“I doubt it, Herr Field Marshal,” Hofer said. “Sleep well,” and he went out.
Dougal Munro slept on a small military bed in the corner of his office at Baker Street that night. It was about three o’clock in the morning when Jack Carter shook him gently awake. Munro opened his eyes instantly and sat up. “What is it?”
“Latest lists from Slapton, sir. You asked to see them. Still over a hundred bodies missing.”
“And no sign of Kelso?”
“I’m afraid not. General Montgomery isn’t too happy, but he has had an assurance from the Navy that the E-boats couldn’t have picked survivors up. They were too far away.”
“The trouble with life, Jack, is that the moment someone tells you something is impossible, someone else promptly proves that it isn’t. What time is first light?”
“Just before six. That should make a big difference to the final search.”
“Order a car for eight o’clock. We’ll take a run down to Slapton and see for ourselves.”
“Very well, sir. Are you going back to sleep?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Munro stood up and stretched. “Think I’ll catch up on some paperwork. No peace for the wicked in this life, Jack.”
At six o’clock on that same morning, Kelso came awake from a strange dream in which some primeval creature was calling to him from a great distance. He was very, very cold, feet and hands numb, and yet his face burned and there was sweat on his forehead.
He unzipped the flap and peered out into the gray light of dawn, not that there was anything much to see for he was shrouded in a sea fog of considerable density. Somewhere in the distance, the beast called again, only now he recognized it for what it was-a foghorn. Although he didn’t know it, it was the Corbiere Light on the tip of the southernmost coast of Jersey, already behind him as the current swept him along. He sensed land, could almost smell it and, for a little while, came back to life again.
He could hear waves breaking on an unseen shore, and then the wind tore a hole in the curtain and he glimpsed cliffs, concrete gun emplacements on top. The place, although it meant nothing to Kelso, was Noirmont Point, and as the sea fog dropped back into place, the current carried him into St. Aubin’s Bay, close inshore.
KR
There were waves taking him in, strange, twisting currents carrying him round. At one side, a wave broke sending spray high in the air, and all around him was white foam, rocks showing through. And then there was a voice, high and clear, and the fog rolled away to reveal a small beach, rocks climbing steeply to a pine wood above. There was someone there, a man running along the shore, in woolen cap, heavy reefer coat and rubber boots.
The life raft slewed broadside in the surf, lifted high and smashed against rocks, pitching Kelso headfirst through the flap into the water. He tried to stand up, his scream as his right leg collapsed under him drowned by the roaring of the surf, and then the man was knee-deep in water, holding him. It was only then that he realized it was a woman.
“All right, IVe got you. Just hang on.”
“Leg,” he mumbled. “Leg broken.”
He wasn’t sure what happened after that, and he came to in the shelter of some rocks. The woman was dragging the landing craft out of the water. When he tried to sit up, she turned and came toward him. Kelso said as she knelt down, “Where am I, France?”
“No,” she said. “Jersey.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and shivered. “You’re British, then?”
“I should hope so. The last I heard of my husband, he was a major in the Tanks Corps serving in the Western Desert. My name’s Helen de Ville.”
“Colonel Hugh Kelso.”
“American Air Force, I suppose? Where did your plane come down?”
“It didn’t. I’m an army officer.”
“An army officer? But that doesn’t make sense. Where on earth have you come from?”
“England. I’m a survivor of a ship that was torpedoed in