“I think so.” Schramm rubbed his chin. He quite enjoyed not having to shave. “Each one of us specializes, of course.”
“Really? What is your specialty?”
“Central London. The Knightsbridge area. But only as far as Harrods.”
Lampard cleaned a spring. “Bloody sand… You do talk a lot of balls.”
Schramm took off his right sock. Already there were holes in the heel and toe. He stuffed it in a pocket. “You grew up in Norfolk. Am I right?”
Lampard stared. “You can tell all that from my voice?”
“Oh no. Everything is on your file. What more can I remember? Your middle name is… wait a moment…” He frowned at his bare foot and clenched his toes. “Roger?”
“Richard.”
“Richard, yes. And two years ago there was an officer you had a fight with. Hooper. Captain Hooper.”
“Good God. Any more?”
“Um… Captain Hooper lost.”
Lampard got on with cleaning his gun. “Where did you learn your English?” he asked.
“Oh well,” Schramm said. “It is not a military secret. In 1917 your Royal Flying Corps shot me down. I was for a long time a prisoner of war, very boring, the camp had no books in German so I read books in English, hundreds of them. Dickens, all of Dickens, all Thackeray, Trollope, Kipling, Hardy, Stevenson. And some Americans: Mark Twain, O. Henry, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Others, I forget the names. The Tarzan stories I enjoyed the most. No doubt they symbolized escape, and freedom, and so on. Do you like books?”
Lampard aimed at the sky and tested the trigger action. “I don’t really like anything except fighting… After the war?”
“Here and there. This and that. A little teaching. Tour guide for Americans. Some journalism in London. Reuters man in Berlin.” He watched Lampard empty a magazine and clean the bullets. “I find this strange,” he said. “Why do you use a clumsy gangsters’ weapon when you could use the Sten gun, which is half the size?”
“It makes me feel like James Cagney. What were you doing in that car?”
“Listening to Rome radio, on…” He tapped his ears.
“Headphones.”
“Yes, headphones. When I saw you I removed them. But you could see nothing, could you? I think you made a great gamble.”
“So did you, old chum. One hiccup out of you and my chaps would have put half-a-dozen grenades into that Alfa.”
“Thus killing you too.”
Lampard slotted the magazine onto the gun and put the gun inside a dust-proof bag. He did not close the bag. “You don’t think that would stop them, do you?”
Schramm tried to grip a pebble with his toes, but it was too big. “It seems an excessively violent way to fight a war, that’s all.”
“Excessive violence is what they enjoy.”
“Especially Corporal Harris?”
“Oh no, not Corporal Harris. Corporal Harris is bored with excessive violence. What Corporal Harris enjoys is some really ferocious homicidal thuggery.”
“And plates of egg and chips.”
Ten feet above their heads, an empty food tin on a string jerked and rattled against the cliff face. “Aircraft,” Lampard called, “aircraft.” Unhurriedly the men left their jobs and sat in the deep shadow. After a while they heard the thin, lazy buzz of its engine, but the noise came bouncing off the valley walls and only the lookout on top of the cliff knew where the plane was. “Harris has a passion for egg and chips,” Lampard said. “He and Pocock got lost after a raid, decided to walk home, about two hundred miles. Ran out of food, so they found one of those Road Houses you’ve got all along the coastal road. Casa something.”
“Casa Cantieri.”
“It was nighttime. They tossed in a couple of grenades and killed everyone except the cooks. Pocock wanted to grab some grub and skedaddle, but Harris made the cooks fry him egg and chips. They were all Italians, by the way. The place looked like a slaughterhouse, blood and guts splashed everywhere. Cooks were terrified, and the odd Italian soldier kept arriving. Harris stood by the door with a meat cleaver and chopped them down as they came in. Pocock wasn’t enjoying this very much, but Harris was in his element, in a quiet sort of way. The cooks, of course, couldn’t think straight and they made a nonsense of the egg and chips, so Harris told them to try again. While they were doing that he chopped a couple more late arrivals. Finally the cooks managed to do him his egg and chips the way he liked them. By now Pocock couldn’t eat anything, so Harris ate his share too. Then they left. I don’t think I’ve done full justice to the occasion, but no doubt your imagination can fill in the gaps.”
“I have no imagination,” Schramm said. “It surrendered, in the face of overwhelming reality.”
The tin above them rattled twice. “All clear,” Lampard said. “Your chaps don’t seem to be making much of an effort to find you, do they?”
Schramm gave a sad smile. “You know what German soldiers are like,” he said. “Slack, lazy, disorganized and irresponsible. I expect they’re still finishing lunch.”
The patrol stood around in a loose circle and ate from their mess tins. It was easier to wave away the flies when you were standing, but the flies never gave up. They too had been waiting all day for this meal. It was rich and rewarding: salmon, ham and tongue, sausages, mixed vegetables, chutney, apricots, cheese. All tinned. The only untinned protein to be eaten was the odd, unwary fly.
The wireless officer, a young and balding signals lieutenant called Tony Waterman, said: “If it’s not a rude answer, which part of Germany are you from?”
“Leipzig.”
“Ah.” Waterman nodded, and kept nodding while he thought about that. He was short and thickset, with a very round face that settled naturally into an expression of placid goodwill. “I saw a bit of Hamburg and Hanover, but oddly enough I never got to Leipzig.”
“Yes, I know.”
Waterman smiled his gentle agreement with Schramm’s agreement.
“What d’you mean, you know?” Gibbon asked. Gibbon was the navigator for the patrol. His beard, under the dust, was as red as oxblood. He squinted suspiciously at Schramm, but then Gibbon squinted at everyone. Too much desert sun.
“Major Schramm has a file on each of us,” Lampard said. “In fact he has a file on the entire SAS. You haven’t met Captain Gibbon.” He waved his mess tin by way of introduction.
“How do you do,” Schramm said.
“Intelligence knows nothing,” Gibbon said. “That’s the first rule of war, the one they don’t teach you in Staff College.”
“Corky is right,” Schramm said, which amused everyone except Gibbon. “And congratulations on your Military Cross.”
“See what I mean?” Gibbon said to Dunn.
“Corky hasn’t got the MC,” Dunn told Schramm.
“Soon he will.”
“Really? What for?” Lampard asked.
Schramm licked a bit of chutney off his upper lip. “I am afraid I am not at liberty to tell you,” he said. Even Gibbon laughed at that. Schramm blinked and smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “Accidental pun.”
Corporal Harris scuffed his boots and kicked a small stone toward Schramm. “What have you got on me in your files?” he asked.
“Oh…” Schramm thought hard. “I feel sure the records indicate that you are a scholar and a gentleman who would never blow his nose on the tablecloth if he could reach the curtains.” This was said so blandly that it surprised them. Corporal Pocock choked. Everyone else laughed, everyone except Harris. He took a swig of tea, swallowed, took another swig and expertly sprayed it through his teeth. “I don’t think he’s a bleedin’ Jerry at all,” he said to Lampard. “He’s too clever by half. He’s one of ours who’s sold out.”