The Key to Rebecca - Ken Follett [62]
A cloud of orange smoke arose in the middle of the battlefield. Von Mellenthin said: “That’s a signal from the assault engineers, telling the artillery to lengthen their range.”
Rommel nodded. “Good. We’re making progress.”
Suddenly von Mellenthin was seized by optimism. There was booty in Tobruk: petrol, and dynamite, and tents, and trucks—already more than half Rommel’s motorized transport consisted of captured British vehicles—and food. Von Mellenthin smiled and said: “Fresh fish for dinner?”
Rommel understood his train of thought. “Liver,” he said. “Fried potatoes. Fresh bread.”
“A real bed, with a feather pillow.”
“In a house with stone walls to keep out the heat and the bugs.”
A runner arrived with a signal. Von Mellenthin took it and read it. He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice as he said: “They’ve cut the wire at Strongpoint Sixty-nine. Group Menny is attacking with the infantry of the Afrika Korps.”
“That’s it,” said Rommel. “We’ve opened a breach. Let’s go.”
It was ten-thirty in the morning when Lieutenant Colonel Reggie Bogge poked his head around the door of Vandam’s office and said: “Tobruk is under siege.”
It seemed pointless to work then. Vandam went on mechanically, reading reports from informants, considering the case of a lazy lieutenant who was due for promotion but did not deserve it, trying to think of a fresh approach to the Alex Wolff case; but everything seemed hopelessly trivial. The news became more depressing as the day wore on. The Germans breached the perimeter wire; they bridged the antitank ditch; they crossed the inner minefield; they reached the strategic road junction known as King’s Cross.
Vandam went home at seven to have supper with Billy. He could not tell the boy about Tobruk: the news was not to be released at present. As they ate their lamb chops, Billy said that his English teacher, a young man with a lung condition who could not get into the Army, never stopped talking about how he would love to get out into the desert and have a bash at the Hun. “I don’t believe him, though,” Billy said. “Do you?”
“I expect he means it,” Vandam said. “He just feels guilty.”
Billy was at an argumentative age. “Guilty? He can’t feel guilty—it’s not his fault.”
“Unconsciously he can.”
“What’s the difference?”
I walked into that one, Vandam thought. He considered for a moment, then said: “When you’ve done something wrong, and you know it’s wrong, and you feel bad about it, and you know why you feel bad, that’s conscious guilt. Mr. Simkisson has done nothing wrong, but he still feels bad about it, and he doesn’t know why he feels bad. That’s unconscious guilt. It makes him feel better to talk about how much he wants to fight.”
“Oh,” said Billy.
Vandam did not know whether the boy had understood or not.
Billy went to bed with a new book. He said it was a “tec,” by which he meant a detective story. It was called Death on the Nile.
Vandam went back to GHQ. The news was still bad. The 21st Panzers had entered the town of Tobruk and fired from the quay onto several British ships which were trying, belatedly, to escape to the open sea. A number of vessels had been sunk. Vandam thought of the men who made a ship, and the tons of precious steel that went into it, and the training of the sailors, and the welding of the crew into a team; and now the men were dead, the ship sunk, the effort wasted.
He spent the night in the officers’ mess, waiting for news. He drank steadily and smoked so much that he gave himself a headache. Bulletins came down periodically from the Operations Room. During the night Ritchie, as commander of the Eighth Army, decided to abandon the frontier and retreat to Mersa Matruh. It was said that when Auchinleck, the commander in chief, heard this news he stalked out of the room