Chapter Text
Christopher Foyle waited patiently. His stolen gas mask was decidedly uncomfortable, but nothing near as cumbersome as what he had been issued in the trenches in Ypres. He ignored the sweat beading his cheeks and the rubbery taste of the filtered air. He stood before a wheel-locked door, in an anonymous concrete room in a warren of them: except that this one had "DANGER! BREATHING APPARATUS REQUIRED IN FUEL STORAGE" stamped on it in ominous white lettering. An unknown number of guards patrolled the room inside. Any of them might be traitors to the war effort. Would they be willing to shoot a police officer? A less sceptical detective might have gone to the base's flag officer with half of the constabulary in Sussex and ordered a painstaking search. Such a man might very well have turned up nothing, wasted six months, countless man-hours and a hefty chunk of the police budget and made a damn fool of everyone involved. More importantly, the appearance of uniforms might very well have made his quarry vanish. From his hiding place behind a few barrels of diesel oil, Foyle was unable to spy any guards, nor his suspect, nor his real target. The man whom Foyle had trailed into this rats's nest of tunnels had entered the fuel dump some time before, causing him to lose precious minutes in finding a gas mask. (He ought to have carried his with him, of course, but the habit had worn off after the Blitz had ended.) All his suspect had to do was lie in wait behind the door, wait for Foyle to come through, then whip off his mask. The wheel in the centre of the door turned. A tall man in the blue double-breasted suit of a Royal Navy officer stepped through, pulled the door to without cycling the lock and sprawled onto the bottom of the stairs nearby. He removed his gas mask with a sigh of relief, revealing close-cropped blond hair. His eyes were closed in fatigue. Foyle memorised the man's face, slipped out from beneath the stairs and slid through the door.
A large storehouse stretched before him. The ends of it vanished in a cloud of noxious fumes from the evaporating fuel. His clothes would stink for days—and be inflammable besides! Whistling caught his attention, a periodic oscillation between loud and soft. When the ubiquitous melody of 'Lili Marlene' faded into pianissimo, he slid from behind his barrels and walked calmly into the nearest alcove. All this sneaking around wasn't something which he had done since the Great War. Soon the guard's booted tread faded along with his poor musical abilities. Foyle headed down the row of looming fuel tanks to the far corner of the warehouse. He counted a dozen tall, gleaming tanks sunk into heavy concrete supports.
"I'll report you, you know!"
The English accent came from directly behind where Foyle was standing. He flattened himself behind the last tank in his row.
"You're a damn thief Hedges! Stealing from another naval rating, that's an offence!"
He slowly let out a breath. It tasted of rubber. Foyle knelt. The gap between the concrete support and fuel tank provided a sliver of the scene. Two guards, both armed with Vickers machine pistols, stood facing one another. Undoubtedly, they were supposed to be patrolling their respective corridors.
"What, am I going to be court-martialled for stealing your chocolate ration? Be a sport, I proposed! I couldn't afford a ring!"
His accuser laughed. The stairs to the observation gantry lay directly behind him. So much for a perfect place to photograph the entire criminal ring. The camera might not function at all in this gloom. With their faces obscured by the gas masks, the pictures would only be of uniforms anyway. He shifted the bulky device which hung around his neck, wishing that Milner were here instead of in Wales.
"I might have…found you one…You should've asked, you fool!"
The guards lapsed into silence. Foyle took the opportunity to listen for his quarry, but the man whom he had tracked to the warehouse must have found a hiding place as well. His civilian shoes would sound quite distinct from the heavy boots of the guards.
"You mean…unofficially?" the thief ventured.
"Don't look at me that way! Unlike you, I'm not a thief! People will swap a ring for a loaf of bread, the way the rationing is headed."
"Well, I don't have a loaf of bread. Do you really think you'll be Petty Officer Benson one day—with that half of a brain?"
Benson paused, shifting his grip on his Vickers.
"A mate of mine can get you one: why stop at bread? Pair of silk stockings, bottle of champagne, anything your fiancée likes, really. Meet him this evening, he's a reasonable chap."
Foyle held his breath. The men's voices were muffled by their gas masks. Sensing his friend's hesitation, the stranger continued:
"The rations office at Brighton takes any surplus ration cards—"
"—confiscated cards, you mean—" Hedges interrupted.
The two laughed.
"Right, from Miss Never Married But Somehow Has Two Children and so on… At any rate, one of their chaps redistributes them to certain of us in the Royal Navy. All we do is pass them on. Sink a U-boat, double your meat ration, that sort of thing."
So that was the story Fleming and his ilk had concocted. It fit nicely with the other statements his constables had collected, each one carefully tailored to appeal to the victims, all with the Robin Hood flavour of stealing from the wicked to give to the needy. Foyle wondered idly if Andrew and his R.A.F. mates would be so easy to fool. No, surely they had more integrity than this lot.
"Isn't it…well, not illegal exactly, but very risky?" asked Hedges.
"Everyone from ordinary seamen to officers is involved. Who's going to tell on us when there are bigger fish to fry? It is odd, though…we've never met here before."
"Well, you can leave me out of it! All I did was clock in because James was sick. Suppose he absorbed too many fumes, working all these shifts."
Just as Foyle hoped his luck had come through, he saw a figure climb the stairs behind the two guards. Hedges spied the man too, for he raised his rifle to the firing position and shouted a challenge. The dark shape paused, halfway up to the gantry. Foyle used the distraction to move back the way he had come. There had to be another set of stairs. With luck he could collar the man red-handed.
There was another set of stairs, accompanied by another pair of bored, under-paid young men who had doubtless imagined that signing up to His Majesty's Navy meant chasing down Hitler's grey wolves in the North Atlantic. Foyle shifted his gaze upwards. The observation gantry itself looked deserted, but with the angles it was difficult to be certain. Green lights winked in the gloom, probably the power box for this storehouse. As if to confirm his deduction, sudden hissing and crackling heralded a shower of sparks. Suddenly Foyle could barely see his hand in front of his face. The fuses in the lighting box above him had to have blown.
"Halt or I shoot!" bellowed a voice.
He heard the nearby guards sprint away from him. Neither of them was going to shoot blindly into a naval fuel depot, not if they wanted to survive. Foyle felt his way along the cold metal of the fuel storage. When he reached the end of his row, he struck out at a forty-five degree angle. His feet caught. Foyle lurched forwards, barking his shins on the edge of a step. Righting himself hastily, he ran upwards. Had his unknown suspect seen him after all, blowing the fuses to scramble out undetected? His footsteps rang on the metal, giving any nearby assailant ample warning. This was all far too clever for a few ration forgers. He stepped forward blindly, feeling his way along the handrail of the gantry. Next to the fuse box there would be a torch. Then Foyle would see which of them could run faster. There was only one door for this bunker! Mr. Too Clever By Half from the Brighton Ration Office had outsmarted himself neatly.
In the darkness, the room tremored. An air raid? Surely not under twenty feet of solid concrete! Foyle toppled onto the gantry. He tasted blood. Sure enough, his training from the Great War kicked in: nothing was broken and his kit was intact. His gas mask was missing. Dizzy, he swayed to his knees. Coughing, he ran his hands over the metal gangplank. Surely it had merely been dislodged when he had fallen. After wasting precious seconds, he staggered to his feet for a second time that night. He ran his palm against the concrete wall, willing himself to hit the fuse box soon. An ominous sucking-in of air reached his ears. Turning, an orange glow caught his eyes. Fire! His fingers slipped outwards into an alcove, touching cool metal. Another door. He grabbed the locking wheel, but the door slid open at his touch. He lurched through, blinking in the sudden light. Dark blotches swam in his vision. Coughing uncontrollably, he slammed the door shut. He blacked out still clinging to the locking wheel.