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  Close Quarters

  SOE Circuit Fortunae Book 3

  Thomas Wood

  BoleynBennett Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Wood

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Thomas Wood

  Cover Design by Olly at MoreVisual Ltd.

  Visit my website at www.ThomasWoodBooks.com

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  First Printing: September 2020

  by

  BoleynBennett Publishing

  The Circuit Fortunae Series

  Into the Storm (Prequel)

  Don’t Look Back

  Playing with Fire

  Close Quarters

  Other series by Thomas Wood

  Gliders over Normandy

  The Trench Raiders

  Alfie Lewis Thrillers

  1

  The November twilight seemed particularly cruel on my extremities as I started to fumble around in the near-total darkness. We had been laying up outside for the best part of an hour, in which time the inactivity of the tips of my fingers had caused them to turn to a blue, rivalled only in its purity by a bright, clear summer’s sky.

  My nose too had reddened significantly and, as yet another torrent of mucus tumbled from my nostrils, I had to make a concerted effort not to sniff it back upwards, for fear of making too much noise. Everyone else was having the same issues and managing to remain respectfully quiet as we went about our various tasks. All the while, however, I felt my state of mind becoming more and more frustrated.

  Along with the chilling air, that was biting at my mind, was the annoyance of the labels. It appeared to me that they were so stubborn to let go of the crates that they clung to, that they would never give themselves up. They clung to that last string of adhesive that they could find, until they became detached silently, a muffled breath of victory escaping my lips.

  They were stubborn, made even more difficult by the fact that my fingers felt as if they could drop off at any second. For some reason, it felt to me like the Germans almost didn’t want the labels to come off the soggy crates, all stacked high in the room.

  I took a breath as I stepped back, desperately clutching hold of the label now in my hands, expelling the air in a cloud of condensation that disappeared as quickly as the rush of warmth that circulated around my stomach momentarily.

  There was a fragile silence in the building, as if the air itself was holding its breath, waiting for the slightest noise that could plunge everything into chaos. It was that chaos, the one that I had come to both love and fear, that I prayed would never descend tonight. I was too tired, too exhausted to really fight my way through.

  The only noise apparent in the room was the slight scratching, like a colony of rats all nibbling away at a farmer’s stores. Just like an aggrieved farmer, I was hoping that the Germans would be just as incensed at the hordes of vermin that had snuck into that building.

  It made me feel fortunate, to hear the others going about their work, as it meant that I wasn’t alone. It was a real fear that I had realised in the last couple of weeks, as if at any moment the game would be up, and all my friends would abandon me to my own devices. It was a dream that had haunted me many times, but my subconscious had ramped up its efforts in the last ten days or so.

  I held the label outstretched as I stared at it in marvelment. It was a real skill to get one of these off without tearing or scrunching it up, but it was the most vital part of the entire operation. Because, once the label had the slightest tear, or minutest crumple in its corner, it looked as though it had been tampered with.

  I read it with intrigue as I wondered about the man that had written on it. The top left of the label had a box for the name of the item, next to which was another with the quantity in the shipment. Below was the name of the civilian who had overseen its packing up, next to the signature of a German who presumably had inspected the contents. Underneath that was the most important of all; its destination.

  This particular shipment of two hundred and fifty carburettors, signed by Raymond Peintre and Leutnant Herbert Schiff, was headed back to the Fatherland, specifically Dusseldorf.

  I slapped it down on to another crate on the other side of the room, before peeling off yet another one that was bound for Essen and switching them over.

  I felt quite happy with my handiwork and took a moment to step back and admire it. It was perfect. There didn’t seem to be any marks or signs that the labels had been switched over, at least not in the dingy light of the railway shed that we were scurrying about in.

  I smiled slightly as I congratulated myself on a job well done, hoping that the task of remedying our deception would take a minimum of a couple of weeks. In which time I was hoping desperately that the war would be coming to an end.

  Another cloud of breath was expelled from my lungs, but this time I watched it as it dissipated into the cold air, slowly funnelling upwards towards the rusting corrugated iron roof that was rather haphazardly pulled on.

  Fortunately, the drizzle that had plagued our stint outside waiting for the time to strike had eased off significantly, so it was an opportunity for us all to try and dry off, even though the old, cracked bricks seemed defiant to cling to the chill of the night more than a new mother to her child.

  The building must have been around for decades, as it was beginning to fall apart at every angle from which one would look. But it played to our advantage, as it meant that it was built long before the German occupation of France. That meant that it had been far easier to gain entry to it than the Germans would perhaps have liked.

  Having said that, it had seemed curious to me that so few guards had been placed in its vicinity, most of the sentries instead opting to keep watch from the station platform, where hot coffee and other luxuries could presumably be found.

  The ease with which we had slipped in unnoticed was welcome in more than one regard. It meant that we had a lot longer to organise ourselves once inside, but also it was a useful way for both Mike and me to warm up to our new area. It was an easy operation to begin with, in which we knew we were carrying out a harassment of the Germans that they were not even aware of, but also taking it as an opportunity to observe our new comrades, and to work out how they ticked.

  Most of them had seemed like decent, switched on men so far, their motivation for causing havoc driven by their hatred of the occupying Germans, and that was good enough for us.

  They too were walking around with large grins on their faces, as they switched Fritz’s replacement car parts with a crate of trousers addressed to Hans. The only regret was that I would not be anywhere near the intended recipients as they realised what had happened, so that I would be able to see their faces.

  Instead, I would be sat a couple of hundred miles away, in Besançon, a quaint French village that I had been forced to call my new home. We had been forced to move away, to find somewhere else to harass the Germans, on account of the fact that things had become rather hairy back in Tours, where we had spent the last few months of our lives.

  We had both felt rather exposed after the showdown with the two Gestapo officers, only just escaping with our lives.

  Our work there would have been suffocated if we had stayed, and the circuit that we had helped to build up was in ta
tters, with a series of locals who had been at the top slowly being incapacitated in one way or another. The circuit then, had been closed down as a result, but I had no doubts in my mind that the local French men would carry on in their struggle against the Germans. But this time they would have no assistance from the Brits.

  I presumed however that they would get on just fine without us. I had long suspected that we had been treading on their toes anyway.

  Now, we had a new priority, with new targets and new aims. The revised and relocated Fortunae circuit was now in full flow, with their two agents that would act as their mentors and link to London, until such a time that we would end up in trouble again.

  It was a fear that would hang over me for a long time, feeling as though I was some kind of a liability to these people, an omen. I had overseen the deaths of many French people, both good and bad, but all of them in most regrettable circumstances. It was in their memory that I had determined to draw my motivation, particularly for Suzanne, and for Alfred.

  A dark face peered around a corner towards me, so shadowy and featureless that he almost appeared as a figment of my nightmares. But there was no mistaking the mischievous grin that flashed across his face momentarily. I had seen it whilst sitting outside a dispersal hut just outside of London, I had even seen it when in the thick of the action in central France, but it filled me with great joy to see it once again in the railway shed near Besançon.

  “How are you getting on, old fruit?” he breathed, his rancid breath thankfully dissipating into the darkness as mine had done seconds ago.

  “Good,” I breathed back, expelling just as much awful breath into his face. “How are you doing?”

  “It feels mightily good to be back, doesn’t it?” I smiled at him, his grin infectious and warm, which was all I was craving at that moment in time.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” he continued, leaving his words hanging on a knife-edge.

  “What is?”

  “We spend all that time up in the Highlands, learning how to kill a man with our bare hands, how to make explosives out of some old wives’ materials and here we are, trying to win a war by switching labels over.”

  I lightly snorted, realising that he was right.

  “Perhaps they shouldn’t have bothered with us at all,” I whispered, keeping my voice low so that the others could not hear. “They could have sent a couple of schoolboys in our place.”

  “Not a chance,” he said, quick as a flash. “Those schoolboys would have more idea about what they were doing than us two buffoons.”

  We carried on looking at one another, our grins as wide as if we were looking in the mirror.

  Nothing happened for a few moments, until, gradually, the scratching stopped. As if the nibs of the pens were slowly being withdrawn from the paper and placed back in satchels.

  Before too long, the silence was perfect, as the huddle of five men stood shoulder to shoulder with one another in the centre of the room, slowly drawing weapons from their shoulders and preparing to withdraw.

  I was slower to react than the others, taking grip of my sling and pulling the Sten gun into the front of my body. I gave it a gentle tap, enough to make sure that the magazine sat comfortably in the well, but not enough to accidentally discharge a round from the unpredictable weapon.

  “Ready?” I breathed into the darkness, met with a smattering of nods and low grunts.

  It was just as well that they were ready because, at that moment, there came a bark. A sharp, aggressive one, unlike all the other shouts that we had heard that evening. This one was authoritative and commanding, not like the jokes and chuckles that we had got used to.

  This voice was angry about something, frustrated. And whatever it was that he had to be angry about, he was venting about it as he marched away from the station building and towards the isolated, rickety brick building in a railway siding.

  In other words, he was coming straight towards us.

  2

  The smiles and grins, the ones that had looked so out of place on the faces of the men in the railway shed, had run away from them quicker than an overnight express train. Their faces, not miserable or downbeat, but totally emotionless, was all that I could see as I looked at each of them, one by one.

  The sharp bark sounded again somewhere outside, as the man, incandescent about something, refused to let up in his onslaught. I could almost smell the stench of his breath, feel the saliva as it splashed angrily onto some poor soul’s face, and I prayed a prayer of thankfulness that I wasn’t on the end of such aggression. Never before had I heard someone with such a murderous tone than the man on that night.

  I skipped my way to the main door of the shed, a big, eight-foot by twelve sliding piece of wood, presumably to allow trucks and other vehicles to back up to its entrance. Carefully, making certain of my footing with every step, I pulled myself closer to the door, until I was able to poke my head around and see outside.

  I refrained for a moment or two, just to compose myself, and repay the debt of oxygen that was causing a shortness of breath. Clutching the door, I cleared my head of anything surplus to requirement. I forgot about what I had come to France to do, erased any memory of what we had been doing and certainly got rid of any remnants of triumph that was still clinging onto me.

  “What is going on?” came a harsh, yet soft, whisper from behind me. The gentle tones of the Frenchman’s dialect had always been met with warmth every time I heard them, no matter what the situation. Whenever any of them spoke, it felt almost as if their words were dancing around me on a breeze, and not breathed in a panic.

  “Can you see what’s going on, old fruit?” I could almost sense the other Frenchmen staring at one another as they tried to work out Mike’s terminology, wondering what a piece of rotting fruit had to do with the situation. I hoped that they would ask him later.

  I could say nothing, nor offer up any kind of intelligence, as I was yet to pluck up the courage to look round the door and see what kind of future lay ahead of us. I was praying for good fortune and that the voice was merely berating a young sentry for having one too many cigarettes while on duty. I figured that it was about time that we came across some good luck.

  I flapped my arm around behind me wildly, trying to get them to quieten down and let me do my own thing. I was trying to blot out everything possible, the last thing that I needed was to feel like I was up in the dock defending myself. To their credit, they seemed to get the message pretty quickly.

  I could sense them all behind me, their eyes boring into the back of my head until it burned, as I acted as their eyes to the wireless show that was playing out around us.

  There was a tension in the air, one that was fragile, but I knew that each of them would remain calm. They had done so up until this point, as I could hear no one breathing heavily and sporadically as they panicked. We had all been caught in situations like this many times before, and to that point, we had all come out alive. There seemed no reason to assume that we wouldn’t this time.

  It was only as I pulled my head out into the night time air that I realised how much warmer it had been in the shed. My fingers still ached with cold, but my breath gave off a bigger cloud than it had done in the rickety old shed, and I pulled back momentarily, taken aback by it.

  I peered out again, this time regulating my breathing and making sure I only exhaled through my nostrils, taking advantage of anything that may keep me hidden for just half a second longer.

  I could just about make out the outline of the train station in the dark, a few lights here and there to aid me. Silhouetted figures kept interrupting the flow of light, as they all barrelled from their stations and to the man who was still barking orders.

  There was just a handful, it seemed, that had responded to his calls, but I could not help but notice how a few others were dashing in opposite directions, obviously making with haste to posts that they had neglected to take at the start of their watch.

  I focused on t
he barking figure, as he continued his slow march towards the shed. Even though I had not seen him, I would have guessed that he was an officer, and his peaked cap worn at a slight angle confirmed that.

  Briefly, he stopped, and turned back towards the station, catching his face in a momentary outpouring of light as he did so.

  He was still a distance away, but I got a decent look at the side of the man’s face.

  His nose was short, trimmed almost, and his whole face seemed to droop downwards, as if made of wax and had been subjected to a prolonged period in front of an open flame. His chin was non-existent, the bottom of his mouth almost seamlessly connecting to his neck. By all accounts, he was an ugly man, made uglier still by the ferocious growl that kept some of his men quivering as they ran.

  He turned back towards the shed, as I realised that he seemed quite lopsided, as if one leg was far longer than the other. He limped towards the railway shed again, as men began to dot themselves about all around the area, taking themselves off to the water tower, the coal store and the tanker of petrol that we had failed to notice on our way in.

  A clamp suddenly wrenched at my stomach, gripping it tightly and trying its utmost to flip inside me. My face strained as I tried to ignore its pain, but the panic that had suddenly taken hold of me was too much to forget.

  I was suddenly very grateful that the others could not see my face as, although I knew they would feel the same inwardly, I did not want them to think any less of me just because my feelings had become apparent on my face.

  The man barked again, his neck faintly wobbling in the dim orange glow of the station lights, before he became nothing more than a silhouette once more.

  There were four or five soldiers crowded around him, each one of them with the stature of young men, obediently following at his heels.