Cast No Shadow, Peter Sharp [books to get back into reading txt] 📗

The house was only a block away. It was detached, fairly modern and well maintained, speaking of affluence. Kelly approached via the back of the house, keeping low and out of sight. He spotted a figure out in his garden sawing logs. He was a little taller than Kelly, but slimmer. Kelly remembered the clothes he had received from Erik on his previous visit. This man would certainly fit those clothes.

Kelly broke cover and walked towards him, his Sten at the ready.

“Erik Jorgsen!” Kelly said and waited for the effect.

The man, clearly startled, raised his arms and backed away. “Yes,” he stammered, “what do you want?”

It was the confirmation that Kelly had wanted. “Inside!” He motioned towards the door, ushering Jorgsen into the living room.

“What do you want?” Jorgsen repeated as Kelly faced him square on. There was a coldness in Kelly’s eyes that froze the man’s soul. Before Kelly could ask his own questions, Jorgsen broke down and started babbling almost incoherently.

“I had to,” he was saying, “they made me. They said I would be tortured if I didn’t tell them.”

Kelly broke in. “Where is Sybilla?” he snarled.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Inga knows. You need to ask Inga. Find Inga. She will tell you. She knows. You need to find Inga. I can help you. I still have contacts.” And then he was babbling again, tears running down his face and mucous fluid dripping from his nose. Erik Jorgsen was clearly terrified.

Kelly turned and made his way to the door, unsure of what to do next.

A slight sound from behind caused Kelly to wheel quickly, bringing his Sten up as he did. Jorgsen was moving up on him, a knife held high ready to strike. Kelly’s response was instantaneous and instinctive. He sent a burst into the chest of the advancing man.

Jorgsen was flung backwards, the knife spinning out of his hand as he crashed onto the floor, blood oozing out from under him. Kelly kicked the knife away and leaned over him. He was trying to speak. Calmness seemed to have descended as though he was accepting death. His voice as he spoke was a throaty rattle. Kelly leaned closer to pick up the words.

“Tell them I’m sorry. They made me do it.” He paused taking shallow wheezing breaths. “You need to search for Inga. She knows.”

They were his final words.

Kelly peddled furiously towards the quay. The cycle he had ‘acquired’ from a nearby dwelling was an old rattler, but it would suffice. It was downhill all the way and he was able to gather speed. Despite being nearly unseated several times due to the potholes in the road, he arrived at the quay in one piece to see Tom Foley pacing up and down.

When he spotted Kelly, Tom shouted angrily. “Dan! Where the hell have you been? Look!” He pointed to the west. In the distance trundling along the road was a sizable convoy of German vehicles, the reinforcements from Kirkenes.

“Damn!” Kelly exclaimed, dropping the bicycle in the road and sprinting towards the quay. Waiting for him, to Kelly’s relief, was not a rigid raider but a power launch from the merchantman, manned by two marines, the engine already running.

Foley leapt into the launch after Kelly. The launch sped away from the quay and out towards the north east.

“The merchantman is already under way,” Tom shouted, above the roar of the motor. “We will need to catch it. Getting on board could be interesting.”

They were well out to sea when the Germans arrived at the quay. A few shots were fired from land, but the launch was moving speedily, and they were just about out of range.

Kelly looked back at Grense. The town receded with each second that passed. He felt mixed emotions; glad to be out of the area for now, but knowing it held so many memories for him, some good, and some bad. There were multiple questions that needed answers.

His face had set into a stone mask.

He was determined to get those answers.

Part IV

France

Cauchemar

Kelly awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright. Despite the chill, he was sweating profusely. It took him a while to emerge from a recurring nightmare in which he would find himself straddling a recumbent, terrified Sybilla Thorstaadt, emptying the contents of his Sten into the screaming woman.

It took Kelly a few seconds more to internalise his current situation. The old barn; the scattered, empty Kronenburg bottles; the shuttered, glassless windows with light streaming through the cracks. He eased himself up from the makeshift straw palliasse, noting the absence of Élise, and shuffled towards the horse trough in the centre of the barn.

Élise was his current amour. Strictly that wasn’t true as they used each other to release their anger, frustration and sexual tension. There was no love involved, it was entirely sexual. Élise was only nineteen, but married and devoted, within reason, to a young soldier currently believed to be in England with the free French.

Kelly splashed the cold water over his face. His mind was fuzzy, and his head ached a little from the excess alcohol of the night before. It was becoming a problem for him now. In the beginning it had been a gentle form of relief from his depression and nightmares. Now it had become a crutch.

He shook one of the upright bottles in the hope that there was still some liquid inside, but grumbled his disappointment on finding it empty. Kelly sat on the edge of the trough and surveyed his surroundings again. He hated this existence, loathed it. He had allowed himself to be drawn into the murky world of SOE almost against his will.

Reluctantly he had agreed to Captain Delacroix’s request to take the selection assessment at 64 Baker Street. With his previous experience it had been ludicrously simple. It was clear that the two assessors—Colonel Gubbins, who apparently was the director of training, and a woman known simply as Vera, whose role was not