and untrustworthy.’

  ‘I think there’s a little bit of the green-eyed monster in Jarrard. He’d like to be in this war too, but he has to remain an observer, looking in from the outside. I think he’s jealous that we’ve taken on Gwilliams. Now look, sergeant, none of the people in your peloton are entirely palatable creatures. They’re all in there because there’s something unsavoury about them, all except Peterson, and we know why the regiment wanted to get rid of her.’

  ‘Her small stature,’ replied Crossman, diplomatically.

  ‘Precisely.’

  Lovelace began to put on his uniform, while Crossman, actually exhausted after his mission into Sebastopol, lay on his commander’s bed and locked his hands behind his head for a pillow.

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable. You’re coming to see the general.’

  Sergeant Crossman was just expostulating when Lieutenant Pirce-Smith, the second-in-command, walked through the door. Both the men in the room could see by his face that he was dreadfully shocked. The sight of an unkempt sergeant lying on a bed, while a major stood beside it, had stunned him, robbed him of speech.

  Lieutenant Pirce-Smith had recently replaced the late Lieutenant Dalton-James, but only physically. In all other respects, from their hyphenated names to their immaculate dress, they were twins. Not soulmates, for they appeared to share the same soul, though one was now dead and the other walking God’s earth exactly in the other’s footprints.

  ‘I was just telling the sergeant that Colonel Hawke wished to see all three of us at our convenience.’ He turned to Crossman. ‘Which as you know, sergeant, means now. So get your dirty feet off my blankets and if I were you I’d change those stinking socks before we go.’

  ‘These stinking socks, sir, are all I have.’

  ‘Then borrow a pair of mine, man, but wash them before return, or you’ll get a laundry bill.’

  The colonel was as usual buried beneath a pile of paperwork. Hawke – known by many as Calcutta Hawke due to the fact that his mother was an Indian lady and wife of an East India Company man, though in fact he had been born in a small country cottage in Surrey – had taken over from General Buller. ‘A hawk for a bull,’ Jarrard had said. ‘It’s extraordinary how many men take on the attributes of their names. Buller was short-sighted, Hawke is keen-sighted. Or reputed to be.’ Hawke was lean, with iron-grey hair at the temples. Men termed him a handsome devil and women were known to be afraid of him. His office, and bed, were in a Tartar barn at the bottom of a pleasant slope, beyond which was a peach tree orchard. He greeted the two officers first and then turned to Crossman.

  ‘Been out on a fox hunt, eh? Remind me.’

  ‘Star Fort, colonel,’ said Crossman, knowing the colonel was perfectly aware of his mission. ‘One of their arsenals.’

  The colonel’s eyes crinkled at the edges as he narrowed them in approval. ‘Well done.’ He then turned to Pirce-Smith. ‘Invaluable soldier, the sergeant. Speaks Russian now, eh? And pretty good at French and German, I understand. Comes of a fine education, somewhere, which he won’t tell me about.’ He paused to stare at Crossman, before adding, ‘In the meantime, I want to get rid of a general.’

  Crossman’s heart sank. He had a strong suspicion that he was going to be ordered to do something quite unpalatable. It was not so long ago he had been ordered to shoot a traitor, someone from their own side, a British officer. It had not been a pleasant mission by anyone’s judgement. Crossman was not as cold and ruthless as at least two other men in the room. Pirce-Smith he did not know at all, but he guessed that the lieutenant was a kitten compared with Lovelace. The major had not been available for the mission, or Crossman would never had had to commit murder, that being the proper name for an assassination. Lovelace would have done it without a qualm, in the name of duty and patriotism. There was, Crossman supposed, nothing wrong with being a patriot. What worried him were the precedents they were setting for the future.

  ‘A general?’ he repeated, bleakly. ‘I hope you are not asking me to shoot one of our generals, sir?’

  Pirce-Smith said, ‘You forget yourself, sergeant.’ Hawke waved a hand at the lieutenant. Then to Crossman, he said, ‘He is one of our generals, but he’s a thorn in my side. I almost
didn’t need you. He was hit by a Russian sharpshooter while out riding the other day, but the damned fool only struck him in the hand.’ The colonel continued. ‘They took off two fingers with a bread knife, but he managed to avoid infection, and there’s no gangrene, so he’s walking around again.’ The colonel paused, as if all present should contemplate the vagaries of life. How could fate be so cruel as to let his enemy get away with a clean flesh wound? ‘Yes, bread knife, eh?’ The regimental surgeons were down to using whatever tools were available for their amputations and various sorts of kitchen knives were being used in the butchers’ tents where the operations took place. ‘No, what I want you to do is to spy on the beggar. General Enticknap. Just keep me informed as to what he’s up to, what he’s saying to people, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Is this – well, I mean, for the general good of the war?’ Hawke stared at him again, this time the narrowed eyes were not commendatory. He knew exactly what Crossman was saying. He had been told that there had been the same sort of disapproving tone and manner when General Buller, the previous head of Espionage and Sabotage, had ordered Sergeant Crossman to assassinate a traitor. The problem was the sergeant was always seeking moral justification for his actions. He failed to see what the colonel saw – that this was war. Lord Raglan was much the same, possibly worse. Always seeking to keep things gentlemanly and honourable, instead of looking to expediency.

  Lovelace broke the silence. ‘In a sense,’ he said to Crossman, ‘it is for the general good. General Enticknap is a blocker and a fusser. He blocks plans just for the sake of it. He fusses over details. Forgive me, sir,’ he said to Hawke, ‘but to speak freely, if I may, General Enticknap has the mind of a bank clerk. Give him ts to cross and is to dot and he is a happy man. Given a plan of attack with a reasonable chance of success and an acceptable percentage loss of men, he worries, and frets, and eventually decides to veto it when Lord Raglan asks for a vote in that peculiar democratic way he has of shrugging off responsibility.’ Lovelace paused, before adding, ‘In short, General Enticknap is lengthening the war and costing the lives of soldiers who die in the trenches of disease, enemy shelling and the cold. The sooner we force an all-out attack the better, and then we can all go home.’

  ‘You’ve got that barber fellow,’ said Colonel Hawke, turning from Crossman and assuming that Lovelace’s speech was enough for any man to nod his head in agreement. ‘Use him. Get him into the staff officers’ dwellings, cutting hair, shaving, that sort of thing. Men say things with a barber around that they wouldn’t tell their mothers. A barber is like a valet, invisible after a while. You don’t notice him. Get Gwilliams in there, in Enticknap’s little circle, and see if we can get something on him. That’s all, sergeant. Well done, on the fox hunt. I expect you’re looking forward to the next one, eh? That’s the stuff.’

  Crossman saluted and left the room, as the colonel was saying, ‘Now, lieutenant, I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you. You can stay, Lovelace. Nothing you can’t hear . . .’

  Crossman walked the long mile back to Kadikoi feeling grim. He was certain that an animosity, a vendetta possibly, existed between Colonel Hawke and General Enticknap, and that he, Crossman, was being used as a secret weapon in this personal war. Lovelace had not helped by intervening. Crossman was sure the major had only done so as a diplomatic move to keep the peace, for there was no doubt who would have lost such an encounter. Crossman knew that Lovelace valued him, did not want to lose him, and would rather he swallowed his principles. He could of course neglect to tell Gwilliams to spy on Enticknap, but the efficient Lovelace would smoke that out in a very short time.

  Since there was little he could do about it now, Crossman tried to put the whole thing out of his mind. It was one of those unusually bright days that appear as if by magic in the middle of January. For some reason the guns had stopped firing. It gave the scene a false air of tranquillity and hopefulness, for there would be men dying in the trenches: if not by a sharpshooter’s bullet, a victim of the elements, melancholy or some dread infection of the body. Yet Jack Crossman could not help but feel lifted, despite his dissatisfaction with those who ran the army. Columns of smoke were curling up from the hills behind the battle area: crofts perhaps, or even hovels. It didn’t matter. They were signs of normal life. They were not the black choking smoke of cannons, but white smoke from farmhouses lucky enough to have stockpiled wood for the winter.

  A girl, a young woman, came down the track on his left, heading for the edge of Balaclava harbour. In front of her she ushered a flock of complaining geese. Crossman knew the goose girl by sight. He had seen her several times, passing through Kadikoi with her charges. He stopped to let her pass, knowing that if he tried to walk through the middle of her flock the geese would peck at his thighs. As a young boy he had been terrified of such birds. They had been as tall as he had been in those days, and in the past he would have run a mile rather than challenge their territory.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘A bright morning.’

  He spoke in the local tongue and she looked up quickly, surprised, before blushing and dipping her head. Crossman saw that her hair was hennaed a coarse red, making it look stiff and brittle, and that her face was filthy, yet underneath there was a comeliness he had not seen in many Tartar girls. She had round features, with large dark eyes. Some young Tartar swain would fall deeply in love with those eyes and, thought Crossman, would tell her how beautiful she was. When that happened she would blossom from this green girl into a glowing woman. There was nothing like compliments to bring out radiance in females; or perhaps it was simply knowing that they were loved that wrought the change. He watched her back as she swayed along the difficult icy path, wondering if she would look back at him. She did not.

  There was a good deal of traffic going down the main Kadikoi street, to and from the harbour. He was not exactly the model soldier in his ratty furs and filth. Yet most other soldiers were in much the same state, and many officers too.

  When he reached the hovel he found a horse tied up outside. That was ominous. They had an unexpected visitor. He hoped whoever it was would not keep him long, because now he was thoroughly fatigued and wanted above all things to fall into his cot and sleep away the rest of the day. There was however the welcome smell of hot stew coming from within: probably one of Peterson’s concoctions.

  Crossman entered the dwelling to find an officer from his own regiment, the 88th Connaught Rangers up on the Heights. He was pacing impatiently up and down the small space taken up by the hard-earth floor. Peterson was, predictably, at the stove. Most of the others were already asleep in their fur coats, or under the odd blanket. The officer, a rather elderly subaltern, stared at Crossman as he came through the door. Neither knew the other, except by sight. Crossman vaguely recalled that the man’s name was Thorax or Borax. Something like that.

  ‘Sergeant Crossman.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Colonel Shirley asked me to come and see you. He wants a favour – for the 88th – for your own regiment, sergeant.’ The last few words were in the tone of in case you had forgotten.

  Peterson looked up from her cooking but said nothing. Crossman showed due surprise. ‘The colonel wants a favour from me?’

  The officer seemed embarrassed, and turned away as he said, ‘It’s those damned bells, you see.’

  Crossman did not see. He had no idea what the lieutenant was talking about. Bells? What bells? He was exhausted. His mind was buzzing and he needed to rest. This shortened a temper which had got him into trouble with authority in the past. ‘I’m afraid I’m not with you, sir. I would be grateful for an explanation. I’m rather tired so I would appreciate your getting to the point – sir.’ His tone was deferential and his delivery polite, but Crossman’s manner and the way this came out revealed his confidence in himself as the son of an aristocrat. It might have been a curt demand, prior to a dismissal of the visitor.

  Another officer might have exploded. This one simply raised his eyebrows
and half-closed one eye. Perhaps it was because he had seen a good few army years, without any hope of promotion since he was incredibly poor and field promotions were thin on the ground. Perhaps he was just war-weary, or life-weary, and nothing really mattered any more. Whatever the reason, he remained calm. Crossman felt the stirrings of a growing respect for the man.

  ‘The bells I refer to,’ he said, patiently, ‘are in a clock tower close to the position the battalion holds in the line. They are a constant annoyance, disturbing in the extreme. They keep us awake, and mock our very existence. Perhaps that seems a little strong, but you haven’t had to put up with this monstrous chiming the way the rest of your regiment has, you and your men, sergeant, being billeted in this cosy little house some six miles behind the lines.’

  ‘With due respect, sir, we spend very little time in this cosy little house. We are more often sleeping in a ditch. I take it the colonel wants us to do something clandestine in order to rid him of these meddlesome clock tower bells?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Why don’t you simply knock out the tower with a gun? A round shot in the right place will end its career as a disturber of the peace, surely?’

  ‘The tower is behind Russian lines. It’s part of a school for naval cadets. A strange-looking structure, tall, but covered with projections and ledges. It’s a rather ugly piece of architecture if you ask me, but then that’s neither here nor there. What is relevant is that a very old and revered church stands in its way. We can see the top of the tower in all its Gothic glory, but it would be a supreme gunner who could destroy that tower without hitting one of Sebastopol’s ancient holy monuments. The colonel rather baulks at destroying a sacred historical building, as you will understand, simply to remove what is, in the end, only an annoyance. We felt you could perhaps slip over one night from the Heights, with your merry band of men, and blow the thing up.’

  Crossman, weary beyond relief now, sat down heavily on the edge of Peterson’s cot. ‘This,’ he said, ‘sounds a rather dangerous favour. It would be putting men’s lives at risk for what you yourself have described as a mere annoyance . . .’