Dead Men Stalking 5: The Prussian Guard
It was not that different to a trench raid, except that this time he was alone. He didn’t have his four comrades with him. And he wasn’t looking for German soldiers. He was intending to kill just one.
Welcome to part five of my WW1 espionage thriller short story! If you missed part one, read it here:
And if you’re new to MI7 Assassin, I’ve also written two earlier standalone stories:
My paying subs get the hot thrill of reading MI7 Assassin the Sunday before it goes out to everyone else on Wednesday, but whenever you get your hans on it, I would really appreciate your feedback on this story!
Eventually we’ll publish these origins stories as novellas and I want them to be as good as they possibly can be when we do! So if you have any suggestions, something you particularly like or don’t like, want to see more or less of, let me know in the comments below!
Dead Men Stalking 5: The Prussian Guard
The climb up the ornate exterior of the elegant, Edwardian Farringdon Hotel to the fourth floor and Major Röpell’s room was relatively easy for an aerialist. Positioned near the distinctive red Holborn Viaduct and a short distance from Fleet Street, the impressive four-storey hotel was perfect for discreetly putting up guests of the government without attracting too much attention.
Across the road was the Hoop and Grapes, one of Captain Pollard’s favourite drinking dens where he would hold court with his cronies from Fleet Street and have them in fits of laughter with his infamous propaganda tales ranging from his early ‘snow on the boots’ story about Russian troops secretly arriving in Scotland, to his recent lurid lie of the Germans turning their dead soldiers into soap.
Stone had spent a few evenings at the Hoop and Grapes with Pollard and one of his favourite drinking pals Arthur Machen, who had dreamed up the even more ridiculous story about the Angels of Mons. According to Machen, these phantom bowmen saved the Tommies during the great retreat of 1914. It was a work of fiction but everyone wanted to believe it was true and proof that God was on Britain’s side. Stone always had the feeling that Pollard was jealous he didn’t come up with the story first. It was certainly his style. He tended to go rather quiet when other Fleet Street journalists were slapping Arthur on the back and congratulating him on his propaganda tale that had hugely raised the nation’s spirits.
But despite his usual garrulous manner and life and soul of the party personality, Pollard could be remarkably tight-lipped where matters of national security were concerned. Undoubtedly it was he who chose the Farringdon Hotel for the signing of the above top secret contract between the German and British governments.
It was almost as if Pollard, like Stone, was leading a double life. Just as Stone appeared to be a young rake, in pursuit of frivolous and hedonistic pleasures every evening, while secretly carrying out his assassinations, he felt there was another more sinister side to Pollard as well. He presented one face of himself in public as a jovial bon viveur, hunting and shooting, even planning to write a Sportsman’s Cookbook after the war with two hundred recipes as choice alternatives ‘to those bloody boring, everlasting joints’, while a much darker and deadlier persona moved with cold calculation and stealth behind the scenes. How much darker and deadlier, Stone had no way of knowing, but he suspected and feared the worst. A more sensible young man might have seen that as a reason for curtailing his assassinations forthwith, but Stone had never been sensible. And his fear only made him even more fascinated by his head of section.
Wearing a dark boiler suit and balaclava, Stone deftly climbed the quoins on the corner of the building, each grip illuminated by the light of the half-moon.
Below, there was darkness punctuated by pools of light from the street gas lamps. Traffic was sparse and the pavements were rapidly clearing as most Londoners obeyed the 10.30pm beauty sleep order.
It was an order that caused even the Hoop and Grapes to evict its ever-thirsty journalists on time. So all was going according to plan.
As he moved along the ledge to his target’s fourth floor window his old childhood fear came rushing back and overwhelmed him. His limbs became uncoordinated and he felt his chest tighten. Gone was the smooth, easy movement and the innate confidence. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed against the building, aware of the yawning empty space beneath him. It was an incomprehensible, unreasoning terror, but in order to overcome it, he had to remember it and make sense of it.
He went back to when he was twelve years old at the London Oratory. Two prefects had suspended him by his ankles from the attic windows on the fourth floor and threatened to drop him on the concourse far below. They were acting on the orders of an Oratory Father, who had told them to give Stone a short, sharp shock to make him withdraw his allegations.
As he hung there, he could barely hear the taunts and jeers of the prefects over the blood thundering in his ears. The world was a vast whirling confusion of light and colour, the clouds scudding indifferently across the sky, the ground spinning out of reach beyond his outstretched hands.
Eventually, he agreed to keep his mouth shut and they pulled him to safety. They left him shaking, lying on the floor with a legacy of terror.
Trouble was, he never could shut up about anything, or look the other way like the other pupils did, no matter how often they punished him. He couldn’t help himself, it was just who he was. It explained why he eventually had to leave school at fifteen and found work in the music halls. And what he was doing here, clinging to the side of a hotel, trying to change the world by assassinating an agent of the German Empire before he signed a contract with traitors inside the British army. Everyone knew secret trading with the enemy went on, but everyone pretended it wasn’t happening, or shrugged their shoulders and said, But what can you do? There’s nothing that can be done. Stone did not agree.
Remembering the reason for his fear, it slowly retreated into a dark corner of his mind. He took some deep breaths, then continued his way along the ledge. He had been prepared to force open the window, but it wasn’t necessary. Röpell slept with it wide open, despite the freezing January night. Healthier – and typically German.
But not healthier for Major Röpell, of course. It would make the job of plunging a bayonet into his heart so much easier, the night before he signed the contract.
Stone had parked his car some fifty yards down the street from the hotel in the late afternoon. As the sun disappeared behind the buildings and the anaemic sky faded to grey, he’d watched a cab draw up and ‘Swiss Businessman’ Herr Röpell alight.
The upturned moustache was something of a give-away, as was his distinctive German, sheepskin-lined coat with its fur collar. His height was even more distinctive. He was easily six foot four inches, probably an ex-member of the Prussian Guards, also known as the Potsdam Giants, and he had that slight stoop which very tall people often have, in constant readiness to enter rooms with low ceilings. Stone wondered idly if he was one of the Imperial Guards his regiment had faced at Ypres, back in November 1914. All he could remember was the sight of terrifying, wraith-like giants emerging through the fog in Nuns’ Woods, singing their battle hymn, the ‘Watch on the Rhine’.
Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine,
Dear Fatherland, no fear be thine,
Firm stands the Watch along, along the Rhine!
Firm stands the Watch along, along the Rhine!
With heavy rain, smoke and fog, it was just a blurred, distant memory to him as the British machine guns and their musketry were taking a heavy toll of the flower of the German Army with Sergeant Dawes snarling, ‘Hold the line! Hold the line!’ As air-bursting shrapnel decimated their massed ranks, the Prussians were successfully thrown back in disarray.
Stone watched the German climb the steps to the hotel entrance, noting a faint limp that had been hidden when the man was on the pavement. An injury from earlier in the war, maybe in that first battle of Ypres. Maybe resulting in Ropell joining Sektion 111. Just as Stone's own ‘Blighty One’ led to him being recruited by MI7. The Junker had a dramatic fencing scar – a ‘schmisse’ or bragging scar – on his cheek which confirmed he was the target. Stone, too, had a small scar on his face, although it had been received under very different circumstances. He already knew Röpell’s room number and had worked out its location in the luxurious hotel. His British hosts were taking very good care of their VIP guest. Sure enough, a few minutes after Röpell walked through into the hotel, a light was turned on in the appropriate room on the fourth floor.
Satisfied, Stone drove away. He would come back later and take very good care of Röpell.
Now, it was just gone 11pm and the street below him was deserted. A chill wind had picked up, drawing out the net curtains of the Prussian's window into the night air where they billowed invitingly.
He drew level with the window and paused, listening. There was no sound, no movement. He climbed in, a silent shadow at one with the night.
It was not that different to a trench raid, except that this time he was alone. He didn’t have his four comrades with him. And he wasn’t looking for German soldiers to capture and drag back across no man’s land for interrogation. He was intending to kill just one. But he was wearing dark clothing and a balaclava, just as on a trench raid, and he drew a blackened and specially sharpened bayonet, just as on a trench raid. The blade had been shortened to nine inches and the tip reshaped so it could penetrate clothing. A conventional bayonet would have been unwieldy. He had also sawn off part of the pommel to make it lighter and more comfortable to handle. He fingered the lethal weapon in readiness. He had no compunction about using it. If you deal in death, you can’t complain if death deals you a hand, too.
All was well. There was the distinctive shape of the Junker asleep in bed. Perfect. It needed to be a silent kill. Previously he had shot his targets, and that had been his mistake. Pollard, with his ballistics skills, had confirmed the same weapon was used in the two previous assassinations. He had shared this knowledge with Stone as he discussed writing a propaganda article reminding the public to be ever watchful for the ‘enemy in our midst’. He had no idea just how ‘in our midst’ the enemy actually was. Sitting right opposite him, in fact.
There was another practical reason it had to be the bayonet. Two of Pollard’s men were on guard duty, just outside in the corridor. Legion of Frontiersmen in civilian clothes. He had seen them leave the Hoop and Grapes and enter the hotel earlier; their military bearing giving them away, despite their raincoats and trilbies. The Legion were made up mainly of soldiers with combat experience on the British Empire’s far flung frontiers. An irregular force of scouts, mounted rifles, adventurers, and intelligence gatherers. ‘God guard thee’ was their motto. If regular soldiers knew what was happening here tonight, Stone reflected, they’d have turned their guns on the German. And the police would have done the same. Because it was still treason. That’s why the War Office used the Legion. They were loyal to the Empire, no matter what. My Empire right or wrong. Never asking questions. Loyalty above all – even if it meant prolonging the war by years and millions more dying.
Any noise and the two Frontiersmen would burst in.
Thus, with great care, Stone crept through the darkened room, towards the shape of Röpell in bed, sleeping on his back. He reached the bed, judged where his heart was, then brought the bayonet down on the body, with sufficient force to slice through his rib cage and penetrate his heart.
Realising, just a second later, to his consternation and bewilderment, that the body was nothing more than a pile of pillows and rolled-up blankets.
The bathroom door was flung open and the Prussian giant was framed in the doorway. He wore a spiked, punch gauntlet on his right hand that caught a glimmer of moonlight. With a triumphant snarl, he lunged at Stone.