Soldiers in the Mist

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Garry Douglas Kilworth's third Jack Crossman novel finds the man they call 'Fancy Jack' with little time to recover from the horrors of Balaclava. Following the terrible massacre of the Light Brigade, morale is low, supplies are scarce and the Crimean Winter is beginning to take its toll. Determined to capture the Russian port of Sevastopol, the British and French lay siege to the city. The Russians send a huge force to break the siege and the scene is set for the Battle of Inkerman. Jack Crossman is sent on another covert mission to cut Russian supply lines but there is an added element of danger when it is discovered that there is a traitor on the loose in the British ranks. Fancy Jack and his men are once again risking their lives to help ensure the success of the Allied war effort.

Release date: October 6, 2011

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 288

Sample

‘There is a traitor in our midst,’ said Major Lovelace, ‘and we must remove him with all expediency.’

Sergeant Crossman and the major were sitting on gunpowder barrels just inside the lower room of a hovel. These were quarters shared by Crossman and his four men. The major also stayed there from
time to time, when he was not out on one of his spying missions. These expeditions were called ‘fox hunts’ by General Buller, who was responsible for their formation.

The hovel itself was situated in Kadikoi village, just north of Balaclava harbour, the scene of the gallant stand by the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders against the Russian cavalry just a few days
previously.

On a recent mission Crossman had captured a quantity of silver coins – Maria Theresa dollars – from a Russian caravan. The booty was to be shared between all those involved. It would
make each of them considerably richer. Prize money was held in abeyance until the end of the campaign however, or men would be buying themselves out of the army right, left and centre. Crossman and
the others would have to wait for their cash.

Major Lovelace suspected that the money had been destined for the pockets of a traitor to the allied cause.

‘You seem convinced of that fact, sir?’

Lovelace nodded. The major was a slim blond man in his early thirties. An officer on General Buller’s staff, he was one of the modern-thinking new men emerging in a post-Wellingtonian army
run by old men. Although he had purchased a captaincy in the Royal Horse Artillery, he had nothing against those who rose from the ranks or received field promotions. He had recently been promoted
by Lord Raglan at General Buller’s request.

Major Lovelace believed in espionage and sabotage as acceptable methods of conducting a war. Lord Raglan and many of the older staff officers did not. Lord Raglan was under the impression that
Lovelace had done something on the battlefield to impress Buller, but in fact he had earned his promotion by what Lord Raglan would describe as ‘skulking and sneaking’.

Sergeant Crossman had been recruited by Lovelace, not altogether voluntarily, into this new branch of special duties which crossed through ranks and regiments and was in many ways a leveller of
class. He too was now a spy and saboteur with a Russian price on his head. The job did not come to him as naturally as it came to his superior officer, however. Certain rather unsavoury acts were
carried out reluctantly by the young Scot.

On the other hand, although Crossman had not witnessed Lovelace in action, there was something in the cold blue eyes of the English officer which told the sergeant that, in the major’s
thinking, expediency overruled scruples. Crossman had no doubt that Major Lovelace was a student of Machiavelli and believed that the end always justified the means. Major Lovelace’s next
remark confirmed this view.

‘Utterly convinced of it. We must seek him out and eliminate him.’

‘Bring him to trial you mean, sir?’ said Crossman, with more hope than conviction.

‘Good Lord, no, man. We must assassinate the beggar before he does any more harm. He’s been passing the Russians information on the disposition of our battalions and the positions of
our guns. We must kill him.’

Sergeant Crossman puffed on the long curved Turkish chibouque which was his constant companion. Taking the stem from between his lips he said quietly, ‘That sounds like murder to me, sir.
What if we get the wrong man?’

Major Lovelace sighed and unbuttoned his tunic.

‘We must make sure we get the right man. Work like this requires precision. Think how it would look to those back home if the culprit were British! His regiment, his parents and his
friends, his comrades – they would all die of shame. Think of what the war correspondent William Russell would make of it – headlines across the front of The Times.’

‘And if the traitor’s not British?’

‘Then it hardly matters, does it?’

Crossman frowned. He was not sure he liked that answer. He was not one of those who believed in the superiority of the British as a race. Lovelace however saw the frown and interpreted it
correctly.

‘I think you misunderstand me, sergeant. I meant if he’s not British – say he’s French or Turkish, or some mercenary from another nation entirely – we should have
the dickens of a job to bring him to trial. My feeling is that he would slide out of it somehow and end up laughing at us on the shores of some unreachable country. No, we must shoot him dead and
be done with it.’

‘And,’ asked Crossman with a sinking feeling, ‘who is to do this unpalatable deed?’

Lovelace smiled humourlessly with those cold blue eyes.

‘Why, you of course, sergeant.’

The pipe came out of the mouth.

‘Me?’

‘Would I be telling you all this if it were not you? This must remain strictly between the two of us. No other person in the world must know of it.’

‘I’m glad to hear that part,’ said Crossman. ‘If it’s to be done I would prefer it to remain a secret to everyone else but myself. Even two of us is one too
many.’

‘Your wish will be granted in full. I do not know who the traitor is. A Greek informant out of Sebastopol tells us only that he will be in a certain place at a certain time. It is all he
knew of the matter himself. He will arrive at Mackenzies Farm at around six a.m. tomorrow morning. You will be there to put a bullet in his heart. On your return you will not need to tell me his
name – all I wish to hear is that the mission has been a success. This is not one of the fox hunts I would have chosen for you, Sergeant Crossman, but there is no alternative.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because I have to be elsewhere and I trust no one else but you to carry this out successfully.’

Crossman puffed on the dregs of his tobacco, muttering, ‘I suppose I should take that as a compliment.’

‘Yes and no,’ said the major, smiling. ‘One of the aspects of this business I am certain of is that you are not the traitor – and that makes you entirely eligible to be
the assassin.’

At that moment the door opened and Major Lovelace looked up sharply. The noise of the guns along the siege line around Sebastopol could be heard quite plainly through the open doorway. Those
Russian batteries replying to the bombardment were slightly fainter, but the eerie sound of ‘Whistling Dicks’ – large Russian shells which made a peculiar whirring noise –
could be heard above all. The two sides had been pounding at one another since the British had repelled an attack a few days previously on the ruins of Inkerman to the north of the city.

Into the room stepped a lieutenant from the Rifle Brigade. Crossman recognised Dalton-James, a member of the old school, and not a modern-thinking soldier like Lovelace. He believed sergeants,
whether they came from good families or not, should be seen and not heard. Dalton-James had not been on any fox hunts. He worked more in the role of coordinator of missions for General Buller

Lieutenant Dalton-James looked shocked as he approached the pair of them. Crossman guessed it was because Lovelace was casually sipping at a glass of rum, his tunic unbuttoned and his hat on the
table beside him. Crossman himself was in a similar state of undress, puffing away on his chibouque. The major and the sergeant looked like drinking chums enjoying a chitchat in an inn.

‘Sir?’ said Dalton-James, coming stiffly to attention before the major. ‘You sent for me?’

‘Ah, yes, lieutenant. The sergeant here will be going out on a fox hunt. He will be going alone. See that he is provided with enough rations for two days in the field.’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied the lieutenant.

Clearly Dalton-James did not like to be called forth to supply a mere sergeant with his field rations. Immaculate in his Rifle Greens, the lieutenant looked as if he were going to a ball. A ship
had recently arrived at Balaclava carrying a trunk of new uniforms solely for him.

Crossman, in comparison, was dressed in rags.

The majority of British soldiers walking around the Crimean landscape were attired similarly to Crossman. After almost a year in the only uniform they possessed they looked like scarecrows. They
slept in trenches half-filled with water, they waded through rivers, through thorny brakes, down into dust bowls and up over rocky escarpments – all in the same uniform. Their tents, ancient
and threadbare even before being unpacked, were also in tatters. It was a raggedy army which besieged the city of Sebastopol, an army of red-eyed, weary men, attacked by sickness and
undernourished.

It was rumoured that there were uniforms, and blankets, and other such riches, thick with mould and rotting in the boats and warehouses of Balaclava harbour. This sorely-needed equipment never
reached the men: no one dared take the responsibility for issuing them. The Commissariat ‘Purveyors’ awaited certificates from England, granting permission to open crates and issue
clothing. Such certificates took an age to arrive, after being signed by several government departments, and even when approved were often lost in transit. Soldiers died of exposure not because
there were no warm clothes, but because of red tape. Families and the general public in Britain were appalled by the stories coming back from the front and there had been much castigation of the
Commissariat in the press.

Winter was coming on, and though a few had managed to take coats and boots from Russian corpses, most were still in desperate need of kit. Crossman had purchased an issue sheepskin coat from
French soldiers who were better provisioned. This hid his threadbare coatee which had weathered from its original red into a faded purple hue. He had sheepskin leggings, held in place by leather
thongs crisscrossed up his calves. On his head he wore a fur hat, taken from a dead Russian.

Once Crossman had been provisioned, he set off to the northwest, to find the Mackenzie place. The farm, once owned by a Scottish expatriate, was situated not far from the
Inkerman ruins, just above the Old City Heights. It was a good ten miles from Kadikoi village over dangerous country. The sergeant travelled light: his Tranter revolver with its two triggers
– one for cocking the weapon and the other for firing – and his German hunting knife. Not for him the normal 58 lb weight of equipment carried by a British soldier, most of which that
soldier had to purchase himself out of his own pay.

The farm was outside the limits of the siege. In fact, Crossman reflected as he walked, it could hardly be called a siege. Supplies and fresh men were still getting through to the troops and
citizens of Sebastopol. The Russians, though soundly beaten at the Alma and held at Balaclava now had the initiative.

Retaining some of the redoubts in the hills, the Russians blocked the Woronzoff Road, thus denying the British a proper supply route from Balaclava to the siege line, and confining them to a
small difficult track over the Sapouné Ridge. They also held the coast along the Heights of Inkerman, north of Sebastopol, thus allowing a safe passage in and out of the city. Reinforcements
and supplies were transported over the Sea of Azov to the towns of Yenikale and Kerch on the east of the Crimea, and from there overland westwards to Sebastopol.

It appeared to Crossman that men were fighting bravely and dying for no gain. Lord Raglan seemed to be a most ineffectual commander-in-chief, though there were one or two competent generals
below him. Raglan was a mere presence on the battlefield, but little else. The one time he had made a decisive order, it had resulted in the destruction of the Light Brigade.

It had been an early dawn of mist and rain when Crossman set out from Kadikoi, passing hovels and tents where British wives took in washing. It was a good time to travel. One could see
one’s path, yet the shadows of the twilight chased each other across the landscape and disguised movement. One man flitting between rocks and through bushes might avoid detection.

As the morning wore on however, the mists cleared and the rain ceased. It became brighter and more dangerous to travel. Crossman climbed a ridge, found himself a rock hang and decided to get
some rest. He had recently been quite ill and was not yet thoroughly fit.

On waking, Sergeant Crossman scratched at his throat, feeling something irritating him in that spot. He thought it was an insect, until he opened his eyes and looked up the shining length of a
sabre. Thence along an arm which culminated in the smiling face of a young Russian lieutenant. The point of the lieutenant’s sword was pricking the hollow below Crossman’s Adam’s
apple.

‘Good day to you,’ said the Russian in his own language.

Crossman, who spoke both German and French, and understood a little Russian, nodded without opening his mouth. He glanced to the right and left and saw he was surrounded by Russian soldiers.
Unlike their officer they were not smiling. They simply stared, a semicircle of long bayonets at the ready. Their round faces revealed no curiosity. They looked as if they belonged behind a plough,
much like the lads who served under British officers.

Crossman now spoke. ‘Good day, lieutenant – I was just having a nap.’

‘You do not speak my language at all well. What nationality are you?’

‘Je suis français,’ replied Crossman, without hesitation, seeing some Cossacks in the background. ‘A corporal in the Zouaves. I’m – I’m running
away. I’ve had enough and my father is sick in a Marseille hospital. I need to get home.’

Since his arrival in the Crimea and his recruitment into General Buller’s group of espionage agents and saboteurs, Crossman had been pursued by certain Cossacks. He had killed a number of
the blue warriors in the course of his duties. A Greek spy for the Russians had given his name and rank to them, as the perpetrator of these deaths. Now they were looking for a Sergeant Crossman in
the 88th Foot, the Connaught Rangers. It was better to be French.

The Russian lieutenant switched easily to the French language.

‘A corporal in the Zouaves? Where is your uniform? How is it that you speak a little Russian?’

‘I speak a little of quite a few languages. Turkish, Russian, German – even a little English. I am a resourceful man.’

The lieutenant finally removed the sword point from Crossman’s throat.

‘And where is this resourceful deserter going?’

‘Home,’ replied Crossman. ‘To France.’

‘You are walking back to France?’

Crossman grinned. ‘I don’t have any other alternative. They wouldn’t let me have a horse. I’m a foot soldier, as you can see. I was hoping to get a ship somewhere up the
coast. Perhaps you can give me the name of a good cargo vessel, bound for the Mediterranean. I live in Marseille.’

‘So you said.’

Crossman bit his tongue. He was overdoing it. He was not yet good at subterfuge and deceit.

The Russian spoke again. ‘You must be a sailor to speak so many languages.’

‘I’m no sailor. I don’t speak them fluently. I have simply heard them in the waterfront cafés of Marseille. May I go now?’

The lieutenant turned to his men and repeated the last sentence in Russian. Now they roared with laughter. Soldiers came forward and prodded him with their bayonets. Then he was herded, out of
the cover of the rock hang and down the hillside. Here he saw with astonishment that there was a whole army on the march. At least two divisions. He noticed by their insignia they were from Odessa
– the 4th Army Corps.

The 4th Corps! Heading towards the Russian Army now camped on the Heights of Inkerman. Something was in the wind. A fresh assault by the Russians?



Crossman underwent a perfunctory search for weapons and was then bullied into a scramble down the slope. When he reached the bottom he tripped and rolled over in the dirt. His
sheepskin flew open to expose his British Army coatee. The lieutenant who had captured him rushed forward and shouted an order to two soldiers. They tore the sheepskin from Crossman’s back
revealing the now purple coatee and its faded sergeant’s chevrons. When he objected he received a rifle butt on the cheekbone, making him reel back and spit blood.

‘A French deserter?’ shouted the officer in his face. ‘I think not. I think you are British.’

‘British, French,’ muttered Crossman, taking back his sheepskin coat and putting it on again, ‘what difference does it make? I’m a deserter.’

‘Perhaps not, perhaps not. There is talk of a British sergeant who has given us a great deal of trouble. A spy and saboteur. Our people are looking for such a person. You may be
he.’

Crossman shook his head. ‘I try to give no man trouble.’

‘How is it,’ continued the officer, now drawing other officers to the scene, ‘that you speak good French? A sergeant in the British Army? This is unlikely, is it not? I think
you are the spy.’

An infantry captain drew his sword and stepped forward. He said something in Russian to the two soldiers standing near him. They reached out and each took one of Crossman’s arms. The
sergeant was forced into a kneeling position with his arms bent painfully behind his back like two open wings of an angel. He realised now he was about to be executed. The captain was going to
decapitate him with his sword.

‘Wait!’ cried Crossman in French. ‘I can be of use. I – I know the disposition of our army.’

Crossman was desperately trying to buy some time. It did not matter what he told them. He could make it up. They were surely fresh from the Russian hinterland. They would know very little about
the situation here in the Crimea. It seemed he was wrong about this however, for the lieutenant standing beside the captain laughed.

‘You think we do not have our spies too? What is there to know? That you have your battalions stretched thinly from Balaclava to Sebastopol? And that you have the French Army on your left
covering the Chersonese Uplands? Let me tell you that the French and British Headquarters both lie five miles directly south of Sebastopol and that the camps of your depleted cavalry units are to
the right and rear of your so-called siege line. What more can you tell me, sergeant?’

Despair filled Crossman. He knew he was about to die and he was terribly afraid. He was a young man with a stout heart, but waiting for a sword to descend upon one’s neck was enough to
fill the bravest soldier with terror. At the last moment he looked up, to see the sword poised. There was fear on the face of the man who wielded the weapon too, and the guards who held Crossman
looked on in horror. An execution is no easy task for any man with feelings in his breast.

Suddenly, there was a shout. A red-faced colonel rode forward on his horse, barking an order. The captain let his sword arm fall by his side. For the moment at least, Crossman was reprieved. He
let out a short sob of relief. The two soldiers pulled him to his feet as the colonel rode up.

Crossman stared up into the fat red face with its huge, white, bristling moustaches. The man stared down at him, keenly searching his face. Then another order was barked and the colonel rode off
to the front of the corps, which was now on its feet and preparing to march.

‘You have been given a short while to live,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Our colonel wishes to question you.’

‘I told you I had information about the disposition of our troops.’

‘Bah!’ scoffed the lieutenant. ‘We can find out all about that from The Times newspaper. Our best spies are your war correspondents. What my colonel wishes to know is
whether your soldiers have any heart left, after we smashed you at Balaclava . . .’

‘You didn’t smash us,’ replied Crossman, angrily. ‘We held you.’

‘Yes, but at what cost? You have lost your precious Light Brigade. We took many of your guns. We captured your redoubts on the heights overlooking the Woronzoff Road. Your generals are in
disarray, arguing amongst themselves, not wishing to speak with the French whom they regard as an old enemy, and not wishing to use the Turks whom they believe failed them at Balaclava. You see, we
know everything.’

‘What’s my grandmother’s name?’ snapped Crossman, as his hands were bound behind him.

‘What? Don’t be foolish.’

‘You see,’ he sneered at the lieutenant, ‘you don’t know everything.’

The lieutenant’s face went stiff and formal.

‘So, this is the famous British humour we hear about – it is not funny at all.’

‘It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to be a put down.’

‘I do not understand this gibberish.’

Crossman was led away on the end of a leash attached to his hands. The two guards assigned to look after him were young men with peasant faces. They seemed pleasant enough, not like the guards
he had had when he had been captured on a mission in Sebastopol. They had beaten him to within a shade of his life. One of them smiled shyly at him with worried crinkled eyes as he studied the
man’s face. Crossman had no doubt these young men were as apprehensive as any soldier in a war.

Towards evening, the march stopped and the Russian corps made camp. No tents went up and no fires were lit. They simply formed huddled rings around stacked rifles, while
sentries were posted on the periphery.

His hands untied, Crossman was taken to the red-faced colonel. The young lieutenant was there, looking immaculate. He also looked pleased with himself. No doubt he would have been given credit
for Crossman’s capture. Something to write home about to his aristocratic family in St Petersburg or Moscow or one of the other cities in his vast country.

Crossman too came from aristocracy: a fact he preferred to put behind him. He hated his father, a major in the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders, for seducing his mother and leaving her to die
unmarried and alone. It was the reason for him being in the ranks, under an assumed name.

The colonel, who like most aristocrats also spoke French, asked Crossman some pertinent questions.

‘Why are you dressed in a Frenchman’s jacket?’

‘It’s warm. I purchased it from a French soldier, who had taken it from the body of a friend who fell in battle.’

The colonel snorted. ‘You rob your own dead?’

‘I understood the money was to go to the dead soldier’s widow.’

There was a nod of approval from the colonel.

‘And the money for that Russian headgear you wear? Is that to go to the widow of the soldier who owned it?’

Crossman looked a little shamefaced.

‘I admit I stole this fur hat.’

Again, another nod. ‘You know what I think? I think you buy and steal clothes because the British Army does not supply its own troops with such items. I think your great Army of the East
is in chaos. Admit to me. The men are dispirited, are they not? Their morale is low, they are under-provisioned, they die of sickness in the siege trenches, they freeze on cold nights, they have
nothing left in them with which to fight?’

Crossman would have liked to argue all points with the colonel, but he did not, instead he confined himself to the last part of the question.

‘A British soldier will always have something in him with which to fight.’

The lieutenant standing behind Crossman snorted with mirth. But the colonel merely stared into Crossman’s eyes, seeking some sort of truth.

Then he said, ‘I think you know your army is at a low ebb, far from home, its faith in its leaders gone. The cholera is killing you by the hundred. Your cholera belts are no protection
against this deadly disease. I think you know you are finished.’

‘Then I must know it, if you think so.’

‘I do, I do. I am sorry for the common soldier. You should have come after us when we retreated from the Alma. You should have gone into Sebastopol immediately. Your leaders are making too
many mistakes, costing many lives. Now we have our defences and a stronger army building. We will destroy you all and send the survivors home to a nation in sorrow.’

Crossman shrugged. ‘If you think so.’

‘I do, I do.’

After this interview, Crossman was led away by his guards and his hands were retied behind his back. His ankles were also bound this time, since there was no marching to do. He was made to sit
with his back against a boulder. A kind of peace settled down over the area, though the sound of distant guns both from the city and the allied armies punched at the hollow sky.

Gradually men fell asleep all around. A Russian soldier’s uniform, unlike that of a British soldier, was full and warm. They were not even issued blankets, their thick greatcoats serving
that function. Finally only one of Crossman’s two guards remained awake. He was staring into the middle distance, not paying very much attention to his prisoner, who he believed to be
secure.

Indeed, Crossman himself felt helpless. The ropes were tight around his wrists. And while his ankles were bound he could not creep away into the night. He tried scraping his bonds against the
boulder, but they remained secure and unyielding under his efforts. After looking up at the stars for a while, he too dropped into a doze.

At around two o’clock in the morning he suddenly woke to feel someone slicing through his bonds. Glancing behind him he saw the rotund shape of a man using a sharp knife. Quickly he looked
at the two guards. Both were asleep now, one sitting hunched over his musket, the other with his back against the same rock against which Crossman was propped.

The bits of rope dropped away. The knife was pressed into his right hand. He swiftly cut through the cords around his ankles. When he looked up he saw his rescuer was just about to slit the
throat of the soldier closest to him. Crossman gripped the man’s wrist and shook his head. The man shrugged and the pair of them then sneaked away into the darkness.

The man who had saved Crossman from what would surely have been a summary execution, was Yusuf Ali, the Bashi-Bazouk with whom Crossman had shared many missions, many fox hunts. The sergeant did
not pause now to ask why the Turk was there, but si. . .