Distantly, Studley could hear the sound of artillery.
He was taken to one of the BMPs and ordered to climb inside. The guard closed down the hatch above him. It was gloomy, the only light filtering through one of the gun ports. The interior fittings were spartan, the seats thinly padded. It would be an uncomfortable vehicle for the infantry who used it.
Studley felt for his watch; it was missing. From the low angle of the sun when he had left the tent he thought it must be late afternoon. He held the paper he had been given towards the gun port. ‘Questions,’ the captain had said. ‘Simple ones. Relatively unimportant.’ There were no questions on the sheet of paper, simply NATO code names. Studley recognized them. Code names for the map references of the division’s positions, rendezvous points, laagerings, field headquarters of all the units, the H hour time code. Relatively unimportant? With the code broken the Russians would be able to anticipate every movement the division made. All the Soviet artillery would need to do would be to wait until a few minutes after the time given in the division’s orders, then plaster the area.
But the information was only good for the next seven hours or so. At midnight, the codes would be changed. Studley felt relieved. if he could hold out until then he would be of no further use to Russian intelligence. He screwed the paper into a ball and tossed it into the corner of the vehicle.
His body felt as though it had been crushed and squashed. Every muscle was bruised and aching, his joints felt as though they were arthritic. The wound in his leg had stiffened and the blood had seeped through the dressing and hardened. He hadn’t seen the wound, but didn’t think it could be very serious… unless it became infected.
He stretched himself out and lifted his legs on to the neighbouring seat. He was exhausted, but knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Their intelligence on military personnel had startled him. It was better than just good. He had heard that over one hundred and eighty thousand people worked, in one way or another, for the American CIA. The Soviet agencies probably employed even more, collecting a mass of information and passing it back to their directorates for storage in their computers. Feed in a name and three minutes later, by radio, you had a full dossier; damn them, they were too efficient. Where did they start and end with the NATO army? Not at lieutenant… major, perhaps… everyone from the rank of major upwards, filed away in a Russian computer… every scrap of information they could lay their hands on; information from countless sources, civil and military, classified and non-classified clerks in NATO offices who were working for the Russians… in military offices… civilian mess staff… bar staff…
It was incredible they knew about Jane. The Russian GRU captain had been right, maybe they couldn’t make use of it but nevertheless they knew. War was a dirty game, and intelligence its darkest corner! Would they have ever made use of their knowledge if there hadn’t been a war? Perhaps. They might have tried to blackmail him… threatened to ruin his career… expose him. God, thought Studley, expose what? Tell Max I’m having an affair with his wife? I wasn’t some businessman on a week’s jaunt in Moscow, or Leipzig. They didn’t photograph me with a whore in some third-rate hotel… or produce pornographic tape-recordings. Jane and I are in love; we’ve been in love for years and we’ve kept quiet, bottled it up; kept it from Max and young Paul.
It hadn’t been easy when they had all been together. It had been unpleasant at times, watching Max with his arm around Jane, knowing it was Max who would be taking her to bed, caressing her, sleeping beside her. Now poor old Max was dead, and thankfully he had never known. He couldn’t be hurt. The thought of his death made Studley fed guilty; he had never wished it. He would have done almost anything to prevent it.
What a balls-up! He had expected casualties in the fighting, but somehow hadn’t thought he would be amongst them. How many of the men had been lost? Who had survived? Maybe it wasn’t too bad after all! If they’d put up a stiff fight and taken out plenty of the enemy, it was worthwhile. Had what they’d all done been enough? Had he somehow let his men down? Christ, he didn’t know!
And what now? Would the GRU officer just question him again, and then pass him back through the lines until he ended up in some POW camp? There were bound to be other prisoners, he couldn’t be the only one! There would be other officers, taken in similar situations along the front… the Russians would get them all together somewhere. God, he felt miserable! It would be bad for Jane, too. Her husband dead, and her lover a prisoner… and Paul, her son… trapped in West Berlin with very little hope of escaping. Damn Berlin. Damn the little red train that was its military artery. And damn Tempelhof, a vulnerable airport which a dozen rockets could put out of action. Christ, it would be bad in Berlin now; surrounded, impossible to defend against missile attacks, and too isolated to break out from. A Stalingrad, perhaps.
Escape. Perhaps that was what should be done? It was wrong to sit around waiting for the worst to happen… escape… it might be possible. But what about his leg wound? He could walk, even though his calf muscle was stiff and aching. Plenty of men had done it before. He remembered talking to someone who had escaped after Dunkirk. ‘Take the very first opportunity you get,’ the man had advised. ‘If you wait for the second, then it’s too late… the second chance may never come.’ Studley could remember the man clearly. He limped badly, broke his thigh when he jumped from a train, crawled several miles at night hiding in daytime in ditches full of water and mud. He had spent weeks in some French farmhouse before returning to England on a fishing boat. But he’d made it. He hadn’t fought again, but he’d done a useful training job for the remainder of the war. He had survived
Survival. That was what Studley was going to do… survive. One way and another… any way, he’d survive. Jane would need him; they’d need each other.
Jane… God, dear Jane. For twelve years they’d loved each other. It was hard to know exactly when it had all begun, or even how it had started. There wasn’t a particular hour or even day when he’d suddenly thought he loved her, wanted her. There had been mess dinners, mess balls; the three of them always seemed to to together. Sometimes he took a lady guest with him, but it wasn’t too easy to meet single women as you got older. Sometime during the evening he would find himself dancing with Jane; Max preferred to remain near a bar. The number of dances seemed to grow… the number of times she was in his arms. Even then, neither of them had said anything nor made a positive move. It was just that somehow over the years it changed; the way they held each other while they danced… the way their arms had linked as they walked from the floor.
One night they had stood together on the mess terrace; it had become too hot inside, after midnight. It had been the summer ball, and quite a grand affair… three bars, a disco for the younger officers, the regimental band in the main hall. He and Jane were close enough for their bodies to be touching and he had automatically put his arm around her waist. He felt at the time it had been a protective movement, not suggestive. She moved even closer and he had felt the firmness of her hip against his thigh, and known at that second they both wanted each other desperately. Jane had felt the same, he knew, for instinctively their eyes had met and he had seen her quickly hide the emotion.
‘Let’s go and have a drink. I’m very thirsty… something long and cool.’ Her voice was over-flippant, sounding very young, uncertain. He noticed she avoided his eyes now and shook her dark hair back over her shoulders, nervously. She and Max had married young. Paul had been born before she was twenty, he was seven only a few weeks before the ball.