Linskey Ungentlemanly Warfare

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-0-85730-321-9
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

A soldier and a spy, an officer but not quite a gentleman... Captain Harry Walsh is SOE's secret weapon. Loathed by his own commanding officer, haunted by the death of his closest friend and trapped in a loveless marriage, Harry Walsh is close to burn out when he is ordered to assassinate the man behind the ME 163 Komet, Hitler's miracle jet fighter. If Walsh fails, there is no prospect of allied victory in Europe. Harry Walsh is ruthless, unorthodox and ungentlemanly. He is about to wreak havoc. 'A heart-pounding thriller from cover to cover. I couldn't put it down'James D. Shipman

Howard Linskey is the author of five novels published by No Exit Press, including the David Blake crime series, The Drop, The Damage and The Dead. Harry Potter producer, David Barron optioned a TV adaptation of The Drop, which was voted one of the Top Five Thrillers of the Year by The Times. The Damage was voted one of The Times' Top Summer Reads. He is also the author of two books set during WW2. Hunting the Hangman, is a historical thriller about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague during WW2. His new novel Ungentlemanly Warfare features SOE agents Harry Walsh and Emma Stirling, as well as American OSS agent Sam Cooper. Howard is also the author of four books published by Penguin; including No Name Lane, Behind Dead Eyes, The Search and The Chosen Ones in a crime series set inthe north east of England, featuring DS Ian Bradshaw, with investigative journalists Tom Carney and Helen Norton. Originally from Ferryhill in County Durham, he now lives in Hertfordshire with his wife Alison and daughter Erin. howardlinskey.co.uk

Autoren/Hrsg.

Linskey, Howard

Leseproben

1

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep’

Robert Frost

Even in the subdued glow of the moonlight, Emma could see the fear in the Frenchman’s eyes.

‘How much further?’ asked Etienne Dufoy. His hand gripped Emma’s shoulder as he peered at her through thick lens glasses, ‘Are we lost?’

‘Not far now,’ she tried to sound reassuring, ‘we are close to the landing zone. You must be quiet.’

Etienne did not seem entirely happy with the young girl’s answer. Reluctantly he released his grip and turned his head from her. As the owlish eyes became downcast he tried to contain his fear.

‘Don’t worry, Etienne,’ she smiled at him then, ‘this time tomorrow you will be in London, drinking Scotch and complaining about the weather. Just like an Englishman.’

Etienne managed a weak smile in response. They had stopped again on this mud track for what seemed like the hundredth time, listening for a sound that should not be there. The path snaked its way over the fields and through the dense woodland that covered this little corner of Normandy. Every noise was amplified by the stillness of the night. The constant stop-start was beginning to unnerve the resistance leader.

Emma looked at Etienne again. He seemed more like a frightened office clerk than one of the most wanted men in France. Maybe even the fearless Etienne Dufoy could feel fear and who could blame him after an interrogation at the Avenue Foch, the Gestapo HQ in Paris. Etienne Dufoy knew the names and code names of resistance fighters in the capital and had personally set up cells all over France. His capture could have been a disaster but, somehow, he had found the courage to elude his captors, jumping from a moving truck on his way to Fresnes prison.

Now the man from Marseilles found himself deep in the Normandy countryside, waiting for an English plane to land in a field in the dead of night and rescue him. And who does he have to deliver him to his salvation this night, thought Emma; a bodyguard provided by the local resistance, who is barely able to shave, and a 22-year-old English girl, the only member of the Special Operations Executive within miles. Emma Stirling had carried out precisely two previous missions in occupied France. In each of these, Emma, code name MADELEINE, had acted merely as a courier of papers. Never before has she been tasked to bring men out, and it probably showed. Is it any wonder Etienne’s nerves are shot through, she thought?

As they moved off, she became acutely aware of how incongruous their little party must have looked. Emma wore a raincoat two sizes too big for her, to disguise the Sten gun slung on her shoulder. Her long, dark hair was worn up, obscured by a man’s hat and tonight she wore trousers instead of a skirt but Emma could never be described as boyish. A few short months ago, she was on the SOE training program, learning the Morse code, sabotage and silent killing. Now she was leading a boy and a man in his middle forties across a mud track in a foreign land, towards their appointment with a Lysander, which would fly Emma and her most important charge to safety.

Olivier, their bodyguard, was young but not so young he had failed to notice Emma. As she stooped on one knee to check a map reference he clearly tried to peer down her shirt front.

‘Stay alert, Olivier,’ she told him sharply.

‘Of course,’ he replied, his young pride affronted.

The local resistance leader had assured Emma that Olivier was a good man but he was so effusive in his praise she had begun to wonder if the boy was a relative. Emma was nervous, for Etienne was a highly wanted man. How the Gestapo would love to catch him tonight, and anybody with him. Emma had to remove the stories of torture from her mind – worse for the women even than the men – or she would be completely unable to function as an agent.

‘They like to rape the girls,’ a local Maquis leader had informed her, ‘so they have power over them. Or mutilate them if they won’t talk,’ and Emma had not slept that night.

She guided the men along the muddied track for another hundred yards or so then a shadow crossed the horizon and Emma froze. Had she seen movement or was it just the wind stirring the trees? Perhaps it was merely instinct that caused her to halt suddenly in front of the copse directly ahead of them? Her left hand went out to the side, the signal for her companions to halt.

‘What is it?’ whispered Etienne nervously.

‘Ssshhh.’ Emma brought the Sten higher but kept it pointing low, just as she’d been trained, to allow for the upward tug of the recoil. She aimed directly into the trees. Emma froze, her stance rigid, the silence around them as complete and unchanging as the darkness. Neither of the men dared break it, even though they could see nothing but trees ahead of them. Emma stared into the shadows. Someone was there, standing in the trees, she knew it.

Emma’s hand went to the Sten and, as quietly as she could, she pulled the bolt back to cock the weapon. Emma could hear her own heart now; she almost forgot to breathe. Was her mind playing tricks? Get a grip. The patch shifted shape. No, she was right, there was someone there. Emma brought the Sten up with a jerk, her finger tightening on the trigger.

The silence was finally shattered when Emma heard a familiar voice, deep and resonant. ‘Careful, Madeleine, that thing goes off accidentally and you’ll have the whole German army down on us.’

‘Harry?’ asked Emma disbelievingly, ‘Harry Walsh? Is that you?’

The unseen figure took this as his signal to emerge from the trees, forming into view like an apparition. A tall, well-built man with clear sharp eyes and a shock of straight, dark hair, he was dressed in a dark civilian raincoat, black leather gloves and a plain scarf to shield him from the cold. His face was prematurely aged with the knowing, slightly jaded look of the combat veteran and he had a dangerous air about him. Something about the way he carried himself hinted strongly at the capacity for violence.

‘Don’t use that name here, Madeleine,’ it was spoken quietly but there was steel in his voice. Walsh walked up to the little group as if his anomalous presence was both expected and entirely normal. He turned to the older man.

‘You must be Etienne Dufoy?’ and he held out his hand in greeting.

‘Yes,’ answered Etienne who seemed bemused by this stranger, but the Englishman appeared to know his pretty guide and Etienne reached out to shake his hand.

‘What are you doing here?’ Emma asked, the question tinged with anger. Damn it, couldn’t Baker Street trust her to complete the mission on her own without sending Harry Walsh to nursemaid her. ‘No one told me about a change of plan.’

Ignoring Emma, Walsh tightened his grip on Etienne’s hand and yanked the smaller man towards him. Etienne gasped as Walsh wrapped a burly arm around the Frenchman’s neck and forced him down, on to his knees, facing away from Walsh. There was a further strangled gurgle of alarm from Etienne before Walsh put his full weight behind the next move, as his knee went into the older man’s back and he jerked Etienne’s head sharply backwards, snapping his neck in an instant. He let the body slump to the ground under its own weight.

‘My God, Harry, no!’

‘That is not Etienne Dufoy,’ explained Walsh, as calmly as if Emma had chosen to board the wrong bus, ‘we need to get going. This wood will be full of Germans in minutes.’

Olivier stood rooted to the spot, staring wide-eyed at the lifeless body of his charge on the woodland floor.

‘Come on, lad,’ the Englishman’s voice jerked Olivier out of his stupor, and he scrambled frantically in his coat pocket for the ancient Lebel revolver his uncle had given him. The youth brought the gun up and pointed it into Walsh’s face.

‘Do not move,’ he stammered, but the Englishman calmly advanced towards him.

‘Don’t be bloody stupid, boy,’ Walsh commanded in accent-less French, ‘it’s a trap, a Gestapo trap. That is not Dufoy and if you want to get out of here alive you will do exactly as I tell you.’

‘Don’t shoot,’ begged Emma.

‘Stop, stay back,’ hissed the startled young man as he cocked the revolver.

‘Do as he says, Olivier,’ Emma was worried the inexperienced boy would simply gun down Walsh in his panic, ‘he is with us.’

But Olivier did not lower his gun. Instead his confused eyes darted between them; from Harry to Emma, then the prone and lifeless body of the man he was escorting, now back to Emma once more, as if seeking guidance from her that he was still too scared to accept. Walsh waited till the boy’s eyes were on Emma’s then he took a half pace forward and in a blur of movement snaked out his left hand, rotating the palm so that it reached the boy’s revolver on the inside of the barrel. In one fluid movement, he pushed it outward and away, levering it from the young man’s grasp. Walsh brought his right hand up smartly, in time to receive the handle of the gun as it spun from Olivier’s hand. Emma marvelled at the speed of movement and the boy found himself staring down the barrel of his own gun. He let out a startled whimper, assuming the next breath would be his last.

‘I’m not going to shoot you, boy, but I will leave you here if you don’t follow me now.’

Olivier felt like a foolish child. He started to edge back down the...