‘This is where I want you to dig,’ he said.
The Welshmen made no reply.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ Warren asked.
‘This is where you wants us to dig, sir,’ said one of the men, who Warren had heard the others call Dai.
‘I want you to keep the tunnel at this level, and proceed in a straight line,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Do you think you can manage that, Private Thomas?’
Dai Thomas poked the earth with his thick stubby index finger. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said.
‘It will be quite a long tunnel,’ Warren cautioned. ‘I don’t know quite how long, but it could be at least a hundred and fifty yards.’
‘We have dug five tunnels under the German lines,’ Thomas said. He turned to one of his companions. ‘How long was the longest, Alun?’
‘Must have been five hundred yards,’ the other man replied.
‘See, sir, when you’re born in the Valleys, you come out of the womb with a pick in your hand,’ Thomas explained.
‘That’s why all our mams find giving birth so painful, like,’ said Alun — and all the others laughed.
Warren frowned, unsure of whether they were being deliberately overfamiliar with an officer and a gentleman — or whether they just couldn’t help themselves.
The problem was, he decided, that though he had not yet learned how to gauge the responses of the ordinary men, he was even further away from knowing how to deal with the Welsh. And these men were not even really soldiers — they were coal miners in soldiers’ uniforms.
He really should have brought an NCO along to translate, he thought, but he’d been keen to show he could do this on his own.
One of the other miners nudged Thomas in the ribs with his elbow.
‘Tell the lieutenant about that German tunnel,’ he suggested.
Thomas chuckled. ‘This’ll make you laugh, sir. We was digging this tunnel towards enemy lines when we heard this scraping ahead of us. “They’s digging a tunnel towards us,” I tells Alun. “That they is,” Alun agreed. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” I says. “We’ll go lower.” And that’s what we did. We dug lower, then we stopped digging and we waited. And sure enough, the next day we heard the noise of them digging above our heads.’
‘This is the funny bit,’ Alun said.
‘Well, we’d already got our tunnel packed with explosives, so we went back to the trench, and set them off,’ Thomas said. ‘There was the big bang that made a crater five yards wide-’
‘Closer to seven,’ Alun interrupted him.
‘It was five yards wide,’ Thomas said firmly. ‘And there was bits of Germans flying all over the place — arms, legs, even a head. Well, talk about laugh — we nearly wet ourselves.’
Warren shuddered. This really wasn’t cricket, he thought.
‘The point is, we don’t think we’s’ll have any trouble with this little tunnel of yours, sir,’ Alun said.
‘Your main difficulty is the lack of precision actually attached to your instructions,’ Warren said, in his best crisp officer tones. ‘I told you it was a hundred and fifty yards, but that’s only an approximation. And whilst we believe that what you’ll be looking for is in a straight line from here, it could well be a little to the right or a little to the left.’
‘Come again?’ Thomas said.
‘The officer thinks that we’s going to have to root around a bit, Dai,’ Alun explained.
‘No problem, sir,’ Thomas said. ‘We once had this pit disaster in the valleys where there was bodies all over the place. Took us two weeks, but we got them all out, right enough — some of them bit by bit.’
The Welshmen were approaching this whole mission far too casually, Warren thought.
‘You should be aware that though I’m the one who’s briefing you, the orders come from much higher up,’ he said. ‘In fact, I don’t think there’s any harm in you knowing that this whole operation is being mounted at the personal request of General Fortesque. And the War Office takes that request so seriously that it had his letter specially couriered out — by airplane.’
The Welshmen did not look over-impressed.
‘We’d have used a pigeon in the valleys,’ Alun said. ‘They’s more reliable than airplanes. Why, I once had one that-’
‘Yes, well, I’m sure the War Office knows more than you do about carrying messages,’ Warren interrupted him. ‘Are there any more questions — and I mean relevant questions — before you start work?’
The four miners looked at each other, then Thomas said, ‘Who did you say we was digging this tunnel for, sir?’
‘It is at General Fortesque’s request,’ Warren repeated, laying emphasis on the words ‘General Fortesque’, in case the Welsh ears had not quite picked up the significance of them.
The Welshmen stared blankly at him.
‘You’ve surely heard of him, haven’t you?’ Warren asked, exasperatedly. ‘He was one of the heroes of the Afghan Campaign.’
‘Where’s Afghan?’ Alun asked.
‘Don’t show your ignorance,’ Dai Thomas said scornfully. ‘It’ll be somewhere in England, look you.’
Lieutenants Hatfield and Maude were observing the scene with the miners from the other end of the trench.
‘Do you think they’ll find him?’ Hatfield asked, worriedly.
‘Probably,’ Maude replied. ‘Those Welsh are like greedy ferrets — they’d dig for weeks in search of a farthing. But what does it matter if they do find him? It’s not as if they’re going to learn anything from it, is it? There are no clues for that grubby little detective, Blackstone, to latch on to.’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’ Hatfield demanded. ‘You’re not a detective, are you?’
‘Of course I’m not a detective,’ Maude said contemptuously. ‘I don’t look like a workman, do I?’
‘You should have done something to prevent things ever going this far,’ Lieutenant Hatfield said. ‘You should have stepped in, right at the beginning, and put a stop to it.’
‘Should I?’ Maude asked. ‘And exactly how would I have gone about doing that?’
‘You could have talked to Captain Carstairs. Or even someone higher up the chain of command. You’re always saying you’ve got influence.’
‘And so I have. But what would I have said? Would you have liked to explain the real reason we don’t want this tunnel dug?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then what other story could I possibly have come up with?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Problems rarely come from what happens — they come from how we react to what happens,’ Maude said. He held out his hand, palm down. ‘Look at that. It’s as steady as a rock, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s because one of the marks of a true English gentleman is that he is able to keep his head in all sorts of difficult situations. And if you ever wish to be taken for a gentleman yourself, Hatfield, that is something that you will simply have to learn how to master.’
‘I know.’
‘If you keep calm, they’ll never be able to touch us,’ Maude said, in a soothing voice. ‘If you keep calm, we’ll all be perfectly safe.’
SEVENTEEN
The British Expeditionary Force warehouse was located near the edge of the main dock. It was distinguished from the other warehouses which surrounded it only by the fact that it had a large sign mounted on the wall.
Blackstone examined the sign, looking first at the imperial crown which stood proudly at the top, and then at the words, ‘HM Government Property. Keep Out’, which were written underneath.
They might as well have put up a sign saying, ‘Want to nick some British Army stuff? You’ll find it here,’ he thought.
But as tempting as the goods inside might be, breaking in wouldn’t be an easy job, because it was a formidable building, with stone walls, small barred windows and a door constructed of solid oak.
‘How long did you say you were out cold after you were attacked?’ Blackstone asked Corporal Baker.
‘It was probably around half an hour.’