Ghosts of the Empire by Justin Sheedy

Author:Justin Sheedy [Sheedy, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Historical, Fiction - War and Military
ISBN: 9781742983806
Publisher: Justin Sheedy
Published: 2013-11-13T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The rain hit hard on the shut fourth floor office window by which Mick sat. Beyond the pelted glass London was leaden-grey in early afternoon.

After landing the previous night at Tangmere on England’s south coast and being served ‘supper’ of Bovril and fried bread with Dave Matthews – the Bovril laced with sherry – they’d each been shown to quarters by a Corporal of the RAF Military Police. Mick had fallen asleep quickly to begin with, though his sleep turned uneasy, and at first light he woke tired to find Matthews gone – taken off for wherever he was heading.

As instructed by written orders which Mick was then handed including rail pass, from nearby Chichester he caught a train headed north for London. A few hours and train changes later, he finally alighted at a London underground station called Charing Cross. Once up and outside this, all he had to do was cross the street to his stated destination, The Metropole Hotel, a grand old stone building with a look of stately defiance in the filthy weather.

Presenting his written orders to the foyer clerk, he was directed, via the elevator and down a very long corridor indeed, to one Room 474.

*

After an hour’s ‘post-retrieval interrogation’ by him, the Head of MI9 seemed to Mick a decent enough bloke – almost kind. A British Army Major, his accent had the air of Jules Bellingham-Pitt’s, yet differed, as did his manner, for its clipped reserve. At a relaxed distance, though, across the rather large room from Mick, the officer, having just lit his pipe, now waved out the match with heavy, slowing flicks of his wrist, finally dropping it in the king-sized stone ashtray on the desk before him.

‘So there it is,’ he puffed. ‘You’re finished with ops. Put the case you have to bail out over the Continent again: Resistance group who got you out the first time. Gestapo’ll sweat their star-signs out of you. And we can’t have that; must protect our networks: keep them open for more chaps just like you.’ His eyeslits narrowed at Mick, ‘Or I’m out of a job,’ followed by the briefest of smiles.

Additionally, yet privately, the Major had no wish to see fifty more Frenchmen snuffed out in the blink of an eye, though refrained from voicing this as the young Australian, from the account he’d just rendered, clearly felt personally responsible for the violent death of one of the poor sods within the last twenty-four hours. As well as for a now fatherless daughter.

‘So, my dear Michael, you’ve some choices before you.’

‘Choices, sir?’

‘Yes. For a start you can always go home. Your transfer request was approved…’

‘It was?!’

‘Yes. Seems someone went in to bat for you there.’

Mick wracked his brain as to who on earth…

‘Of course,’ puffed the Major, ‘that way lies the Pacific, and flying against the Japanese… Dreadful business… Unless they revert you to your original classification of Instructor at, ah…’ – he referred to a sheet of paper in a file before him – ‘…Wagga Wagga… Sounds even worse.

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