His Master's Voice part 1: An MI7 Assassin origins story

His target was Wichart Crowe, superintending under-secretary of the Contraband Committee. The man responsible for what even the Daily Mail had called ‘The Blockade Farce’.

Welcome to MI7 Assassin! My new WW1 thriller kicks off with two origins short stories to warm you up: His Masters’s Voice and Scent of a Killer.

Thank you to my generous paying subscribers for supporting my writing on this platform. And welcome to all recent subs who’ve joined us! You’re most likely here because of all the Doctor Who material: I hope you’ll stick around for MI7 Assassin, too.

The grand plan is that my paying subs get to read His Master’s Voice several days ahead of everyone else. I’ve been completely distracted by all the Star Beast excitement, so you’re only getting it a day ahead, but I’ll get the next instalment off to you on Sunday, three days before everyone else gets to read it.

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His Master’s Voice

It should have been easy to shoot the traitor. Yet Stone was unable to pull the trigger.

On trench raids he had killed so many Germans in cold blood, why was it so difficult now? Admittedly, Wichart Crowe was a civilian, but there was no doubt of his guilt. He was a traitor, responsible for prolonging the war for years, and he deserved to die. But Stone found himself pointing his Mauser 1914 with Harrington and Richard suppressor at Crowe’s forehead, and yet was unable to go through with it.

Maybe because this was his first ‘freelance’ kill?

Despite the encouragement of his dead comrades, the voices in his head that gave him no peace.

Just shoot the bastard!

He’s betrayed his country!

Get on with it, Sean!

Thousands have died cos of ‘im.

They had been his fellow stealth raiders and were used to killing. Elite troops, trained to be assassins. So many times their officer would give them the order. ‘We shall only require one prisoner for interrogation. Any more will be a damn nuisance. So all other enemy soldiers must be put to death.’

So, armed with knuckle-dusters, hatchets, maces, butcher’s knives, bombs and handguns, they would raid enemy lines and find a suitably lightweight and compliant sentry to drag back with them across No Man’s Land. But before they departed, it was necessary to carry out their officer’s order on the other Germans who had surrendered. 

‘Gott mit uns! Gott mit uns!’ one prisoner had screamed, repeating the words inscribed on his belt buckle. ‘Gott mit uns!’ he wailed again as he waited his turn to die.

‘Got mittens, have yer?’ said Sergeant Dawes. ‘Well, here’s socks.’ And smashed him in the face with his cosh, so the enemy’s head exploded in a gush of blood and bone.

Ralph Plant, ‘the gravedigger’, used his sharpened entrenching shovel to slice through another’s throat.

Duncan Mond – with surprising courage – plunged his hook knife into his target’s guts and ripped upwards. Surprising, because he had recently tried to shoot himself in the foot, had a failure of nerve and botched the job. Now he was trying hard to redeem himself.

The raiders all had cork-blackened faces and hands, but one German still recognised Dean Scorer’s African features and launched into a stream of hate. Dean had no idea what his curses meant: ‘Abschaum! Primitive wilde! Keine kultur!’ But the expression on the German’s face didn’t require an interpreter. His curses helped Dean as he slit the man’s throat with his butcher’s knife.

Stone used his blackened bayonet on a prisoner. The blade was shortened to ten inches and the tip reshaped so it could penetrate clothing. It bypassed the German’s ‘lobster’ plated armour, going in under his left armpit, and deep into his heart. Another tried to make a run for it, screaming ‘Hefen!’ and Stone shot him in the back with his Mauser with the silencer.

It was a typical stealth raid. They had been offered Forced March (cocaine and caffeine) and rum before their ‘minor enterprise’. Rum and coke. Just in case their resolve needed stiffening to do what had to be done. In case they had a failure of nerve at executing soldiers who surrendered. But Stone always declined. He preferred to be in control of his senses and his nerve had never failed him.

Until now.

His target was Wichart Crowe, superintending under-secretary of the Contraband Committee. The man responsible for what even the Daily Mail had called ‘The Blockade Farce’. And The Morning Post had described as ‘The Make-Believe Blockade’.  

Stone had secretly read Crowe’s personnel file locked away with other ‘most-secret’ files in Room 38 at the Ministry of Munitions. The Ministry was located in Adelphi Terrace in the Strand, a building it shared with MI7, the propaganda department of military intelligence that employed Stone. MI7’s offices were directly below the Ministry of Munitions. This was most convenient for Stone, who found his own unauthorised way into the hallowed Room 38.

Crowe was born in Leipzig  and was half-German on his mother’s side. His father was the British Consul-General. But his education at a German boarding school had been an unhappy one. His German classmates had bullied him because he was English. There were several allegations of their ‘extreme misbehaviour’ towards the nine-year-old boy. German hate-propaganda had worked them up into a frenzy. ‘God Punish England!’ was a popular anthem. After one ‘most unfortunate incident’, Crowe was transferred to a prep school in Britain. He then went on to study at Eton and Oxford, where he excelled before joining the Foreign Office.

But although Crowe constantly spoke out against the threat of Germany, he was still regarded with suspicion. Not least because he was married to a German, Clema Gerhard, the niece of Henning Von Holtzendorff, Chief of the German Naval Staff. Understandably, he was attacked in the press as ‘the enemy within’ 

Aware he was considered by many to be an enemy agent, Crowe was not taking any chances. There were two bodyguards in the rooms next to his personal library where Stone now confronted him. And a further bodyguard in the servant’s quarters downstairs. 

Stone had read the intelligence reports in Room 38 that made it clear Crowe’s Contraband Committee was allowing food and munitions to reach Germany, prolonging the war by years. The British naval blockade was a propaganda exercise to reassure the public and nothing more. As a report by the leading authority Rear Admiral Consett put it, ‘An effective blockade would have crushed Germany into surrender in 1915.’

It was now November 8^th 1916. 

There had been the bloodbath of the Somme when his comrades, Ralph, Duncan, Dean and Sergeant Dawes were killed and Stone had suffered severe shell shock. These four men were the only family he had during three years of war. He had described them vividly and favourably in the best-selling books he had written about his life in the trenches: The Young Contemptibles, ‘Alf a Mo’, Kaiser, and Ragtime Infantry. Favourably, because that’s how he wanted to remember them. With huge affection. And anyway, the publisher would have censored the truth about them.

If the war had ended in 1915, they would still be alive. But, as the rain beat against Crowe’s library window, Stone still hesitated. He still couldn’t pull the trigger.

So the voices encouraged him once again. I’m running out of patience with you, son. He needs to join us in No Man’s Land, Sergeant Dawes said menacingly. He’d been an Elephant Boy, a member of the notorious Elephant and Castle gang.

Duncan chimed in. If Crowe was on the battlefield, he would have been shot for treason.

And Ralph. You’re letting us all down, mate.

Even Dean who, maybe because he had been a legal clerk, was still guarded in what he said, despite speaking from the grave. We are waiting for you to carry out the necessary action along the lines you are considering. You will know to what I am referring. 

It had been this way ever since the Somme. Were the voices shell shock? Some weird psychic phenomena? His conscience? Whatever they were, they hadn’t given him any peace since.

The shell shock had made him mute and the doctors had tried the latest methods to cure him and enable him to speak again. A spinning wheel with a carousel of coloured discs going round and round that they made him stare at for hours on end. When that didn’t work, they ran high voltage electricity through his throat. Then they applied lit cigarettes to the tip of his tongue. And put ‘hot plates’ in the back of his mouth. None of these methods worked either.

It seemed like he would remain dumb, a casualty of war. His voice was gone, seemingly forever. 

But then he’d received a visitor in the special hospital for neurasthenia patients: A section chief at MI7 called Captain Hugh Bertie Pollard. Pollard was a handsome, slim and athletic young man, although his moustache gave him a somewhat villainous-look. Or maybe it was his eyes, Stone wasn’t sure. But he was an instantly attractive, larger than life character who Stone found himself drawn to. Pollard had read all three of Stone’s books and was greatly impressed.

Pollard said Stone had ‘the common touch’ and that was what was missing at MI7. Everyone who worked for Military Intelligence was a toff – people such as Lord Dunsany, the famous fantasy writer, and A. A. Milne, assistant editor of Punch. They were often out of touch with ordinary people. But not Stone. Pollard said he, too, was a toff, but he still knew how to reach the man in the street. ‘That’s why I write for the Daily Express,’ he said with a wicked grin.  

He offered Stone a job, writing propaganda for MI7, working alongside these great writers. And many others, too. All the great novelists – a veritable who’s who of famous British authors – were using their talents to help the war effort.  Everyone from Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard to Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells.

Pollard’s offer to work for MI7 was a miracle cure. Stone recovered his voice almost overnight and he joined the propaganda department a few weeks later.

Naturally, he wanted to share his good fortune with his voices. His family. The only family he had since he left home at fifteen.

His ‘good fortune’ did not go down well. Ragtime Infantry had been published after his comrades had been killed on the Somme. About your latest book, I read it carefully and, frankly, I don’t think much of it. We all thought you’d tell the truth about the war, but instead you write just the same old Boys Own Paper tripe. We are so fed-up with this eyewash written to amuse the idiots back home. Duncan was always Stone’s most scathing critic.

Sergeant Dawes was equally eloquent. All that tosh you wrote about us laughing when Fritz was giving us what for. You weren’t laughing when them Jack Johnsons and Moaning Minnies was exploding all around us. You was crapping yourself, son.

Ralph the gravedigger didn’t pull his punches either. I may not have been able to read and write proper, but I’m not stupid, despite what they said about me in that children’s home. What you’re doing is wrong, Sean.

Dean reminded Stone of the consequences. Thousands read your books. You’re the reason they flocked to the colours. And now you’re doping more minds at MI7.

Night after night he was unable to sleep as he argued with them. He told them how he had always wanted to be a writer. How his first two books, Backstage and The Aerialist, about his days in the music hall, had been rejected by publishers. So it was a dream come true when his war stories were accepted and became runaway best sellers. Only The First Hundred Thousand by Ian Hay outsold them. He told them that he couldn’t write the truth about the war. 

He shared some of the royalties with their families. That didn’t help either. Dean said, I appreciate your generosity, Sean. The royalties from your books you passed onto Sally. She and our little ones will have a nest egg now for the future. Nevertheless, you must address my concerns about the work you are currently engaged in.

He’s just trying to buy you off, Dean, cut in Duncan. Don’t bother sending any more pieces of silver to my widow. It’s dirty money and we don’t want it. 

He told them patiently, again and again, that he had no choice but to stay silent about the real war. Then maybe you should have stayed mute, sneered Duncan. The relentless barrage of his inner voices was wearing him down. He hadn’t slept properly for months. He seemed to be living in a daydream world where his new comrades at MI7 and the ghosts of his past were merging. He could have sworn he had seen Sergeant Dawes sitting in the MI7 canteen, chatting happily away to Lord Dunsany. But when he came over to say hello, Dawes had mysteriously vanished and there was just his lordship looking coldly up at him. And he was convinced it was Ralph, the gravedigger, he saw studying a massive tome in the MI7 library. Remarkable, as Ralph had only just learnt to read and write. Stone had patiently taught him. It had been a proud day for both of them when Ralph had read a copy of his beloved Popular Mechanics magazine (‘Written so you can understand it.’) from cover to cover. Previously he’d only been able to marvel at the pictures. 

A week later, Ralph was dead. Killed on that first day of the Battle of the Somme with the others. 

The shadows on his bedroom wall seemed to form the four figures of his comrades. He was living in the gravedigger’s cottage in Brompton cemetery. Ralph had left it to Stone in his will. With the royalties from his books, he could easily have afforded better lodgings, but he wanted to remain close to his best friend. Amongst his piles of unread but much loved Popular Mechanics. The cottage had been given to Ralph by a wealthy family for protecting their mausoleum from grave robbers.  

Most young writers would kill for my job, Stone told the wraiths.  

And you did, replied Dean coldly. 

If that’s true, what can I do about it? he challenged them. 

They didn’t reply, but he already knew the answer. Nevertheless, he looked away from the shadows, gazing instead at the endless rows of Gothic headstones and tombs in the city of the dead beyond his cottage. 

He knew what he had to do.

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So here he was, gun in hand, facing Crowe in the library of his house in The Avenue, Colchester. 

It was considered to be the best road in the town, just off Lexden road, which lead west from the centre towards London. Broad and leafy, it boasted a medley of distinguished Georgian, Regency and Victorian residences set back from the road with high hedges and mature trees lending an air of refined seclusion. Crowe’s house was the most distinguished; a towering red-brick, Gothic, four storey town house on the corner of The Avenue and Lexden Road, with a large cedar of Lebanon tree on the drive, affording the residence a great degree of privacy from casual passers by. Of all the important people who lived in The Avenue, the imposing nature of the property signalled that the most important lived here. From it, Crowe would commute every morning to London’s Liverpool Street Station. Then take a taxi to the Foreign Office and his job as head of the Contraband Committee. 

When he was younger, he must have been a handsome man with what would usually be described as dashing good looks. But now, perhaps under the strain of war, he was looking far older than his fifty three years. There were heavy bags under his eyes, underscored with black lines of stress. His moustache was patchy and unkempt. He looked rather like Field Marshal Kitchener, but on a bad day. He was wearing his evening suit, even though he dined alone. The traditions of his class had to be maintained. 

He looked up from his desk and faced his executioner without a trace of fear.

Outside, the rain was beating against the library window, but both men were oblivious to it.

And that was when Stone made his mistake. 

It was a mistake no professional assassin would dream of making. But it was his first hit, after all.

He asked Crowe, why?

Why had he done it?

As he did so, he saw Crowe’s eyes light up. Because now he could see a way of defeating this young man dressed in black with only his angry eyes visible through his balaclava mask. 

Crowe knew he had the most deadly weapon in the world, more lethal than the Mauser the assassin was pointing at his head.

He didn’t deny Stone’s charge that his blockade of Germany was fake. That his committee was allowing millions of tons of produce and munitions to reach the enemy.

‘Yes, it’s true what Admiral Consett and others are alleging about me,’ Crowe replied smoothly. 

‘So why are you committing treason?’ repeated Stone. ‘Sir,’ he added sarcastically.

Crowe settled back in his armchair. He needed to be relaxed and comfortable for his arsenal of words to have the most impact on his listener. He had so many to choose from and they were all as destructive as high-explosive artillery shells. ‘Because the zealous man on the spot knows only one part of a whole picture, while at the centre a mind which can take in so much more knows all the consequences.’ 

‘And that is you …? Sir?’ Despite his anger, Stone could already feel himself reeling from the impact of the word barrage. 

‘That is correct. With a strict blockade and other measures, yes, we could have defeated Germany.’ He made an expansive gesture with his hands. ‘In a matter of months. But then nothing would have been settled. It would have been a lame peace. A half peace.’ He steepled his fingers and leaned forward to deliver a further devastating fusillade of fire. ‘We have to prolong the war so that Germany is totally destroyed. Forever.’ 

He looked grimly into Stone’s eyes and said very slowly and solemnly, ‘And can never rise again.’ 

Stone intended to remind him of the cost. Of the thousands of Tommies who died in the trenches as a consequence. The millions made in profits by the arms manufacturers. And the sailors risking their lives to enforce a sham blockade. But instead he was speechless. He was literally struck dumb, like when he was shell-shocked. 

Because Crowe was using his ultimate weapon. It had been carefully polished and honed over generations, with knowledge and calculation as to its importance, its purpose and its efficacy. Its successes noted and its failures reviewed. It had been reinforced and refined at Eton and Oxford, notably through debates and by emulating the previous generations who were keen to pass the weapon on, this advertisement and display of their superiority over lesser-beings. It was cultured, calm, self-confident and authoritative. 

His Voice.

It wasn’t the words. The ludicrous excuses that Crowe gave for his actions were meaningless. He could have been telling Stone that the Earth was flat or that H. G. Wells’ Martians had landed. And Stone would still have believed him. It was only his tone of voice that mattered. It said quite simply, ‘I am your Master. I know better than you. You will obey me.’

His Master’s Voice. And Stone was like the little dog, the terrier, on the gramophone records. Utterly bemused by its magic. By its infusion of class and wealth, pomp and power.

‘So you really shouldn’t take any notice of the newspapers,’ Crowe continued with his most educated and sophisticated Voice that could permit no dissent from inferiors. ‘And, besides, what difference would my death achieve? Someone will take my place and carry out exactly the same agenda.’

He regarded Stone calmly, like an Oxford Don gently but firmly correcting a wayward student.

Stone was Crowe’s dog. He lowered his gun, obedient to the Voice. 

Crowe’s eyes showed a brief flicker of triumph.

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Next week in His Master’s Voice part 2: will Stone be a good boy and roll over for Crowe?

His Master's Voice part 2: An MI7 Assassin origins story