El Alamein by Jack Murray (most popular novels of all time txt) 📕

‘Hadn’t you heard?’ asked the driver.

‘Heard what?’ asked Manfred.

‘It was Captain Marseille that was killed today,’ said the young man.

Manfred glanced down and saw the shocked expression on Basler’s face. Then the lieutenant nodded. Nothing else was said. Manfred sat down and read the letter from his father in a daze. The war felt terribly close again. Like the mythical Kraken he’d read about as a child, its tentacles stretched everywhere bringing death and destruction to everything within its reach.

-

A week later Dick Manning sauntered into the headquarters of his squadron. In this case, the headquarters was a large tent with half a dozen tables and two large upright boards. A large map was pinned to the first board. On the other was a list of pilots. In the centre of the tent were half a dozen tables set together with an enormous map laid out flat on top. Sitting on the map were model planes, tanks and guns. A few officers milled around the table chatting and occasionally gesturing towards the map.

‘Hi Dick, when did you get back?’ said a man behind a desk at the entrance to the tent.

‘Last night. I think I need another break,’ replied the airman.

The man laughed and offered up a few salacious reasons for the evident fatigue of their flyer. Manning was never a man to forgo the opportunity to imply that he’d satisfied every craving of his female admirers over the last few days in Cairo.

‘Who’s up today?’

The man consulted the roster.

‘Looks like Jarvis, Heathcott and Wilkins will be accompanying the reconnaissance boys.’

‘I’ll speak with Wilkins. Put my name down, will you?’

The man looked quizzical but shrugged his shoulders.

‘I’m sure Wilko won’t object to an afternoon nap. Very well, Dick. By the way, what’s that in your hand? Is that what I think it is?’

Manning looked down at his hand. He was carrying a wreath. A small card was taped on it. There were three words.

R.I.P. Hauptmann Marseille.

34

Heidelberg, Germany: 21st September 1942

Sammy Schneider was a career criminal. Or at least he had been. After his third spell in prison and with the arrival of war he took the very wise decision to retire from felonious activities. What was the point? He was merely an amateur. The true professionals were running the country. He lacked their vision, their ambition.

So Sammy became a window cleaner. He often wondered about the wisdom of such a profession as it offered so much temptation. How many times had that open window beckoned him, pleaded with him, begged him to nip in and fill a swag bag?

But Sammy said no. He’d made a promise to his wife.

Heike Schneider had spent ten of their twenty-seven married years bringing up their children single-handedly. She’d known what he was from the start, but love blinded her to the very real risks of matrimony with a man likely to spend enforced time away from the family home.

When Heike Schneider saw Peter Brehme standing at the door, her face fell. Brehme was used to seeing some degree of suspicion and caution when he arrived on doorsteps. Such was the nature of his job. Heike Schneider’s reaction was one he would remember.

In the space of a few split seconds her face ran a gamut of emotions from fear to anger and then back to fear. The anger part was the most fun as she considered the very real possibility that Sammy had once more lapsed into old ways. It struck Brehme that if he had, he would never have made it to prison for his rather impressively made wife would have squashed her more diminutive husband like a rhino sitting on a fly.

So amusing was the reaction, Brehme, in a moment of humour that had certainly not been a thread through his life, genuinely considered keeping up the pretence that Sammy was in trouble with the law again. He didn’t have the heart. He’d done enough to Sammy over the years. Anyway, Brehme’s stock-in-trade humour was exceptionally dry and almost wholly reliant on the hubristic folly of others rather than the improvisation required here. Brehme held his hands up as he saw murder in the eyes of Frau Schneider.

‘Please, I am not here to arrest Sammy. Quite the opposite. I need a favour, would you believe?’

One look at the face of Sammy’s wife told Brehme that she certainly did not believe it and that he was walking on thin ice. Unfortunately, Brehme had little time for negotiating the tortuously Byzantine emotional state of a middle-aged married woman. He went direct.

‘I need to see Sammy now. Where is he?’

Even a woman as forceful as Heike Schneider knew where the power lies. She climbed down from the high horse that she was threatening to mount and yelled into the corridor, ‘Sammy, there’s someone here to see you.’

This was never going to be an easy reunion, accepted Brehme. After all, he’d arrested Sammy. Twice. On both occasions he’d been jailed for a couple of years. Oddly, though, he didn’t dislike the little burglar. He was just professionally obliged to discourage his activities.

When Sammy appeared in the corridor it was no surprise when his face fell at the first sight of their visitor. Guilt clouded his face like a child caught stealing Berliners from the pantry.

Brehme smiled by way of appeasement although even he would have been the first to acknowledge his natural lack of warmth might have made the rictus grin even less welcoming than a frown.

‘Good morning, Chief. What brings you here?’ asked Sammy cautiously.

‘Good morning, Sammy,’ replied Brehme. He glanced at Frau Schneider and then back to Sammy. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’

-

Sammy looked at Brehme in utter shock. The two men were sitting on a park bench. This was just as well as Sammy might well have collapsed otherwise. It was clear from what the Chief of Police had said to him, and by the tone of his voice, that he was completely serious. He shook