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By Root 2851 0

gambler – like Cosmo Flitton – so it appeared, familiar as a dubious character in France, Belgium and the Balkans; in fact all over the place. He had a row of aliases: Kubitsa: Brod: Groza: Dupont: to mention only a few of them. No one – even MI5 was vague – seemed to know when and how he had first appeared in this country, but at an early stage he was known to have volunteered for the Belgian forces. This offer was prudently declined. Szymanski then tried the Free French, who, with the self-confidence of their race, took him on the strength; later ceding him with relief to the Poles, who may have wanted to make use of him in some special capacity. The general opinion was that he had a reasonable claim to Polish citizenship. The Czechs raised no objection. There were those who insisted his origins were really Balkan.

‘It seems fairly clear he’s not Norwegian,’ said Pennistone, ‘but I’ve learnt to take nothing on trust about Szymanski. You may have him on your hands before we’ve finished, Dempster.’

Szymanski was one of those professional scourges of authority that appear sporadically in all armies, a type to which the Allied contingents were peculiarly subject owing to the nature of their composition and recruitment Like Sayce of my former Battalion, Szymanski was always making trouble, but Sayce magnified to a phantasmagoric degree, a kind of super-Sayce of infinitely greater intelligence and disruptive potential. The abiding fear of the Home Office was that individuals of this sort might, after being found stateless, be discharged from the armed forces and have to be coped with as alien civilians.

As it happened, Szymanski’s name cropped up again a day or two later in our room. Masham, who was with the British Mission in liaison with the Free French, was waiting to be summoned by Finn, to whom he was to communicate certain points arising out of Giraud taking over from Darlan in North Africa. Masham asked Pennistone how the Poles were getting on with Szymanski, who had caused a lot of trouble to himself in his Free French days.

‘Szymanski’s gone a bit too far this time,’ Pennistone said. ‘They’ve sent him to detention. It was bound to come.’

There was a barracks, under the control of a British commandant, specially to accommodate delinquent Allied personnel.

I asked how recently that had happened.

‘A week or so ago.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Masham. ‘Though one’s got to admit the man was rather a card. It looks as if this North African switch-over will mean a back place for de Gaulle.’

‘Has anyone else hanged himself in his braces in that Free French snuggery behind Selfridge’s?’ asked Borrit.

‘Nobody hanged himself in his braces there or in any other Free French establishment,’ said Masham, rather irritably. ‘You’ve got the story wrong.’

Like all his Mission, Masham was, as he himself would have expressed it, plus catholique que le Pape, far more Francophil than the Free French themselves, who on the whole rather enjoyed a good laugh at less reputable aspects of their own corporate body. When in due course I had direct dealings with them myself, they were always telling stories about some guerrilla of theirs who divided his time between being parachuted into France to make contact with the Resistance, and returning to London to run a couple of girls on Shaftesbury Avenue.

‘What did happen then?’

‘There was some fuss about an interrogation.’

‘De Gaulle was pretty cross when our people enquired about it.’

‘He’s got to steer his own show, hasn’t he?’ said Masham, ‘Anyway, it looks as if he’s on the way out. By the way, Jenkins, the successful candidate for the job you applied to us for caught it at Bir Hakim.’

Kucherman rang up at that moment, and, by the time I had finished with Belgian business, Masham had gone up to see Finn. Transfer to the Belgians and Czechs meant no more physically than ceasing to sit next to Pennistone, though it vitiated a strong alliance in resisting Blackhead. The two Allied contingents with which I was now in liaison were, of course, even in their aggregate, much smaller numerically