Very carefully he parted the rushes above the culvert and saw the dense wire of the French lines about twenty yards away. Very thick and professionally laid, he thought. He couldn’t squirm through that. He saw a grey column of smoke rise from the trenches beyond, snatched at by the breeze, but no sign of a breastwork of sandbags or a sentry’s loophole.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted.
‘Allo! Allo! Je suis officier anglais!’
After about five seconds he shouted ‘Allo!’ again and was answered by the crack of a rifle shot.
‘Je suis un officier anglais! Je ne suis pas allemand!’
More shots followed but none came near him. Then he heard a shout from the French lines.
‘Tu pense que nous sommes crétins, Monsieur Boche? Vas te faire enculer!’
Lysander felt a moment of helplessness. Maybe talking in French was wrong.
‘I’m English!’ he shouted. ‘English officer. I’m lost! Perdu!’
There were some more haphazard rifle shots. He looked over his shoulder at the German lines, hoping the Germans wouldn’t be provoked into shooting back, or else he’d find himself in a cross-fire.
‘Parlez-vous anglais?’ he shouted again. ‘I’m an English officer! I am lost!’
There was more swearing at him – colourful expressions he didn’t know or vaguely understood to do with various sexual acts involving animals and close members of his family.
He sat back in some despair. What should he do? He thought he might have to wait until night fell and make his way back to the Manchesters. Then it would be just his filthy luck to be shot by a nervous sentry, jumpy after last night’s exchange. But assuming he made it back how would he explain himself – the whole Geneva operation might be put at risk? Stupid fucking plan, he thought, anyway. Why did he have to disappear, ‘missing in action’? Why not simply go to Geneva as Abelard Schwimmer?
‘Officier anglais?’ The shout came from the French lines. Then, ‘Are you there?’ in English.
‘Yes, I’m here! In the ditch! Le fossé!’
‘Move to your left. When you are seeing . . .’ The voice stopped.
‘Seeing what?’
‘Un poteau rouge!’
‘A red post! Je comprends!’
‘That is the entry to come through the . . . Ah, notre barbelé.’
‘I’m coming! Don’t shoot! Ne tirez pas!’
‘Coming ver’ slow!’
Lysander hauled himself out of the drainage ditch and began to crawl to his left, staying as flat as he could, suddenly feeling very exposed. He squirmed and wriggled along for a minute or so until he saw a red post hammered in by a gap in the maze of wire. He changed course and crawled towards it – now he could see it marked a zigzag path through the labyrinth.
‘Je suis là!’ he shouted.
He crawled slowly into the wire entanglement and saw the sandbagged breastwork up ahead.
‘I’m coming!’ he shouted, suddenly completely terrified, convinced he was being lured close just to be picked off. He held his cap up, his khaki English army cap, and waved it above his head. Strong arms reached for him as he gained the sandbags and hauled him over, lowering him gently to the bottom of the trench.
He lay there on the ground for a moment, his breath coming back, looking up at giants standing over him – bearded filthy men in dirty blue uniforms, all of them smoking pipes, bizarrely. They stared back at him, curious.
‘C’est sûr,’ one of them said. ‘Un véritable officier anglais.’
He was sitting in a dugout in the support lines, an enamel mug of black unsweetened coffee in his hand, experiencing a level of exhaustion that he’d never encountered before. It was all he could do to raise the mug to his lips, like lifting a heavy boulder or lead cannonball. He put the mug down and closed his eyes. Sleep. Sleep for a week. He had handed the sealed letter from his pack to the officer whose dugout this was – where the bearded blue giants had led him. Cigarette, that’s what he needed. He patted his pockets – then remembered he’d left them behind in Dodd’s dugout. Dugout Dodd. Wiley and Gorlice-Law. Was that Gorlice-Law’s shout for Foley? He just hoped that all –
‘There he is. Our bad penny.’
He looked round, blinking. Fyfe-Miller stood there in the doorway. Smart in a jacket with leather cross-belting, jodhpurs and highly-polished riding boots. The French officer stood behind him.
‘Notre mauvais centime,’ Fyfe-Miller translated for the French officer, making no attempt at an accent. He helped Lysander to his feet, grinning his wild grin. Lysander felt like kissing him.
‘Phase one completed,’ Fyfe-Miller said. ‘That was the easy bit.’
PART THREE
GENEVA, 1915
1. The Glockner Letters
The ferry from Thonon nosed into the quayside at Geneva, then its engines were thrown into reverse to bring its stern round and the whole little ship shuddered. Lysander – Abelard Schwimmer – almost lost his footing and held on tight to the wooden balustrade on the top deck as thick grey ropes were slung out on to the dock and seamen hitched them to bollards, making the ferry hold fast. The gangway was lowered and Lysander picked up his tartan suitcase and found a place in the disorderly queue of people hurrying to disembark – then it was time for him to move down the wooden incline and take his first steps on Swiss soil. Geneva lay in front of him in the morning sunshine – big apartment buildings fronting the lake, solid and prosperous – set on its alluvial plain, only the bulk of the cathedral rising above the level of the terracotta and grey rooftops, reminding him vaguely of Vienna, for some reason. Low hills and then the dazzling snows of the mountains beyond in the distance. He took a deep breath of Swiss air, settled his Homburg on his head and Abelard Schwimmer wandered off to look for his hotel.
After they had made their way from the front line to the rear, Lysander and Fyfe-Miller had been driven to Amiens, where a room had been booked for him in the Hôtel Riche et du Sport. He went straight to bed and slept all day until he was shaken awake by Fyfe-Miller in the evening and was informed that he had a train to catch to Paris and then on to Lyons. He changed into Abelard Schwimmer’s clothes – an ill-cut navy-blue serge suit (that already felt too hot), a soft-collared beige shirt with ready-knotted bow tie and clumpy brown shoes. If Fyfe-Miller had been planning to offend his dress sense, Lysander thought, then he had done a first rate job. He was given a red tartan cardboard suitcase – with some spare shirts and drawers in it – that also had, hidden behind the lining, a flat bundle of Swiss francs, enough to last him two weeks, Fyfe-Miller said, more than enough time to finish the job. The outfit was completed by a Lincoln-green raincoat and a Homburg hat.
‘Every inch the “homme moyen sensuel”,’ Fyfe-Miller said. ‘What a transformation.’
‘You’ve an appalling French accent, Fyfe-Miller,’ Lysander said. ‘The Hhhhom moyn senzyul – shocking.’ He repeated it in the Fyfe-Miller style and then as it should be correctly pronounced. ‘The “h” is silent, in French.’
Fyfe-Miller smiled, breezily.
‘Quel hhhhorreur. I can make myself understood,’ he said, unashamedly. ‘That’s all I need.’
They shook hands on the platform at Amiens.
‘Good luck,’ Fyfe-Miller said. ‘So far, so good. Don’t delay in Paris – you’ve forty minutes between trains. Massinger will meet you in Lyons.’