The Prague Ultimatum Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2017

  by Urbane Publications Ltd

  Suite 3, Brown Europe House, 33/34 Gleaming Wood Drive,

  Chatham, Kent ME5 8RZ

  Copyright © James Silvester, 2017

  The moral right of James Silvester to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-911331-38-4

  EPUB 978-1-911331-39-1

  MOBI 978-1-911331-40-7

  Design and Typeset by Michelle Morgan

  Cover by Michelle Morgan

  Printed in Great Britain by

  CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

  urbanepublications.com

  The publisher supports the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®), the leading international forest-certification organisation. This book is made from acid-free paper from an FSC®-certified provider. FSC is the only forest-certification scheme supported by the leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace

  For Mitchell Kevin Harrowell Lynn.

  Always be Batman.

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  “TOMMY…? TOMMEEE…?”

  The words floated ghoulishly on the bitter, raw night air, accosting Corporal Thomas Stone of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment and freezing him in his well-ordered tracks; his immaculately polished right boot hovering inches from the ground and his long-standing loathing of sentry duty rising familiarly in his gut.

  It was the primary responsibility of Corporal Stone and the Armoured Regiments incumbent in The British Army of the Rhine, to deter incursion from Eastern forces, demonstrating an ability to deploy to forward positions with a high level of battle worthiness twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Theirs would be a symbolic sacrifice of course, the men knew as much. However brave, however well trained they may be – and were – it was common knowledge that the efforts of BAOR and their Western Allies would be wholly insufficient to quell a Russian invasion for any more than seventy-two hours. But they would be the most hellish seventy-two hours of the invaders’ lives, Corporal Stone and his comrades in arms would make sure of that. He and the lads in 4RTR and throughout the Army had not been dragged up through the blood, toil, tears and sweat of a World War, only to back down when the call came. Corporal Stone was ready to do his duty and, if necessary, to die in the course of it. He was ready to do his best.

  But heroic futility was not in the Corporal’s immediate plans tonight. Tonight, his desire had been solely to complete his patrol with as little incident as possible, down a couple of beers with the boys and then throw himself on the sparse provision of the barracks at Fallingbostel; there to gnaw the cold from his fingers and plunge himself into dusty dreams of the squalid streets and dilapidated buildings of his childhood. The rubble and remains of neighbour’s houses in the forgotten corner of Manchester derided by many as The Italian Quarter, had so often provided his playground and he longed only to play in them once more until the inescapable claw of reveille reached into his slumber and pulled him back to his post. But before he could retreat to his dreams, there was the matter of the words which so chilled him, and whichever ghoul had spoken them.

  They were not aimed at him of course, not specifically at least, rather they carried the melancholy of a caller fully aware of the British patrols between themself and escape, and the haunted intensity of one determined to complete their journey. Patrols of the inner border between West Berlin and the forsaken East were common, and for more years than most could remember, some said as far back as the Peninsular Wars, the World knew every British soldier as Tommy Atkins. Corporal Stone knew this too, Corporal Stone was no fool, but this warmed him with little comfort when the Berlin night was at its blackest and the ghostly voices called his name. It was not only the words, but the spectral manner in which they reached him that unsettled the Corporal, whistling chillingly in his ears, just as the German bombs had done those nights he had stood vigil with his Mother, years before, wondering on the fate of his older brothers long since gone off to war. The sound was at once universal and particular, as though insistent that he feel some exclusive dread in the midst of its throes.

  Rejecting the entrapment of memory, Corporal Stone called upon his military rationalism to dispense as best he could the threat of the supernatural. Crunching his wavering boot to the ground, he spun to face the direction of the words in one fluid movement. Swiftly, sublimely, he ran his numb hand up the sleeve of his dull green Great Coat until it met the varnished wooden barrel of the grimly reassuring A1L1 Self Loading Rifle hanging on his shoulder, sliding it down into readiness and opening his mouth to recite the time honoured cry of the sentry.

  “Halt!” Corporal Stone barked, “Who g…”

  His throat obstinately refused to release the words, mirroring instead his eye’s surprise at the figure before him. Corporal Stone had sentried in Germany many times and was well used to the sight of people struggling to break free from the crumbling grey oppression of the East, and the desperation that so often fuelled them. Many had come on many previous nights, wretched, filthy, clothes and flesh torn by the jagged defiance of wire fences run through and crawled under in terror; the completion of their fear driven quests depending on escape through the British Tommies walking the line. Some offered chocolate, hoarded for the journey, some offered jewellery handed down through generations. Some offered themselves.

  The Corporal’s instructions were clear: to deter entry. Corporal Stone had balked when on his first patrol he had been handed the battered, worn axe handle and realised the implication of its purpose; his disgust palpably contributing to his hatred of sentry duty. The West was recovering slowly from the ravages of war, so the political mantra went, it couldn’t accommodate everyone. Besides, how could they be sure which of the escapees were genuine and which harboured more nefarious intentions? Corporal Stone understood the argument, in his weaker moments he almost sympathised with it, but those who stood in The House and made it had seldom personally sentried the Divide and looked those people in the eye. Corporal Stone had, and he and his comrades had lost count of the occasions they had stooped to re-tie bootlaces, or suffered momentary loss of sight when the calls drifted over the fractured concrete and barbed wire, across the divide towards them.

  Corporal Stone gathered himself and drank in the silhouet
te standing ossified to the spot a few yards ahead. A figure more than a boy but not quite a man stared back at the Corporal, almost as tall as he was painfully thin, the piercing white of his eyes and paleness of his flesh accentuated in the moonlight. It was those eyes which unsettled the soldier, they were pained and tired, too much so for one so young, as though something irrevocable was absent from the soul behind them. They bore through Corporal Stone, without malice or ferocity, but with an undeniable presence. His young face was gaunt and unsmiling, though not displaying a preoccupation with its own unhappiness, and his posture was devoid of the signs of desperate panic so typical in people scrambling towards the Lines.

  “I am your friend, Tommy, though I have no password to give,” the young voice was as emotionless as the face it came from, making its case simply and accordant with fact, “and I have no bribe to offer you. Will you let me through, Tommy?”

  “You can’t come through lad,” Corporal Stone responded, still frozen into position and his voice not altogether as strong as he would have liked, “run along home now, your parents will be worried.”

  “My parents are dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Corporal Stone answered in sincerity.

  “They died years ago, in the War. It was a long way from here.”

  “So who looks after you?”

  “Those people..,” the young figure answered, the slightest hint of hesitation in his voice, “they are dead as well now.”

  “Bloody hell,” Corporal Stone cursed. The War had made losers of everyone, right the way across the continent and though it had finally ended some six years hence, the soldier could never quite get used to the totality of the misery it had caused. Nor, he hoped, would he ever.

  “I really am sorry lad,” he insisted, “but you won’t find anything to make up for that this side of the fence. Whatever problems you’re running from, you’ll just find more here; the grass isn’t always greener.”

  “They are coming for me.”

  “Who?”

  “The Men.”

  “Why?”

  No answer came. The figure simply remained standing, ghoulishly noiseless, his hands in his pockets, only the thin wire fence between them.

  “I need to pass through, Tommy,” the quiet voice eventually murmured.

  “Why do you want to come here?”

  “I am looking.”

  “For what?”

  “Answers.”

  “There are no answers here, lad. There’s a shed load of questions alright, but not too many answers.”

  Distant laughter behind him alerted Corporal Stone to his impending relief and a momentary surge of alarm channelled through him. The boy still stood silent, ghostly; the intensity in his eyes a constant. He wasn’t much younger than Corporal Stone’s brothers had been years earlier, when they had left to fight the damn war with cheery promises of swift victory and imminent return, their faces full of an optimism they didn’t truly feel. There was no such optimism in this boy’s face.

  “Will you let me through, Tommy?”

  For an agonising and seemingly eternal instant, the Corporal stood, staring down the barrel of his rifle at this strange, emotionless boy whose future depended on the outcome to the conundrum playing out in the soldier’s mind. And he wondered as he stared, if the German soldier had peered in equal hesitation on the day he took his brother from him; and pondered for the thousandth time whether he had in turn found himself at the end of an Allied rifle, or whether he had lived to cry regret into his glass in some post-War Bavarian beer house, for having allowed himself to be bullied by another’s misguided sense of ‘Duty’ into acting against what his conscience told him was right.

  He could only guess at the moral introspection of the wartime killers of yesteryear, but his own conscience was speaking to him now, loudly and clearly, and he knew very well which choice he believed to be right. With his heart full of family, Corporal Stone shouldered his rifle and turned away from the boy, swiftly and deliberately continuing his sentry along his side of the crumbling, grey concrete desert he was sworn to protect.

  “Double Time, lad,” he said, almost under his breath, “God bless.”

  The sound of quick, ferocious scrambling echoed in Corporal Stone’s ears, followed by fast footsteps quickly fading into the black night behind him. He hadn’t made much further progress on his path before a bellowing voice reached him from behind.

  “Corporal Stone!”

  “Sergeant Major!”

  Corporal Stone threw himself to attention, a sinking dread taking hold of his stomach. The Badge, his Sergeant Major, had seen the whole exchange. Sure enough, the RSM, a barrel-chested giant of a man and a seasoned Warrant Officer who had stormed the beaches at Normandy, was striding imperiously towards the young soldier with purpose, his clipped moustache bristling above his fixed jaw. Rumours circulated among the men that the mere sight of him charging forward, bayonet fixed and battle cry bellowing had once been enough to convince a trio of German Paratroopers to surrender. Others scoffed at the suggestion and insisted the intimidation had been down to the ferocity of the profanities he screamed, and that it had been five men with the good sense to lay down arms. To cross this man was not to be advised and Corporal Stone began to inwardly prepare himself for the two weeks of jankers he could expect as a minimum punishment for his dereliction. To his surprise though, no vociferous volley was launched by the Sergeant Major when he drew alongside his subordinate, instead, Corporal Stone was greeted with a stern but fatherly stare from the older man.

  “What was that, lad?”

  “What was what, Sergeant Major?”

  “I could have sworn I saw something coming through the fence and scurrying off just then.”

  Corporal Stone adopted an expression of supreme ignorance and shook his head, his eyes wide.

  “Dunno Sergeant Major, must have been a fox or something, maybe?”

  “A fox, eh?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  For all his fearsome reputation, the men knew their Warrant Officer to be an honourable man who had their backs, and by not having subjected him to an immediate dressing down, Corporal Stone knew he would escape the worst.

  “When you finish here,” the veteran soldier said, “collect my boots from outside the Doss House. I want them cleaned, shined and spic and span before reveille tomorrow, or I’ll run a pole up your backside and have C Squadron use you as a flag. Plenty of Bull, understand?”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  “Carry on, Corporal.”

  Corporal Stone turned on his heel and continued his patrol as his superior’s boot steps receded back into the night. He had gotten away lightly he knew that, even if his bed would have to wait a little longer for him. He allowed a little pride to creep into his step; he was there to do his best and he’d done it, even if he had earned a mild punishment for his troubles. Someone had needed help and he’d given it, and maybe someone would have the chance of a better life because of it. He smiled at the thought of the strange youngster who had stood before him minutes earlier and wished him better times than those he had clearly experienced so far. While the War had stolen so much from so many, Corporal Stone always felt worse when the young were involved, and he hoped the boy would have a future free of the death, destruction and conflict which had robbed his eyes of their wonder. Content, he reassured himself that the boy would be fine and that he would have plenty of time in his life to reclaim the innocence in his soul and be happy; he was, after all, only a Child.

  ONE

  “THE GOLDEN ROOM IS CLOSED TODAY, I’m sorry,” the woman behind the small, glass divide repeated her refusal for the third time, “you can join the regular tour at ten o’clock, but it will be a tight squeeze; this is the most visited castle in Czechoslovakia, sir.”

  Captain Lincoln Stone shifted his weight from one leg to the other, his irritation with both the woman’s obstinacy and his own crouched stance at the low ticket office window ferm
enting steadily. Though the circumstances of his trade had well versed him in desert temperatures, the dry, burning sun and his own frustrations combined to break down his body’s resistance and he felt the sweat begin to form atop his bald head; glistening droplets upon his smooth, dark skin. His face betrayed the baggage of military experience, but he wore it handsomely nonetheless and he was certainly leaner and fitter than most men in their mid-Fifties. A light, white cotton shirt hung open necked on his torso, above immaculate blue jeans and black shoes which glistened in the teasing sun. A light black jacket completed the ensemble, the finishing touch to a dashing, if imposing figure.

  “Believe me, ‘madam’,” Stone replied, countering her ‘sir’ with a barely supressed venom, “castles bore me, and I harbour no desire to tour one with a group of people more intrigued by my skin tone than the resilience of millennia old architecture. I’ve travelled a long way to get to this ‘Golden Room’, and whether you let me in willingly, or I kick down every door I see until I find it, that’s where I’m going. Now if you can’t help me with that, then please go and find someone who can.”

  The woman squirmed and vacated her seat, quickly scurrying through an inner door while Stone sought to rein in his seething. He instantly regretted his shortness with her, blaming everything from the heat to the circumstances for his display; and in truth, they were unusual circumstances, at least for him, and he moved to stand in the shade of the Castle gates while he reflected on them.

  The envelope had dropped just days after the Hearing, along with the latest freebie rag, a couple of bills and the dying dregs of the hate mail the proceedings had briefly stirred up. A part of Stone suspected the mystery letter may too have formed part of the bile fuelled barrage, but instead he found inside a boarding pass from Liverpool to Bratislava for the following week in his name, connecting train tickets from the airport to the town of Prievidza, a ticket granting now disputed entry to Bojnice Castle’s ‘Golden Room’ and a letter bearing the words ‘Please attend promptly’ above a flurry of official looking signatures. Only the grandest of these monikers persuaded him to comply.