Colonel Berry

Chapter Thirty-Two

Saturday, 29 April 1916

David and Maria joined the Ambassador and his wife for tea at four o'clock on Saturday. Partway through Edith's update on relief packages for the prisoners of war in Germany, the butler entered the withdrawing room and interrupted, "Pardon, my Lady. A priority for you, Sir."

"Thank you, Stanley." Evelyn opened the sealed envelope and scanned the message while the butler withdrew. Then he said, "More on the Irish situation." He read the contents aloud:

We have now suppressed the rebels. An hour ago, their leader signed a document of unconditional surrender. Sporadic fighting continues while word of the truce spreads.

We are relieved that few had risen to support them, and that there were only isolated actions in other parts of Ireland. Unfortunately, some four hundred and fifty have been reported killed and more than two thousand wounded. The fighting destroyed much of the Dublin city centre.

Martial law remains in force, and we continue to identify German agents and sympathisers and arrest them. You need no longer monitor Irish personnel on your staff.

More details to follow as this evolves.

The Ambassador looked up from the page and nodded. "You were right, David. They've been swiftly brought to a halt."

Edith blew out a deep sigh. "So much death and destruction. Did we need to be so heavy-handed with this?"

"With the Germans supporting them, we could not risk allowing the rebels to take over." David winced. "They'd threaten our rear."

Evelyn nodded. "Yes, with the Germans in Ireland, we would have been forced to withdraw troops from the Continent to establish defences along our west coasts. Also, we'd need to reposition naval ships into the Irish Sea, weakening our blockade."

Maria tilted her head as she looked up from her teacup. "So, this was a German-backed attempt to seize power?"

"It appears to have been. London had received word last week of a ship departing Germany with twenty thousand rifles and machine guns and vast quantities of ammunition for each. The Navy tracked it, and on Saturday, intercepted it in Irish waters and it was sunk." David shrugged. "This knowledge is why we were able to respond so swiftly to Monday's declaration."

The Ambassador smiled at him. "And the information would have been gained through agents such as David and his teams. The war is much more than simply lining up and shooting at each other."

"I'm pleased David is away from the shooting." Maria grimaced. "I still wince at the thought of the horrid wounds he had when I first saw him. I took pity at first and tried to comfort him with friendship."

"I still remember your first timid approach. So endearing. Then as your confidence grew, I became increasingly entranced."

"I forced myself to look beyond your wounds." She shook her head. "So difficult with them so obvious. The pain you showed as you tried to eat with your face ripped to shreds."

"I was near starved at that point. I had to ignore the pain."

"Yes, I now see this, but at that time, it was difficult to move beyond my horror. We had not examined the topic in my studies, and I had to imagine how a trained nurse would be expected to respond."

Evelyn had looked on in fascination at the intercourse, then he asked. "When was this? Where?"

"That was in Freiburg, Germany, three days after I had been wounded. I had taken a room in a gasthaus there while I planned my escape over the mountains, and Maria was waiting tables in the dining room."

"I was in nursing school and working evenings there to help keep food on the table. The war had disrupted so much."

"That was a year ago this week." Evelyn closed his eyes and bowed his head. "We've just passed the anniversary of the first gas attack."

David nodded as his mind spun dates and memories. "A year ago today, we shared our first..." He paused and looked into Maria's eyes then grinned. "Our first kiss."

"But with most of your mouth bandaged, we couldn't... Oh!" Maria blushed. "We had to skip that part, didn't we."

Edith giggled as she looked at Maria. "From what you've hinted at with me, I now understand."

"I wanted to know how it was done." Maria shrugged. "So innocent back then."

David leaned across and kissed her cheek. "And still so innocent and inquisitive."

Thursday 4 May 1916

As David scanned through the Wormser Zeitung Thursday afternoon, he thrust his fist into the air and shouted a loud, "Hurrah!" He leapt to his feet and scurried from his office to the Ambassador's, knocked and entered, waving the newspaper. "They've done it, Sir."

Evelyn looked up with a puzzled expression. "Who's done what?"

"The gasworks." He read the brief item aloud: Mängel an Gaswerken entlang der Rhein führten am Dienstag zu Explosionen und Bränden. Techniker sind jetzt in anderen Werken, um die Systeme zu korrigieren.

The Ambassador chuckled, then he said, "I got only a few words of that; gasworks, Rhine and explosions. Fill in the rest."

"Sorry, Sir. Overexcited. It says deficiencies in gasworks along the Rhine caused explosions and fires on Tuesday. Technicians are now at other plants to correct the systems." David looked up from the paper with a broad smile.

"What details do they give?"

"None. That is the entire article."

"Doesn't give us sufficient to know they've succeeded."

"Oh, but it does, Sir. This appears to be an official announcement, and I would think all else will be withheld from publication by the censors." He pointed to the article. These are all carefully-chosen words, precisely arranged. They acknowledge there have been explosions and fires in gasworks along the river, showing they are not trying to hide them. And they'd be stupid to try since they would have been so obvious. But, they don't say how many nor how serious nor their real cause."

Evelyn nodded. "And they blame them on deficiencies."

"Exactly! And that technicians are now at other gasworks to correct the problem." David chuckled. "What they don't say is that the deficiency was their complete lack of security. The corrections will be installing fencing and posting twenty-four-hour guards."

"So, the explosions were on Tuesday. What's the date on the paper?"

"Last evening's from Worms; it just arrived. The men were planning on detonating at dusk, so this will have missed being inserted in any of the Wednesday morning editions; the presses would have been already rolling when the explosions occurred."

"Yes, the freshest of the morning news is from the previous afternoon. Always half a day and more stale."

"And I'll wager we'll see nothing about this in any paper outside the affected area. This is only to appease the locals, and few of them will be aware of more than one explosion." David nodded toward the Wormser Zeitung. But this article will appear on page two or three of the Speyer, Mannheim, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe papers."

Thursday's newspapers proved David right. Late Friday afternoon, Georg, Hans and Dolf arrived in Sonnenhang and George reported their three successful detonations in a brief, cryptically-worded phone call.